Lance Winslow's Real Estate Topics Blog by Lance Winslow

Lance Winslow's Real Estate Blog w/500 articles - Lance Welcomes You and Wishes You Well!

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:51:35 -0600

A Message from Lance Winslow:

Thank you for coming to my Real Estate Blog. The Real Estate Sector is going through some tough times, but like anything, there are cycles and sector rotations, so, it will eventually recover. Depending on how closely you have watched many real estate markets in the United States go through 10-year cycles and although being at the bottom of a cycle is no fun, it is a temporary situation, it will not last forever. Individuals investing real estate long-term have made millions over time and made many of their family members quite wealthy.

One of the main reasons for creating this blog was to interact with the real estate community, the actual people who make a living working in the real estate sector, as Realtors, Agents, Home Stagers, Mortgage Brokers, Inspectors and Real Estate Service folks. Having been in the Franchising Sector, which often seems to be more about real estate than the actual business model itself, I have been involved for years in all aspects of the real estate sector. During my career as a Franchisor, I set up franchised outlets in 23-states, serving nearly 450 cities. The Real Estate side of the business gets in your blood and becomes a part of who you are.

The Real Estate Industry from building and construction to sales and services is a major part of our overall economy in the US. Thus, the happenings in and around this sector should be of interest to all because what happens here effects all corners of our society, economy and civilization. I sincerely, hope that as you read some of my 500 Blog Posts here at ActiveRain, that you will gain a greater knowledge, understanding and love for the real estate sector. I have enjoyed preparing this information for you and others who happen by. I feel it is important to share my experience, observations and knowledge with you.

I invite you to contact me, after you have read through these 500 Blog Posts or perhaps while you are working your way through them. Feel free to shoot me an email using this ActiveRain email system or look me up online, as I am not hard to find.

Oh, and one last thing; Have a totally great day, you deserve it!

Sincerely, Lance

Turning Old Car Tires into Roof Shingle Tiles Made of Rubber - An Environmental Solution Worth a Look

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 15:28:19 -0600

Believe it or not used tires can be made into roofing tiles and it turns out they have many advantages over other roofing materials. Tires into roofing; old tires made into roof tiles is be is being done. There is a plant that is recycling 40,000 tires a day for roof tiles; so far it is the largest. They cut the tread into little squares and then coat them with a bunch of large granular sized sand pebbles and you stack them on the roof as tiles and they are suppose to work great. More factories are opening and a few are coming online right now.

There are many environmental groups and eco-friendly Think Tanks, which are systematically looking for solutions to the challenge of the accumulation of used tires. Their focus is to develop a strategy to deal with all the tires we throw away and using these old tires and rubber materials that meets certain criteria to make things out of. One of the concepts is to use these old tires in the building of structures.

GreenMan Technologies has 8 Processing Facilities in USA. Below are some more websites, which are worthy and where you can learn more information about the used tire tiles for roofing.

Rubber used tires are piling up in the nations dumps and along our borders with Mexico, millions of them. They create hazards because rainwater is caught inside and remains stagnant and havens for Mosquitoes to lay their eggs. The piles of tires often catch on fire and are almost impossible to put out, while the smoke coming off of the melting rubber contains some of the most toxic substances known to mankind. By re-using these tires for roof shingles, which actually out last other shingles due to their tough construction, we can solve two problems at once. Think on This!

Wireless Sensors for Lawns in Drought Areas - Professional Lawn Watering Techniques

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 14:46:55 -0600

Over the years, the Online Think Tank has studied the challenges of droughts in the US. Our goal is to come up with solution to ease the pain of dwindling and over taxed fresh water supplies that our civilization so desperately needs. One concept we came up with was a scheme which used the latest in moisture sensors and net-centric WiFi systems to monitor the amount of water used on landscaping and lawns. These technology strategies can help home owners maintain lawns in drought areas using a fraction of the normal water use.

Professional Landscapers know that by burying wireless sensors on a rod in several places on a golf course to measure the exact amount of water getting to the roots. A healthy lawn only needs to be watered down to the roots and approximately three quarters of an inch below that. Any more is a waste and counter-productive for the lawns health. Professional lawn watering techniques have often been studied at length to improve efficiency in drought ridden regions and prevent the roots of the lawns from rotting out. Over watering the lawns or golf course greens does no one any good, as a matter of fact invites disease and additional problems to the lawn

Using such a system could save perhaps half of all landscape and lawn water and we know that 40% of all water used in a residence is used outside the home, thus, we can cut the water usage of the average household by 20%, and that's before employing gray water strategies. Now then, if you consider the over watering of center medians by municipalities in the middle of the night and the run off which flows into drinking water of local lakes and/or causes Algae Blooms from excessive fertilizer nitrates, then perhaps this concept could help there as well.

How does this system work? Well the sensors would be fixed to small rods not more than .3 meters long with wireless sensors in it buried a few inches deep to avoid being cut off by lawn mowers. The remote control computer gathering system mechanism would be attached to sprinkler system controls. The cost could be as little as $80.00 for the controls and as little as $8 per rod for such uses and mass production of any of these ideas. If these ideas were rendered as relevant BMPs, then perhaps the cost could go down to $35.00 per control and $5.00 per unit considering the economies of scale, since everyone would use them. In fact, they could be mass produced and sold at Wal-Mart, Lowes and Home Depot.

Currently, similar devises are used in private wells, pipelines, tanks etc. for fluid level control. The Flow of Water in this country is critical to the health and wealth of our Nation. The degree of effort we put forth now in conservation and savings will pay dividends and thus such systems are clearly worth the nominal upfront costs. These system are needed now, especially in the South and out West in drought ridden areas. This is an inexpensive solution to a major problem.

By employing innovative concepts like this we can spare our underground aquifers as well, as we are depleting these fresh water resources much faster than they are recharging. Now is the time to take action on water conservation. It has been estimated that watering of Golf Courses in many cities takes up to 10% of the total usage, so if you could cut it down by half, you get 5% of the total city's water use footprint back almost immediately. Of course, there are also agriculture applications for such a concept. With the increased growth and increased frequency of the droughts and severity of each new drought it is time to study these technologies further for the future of mankind. Please think on this. I offer the following essay as background information:

The Flow of Water: http://activerain.com/blogsview/394040/The-Flow-of-Water

Hurricane Homeowners Insurance in Florida Beach Communities - You Wish

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:30:21 -0600

Although the most recent Atlantic Tropical Hurricane Seasons, 2006 and 2007, were relatively light, State Farm is not writing any new policies to homeowners who live within a mile from the coast. State Farm indicated that the risk is far too great and that it is "only a matter of time" until there is another big year like the 2005 Atlantic Tropical Hurricane Season. There are other preferred carriers in Florida, but State Farm is one of the largest insurers there.

In fact, State Farm is cutting coastal residence from their insurance rolls, over 50,000 of them that live within a mile from the water on either side of the state. Through a combination for policy price increases of anywhere from 50 to 150% in some cases and a trimming of high-risk customers, State Farm hopes to reduce the risk exposure to the more than 1 Million it insures in the state.

The Great State of Florida's Insurance Government Monitoring agency is looking into forcing State Farm to uphold their previous policy costs, rather than raising fees to its policy holders or perhaps sue the company on behalf of citizens and consumers. Of course, State Farm had paid out huge amounts to policy holders in 2005 and is trying to reduce its risks and reinsurance companies may not be there if another huge season wipes out a decade of policy profits.

State Farm is a business, they are in the insurance industry, their goal is to remain profitable and that means shoring up risks. A Cat V Hurricane in a highly populated area, could amount to billions of dollars in losses to policy holders, which would most likely force them to exit the market place all together. Even though there are a couple of companies that will still write policies, one has to wonder if those policies will be worth the paper they are written on in the case of the Big One?

Even worse is the problem where mortgage companies and banks require the insurance as a stipulation of the loan, if the homeowner is cancelled, the bank will secure the insurance, most likely at an even higher price than the previous policies, even with the huge increases in costs. This is problematic at a time when many homeowners are trying to stay out of foreclosure and real estate prices are continuing to slide. Scary stuff, it is like a financial economic storm, before Mother Nature even warms up for the 2008 Atlantic Tropical Hurricane Season.

Property Tax Receipts and Economic Slow Down Takes Toll on Local Governments - Layoffs On the Way

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 12:14:15 -0600

As predicted and expected local governments are beginning to trim the fat and that means laying off employees. In markets where housing has taken its biggest bite out of the economy, there is an air of uncertainty. Country controllers, city auditors and local government leadership is trying to find ways to keep things moving and services strong, even with the dwindling of tax receipts from lackluster retail and auto sales, plus slow pays and property tax value re-adjustments.

The City of Phoenix, Arizona is cutting 500 employees now, with more to follow. In state governments we already read about California's hiring freeze and now Arizona is following suit, they have no choice. Most cities in both California and Arizona anticipate on cutting 5-10% out of their budgets in physical year 2008. That means no new buildings, equipment, hiring and trimming budgets, which will mean laying-off employees.

The States of Nevada and Florida are in similar positions. In Nevada they are watching their receipts hurt due to less travel from California to their casinos in the Northwest part of the state and then huge foreclosure numbers in both Northwestern Nevada and Clark County (Las Vegas), affecting property tax receipts. Las Vegas has enjoyed foreign tourism increases (due to weak US dollar) for hotels, entertainment and gambling. Although car sales are down statewide, the general retail receipts are actually up in Las Vegas, the most populated region of Nevada.

South Florida is in tough shape and small businesses are failing, due to the cascading problems of the housing crisis. Economists speculate that this scenario will be repeated in other high foreclosure housing markets first as we get through the recession. The recession will most likely be announced after it is over, as that is what the Fed and Treasury did last time.

Local Governments are also watching their costs increase as fuel costs have been taking a larger and larger chunk out of their budgets. This is also effecting education due to the costs to run school buses. It appears what has happened is no real surprise, as government generally spends whatever it takes in plus some, growing the bureaucracy incrementally, now with tax receipt income down, they are going to have raise taxes, fines and fees while reducing costs too. Maybe it is time for government to go on a diet? Of course, with increased foreclosures comes more crime too.

Meanwhile, the local governments are providing services to illegal alien and those costs are mounting as well. The challenges are intense and growing, municipalities and county governments are getting hit from all sides, as their income is reduced, their costs have increased and more folks are demanding more services, while crime is increasing too. Things are not looking too pretty right now.

Homes Near Schools, Sports Parks and Libraries Often Hold their Value Better

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:48:35 -0600

In places like California, homeowners watched average home prices fall over 20% and in some areas like Riverside County by 25% or more. Of course, Las Vegas, Detroit, Phoenix and Southern Florida took huge hits also and indeed, home prices are still falling in these markets. Much of it is about supply and demand with inventories rising and homebuyers trying their luck with low-ball offers, and with each one accepted that causes the average prices to fall further.

Still, we must be careful when discussing average home prices because some homes are much more desirable than others. Some neighborhoods and condos that are close to shopping districts, schools, civic arts plaza, sports parks, golf course or libraries do much better. Some communities and neighborhoods are just more appealing to folks who plan on buying a home to live in and expect to live there for quite a while.

Of course, those looking to steal a home by taking advantage of a distress sale, foreclosure or just low-balling many homes until one pays off, well they are not so interested in the community or what is nearby. Real estate agents and FSBO risk takers should be marketing their listings or homes with this in mind. It is extremely wise if the home is near such a community amenity to make a note of it, because it matters to home buyers and families.

Just like all politics is local, so too are all home prices, they are very local, as in what is just around the block. A park, golf course or library will be a big plus when you go to sell, take advantage of it, as it is a prize location. Think on this.

$3.50 per Gallon Gasoline Prices Predicted by Spring 2008

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 09:18:52 -0600

The Real Estate Sector is a huge drag on our economy, but then again so are the high oil prices, as high fuel costs act like an additional tax on everything you buy or any service you partake in. High gasoline prices affect families and our citizens at a real personal level. Now the Department of Energy research shows that we might be looking at $3.50 per gallon gasoline by Spring and Chicago commodity traders agree.

With home mortgage credit tight and credit card companies tightening and at least one going public at the before the credit card crash to match the subprime lending crisis, one has to wonder if all the doom and gloom predictions for a tough year in 2008 are right on the money. Of course, there are several events that will be taking place the will determine if the gasoline average prices jumps about $3.50 per gallon, as oil looks like it is moving back towards $100 a barrel.

An OPEC meeting is coming up and commodity Traders believe there will be more supply issues, as OPEC moves to cut production. Meanwhile, we have some political rhetoric coming from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, as he makes threats if the US interferes with Cuba, he will move to cut the US off from his oil. Indeed, the most troubling comments came from the Department of Energy recently predicting a $3.40 per gallon average price by Spring, but by end of year back under $3.00 per gallon.

Now then, we have the auto sector having problems, banking sector, real estate sector, retail sector and small businesses not expanding, while simultaneously strapping consumers with credit tightening, fuel costs and potential lay-offs. There are many troubling economic indicators that are all hitting us at once, this might be a good time to play it safe.

More information on the Flow of Fuel: http://activerain.com/blogsview/392696/The-Flow-of-Fuel

Droughts Causing Some Power Plants to Shut Down

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:57:36 -0600

Shortage of water not only hurts real estate values, as people stop watering their landscaping, it is also hurts the energy generation companies. Now it might be obvious that if lack of water in the reservoirs and behind dams means that the water cannot be let out in order to use hydro-electricity generators, but that is not the only use of water in the energy generation business. You see cooling is required for power plants and without water the generators plants have to be shut down otherwise they over heat.

Fewer electricity generating plants on the grid mean that the other generating plants have to run at higher capacity to keep up with demand, which may not be possible, depending on how many generation plants have been shut down. It can get serious in a hurry. Worse, drought regions are quite large and that means many energy generating plants might have to close in the same area. How bad is the current problem?

It is getting pretty serious and there are Power Plants in GA, NC, TN, CA, FL that are now at risk of being shut down. So, far there have already been a few, but those numbers will increase as we reach Spring and Summer time where no new major rain storms are normally expected.

When drinking water is pitted against electricity generation, fresh water supplies for citizens will win. When water is rationed in Level II Drought and homeowners cannot water their own lawn or landscaping, they should not be surprised that the cost of electricity increases due to the same supply and demand issues, as the power plants are going thirsty without water for cooling.

I would like to offer the following essays for background information:

The Flow of Water: http://activerain.com/blogsview/394040/The-Flow-of-Water

The Flow of Energy: http://activerain.com/blogsview/392479/The-Flow-of-Energy

The Flow of Thought - An Essay by Lance Winslow, Part I of II

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:16:10 -0600

What does the Flow of Thought have to do with the Real Estate Sector, and why am I posting this essay on my Real Estate Blog? Well, The Flow of Thought has to do with everything in human society, including the planning of our civilization, cities and community. In fact, you could not work, play or love without the flow of thought, think about it. Yes, that indeed, is the very first step, so shouldn't you know a little about the Flow of Thought, to assist you in your complex and challenging career?

Why are we studying the Flow of Everything we know? And why are we starting with the Flow of Thought? Without the flow of thought, the human species would not need to study anything, but rather be reduced to simply react with the stimuli around us. Luckily, the human race and the human brain has the ability to think and reason. Without debating the cognitive ability as compared with other species of the planet, we can definitely say we are amongst the top tier of intelligence of all species here on our Earth.

Scientists have studied the brain, but still have many questions yet to be answered. This Gray spongy thing seems to be able to do quite a bit more than we ever realized. Most of the current studies have to do with brain disorders. Using these disorders scientists have hypothesized how the brain works. Unfortunately most of the studies that are funded are for brain disorders instead of healthy brains. Which is interesting in that; where does a healthy brain start and an unhealthy brain end. And what is exactly is the definition of a healthy brain? We study things such as ADHD and we say these are disorders. Are they?

If so many people have this so called issue then in fact is it a disorder or is it the way many human brains work? Studying the characteristics of ADHD, I would say that it may not be a negative trait at all. As a matter of fact squirrels and other fidgety creatures are able to stay more alert and not get eaten by predators as often as other critters. Perhaps the person with ADHD ought to be the one on point guard when searching caves out for Bin Laden. They will be more alert and dwell less on one thing and able to pick up the slightest movement, sound, or sight and be able to adapt quicker and isolate the threat with force. Perhaps ADHD might be used as a tool for certain needs. Perhaps a person with ADHD would be a better direct sales person, because they can read body language, scan a room for topics of conversation and opportunity faster than a person without ADHD.

Perhaps we should make sure all of our blitz team members (Car Wash Guys Marketing Teams which set up new territories for franchisees) be diagnosed with ADHD before we hire them? Interesting observation isn't it, maybe a sales career might be perfect for an ADHD individual, as there must be a benefit here and we ought to use these traits to our advantage. If a person with ADHD is said to have learning disorder in school for study and the like, then he or she must have another set of traits that are of benefit somewhere else. Plato wrote about this in The Republic; that each member of a society ought to do what they are best at and be alleviated from responsibility of those things they are not good at, which can be done by others. The individual and the society as a whole gain the most using this methodology.

Why have we not considered this wise advice in our culture? Instead we often put people into jobs they are unsuited for in patience, competence and ability. Who benefits? Would a Football team, which actually wants to win a game do that? After all; the guy with the strong foot and lanky build ought to be the kicker, not a lineman, for he would only be good for one play on the line. Yet we are worried about hurting feelings in the real world and try to make everyone equal, people are not equal. For instance I am a terrible accountant and could be good at that but it would be a living hell for me to try. This would serve no one if I were assigned to that position, would it?

Regarding ADHD maybe we ought to study up on these things, before assigning it as a disorder and putting the kids on Prozac. We should be finding out where the superior traits can do the most good. From our studies of different people we find that lower intelligence levels find themselves happier in repetitive jobs. We know that "A Type" personalities make lousy accountants and do not like fine details. So what do ADHD people have, we know they do not have a lack of intelligence necessarily. So why is it a disorder if the person shows signs of higher intelligence, after all wouldn't that be a sign of strength and a positive attribute?

The ADHD individual may not always score the highest on the English section of the SAT tests, but we know they are not stupid. So take a person who is smart, but fidgety. What would they be most suited for? What do they excel in and what would they be most suited for as an occupation? The ADHD individuals normally do not have the opportunity to get lots of certificates or degrees, they probably hate school. It probably feels like torture for them, so then we should find a need for their genetic make-up and you win, actually we all win. Or we could continue to classify them as an owner of a deficient brain with an insurmountable disorder and then pump drugs into their body to alter the natural flow of their individual thought.

We are not paying attention close enough to the issues of ADHD and Bi-polar disorder, (there is that word again) we do not take into account the incredible amount of prescription drugs being given to our youth like Ridalin (Sp?) and Prozac and their affects on the learning ability of our children and young adults in real terms and actual intelligence levels due underutilized brain power being wasted on mood control and baby-sitting drugs as I call them at this age.

A recent report by Carnegie is interesting in that it talks about the problems of delivering productivity and ethics back to the work place by starting in the schools and in hind sight is a valuable study even though a prediction of the past and a mission for the future may not take into consideration the newest problem of the current decade; that our miss uses of drugs in the brains of our students is hurting our ability to get to that lofty goal. It is very much an optimist approach to rest the bar of productivity, ethics and expectations, yet not very real world in terms of the reality of the overall parents, teachers and publics objectives to over medicate. People just are not too concerned about these issues and we are artificially numbing the brains of millions of students each year calling it a way to calm the unruly, high energy, ADHD, Bi-polar kids. It is a noble and worthy cause to want order in the classrooms and be able to teach larger groups of students, but I do not see the long term benefits of denying what it is to be human and calling much of what is normal behavior a disorder.

There may well be 1-2% which need some type of medication, but in some schools the numbers of medicated kids is 13-17%, that is simply not good for the flow of thought in kids and teens. Middle school reform in today's metro sectors is by far the most difficult challenge. The American School Board Journal also touches on this subject and has a reading recommendation list on these topics of drug use. I believe it is possible to change the direction and current course. I suggest the books;

BAD BOYS-Public Schools in the Making of black Masculinity, by Ann Arnett Ferguson
Accountability in Action-A Blueprint for Learning, by Douglas B Reeves
Conflicting Missions?-Teachers Unions and Educational Reform, by Tom Loveless.
Motivating and Learning Strategies for College Success-A Self-Management Approach, by Myron H Dembo.
http://www.aacap.org/web/aacap/publications/factfam/disaster.htm
http://www.bcm.tmc.edu/cta/effects.htm (Traumatic Events on Children).

Also a little interesting is the mental health tip by our government:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/publicat/violence.cfm

The reason we talk about this is because with our car wash fundraisers http://www.carwashguys.com/fund.html we build unity and on the other hand with our Neighborhood Mobile Watch patrol we help put people in jail for crimes. I certainly prefer the first idea better. After all we can build schools now or prisons later. But no matter how many schools you build you must not impede the flow of thought in the minds of kids. This means slowing down their systems artificially when it is not absolutely necessary.

What does Prozac due to kids? Well I suggest you read the book Living on Prozac in case you doubt some of what we are saying here. And it doesn't just stop in schools, 10% of the American Population takes this stuff, it is a consideration. Prozac takes 30 days to start working so obvious it is changing after the chemical reaches critical mass, which means it is changing everything. One Fraternity at a Major Medical College gets lists of females who are taking Prozac so they can date them. The Fraternity has an incredible record stating that 86% of those girls will put out on the first date. So much for these scientific white paper field studies, maybe these guys are on to something? The reasoning seems to point to a drug, which takes the edge off, reduces inhibitions and causes somewhat irrational behavior. Either that or these guys are super studs? You be the judge, but is a drug which causes such behavior worthy of our children?

The human brain generally is fully formed structurally by age 6 (debated in some research), yet there are many kids on mind-altering drugs prior to the age of six, is this wise? So first thing needed in our study of Flow and specifically the flow of thought is to allow the brain to have flow of thought and that starts in the nurturing of our students. Now then drugs are not the only thing we are doing to the human brain which effects thought. We are putting fluoride in our water too. Hitler wanted to do this to numb the minds of the people to keep them from rebelling, the area of the brain which gives you the stick-to-it-ness or will to fight is dissolved by fluoride. http://newsoutpost.com/article731.html .

We use Fluoride in small doses to supposedly help with teeth decay, although it is industrial waste, which during WWII and manufacturing of aircraft we needed to put it somewhere. The biggest problem is the Fluoride is not filtered out downstream, so once it goes through a treatment plant and is discharged into a water way, it flows to the next city, then the next and could be a huge issue at the furthest city downstream. What else do we do? Well Americans consume lots of alcohol, cigarettes and illegal drugs. All of which are killing brain cells and hurting our chances of the benefits of flows of thought within our selves. You can teach people to reason and adapt, memorize and think, but if you limit your brain capacity where are you? How bad is the fluoride? (this topic is highly debated because it does provide help in tooth decay)

How bad is the illegal drug problem here in the US? Very bad and it alters the brain's thought process and causes a problem with human interaction and our natural socializing tendencies. The drugs are so diverse and so plentiful that it touches the lives of nearly every American in some way and certainly nearly every family in this country. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000025.htm and we must be honest with ourselves. We have legal drugs, prescription drugs and illegal drugs. Caffeine is a drug that is wide spread in America. The verdict is not completely out now, but what will we learn in the future. We already know that spiders cannot spin a web while under influence of caffeine. What is the Caffeine content in your life? What is going through most American's heads half the day? http://www.fred.net/ultrunr/caffine.html See for yourself.

No wonder people cut you off in traffic, they are in a mad tear to where? In front of you so they can hurry up and wait. Now it appears that kids are using caffeine to get high? In combination with other drugs? Think about this; The "pick me up" that most Americans use to get through the day, wake up in the mourning is penetrating other parts of society. Why? Why would this happen? Well here are some interesting stories of kids using caffeine to get a rush. We have kids taking crystal meth and killing their bodies and becoming very horrible workers as far a responsibility and work ethic go, and when they cannot keep a job and have no money to buy drugs they are trying to duplicate some sort of experience using caffeine. Wow, this is a problem really. Think of all the mood altering drugs being used Prozac one-way, caffeine the other and then all the illegal stuff in between. How is the human brain suppose to operate efficiently and develop normally with all this foreign content with such extreme ratios? Maybe some people ought to figure out a way to reduce this desire for mood enhancement?

There is much information on the Internet about this and perhaps we, as a society should be doing something to help people think about what they are doing to themselves? And to find a reason to live life to its fullest without a mood enhancements. So if we are to have caffeine as a way of life we ought to let people know that the caffeine buzz that kids are trying to get from using it is not all that great. Now this maybe a better stimulate over all to other drugs, but no drugs is the better solution. It would be better for the productivity of America, better for kids and better for long-term health.

We know that ancient cultures and Indians and the like across the globe used such mind-altering drugs to alter their states. Still today in the world we have whole cultures enslaved to drugs of some type. Heroin, Opium, Peyote, Marijuana, Cocaine, it almost appears to be a human issue, a need. Most who study such, believe that since the addictions affect the frontal lobes that it also affects the basic drives of that individual which we have all heard of when individuals will steal from friends and family to obtain more drugs. For mankind to progress we will need to maintain flow of thought in all members of the species. We have failed miserably in this regard. It affects every aspect of our lives and is tough on the business community who needs the employees mind present for productivity.

We need to be cognizant of the effect on the flow of thought in each of individual and how that affects the whole. Drugs change the flow of thought and force it into an unnatural state, which affects the flow of everything else. If we are to decide to allow this, for instance legalize certain drugs such as we have done with caffeine and alcohol then we need to realize that this in fact changes the flow of thought and will change the way mankind interacts. There are other things, which affected the flow of thought in our evolving species. Perhaps some of this is the reason that we evolved in the way we have.

The Wireless revolution is upon us and those of us who are sensitive to frequencies bands will find it difficult to have quality of life in those areas where lots of wireless activity is. A study by three Dutch government ministries found that radio signals for the next generation of mobile phone services can cause headaches and nausea. We have already found this out. But I believe this can be accounted for and corrected by use of intermittent ELF tuned to the body's natural frequency to help the body super charge the immune system. In these particular Wireless study they compared the effects of radiation from base stations used for the current mobile telephone network with the radiation effects of base stations of 3G networks. The study found that the test group exposed to third generation base station signals felt tingling sensations, got headaches, and felt nauseous.

Cognitive functions such as memory and response times were actually boosted by both 3G signals and the current signals. This is interesting and I have found this to be true when I used lots of minutes on my cell phone, especially using a 3 watt phone, before the new systems lowered the power significantly; I had more brain activity. Other studies have recently come out and said that small doses of microwave are actually good for you, of course, long usage can literally cook your brain, not good. And I have found that significant does of caffeine during periods of high cell phone use increased and stimulated brain activity to higher levels of thinking. The body's immune system may move to protect itself and react by thickening to areas that need reinforcement, if that occurs we know that brain density is a positive thing.

The ramifications of the study to Wi-Fi networks is clear: previous research into the health effects of radio frequency radiation always measured the impact of cell phones, which are held close to the head and cause high fields of radiation close to the ear and warming of the brain. I have found that it heated up the cerebellum and thus stimulated the brain, but also could cause headaches, until which time the brain got use to that frequency and perhaps even enjoyed the stimuli and was even able to pick up that signal. Meaning, just seconds before the phone rang the brain felt stimulated, in other words the brain was in fact picking up the signal and for me this even worked when the phone was in the next room. So these studies are correct and the 3D technology and the cognitive enhancement, I can vouch for is real.

The Dutch study, on the other hand, used lower a dose of radiation to mimic base station signals rather than handsets. Handsets emit stronger radiation when they are used, while base stations transmit more constant levels of radio signals, exposing everyone within range. Some are doing this for safety, we are studying this to increase the world knowledge and better the human race and realize that we will soon be able to use this data along with other significant research like this;

Why bother, well think of technologies that can be used to connect the brain to machine, increase our capacity and create artificial life with a soul being a frequency wave of RF, VLF, ELF or microwave. Connecting Man to computer or putting computers in man is almost here: HUD Heads Up Display work is currently being done by the military; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000033.htm . The benefit to mankind will be truly significant. The truth is that Arthur C Clark in his short stories talked about groups of people being connected in real time by neuron transmitting devises below the skin. You might even have all the world's knowledge and latest research all in a chip connected to your brain. Instant Messaging is just one step away from actually hooking up to your friends in real time, via electronic brain-computer interface, after all, what is the difference if you abbreviate with your fingers symbols or just send it directly? Flash Mobs of today are already networked groups working together in real time: http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000060.htm . The "Internet in your head" so you can only imagine the opportunities. Instead of trading MP3 Player music on the Internet, you would be trading experiences in 4D, and thought using Nano-Tech computer which interfaces with the enhanced brain.

You could do real-time research with members of certain groups across the ocean and when someone made a discovery, the time to write the white paper or peer review would be instantaneous. Thus, cutting down the research time to next to zero. If you read certain books such as:

Prescription for the Future-How the Technology is Changing the Pulse of global Health Care, by Moore, Rey, Rollins

and The 500-Year Delta. Too far out for you, well, just imagine what Thomas Jefferson would have thought about computers, space flight or modern medical miracles in his day. Many innovators, scientists and entrepreneurs are working on these issues and you can see where we are headed. Some are worried about this, but I am rather intrigued on the possibilities for the betterment of mankind. Will computers be smarter than humans, the latest estimates are by 2029, but judging by Moore's Law and applying this to the field of Artificial Intelligence, it surely will not be that long. With plug in brain-computer interfaces - Computers and humans will be one in this case, so we will be equal.

Instead of file swapping or file sharing, you will be thought swapping. This will be incredible in that you can swap the thoughts, emotions or experience of someone doing an extreme sport, such as jumping off a bridge with a parachute. People will sell these experiences and the VR world will literally be in your head. Humans are a species, which studies other species that many different types of strategies such as employing ELF to communicate, use radar and sound to navigate, use all sorts of interesting methods to identify and protect themselves. But humans will finally get well beyond the communication skills, which are made through the larynx, in many ways this was surpassed a long time ago.

What an incredible leap brain-computer interface will be for mankind. Is mankind ready for these new opportunities and horizons; will we use this for the positive or the negative. It may well depend on our ability to allow the flow of thought, while simultaneously allowing a private place in our minds which will not be shared, that which makes us ourselves. In other words, we will once again get back to the tribe, society, which currently we are drifting from. Humans are social animals no doubt and derive happiness from that sense of belonging; it appears to be an innate tendency. Sharing thoughts and ideas allows for this, as it delivers to the human race; a completeness, a oneness. If you look at a Bee Hive, those bees are quite content to service to the hive and are willing to sacrifice self to do so. Imagine now a human race which works together in a Capitalistic system for the benefit of the individual, "you" in that private place in your mind which becomes self fulfilled by helping others by sharing knowledge and promoting self by that feeling of doing good and helping.

The flow of thoughts in this regard is wonderful, uninhibited instant communication. You would not give up self, but you could share that which makes you, you with whoever you wished. You could instantly communicate with all the people in the world who loved jet skiing and if they wished to, they could communicate back. Well you can imagine that there would be no more wars and if you transferring thoughts they are a universal language so that would not be an issue although those who think in terms of words would be understood since you have all the world's knowledge in a chip. When you were ready to perish, you could transfer all your experiences in 4D to your offspring, so they would not make the same mistakes that you felt you did. Think of the benefit to mankind if everyone who died and all their worldly knowledge was saved forever? Now this is what the future will be at our present rate and realize that science is moving in this direction.

With all the Bio-metrics work being done we will see the merging of information and cognitive abilities go hyperbolic in the human brain. This is good in that it will increase The Flow of Thought. Anytime you increase the flow, you increase efficiency.

This concludes the end of Part I of The Flow of Thought Essay. In Part II of The Flow of Thought we discuss Memorization, Freedom of Thought, Creative Thinking Environments and a bit of Philosophy.

The Flow of Thought Part II (Memorization, Freedom of Thought, Creative Thinking & Philosophy)

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 05:06:47 -0600

To refresh the reader, in Part I of The Flow of Thought we discussed ADHD, Education, Drug Use issues on the brain, Fluoride in the water, Future Computer-Brain Interfaces and Frequency Pollution. This is: The Flow of Thought Part II (Memorization, Freedom of Thought, Creative Thinking & Philosophy)

Now I would like to discuss the value in these possible future innovations and how they will affect the changes in education. There are so many theories in schooling on the best way to teach people, but brains and people do not exactly think the same. Connections are made through memorizing by association, alliteration and rote memorization and countless other ways. What we need to be careful of brain washing our brains to think in unnatural ways and to believe that everything we learn is truth. The basic reasoning on this is that truth is relative and a relative story is the one about the elephant where if asked to describe it and you are holding onto a leg, you might say it is like tree trunk the tail a rope and the tusk a solid pointed rock. None are incorrect, but in the same regard none are absolutely correct. It is therefore apparent that blindfolds will keep us from the closest possible relative truth.

Too often we teach in schools as an absolute, the information all of it is relative and the changing truth of political correctness of history every 20 years is also an interesting phenomenon, not to mention a real problem. Why on Earth would you re-write the truth of history? Well perhaps to get closer to the truth since in the period you could not tell the truth. Well then that means that the flow of thought has been stifled and the media has been suppressed. Once the truth is feathered out, and then later it is changed again and again then it is but a mere work of fiction and brain washing. Therefore even those who study the annals of history so that they do not allow that history to repeat itself; are using the information in vain and there is an increasing possibility that they will repeat all that they fear. When we educate we should do so with an extreme conviction to tell the truth to the best of our abilities and without regard to the political correctness.

If you burn all the books of today you will surely repeat those hardships over again in the future. Every time we inhibit or restrict thought we deny the truth, suppress innate characteristics of mankind and then allow these thoughts to appear at inappropriate times and cause serious issues, which are often compounded later. If no child is to be left behind and we are serious about education then perhaps we need to pay attention to what we teach, teach the truth and have that closest representation of relative truth easily available for all. How can this be done to insure the closest possible relative truth is allowed to flow to increase thought and increase thinking without brain washing or simple memorization? We can put the information in archived bite size lessons on the Internet. Here are the reasons for my theory of Internet archived knowledge: http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000044.htm .

This is already being done at the University of Phoenix http://www.carwashguys.com/0030203_1.shtml alone with a Gen-Ed class which teaches graduating seniors who will be attending classes there to rethink how they learn? Interesting that they need to re-teach young adults who to learn in order to teach them. If this is the case shouldn't the grade, middle and High Schools be catching a clue too? And after such classes and online content, we must realize that which is memorized needs to be memorized correctly and takes into account the way the brain learns?

One way to get the proper information into the schools of this present period so that no child is left behind may be to put the content on the Internet, but of course it is not the only way or be all, end all. With this done and with every individual and school allowed to access it, you will have increased the flow of thought. Creating a seamless information flow for education while still keeping the schooling local, thus without disrupting the system. Then you can add the local mentoring programs and discussion in a classroom setting to make the program full circle; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/0000007f.htm

If we fail to mentor our kids there can be some serious consequences, for instance the School Shootings in Columbine or this incident; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000084.htm . Will this work considering what we think we know about the human brain? After all How does the human mind really work? Some say it is a random organic devise? Each brain is a little different just like no tow people have the same DNA. Here are some thoughts on Random Sequencing and the human brain. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000081.htm . Once we have increased thought, educated our populations, taught people to think and exercise their brains then have we accomplished our task of fixing the flow of thought? No, this is simply the beginning, as the thought flow must be open to advance a civilization, culture or country. But in our study of thought and the flow the first item of business is the production of thoughts. Not simply facts or repeating the desired thought on a multiple choice test where teachers study questions and teach the answers to kids so that the kids do well, but teaching kids and adults to think. An original thought is of supreme value.

What do we do with these original thoughts? We use these thoughts to help advance mankind. Unfortunately there are barriers to thought. For instance political correctness restricting thought, rather than hashing out the issues in trade for a reality based answer to a dilemma. Some would say about certain issues that the means do not justify the ends. Well more often the ends do not justify the means. For instance if you are trying to accomplish something and know that if you do use the most approved PC methods then you cannot get to the desired results, but use those methods anyway as to not appear to offend anyone, then in the end you offend everyone by wasting their time and by failure of the project. What we must do is to protect original thoughts and not suppress them and allow them to enter the public domain for the common good without denying the producer of the thought their benefits.

The first problem we encounter in this regard is the PTO Patent and Trademark office. If someone has an idea or many ideas and cannot easily register them without undue hardship and cost, then that individual is likely to never bother to continue to have original thoughts and we all lose as a country because of it. Concept patents are outrageously expensive, take years to get approved and you for the most part need to hire an attorney to do them. All this costs money and causes a lessoning of thinking or flow of thought to the common good of mankind. One discovery in one industry will surely lead to several more in others. We need to allow for the flow of thought and not stifle the speed of that flow through a bureaucratic process. The PTO is expanding in Washington and will move into a new 600 million dollar campus, but really it needs to be a huge computer system.

If you create artificial barriers to thought then thought stops flowing. You see the most progressive Think Tanks, Brain Trusts, research facilities in companies and government, etc. do their best work by allowing free thought to flow. If the United States is to lead the world in innovation and know how, technology and invention, then we will need to repel these barriers of the flow of thought. Now then we should discuss the concept of why thought is necessary and why it is the first in our series of Flows. You see Zig Ziglar, the famous salesmen who became such by writing books and giving seminars. His premise is that nothing happens until someone sells something, which in his realm is true enough, in that no money is exchanged and no products are delivered and no services rendered until the salesman has done his job.

Why was he so adamant about this? Well he was trying to help salesman understand that the profession of sales is not a bad thing, but rather the oldest part of commerce. Even older than the oldest profession, after all, a woman selling her body has to make an offer first and thus, a salesperson in addition to the other profession. A sales man by Zig Ziglar's terms was a problem solver. I use this analogy to show that whereas, Ziggy is correct in his statement, the truth is nothing happens until a thought is produced. You see a thought is triggered in a customer's mind or a member of a species decides it wants something. Due to the fact it is hungry, cold, hot, tired, etc. Then that animal is motivated by that thought.

If it is the hunger of a Bald Eagle it means flying over the river to catch a Salmon. If it is a tourist who is cold it means going in and buying a sweatshirt. This comes first and is the reason we must first discuss the flow of thought before we attempt to fix anything else in the World we live. We must make sure that we allow for the free flow of thought and of course the freedom of thought. Just like Ziggy would defend the freedom of speech in the sales process and the freedom of trade to make that sale. A penny for your thoughts, is a very good price, you should be buying, that is definitely a buyer's market so take all you can get. Yet we do not. Different cultures feel different about the flow of thought. And even we are worried about the past freedoms, which were taken in other civilizations and have pondered what would happen with the thought police.

The movie, "Minority Report" with Tom Cruise discussing such possibilities as the thought police; to this day people are concerned from writings of science fiction writers about the thought police concept. Such possibilities would in fact be the death of freedom, civilization and what we believe to be the proper direction of the human race. In eastern Cultures the passing of thought was considered valuable, so much in fact that even to this day members of those cultures respect their elders and listen to their advice. The passing of such thoughts and concepts and philosophies is of extreme value. The Christianity religion and its followers take those stories in the bible literally, almost to an absolute truth. Much of which is an incredible gift from those who came before us and experienced their lives and had something to say and tales to help the understanding of those who would come later. Jesus in the bible talks about important concepts and thoughts of what should be done and how to live with love towards your fellow man.

The Philosophers of ancient Greece; Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle had many interesting and valuable thoughts. Much of which helped the well studied Thomas Jefferson in his ideas as one of our most noted founding fathers. Such enlightenment has been going on for at least as long as we have been able to acquire our written history. 10,000 years of Chinese written history, 6,000 years of middle-eastern history, as the human race branches grew together, it became more apparent that different cultures learn differently and think somewhat differently.

A book called, The Seven Sister's of Eve is worthy of a read and talks about what we have learned about the flow of human beings populations through DNA research. Thus, it is safe to say that certain members of our species have developed differently and in different ways, meaning the brain also learns differently. As Scientists look at different human brains doing various tasks light up with energy as it works through different thoughts and tasks. Why does man need to think. Why does mankind feel the need to share these thoughts and concepts in their writings? It appears that the flow of thought may be the single most important part of life. The process of thought is probably the single most important part of human life. "I think therefore, I am" Are you, is that it?

So what is it with this large complex body? Is it to serve the brain? Or is the brain to serve the body? With these questions and the philosophers of prior periods and the writers and thinkers of today we can all agree that thought is one of the most important parts of self and of human life, if not the only true important part of life. Then why do we allow thought to be controlled by religion, governments, other men? If we study the dialogues of Plato, Galileo, Copernicus, etc. we see that man has often muffled thought and that often fiction is the only way to allow for truth or thought.

So, we therefore live in a world with a history of imprisoning dissenting or disagreeing views. But for mankind to move forward we need to stop this and allow free thought. As we see modern day people of deep thought attempt to bring forth their discoveries and enlightenment, we see them doing so by way of fictional works; because we as a people would shun their thoughts if they were not brought out in any other way. Let's use Ayn Rand, Bertrand Russell, Arthur C Clark, John Gresham, Ben Bova, Isaac Asimov, Tom Clancy as examples for this point. When brought forth as a fictional work it makes you think and brings out a point of contention.

If brought forth as an idea, it would quickly be squashed as not Politically Correct. In the days of Galileo, Copernicus, Plato, you would be imprisoned or killed, therefore they were forced to put them forth in dialogues instead of actual formulated ideas and in the dialogues the strongest point still had to be the prevailing view that matched the politically correct thought. Today the PC police, call them the controllers of thought, would character assassinate you even if your point so contention contained a high degree of relative truth. In Iraq you may have been killed if it went against the former Saddam's views or in contrary to the Qur'an. Cultures which allow for free thought and those individuals in the culture with freedom to the flow of thought will innovate faster.

Thus, here in the United States we have the greatest benefits of the flow of thought, but are we really fully living up to this lofty goal or are we simply the best so far; and if we are able to free the restrictions of the flow of thought and refuse to teach our children barriers to thought, we may just find that the next giant leap of mankind comes from within our countries boundaries. If we allow children to be bombarded with the "That's a dumb idea" syndrome, then they will be taught to not think, instead of to think. This will foster itself as they go through life and it will be passed onto their children and in the work place. "That's a dumb idea" why, because the boss did not think of it. And instead of defending their position, they will simply forget about any new ideas, stop volunteering ideas and the company will go stagnant.

Tom Peters talked about this in his management idea books; stating that the person on the assembly line is full of ideas to speed up the process. And subsequent other business leaders have for ever written books about it. http://www.carwashguys.com/finite.pdf . We have seen the return of the suggestion box in the near prior decades, although with the flow of thought set up correctly they would never be needed. Thus the problem that hurts the most and denies us our future is the unspoken restriction of "Not Invented Here" to the flow of thought. Man is generally a copier, with very few in the populations capable of free flowing original thoughts. Why is this? We mimic, copy, imitate that which we see. This is a common thing that all higher primates do, including us. But if we would stop and think and allow original uninhibited thought to flow without fear of being chastised, cast out, imprisoned, punished, ridiculed or made example of, then we might really come up with some great innovations which would certainly propel mankind to better quality of life and higher standard of living.

We see where Bill Gates in a brain storming exercise allows for the challenging of the flow of new idea, stating "That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard of in my life!" Challenging, the thinker to defend their idea, challenging them to passionately defend their views, debate, thus this gives them the strength of character to go against the norm and continue to come up with new ideas. If the thinking of the thought can defend their position then they have what it takes. It is not often that you find an original thinker with the strength of character to overrun the critics, politically correct society, the thought police and the "Not invented here" fiefdom-ists; but we need to instill people to think.

We need to develop a culture that is based on the thought that young people should never know or expect limitations in life and never be inhibited in the process of thought. We should encourage thinking and the exchange of ideas. We can do this by making sure that our youth can believe in themselves, have confidence in their own abilities, and think for themselves. By doing this we can insure that they are not afraid to think or to communicate these new thoughts. We can break through the confines of religion, prejudice, economic enslavement, war, education, physical limitations, and government bureaucracy all for the common good and all by simply thinking. All this can be ours if we simply teach people of all ages that it is okay to think, have ideas, "Because one person can change the world." But only if that person believes in himself enough to speak up and share their ideas without fear of being outcast.

Eventually humans will be able to communicate by thought, through computers, which will be available to everyone probably within a couple of decades. The people who can currently communicate by thought with powers of ESP who are limited in their abilities and rare in their numbers are about the only human beings with a chance of thought transfer. Couples who have been married a long time often say they can know what the other is thinking, either because they have become closer on their brain wave frequencies or have adapted to the other persons brain activity, but along with marriages and communication, without thoughts being shared and mutual respect of those thoughts a marriage will drift apart. This should be a warning of what happens in business deals, corporate brainstorming (with regards to hard earned and developed Organizational Capital) and an outcast member of society.

What is the most unfortunate situation in all of these instances is that the whole of the group loses from the possible ideas and innovations of these individuals. As we learn if we imprison, kill, ridicule, out cast, character assassinate or refuse to be open to the flow of thought, we are doomed to repeat the past. If we study people like Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Galileo, Copernicus, Plato who in their days met much resistance from many fronts, we see who easy it is to stifle those with great ideas and we may in fact destroy the next innovation visionary before he or she delivers their greatest contribution to mankind. This is why the flow of thought is so important.

We are witnessing a time when we can actually change these situations in our society and if we do we will be living in the greatest period of discovery ever known in the history of our species. Can we rise to the occasion; will we dump the pettiness in order to reach for the stars? We must first remove all barriers to the flow of thought. This is the very first event in all instances, first a thought occurs before anything else. We must protect this process, otherwise we will never get to the next step. As an observer of culture and society, philosophy and psychology, innovation and invention, science and religion, industry and philanthropy; I can safely say that although we have done better than any other previous civilization or country, we can do better and we must work on the elements which are needed to improve the flow of thought. The best time to start with this thought would be now....I think? Do you? Can you? Will you? Please email me on any thoughts you have on The Flow of Thought.

What will the future of thought and wisdom be?

http://www.worldthinktank.net/pdfs/limitlessthought.pdf

The Flow of Water - the First Necessity of Human Civilizations

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 02:22:23 -0600

The purpose of this essay is to assist you in understanding the importance of our fresh water supplies. What does The Flow of Water have to do with the Real Estate Sector? Everything! Without fresh water supplies a community, town, city, region, state or nation is uninhabitable. Of the most important flows in human society The Flow of Water ranks near the top, because without water you have no civilization at all.

As we travel to every city in this nation we can tell when we are coming to where a city might be located simply by the way the terrain is formed and where water might flow. The towns are all built near water. These towns were connected by dirt roads, then the railroad connected the towns near water to fill up the steam engines, then they build the highways connecting the cities. But it all starts with a river, creek, lake or well. Water determines, where and how we live.

Why is the flow of water so important to our lives? Well, we are all familiar with the cycle of water. The evaporation, rain and then the long flow back to the ocean. There is not a shortage of water on this little planet from what we can see with 2/3 of the Earth's Surface covered with it. However 97.2% of the water is salt water in the oceans. Human's need fresh water to drink and sustain life. There are tremendous amounts of frozen fresh water in the polar ice caps. There is actually more water in the atmosphere than in all the rivers. About nine times as much fresh water in the lakes than atmosphere. There is lots of ground water at about 95% of the fresh water is in the ground. There is as much water between 1 half mile to 1 mile from the surface as there is deep lying ground water which is more than a mile underground. This table will help you understand the situation better.

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0004674.html

There is not a shortage of water in the world. There is merely a problem with its salinity. The flow of water affects everything we do. Where we live and work. What we eat and how we play. The flow of water is one of the most important flows of life on the surface of the Planet and has more to do with the evolution of life on Earth than nearly every other factor. Life seems to have begun in the shallow water and expanded into all depths and areas of the oceans. Life on land grows best where water is plentiful. These basic facts should be taught to all children and teens in school. Here is a basic course outline: http://www.utm.edu/departments/ed/cece/seventh/7I3.shtml . This will teach kids to understand the issues and why the conservation of our fresh water supply is so important.

If we are to tackle the challenges of future populations on the planet, we will need to insure adequate water supply. Our US population is growing, by one person every nine seconds; http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/popclock and with this growth the consumption of fresh water increases. The average person uses 80-100 gallons per day in the US. In many Third World countries about they use about 4-8 total. I have tested this myself; http://www.carwashguys.com/082902_2.shtml and we have studied what has to be done to insure water supplies in the future; http://www.carwashguys.com/082602_1.shtml . During these studies it became obvious that we need to start by teaching kids the facts and making sure they understand the needs for our water infrastructures for the future. Populations are expanding rapidly in desert regions, without sustainable water resources, and a very alarming situation is taking place where population explosions move in and put in lawns. It is also known that 40% of the residential water use is expended outside the home.

The reason that I personally got involved in water conservation is that I have been in the car washing industry and we know we can clean cars using as little as 3-5 gallons whereas the home owner will use up to 100 gallons washing a single car. As areas get into level two droughts more often between cycles the water supplies become critically low, and water restrictions are put into action and enforced by usually municipalities "water police." These issues of drought years and populations and the balance have been occurring in the arid regions of the South West for as long as humans have been congregating in civilizations.

These same issues then that the ancient Indian cultures were challenged with is affecting us today. Just like other Indian Cultures in Central and South America, the indigenous people of Australian outback, as well as the water ways and canals built by the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians. In the South West; SRP has conquered the problem of bringing in the water to Arizona, which is really one big giant desert.

For any region, country, culture, civilization to succeed and grow and support substantial populations it must have a stable supply and flow of water. Weather and weather cycles play a huge issue with these needs and can create very difficult challenges to over come. EL Nino and La Nina are very well known in the United States. These factors of the Pacific Ocean cycles affect nearly two-thirds of the populations of the World and causes floods and droughts here in the US.

Large population bases have the need for storage and recharging aquifers during times of excess water. Once it flows to the ocean, it may not return for several years. As populations grow there are increasing frequency and severity of these droughts. Without adequate water supply, common decency goes out the window, with water rights fights leading to court battles in the US and actual wars where countries share a river's supply. In our country we have are fighting over the means, wasting time to build new infrastructure to lessen the burdens and possible disasters. These issues fill up our courts with bogus lawsuits based on junk science on behalf of non-indigenous and so-called endangered, yet conveniently transplanted species and academia papers to prove it. These issues are preventing us from fixing the flow so we can have the water we need to live comfortably. These issues of water supply have gone on in North America for a long time.

Even after the great Indian civilizations folded due to among other things lack of water, later when the Conquistadors explored what is now Central Valley CA some 236 years ago, they wrote about the desert landscape. When the Smith family brought water into the Central Valley CA for farming and the Chandler's brought water into the Los Angeles desert area they all profited immensely. Los Angeles had nothing more than sage brush with an onshore breeze at times. It looked very much like Bakersfield, CA only a few degrees cooler in the summer time and a little higher sagebrush due to El Nino cycle rains.

The LA River ran dry part of the year, like the old rivers through Pima County in Arizona, there were flood periods in both areas that were fairly severe and often. Today both areas for the most part are covered in concrete, LA is some 460 square miles of city, solid concrete, buildings, freeways, airports, Industry and housing. In Las Vegas area along with Phoenix and most of Southern California the growth has been huge. In Las Vegas even since the days of Bugsy, was a fast growth area, sharing the water from the Colorado River and drawing energy and water from Lake Meade and the Hoover Dam.

During this last drought cycle which was only three years long until an El Nino like season came along to fill the depleted reservoirs up to 60-88% things were pretty bad all over the country, not just the Mid West and South West. This time it affected New England down to Florida Everglades. As the populations expand in Colorado outside of Denver, Las Vegas, North County San Diego, Atlanta, Phoenix, Tucson, San Bernardino, Riverside, Albuquerque, etc. The West will need to look to transferring the load of cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Diego, and San Bernardino to getting water from the ocean through Desalination Plants. At one point during the last drought states had to make a choice between fighting fires or saving the water for drinking. This could have been a serious issue in CO, MT, NM, NV and AZ.

In 2003 we have seen the Hurricane Season bring much rain fall to drought areas of Southern and South West TX, to the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia. Along with the normal flow of storms has alleviated the drought stricken regions of the US. But realize that now the reservoirs are filled up it is business as usual and continued water wasting and lawsuits over the building of new reservoirs by the Sierra Club, reservoirs we desperately need if we are to continue to build our cities and suburbs larger. If we look at other nations, which do not have the area we do in terms of populi per acre, we can see that our incredible consumption must be mitigated with increased supply and also conservation.

If our populations in arid regions continue to expand and we continue to lose population from rural America due to economics, jobs and agriculture farming changes as well as allow immigrants legal or otherwise without proper control of the direction of the flow of water and the education of that population we are leading for a major calamity. We must protect our dams and rivers along the Colorado River from International Terrorists as well as control our thirsty appetite for this finite resource. There are issues and concerns with the flow of water in this modern era, we must not take it for granted, nor should we turn a blind eye to the serious nature of these issues. Water is life and we are not paying attention to the importance of it.

The purity of the water we drink is also at issue, but many municipal water resources are as clean or better than bottled water, as a matter fact the bottled water companies use municipal water many times and talk about a profit. We must continue to find easy, inexpensive and successful ways to keep the pollution out of our rivers and streams which are the drinking water for those downstream or might flow into underground areas where shallow wells feed fresh water to homes, schools, government offices and businesses. There are many things we can do as small business owners to mitigate such things.

If industries will continue to look towards win-win situations and non-linear decision-making, we can find ways to serve our markets better, increase profits and efficiencies and do our part to help keep our water supply clean. http://www.carwashguys.com/073102_2.shtml . There are also things our non-profits can do when they do their activities; http://www.carwashguys.com/fundraisers/ch2.html . And the government agencies can find simple ways to assist businesses rather than making complicated and costly regulations and micro manage; http://www.carwashguys.com/073102_6.shtml . Complicated regulations hurt businesses and add to the bureaucracy that builds government agencies into huge inefficient Dinosaurs, which destroy the flow of everything we know. We should also be talking about the filtration systems that lead into the fresh water supply for cities. They are not generally quite substantial, but rather rely on the volume of water to help make things safe; this along with chemical treatments such as Chlorine and Fluoride; and aeration of water on its way in.

Unfortunately, some chemicals and bacteria which combines with the H20 and/or is of a similar weight as water seems to get through in micro amounts. Generally, you have a safer chance with the water in large cities due to large budgets to filter the water. Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, LA, Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, San Francisco and Seattle have some of the safest water to drink. As the water flows down rivers it is often used to generate our electricity and accounts for less than 20% of our electricity on the grid, in South America is over 80%. Washington State is also about 80% from hydro along the Columbian River with Bonneville Power.

If we look at Niagara, Columbia River, Colorado River, Grand Coulee Dam, Tennessee river Valley Authority and Roosevelt Dam. Tesla would be proud of these accomplishments, but remember if we are not careful with supply then we cannot afford to allow the waters out of the dams and therefore the energy costs will increase. Water Flow and the flow of water therefore is crucial to not only the life on the surface of the planet but also to the energy flow that powers up all we know.

Twenty Percent is a lot, if we fail to use water efficiently or fail to conserve and build up stream reservoirs until needed, we will find ourselves in a bad position, trading life of species of fish and our power for water to live. As we increase our populations every new soul will require increased infrastructure efficiency or expanding of the systems. The flow of clean, fresh water has to do with which way the rivers flow and the weather that delivers the water to the land by way of rain. Some day we may be able to control the weather, not just seed clouds, but completely control the weather stopping deadly storms, preventing droughts and modifying the weather to correspond with human activity, farming and planning of civilizations. Some side thoughts along this theme;

This will truly be a major accomplishment of mankind in the next three decades in the meanwhile we must not underestimate the World's need for water flows. Within the same time period the population of the World will more than double meaning the already stressed third world nations will be beyond crisis. They will need to limit population growth now otherwise there will be continued malnutrition, civil wars, mortality rates, disease, unhealthy water from sewage and death. If you look at the African Continent there are areas that are not able to sustain the current level of population much less anymore people. Millions dies in the Ethiopia drought of 1984. The West African droughts of 1972, 1975, 1984 and 1985 were blamed on EU factories and sulfur dioxide. "If the flow of water is not fixed there it will be replaced by the flow of blood as anarchy sets in due to the shortages of the most basic need to sustain life." This has been debated but the region suffered 20-50% less rain fall during those years on an already stressed situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/2042856.stm .

In North Korea the droughts of seven years leading up to 2001 nearly sank the country. Australia also had a huge drought. Much more critical than anyone was willing to admit. Here are just a few of the industries and problems that the lack of water flow in this drought caused on their flow of products, agriculture, transportation and drinking water. http://www.abc.net.au/rural/drought2002/ . China has been having some problems on their incredible project on the Yellow River Basin to bring flow to their largest coastal cities. Makes the San Francisco Bay area wonder if they should not try to attempt their own huge project as the Chinese immigrants come in on ships and planes to the region to stay, live and work? San Francisco Reservoir; www.spn.vasace.army.mil/bmvc , but it is something they had to do to continue. The issues we deal with here are nothing compared to other countries with less land and more people per acre. They have already over stressed to the max. We have been watching the plight of the farmer in this country and fights over populated cities VS the farmer and Industry. These issues are huge and they affect our economy, industries, jobs, food supply and prosperity.

In cities across America water is an issue, the flow is sporadic, either too much or too little. We must stabilize the flow, so businesses can plan, people can feel secure and we will not be caught with our pants down during the next drought. As the droughts become more often, more severe and longer in length due to over use of supply, we must be ready.

Many cities understand the importance of water and the psyche involved in plentiful water and the innate happiness it brings to the human spirit and they have developed River Walks, boat rides, etc to encompass such water features. Cities like Oklahoma City, Tempe, AZ; San Antonio, Caldwell ID, Wichita KS, Reno, NV; etc. Many cities rely on tourism to their lakes some man-made and others natural; with these lakes down and the evaporation taking its toll, it is difficult to create a man-made lake and justify keeping it filled. Lakes like Lake Las Vegas a high-end million dollar plus home area has suffered as have areas were the lakes are down significantly making boat launching nearly Impossible and hurting tourism dollar.

Normally when air travel is down lakes do well since many people can drive to these lakes. But along with fuel prices being high and water levels being low due to the disruption of flow the problem is compounded. Companies, which work in Chemicals, refining, food processing, paper product manufacturing, growing agricultural products stand to be pitted against populations for the control of water. Depending on the voting block and the social contract of the populations to conserve in times of droughts will be in direct proportion to the survivability of those businesses and industries in those regions. This of course in terms of short term drought hysteria is a problem.

We have recently seen the possibilities of growth, building and new housing industries pitted against the thirsty populations for water in legislatures across the country, this last drought which has still not filled up the reservoirs to the appropriate levels was merely a trial run. The droughts also happened in 1985 and in 1977 and next time they could be even more severe due to the replenished water supplies are probably not going to be returned to normal levels while usage continues to climb. We must fix the infrastructure to handle to flow needed for the future. When we go through periods of droughts we also have other problems which are increased.

Things such as West Nile Virus, Bark Beetles, Disease Epidemics, Med Fly and Chronic Waste Disease and realize these diseases and problems which occur during certain weather periods are compounded when the cycles get out of control. For instance an El Nino heats up the Pacific Ocean and expands the atmosphere and the jet stream is within the temperature and range to carry insects all the way across the ocean. Birds modify their stopping points for water during migration, stay in areas longer during the year or leave earlier thus their chances of infecting more areas are greater. When Deer travel further to go to watering holes during migration the come in contact with different livestock and humans.

The Bark Beetle has a field day during droughts and the issues in Alaska, Prescott and Flagstaff, AZ are rather serious. Bark Beetle also reduces trees to fuel, which can start fire during lightening strikes. This makes diseases hard to control and viruses hard to contain. Like their feathered friends people also move and migrate, more and more each year and with them they tackle their problems to other parts of the country and like the migration of people to different regions the water also moves over man's line drawn in the sand and fought over or bought as official territory. Some of the water that we take for granted also belongs to our neighbors. In Northern Montana the river water flows into Manitoba, Canada; http://www.3rivers.net/~dbaker/gndwater.htm . This is tough because Helena, Billings, Bozeman need the water, but it flows the wrong way. http://www.washguy.com/mt/index.shtml . Along the Rio Grande River the water does not reach the Gulf of Mexico in some years, water which is shared by farmers on both sides; Rio Grande situations and South West TX http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publications/reports/GroundWaterReports/GWReports/Brackish%20GW%20Manual/04-Ch03-HuecoMesillaBolsons.pdf . The Colorado River flows into Mexico and is called the Colorado Mexican Delta and is under constant stress and complaints.

Water supply is essential to keep civilization going strong, keep countries at peace, provide for life, food, security, peace of mind, strong economy, healthy populations and just about everything you can think of. Now then, what happens once we are done with the water we use. Some returns to the ground water, but most goes down stream to a sewer treatment plant. The United States has some of the greatest sewer treatment facilities and technologies in the world. We have some of the highest standards in the world once the water is treated and returned. We are doing an excellent job in that regard where as in third world countries people die of horrible diseases from untreated water entering the drinking water of those downstream. Water-borne diseases include cholera, typhoid, shigella, polio, meningitis, and hepatitis A and E. Human beings and animals, which drink or swim in these contaminated waters that will become hosts to the bacterial, viral, or organisms that cause these diseases.

Billions of people on the Planet have little access to sanitary waste disposal, sewer treatment plants or to clean water for personal hygiene. The average third world inhabitant in many parts of the World live on less than 4-8 gallons per day, about 3 billion people do not have a toilet and over 1.2 billion people are at risk because they lack access to safe fresh water. The problem is getting worse in many places not better as run-away population growth is not being figured into the solution. Water-borne diseases, which the WTO calls "dirty-water" diseases, that is they are caused by water that has been contaminated by human waste, animals, or chemical and industrial wastes.

The lack of sanitary sewer plants and waste disposal treatment centers and the lack of clean water for bathing, drinking, cooking, and washing costs the Planet no less than 12 million deaths annually. Diarrhea type diseases are a serious issue also, especially when, human waste is disposed of in open holes, ditches, canals, and water ways. This waste often flows directly into cropland. About 4 billion cases of diarrhea type diseases occur every year, which cause about 3.8 million deaths per year and most of those are children. We are very fortunate to live in a country, which has adequate and above average sewer treatment plants. The sewer treatment plants are not the end of the flow, much of this water is used to water golf courses, municipal parks and/or flows into rivers on its way to the ocean.

In countries where there are no sewer treatment plants the untreated water pollutes the fish which are caught and eaten and cause all kinds of bad diseases also. Some of the Rice fields of the Pacific Rim are said to be quite polluted and much of the fish are now dangerous to eat. As we rebuild Iraq and help the people of Africa and children of the world the very priority and first order of business must be to look closely at The Flow of Water. Then and only then can we move to the next item on the agenda. Without clean water and healthy bodies, there is no way to feed the brain so it can be used by the people to help themselves into a better place.

The people of these regions need the strength to work, become productive, become educated and work with us to help them help themselves. And as we look at these other countries, we need to remember that much of what we take for granted is at a stress point and simply going with the flow may lead us to a place where the flow no longer goes. We know where we have issues and challenges and we must continue to be proactive and fix them and be ready for the next drought. I hope you have enjoyed this topic on The Flow of Water. Without water there is no human life and we need to address first things first.

The Flow of Transportation Part I of III (moving people, products and services)

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 23:15:47 -0600

Why is the Flow of Transportation important to the Real Estate Sector? Well, because every thing that the civilization needs comes from other places, even the people themselves have to get around. Without proper transportation, there is no quality of life, and I guess the Romans figured that out when they built their civilization, and system of roads. Let us face it, one of the most important things in any civilization is the flow of transportation. People have needs to transport themselves around. And since we do not have those nifty Star Trek transporter machines yet, we need to find efficient ways to move our bodies in linear time to other places of interest to fulfill our needs and desires. People have places to go and people to see, for instance; commuting to work, taking a vacation, having some fun, going to the doctor, getting to school, going to church, picking up materials to finish a project and of course picking up necessary supplies like groceries, clothes, hygiene items, etc.

Think of all the things in your household, all of those items, TV, refrigerator, sofa, plants, items in the garage, etc. Where did they all come from? Well they came from destinations all over the globe, even if you are careful to buy local or buy American, many of the movable parts inside those items came from other countries many thousands of miles away. Now all you had to do was to have thought, grab your car keys, jump in your clean car and transport yourself to the store. But that is not where the journey begins consider if you will how all those products got to the store in the first place. Ah ha, now you see the importance to the Flow of Transportation!

You see, the items in the store were produced, whether they are agricultural products which were grown, raw materials which were collected or whether they were manufactured - all these items of course came from where they were produced or collected. Then they were transported by truck, train, ship or most often a combination of these methods of transportation. Sometimes the products come to you from B2C websites; such as Online Grocery Sites, books online at Amazon, or something you bought on Ebay. Perhaps you bought something for your home business SOHO office supplies from Office Depot, as these companies have over 45,000 products. Even if you ordered it online the product had to be transported right?

If you order a Dominos Pizza just in time for the game, still it has to be transported and such items and products come by delivery services, smart and innovative leading edge companies or those who specialize in getting it there Absolutely Positively Overnight such as FedEx Home Delivery, UPS, Emery, Airborne or regional expeditor. So, products can either be picked up by transporting yourself or by having them transported to you. There are many theories of methods which can be used to transport products to your home, some are good and some are merely wishful thinking, such as Santa Clause utilizing chimneys and roof tops.

Then there are services that are available to you, where you might transport yourself to get a haircut, Karate Lessons, consulting assistance, etc. using a bicycle, moped, skateboard, passenger car, taxi, bus, motorcycle, a new Segway Scooter or your feet and tennis shoes. Or you might hire a service to come wash your car, put a coating on your deck, clean you windows, since you don't do windows or have your pool cleaned, dog groomed or rain gutters cleaned out. Perhaps you might order home repairs or god forbid you might people repair in time of need; emergency services from professionals such as paramedics, firemen, animal control team, refuse collector, AAA Tow Services or police. These types of product delivery companies, service companies, everyday needs and emergency professionals have to stay efficient to conserve costs and operate on a strategic grid plan to insure proper service to all on a timely basis. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/0000005c.htm

This of course is essential to good quality prompt service and for safety of our people. If you think of a Football play, Net-Centric Warfare Event http://www.carwashguys.com/050802_1.shtml , a disease vector using the blood stream to transport itself and then transfer to another host through the natural flow of species interaction http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000055.htm or even something as simple as delivering the mail, milk or newspapers every day to the same addresses, everything involves transportation. All these transportation systems can be studied and controlled by use of computer programs such as the ones designed by ESRI with hundreds of vendors who design add on systems.

Transporting energy, water, fuels, cable TV, etc also work on a grid theory in order to make delivery possible. No matter what macro or micro system of transportation you are describing, the key to survival is in simple redundant systems and logistical processes. And although we now have high tech tools, really this is nothing new to human beings, the history of the species as described by Evolutionists discuss the theory of hunter-gatherer tribes roaming around, having seasonal patterns knowing where to find the food and transporting themselves by walking. Later agriculture based became prevalent as the most recent activity and we know from written history of the last 10,000 years that mankind transported themselves for water, food, battle and later trade on the backs of animals, in the hulls of boats and on people powered apparatuses.

The first pilgrims came to Plymouth Rock to set up that first colony by way of boat, as did Columbus to the West Indies before in 1492. Leif Erickson is said to have come over 1000 years earlier. As the colonies grew they built up the area, by building trails and roads. Later on we built inter coastal boat transportation, then trains, trolleys, barges, submarines, cars, trucks, buses, blimps, aircraft, helicopters, etc. Today transportation impacts every single part of our daily life and it is the Flow of Transportation, which is the one of the most important flows to insure quality of life and higher standards of living.

If you ever have the opportunity to visit some of the Transportation museums in the New England States including the Trolley Museum in Maine; http://www.trolleymuseum.org/ and The Land Cole Transportation Museum in Bangor Maine; http://www.colemuseum.org/ . Danbury Railway Museum; http://www.danbury.org/drm/museum.htm and The Golden Age of Trucking Museum; http://www.goldenagetruckmuseum.com/ you will certainly conclude that, we have come a long way. As a matter of fact after visiting nearly every truck, aviation, railroad, trolley, ship museum in the country, one would have to say that we have put a huge emphasis on transportation in this country, from day 1.

We have attempted to build unbelievable transportation items and prototypes for instance the Spouse Goose, jet powered bullet trains, under water autonomous vehicles and those X-Planes. Speaking of which if you have been to all the aviation and space museums you would have to be impressed with what we have achieved so far in air transportation, but we cannot stop here. Here are just a few of the museums we have been to; http://www.aircraftwashguys.com/action.shtml and look at these jet trains; http://www.aircraftwashguys.com/tours13.shtml down the street from the R and D, Department of transportation Center in Pueblo Colorado run by Bechtel . It is essential that we should continue research on all types of new and improved methods of transportation such Magnetic Levitation Trains, Hyper-Sonic Aircraft and space craft, Pelican type super transports, Mega-Cargo Blimps, Air-Cushioned Trains, Self Driving Trucks, Smart Cars, Pilot-Less Trains, UAVs, Underwater Unmanned Vehicles, RLV-Reusable Launch Vehicles Space Craft, Road Surface Safety Materials, Warning Systems and Smart Traffic Controls. Indeed, I have discussed at length on our Bulletin Board, Blogs and in eBooks:

http://www.worldthinktank.net/pdfs/futuretrucktechnologies.pdf

All of these emerging technologies are the part of the transportation mix of future civilizations. It is important as populations expand to work on the Flow of Transportation components that improve the flows without increasing cods in the wheel with over burdensome rules for operators, slow moving steering committees, long-term bureaucrat heads, confines on R and D, duplication of regulations by states, pet projects, linear decision making and pure partisan politics.

When transportation fails us we are put into a very bad situation. For instance in 1892 we saw the collapse of 4 railroads, right after the banks failed, 10's of thousands became unemployed and thus the panic of 1893. If we study history we see that when transportation fails stability becomes uncertain and chaos can ensue. We saw during the recent Blackout power outage of 2003 when the subways stopped, traffic signals stopped, gas stations could not pump and the transportation stopped. Although people kept calm you can see the transportation issues with the movement of people. On the day and days following the International Terrorist events on 9-11 (before they were eventually put on the run and wiped out from the surface of the planet) we saw the grounding of all commercial aviation transportation, taking out a major sector of travel.

Many people who were stranded soon found out that there are a multitude of other methods of transportation. These other forms of transportation included Amtrak, rental cars, Greyhound and Trailways, Tour buses, private cars, motor homes, trucks, etc. These backup systems in place of air travel may not have been as convenient, but a heck of a lot more convenient that the expeditions of Lewis and Clark or great migrations of families in covered wagons. Even the first automobile to travel across the United States set a record; it took exactly 66 days. Today you can drive it in four or five if you have to.

Think about it. Having redundancies and today's technologies in transportation we have protected the system for nearly any eventuality. Today in California, the BART train tram system is trying to figure out how to continue with mounting costs and California's financial debacle of the Davis era. The idea to fix this problem has been pondered and they have come to the conclusion they need to. This is linear in thought and sure to destroy the integrity of confidence with the riders and patrons. Although with rider ship down due to less jobs in Silicon Valley, East Bay and in San Francisco raising fees to cover costs will mean even less riders, as a matter of fact when you surpass the cost that the average person is willing to forgo that unit of trade we call a "Dollar" for the opportunity to spend it somewhere else, there is a hyperbolic curve of people willing to continue to participate with the voting of that dollar. Simple supply and demand comes into play.

When the Bay Area in California was losing population and jobs after the collapse of Silicon Valley there was need for restructuring of the transportation system. The BART system is one of the finest in the world, with tunnels under the bay, huge stations, which can handle huge volumes, parking and easy access, as well as a network of private shuttle services, corporate shuttles, city buses, taxi cabs, trolleys, CalTrain, Amtrak, Greyhound and private carriers with matching synchronized schedules. But when the economies of scale cannot be supported in times of a weak economy we need to figure out how we can lower costs and go for the volume needed.

Water companies ask us to conserve and then raise our rates because they have fixed costs and charge per unit used, this of course does not mean we should not conserve water only that the incentives to do so do not take into consideration the innate characteristics of mankind. Obviously we should conserve water because it is a finite resource in a given drought year. As new systems are built they will need ways to conserve costs and it's finite capacity. For instance the number of commuters traveling into NYC is only 1% higher than in 2000 than it was in 1990 as per the Census Study done by the transportation department.

Now a new super system which will be even higher tech than the BART system is being built in New Jersey by the same company, it will be a world class system, state of the art. We need to figure out ways to save money on these systems through operational efficiencies. One way to save money is to spend more in the technological capital constructing of these projects and stack the deck with the highest of high tech - for instance the use of pilot-less trains. High Speed Trains have a great advantage over short distances that make standing in line bordering a plane and getting off a plane and finding a cab, shuttle or picking up a higher priced rent-a-car (supply and demand issues with decreased air travel).

If you consider the two hours ahead of time they require for check in and screening, the one hour to get off the plane and get your checked bags, stand at the curb, drive to the location or hotel you can see that a 200 mph train; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0503/00000088.htm has the overall advantage, 3 hours at 200 mph is 600 miles. Distances of 700-800 mile trips, would be much better served by high-speed train. Distances, which are under 150 miles people usually will prefer to drive. So those mileages between 150 miles to 800 miles a bullet train is best. For those not wishing to fly for fear of flying, they may wish to travel up to 1500 miles or more by bullet train. The length of California on the 5 Freeway is about 1000 miles (try that in a truck at 55 mph?), similar to the width of Texas.

Driving across TX can be a living hell and cause you to want to kiss the ground at the first off ramps in Louisiana or Las Cruses, New Mexico. Travelers have often made these "living hell" comments traveling from Denver to Kansas City. The distance from between NYC and Florida is about 900 miles (not an especially satisfying drive when you throw in Florida's length), Salt Lake to San Francisco 600 miles, Denver to Chicago 900 miles, Detroit to D.C. 700 miles so you can see the benefits. One reoccurring idea from soccer moms traveling is to; piggy-back on flat bed rail cars, like ferry. The high-speed train could streak across the region and then you simply drive off.

In studying this concept which seems more than relevant could be done by modifying the TTX Auto Hauler Trailers design for high-speed rail and put in a couple of portable toilets so you could get out and use the restroom. Then you have your car when you get there. Trains with no engineers are here and this is one way we can take out human error and reduce costs. Perhaps, with the strong union controls in New Jersey, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Connecticut. Maryland and D.C. it may not be feasible, but surely for cargo transport trains; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000083.htm and http://albany.bizjournals.com/albany/stories/2003/09/01/smallb1.html .

We recently saw another ferry accident, this one in NY when the pilot of the vessel fell asleep, which may have been a medical situation or condition, but never the less, accidents like these would be prevented by pilot-less transit systems, this would be no problem with modern technology. We know in the future this will be an accepted method and fully safe, today we will see a union propaganda road show with the media incited fear in our citizenry to protect their jobs through a blocking of these future technologies in the near term through self interests and political action committee donations to politicians and their decision makers on ‘K Street" this is unfortunate for mankind and the transportation advancements in this present period. All too often such linear decision-making hurts the process of incremental betterment for all.

We have the technology now and this will improve safety, prevent hi-jacks from International Terrorists, improve operational costs by a pre-controlled perfect trip setting and lower labor, energy and fuel costs. With the increase of work place shootings of former fired workers, even if such technologies were set in motion, we might have displaced union workers try to sabotage these systems and then the first accident of a pilot-less train would get intense media coverage dwarfing the OJ Simpson, Kobe Bryant or Scott Peterson Court Trails.

We often see pet projects, which make no sense, which due to public outcry also adversely affect the public trust in vital transportation projects. Causing one to wonder why we have lawyers and politicians at all. one for instance is a Vermont bill to have a high speed rail from Boston to Montpelier the capital of Vermont, well this is absolutely silly considering only about 8000 people live in Montpelier, VT and most of them are lawyers, politicians, small business owners and crystal meth drug addicts. Talk about pet project ideas, spending the people's money? Now if the project included New Hampshire's capital and the train traveled up to Burlington VT and the University and down to Boston, you might be able to justify it, but weather issues would be a big deal in winter, now it could seriously help Vermont and New Hampshire Tourism, but the distance is not great and a regular train would suffice.

The projects across the country are worthy, but we should be doing more; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg1202/00000003.htm . For years they have been discussing High Speed Trains, between Los Angeles and Las Vegas and from Houston to San Antonio to El Paso, Houston to Dallas, Dallas to Austin to San Antonio, Dallas to Amarillo, Amarillo to Denver, Denver to Kansas City to Wichita to Oklahoma City to Dallas. Montana needs a high-speed rail and North, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska could all benefit from a high-speed rail system. Connecting the Mid West to all of the Texas markets and Texas to Los Angeles and Florida to Texas through the Southern States could vastly improve transportation and travel in this country.

It would not hurt airlines. The discount airlines; such as Jet Blue, South West, America West, Air Tran; would continue to do well and time factors would be a reason to fly the coast-to-coast routes. Discounters can cut price and stay in business due to the business model used as a major part of their overall growth strategy; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/0000004f.htm . Greyhound Company might suffer in the beginning from a National Network of high-speed rail in the US, but that bus line is now owned by a Canadian Company anyway, eventually they will be able to work with the network to fill in the gaps and actually make more revenue for connecting people to final destinations. More contacts, competition and intra nation trade means the increase in the flow of transportation would bring America closer together and stronger.

This concludes the end of Part I of The Flow of Transportation.

In Part II we discuss: bureaucracy, buses, highspeed trains, aiviation vs. other forms of transportation and future innovations.

In Part III we discuss: Nation's Airports, Road Infrastructures, Highway Safety and Innovations.

The Flow of Transportation Part II of III (bureaucracy, terrorism, buses, highspeed train vs. plane & future innovations)

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:43:15 -0600

The United States is often more representative of a United Countries with our myriad of regulations and rules which change the second you cross the border into a new state, even though we really are one country. Obviously, when Snow was serving as Secretary of Treasury these issues had been studied on this grand scale, especially considering the decade of railroad consolidation during his time at the helm of CSX. With roads in need of repair and traffic getting to be a major issue and our expanding population, we need to look ahead on these serious issues. With magnetic levitation and air-cushioned technology there is no reason we could not build a great network inexpensively that would have the speeds necessary for rapid movement of people. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0802/0000000b.htm .

Also with the latest technologies it could have WiFi wireless computer access so no one is out of touch during the travel time. This is being done now in Baltimore to NY trains and in Sacramento to San Francisco Trains thanks to Amtrak. After all we now have WiFi hotspots at McDonalds, Starbucks, Airports and hotel lobbies already. http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=42029 . By having these amenities we can get people to stay out of their cars and enjoy the commute and or take a high speed train on their next trip. Once the system is built the operational costs are relatively low considering the costs of expanding airports which tend to have cyclical trends during boom and bust years and thus hard to manage your ROI, with gates becoming empty and then new gates which need to be built in the up cycle.

One only has to follow the sector rotations of the airline industry and take a trip through the California desert and look at Billions of dollars of Airliners sitting hibernated which may never be used again. Between the cut throat price wars, Bankruptcy tactics and now era of International Terrorism we need to rethink our transportation strategy to include other redundancy methods which can deliver the speed and comfort that we use to have in Commercial Aviation. We have only a couple Nationwide Bus Companies that deliver people across the country. We need to insure buses are safe also in the era of International Terrorism and people feel comfortable with them again we should figure out how to make them safer and more efficient.

We know that the International Terrorists like the idea of attacking buses as we watch every week another attack in Israel. There have many ideas on how buses like Greyhound might protect the drivers through use of a high-tech ultra-strength plastic shields or enclosed see-through boxes. Lately Canada and the FBI in United States have been looking at tour buses traveling into the country, looking into the riders and drivers. I once had a call from a Tour Bus Operator in Ontario Canada on his way to Florida Coast with Tourists, he was going to stop in Columbus GA or Across the river in Phoenix City, Alabama for the night. Think about this they found a make shift training facility for terrorism up the road about 45 miles. The bus again was to be driven from Canada to AL, with no scheduled stops.

With large school districts sub contracting the school buses in this country and out sourcing though companies like Laidlaw, a Canadian Company along with the Greyhound Company owned by a Canadian holding company we need to be sure that our transportation system, which utilizes buses to deliver people to their desired destinations is watched closely. These buses travel along with private automobiles and share the roads, highway, freeways and toll ways. Having a strong bus sector for travel helps in that people can travel for less by bus and they have more options of where the buses can go. Some of these Greyhound buses go 500,000 miles between oil changes, the motors are never turned off, this is the level of efficiency and is rarely matched in public transportation systems. It is an integral part of our Flow of Transportation.

Without buses schools would have a trouble educating our kids. In the future we will have more schools using the Internet for the hard to get to rural areas. One option is to schedule schools on staggered schedules based on where you live. So if you live on the East side of town you might go to school on Mondays and Wednesdays only. This would allow for areas to spend less on schools and get more work done and lower class size without bankrupting states, it would also alleviate the problems of massive amounts of buses to deliver kids to somewhere else to be taught, here are some thoughts on how we might assist schools without disrupting peak flows in the transportation departments of the educational facilities. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000044.htm .

Right now I see this being a method best used for those days when the weather is unacceptable to put kids in a bus and risk driving them to school through rural areas with unsafe roads for the conditions. Eventually those areas with over stressed budgets can look into the issues of large bus contracts or large bus fleets to move kids to schools which are not ready to accept such large temporary inflows of kids which might only last for a few years and then the school is under-utilized, thus might need to close and bus those kids even further in the future. Today many schools have set up modular classrooms in peak years as another strategy.

Not long ago we watched the Los Angeles Transit workers are on Strike and the RTD is not operating, this happens every few years. This disrupts the flow of people on their way to get food, go to work, attend college or visit friends. When the flow of transportation is disrupted it hurts our trust in the integrity of the system and affects our lives. When you design a city and have a transportation system to support the population and then turn it off you cause chaos. In Los Angeles they are having a grocery store strike this week along with a transit strike. So going to the store to buy food is irrelevant, because they are not open and you can't get there anyway.

Disruptions in flow hurt businesses in that their customers cannot get to them and their workers cannot come to work. This means businesses make less money, pay less taxes, might go out of business when times are already challenging and workers cannot get paid for working and therefore cannot pay their rents. Everyone loses. This is why we need additional choices of transportation. Shuttles, Taxis, private cars, buses, trains, aircraft, ferries, etc. The more choices and the more competition the better prices, level of services and quality. This means people can get where they need to get to, in order to fulfill their needs and desires or pursue their dreams, goals and happiness. Having public transportation breakdown is as bad as having roads in disrepair.

Another huge issue in the Flow of Transportation and one challenge we face are the roads in this country need more attention. What I usually see is construction projects that take years on major freeways, block traffic, slow logistics and make families traveling wait. This costs society as it is blocking or bottle-necking the flow of transportation costing the efficiencies of trucking, which is already stressed with over regulation, high insurance costs and fuel costs. Insurance costs in trucking passed onto consumers and vendors and after 9-11 there have been many other reasons for high insurance on the businesses, many smaller trucking companies are really hurt by this and regulations and fuel costs are tough also with increased competition from large super consolidated trucking companies;

One thing, which is becoming more typical is the piggy back on the flat bed rail car approach, where the trailer is delivered across the country and the tractor hooks up to it and takes it to its final destination. This means that fewer trucks will be on the road and the driver shortages that the industry is experiencing will not increase safety issues with newer and inexperienced drivers filling those jobs. Each time a truck is in an accident with a four-wheeler, the DOT does a report and this increases the costs for all trucking companies and adds to even more regulations.

As more cars are sold in the US and the auto manufacturers continue to make and sell more cars to keep the factories open and increase profits in the sector we are seeing the freeways and large cities have huge peak time traffic jams. We are seeing more accidents too. Much is being done to prevent these increases in accidents to protect the public, although we are also seeing less attention to the road with cell phones, iPods, DVD players, Surround a sound entertainment centers, etc creating sensory perception over load. The military has done testing in combat stress situations on this and the reality of the performance of the human brain with such distractions is all too real and can lead to accidents as well. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000033.htm .

One idea came in to me today was to put a little light on the dash boards of cars so when an ambulance, fire truck or police car with lights and sirens was on it would flash on the dash board to alert drivers to pull over. This could very easily be done with a small network sensor in every car and a small light on the dash, which would activate automatically when an emergency vehicle was within one-eighth of a mile away. Clean windows of course help for visibility. Other ideas which are on their way to a car near you include such things as improved kids car seats and also innovations in air bags, radars and simple things you can do to protect yourself. Below are some background links, personal concepts, and potential innovations that you might like to read up on if this sub-topic to the Flow of Transportation interests you;

This concludes the end of Part II of The Flow of Transportation. **Part III will discuss our Nation's Airports, Road Infrastructures, Highway Safety and Innovations.

TheThe Flow of Transportation - Part III (road infrastructure, airports, safety, planning)

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 22:08:24 -0600

The Flow of Transportation is vital to our or Nation, traffic gridlock destroys quality of life, and leads to decay. Property Values in Real Estate and the very foundation of community depends on a strong, stable and secure transportation system. Before we can talk about downtown revitalization, additional housing, increased population, curbing crime or returning our nation to economic prosperity, we must factor in the reality that the underlining flows of civilization are needed as the foundation, the flow of transportation is critical.

This is part III of The Flow of Transportaion:

If you are involved in an accident you need to be aware of what to do, chances are every driver will sometime be involved in an accident sometime in their lives. If you are wondering what safety features you next car might have check out the links above and see if your choice for your next car is safe enough for your family. For safety sake the silent running electric vehicles will now be required to make noise, which will prevent accidents of other cars, bicycles and pedestrians. Electric Automobile makers are using this as a marketing tool saying you can choose the sound you wish your car to make. You can get the Ferrari Sound, Beethoven, Motorcycle sound, or even swooshing air. The sounds will be played at 60 watts with speakers facing out. And will be required by law so you have to choose one when you buy the car. You can get the sound of the day buying all seven if pay for that added feature. If you are a street racing enthusiast, count on new safety items for you too. The Auto Service industry also takes this seriously too. Some say the best way to stay safe is to be bigger and others say that is the problem;

In case you are wondering why we study this, it is because over 40,000 people a year lose their lives in traffic accidents. You are worried about the Iraq conflict? This is 2000 times greater. Another huge issue of cars mixing with truck traffic has been studied to death, probably due to the deaths, which can result. I can tell you having driven some 500,000 miles around the country that when you are on the open highway and you separate the speeds of cars and trucks by too much for example trucks drive 55 and cars drive 70 you are asking for an accident to happen. There are many places in this country where the speed differentials are like this. What happens is; cars try to pass at bad times adjust for the trucks and end up causing an accident. Did you know more traffic deaths are caused going up hills than down hills? Why due to the severe speed differential, slow vehicles and fast vehicles trying to pass or adjust and fit in between cars moving in faster lanes, many of these accidents are rear collisions or partial rear collisions. These are among some of the most severe accidents.

Trucking is very proactive in their safety innovations as well; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg900/00000230.htm due to the previously discussed insurance costs. A new warning system will soon be located on trucks to warn them of an impending rollover risk. The devise will be activated either by transponder on the roadway or roadside service vehicles. It is possible that the 15,000 truck rollovers per year will be cut by over 45%. One thing we must realize is when we make rules to help in aspects of safety, they must not slow the flow of traffic or transportation. They should solve both problems, improve flow and improve safety. For instance when improving the roads there are special markings, which work better in inclement weather such as fog, rain or wind storms. Also available to us are incredible new roadway materials, which reduce road noise, help the tires grip better, stop quicker, repel water and do not ice up as easy. Similar techniques have been learned to prevent ice from forming on bridges. There are many problems with freeways and toll ways in America. First the toll ways in America are clogging the flow of traffic. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000011.htm .

With the proper systems in place like the Los Angeles, Atlanta, Baltimore video cameras on the freeways and the system in Seattle run by Battelle, there are ways protect the people, monitor the flow, prevent International terrorist attack using our road ways and alleviate any impending rush hour grid lock. All toll ways should disappear in all states and interstate toll ways and highways and become freeways. This increases flow and removes the cancer blocking the transportation life-line. We should take all the information we know about flows and information and use them to keep our systems safe.

We take all the traffic information, weather information, daytime population migrations, census data and we put it all together and display it on a 4-D model we can watch and study to improve traffic flow; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000058.htm . By doing this we can see what the roads on the NY Toll way into NYC are doing with pot holes the size of wheel barrels and destroying truck undercarriages and suspensions on even the Hummer SUVs. Giving your hard earned money to pay toll and then being subjected to bumpy roads which are ruining your car. Imagine paying to drive on a road when you cannot even keep from having your Big Gulp or Starbucks popping out of the drink holders.

This is modern bureaucracy at best and highway robbery at least. But to be fair the 101 and 118 in California are about as bad ever since the North ridge Earth Quake. Also the I-10 East of Houston all the way to Lake Charles, LA are utterly horrendous. The I-20 and I-30 Freeways in Arkansas are a fine how do you do to travelers and the Wal-Mart trucks. There is no excuse for such roads in such a modernized country. To even think this might be acceptable only proves that some have never known any better, meaning this lackadaisical attitude in these places and agreement to live in mediocrity has gone on for generations. Surely we can fix the roads and prevent equipment failure for a smooth transportation flow. In these areas mentioned we see the traffic is very bad due to people slowing down to 35 miles per hour in places to negotiate the potholes, ripples in the road and constant bumps.

The current bidding process for road projects is also flawed due to the mandated minority bidding requirements. The HUB process is also flawed and the entire idea of minority bidding quotas is a politically correct notion, which is incorrect thinking. In fact it has become used and abused and fails to even come close to providing minority businesses with opportunity. The theory was ill though and now the public pays for it over and over again with projects, which are in default of contract, take extra months and years to complete and are awarded to those who cannot perform and have little track record of ever performing. All these delays cause a restriction of flow, artificial choke points, continuous detours and costs to companies which are passed onto the consumers like an additional tax on society.

After the North Ridge Earth Quake there was a company who hired a black guy to be the minority bidder, gave him title of President had him drive around in a pick-up truck which said supervisor, yet he had no more to do with the project than name and of course a high pay check. Turns out there were no black business man bidders except this guy who could not do it, so he hired out the larger and more experienced construction company. This hardly seems right. No one ever talks about this stuff, but it happens every day in government contracts all over America all in the interest of political correctness. It is a waste of money and rewards mediocrity. The best person should get the job regardless of race or color. So much is at stake in our infrastructure for transportation in America it requires reality based thinking, not political correctness without consideration of performance risks.

The flow of transportation affects our lives in a very big way and it is unacceptable to approach such contracts to be given out using the current method. In the US there are surface streets, which are outrageous as well. In Missoula, MT they have an intersection called "Dysfunction Junction", which is an understatement. Although this is just one example, AAA puts out a list of the most dangerous roads in America with the most accidents. There are over 100 listed. Now most states have grid-lock laws which make it against the law to block an intersection when the cross traffic has a green light. Downtown streets in metro areas across the country are in gridlock during rush hours.

The traffic on the freeways near the center of towns all the way out to the suburbs is outrageous. Much to this is due to improper planning. You see the cities in America started where there was a river and small populations sprung up, then the railroad steam engines needed a place to fill up the water. Eventually the towns got larger and grew near the rail stations. Then as people moved outward and behind the downtown areas they grew without regards to modern day planning methods, making increased surface transportation rather difficult. Today master planned communities and larger city planners design the outlining areas with ring roads. Yet even with all these modern theories you still get the terms; Spaghetti Bowl, Mixing Bowl, Cluster Muck, by those who have to navigate such areas where major roads all come together. One little fender bender and the entire system breaks down. When cities are built around bodies of water a ring road theory or design fails because ring road concept serves the center, but in the center is only those fish, which are used by the Sierra Club to file lawsuits on behalf of.

If you look at large cities near bays, the successful ones with transportation flows have concentric rings around the outside of the lake or bay. The traffic flows in Bay Cities is often ill conceived and causes problems with growth and makes for deplorable traffic conditions. Some cities have meandered traffic flows to make sure that all roads lead to the regional mall, auto mall and of course City Hall, in order to collect revenue from the sales tax as consumers buy products in their city. This was the big push in city strategy between the 1980's and 1990's and for the most part it worked but caused local traffic to go around such roads and thus caused other streets traffic issues, but the cities had the money they needed to build parks and maintain high levels of city services. In the 1990's a new fad started the older cities and even newer projects worked to build a downtown with tilt up prefabs like the project in Columbus, Ohio at the Limited Co. mall. These projects go on today in many cities trying to revitalize downtown.

and for the cities which work to bring people back to downtown and the flow into those areas which have experienced urban flight to "the burbs" it has come with hard fought eventual success. The Smart Growth debate will continue until far into the future, what is of importance is to not lose sight of the flows, which go into the proper growth. Just like the song; The foot bone is connected to the leg bone, the leg bone is collected to the hip bone, the hip bone is connected to the.... In other words all roads are connected in some way to all other roads even if a ferry is in-between. All roads are connected to all bus stations and all railways connect and intersect to all roads. And all airports are connected to one another and to the ground transportation. Ring roads and proper surface street infrastructures separate the good transportation flows from the bad ones.

Some cites have done better than others in this regard, but one only has to look at places like San Francisco and the Bay area to see the problems. If you look at 101 and 280 on the West side of the bay you can see attempts at a solution with connecting highways, but they are far and few between. Even down lower in San Jose the last minute expressways are hard to navigate and were put in too late. East Bay is a complete disaster and you can see why BART was necessary. There are many good examples of ring roads which have been done correctly for instance Houston, but when you add people so fast, even a well done system can be overloaded. Most of our major cities are now over loaded with cars and the roads are not handling the flow. And we keep making them and buying them, which is our choice as consumers. The problems are that we are not utilizing our transportation systems correctly. We have peak periods where no one can get anywhere and times when the streets are literally empty.

We have the same problem at Airports, where aircraft are usually parked in the middle of the night and fewer and fewer red eye flights these days. Instead we should be trying to figure out a way to use these resources better. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000060.htm and http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000063.htm . There is tremendous growth at our airports for instance Dallas, Las Vegas, Atlanta, San Francisco, LAX, etc. And many other smaller airports Akron/Canton, Long Beach, Flint Michigan, etc. are seeing incredible growth. The FAA is in need of less regulation from other bureaucracies to do its job as well as some privatization. The EPA routinely withholds monies to airports until they comply with NPDES permits with EPA and will withhold funds or add in those costs in their funding as mandates. The problem is that first you need to expand the airport and thus increase revenues then you can solve these other issues. But the bureaucracy is unnerving. Having been around airports all my life and discussing things with small, medium and large Airport Managers and Executives their issues are not being served and their hands are tied behind their backs with mandates from the DOT, Congress, EPA, Homeland Security, it is amazing they are still able to even function. My Grandfather was the former head of the FAA at Fresno International and these issues are very old, they have been going on for years.

Airports are an integral part of our transportation system. Many Airports have become great transportation hubs as needed by the patrons who frequent them. Chicago, Newark, LaGuardia, Reagan, San Francisco, Hawaii, PHX, and many others have figured out how to move people in and out quickly and connecting them to the desired ground transportation. Likewise those which are in close proximity to bus-train stations hubs or have incorporated them into the overall plan seem to really do well for the traveling public. Trams, which go from the airport to downtown or to the bus or train terminals and parking structures for rent-a-cars, really serve there nearby cities well. This brings in business to the cities and completes the transportation loop.

Economic Development Associations, which work closely with their airports will often are able to encompass the needs of the people, businesses and government into a seamless. We see in the organized world of the Japanese with their transit systems and floating airports and super engineering anti-Tsunami bridges many ideas in the theory of flow, which assists every part of their society. We can learn a little bit from their ideas in the system of flows and simplicity once the giant infrastructure projects are finally completed. We have some really great border line world-class transportations systems in the US but they are not cohesive in all regards.

Alas, but with a little fine tuning they certainly could be and with all the space we have in this country we have so many possibilities of making it logistically perfect, people friendly, efficient in operation, safe from International Terrorists, redundant without worry of break down and cost effective to increase usage and confidence with the patrons. To do this we must prevent trucking regulations which are duplicated in every state and often contradictory. EPA laws have to take into consideration the free-market mechanism to clean the air. We have seen severe restrictions and deadlines forced on the trucking industry which should have better considered. When large items need to travel down existing roadways and are considered wide loads, long loads or oversized loads they often have different rules for different states, highways, federal and even some counties have their own rules.

Making it difficult to get a much needed part to a power plant, military base, infrastructure project, building, government agency or individual, has a cascading affect on the entire civilizaiton. When businesses have to deal with all these different, often redundant rules and regulations they cannot use the existing transportation system and when these things happens it hurts the flow of products and services to the overall people that it was built to serve. In addition to this, every permit, fee, fine or rule imposed causes and increase in cost and an overall tax on society. When we slow any form of transportation, increase regulations these costs are passed on. When companies are over taxed passed the amount their customers can afford they have two choices; file bankruptcy like United Airlines, Consolidated Freightways, Penn Central Railroad, Budget Group, Laidlaw, etc. Now we could discuss the transportation sector and bankruptcies of the last three decades for 36 hours and never get to the bottom of it.

We need to consider that when regulations to prevent accident slow the flow of transportation to the point that profit cannot be made because the costs for rider ship or shipping a product is out of sync with reality of the free market then we all lose in that loss. Friedman Economics comes into play here and too the books of Ayn Rand, we cannot use linear thinking to run the wheels of government bureaucracy due to media stirred controversy and PAC politics. Transportation must be above all that if we are to insure the integrity of its flow.

The flow of transportation cannot be compromised by the mere threat of International Terrorism, nor should we allow it to be used against us. By making the transportation system all encompassing, no one problem can stop the flow. No one terrorist act can prevent our system from serving the will of the country and people. All rules, laws, regulations, incremental changes, and screening in all forms of our transportation infrastructure must use the most technological advanced systems to see that the we can move people, products and services efficiently, cost effectively and quickly.

I hope you have enjoyed this essay The Flow of Transportation in this project called Improving The Flow of All We Know. My name is Lance Winslow, I have been to every city in the US over 10,000 in population in the last 7-years, touring in a NASCAR type truck mobile command center conversion and motor coach: http://www.carwashguys.com/blitz.html and I want to thank you for listening.

Problems with Cold Calling Quotas for Your Sales People

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 08:11:28 -0600

Often sales managers make a huge mistake when they require their sales people to make "X" amount of cold calls per week and write down the person they called, what was said and the phone number on a little chart. What ends up happening is fairly interesting and it happens in many industries. Often, the sales people will call when they know most people will not answer and they leave a voice mail. Then they put on the chart; Voice Mail - left message for Mr. Smith.

As an entrepreneur that works late, many sales people would call me on a Friday Evening and expect to get a voice mail, but instead they got me. Then they were not really prepared to talk, or explain what it was they had to offer. They wanted to hurry up the phone call and just waited for me to say I was not interested. After a while I asked these sales people why they always call on Friday and they told me;

"I call on Friday and leave messages because no one is usually there!"

Ever since then, I banned my own sales force from cold-calling on Fridays. Look here is the deal, if you are just going thru the motions because you have too and not because you are hungry for sales, then maybe you should not be in sales at all. The reason I say this is because there are just too many people that are afraid to cold-call, when it is a necessary evil, especially for a newbie. You know that old saying;

"It is amazing how lucky you get when you are working hard"

Well, we all know that's true, but my question to you is, are you working hard or are you just wasting everyone's time, including your own. You do not have to reply to this or leave a comment, but just think on it!

Cash Strapped Consumers Choosing Between Risk of Car Repossession and Foreclosure?

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:34:00 -0600

Well, apparently the credit card companies see some problems down the road if the economy continues to worsen, which is what is predicted. The Economic Stimulus Plan is of interest because consumer studies show that when consumers know they are going to get a check in the mail, they generally spend it three-times. That's right, studies show that consumers spend 3 times the amount of their refund checks from the IRS, and allot the reasoning for doing so, "because I am going to get a check in the mail!" scary yes, but it is true and this is a known thing.

This means that they will most likely try to charge things in advance knowing they will get this check in the mail. Credit Card companies are already trying to hedge their risks by tightening on credit, because they know that folks are already in over their heads, just like many homeowners are underwater. Now with credit card missed payments spiking upwards, the credit card companies have no choice but to cut people off, these consumers are addicted to spending.

Now the latest consumer credit research shows that car loan repos up 17% in last two years over all in some markets over 35%, which is highest in 10-years. Credit Card and Student Loans are also in default and with college students and those just out of school. Folks who get behind in credit cards end up with higher insurance rates also. This has many banks, economists and Think Tanks a little unnerved, the Online Think Tank stated, that they see some dark clouds for many consumers on the horizon and its time to pay the piper.

We already know what is going on in the housing markets with the glut of foreclosures driving down home prices. Another harsh indicator is in the small business sector. Small business loan requests down 14%, which means less new equipment being bought and very little expectation of growth, a good indicator of future unemployment figures, realize 75% of Americans are employed by small business. Many credit counselors are now saying that folks are trying to choose between car repossession, credit card cutoff and/or foreclosure. And that quite frankly has me a little concerned.

The Flow of Fuel - America is Motivated by the Fuel Which Drives Us Around.

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 06:57:23 -0600

Without it, without the Flow of Fuel, our very mobile society comes to a complete stand still. When the supplies get low and the free-markets dictate higher prices; every one of us feels the pain in some way. We are effected no matter where we live, what we do, where we go, what we drive, where we live or who we are. This is because the economics of supply and demand affect every flow that we know. The price of fuel in the transportation sector that delivers to us the things we need and desire is added on to the prices of those items effects every item that we purchase, buy, beg, borrow, steal or trade. Why, because it was delivered by a truck, train, plane, automobile, ship or other form of transportation and many times a combination, all of which use fuel. Please read The Flow of Transportation essay in this series.

In the future when new innovative types of transportation do not require such fuels, it will still affect us in some way. This could be in a very positive way or could be in a negative way, due to future transportation options becoming obsolete and therefore less competition in the transportation sector. This again will all be due to; supply and demand of the fuel that such transportation does not need. When a vehicle can deliver without fuel, then it's place in the transportation mix will go up in demand. This is because; when the price of fuel for competing transportation goes up, more usage will be placed on it to meet such demand.

We see today a fierce unspoken competition between trucks and trains. It is well known in those industries and with those who ship the products, components, parts, natural resources, produce and event the fuel itself. After all, the fuel competes for the cheapest mode of delivery as well; whether it is a pipeline, rail car, tanker truck, ship, barge, etc.

In the case of military, you can add in all the squadrons of flying gas stations too. The price of fuel can be the savior to an industry which is hammered by overseas competition or is trying to find a little more room to cut costs to appease a persnickety union with greater health care costs, safer working conditions (at least they often claim that), less working hours, more paid vacation time, bonuses, higher pay, etc. The money has to come from somewhere and the price of fuel and the supply will often determine the viability of a large corporation. Those companies, which use lots of fuel will be very much affected by these trends for instance; Airlines, Trucking Companies, Railroads, Manufacturing Companies, and Service Companies of every shape and size.

When these companies pay more for fuel those prices are figured into the price to the customer. When such companies have long term contracts to a customer and the price moves upward to quickly then these companies have to eat that cost. This causes huge operational losses and poor quarterly earnings, which effects their market valuations due to hammering by the gambling casino stock markets when they report these losses. This in turn leads to massive lay-offs, which is not a good thing. If you have been laid off recently, you may wish to look at your companies supply chain and distribution both too and from and the use of vehicles which use fuel and determine if high fuel prices is a part of the reason or another large factor in the fact you were laid off. Even companies you might not even think of are very much affected by fuel; Telecommunication, Cable, Garbage, Utility and even Pharmaceutical companies have vast fleets of vehicles.

Today we see two massive Labor Union disputes in the fire-ridden state of California. One is the RTD - Rapid Transit District, which uses tons of diesel fuel per minute. So where will the RTD get the money to pay the workers more if the fuel prices are so high? Well last time they went on strike for five weeks and the RTD wanted to slow down talks because they were saving 5 million dollars in fuel every day the strike was on. Therefore, the longer it lasted the easier it would be to meet the demands of the striking workers. This leads to even more problems since the entire flow is disrupted by those who are suppose to be insuring the safe flow of transportation. Please read The Flow of Transportation essay in this series.

Of course when people cannot get to work, buy things or go to school, other things suffer too. For instance; the store owners in lost revenue and the cities, counties and state in lost sales tax revenue; the State of California Franchise Tax board in lost income tax of the workers who did not work; the schools who are reimbursed for their budgets based on attendance and enrollment numbers by the state and the colleges which derive income from tuition which now have more drop outs; the student loan programs because people who do not go to school obviously do not feel they should be paying for it; and we all pay in increased time stuck in traffic causing increased poor air quality because many of the people riding the buses now drive or pile into other peoples cars which make more trips.

Generally the pollution of cars carbon monoxide from the burning of gasoline is twice as bad for people than the CO2 from the bus burning diesel fuels. Many city buses today burn natural gas, some are electric, ethanol and believe it or not hydrogen. The beef with the bus drivers is they want more money? Yes so does everyone, but we are all in the same economic ball of wax so now, we destroy the credibility of the transportation system and hurt the taxation input of a strapped for cash state.

Although this is only one of the more recent strikes, the other being the grocery union. Grocery stores have huge distribution centers and some of the largest fleets in the nation. Safeway, now Safeway-Vons stores had at one time the second largest fleet in the nation hauling its own product. Ten years ago; Safeway had 3600 trucks and Vons had over 2500 making a total of 6100 trucks or units, now Wal-Mart blows away that number. When the grocery stores stop, the trucks stop, the stores close, which is okay because no one can get to work on the bus anyway?

Who is going to use all that fuel of the buses and grocery trucks, which are parked? Will this lower fuel costs, due to oversupply? Yes, but this is only temporary as the crude oil, refining capacity and the commodity markets are all other components of the supply and demand issues. The reason we bring this up is to demonstrate that the flow of fuel affects everything we do in life; our jobs, families, school, work and safety; not to mention our food, shelter and clothing. If you will think for a second everything you eat, every piece of plywood in your house and piece of clothing you wear was transported to you and folks that took fuel. The cost of that fuel is figured into the price of your new sweater, nails and roofing material over your head and the Starbucks coffee you drank and the McDonalds Hamburger you ate.

Generally when the average person on the street thinks of fuel, they think of gasoline in their car and the prices at the pump and how much it takes to put the hand of the dial on "F." One Oil Man we recently interviewed from Texas, with wells in Oklahoma, Texas and natural gas wells in Louisiana was blown away after driving around in LA. He said;

"I cannot believe the amount of cars in Los Angeles and Southern California, I did not realize that we had that much oil to make into gasoline for all those people to drive around like that!"

Think about it for a second; he is in the oil business. There are many types of fuels besides that gasoline we put in our cars and use to cruise around. It is only the first that come to mind when we think of fuel; "Gasoline" for my car. We mentioned a little bit about the Diesel Fuel for trucks. It is a huge amount of fuel. Think how many trucks there are on the road? All the independent truck drivers with those fancy rigs getting just about 5 mile per gallon depending on terrain, speed and wind.

Then of course the huge fleets of the grocery chains and giant companies like Wal-Mart; you have Publix, Albertson's, HEB, Kroger and Piggly Wiggly, which all with enormous fleets of their own. Then you have the large contract carriers like Swift, JB Hunt, Werner, Covenant, US Express, Dick Simon, etc. and the LTL Carriers- Less then Load Companies with gargantuan fleets and even with all the consolidation of companies like; Fed Ex Ground buying up Viking, American Freightways and others to form the third largest LTL; the mega merger of Roadway and Yellow Freight; the bankruptcy of Consolidated Freightways; these fleets have continued to buy fuel to get the products to market, deliver the materials and components to keep the world's economies turning.

All this is made possible because the fuel is readily available at price threshold that is livable. Without it America stops. There is a saying in the trucking industry with those that accuse the truckers from getting on the freeways and holding up traffic;

"If you take the trucks off the road the shelves in the stores will be empty in four days,"

This makes truck drivers and the trucking industry feel good about themselves, so it serves a purpose. The truth is the shelves would be totally empty in 5.5 days and people would starve within the week. Three weeks and there would be anarchy in the streets, yes even the middle class suburbs. At that point you might just wish to have a friend who drives a truck, because the new world order would be that of Road Warrior. If you look at the huge moving company trucks with this latest housing rocket ship, layoffs causing people to move to other accommodations, enrollment peaks as those laid off go back to school, you a large market sector using more fuel. And really we are just scratching the surface of trucking and surface transportation where the tires meet the road.

How about companies like UPS and Fed Ex Air, talk about market power and vehicles. Fed Ex and Ups are approaching 35,000 vehicles each. How much fuel is that? It is so much they can afford to look at alternative sources and fund R and D projects to reduce their costs in fuel. UPS recently decided to put in Hydrogen stations at every terminal for their double and triple truck units. Fred Smith, Chairman of the Fed Ex Companies said that if a company could deliver a vehicle that would use 50% less fuel and 90% less emissions he would order 19,000 of them. He lied they are now ordering 35,000.

The company grew a little between the offer and the accomplishment. Just in case this does not impress you, we will be glad to be impressed for you. The free market is finding ways to deal with the issues in the flow of fuel. It does not take long on a busy corner in a busy city to see that one in three vehicles is a business or a government vehicle. A school bus, cable installer pick-up, limousine, post office LLV (new jeep), dog groomer, meter reader, taxi, car wash guy, telephone company van, garbage truck, shuttle bus, pizza delivery car, package delivery van, rent-a-car, police car, armored car or a hot dog car towing a cart. This is before we even discuss the fact that in many households there are as many registered vehicles as members of their family, including the family dog or cats.

America's love of the automobile comes with issues of fuel and this is why the supply and the flow of the fuel should be among some of our top priorities. Recently in Arizona an old pipeline owned by Kinder Morgan sprung a leak and left the city of Phoenix in a problem situation. No fuel for cars. The problem went from serious to critical in less than two days. We saw first-hand that service businesses stopped, people could not get to work, school, doctors office, etc. It certainly got the attention of every man, woman and child within in that period.

The problem lasted a week. Trains, trucks loaded with fuel tried to keep up the supply, but they started from behind the curve and could not possibly keep up. Many gasoline stations had already run out of fuel and people were running out of gas, while looking for a gas station still open. The sides of the freeways were full of parked cars, yes you guessed it with scribbled signs written on note book paper, pieces of car board and backs of hand bills set between the windshields and wiper blades; "out of gas." Still think the flow of fuel is funny?

In the buffet of essays on the Flow of All We Know, fuel rates up there at the top, doesn't it? The other heavy users of fuel are not as often thought of. But let's look at them for a second. While we are talking about surface transportation, let's talk about trains. The railroad has always been a big part and played an even larger part in the flow of fuel even before the locomotives used fuel. Even back when the trains were steam driven from coal. The Flow of Fuel is very important and no one can argue that, better than Rockefeller. As you know he was a master of the flow, all the way down to controlling his cost and his competitor's costs on the rail lines. By forcing restrictions on the distribution systems it was hard to compete and many an Oilman sold their companies to the "streamline by the numbers former accountant with the impeccable books."

Before you continue this discussion please go read the life story of Rockefeller and Standard Oil Company, then you may continue. Now let's continue, today the railroad is a big user of fuel and the railroad is responsible for much of the major movement of fuel as well as the natural resources in our country. The railroad delivers fuel to terminals for trucking companies, without the railroads it would be difficult to supply the trucks with the needed fuel. Pipelines only go to so many places. The railroads move chemicals out of the refineries, compete with them and their vendors to deliver the fuel and deliver to the trucking terminals, which are not near pipelines, while the railroad competes with the trucking companies to deliver products to the market or manufacturing companies.

Then in the last decade or so you have seen an increasing amount of piggy back trailers from trucks on the flat bed railcars moving across the country due to high fuel costs, insurance costs, interstate trucking regulations, trucking unions, driver hour restrictions, road construction destroying equipment or slowing the traffic flow and shortage of qualified drivers. As all these methods compete in the market and for fuel, they also complement each other providing our great nation with much redundancy, which at times seems wasteful, but in this newest era of the treat of International Terrorism, makes it nearly impossible to stop the turning wheels of industry, energy and commerce. The entire system moves on the flow of fuel.

The railroad companies can buy large amounts of fuel and store it and move it cheaper and has an inherent edge on the trucking industry and whereas the railroad is more efficient than the trucking industry, the tracks do not go everywhere. Also the loads need to be larger to make it worthwhile. So even if the railroads are more efficient the shipments must be broken down to get to their final destinations. Thus you will always need both forms of transportation, which are the two of the largest private users of fuel.

The other huge user of fuel is the airlines. Fuel costs are higher than even the cost of the aircraft. Airline tickets and airlines live and die on their ability to number one fill up planes and number two, manage their fuel costs. Discount Airlines have been able to keep flights full in order to order to cover costs and keep prices low, but are hurt in quarterly earnings every time fuel prices increase. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/0000004f.htm When fuel prices stay high, you often see massive downward spirals and negative sector rotations in Airline Stocks. Again it is all about the flow of fuel. It is of interest when we hear talk of our National Debt and how important that is. "A Nation is not in danger of financial disaster merely because it owes itself money."

The flow of fuel is several times more important than that, because with proper flow and economies of scale, everything works better and everyone wins. Consumers have lower prices and more choices; governments have greater tax revenues due to more commerce and more jobs paying into the system; industry has higher profits and more money to expand; the stock market moves upward provided greater benefits for those who bet on a strong America and therefore greater investment in new companies which provide innovation and research and development to improve the flow of everything we know.

Speaking of the benefits of the flow of fuel to government in the tax revenues, just think of all the fuel the government uses at all levels? Incredible amounts at every level; so incredible that they along with private enterprise spend millions of dollars trying to figure out more efficient methods. The military uses so much fuel it has its own reserves and oil fields and contracted out refineries. It has about enough supply for the entire country for 60-90 days depending on our conservation levels in a crisis situation. Fighting a war takes a tremendous amount of fuel. The modern Aircraft carriers use nuclear power, like the submarines, but the rest of the world's greatest arsenal uses fuel of various types. And they are always testing different fuels to increase performance in different situations.

These reserves have been used when OPEC plays hardball creating fuel prices above our ability to operate our industries and businesses and keep America employed and the wheels of commerce turning. Opening up the floodgate of supply, lowers the prices and puts the cartel in check. If not certain businesses become un-viable when fuel prices go too high. Often people will say that certain wars are only about oil. Obviously this is not the only reason, but even if it were, judging by our need for the proper supply and flow of fuel and the fact that if America stops, America starves, it would appear such a war over resources is justified no matter how you slice it.

Wars have been fought over land, slavery, gold, arms, drugs, trade, religion, territory, practice, race, currency, food, water, resources and fuel. Killing of your own species seems like the wrong way to go about such a situation, but since only one percent of the total humans who have lived on the planet, the flow of fuel is surely a better reason for a war than many of the previously mentioned. Although it certainly is no way to run a world filled with neighbors, friends and trading partners. Many a culture has been accused of goosing another in trade disputes and even this week we see our friends and allies trying to play the upper hand in questionable trade tactics over all kinds of important commodities. Please read The Flow of Trade essay in this series.

It is interesting the OPEC Nations and the cartel, which affects the quality of our daily lives, personal success, the number of people who can enter our middle class, and all of our businesses and industries including your job. In our country we have rules about monopolies that we enforce on every large super heavy weight business in every industry. Above we asked that all those continuing this discussion read the book on Rockefeller. If you have already read that book then you understand the remaining points and why we bring up the importance of flow and we are discussing it and comparing it to OPEC.

Rockefeller was beholden to the market place and the supply and demand issues of the day. If his price got too far out of line, then others would jump into the game. OPEC constantly screws with our supply, much worse than the anti-trust issues of yester year. If it is okay today for OPEC to play these games then certainly Rockefeller did nothing wrong, as a matter of fact, I have never heard of such an important concept such as Anti-Trust, which has so little reality based thinking and has undergone so few changes in the past 200 years. With all the ridiculous patch work within is regulations, it throws out the entire idea of capitalism and competition. The laws are vague, utterly preposterous and reward the weak. The notion that bigness is automatically evil, dangerous to the welfare of free men or bad for the society as a whole makes no sense in a free market economy.

The attack on Gate's Microsoft by the FTC, after the consumer made them number one by buying their products was beyond me. People vote with their dollar, they chose a company that fulfills their desires, purchase products and services from that company and this is bad? It appears that the FTC only attacks the visionaries and market winners, Jealousy? The theory that Monopolies, which started small and grew big due to the consumer choosing them over the competition is a testament of a strong free market system with tough competition forcing the best athlete forward for the gold medal and is merely survival of the fittest.

If growing big is evil then and anti-trust laws are to be enforced upon bigness then the entire government, by the people and for the people should be immediately shut down, because it was voted for by us, we chose it over other forms of government and it is now huge, talk about out of control with regulations. This alone would make it ready for anti-trust lawsuits, with its finger on the flow of everything. When our Oil Companies here in the US wish to merge to create the economies of scale to compete, they go through months of regulatory review. Then these same oil companies are told they must divest themselves of certain pipelines, retail outlets, subsidiaries, trading rooms, etc., but this reduces choices and raises prices.

It is interesting that we allow foreign competitors more latitude than our own companies and then we create a hostile environment in the regulatory bureaucracy and cause our companies to move jobs, factories, refineries, etc to those same foreign lands. One might have to ask exactly whose team are we on? Let's face it, the growth of a business from small to large is a testament of commitment and hard work by the team running that company and their value to the consumer and my friends that is merely survival of the fittest and best prepared to take advantage of opportunities to serve the desires of the customers.

Just like a Republic or Democracy government voted into power by the people is a sign of the strength, trust and will of the people. John D Rockefeller was a great man and delivered fuel to the people and enabled us to move the ball forward as we modernized our civilization. J. Paul Getty once said;

"I believe that the able industrial leader who creates wealth and employment is more worthy of historical notice than politicians or soldiers."

Well I support our troops and believe they are top notched so would not make that statement in public, but I definitely agree about the politicians, very well said Sir. The flow of fuel is related to every decision we make and every step we take and as the song says; "Every breath we take." This brings me to the next fuel to be discussed; "Natural Gas." We use Natural Gas for heating and running appliances at home. Industries use Natural Gas to help the environment. Many companies switched to Natural Gas in the last decade due to tax breaks given by government agencies. Now it appears there will be a huge price spike due to supply shortages, which will cause many business failures in industries whose jobs have for the most part already left the country due to union demands, over regulations, costs and WTO and NAFTA deals.

Why is there a shortage of Natural Gas? We have been converting to cleaner burning fuels and there is plenty of Natural Gas in the world. Unfortunately drilling has been hampered due to Sierra Club lawsuits, such as the one off the New England coast, which stated that the drilling, which would only last a month or so might hurt the extremely low frequencies that dolphins and whales use to communicate. Then there have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against offshore oil drilling, natural gas pipelines and refineries.

There has been discussed about the need for hydrogen economy and it's desirable attributes for the environment. All well and good, but right now we have issues with fuel and oil which are critical with regards to the reserves available and the amount at any one time in the pipeline, both actually and figuratively. Hydrogen is a wonderful future choice, but only through incremental change. Many say ethanol is the answer. Maybe but let's not forget that it takes water to grow corn and many of the areas where corn grows well have gone through some rather harsh drought times lately.

If we subsidize farmers to grow corn, use up all the water and then the price of the ethanol is close to that of gasoline then why not use the same money to lower the taxes placed on gasoline now? It is the same money and we get some of the water back and still have something to eat, make plastics out of and export. There needs to be some clear headed thinking about these issues and all too often it is political and not reality based. It is going to require some non-linear thinking and deep thought.

Renewable energy is a fine ‘Buzz word' but it should not be applied to everything that comes along. There are many issues to the flow of energy so, please read The Flow of Energy essay in this series. One thing to consider is that oil in the ground and the natural gas is sitting there and it is free, all you have to do is grab it, or refine it and distribute it. Please read The Flow of Raw Materials essay in this series. If the refining process of ethanol and the decaying leftovers that are tilled put out pollution and green house gases in the atmosphere, then where have we really saved?

It has to work all the way around in the environmental circle and still be produce for the same price point without subsidies, otherwise it is defeating the purpose and therefore it is not reality based. A very skeptical eye needs to be watching these movements and if it makes sense, move it forward incrementally. Today, there is are comments about the scarcity of oil or natural gas on this planet, but really there is only a scarcity of the easy to get reserves.

We have certainly come a long way since the old stories of the Permian Basin originals. If you have studied some of the incredible stories and histories of the Texas Wild Cat'ers, then you can see what an incredible distance we have really come in keeping up with the World's thirst for oil and the refined products such as Jet Fuel, Diesel and Gasoline and ancillary chemicals left over during the refining process.

The Flow of Fuel is a key to the Health and Wealth of a Nation.

The Flow of Trade - It is a Global Economy and the US Housing Crash Affects the World

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 05:14:03 -0600

This short essay is on the Flow of Trade and how proper flow keeps food on the plates of people and Civilizations from going to war. In the new Global Economy everything affects everything else. The Flow of Trade is a major consideration of civilizations and cultures working together to insure that they can get what they need, since some regions have special crops, which grow in their areas, which the other regions would like to have. In days of the First US Colonies, before it there was a country trade with done with the local Indians, in fact it was vital to the colonists staying alive. Indeed, my ancestors traded with the Native Indian tribes to insure the colony had the food and things needed to get through the winter months. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mcstayfamily/pilgrim.htm

If it were not for the Native Indians in those first winters the Pilgrims would have died, starved and frozen. The trading of civilizations has been written about throughout history and has been documented in every culture, race, nationality and religion. It seems as if trading partners is a way to exchange the products and services to improve quality of life and higher standard of living to both sides. It brings with it, possibilities for peace and opens cultural exchange and best of all it makes friends. We can learn a lot from fellow cultures, species and nationalities.

Today trading partners are keeping peace in the world, because you are less likely to attack or want to cause war against a group or country that provides you with products, natural resources, technology, enlightenment, services and assistance. Today most of the peace has been nurtured through trade. Many of our wars have in part been due to trade disputes. For instance the Japanese in WWII part of the reason was due to the steal, oil and rubber trade. Our breaking with England in the revolutionary war was partly over tea, taxes and other issues. Many of our allies in wars were those who were trading partners, for fear of loses a trading partner.

Often mankind attempts to justify war over natural resources like oil, perhaps in the future it will be water? In the news most of our hardships or disputes come from unequal trading partners trying to get a little extra by manipulating currencies. Free trade is a good thing provided the sides trading have what the others need, items they do not wish to produce or cannot produce for the same costs due to regional temperature variations, labor forces, raw materials or cultural norm. Free Trade is a great thing, as long as that trade remains a fair trade.

If fair trade cannot be reached as a balance, sometimes triangle trading partners can take the place or a currencies adjust a completely free trading global market can exist. Triangle trading partners worked because one country needed something but the trading partner did not need what the other had extra to sell, but a third partner did and the first partner only had enough to supply her own country. But the first partner needed what the third partner had. Eventually the trading partners ended up using a unit of trade such as gold, silver, etc. Then eventually gold coins and silver coins and currency came into play.

In Amsterdam a whole new trading hub evolved with interest, currency, banks, and trade of every good known to man at that time. This was the culmination of centuries and a millennium of trading. Civilization and modern living with amenities and time for recreation, thinking and personal items became possible and pushed the world into a better place of working together. Wars of course did not stop, but rather a shift in thinking began to take shape. Trading partners and allies are generally all part of the strategic thinking of wars or of peace.

The Germans before WWII used the trade payments as a tool and established a bureaucracy to slow out flow, while collecting the inflow of goods, thus insuring it owed money and therefore existing trading partners would not want to go against them for fear they might not be paid; literally becoming a cancer or parasite on the outflow of money or on the flow the float. Often still countries attempt to manipulate flow. Trade organizations are set up to keep flows fair and products and goods flowing so no one trading partner can hurt another. When the parasites of flow attack and manipulate the flow of trade whether in or out they do so at the expense of the people and business, jobs and families of their trading partners. This is why in WWII, the Japanese literally felt as if the act of war was the US blocking their trading needs and not their attack on us at Pearl Harbor. The world is still not perfect.

Now we find China and Japan manipulating currencies to get an edge. Meanwhile stealing technology or we secretly give it them; for instance their satellite programs and recent man in space. Stealing of the P-3 and the problems at Los Alamos where secret scientific research was collected and then the spy for sex FBI scandal. Our trade deficit with China today is 433 Billion annually in 2004 a we figured 2.7 million jobs have ended up there. China also owned 88 Billion in US Treasury notes to hedge against their undervalued and manipulated currency, all this very interesting and those are now old figures, today the numbers are seriously jeopardizing our Nation's economic future.

The Japanese have come to America with trade delegations and take pictures of everything we make. Stealing technology and taking information from niche manufacturers of components, then copy the stuff and manufacturer it there, now it is China that is playing that card. Problems of piracy are on a grand scale, but the PTO in the US favors the foreign competitors who scan thousands of inventions per day and take and make the stuff there in other countries. All US based technology. There are so many disclosure regulations on America Corporations and even private companies that the corporate intelligence espionage gatherer has little trouble finding anything they might want.

For every dollar of products we sell in China, they sell six dollars here. Industries like plastics, toys, electronics, heavy equipment parts, shoes, trinkets, aerospace parts, semi-conductor components for computers. It is a huge issue and with 1.3 billion people to employ, before that thirst is satisfied there is no end in sight or possibility of their labor source balancing out with unions or supply and demand issues to drive the labor costs up anywhere near that of the US. The average worker there could cost as much as $1200.00 per year there, but here try over $24,000.00 and shipping the products half way around the world for assembly is also irrelevant considering the low labor costs divides.

To compete our companies are hiring them to make the stuff there, costing jobs here, but in the end staying in business. Why are companies here doing this? Well unions, lawyers, regulations all drive up costs of production and make efficiency rather irrelevant. Read this article for more details on efficiencies in manufacturing. http://www.carwashguys.com/finite.pdf . When we saw these issues get so bad about 2 decades before we initiated NAFTA, so we could open trade with Mexico. Today NAFTA, which covers all of North America and Mexico and a few other partners has rules such as 51% of all vehicles are to be built in a NAFTA country. Again the reason why BMW, Mercedes, Honda, Toyota, Nissan all have plants here. These plants thankfully must hire labor from here in the states, which is good for the workers and employment, but much today is built by robots.

Realize also that components or even completed products are built in Canada and Mexico. In Mexico is costs me 50% to send over business equipment as an extra tariff. US companies have huge factories over the borders in Juarez near El Paso and over the borders from Laredo and Brownsville, TX. Besides NAFTA there are huge trade organizations and treaties. The WTO has been a big devastator of jobs for textiles, shoes, etc. in Monterrey Mexico all those jobs now have moved to China. Previously in the Southern States were factories for carpets, shoes, clothes, linen, suitcases, furniture, etc. But most of those jobs went to Mexico and now to China and even today China says they are losing those jobs to other countries with lower wages. China losing manufacturing jobs too: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/2003/10/13/daily64.html?f=et79

In hind sight the workers in GA, AL, TN, SC, NC, OH, WI, MI, etc. are asking well look what great job that did? And to some extent they are correct. But that is not all that was affected. If you look at all the old mills in New England those factories closed too, workers would not take a pay cut or work the Fredrick Winslow Taylor (yes an ancestor of mine through Ann Winslow of Philadelphia). Instead demanding greater benefits with less production and productivity. You may wish to read: Collision Course by M. Maynard, NAFTA, and Selling of Free Trade: Nafta, Washington, and the Subversion of American Democracy by John Macarthur.

You can debate both sides, well I can or anyone who studies trade and economics. The idea of free trade is fine really if all things were equal. Well, all things are not equal; we have in this country all sorts of laws. OSHA, EPA and over regulations in all industries many over lapping and then through in states like CA, MA and it is a wonder you could produce anything; including a toothpick, which by the way for such a simplistic item, you would not believe the regulations. Think about it, the damn items come from wood and trees. You want to back track to the timber industry in Aberdeen, Washington? First you need to cut down and harvest a tree? Woooo, slow down horsy. In Aberdeen; http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_aberdeen.shtml , there are the environmentalists. And forget the fact that all the trees were cut down outside Bangladesh and the great floods a mud came later.

We have environmental laws here so the tooth pick manufacturer will have to get the wood from somewhere, where it is okay to cut down the forest. Thus, timber jobs are a loser, paper manufacturing is a loser, building materials like trusses etc, must come from somewhere else. Otherwise you find you self in the middle of a lawsuit-Sierra Club. Well then the builders need to make sure they have supply so when Enron decided to sell timber futures they found the best deal in Canada, who was checkerboard clear cutting. But with housing growth in the US propping up the economy along with financial institutions loaning on new housing starts the game continued. However the timber industry in Canada was abusing its environment and upsetting the people there. Since they were dumping, selling below the cost to reproduce the forest of which they had no intention like that of the US, which is required by our laws to replant the forests, which you can see in ID, WA, OR, CA and it is extremely prevalent in the Olympia Peninsula.

When over regulation makes it impossible to compete and manufacturers cannot make up the difference and the labor unions will not help to streamline, work more efficient and demand the same high pay while taking the productivity needed to sustain the company for granted the company has no choice but to close the facility and manufacture somewhere else or close the company all together for instance the PillowTex Company a long time hold out which crumbled under pressure recently from the Kmart downsizing. If you look at some of the cities we have been to and studied we see the problems of over regulation and hard core union short-term thinking.

Of course the unions are angry at the high salary of the executives which have gotten a little out of line especially as the companies are laying-off workers and the company is not making a profit. However, a man should put in an honest day for that which he was hired and -that does not mean just showing up and punching the clock but actually providing some real work and productivity. When we travel the country we see closed factories, boarded up small businesses which made money selling goods and services to those workers, now downtown is a ghost town, the mills are closed and many people have left, the ones remaining have gone on the public dole and get a small government check each month. Who has won?

This is what people are saying who are against free trade, but in free trade all things being equal everyone should do just fine. Another issue is the imbalance of money flow and trade deficit issues where our money flows out and does not circulate here, meaning people have less of it. Think of it this way. A Wal-Mart goes into a small town which is a hub for five other towns, the towns try to keep it out, so it goes to the outside of town and no city gets the sales tax revenue share. Then the small businesses which compete for things that Wal-Mart sells cannot stay in business, so the employees are forced to go to work at Wal-Mart. Then people buy from Wal-mart at lower costs due to economies of scale. And use a number of other strategies such as slow pay to Wal-mart vendors exercising their control on the float of payments out ward.

Do not blame Wal-Mart, Sears, Dell and many other large corporations have been doing this for decades and are getting better at it every day. On a micro scale if you can call those businesses micro. After all Wal-Mart is exactly 10% of our countries GDP. It employs the most people of any company and even more than the government, but what is being done is the same as the strategies of those trading partners, which hold up transactional flow of payments. Also Wal-Mart is able to get the labor and pay less by adding benefits again due to economies of scale that small companies cannot. It would not matter anyway because small companies cannot compete on price without massive co-ops or a franchise system, which passes on the savings of those economies of scale to their franchisees. Usually in a franchise which runs more like that of a governmental structure adds on costs for the economies of scale buying and passes it onto the franchisees by taking out the money in the flow. Some might be critical of this because the franchisees best interests are not in mind and therefore their actual success against big box stores like Wal-Mart is hampered.

After all Wal-Mart changes oil, sells fuel, has a bank inside, restaurant, QSR-Quick Service Restaurant, develops film, has a garden center, etc. Now then you understand why Wal-Mart keeps growing and why Sam Walton was a brilliant man, basically he studied what worked, the competition, the flows, cycles, frequencies, etc. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg1202/00000029.htm and of course there in Bentonville he collected all the data and duplicated it over and over again. Who wins? Every consumer that shops there; Sam Walton also said that he would always purchase American products first provided that they had equal quality and price. Good for him? So then this will employ America while feeding America right? Well sure enough, how could it not? It works, a complete closed loop. Employing and supplying like Henry ford use to say, we want to pay our workers enough so they will buy our cars, we do not need a union. A noble effort and idea shared by the wise.

Fortunately Sam Walton kept his promise to the American People and unfortunately the government, legal system and unions did not keep their promises. The government attacked businesses and over regulated them. The attorneys used this to get a double whammy suing class action on top of governmental regulatory fines which were under the impression that the should fine the same amount as the costs of their budgets to the businesses they regulated. Meaning even if the business broke no rules, they would have to find something to justify the existence of the created bureaucracy. Go read the book; The Business End of Government By Smoot. Fountain Head and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Read this while you are at it. Another recent book is: The Case Against Lawyers By Catherine Crier. By the way Catherine; excellent book if you ever happen across this page on a search engine, I want you to know I mean that. Also to illustrate my point I recommend and this one will make you as angry as Smoot's book, but it is correct and it is a shame for America: Death of Common Sense: How Laws are Suffocating America by Philip K. Howard. What is shown in this book clearly is not what was intended by our founding fathers.

In 2003 on C-SPAN, there were two gentlemen debating free trade one from the CATO Institute for free trade, yet he failed to mention the real problem, the lawyers, over regulation and government bureaucracy. I had to call in and enlighten them on the issues and what is really going on, they seem to be under the impression that Americans did not want to work in manufacturing jobs? If the CATO Institute is going to go on National Television and debate free trade, then they must explain the whole truth to the American People. For a conservative free enterprise think tank, surely they have more depth to understand the plight of the manufacturers in this country. Not everyone can run a service company like me? We need all kinds jobs and if we are going to import, then we need to export too. If we export we must maintain proper relations and import from those reciprocating countries.

When we lower tariffs and those countries we trade with raise them, we lose. When we raise tariffs they lose. When someone loses they are disrespected and modern human psychology indicates that when people are disrespected they want revenge. So there is a second reciprocal response and a third and a forth and this is a lot like a war isn't it? Yes it is and this is why we ought to get along. VonClauswitz would have been good a trade negotiation and trade war escalation. We often cause issues that do not serve the best of mankind.

For instance the fruit in Brazil grows better tastes better than the fruit in Florida. The fruit in Africa is bad so they might be happy with the fruit from Florida. If we restrict and tariff the fruit from Brazil then they are mad at us, but we say we will buy your oil or ethanol, but really it is a drop in the bucket for us. The fruit farmers in Florida have years of drought like problems and drain the Everglades. This causes pollution issues since the solution to pollution is dilution and less water means greater parts per million of pesticides, fertilizers, etc. Florida needs to have larger reservoirs to collect the storm season water for their populations and use desalination as they are doing now in Tampa Bay.

Otherwise we ought to buy the better fruit from Brazil and maybe use the land in Florida for something else. Once they have the water supply grow the fruit here and let the consumer decide which fruit they like best provided that Brazil does not steal water from their natural settings either, same with grapes, wine, strawberries in CA and Specialty berries in North Eastern UT. You might want to take this opportunity to catch up on the flow of water in the United States and the weather and rivers and agriculture: Please read The Flow of Water essay in this series.

Another issue is Ethanol Plants, they need corn, but corn takes water and states like Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, Kansas that are in drought. So if you take the water to make corn, to process (which also takes water) to make fuel and in the process release CO2 then where are you really in terms of trade? If other countries want the ethanol and it is an export crop then, we leave the CO2 for us to breath and the water bill here too? Luckily in this case we can use all we produce, but this is an example of the cause and effect of linear thinking in theories of trade.

North Korea has trading partners; Japan for fishing lures and supplies. It's exports are minerals, metallurgical products, manufactures (including armaments); agricultural and fishery products. And it imports petroleum, coking coal, machinery and equipment; consumer goods, grain. In times of non-drought it ought to be exporting Ethanol processed there made from corn with the Bt. Gene (super-corn GM), not plutonium for nuclear weapons. All countries have specific things that are abundant in the region. Middle East it is oil and sand. We do not need the sand but can use it to make cement. So perhaps we should import sand and oil from there and they can buy cars, computers, and other things from us. By developing trading partners, we can keep peace if of course the Westerner Hatred thing can be educated out of the population?

One thing that we in the United States need to be careful of is buying products from other countries and they take that money and rather than buy what we produce the end up buying us. For instance our companies; Telephone companies, media outlets, Car Manufacturers, refuse companies, bus companies, water companies, food distribution companies, trucking companies, truck manufacturing companies, large commercial real estate companies, golf courses, Aerospace companies, let's see give me a few minutes and I can think of some more. You see the issues here? If we buy some of their companies and they buy some of ours, that is Even-Steven. But if we buy consumables and they buy our infrastructure and companies then the problem is compounded because they end up scraping the crème off the float and the flow.

In other words the money they make selling to us domestically, while they own our companies allows them to buy more companies and retain more profits that they send overseas. Once they have all this money they have to spend it on projects elsewhere or here, but really capital expenditures here is a dead issue with all the regulations after all we are having a difficult time getting our own companies here to do that. After all why should they want to re-invest in America when they can get a higher return manufacturing overseas, leaving no jobs here for Americans, so they can continue to buy. Thus the average consumer is upside down in their cars, over extended on credit card debt and living in a house, which they the consumer may have 10-15% equity and probably less with all these new home sales on 2-3% down and all the re-financing to pay off short term debt.

Now let us look at Wal-Mart again; you buy a product there, 6% goes to the employees, 10-18% is profit to the company, 25% goes to other costs and 50% goes to re-stock or the cost of goods sold. Of the 50% about 20-25% goes to China, a guess, but you get the point. Now then, how long will it take at 433 Billion dollars at year for China to have all of our money, leaving no money flow for us to circulate? At a 17 Trillion dollar economy less than 40-years minus the 1/6 they buy from us. Some say that if we keep putting money into our economy, it would take forever, but if we do not then eventually all the money flow will go. If China buys our debt then eventually they own us, no need to worry about a war, they are buying America, due in part to our own mismanaged trade, so whose fault is that? Not necessarily China, as they are doing what's in the best interests, and we should make sure that trade is not only free, but fair too.

Now some of that money comes back since expanding emerging markets need things. But only $3s in 10 are coming back to us, but how is it coming back? Is it coming back in consumables? Are they buying automobiles? No, we cannot produce the automobiles as inexpensive as South Korea, Japan or India, our labor unions, regulations and factored in costs of lawsuits or even threats of potential lawsuits will not allow us to. So they will be buying the automobiles from them not us. Well then will those countries be buying from us as they expand? Yes, but it takes a while and still we have an upside down flow to those countries as well. The trade flows are a serious issue. It seems tough to do business in a country, where your own government is constantly attacking your hard work efforts to supply jobs and capital.

The lawmakers make regulations and then the lawyers find people to complain to bring about regulatory fines or actions and then the lawyers use these for basis of a class action against the company. Thus, we allow this to cut off the hand that feeds us while the regulators make a name for themselves so they can join their lawyer friends defending the regulation insanity they helped create while they were there. Or these regulators run for office with all their notoriety to make more laws pandering to the voters who have not worked an honest day in their lives. Those that have worked or run a business, produced, well they would not vote that way. Neither would any rational person once they learn Economics 101 or unless the mass media becomes their add-on brain and it tells them too.

With everyone ganging up on the entrepreneurs and companies, the companies no longer feel beholden to the American Ideals that they once had and except for a few hold outs have decided to take their money and vote with their dollars to manufacture elsewhere. Thus, a transfer of technology, innovation, and capital of epic proportions; this compounds the problems of the trade deficit. So what is the answer? Well, it is simple really; all regulatory laws must be reality based and all trade deals must be both free and fair. Those rules and regulations that do not fit the fair and free scenario must disappear if they restrict flow on all sides, on the US side and our trading partners. Free trade means free trade. There is nothing free about the parasites of flow, tariffs, quotas or obstruction. Please read this essay on The Flow of Money - Allegory of a Beach Ball.

http://activerain.com/blogsview/372288/Beach-Ball-Affect-Allegory

The bigger problem is that the US has the best policies for those we trade with, yet our trading partners have not considered the benefits of the Western World's WIN-WIN situation, instead laughing at us and when we try counter their attacks they scream and yell and want more free stuff and they want sanctions against us. It is a lot like the person on welfare, give them everything and they want more and if you let them vote they will keep voting for more free stuff until the system collapses, perhaps the reason for Plato's comments in the Republic or Milton Friedman's Free to Choose?

The system is broken. It needs to be fixed. The Flow of Trade is important, we cannot be taken advantage of or we will trade the middle class of America for it. If we lose the middle class we lose what it means to live free and our rights to pursue happiness. We throw away the gift that all those who died to protect such rights have given to us. We cannot let them die to no avail. I cannot accept that. Let's stand tall and proud together, get on the same page, admit that the regulatory quagmire, overzealous litigation and attack on American Businesses from the; politicians on both sides, and grandstanding of podium pushers has to stop.

Won't you join me now and demand a reality check. The time has come to make things right. The flow is going the wrong way at the wrong speed. The Flow of Trade is an integral part of the overall system to keep peace in the world, food on the table and move mankind forward together, all of us - throughout the world. Think About it...My name is Lance Winslow and thanks for listening.

The Flow of Natural Resources and Raw Materials that Home Building and Construction Rely On

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:05:29 -0600

The Flow of Natural Resources and Raw Materials is vital to our Nation's Industrial Capacity and Job base. There are many reasons why we should be harvesting the raw materials that already exist in this country, rather than importing them, whenever it is feasible or possible. When there are reasons, which prevent us from doing the collecting of those natural resources within our own country, then and only then should we look towards our trading partners to supply us such raw materials and resources.

When we can harvest or through mining collect such raw materials within our borders and transport them short distances to the processing facilities, manufacturing factories, refineries, energy power plants and shipping ports or railroads for movement within our nation in expeditious and cost effective manner, our industrial capacity can run at optimum. In our country we have seen the loss of most of our mining in the last 40 years.

Some of these closures were due to Federal Clean Water Act in 1972, which was to prevent the pollution from things like strip mining. Many other mines, drilling rigs and plants were closed due to the cost. This was often due to the World market price for the minerals or natural resource. Much of the mining was shut down due to regulations, labor costs, labor unions, OSHA rules, etc. Some examples of the problems of cost in mining have been overwhelming. We need our iron ore mines for instance to continue to build.

When reviewing the recent closing of the Gold Mine in Butte, MT we find that the mine was closed due to the increasing costs of energy to crush the rocks to get the gold out. Their costs in energy went from $280,000 per month to 1.6 million per month. Sure there were other issues although imagine getting that electricity bill and trying to manage your expenses? Unpredictable energy costs are necessary for mining and other heavy industry, price spikes on top of over regulations is a death nail. Please see the essay; The Flow of Energy in this series. Now in many countries people have protested mines, as diamonds, gold and silver are easy ones to protest because these are often associated with greed since they are also considered legal tender. But protesting mining is also akin to attacking your economic base and strength.

A great mine to visit is one of the first gold mines in the country, The Reed Gold Mine in Charlotte. There were over 300 gold mines in North Carolina in the 1820's, before the 49'ers of CA, the Reed Mine was active until 1912. A total of 13 gold mines closed in during the last drop in the gold prices. Collecting the Gold under the conditions required in most of North America is no longer feasible with current technology, unless it can be collected along with other precious metals and the remaining material can be further sifted for iron ore, copper or another metal. There are several places on Earth where multiple metals appear within a very close proximity. Mining often, like many industrial endeavors can cause air pollution. When mining the excess which is not used is piled up and often causes leaching into the ground when it rains, those other minerals released are more concentrated than much of the normal downstream waters. The flow of clean water is important to a healthy America; please read: The Flow of Water in this series of essays.

This is because the minerals have been buried for centuries underneath in layers from previous periods. In the old Berkeley Pit, a copper mine which is closed not far from the Sunlight Goldmine in Montana, the rain water mixing with the minerals left in the bottom of the Pit was quite toxic and contained arsenic, which is harmful in large amounts to humans and animals. Although arsenic is a poison, it is part of the natural occurring minerals in nature and common to that area. Small traces are not to bad, but once they become to high it is cause for alarm.

http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_berkeley.shtml

Most of the Copper Mines in the United States have been closed. One excellent tour to visit is the famous old mine in AZ, Bisbee Mine. Why? Well, global prices, but more of an issue was the over regulation. Arizona at one time had many copper mines than any other place in the World. Many ancient Indians of the Americas made art out of the metallic materials found near their regions in Arizona. Many stories were handed down regarding its power?

The costs of transportation is also important in mining and a major consideration. Please read; The Flow of Transportation essay in this series. Most mines still in business today are in very close proximity to major rail lines, even with all the regulations and rules that exist some mining still exists in the United States; Borax in Dagget, CA. The Borax mine was moved from the Harmony Borax Works mine in Death Valley, the second hottest place on Earth with temps up to 134 degrees, In the 1880's, the famous 20 mule team borax trains hauled their loads a grueling 165 miles to the railroad in Mojave. This is an illustration of why the transportation factor is critical in the efficiency of mining to keep costs down for the factories which use the raw material or natural resources.

If you look at the above ground mines in North America, those with rail service right to the site can compete if the economies of scale and market prices remain stable. There are many other factors to consider also, for instance if your other countries do not have the same rules for environmental controls they can often sell those raw materials to other countries who in turn can sell their finished products, such a specialty alloys, steel, etc. at lower prices than your companies can produce them. Which would appear to be dumping; selling their products for less it costs them to produce them.

Many countries prop up such industries with huge tax incentives or subsidizing those industries and/or companies. There are many reasons for this, sometimes it is merely to insure that those companies are in business to sell products to the Countries government agencies for infrastructure projects. Other times it is to appease labor and provide jobs. Sometimes it is in retaliation for a perceived or actual trade war from another trading partner country, which is propping up one of its other industries. The dynamics of World Trade on; industry, peace, quality of life of populations, money flow, raw materials and natural resources; are quite extensive, as you might have guessed. Please read the Flow of Trade essay in this series.

If you look at the above ground Coal Mines in; Gillette, WY; you can see a perfect example of how mining works when everything is just right. Hundreds and hundreds of complete train loads leaving weekly for coal fired energy plants across the country. http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_gillette.shtml . The economies of scale in such mines are incredible, fun to watch and very serious, every single second is accounted for, it is now a pure science in efficiency. If you ever get the chance we recommend you take the Gillette, WY tour; http://www.horizon-tours.com/coalmine.htm you will be blown away to see where we have come in the past few centuries.

The deepest Coal Mine in the world is over 5000 feet below the ground in the UK. Many in the United States are over 1200 feet deep, most of those are closed and now few are remaining. There is a mine in Alabama, which is the deepest vertical shaft coalmine in North America, with operations at 2,140 feet beneath the surface. It is hard for the coalmines in Washington State, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Alabama to compete with the incredible economies of scale of the Gillette WY above ground mine. Below ground coalmines can be quite dangerous. There are gases underground and coal dust and if a fire breaks out it steals all the oxygen. Learn more about the serious nature of these mine safety you may wish to visit this site; http://www.usmra.com/ .

Recently the rescue of the coalminers in PA caught the attention of the whole world as rescue workers and heads-up trapped miners, worked non-stop to stay alive until every man got out. This is not always the case, many miners were lost in a Utah Mine recently and we all remember the miners who have lost their lives in West Virginia. Mining is dangerous business and safety is essential and comes at a high cost in productivity. Above ground machinery and robotics have made many mining efforts in the United States profitable and much safer. Also at issue as we have discussed are the environmental issues. One coalminer ancestor we interviewed had been in touch with relatives in the UK, she told us of the problems with pollution:

"My grandmothers were born in this country, but my grandfathers weren't so I am only a third generation American. My mining ancestors came from Wales and Scotland where the mines were very polluted and people equated them with working in hell. I understand that relatives there still work in the mines."

Things in the mining industry have significantly changed in the United States in the past 25 years the only question is; did they change too fast? The reason we won the Second World War was because of our industrial output, we had the raw materials and the will and we were able to do it all here, are we positive we wish to lose such capability in the future, after all it is still a cruel world, the human race is surely not done killing our own species yet, there will be more wars. The key issue in mining is the competition between third world countries trashing the environment and our environmental regulations in place here.

Today in the United States, we have new innovations to protect the environment without slowing the process. These new methods are costly on original capitalization of a project, but usually once started are amortized over a significant period. Many colleges are putting out environmental engineers specializing in mining in specialty colleges such as the famous mining college in Butte Montana. By doing this the job of doing mining correctly is feasible, but environmental laws are not the only regulations that mining operations have to deal with, once you let those bastard regulators on the property they are only interested in finding something wrong to pay for their trip.

Many older coal miners of the past few generations met these US Regulators at the gates with shotguns. This is due to the outrageous, self-righteous attitude. Here is one story for the daughter of an old coalmine that was eventually forced to be shut down. Was it competition that prompted this? Was it the environment? Organized labor? Why the attacks on a coalminer family?

"There is so much political bull in the energy field it isn't even funny. When I was 11 or 12, I walked down to the mine yard where I witnessed two Federal mine inspectors shoving my father around. They were provoking him to try to get him to fight them. He just stood there like the gentle soul he was. I went back to the house, picked up the rifle and shells and fired a warning shot over their heads. Lord, was my father ever mortified! The Feds backed up with their hands in the air and I told them exactly how to get in their vehicle and drive away before I decided to blow their heads off. They did.
My father took the rifle and walked me back to the house lecturing me with the biggest grin on his face. When my mom and dad were discussing the situation, I snuck out, hopped on my bicycle and went after them (of course, I was gun less by this time). They were on the highway a few miles away and I decided to do the domino effect. I got neighbors to get other neighbors and we all hit the highway with me still on my bicycle leading the troops. We went around the corner and the bastards had decided to turn around and come back. All vehicles stopped and everyone got out and stood across the road with me. All were packing with their guns at their sides. The neighbors went to my parent's house after this to tell them what we'd done. Someone got the law and the attorney and it was probably the first time I saw the gaping holes in our legal system."

Interesting how we deal with things in this country and mind you this is a true story, certainly 30 years ago, but it is real. Truth, Justice and The American Way are an ideal to work towards, it is questionable if they ever have actually existed in our country as per those wonderful text books in grade school. However with that now known and with the truth of Santa Clause also revealed to us, we do have duty in this country to fight for that ideal. Having read about this in many novels and non-fiction books and having now experienced these things personally. http://washguy.com/ftc.shtml I believe we can have those ideals and still provide business opportunities for those who wish to control various industries, by finding win-win solutions that expand the pie for all and serve the needs of the people, not the sheep.

If you read about the Oil Barons in this country and understand the politics, the law and the DOJ, you can see there is more to it than simply digging up a raw material or resource, collecting it, refining it and selling it. These circumstance are not necessarily good or bad, they just are, and this is an area we must work on in our nation. Everyone should read Ayn Rand before they judge the producers, wild caters, entrepreneurs and risk takers that built all we are and all we know. Perhaps I am not the only one upset about the government's mistakes which end up disrupting the flow of things. I recommend The Business End of Government by Smoot.

For us to continue to mine our own natural resources we need to sustain our factories and manufacturing facilities we need a new hands off approach to the inane regulations that plague the industry. We are not saying a complete lack of regard for the environment, but rather a better approach to the streamlining the bureaucracy and more reality based lawmaking and regulations. Not simply laws to make laws or appease the protesting groups with a small and skewed view of things, often borrowing junk science. Unfortunately this in non-reality based thinking, it is based on the Utopia theory, which we have not earned yet. One, which cannot exist until all the systems are fixed and the flow of everything we know is running like a Rolex Watch.

In this country we have Salt Mines, Uranium Mines, Zinc, Lead, Molybdenum, Iron Ore, Copper, Silver, Gold, Aluminum, etc. Some of what we ought to be mining is old computers, refuse and disposed of automobiles. Gosh you drive through the South and every Jerry Springer future guest star has five cars sitting out front with the high grass camouflaging them. Europeans have an interesting idea; http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0503/0000006f.htm and http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0503/00000070.htm . How about all those tires? We should be mining those too. We should be finding ways to mine better and when we can figure out ways to re-use and mine old vehicles, which is the best for all concerned. Why not apply the mining process to recycling as well, in fact, this concept is now being done.

We must keep our mines running, as it employs lots of people and provides local raw materials, thus saving the expense of overseas shipping and if we are careful to mitigate the issues of environment along with the need for efficiencies, we should be able to slow the flow of the growing deficit. There are many mines around the world, which are owned by the new global citizen who considers no country their home. Literally a world-class jet set of entrepreneurs. They are unconcerned with where on Earth that they do business, they take their business to which ever country they can make a deal with and make the quickest ROI and the greatest profit. This is not good or bad, this is the reality of opportunity, capitalism and risk-reward scenarios.

The United States can compete, if we will drop the attitude and the delays caused by frivolous lawsuits, bad law making and bogus regulations, which are said to help people when in actuality they serve no free man. If you read the Ayn Rand books, you can get a sense of this. Different places in the world have all the same minerals we have here. All in all we need to change our attitude on all issues of mining, there are some brilliant entrepreneurs out there, state of the art equipment, brilliant industry consultants who can and will get the job done without polluting, without hurting the environment and still turn a considerable profit. Who wins?

We do, because the world prices of raw materials and resources dictate the cost and the efficiency of having it here in country before we start to make something out of these resources and materials is good for America. We should allow these brilliant problem solvers in the name of profits help us figure out how to do it right, presently we are over regulating and not listening to these new technologies and the thinking of those in the know. Nothing happens until someone considers some of these other options, we have discussed. I hope you have enjoyed some of these observations and this dialogue of an Industry in severe stress in our country, one we cannot afford to lose. This has been another topic in Improving the Flow of All We Know.

The Flow of Energy is Vital to Human Civilizations - without it Real Estate Values are Worthless

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:24:40 -0600

This essay is meant to educate citizens and the real estate community on the importance of energy; "The Flow of Energy!" The flow of energy has always been important to advanced civilization. The ancient Egyptians used people power. They used elephants to move things and even in battle. The water wheel was used as early as 4000 B.C. as power. Here is a modern concept of ocean wave generation is really along an old technology theme, albeit an incredible advance on that ancient idea.

http://www.worldthinktank.net/oceanwave.shtml

Steam Engines are much newer. Animals, water and many other improvised methods allowed for the making of machines by simplifying life; from farming to water pumps for mills, etc.. By freeing up the time needed to sustain life, mankind is able to use that extra time to increase his flow of thought and thus coming up with other inventions and devises. Now, fast forward to modern times where we often take for granted our electricity, until of course; it is shut off by a black out. What we see as the ultimate hardship other third world countries do not have at all. And in places like Baghdad after the major fighting had ended, energy for only three hours a day and they were indeed thankful for even that.

We should not forget the gifts of Tesla and Entrepreneur Westinghouse for the Hydropower and for free enterprise, which funded the beginnings of what, we now take for granted every time we flick a switch. Recently, we all felt the affect of the Black out of the Northeast Regional Power Grid, now we realize that we need to upgrade the transmission lines throughout all the grids, cascading in failure. SCARDA's real time computer system saw the problem but nearly all the defensive options include mean shutting down parts of the gird, power to millions of people, which is a hard choice to make, although if not covered in a timely manner the cascading would occur.

Here are a scary book to read on the subject; http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0072227877/002-5871440-6244020

We also saw the rolling blackouts in California and the vulnerability of getting the grids energy to the Los Angeles basin where Southern California inhabits over 16 million people. I have personally visited many Nuclear Power Plants in the US and since my Grandfather was a Nuclear Physicist at Stanford Linear Accelerator I am pro-nuclear power.

http://www.carwashguys.com/paloverde.shtml

The newest pebble reactors are easy to build and manage and have extremely high output considering their small size, perfect for islands set downwind from populations, but we are only scratching the surface of nuclear energy. Unfortunately the Three-mile Island and Chernople incident make populations feel uncomfortable with Nuclear. Therefore the increased regulations have made the cost of construction almost not worth it. The ROI of a nuclear power plant could take as long 150 years.

This is so unfortunate seeing how great Nuclear power is and how clean it can be when handled correctly. For this reason for nearly three decades we saw no new permits granted and we continue to have a large percentage of our power coming from fossil fuels which is a problem for air quality and long term it has many issues such as acid rain. We do have plenty of coal, but clean coal technologies are still a few years out.

Imagine having all nuclear power where you turn it on, monitor it and it just sits there and produces energy? We no longer lead the world in Nuclear Energy and now in the age of International Terrorism some are afraid that if we build Nuclear Power then they could become a target. This is not proper thinking in the day and age of radar guidance SAM sites, automatic sensors and back-up systems. We can defend Nuclear Power Plants from any type of attack. And generally the newer plants will be put in the middle of nowhere, thus lessoning the risks even more.

Now then how many people will breath polluted air if we do not have a continued mix of these nuclear plants contributing to the grid and bring on the clean coal technologies? And is the grid safe any way, seeing as we already had one black-out which was purely a failure. Iran, N. Korea, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Armenia, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, China Red, Taiwan, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Hungary, France, South Korea, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, UK and USA all have nuclear power or will soon. France is at 68% derived from nuclear. Spain 60%, Sweden 65%, Ukraine 73%, UK 81%. Are we crazy? Why are we using so little nuclear? Because we do not have neighbors yelling at us next door that have to breath our pollution and also because we have little in the way of population compared to land mass, but Nuclear only makes sense.

Countries have often thought of over producing to export to nearby countries and the USA has only 20% of its energy coming from Nuclear, it ought to be 80% and we ought to be producing enough to light up all of the modern countries of Central and North America. We should be producing and exporting our extra, this would mean energy would be cheaper and we would all have higher standards of living and better quality of life and why not? What if we produced 125% of demand?

Such a system could work. And yes we could throw in some Solar, after all we have the technologies; Solar Power: http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000036.htm too, it would be silly not to. In Tempe; http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_tempe.shtml . We could also use some wind, we already have some, huge wind farms out there in many places; http://www.carwashguys.com/tour_palmsprings.shtml . Our Hydro-electricity accounts for some 20% of our current needs, we could increase this using some of the strategies outlined by the Online Think Tank. Hydro Power: http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000074.htm , think of that?

We do use the most electricity per capita than any other country in the World, but we also have the strongest middle class and rank near the top in quality of life and standard of living. For instance try living in Baghdad at 120 degrees with no air conditioning. If we are able to power up efficiently, without polluting, it is all good. We have done quite well with our hydro in this country and much of this is discussed in the Flow of Water essay right here on my Blog. Instead of paying attention to our needs as the population grows, we are waiting for crisis and then immediately looking for a scapegoat when things go wrong, thrusting a whistleblower to hero status and allowing lawsuits to destroy us like a virus - it is time to get beyond this repeating scenario of heads rolling on the blackout blame;

http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2003/08/11/daily15.html?f=et58

Here are some ideas on bettering the system and the transmission lines: http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/0000001c.htm and http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000026.htm . It must be obvious to anyone who is reviewing these things from a far that we love to blame others after the fact instead of covering the bases before the fact. It is said that the transmission lines for the power grid need an upgrade of 600 Billion which is not significant especially considering the enormity of the problem and the huge expansive distances it needs to cover, but really we should be looking into the infrastructure costs on a pay as you go basis.

It seems a little un-nerving that all of a sudden we of all people living in the greatest nation ever created in the history of mankind have this huge problem. The fastest expanding countries building reactors right now are China, Taiwan, India (8) and Russia building six meaning it along with India, which will most likely export some of that energy - smart move on their part thus, proving my point that we should be producing and selling to Mexico, Canada and Central America.

Ships with giant ion lithium batteries could also take power to the islands of the Caribbean, since the technology exists now and can be used for such a purpose. Three ships, one in route, one loading their battery, one docked and supplying electricity. There is a Canadian company with this technology, which puts large batteries on a huge rail car system. We should be looking into this, also terminals for Burlington Santa Fe and CSX, if you get a power outage you will have enough minimal power back in service to keep chaos at bay within 8 hours.

As a matter of fact Energy and Power have become so important that it is one of those things that you need triple redundancy back up for all the time. There are many different ideas for back-up batteries during power outs, think of the back-up, which means the would-be international terrorist thinks he can disrupt your system and as soon as he tries he is caught by a series of sensors and all he did is cause a flicker, while the most important systems reboot and spring into action:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02_09/b3772105.htm

The flow of energy and the integrity of the system can be maintained and having automatic back-ups means we can do just that; computer hacker, attacker, mother nature, no problem, back up and running in a nano-second. Regarding the de-regulation of energy, this is not such a bad idea really, even the commoditizing of energy is not such a bad idea - the California mess with deregulation was ill-conceived. De-regulation can be done correctly and can assist businesses in judging costs and allow entrepreneurs to understand their costs and turn variable costs into fixed costs meaning more investment in R and D, co-generation, and larger capital expenditures for manufacturing, knowing things will be okay.

We see a huge problem with factories, which switched to Natural Gas to save the environment and get some tax breaks and this winter may be put out of business due to the rising costs during the coming shortage of Natural Gas. We cannot lose anymore manufacturing jobs in this country, especially the ones which have survived so far which have been those specialized high paying niche manufacturing jobs or those companies which have done well since plant and equipment have long been paid off.

Those very high tech robotic manufacturing facilities will lose out to third world labor costs due to high costs of energy, we need stable power and the flow of energy. This is merely one reason we are putting this report at such a high level. It appears if we are going to spend some 500-800 plus Billion on a new power grid then perhaps we might like to look into some of the new physics we are learning about? It has even been theorized that we should be able to deliver via ELF power to a receiver or battery system to any point on the planet, maybe we can deliver the power without transmission lines which go "buzzzzzz" and if they do maybe we can turn that sound back into energy so we do not lose so much energy during transmission to the points of destination. http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000026.htm .

Just because Enron became embroiled in scandal does not mean the energy should not be traded or that free markets should not soften the fluctuation in pricing or that energy should not be deregulated. It if is done correctly, in a non-gambling casino fashion, everyone can win, not just the brokers and traders, but the people too, that makes our nation stronger. It really is time to get the grid together, get the back ups in place, set ourselves up for flawless energy and lower the costs. All this can be done in somewhat short order. But we must see the big picture. Having looked at these issues on both a macro level and at a micro level http://www.carwashguys.com/0100802_6.shtml it appears to me that when it is possible companies, individuals and government agencies should in fact generate their own power. At their houses with fuel cells, solar, wind, etc and plug into the grid so the grid can work net-centric with sensors allowing for the closing off or opening of connections to the whole, when everything works, it works well, but right now when it doesn't everything goes to hell.

Why not think of it like a ship with a hole in it, the hatches are closed and the water coming in is limited to one small area, meanwhile that small area has a back up, get back on line, fixes its problem and then once that is done, reconnection occurs. Not one fail safe many, many smaller fail safes, sensors at each house, street, housing tract, census tract, zip code, city (maybe many individual sectors), country, state, sub-region, region, country. All can run independently or all together?

Runways and Airports producing their own power; http://parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000073.htm and http://parthe.net/_cwg0803/00000072.htm . The idea is to have all the important items with minimal back-up systems while things are restored. There are so many ideas we have not explored and should explore. With a little proper usage, and conservation and a cohesive plan, the Grid should be so safe and capable. Strong and efficient enough that it no longer will be looked on as a target of those who wish us ill. Even devises can be made that lay on the drive way and the drive wheels of the car sit on them and they spin wheels generating electricity for emergency power up a neighborhood. People would not be totally without electricity in the event of a Black out, rolling brown out, or large transmission line failure.

Traveling the country in a motor home and being self contained gives me a little different perspective on things than most. It is time to put together a complete plan for the next 50 and 100-years to insure trouble free electricity and power for the country and then the world. The plan must be updated every five years with a 5, 10 and 20 year plan as well, while studying the future of energy innovations. Maybe at that point we can look into some revolutionary harvesting of space energy? http://www.parthe.net/_cwg0703/00000057.htm

Just some thoughts on the Flow of Energy. This is part of a twenty part series of the "Flow of Every Thing We Know" You see, people need power to sustain civilized societies. If and when the flow of energy breaks down we may be reduced to chaos in the streets. We need to be able to have peace of mind when it comes to the flow of energy. In the United States we do, but it can always be better and as the future moves forward so should be and we must be committed to reliable, affordable and trouble free confidence, power and our ENERGY.

Is Your Home Earthquake Ready - Is Your Family Earthquake Safe

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:03:48 -0600

Sometimes I think it is funny how folks forget that the Earth is in constant motion, slow motion yes, but it is constantly moving. We call it such things as; Continental Drift, Plate Tectonics and those occasional Earthquakes, lave flows, extreme weather and constant ocean waves. The Earth is moving, it has always been moving and it will continue to move long after you and your family and your family's families walk upon it's surface and expire.

Although Earthquakes are not so common, they are known events, they are part of the Earth's movement. To deny the fact that there will be another Earthquake in your future is to deny yourself and your family the much needed preparation and protection that is paramount for survival and insurance that your property will remain unharmed.

There are so many things folks can do, common sense things that they needlessly look over. For instance; having a tool to turn off their gas, water and water heater nearby perhaps attached by chain next to the valves, if a quick hand switch does not exist. Common sense should be exercised, and you must consider the breakables and where you place them in your home, if there are things you cannot afford to lose, consider special placement. Watch for things above your bed that might hit you or your children in the head.

Keep flammables in the garage on the ground, and in the kitchen consider things that will fall from shelves. You would be amazed at the simple things you can do in advance to protect yourself and family. Perhaps you might take a couple of minutes this week to search for tips on the Internet, from a reliable government approved website. Just 15 minutes of your time and then think about it for a bit, do the simple things first, just be aware. This post is not meant to scare you, it is meant to help you, preparation will give you strength and safety, think on it.

Donate the House on Your Property to the Fire Department - But there Might be Tax Consequences!

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:05:19 -0600

Well, every once in a while you have a piece of property that is actually worth something, but the old run-down building or house on top of it, makes it impossible to do anything with. Getting permits to demolish stuff can be as aggravating as getting permits to build something sometimes. Of course, if you have the blessings of some of the local municipal higher ups and a little political influence, you can make at least some headway.

Okay, with that in mind let me tell you an interesting story. Donated an old farm type house (very old) to the fire department for training, took the donation gift deduction and got a property tax deal, they burnt down the place, at least 15 times in practice. Finally there was nothing left, and the fire department tilled under all the ash. Great, got rid of the place, without demolishing permits and didn't have to haul away any junk. Good deal right?

Well, here is the final score; got the commercial zoning change, the property was re-assessed and now there is no junky home on the property, so the property, well, it's suddenly worth more. No problem right, next year, higher property taxes, but gonna build on it anyway, but that is only half the issue. What other issues need to be addressed, it's a done deal right?

Ah, but now that the property is worth more creating a capital gain, so that negates the "donation gift" that was taken and deducted last year. Since it was a gain and no longer a gift, which in reality is true, the gift was made in order to gain. It's just unfortunate, would have been nice to have the cake and eat it too!

Those People Next Door - How On Earth are Those Folks Going to Sell their Home in that Neighborhood?

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:42:10 -0600

Well, I have some long old time friends in the city, well it's kind of a suburb city which has been engulfed by the growing area, it is just wall-to-wall city now. You know "they call it LA - Los Angeles home to 16.6 million people on 460 square miles of concrete." (read that to the monotone introduction of the 1980s hit Police Series - Dragnet). Anyway, I am visiting my friends, they live in a culdasac two-blocks from a busy main street.

The neighborhood is not like it use to be, but my friends home is now worth $415,000 or $656,000 two and a half years ago? Ouch! Anyway, one of their neighbors is trying to sell his home, and worried about being foreclosed on, there have been several people to look at it, but no offers. Real estate market slow? Well, yes, but that's only half the problem. His next-door neighbors are in perpetual partly mode, blaring music and they park their obnoxious cars on their lawn, sometimes half on his lawn too.

He has had some words with his neighbors, so has my friends, but these are some rough guys and gals with tattoos and the works, it does no good, only causing more friction and harsh words. The real estate agents, yes this is its third, 60-day listing, tell them;

"Until the neighbors leave or mellow out, no one is going to buy your home!"

Even suggested waiting until they make their next run to Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort, Vegas or get thrown in jail, to call so the Real Estate Agent can show the home? They have tried everything; called city code enforcement for parking on the lawn, etc. As soon as the code enforcement shows up the guy walks out and turns on the hose, and says;

"Hey man, I am just trying to save water, I am going to wash my SUV now!"

For Sale by Owner Horror Stories

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:10:22 -0600

So, I am sitting there at the coffee shop across the street from the Movie Theatre tonight, waiting for "Vantage Point" at 9:15 PM, it had good reviews so, what the heck. I am sipping on one of those foo-foo coffee chocolate shake drinks - Blended Mocha something or rather. (oh, before I go much further, the movie was good - I recommend seeing it). Anyway the folks next to me were having an interesting conversation, about trying to sell their home.

Turns out with the real estate home prices so low, that they decided to save the money for the Realtor, pocket the money that they would have paid to the agent and come out further ahead. Well, nothing could be further than the truth. So far, they have had 5-offers all so low, they were very angry. In fact, they told one buyer to stop badgering them or they would call the FTC for violating the DO NOT CALL LIST. The buyer said to them:

"You are the one who put your home on the market and eventually you are going to lower the price, I want to be the one who buys it!"

They told the gentleman something like; when hell freezes over you old coot! Now the buyer tells them he will sue them for age discrimination. Well, we all know that is a bunch of BS, but this is certainly not what they had figured on at all.

Another one of the low offers told them, that they could possibly make a higher offer, but would have to come back and look at the property again. Turns out a train that comes by every so often about 1/2 mile away was now an issue, so they said that they would pay more, but now would have to lower the offer due to the train noise, which is hardly noticeable they said.

Next, one of the buyers, this one really made them angry, said he had to show the home to his mother, something about the fact she was a co-signer, which did not sit well with them, but they agreed to allow the mother to come see the home and meet with them. The son and mom wouldn't leave, finally it was dinner time, so they ended up staying thru dinner, ate like pigs, then the mom, scolded her 35-year old unmarried son (still living at home, something the FSBO homeowners said was not surprising at that point, although he failed to mention it the prior) in front of them and said no way would she co-sign for a piece of junk home, and that the son was an idiot for wanting to live there?

OMG, I thought, those poor people may never sell their home now, nor do they want too.

Sharing Walls can Become a Huge Problem - Condo Seller Learns the Hard Way!

Lance Winslow (The Car Wash Guy) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:45:20 -0600

The other day a friend of mine told me of a problem he was having with one of his 5 alternate homes. He travels between them and lives a life of leisure and likes to have his own place when he visits his favorite cities for a month or two at a time. Your basic perfect neighbor, hardly ever there and never bothers anyone. Unfortunately, this mild mannerism and graciousness is not always reciprocated.

Let me re-tell you the story he told me. One of his 5-homes is in a very nice resort type town, and this particular residence is a Condo. Above him is a Doctor who really is, well, a not so nice person. Apparently, his drain on his bathtub or shower leaks and has been for quite a while, it leaks down through the ceiling and the walls into his condo. When the doctor was told of this, he said, it doesn't bother him in the least, nothing on his upstairs condo is leaking in his bathroom. Right - water goes downhill!

Well, it just so happens that my friend found a stand-alone home he really likes in the same city, prices are lower than usual, but it has not taken the huge hit that other parts of the US housing market have. His condo has held because it is a choice place to live and the home he wants has taken a little bit of a beating, so he figures he can move straight across on cost. Good for him right, condo will sell fast and the home can be bought for a lower than normal offer. He doesn't have to sell the condo to buy the home, but no longer needs the condo and does not wish to deal with it or this neighbor of his.

It turns out however that the Doctor will not fix his leak, so my friend cannot repair the damage and sell his condo. Worse there is the problem with mold issues if it is not fixed. My friend had to take his condo off the market, while he is entertaining offers. A couple of buyers are irate. The doctor doesn't care and although the home he wants to buy is not going to sell tomorrow, it will eventually sell. The condo he is selling is 1700 miles away and he now has to deal with all this. He likes the idea of owning a condo and has another, because it is little upkeep, when he is not there, but now he realizes that there is a price to pay for sharing walls too!