licenses
"A Burlingame man with eight DUIs still had a valid driver's license when he got his ninth in January because he apparently never hurt or killed anyone and many of his previous convictions were outside a 10-year cutoff period used by the Department of Motor Vehicles to assess drivers, a department official explained Monday."

California , isnt this amazing , that we are waiting for people to get killed after which we revoke their license.And how lame is the argument .

"

However, Joshua Dale of the California DUI Lawyers Association said people who get multiple DUIs need treatment. These people are alcoholics, he said, and the small number who repeatedly reoffend will not be stopped by the loss of the driving privileges.

"If they are going to drive (while intoxicated), they are going to drive without a license," he said of multiple offenders.

"

Isn't the job of the lawmakers to make it difficult (if not impossible) to disallow this from happening ?
Read the full article @ http://www.mercurynews.com/top-stories/ci_13749459

posted at: 14:59 | category: /politics | permanent link to this entry

I'm very excited that California is considering allowing Pay as you Drive Insurance .I strongly believe in consumption based metering :-)
Progressive Insurance has offered this in a few states, You can get more details @  http://www.progressive.com/myrate/
So the concept is that you have a GPS based device which records your speed/location/miles driven/time driven etc.

From my point of view there are 2 benefits.

• Lower cost for infrequent drivers
• It will force  us to drive less and help the environment 

My only biggest concern at this point is the privacy issues around it.I don't have a problem with they tracking speed etc because it will force us to not to speed etc but I thing recording the locations of where you are going and when you are going etc is too intrusive.
My hope is that Progressive respects our privacy and I'm pretty sure this concept will take off.Without the privacy issue addressed I feel that this will fail.
You can read more @ the paper http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2008/07_payd_bordoffnoel.aspx

posted at: 02:12 | category: /politics | permanent link to this entry

It is unimaginable that one of the worlds most propserous economy anf the golden state does not have money to refund taxes.
It is also amazing that if we don't pay taxes on time we get hammered with late fees etc but the state is able to keep our moeny :-(

Read more @ http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/30/news/economy/california_budget_crisis/index.htm

posted at: 17:02 | category: /politics | permanent link to this entry