Archive for October 22nd, 2012

Speaking of things that make me want to go full Nelson…

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

…in the “Ha ha!” sense:

Parking in New York City is also expensive. Especially near Yankee Stadium on game days.

Good news: there’s a train! And a subway!

Bad news for the people who own the parking lots: they didn’t plan on having a train stop near the stadium.

Bronx Parking Development Company, the operator of the lots, has defaulted on nearly $240 million of its bonds because of overambitious forecasts and less expensive transportation alternatives for fans, like the subway and Metro-North Railroad.

More:

If new revenue is not found and costs are not cut in the coming months, the company could go bankrupt even though the city provided more than $200 million in subsidies, some of which were used to replace parkland where parking lots now stand. The company’s next debt payment is due in April.

I find myself wondering where “new revenue” is going to come from, unless BPDC blows up the train and subway tracks. Come to think of it, this is New York; they could probably find a couple of guys who’d do that for a price.

Interestingly, the city’s Industrial Development Agency issued the bonds for BPDC, but the city does not have to pay if BPDC defaults. I’m not clear on how that works. But, “the company owes the city $25.5 million in rent and payments in lieu of taxes accumulated since 2007.”

Also, just to be clear: BPDC is a separate company from Satan’s minions, the New York Yankees. The Yankees don’t own the parking and have no say over it. Which is a shame; at least the Yankees could manage a team into the playoffs, so why not let them have a shot at parking?

Posted in Cars, Clippings | Comments Closed

Banana republicans watch: October 22, 2012.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Gas is expensive in California.

Even as gasoline consumption has declined in California in recent years because of high unemployment and increased vehicle fuel efficiency, refiners have been able to keep prices about 35 cents a gallon higher than the rest of the country.

Gee, I wonder why that is?

…the reason refiners made a killing while retailers such as Arya lost their shirts isn’t conspiracy, it’s economics. Oil companies operate what amounts to a legal oligopoly in California — an arrangement that probably will contribute to more wild gas spikes in the future.

You don’t say? Tell us more, Los Angeles Times.

That’s because the Golden State’s gasoline market is essentially closed. The state’s strict clean-air rules mandate a specially formulated blend used nowhere else in the country. Producers in places such as Louisiana or Texas could make it, but there are no pipelines to get it to the West Coast quickly and cheaply. As a result, virtually all 14.6 billion gallons of gasoline sold in California last year were made by nine companies that own the state’s refineries. Three of them — Chevron, Tesoro and BP — control 54% of the state’s refining capacity.

But why doesn’t someone come into the California market and open new refineries? Or re-open some of the mothballed ones?

Refiners contend that the price of gas reflects the higher cost of doing business in California. It costs as much as 15 cents a gallon more to refine the state’s clean fuel blend, and green regulations chip away at the bottom line. Fuel taxes, too, are higher than in many other regions.
“It’s a very difficult, challenging market,” said Tupper Hull, spokesman for the Western States Petroleum Assn., whose members include most of the region’s oil companies and refiners.
In August, the group released a report predicting that state rules to limit greenhouse gas emissions and push alterative fuels could force as many as eight of California’s refineries to close in coming years.

By the way:

At the same time, the number of refineries operating in California has declined to just 14 today from 27 in the early 1980s.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cars, Clippings, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 22, 2012.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Russell Means, controversial Indian activist, actor, Libertarian Party presidential candidate, and vice-presidential nominee during Larry Flynt’s attempt to get the Republican nomination in 1984, has died. (LAT. NYT.)

Noted:

Told in the summer of 2011 that the cancer was inoperable, Mr. Means had already resolved to shun mainstream medical treatments in favor of herbal and other native remedies.

How’s that working for you?

I thought I’d give the George McGovern obits a day, which is why I didn’t post them on Sunday. For the record: NYT. LAT. WP.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Also worthy of immortalization.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Another exchange from the weekend:

Me at the gun show, looking at a Remington XP-100: When I was six years old, I thought that was the coolest gun in the world.

My nephew: Why?

Me: Because I was six years old.

My nephew: (nods sagely, as if this actually makes sense to him).

(I still want an XP-100 chambered in the original .221 Fireball caliber. The one we were looking at was rechambered to .223, which I will admit is a lot more practical. However, the asking price on it was $1,300, which is much more than I’m willing to pay.)

(I also want a S&W Model 53, even though .22 Jet is even more impractical than .221 Fireball. I keep meaning to sit down and do the math to determine if you could actually do a .221 Fireball conversion of a Smith; off the top of my head, I think the cartridge length would require an N-frame or X-frame sized cylinder, so it wouldn’t exactly be a compact field gun like the Jet…)

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Art, damn it, art! watch (#32 in a series).

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Once upon a time, there was an art gallery in New York City called Knoedler & Company.

Knoedler & Company made more than a fair amount of money selling art. As a matter of fact, they made a lot of money selling art supplied by one dealer, Glafira Rosales.

Between 1996 and 2008, the suit asserts, Knoedler earned approximately $60 million from works that Ms. Rosales provided on consignment or sold outright to the gallery and cleared $40 million in profits. In one year, 2002, for example, the complaint says the gallery’s entire profit — $5.6 million — was derived from the sale of Ms. Rosales’s works.

But there are some problems. Ms. Rosales’s “collection of works attributed to Modernist masters has no documented provenance and is the subject of an F.B.I. investigation.” One of the works that passed through her hands, a Mark Rothko painting, was sold by Knoedler for $8.3 million dollars, and has now been declared a fake.

At the moment 14 works Ms. Rosales brought to market — 9 of which were handled by Knoedler — have been judged as fake by authenticating bodies.
A company called Orion Analytical also conducted forensic tests on at least five Rosales paintings and reported that materials on the canvasses were not available or were inconsistent with the dates on the works.

Knoedler stopped selling works from Rosales in 2009, and immediately started losing money. They closed in 2011.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

Juxaposition.

Monday, October 22nd, 2012

Waves of about 4,300 cyclists were taking trips of up to 100 miles long in the Livestrong Foundation’s 15th annual Ride for the Roses, raising $1.7 million for cancer research, organizers said.

I’m glad folks are out there doing this: cancer sucks. However, the Statesman doesn’t discuss how this figure differed from last years: did they get about the same number of riders, more, or less?

Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong is no longer a Tour de France winner. I wish I had something profound and insightful to say about this, but I need time to think.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed