At least 16 deaths, 7.5 million without power in Superstorm Sandy's wake

Much of New York was plunged into darkness Monday by a superstorm that overflowed the city's historic waterfront, flooded the financial district and subway tunnels and cut power to hundreds of thousands of people. (Oct. 29)

Tribune wire reports
5:53 a.m. CDT, October 30, 2012

What they have dubbed, the "Superstorm Sandy," slammed the New Jersey coast with over 80 mph winds Monday night. Then an unexpected 13-foot surge of sea-water hit New York City, flooding its tunnels, subway stations and the electrical system that powers Wall Street.

The National Hurricane Center said that as of 5 a.m. Tuesday, "The storm was moving westward across Pennsylvania and was centered about 90 miles west of Philadelphia."

At least 16 U.S. deaths were blamed on the storm. Sandy also killed 66 people in the Caribbean.

President Barack Obama has declared a major disaster in New York and Long Island.

The declaration makes federal funding available to people in the area. It bore the brunt of the sea surge from a superstorm that hit the East Coast on Monday.

An estimated 7.5 million people are without power across the East.

The unprecedented flooding was hampering efforts to fight a massive fire in one of the city's barrier island neighborhoods, Breezy Point in the borough Queens, the New York Fire Department said. More than 170 firefighters battled a fire that destroyed more than 50 homes.

Stock trading will be closed in the U.S. for a second day Tuesday — the first time the New York Stock Exchange will be closed for two consecutive days due to weather since 1888, when a blizzard struck the city.

Heavy rain and further flooding remain major threats for the next couple of days.

When the World shifted into our understanding, will we change?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, a barrel of oil is a barrel of oil. You know the size of it, you know the weight of it, you know its wealth making properties. Property owners understand boundary peaks and fences but the spectrum, well, you can’t see it, it doesn’t behave itself with respect to manmade laws, it’s governing laws are the laws of physics rather then economics or political lines in the sand, so it’s difficult, difficult to describe in a legal sense of what is your right. I have a title for my property, making a title for spectrum is difficult.

So is the application of property rights appropriate for the radio frequency spectrum? Fundamental question. I believe it is, that in some segments of the radio frequency spectrum the management is better off being the responsibility of the party to which excess of the spectrum gives the greatest value.

Take the similar radio bands for example, management of interference with these bands by the service provider allows for a dynamic approach to engineering. There are -- [inaudible] -- to my own country where the antennae patent has changed between morning and night to make up for the capacity, drive time, extra capacity needed. Can’t apply for a license like that, that people are doing it need to be master of their own destiny, management rights allows people to be masters of their own destiny, property rights.

One of the roads to excellence in spectrum management, like virtually any other activity of mankind, is through competition.

Imagine that you want to put a fixed link between point A and point B. You need a license, you go along to one spectrum manager and he gives you a proposal, but then if you can get another proposal the quality of engineering is driven up and the costs down, fundamental part of competition. And you all know it, have it seen applied to every other field.

So what is needed to bring this about? How do we get there? Let me use the example of my own country, New Zealand. In the early 1980s the New Zealand economy was racing to the back door. In just 30 years we’d managed to move from one of the wealthiest nations per head per population to about 20th on the OECD list. There were many reasons for this, New Zealand is a small country, it did not have the ability to determine its own future economy, we were a pointer(?) in the falling of the European Community and many other things that caused it. But nevertheless our economy was racing to third world status.

The country was amassing huge debt and as I said the economy was sliding backwards. In 1984 the new labor government at the time under the Prime Minister of David Longey(?), upon being reelected to power opened the books and finding the cupboard rather bare decided change was needed. At that stage ladies and gentlemen about 48 percent of the workforce were either directly employed by the government or in government agencies. At that stage

the government owned the New Zealand Post Office, the railways, the airline, the tourist bureau and so on and so on and so on. The government of the day looked at what it owned and decided to undertake a zealous program of government asset sales. The theory was that the revenue from the sale of assets would help alleviate the national debt. It would also bring market forces to the provision of services and the excellence that such forces would bring.

As a first step the government formed state owned enterprise with the government as owner. Each state owned enterprise had a commercial mandate and the body of business law applied to it, they were no longer under the umbrella of protection of government. The SOE was required to provide a dividend to its owner and the government, which was the government which also helped to round the budget.

When the opportunity is right the state sold some of the SOEs and used the money mainly for the national debt. Not all SOEs or state owned enterprises end up being sold, some were too difficult. And in a couple cases, notably in the airline industry and in the railway industry, the whole theory fell flat in the face and the government had to come involved again. It wasn’t a completely wonderful story all the way through but generally it was. The sale of Telecom New Zealand was quite a success story for example.

But it was in this environment of the need to privatize, to look at the business efficiencies in every sector, that the government officials of the 1980s looked at the opportunities to enhance the value of the radio frequency spectrum to the nation by overcoming the problem of a monopoly supplier, the then New Zealand Post Office. In 1988 the government contracted the NERA, N E R A, Organization of the United Kingdom, to report on what the possibilities were. This was a major turning point and even though history has shown that the issues were rather oversimplified and there’s a tendency always for people to oversimplify spectrum management issues that the basic concepts were of great merit even today.

Romney Doesn’t Know Why Airplane Windows Won’t Open, Calls The Closed Window Policy ‘A Real Problem’

Is this guy even seriousanymore?? We want Ron Paul to lead the GOP, from Today forward, Deport BHO and Nimwit Mitt, being that they are both foreigners, neither one is a natural born citizen, so ??? W ? T ? F ??

As if thats not bad enough, he goes jumping off his platform again, this time like a sheet in the wind:

Romney Doesn’t Know Why Airplane Windows Won’t Open, Calls The Closed Window Policy ‘A Real Problem’

Caity Weaver
Affluent Imagineer Mitt Romney has some exciting new proposals for the future of airplane design, according to some remarks he made to the LA Times at a fundraiser in Beverly Hills Saturday Night.

Romney was speaking to the Times about his chevalier Ann's brush with danger last week, when a plane on which she was a passenger was forced to make an emergency landing after an electrical fire caused the cabin to fill with smoke.

"When you have a fire in an aircraft, there's no place to go, exactly, there's no - and you can't find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don't open. I don't know why they don't do that. It's a real problem. So it's very dangerous."

truth be told: Mitt Romney Campaign Questioned By GOP Activists

truth be told: Mitt Romney Campaign Questioned By GOP Activists: Now think of How they propped him in front of america, meanwhile blocking the world from hearing the truth that Dr. Ron Paul speaks!!! They...