Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ-Life Links (050506)
Free Links:
- After $14.6 billion, please don’t tell me the tunnels will fall in — Six indictments involving allegedly inferior concrete in Boston’s “Big Dig” project came down yesterday. Here’s the second paragraph from the Wikipedia entry about this “Your Government Dollars at Waste” project (go to the link to get to the footnotes within the paragraph):
Big Dig is the single most expensive highway project in American history. Although the project was estimated at $2.5 billion in 1985, when the last major highway section opened in December 2003, over $14.6 billion had been spent in federal and state tax dollars in the over 20 years since the project’s conception. However, according to a former state official, “they just picked $2.5 billion to get it rolling — everyone knew that was a lie.” The construction was replete with delays, escalating costs, leaks, poor execution and use of substandard materials. The Massachusetts Attorney General is demanding contractors refund taxpayers $108 million for “shoddy work.”
- Psst, don’t tell anyone (you figure I would find this at an Australian site) — “US Economy Firing on All Cylinders” (HT Drudge). There’s so much good news in this one, you just have to read the whole thing.
- The ACLU is so determined to get a cross removed in San Diego that it gets a judge to override the will of 75% of the voters who said they want it to stay (HTs Right on the Right and Interested-Participant).
- The Irony in This Item Is Indeed Bitter –
Court rejects Catholic request to stop Popetown
MUNICH - A German court rejected Wednesday a last-minute request by the Catholic Church to halt the broadcast of Popetown, a British-made TV cartoon that makes fun of the pope and the Vatican.
Judges said they could only have stopped the German arm of MTV from airing the 10-part weekly series if it had risked causing a breach of the peace by insulting religious sensibilities.
The court in Munich told church lawyers that TV shows might be tasteless or stupid, but that did not mean they endangered civic peace. Judges said debate about the forthcoming programme in Germany had remained rational.
Something you won’t see coming to German TV any time soon: Meccatown.
- The World Cup as a “Human Rights Disaster“? — If there’s one in the works, it has nothing to do with the soccer players, and everything to do with some of the attendees.
- Is Somebody at AP Not-So-Secretly Hoping for Bad News? Looks like it to me (bold is mine) –
Oil prices sank more than $2 a barrel for the second straight day on Thursday, falling below $70 as traders focused on U.S. government data that show gasoline supplies grew last week, reversing two months of declines.
….. Gasoline futures tanked by 9.11 cents to close at $1.9946 a gallon, and some analysts say it could be a sign that the 2006 highs for retail gasoline prices in the U.S. are behind us — assuming there is no repeat of last summer’s ferocious Gulf of Mexico hurricane season.
