City
Durham gets one bidder for winter road maintenance
The lone bidder, Mike Copp Construction of Durham, submitted a detailed bid for a five-year snow plowing, sanding and salting contract for 71.7 miles of roads, including turnarounds, at a cost of $572,000 for the first year.
The cost for the second through fifth years would increase annually as follows: $597,000; $622,000; $658,500; and $702,500 for the final year.
The bid included a listing of the company's current equipment and a list of new equipment to be purchased if awarded the contract.
In a change from previous three-year contracts, this new one will be for five years and requires that the contractor will, in addition to plowing, provide all salt, materials, labor, and be responsible for stockpiling salt and sand.
Selectmen will review the bid at their regular meeting next week and will set a date for a special town meeting where they will present their recommendation to voters. Traditionally, snow removal contracts in Durham are awarded by voters at town meetings, not by the Board of Selectmen.
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verified on "P. Nachman: Confidence probably misplaced"
Paul Nachman has a much storied past
Paul Nachman is a featured writer on VDARE.com (named for Virginia Dare the first English Child born in Virginia 1587) The site and its editor are well known anti-immigrant propagandists who spend a good deal of time explaining why they are not white supremists and anti-semities even though they have been identified as such by reputable organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Actually, Mr. Nachman's letter says almost nothing. He agrees with the previous letter's author that the law prevents federal payments to illegal immigrants for medical care. He then suggest that illegal payments might be made because illegal immigrants illegally are paid for jobs they can't legally hold.
First, undocumented immigrants are not criminals. They have broken no criminal law. They have broken federal "civil" law.
Then he suggests that if the Affordable Care Act had mandated the use of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements online program to confirm that a noncitizen applicant for benefits resides in the U.S. legally, then undocumented immigrants would be prevented from getting these benefits. Why would that work? If these people are breaking the law to be here, why wouldn't they get illegal documentation that would let them get jobs and benefits. Fact is they do. Plus nothing in the Affordable Care Act says the government won't use this system. The act merely leaves open the "how" so the government can choose the best system at the time to verify proper payments.
You have to be paranoid to read into this any problem. OOps, guess that's obvious.
verified on "D. Corrigan: Contesting benefits of wind power"
Over supply of electric generation
In the northeast and much of the US there's an oversupply of generation. Demand is down due to conservation, efficiency and the recession. We don't need to be building new generation; especially expensive, intermittent, environmentally destructive industrial scale wind projects.
The folly of wind power is apparent when one looks at the
transmission gridlock in Orrington, ME. First Wind built the Stetson projects and then a 40 mile transmission line to Orrington. Two base load generators, a pooling hydro and a gas plant, are also transmitting power to the grid from Orrington resulting in an over supply on the transmission line to the NE grid from Orrington. Wind power, when available, is given transmission preference and the base load generators, who sold their output in the day ahead market, are backed down or curtailed, but they are still paid for the power they contracted to provide in the day ahead market even though they are not putting that power on the grid. So the ratepayers are paying for the surplus, unneeded, wind power as well as the power the base load generators are paid for but not generating.
These costs and the costs of transmission built for wind projects are going to soon be felt by ratepayers.
verified on "J. Ziehm: LePage forgetting his childhood"
Child labor crescendo was
Child labor crescendo was during the early industrial revolution. During the same time period life expectancy of children increased dramatically [1].
That being said, the government does have a purpose. Investment in sanitation significantly increased live expectancy for example. That was a benefit to society as a whole; however, the Government can overreach and is currently overreaching to the point where these basic services will be at risk due to structural budget deficits.
In closing, I hope to work until I die for that is a function of living. We’ll have to continue to argue about where to draw the line between productive services and overreaching services, but you cannot deny perpetual borrowing to balance the budget will not result in eventual collapse in all services. You need to start thinking about what you want to give up now to save the most important services, such as sanitation.
[1] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/387301/modernization/12022/Pop...
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