Recent content by Basenji

Lobbying has a spectacular return on investment -- 22,000% on one tax bill, according to a U of Kansas study: KU News - Tax lobbying provides 22,000 percent return to firms, KU researchers find

Wish it were true that tobacco "paid for itself." (I was thinking that was a corollary of your fix; if it wasn't, please disregard the quote/reference.) Unfortunately, when one combines the history of enormous tobacco subsidies to farmers and the increased health care costs for the very long and...

"Competition" proponents worked hard to destroy real competition Please disregard this post unless you want to read a long attempted explanation of why Texas electric restructuring has gone badly. [a better explanation would be much longer] I was right to be hesitant, because I forgot to...

Good luck! I'm hesitantly writing a quick off-the-top-of-the-head answer when I really should cite numerous references, which I hope to do later. (I've worked in the Texas utility field [electric & telecom] for about 16 years.) In short: your best bet is to try to reduce consumption through...

Let's not forget to thank the previous governor for pushing through "deregulation" that took Texas from lower-than-average rates to higher-than-average rates, and let's not forget to thank the current governor for insisting that it's all going very well, thank you. (Oh, did we forget to mention...

Good points, but ... 8.25% sales tax, 2-3% property tax, long distances and very little public transit (so the increasing cost of gas is painful), houses not cheap any more in central metro areas. Then again, there are solutions: don't buy much stuff, ride a bike or drive a small...

another reason y'all won't want to move to Texas Wow! I apparently made a big mistake in working for the State of Texas (rather than California). Those salaries and pensions mentioned above are almost triple the typical Texas levels (maybe double for firefighters). In the 1980s and 1990s...

and "What the [non-partisan Congressional Budget Office] found, as study after study has shown, was that any new revenue that tax cuts brought in paled in comparison with their cost. This is why the deficit jumped under the last two tax-cutting presidents (Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush) and...

The Bush/McCain invasion and long-term occupation of Iraq is now widely expected to cost well over a TRILLION dollars (multiply that by two or three or more to include opportunity costs, along with other still-unrecognized costs related to long term effects on military personnel and equipment)...

Perfect timing, chinaco - thanks!

Seems like it was just yesterday that we were paying 90p for a pint (ok, it was 1984-85), and with £1=$1 to $1.10, we were downing dollar pints. Woohoo!

Yikes - the things one says at 3am! In the light of daytime, I see that the professed attempt to be non-political seems silly - so ... clarification: I tried to not add any political commentary to statements already made by others. In any event ... uh ... never mind [just ignore the references...

video file available online already! Thanks so much, Telly! Warning: this show will "make you either want to throw up or do bodily harm to your elected representatives" This show appears to be only on KERA, the generally superb Dallas public television channel (I used to live near Dallas many...

You're very welcome, SamHouston! Thanks for letting me know it was helpful!

Howdy! After lurking on these forums for a long time, I joined so that I could add a bit more to Texas Proud's helpful comment. According to a relatively recent (Nov 2006) Texas Attorney General weekly column:In Texas, a business cannot penalize consumers who pay for a good or service by using a...