Marshall movie map

This will probably show up on Justin McElroy's Marshall movie blog in a little bit, but I don't care. I have my own take on it.

The Cabell-Huntington Convention & Visitors Bureau now has a "Filming Location Site Map" for the "We Are Marshall" movie.

The editorial page of The Herald-Dispatch has criticized local officials for not taking full advantage of opportunities to let people know what's here. The last time I was on Interstate 64, I did not see one sign pointing to Pullman Square. That could be a responsibility of the company, but someone should see to it that visitors know how to get to Pullman Square.

In this case, visitors can find spots associated with making the movie. Good move.

Disclaimer: I haven't seen the map yet.

Bowl eligible

I love it when the Marshall football and basketball teams to do well. I love working in a city of winners. I love all those "Go Herd" and "Congratulation Herd" ads.

But let us take a moment to note that there are two Division I-A teams in Ohio that are bowl eligible. One, of course, is Ohio State. The other is my own Ohio University. Yes, the Bobcats are 6-3. One more win in their final three games guarantees a winning regular season. Who knows, they might even do well enough to face a Conference USA team in a bowl. And that C-USA team could be. . .

Go Bobcats.

By the way, Wake Forest is bowl-eligible, too, but they'll probably go to a BCS bowl. Wake Forest is where former Ohio coach Jim Grobe landed, you know.

Boys okay without dad in their lives?

This came in today's e-mail from the Christian Science Monitor. I couldn't believe it when I read it. Actually, I can believe it. It's just that they're not asking the right people in doing this type of article. The first three paragraphs are below. For the entire article, click here.

"The American family is quietly being transformed by a powerful social trend: more single women are skipping marriage in their quest to become moms. Women and men are delaying marriage until they are older, and fewer wed at all. One out of 3 children is born to a woman who is not married. While the number of teens giving birth has decreased, single motherhood is on the rise for women in their mid-30s to early 40s.

"Cultural conservatives will surely decry this phenomenon as another sign of America's social decay. But today's intentionally single mothers are not undermining the two-parent family - and they are not out to create a world without men.

"Instead, they are forging new families that they hope are as effective as a traditional family. A married mom and dad who have their own children - which today accounts for just 24 percent of American households - remains the yardstick against which families of all kinds are judged."

The first 15 years and two months of my life, I had my father. Then he died. My life changed in many ways that I didn't understand until I had my own sons.

My two sons are ages 12 and 7. The oldest will turn 13 soon. My daughter is 14. In mid-July 2007, she will be the same age I was when my father died, and I plan to mark that occasion.

Would my two boys be as well off as they would be if I weren't in their lives? Would an elementary school gym teacher or a Scout leader provide the same guidance that I could?

Was I better off at age 16, 17 or 18 because my father wasn't around? To me, that's an incredibly stupid question, but one the single-mom-by-choice crowd is answering in the affirmative.

Maybe the next professor of women's studies and sociology should look up those of us who lost a father in our childhoods and ask us if fathers are necessary.

Cabell school enrollment

The annual numbers for school enrollment in Cabell County are out. The envelope please.....

School Oct. 2006 Oct. 2005 Change Pct change
Cabell Midland HS 1,841 1,844 -3 0%
Huntington HS 1,633 1,636 -3 0%
Alternative HS 14 11 3 27%

Barboursville MS 773 775 -2 0%
Beverly Hills MS 531 549 -18 -3%
Cammack MS 343 361 -18 -5%
Enslow MS 246 299 -53 -18%
Milton MS 693 679 14 2%
West MS 213 230 -17 -7%
Alternative MS 13 20 -7 -35%

Altizer 318 303 15 5%
Cammack ES 247 263 -16 -6%
Central City 487 487 0 0%
Cox Landing 232 221 11 5%
Culloden 195 205 -10 -5%
Davis Creek 210 174 36 21%
Geneva Kent 297 274 23 8%
Guyandotte 250 246 4 2%
Highlawn 283 257 26 10%
Hite-Saunders 237 218 19 9%
Martha 257 259 -2 -1%
Meadows 214 219 -5 -2%
Miller 151 133 18 14%
Milton ES 623 582 41 7%
Nichols 205 195 10 5%
Ona 319 302 17 6%
Peyton 156 185 -29 -16%
Salt Rock 248 241 7 3%
Spring Hill 446 495 -49 -10%
Vill. of B'ville 644 598 46 8%

TOTAL 12,319 12,261 58 0%

My conclusions will come later. I'm analyzing long-term enrollment trends and have already turned up one interesting number.

Governor's tax proposal

Gov. Joe Manchin is unveiling his tax proposal today. Tomorrow afternoon, he's visiting The Herald-Dispatch editorial board to talk about it.

Some of the key points:

> Reduce sales tax on food from 5 percent to 3 percent.

> Reduce business franchise tax rate from 0.7 of a percent to 0.55 of a percent.

> Increase refundable property tax credit to seniors, from $10,000 to $20,000.

> Create family tax credit on income so no one under federal poverty level pays income tax.

> Reduce corporate net income tax rate from 9 percent to 8.75 percent.

> Sales tax exemption for contractors-direct use manufacturing plants.

> Increase nonresident tax withholding rate.

> Extend non-resident withholding tax to capital gains on real estate.

> Eliminate pre-1967 corporate capital gain exclusion.

> Repeal the West Virginia Capital Company Tax Credit Program.

> Improve administrative efficiency through modern technology.

Is there anything I need to ask the governor on your all's behalf?

Huntley-Brinkley's golden anniversary

On Oct. 29, 1956, the Huntley-Brinkley Report debuted on NBC. It was all of 15 minutes long. I can't remember that night, but I remember in later years when my parents would stop what they were doing, when they could, to watch the evening news delivered by that duo. Now, my family can barely tell you the evening network news is one.

I don't blame that on a different lifestyle or the proliferation of cable channels. I blame it on the fact that network news is irrelevant. Most of what it reports is not relevant to me. Add to that the fact that I don't care how they frame issues, and I have no desire to watch Brian, Katie or whoever is doing ABC's evening news these days.

For me, the morning news shows are more likely to have my interest, but the evening news means little or nothing to me.

But the golden anniversary of the Huntley-Brinkley Report should be marked as a warning of what the news once was and what it has become.

Predicting the election

The deadline for letters to the editor pertaining to the Nov. 7 general election has passed, and am I glad. In the past 24 hours, we must have received 100 letters from people endorsing or opposing a candidate or an issue.

We're probably not going to be able to put all of them in the print paper. Some will be Web-only letters.

Judging only from the letters I have received, the park fee will be voted down by a landslide. Jenkins-Scott in the State Senate will be close. Bob Bailey's core supporters will turn out to re-elect him to the Cabell County Commission.

Yesterday, one of our reporters asked me what I thought would happen in the elections for the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. He was surprised when I said the Republicans would hold both houses. As I told someone who makes his living in the political arena, I think voters want a change, but I'm not sure they're going to make it this year. 2008 looks more likely, depending on who's at the top of each party's ticket.

Of course, if I was so good at predicting the future, I would be a professional gambler.

UPDATE: On the park fee, here's my reasoning. As a rough guide, figure half of Cabell County voters have Huntington addresses and half have other addresses. As for Wayne County, figure everyone in the park district has a Huntington address. I would guess that the mail on the park fee has run 60-40 against from Huntington addresses, maybe 70-30. From other addresses, it's almost all anti fee. That tells me people who do not live close to a park feel they would get nothing from the $95-a-year fee, so they will vote against it. So that means at best the fee could fail by an 80-20 vote, or 4-to-1 against. This is not a scientific method by any means, but I do believe it shows the sentiment against the fee.

Ritter Park's pink bridge

On my way in to work this morning I had to swing by Ritter Park and take a look at the pink bridge. For those who came in late:

Officials of the Greater Huntington Park and Recreation District were surprised to hear a 26-year-old Huntington man was painting one of their bridges pink. Jason Sansom thought he was performing a public service. The bridge needed a new coat of paint. Park district officials have talked about how they don't have much money for maintenance. So Sansom bought a few gallons of masonry paint and proceeded to paint the bridge pink in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

But Sansom didn't get the park district's permission first. He has been ordered to repaint the bridge white. The park district chooses colors of its structures, and it wants its masonry bridges to be white, apparently.

The bridge crosses Fourpole Creek near 12th Street. It's over by the tennis courts. It looks a lot better now with Sansom's $50 worth of pink paint than it did before.

"I walk by that bridge four times a week and the west side hasn't been painted in the past five years, so I volunteered myself to do it, but I had no agenda to cause any trouble," Sansom said in today's The Herald-Dispatch. "I thought I would just get in, get out, and not get caught."

Okay, the park district has a good point. People shouldn't just take it upon themselves to paint public property. But what can we expect when the park district cries poverty and people want to do good deeds?

The park district is right, but it should keep the bridge pink anyway. It looks better than it did, and it's a good conversation piece. It's not a tourist attraction by any means, but it gives us something to think about when we drive past.

Now the park district has an opportunity to let people help make the parks better by doing community service. If that means painting bridges pink or whatever the color of the month is, why not?

We're Number 3

For a while, I’ve been saying the next round of population estimates compiled by the Census Bureau will show Cabell County slipping to the third-largest in West Virginia, behind Kanawha and Berkeley. The 2005 estimates showed Cabell with slightly more people, but if you look at our stagnant population and Berkeley County’s growth, it appears Berkeley County has already overtaken us.

So today I got a news release from the secretary of state’s office with voter registration numbers. It shows Berkeley County with 57,724 registered voters and Cabell County with 55,784. I went back and checked registration numbers for the primary and saw Berkeley had more registered voters than Cabell back then, too.

Two years ago, Cabell County had more registered voters -- 60,652 to 52,308. If you look at historical numbers, Cabell's registrations that year were unusually high. This year's are closer to what you would expect. I have no way of saying with any authority where those 3,000 voters came from or went to. (I have ideas, as we all do, but nothing I can point to).

So what does this mean, really? Nothing, for now. But the fact that all growth areas of the state except for one -- Morgantown -- rely on booming economies just across the line in other states tells me something.

A dearth of births

Sometimes when I don't want to face something directly here at work, I go find a batch of statistics and dig into them. This morning, it was the large backlog of letters to the editor. In case you haven't heard, Evan Jenkins, Tom Scott, Bob Bailey and Bob Hayes are all great guys and deserve to be elected to whatever office they're running for. And the Huntington street levy and the park district user fee are either sorely needed or will drive everyone to the poor house.

So rather than face all that again, I found some stats at the Centers for Disease Control Web site. The site had the birth and death statistics for 2004, so I decided to compare the two. What I found didn't really surprise me.

If you put the number of births by state and the number of deaths by state side by side and divide births by deaths, you will see West Virginia had the lowest ratio. We barely had more births than deaths in 2004. To be precise, we had 1.00289 births per death. The national average was 1.72 births per death. The other old states -- Maine, Pennsylvania and Florida -- had ratios of 1.12, 1.14 and 1.29, respectively.

Utah had the highest ratio at 3.80, followed by Alaska at 3.39.

Unless, that is, you want to include the U.S. territories. The rates were 1.77 in Puerto Rico, 2.26 in the Virgin Islands, 5.01 in Guam, 5.99 in American Samoa and 8.23 in the Northern Marianas.

With this being the political season, it's easy to see one result of this. I don't see how West Virginia will hold on to all three seats in the House of Representatives after the reapportionment following the 2010 census. One of the three seats will go to a state with good population growth. That means either Alan Mollohan, Shelley Moore Capito or Nick J. Rahall will be out of a job, assuming all three are continually re-elected until 2012.

On another level, this has to make you wonder if West Virginia's economy is anything more than barely self-sustaining. The people having children are not the people remaining in West Virginia or moving here.

Please, USN&WR, drop those college rankings before someone gets hurt

I've written before that I think the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of colleges are worthless because they measure the wrong things. Something that arrived in my mail at home a while back strengthens that opinion.

I don't know when it arrived. It could have fallen behind some furniture and someone found it and set it out for me. It was a piece of junk mail from Ohio University, where I spent some wonderful years in the 1970s. About the only time I get mail from OU is when they want money. Here are two paragraphs from the mailing:

"Ohio University ranks among the top 50 national universities (46th) in the 2005 U.S. News & World Report's 'America's Best Colleges' edition. Ohio has its sights set even higher, but will need the help of our alumni in order to remain among the finest universities in the nation.

"Ten for the Cats asks that each alumnus gives $10. The university rankings measure the percentage of alumni participation, so your $10 gift will help increase our ranking. As always, your gift will also benefit our students and faculty every day."

My warm feelings for my years in Athens, Ohio, have nothing to do with how a news magazine ranks Ohio U against other schools.

When one of my kids asked me a while back what the best college is, I said that depends on what you want out of it. A lot of things go into choosing which college is best for you. The USN&WR rankings should be a small and truly insignificant factor.

Needless to say, Ohio U. didn't get a $10 check from me.

Reverse the school calendar?

My daughter is a high school freshman. She hates getting up at 5:30 in the morning to catch the school bus, especially when it's pitch black dark outside. She hates standing in the cold and rain. She hates having only a couple of hours of daylight after she gets home this time of year.

So she came up with a great idea. I'm trying to get her to write a letter to the editor about it.

Now that all schools are air conditioned, why doesn't the school year run through the summer and take 10 weeks of winter off? We wouldn't have to worry about snow days. Kids wouldn't have to wait in the cold and dark for the bus. Buses wouldn't run on snowy roads.

Why not?

Seriously, why should this idea not be considered?

Because teachers and administrators and service personnel wouldn't like it. Forget about what's best for kids.

Would kids benefit from reversing the school year?

This boastful display....

Part II of the Robert C. Byrd "Big Daddy" video...

We cannot forget the Robert C. Byrd statue in the Capitol, along with the Legislature's having named Byrd the West Virginian of the 20th Century.

On Dec. 4, 2005, I had a column giving my opinion on how the Gallipolis Locks and Dam was renamed for Byrd. I can't find it on the Internet, so I pulled this copy out of our archives:


Byrd's name shouldn't be on Gallipolis dam


One of my favorite places along the Ohio River is the Ohio side of the Gallipolis Locks and Dam. My older son made his first visit there on Oct. 9. He listened as I told him how I used to walk on the ragged boulders near the dam when I was his age.

We went down to the waterside where anglers tried to catch fish. The day was perfect for photography. The sunlight was bright, but the cloud cover was thick enough that no shadows marred our pictures. We took pictures and talked about how the dam keeps a sufficient depth of water in the river to make it usable by boats year-round.

Notice I called it the Gallipolis Locks and Dam. Not the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam, which has been its official name since an act of Congress in late 1992 or early 1993. I've always known it as Gallipolis, and to me, that's what it will always be.

I'll give the senior senator from West Virginia the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing, the Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health and even the Robert C. Byrd Bridge. But I wish someone would take his name off the Gallipolis Locks and Dam.

Unlike the other things in this area bearing Byrd's name, Byrd had nothing to do with building the Gallipolis Locks and Dam. It opened in 1937, when Byrd turned 20 years old.

It was modernized in the 1980s, but not because Byrd took it on himself to update what was then the Ohio River's biggest bottleneck to barge traffic.

Modernizing the dam was the result of several forces acting on waterborne commerce. In the 1970s, Lock and Dam 26 on the Mississippi River near St. Louis was in bad need of replacing. At the same time, the Gallipolis locks were too small to handle modern barge traffic. There was considerable opposition to both projects because, at the time, the federal government paid the entire cost of lock and dam projects.

So a compromise was reached. Towboat operators would agree to pay a tax on diesel fuel. The user fee, as it was called, would pay half the cost of lock and dam projects throughout the United States. That's how the improvements came to be made at Gallipolis, not because Byrd put a line item in an appropriations bill.

In January 1993, people in Gallipolis, Ohio, said folks across the river in Mason County, W.Va., pushed for the name change as a way to honor Byrd for his service in the U.S. Senate and as a way to get his support for upgrading U.S. 35 and W.Va. 2. Playing to Byrd's ego, it might be called.

The folks in Gallipolis really didn't like the idea of changing the name of the locks and dam, but they went along. They figured they needed the roads in Mason County more than they needed their town's name on a dam.

For what it's worth, the first steps of improving U.S. 35 are under way, but any improvements to W.Va. 2 are far, far off.

As my son learns more about the river, he will hear a lot about the Gallipolis Locks and Dam and precious little about the Robert C. Byrd Locks and Dam. At least from me, except as a lesson in how politics works.

Jim Ross is editorial page editor of The Herald-Dispatch. His e-mail is jimross@herald-dispatch.com.

What I really wish would happen, but won't

Everyone decides enough is enough, and the general election everywhere will be Saturday.

Is anyone else tired of the electioneering, the mudslinging and the pointless bickering? Can I not watch the local news on TV without hearing ominous music, seeing a grainy black-and-white photo and listening to a baritone voiceover telling folks how twisted and evil a candidate is?

This boastful display of arrogance is off the charts

That was the comment accompanying a video of Sen. Robert C. Byrd when he was in town a few weeks ago bragging about being the "Big Daddy" when it comes to getting money from the federal government for projects in West Virginia.

To see the video, click here.

There are folks who criticize Byrd as being one of the biggest hogs at the public trough when it comes to delivering money back home. Many of them refer to themselves as "porkbusters." I have a hard time getting worked up over it. Yes, we're talking millions and billions of dollars. It's not the money that gets me. I wonder what the federal interest is in some of these local projects.

Aren't we as deserving of some of this money as communities with unnecessary military installations? And didn't Byrd's clout help save the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers back in late 1992 and early 1993 when Bush 41 wanted to punish the state for voting Democrat?

Congress engages in other foolishness that outrages me more than most of Byrd's appropriations. And Byrd's desire to have his name on everything in the state bugs me mightily, too.

More on this tomorrow.

UPDATE 1: I was there the day Byrd made that comment. I stood outside the packed room where he was speaking. To see what I wrote from that day, click here.

Lady beetles, die

For anyone who cares, I sprayed the front of my house last week, and now dozens of lady beetle carcasses grace my front door step. I probably should sweep them away, but I love to see them accummulate. The alternative is to see them all gather in my house this winter.

Also pertaining to an earlier post, I think I was wrong about kudzu. A field on my road about a quarter of a mile from my house is covered in something that looks like kudzu -- ground, fence, trees, everything.

When it gets down my way, we'll have a celebrity grudge death match: kudzu vs. multiflora rose.

School fundraisers

Here's something from the AP that parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors should find sort of interesting:

"An estimated 1,500 companies nationwide sell candy bars, holiday items, magazines and other goods through fundraisers that target schools.

"But the growth has created a backlash: Some parents object to their children being counted on as a sales force. The result: an 11 percent drop in sales last year, according to the Association of Fund-Raising Distributors and Suppliers."

At the Ross household, the children are just short of forbidden to take part in these things. (The boss won't let me use the words I want to use to describe fundraisers, as they might invite lawsuits).

A few years ago, one of my kids came home with a catalog on the first day of school. The first day. And kids in younger grades are targeted by promising they get to take part in certain fun activities if they reach a certain sales quota, er, goal.

If I had my way, all these things would end today. The only exception would be for specific student groups raising money for specific purposes, such as band kids selling candles to pay for a trip to the Orange Bowl game. But for generic fundraisers for money that we never hear of again, uh uh.

Cartoonists and religion

I'm out of here for a week. I need to go home and vegetate while (a) watching "Deep Space 9" reruns on the SciFi channel and (b) spraying the side of my house so I'm not knee-deep in lady beetles this year. It faces south and has a combination of brick facade and white vinyl siding -- just the thing to attract lady beetles finding a warm place to ride out the winter.

Before I bug out for a week, a final thought:

This Mark Foley thing has brought several syndicated cartoons that probably would offend a good part of our readership. I need to get on the Catholic League Web site (www.catholicleague.com) and see if they've said anything. There's been a recurring theme by some cartoonists to dress Hastert and Boehner in bishop's clothing and have Foley somewhere in the background.

We probably won't use those cartoons.

Just as we didn't use a lot of cartoons a couple of months ago that took swipes at Islam. One in particular showed an Iranian mullah approaching a large sign saying "Islam." The mullah used a couple of strokes of paint and changed the "S" in Islam into a swastika.

I ask you: Am I too sensitive toward people's religious faith? Should we run such cartoons?

I know it's difficult without actually posting them, but that's what I have to do: Re-think my boundaries.

All comments welcome.

I'll check the site from time to time next week and post some reader comments.

Except for that, I'll see you on Oct. 16.

Time to move to the Alaskan bush country

I go to the Fox News Web site, and what does an item say: "Tori Spelling pregnant with husband Dean McDermott's baby."

It's news when a Hollywood celebrity is pregnant, and the father is her husband?

Maybe I should become a hermit in Alaska.

Rahall vs. Wolfe, Part 1

An article by reporter Curtis Johnson in The Herald-Dispatch on Tuesday described many of the challenges faced by Cabell County Sheriff Kim Wolfe as he attempts to win the seat in the House of Representatives held by Nick Rahall. Rahall was elected in 1976 when Ken Hechler, who had held the seat since Moses wandered in the desert, made an ill-timed run for governor.

One problem facing Wolfe is that incumbent Congressmen are hard to beat. As Marshall University political science professor Simon Perry noted, the best time to beat an incumbent Congressman is the first time he runs for re-election. After the first re-election, an incumbent is almost unbeatable, especially here in West Virginia.

There's another hurdle Wolfe faces. Rahall has learned at the feet of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, and he has learned well. Rahall has almost as many things named after him in Huntington as our senior senator does. I might be missing some, but right offhand I count four for Byrd and three for Rahall.

For Byrd: The Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing, the Robert C. Byrd Center for Rural Health, the Robert C. Byrd Biotechnology Science Center, the Robert C. Byrd Bridge.

For Rahall: The Nick J. Rahall II Bridge, the Rahall Applachian Transportation Institute and the Rahall parking garage at Pullman Square.

It's hard to beat that kind of name recognition.

Rahall has built himself a reputation as a Congressman who can deliver the earmarks. Byrd calls himself the "Big Daddy." We just have to wait for Rahall to call himself the "Little Daddy."

If Wolfe has any consolation in this, he can look at the results from the election two years ago and see that Rahall didn't carry his home county. But Rahall had a big lead over his challenger then in the other traditionally Democratic counties. Wolfe will have to change a lot of minds if he is to unseat Rahall.

Maybe this year is not the year Wolfe really expects to challenge Rahall. Even if he loses, Wolfe still has his job as sheriff to fall back on. Two years from now, Wolfe will not be able to run for re-election because of term limits. If he can make a respectable showing this year, Wolfe will have built up some momentum that could come in handy in 2008.

The next presidential election should be a good one. For the first time since 1952, we will not have a sitting president or vice president in the race, unless Dick Cheney really surprises everyone. We don't know if Wolfe will be able to ride the presidential candidate's coattails, or if the presidential candidate will need to ride his.

Walk to School Month

This is Walk to School Month, and Oct. 4 (tomorrow) is Walk to School Day. Various groups hope to encourage physical fitness in our youth by encouraging more of them to walk to school rather than ride a car or bus.

Like that's going to happen in West Virginia.

Luckily, the Centers for Disease Control has published a short article on barriers to walking to school. Being the geek that I am, I found some interesting numbers in it. The CDC recognizes that kids tend to live farther from school now than they used to, mainly because of school consolidation.

Between 1968 and 2001, the number of schools decreased by about 1,000 (70,879 to 69,697) while the number of students increased by more than 2 million, according to the CDC.In 1969, about 33 percent of students lived more than three miles from their schools. In 2001, about 50 percent did.

In my kids' case, it's not so much distance as it is the roads. My youngest lives about three miles or so from his school. That's three miles of country road. The more heavily traveled parts have no berm.

Kids living along some of the main roads don't have it any better. Check out the berms along Route 10 south of Huntington High School, for example.

I walked home from school once. It was my junior year, I think. It was about six and a half miles. Why? Because no one I knew had done it. (It's a guy thing).

I tried it once more, on the last day of school that same year. I got about two-thirds of the way home before I accepted a ride.

One dollar in 61 days

(There's nothing like waking up at 1:35 a.m. and realizing you made a misake on a blog entry the day before. The price of gasoline dropped $1.01 in 61 days, not 30 days. My apologies. I have corrected this in the blog entry below. Now if you'll pardon me, I'll play a game of Sudoku online and go back to bed. --Jim Ross, 1:51 a.m. Wednesday, 10/4/06).

Two months ago today, gasoline sold for $3.159 in Huntington, a record high.

Today I saw a sign at the same convenience store. It was selling gasoline for $2.149 a gallon. That's a reduction of $1.01 in one month.

At this rate, by New Year's Speedway and BP will be paying us to take gasoline off their hands.

Or maybe not.

I don't buy conspiracy theories that oil companies are cutting prices to help Bush and other Republicans. I mean, what have they gotten so far that they didn't already have or weren't getting anyway? I don't see any rigs in ANWR. Cellulose-to-ethanol and coal-to-liquid fuel will come when marketplace economics allow.

Something's at work here. I'll admit I just don't know.

Capitol sex page scandal ... More to come?

Here we have another scandal in Washington, what with the Congressman and the page. Not to downplay it, but I'm paying little attention to the details of the particular case. What I'm waiting for is word that another Congressman is guilty of the same conduct. No, I don't have any in mind, but with 435 members of the House of Representatives and 100 members of the Senate -- most of them male -- there had to be more than one. And I'm sure the GOP has its investigators out trying to nail similar charges on a Democrat.

I figure the next big news in this will break sometime around 4 p.m. on Friday. If you want something in the paper and if you don't want your enemies, opposition or rivals to have time to respond, have your news break late Friday afternoon. That way you own the story until Monday morning. By then, most people will have moved on and they won't care what your enemies etc. have to say.

One other thing I keep wondering about all this. This isn't the first time a predator Congressman has put a page in his sights. If my minor child said he or she wanted to work at a page at the U.S. Capitol, I would say, "Nope. No way. Ain't happenin'. Some people there would take advantage of you and eat you alive. And I don't know who they are, so they aren't coming anywhere near you if I can help it."

Call me overprotective. Call me hopelessly cynical. But why someone would send a child to work in that environment is beyond me.