The best news out of the collapse of Warner-Lieberman this week in the US Senate is that we will still have a railroad industry.  The impact on railroads was largely overlooked in the debate, but the fact is that if Warner-Lieberman had passed, three of the nation's four largest railroads would have collapsed.

And that would have been bad, very bad.

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With oil jumping $11 in one day to close just above $138.40 a barrel, Americans are wondering "What the hell?" as gasoline surges well beyond the cost of a gallon of milk.  I have long believed that the cost of a gallon of milk was the bellweather for when gas would reach an unnacceptable price.

But what do we do about it?

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If you think gas prices are too high, then you better not drink Starbuck's Coffee or any Anheuser Bush Beer.

Starbucks Venti:  $23/gallon.

Budweiser:  $11/gallon.

Just something to think about when you are downing your favorite liquid.

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Thank God for incompetency.  Our incompetent Congress -- and I mean the entire bicameral body, regardless of party affiliation -- can't even pass a law and present it to the President according to the simple and clear edicts of the United States Consitution.

Remember that massive Farm Bill that was a complete and total charlie fox of bad farm economics which I blogged about here?  Well, it turns out that the bill the President vetoed the other day -- the bill Congress presented to him for signature -- was NOT the same bill that was voted on in session.

That means that Congress has to resubmit the correct bill, and vote on it again, and resubmit it to the president.

Way to go, guys!  This is the very reason I do not trust government to solve problems.  They cannot even perform their basic duties properly.

Robert Alt has more on the consitutional implications here.

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There has been a lot of foot stomping in Conservative America about John McCain's endorsement of cap-and-trade as a so-called market-based solution to restricting so-called "greenhouse gas" emissions.  But no one has really asked "Why does he back this method"?

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Remember how O'Guvnah promised us in his 2006 campaign how the O'Guvnah era in Maryland Politics would usher in a brand new Public Service Commission... one not "so connected" with power utilities that they regulated?  How rate increases would be rolled back?  How electricity would be made affordable again?

Of course, the rest of Maryland now knows what Conservatives were saying all along:  O'Guvnah's gift of gab from kissing the Blarney stone was producing rhetoric his capabilities couldn't match.  (In other words, he was lying his ass off.)

And PEPCO has just given us proof.

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There Heritage Foundation has a new chart up on the ridiculous stupidity that surrounds farm politics in America today.  It's stupid, because our nation's farm politics have nothing to do with saving family farms, but with providing corporate rent-seekers (like, ahem, David Letterman) with gobs of taxpayer money to subsidize incredibly profitable operations.

If you think "Big Oil" is bad, you ain't seen nothing yet.  "Big Ag" is worse.

Did you know that there are more employees in the US Department of Agriculture than there are farms in the United States of America?  How can that possibly make sense?

And the Heritage Foundation chart doesn't even take into count massive tarriffs on items like imported sugar, which act as entirely other subsidy on an incredibly non-competitive industry.  The tarriff on imported sugar is made even worse when you consider that, because of that tarriff, food companies switched to High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) over two decades ago to cut costs.  Yet another distortion on the demand curve for corn that increases the price of food worldwide.

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On Friday, May 2, 2008, Eddie Hale -- robust supporter of O'Guvnah and would be land-baron of Baltimore -- spoke up at the annual 1st Mariner Stockholder's Meeting and prognosticated that the stock had reached its lowest point, and was poised for a rebound.

The stock had closed at $4.13 on Thursday, May 1st. 

The stock closed at $3.80, down 33 cents, on Friday, May 9, 2008.

Eddie certainly is no Jim Kramer, that's for sure.  If you are taking advise from him on your 401(k), I have three words for you:  Don't do it.

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Bank of America, one of the largest retail banking operations in the United States of America, loves America, but seems to have a serious dislike for Americans.  Founded by Italian immigrants in San Francisco in the 1800s when "American" banks wouldn't service them, Bank of America was one of those true Horatio Alger stories.  But a recent patent filing by Bank of America has a lot of people scratching their heads.

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AmericasBank Corp -- which runs Towson Community Bank and Annapolis Community Bank -- has ousted its President and CEO, Mark Anders, due to poor performance according to the Baltimore Business Journal.

Hard to believe that a small bank company would have the gumption to "do the right thing".

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