wasmi.net

First of all, Brian still does not have a job. This is due to no fault of his own, he was simply downsized due to a budget crunch at the road commission where he worked. There wasn't enough money to operate with a balanced budget, so some of the positions were cut. (This means the road commission is trying to do the same amount of work as it did last year, but with fewer employees.)
Road commissions generally get the majority of their funding from taxes on gasoline. So, Hello! all you politicians-it's an ignorant idea to think that giving the US public a "gas tax holiday" will improve our lives at all. Gas will probably still be $4 or more per gallon, but our roads and bridges will deteriorate at a much more rapid rate as we won't have any money to repair them. We *already* don't have enough money to repair them! Anybody remember the bridge collapse in Minneapolis last year? The bridge had been rated as "structurally deficient" since 1990, and had not been scheduled for replacement until 2020! The bridge officials knew that the bridge might collapse (they discussed that possibility in internal memos well before the tragedy.) Yet there was no money to fix it until its scheduled replacement in 2020.
I chuckled when I read that President W was in Saudi Arabia visiting King Abdullah in order to convince him to raise oil production so that the US people could once again have cheap oil. According to the Associated Press, Bush received a chilly response.

In case you haven't read it, here's a quote from the article:
"High energy costs are a major drain on the U.S. economy, which is experiencing a slowdown that some think is already a recession. Oil prices are nearly $125 a barrel and gasoline threatens to go to $4 a gallon this summer.

Anthony Cordesman, a security analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Abdullah may produce something "simply because it's good manners," but nothing that would have a significant effect.

"U.S. influence over OPEC and Gulf oil production is diminished," he said. "It's not clear what the incentive is to Saudi Arabia. We can't deliver on (Mideast) peace. We can't deliver on arms transfers. We can't deliver on the Iraq that Saudi Arabia wants. We are raising problems in terms of Iran. And the reality is the market isn't being driven by us; it's being driven by China, by India, by rising Asian demand."

What does this mean? Well, remember all of our US jobs that were given away to people in India and China? Well, all of those workers over there want our American suburbian oil-guzzling lifestyle, too! China and India's demand for oil had doubled in the past decade.
China actually sent people over here to the US to study our suburban developments, saying that they actually want to recreate our suburbs over there!

So what does this all mean for me, personally? Well, my family now owns a house that is worth about $150,000. Did I mention that we owe $200,000 on this house? Did I mention that, of all of the potential job positions that Brian has either interviewed for or sent resumes to, none are less than an hour's drive away from said house, and most of them would require us to actually relocate.

This is a major issue, it's depressing, because we would be looking at either owing tens of thousands of dollars at closing (if we were even able to sell our house in this market) or just handing the keys over to the mortgage company and taking a massive hit on our credit rating and a huge financial loss. I won't even mention some huge repairs that must be made to the house to get it ready to sell. Yet more tens of thousands worth of loss.

How big a loss would this house be to us? I paid $50,000 in cash as a down payment on our house. Then, I spent $20,000 to remodel a bathroom. Then, I spent $17,000 on a new roof. Then, I spent $4,000 to have it painted. Can you say, "Bye bye, money!" because that's what it would be if we had to leave this house, where I fully expected to be able to live most of the remainder of my life.

Derek had better be smart enough to win a huge college scholarship, because by the time he is ready to go off to college, we won't have a dime to give him.

But we might be all flattened by our failing infrastructure before then.