Well today is October 15th, 2007, and as you can tell from the topic it is Blog Action day, a day when bloggers all over the web will unite to discuss one important issue in the hopes of bringing attention to the topic and with any luck bring about some change. This years topic is the environment, a topic we have heard a lot about on the campaign trail and on T.V.
I know there has been a lot of buzz about E85 ethanol and the benefits it provides for a clean renewable energy. What many people don't realize is that the effect that the manufacturing of this fuel has on the environment. E85 ethanol is made from corn which can be grown in a variety of locations, the problem however, is that the process of growing the corn requires lots of fertilizers and pesticides that can pollute our waterways and cause a significant negative effect on the ecosystem.
So what does that leave us?
Cellulosic ethanol is the answer, it is made from plants that are easy to grow and require a minimal amount of fertilizer or pesticides to maintain. Not only that, but the plants grow rapidly and will be fairly easy to maintain once they are widely accepted, not to mention they are not a food source and unlike corn, a commercial adoption will not drive up food costs.
So what's the problem?
Bugs, more accurately the cost of the bugs that break down the plants into a usable material. The science is there and the technology is there, the money, however, has just started to come in for developing a process that can be cheaply used to mass produce fuel from these plants.
Once again the almighty dollar takes center stage over what the morale thing to do is. That's a touchy word I know, what is morale? Who gets to decide? The simple answer is, the majority of a civilized society decides what is morale for them. This is a sensitive subject better discussed in a separate entry.
Closing, what we need are a few people with some really deep pockets who are willing to put whats right ahead of whats profitable.
2007-10-15
2007-10-01
Go go idiots in Florida!
Today is the first day of October in the year of two thousand and seven and our illustrious Florida, State Government has allowed the no-fault insurance system that we have had here in Florida to sunset and adopted a new tort system.
What does this all mean?
Simply, what it means is that PIP, the minimal insurance you had to carry to operate a motor vehicle in the State of Florida, will be gone. The Insurance companies would have you believe that this will save motorist money and that this is a good thing for everyone. After all, why should you need insurance to cover your medical costs if your are not at fault, that’s the responsibility of the other guys insurance right? Sure, in a utopian society everyone is carrying insurance that will cover you if someone hits you. The reality, however, is very different and often times the person at fault either has no or insufficient insurance to cover your injury, lost wages etcetera.
What can you do?
Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do at this point, the no-fault system expired today and I am not totally sure when it will be able to be brought back, if it that is a possibility at all. What can and should do is protect yourself in case you are in an accident with a couple options that many insurance providers won’t tell you about or if they do, they down play the importance and sometimes even try and have you sign away your options.
The first one is called UM (uninsured/under-insured motorist) this basically protects you against being hit by an uninsured motorist or one who doesn’t have enough coverage to cover all of your costs/damages. This places the burden on your insurance provider to pick up the slack.
The other one is called stacked insurance and will only apply to you if you have more then one vehicle on the same insurance policy. This one is a little more complicated but is easily broken down into understandable terms. What a stacked policy does is stacks the amount of coverage by an amount multiplied by the number of vehicles on the policy. In other words if you have medical coverage of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00) and you have two (2) vehicles on your policy, if you have stacked your coverage, your medical coverage is actually two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000.00). This is the one that most insurance companies will try and hide from you and that requires you to sign or initial away, the common practice is to get you to deny it early on when you first get your policy set up and then they don’t offer it to you again and instead just ask if you want any changes made to your policy, most of the time people will just say no and that’s the end of it.
So in closing I will give a proud “bird” to our legislators and say, “Go home, nobody loves you.”
What does this all mean?
Simply, what it means is that PIP, the minimal insurance you had to carry to operate a motor vehicle in the State of Florida, will be gone. The Insurance companies would have you believe that this will save motorist money and that this is a good thing for everyone. After all, why should you need insurance to cover your medical costs if your are not at fault, that’s the responsibility of the other guys insurance right? Sure, in a utopian society everyone is carrying insurance that will cover you if someone hits you. The reality, however, is very different and often times the person at fault either has no or insufficient insurance to cover your injury, lost wages etcetera.
What can you do?
Unfortunately there isn’t much you can do at this point, the no-fault system expired today and I am not totally sure when it will be able to be brought back, if it that is a possibility at all. What can and should do is protect yourself in case you are in an accident with a couple options that many insurance providers won’t tell you about or if they do, they down play the importance and sometimes even try and have you sign away your options.
The first one is called UM (uninsured/under-insured motorist) this basically protects you against being hit by an uninsured motorist or one who doesn’t have enough coverage to cover all of your costs/damages. This places the burden on your insurance provider to pick up the slack.
The other one is called stacked insurance and will only apply to you if you have more then one vehicle on the same insurance policy. This one is a little more complicated but is easily broken down into understandable terms. What a stacked policy does is stacks the amount of coverage by an amount multiplied by the number of vehicles on the policy. In other words if you have medical coverage of one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000.00) and you have two (2) vehicles on your policy, if you have stacked your coverage, your medical coverage is actually two hundred thousand dollars ($200,000.00). This is the one that most insurance companies will try and hide from you and that requires you to sign or initial away, the common practice is to get you to deny it early on when you first get your policy set up and then they don’t offer it to you again and instead just ask if you want any changes made to your policy, most of the time people will just say no and that’s the end of it.
So in closing I will give a proud “bird” to our legislators and say, “Go home, nobody loves you.”
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)