The rising cost of gasoline

Every week it seems that the price of oil hits a new high and the price of a gallon of gas is in lockstep behind it. In Delaware, at least in Kent County, it ranges from somewhere between $2.99/gallon and $3.05. Soon, or so the news is starting to scare us into thinking, it's going to be $4/gallon. I would not be at all surprised when this happens. Here's some thoughts on what should be done about it.

My curiosity begins with how the price of a gallon gas can jump so high (and even more quickly) on oil futures. Last week the price of a gallon of gas was $2.90, and then poof, the price of a barrel of oil jumps over $100, and like clockwork, gas jumps to over $3.00/gallon. Exxon, Valero, Sunoco, and the rest of these energy corporations must have secretly developed some sort of supersonic oil refinery jet that can take these pricey oil drums from the Saudi oilfield directly to the tanks at the local Exxon in a matter of hours.

I'm all for profits and business, but it strikes me as even more curious that the country is heading into a recession (or, more likely, is already in the shallow waters of one), and all of the major oil companies are receiving record profits (profits, not sales) on a quarterly basis. Something about that just doesn't sit right. It shouldn't be sitting right with the Federal Government, and it shouldn't be sitting right with any of the 50 state governments. As put better by Hamlet, something is rotten in the state of Denmark and it smells like gasoline.

Notwithstanding our economic troubles and the unfundable concept of universal healthcare pedaled by the candidates daily, the price of gas and travel is just as major an issue for the candidates, if not more so. But it need not wait until November to be addressed; the Congress (including these current Senators) could be doing more about it now. The fact that the Congress is in need of some oil leads me to think that it's no longer a congressional problem, but an executive one.

The cries of foul by the States have gone unanswered long enough. It's been almost two years since the president has called for an investigation, and yet the price of gas continues to rise. Frankly, this tax rebate isn't going to even put a bandaid on the problem.

As much as I loathe for the government to get involved in private enterprise, maybe it's time for the Attorney General (of both the US and the individual states, to the extent that the profiteering is hurting states) to crank up the wheels of justice and do some good old fashion trustbusting. Or at least start regulating this industry a lot closer. I can't imagine that the Sirius-XM merger nearly warrants the expenditure of so many resources.

I concede that this is primarily a federal issue, and in the end, the government may have to regulate this industry a little closer by either a tax on all profits over X% or some sort of disgorging of profits if there actually is collusion at the expense of the public. Nevertheless, I'm surprised that given the state of economic affairs, at least in this recession-vulnerable side of the country, more isn't being done about it at the state level. After all, everyone is paying for gas, and the rising cost of this luxury-commodity is breaking the banks of everyone. Everyone, that is, except those running the oil show.

Tags: cost of gas in delaware, oil company profits cause pause for federal investigation

IRS scam phishing alert

Various spammers and hacks are once again suspecting to fool the general public into thinking the IRS sends emails that purport to calculate your taxes for you. An example of these emails have the subject "Tax Refund Notification" and are from the Internal Revenue Service." These are fake and are designed to steal your money. Use your head and common sense and delete them. The IRS is aware of this particular scam as well as the others. As Snopes points out, this particular scam is not new.

The fake IRS emails to me have said something to the effect of:

"After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of [some amount of money; e.g., $9950.55]. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-3 days in order to process it.

A refund can be delayed for a variety of reasons. For example submitting invalid records or applying after the deadline. To access the form for your tax refund, please click here [taking you to a fake website].

Note: For security reasons, we will record your ip-address, the date and time. Deliberate wrong inputs are criminally pursued and indicated.

Regards Internal Revenue Service."

Use your common sense and realize that the IRS isn't going to calculate your money for you. I would go as far as to say that if you're stupid enough to fall for this you deserve to get taken to the cleaners, but nobody should be taken advantage of like this. Don't be another statistic.

If you understand headers and your email settings, you can trace their IP address. The IRS emails to me came from 82.128.5.211 (Lagos, Nigeria) through a routing server in 195.4.92.23 (Kiel, Germany). Because it will be years before this type of scam is fully addressed by the Nigerian government, your best bet in the meantime is to rely on an accountant to do your taxes and not use some fishy email offer.

Tags: irs email scam, phishing emails

Delaware Tag No. 6 goes for $675,000

As I discussed before, these low digit black tags, while nifty, are not really that great an investment for most Delawareans. Granted, the bulk of these people have held onto tags for thirty or forty years, and, much like a house, they have appreciated in value. But other than for the vanity of the vanity plate, how much are you really making on this "investment?"

As pointed out in the article in today's paper, Tag #6 sold for a whopping $675,000. (By comparison of apples to oranges, the No. 1 tag in UAE sold for $14 million). Here's one way to look at this investment, other than potentially being the envy of a very select group of people.

The auction commission for these types of things varies between the ebay cost of approximately 5% to the Wilson auction cost of about 20%. If this tag had sold on ebay, the fees would have been approximately $35,500. At a 20% rate, the fee would have been $135,000. I'm sure the auctioneers of this auction took a commission somewhere in the middle. So, for my argument's sake, let's say if you sold your plate at auction, it would cost you about 10% in commissions based on final sale price.

Even at a conservative 2% interest rate, compounded quarterly, your $675,000 investment would appreciate to about $825,000 over 10 years. Invested in long term safe investments yielding 5% gives you around $1.1 million. The question is really whether you can get that much for the same plate years from now. Maybe. But the ceiling to these auctions isn't at the UAE's ridiculously high selling point. It's probably not that much higher than this conservative interest calculation. Plus, after you sell it, you've got to deal with the commissions. If you only got $825,000 for it, you're only pulling in $742,500 after a 10% commission, which turns out to be a pretty lousy investment. Just to get to the net of $825,000, the plate would have to sell around $915,000. Is that really realistic? I can't imagine that is the case absent some sort of crazy inflation over the next decade.

Of course, if you have this kind of money in disposable income, what is the point?

Tags: delaware black tag, delaware tag 6 sold at auction

Busting text messagers on the road

Want to inject a boost to the general budget? Why not triple all of the traffic violation fines from what they currently are? For an example of why this could be an easy remedy for a problem that probably hasn't been updated in two or three decades, I need only point to the front page article in today's paper, "Bill aims to brake texters." According to the article, House Bill 291 would ban text messaging while driving and make it a secondary offense. Notwithstanding the merits of this bill (and there are several), the proposed law carries with it the hefty fine of $25. Seems like the legislature is trying to attack what they perceive as a major problem with a wet noodle than a big stick.

With all of the budget problems plaguing this state currently, someone really needs to propose a broad brushed measure to double or triple the current Title 21 violations, which would presumably include this secondary prohibition against "TWD" (text messaging while driving). Wouldn't this measure generate revenue while avoiding the need to raise taxes? Just a thought.

Tags: delaware proposes ban on text messaging while driving

Sykes murder conviction affirmed

Someone posted a comment that the Delaware Supreme Court had recently affirmed a conviction of Ambrose Sykes, who apparently had murdered an elderly woman in Dover a few years back. I don't remember reading anything about this case in the newspaper recently and can't find anything about it online, so this is either a scoop of the entire Delaware press, or everybody is too caught up with the current political winds to care. In either case, maybe someone can provide some legal thoughts about it; it looks like it's about the death penalty to some degree. Here is the link to the Sykes v. State opinion.

I did find an old write-up about the case from the Dover Post from 2005.

Tags: delaware death penalty, sykes murder case

Delaware primary results and voter disenfranchisement

I saw in the paper and by online coverage that Obama and McCain won Delaware. What was funnier was the letter to the editor in today's paper complaining about the fact that independents in Delaware (as well as 18 other states) can't vote in primaries or caucuses. It then cites, without reference, to some statistic that nationwide independents make up about 40% of the voting electorate. It goes on to complain about how the voting rights of the independents are adversely affected by this exclusionary process.

Well, I feel disenfranchised because I wasn't asked to participate in an exit poll (in fact, it appears no Republican was), so my influence on this national electoral-o-sphere was not counted and this is ludicrous. Who can I sue to fix this travesty? This has to be unconstitutional in some way. I have one additional comment, but I'll save it for the end.

Relevant to the point, and probably of more interest to various internet searches curious about the breakdown of the vote in Delaware, the State News broke down the vote slightly differently than CNN, and so for those political junkies worried about the role of the First State in this process, fear not:

For the Dems (according to this morning's paper):
Obama = 50,953 53%
Clinton = 40,587 42%
Biden (who explicitly asked people not to vote for him) = 2,858 3%
John Edwards 1,234 1%
Dennis Kucinich 190 <1%
Christopher Dodd 170 <1%

For the Republicans:
McCain 22,511 45%
Romney 16,280 33%
Huckabee 7,673 15%
Ron Paul 2,122 4%
Giuilanai 1,249 2%
Tom Tancredo 175 <1%

I had to look up Tom Tancredo to learn that he was out of the race before it even started, so I find that he got votes almost as funny as the fact that Biden did.

In either case, the final tally, according to CNN, was 51,124 (53%) to 40,751 (43%), which gives Obama a 9:6 edge on delegates.

One final thought on this (interesting) letter to the editor. I have half a mind to put pen to paper and write a response to it, and I may, but for now, I'll simply say that they are incorrect. You can vote in the general election, so your argument fails. Period. Even assuming that the primary process is a "stage" in the election, and it is not, how does your inability to vote for a potential affiliated candidate possibly disenfranchise your vote when you have consciously decided not to affiliate yourself with a party? Answer: It doesn't. If anything, your vote screws up the result. Alternative answer: If you don't like it, declare a party.

This whole process makes me wonder how many people are under the erroneous impression that you must vote straight ticket based on your party? If the answer is more than ten percent, I see that as a sad commentary on the political system.

Tags: mccain wins delaware, obama wins delaware, delaware primary process, delaware primary breakdown

Voting machines in DE primaries

I went ahead and cast my vote in the primary today, which is something that I have never done before (previously my votes have always been during the general election). My question is whether you could have voted for someone in the other party. I suppose it doesn't really matter, but I found it a bit confusing since the machines had the Republican candidates on one side and the Democratic candidates on the other. I voted for the same party that I am "R"egistered for, so at least one of the votes is right. At least with the electronic system, there isn't any concern with potentially hanging chads.

According to CNN, McCain and Obama will emerge with the few Delaware delegates. Humorously, despite Sen. Biden's published letter regarding the fact that nobody should cast his vote for him since he isn't running anymore, he managed to snare about 3% of the Democratic vote.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed that of my previous entries has seemed to have taken a life of its own: The one about the Lockerman Exchange closing. I think there are multiple conversations going on in the comments, but the only one really worth pointing out, and relevant to my initial talking point about that event is from 9:21 AM on Feb. 5.

That comment states, in part: "The original goal of the business was to spark downtown revitalization, with the hope that the economics of the area would improve. I don't think anyone quite realizes what start up costs actually are. If things continue there the way they are going, then no business will succeed there. The people of the town have to want to make their main street area better, it won't happen by magic."

That is actually a very astute point - therefore, I will have to give more thought to how to frame a well-reasoned response. In the meantime, my open ended question is what revitalization project or business would thrive (or be a draw) in that area that could succeed? I threw a few ideas out there earlier within that same post, but given the commentary, the area may have a greater business potential than I give it credit for, so I will examine a few Dover businesses closer and make some additional suggestions as to what may be missing and could succeed in this particular area of the state later. Feel free to make suggestions though - for example, what was there before Lockerman exchange?

Tags: dover delaware business ideas, voting in delaware primaries, delaware primary results

Rising rates drive traffic away

Just a quick note that I saw the other day that the increase in tolls has led to a greater than expected drop in traffic and revenue from Route 1. I find this interesting because I predicted as much when I found out that the weekend rates were going up. According to the article, the revenue generated is up considerably, but traffic took an 11 percent drop (as opposed to an estimated 3-6 percent drop). So what effect does this have on the revenue? I submit, "not too much." Come summertime, I'm sure weekend beach traffic will more than make up the difference.

There are plenty of things to write about, but I'm going to have to get back to it in a couple days. While I'm on the subject of traffic, I will state that I have noticed in my downstate-to-upstate travels that upstate drivers are much better at getting over in the left lane rather than traveling the speed limit in the passing lane.