Fulton to increase water rates 15 percent

Fulton County officials praised county water users Wednesday for their success at conservation — then socked them with a 15 percent rate increase for their effort.

The conservation penalty the County Commission adopted Wednesday 6-0 matches the increase Atlanta utility officials asked to impose earlier this year but which the City Council so far has resisted. The average water/sewer bill should increase nearly $9 per month to a total of about $68 per month, water officials said.

Why raise rates on water? Well, because the conservation has cut revenues:

Utility managers said water use has dropped by as much as 30 percent since last year when Gov. Sonny Perdue asked each county to cut usage by at least 10 percent because of the lingering drought. That has Fulton facing potential default on its bonds, said Angela Parker, public works director.

"We just can't swallow this reduction in revenues," Parker said.

She said Fulton one day might roll back the rates if the drought ends and revenues return to pre-drought levels.

Riiight.

This is Fulton county doing this. Apparently the city of Atlanta is trying to do the same thing but has been blocked so far.

Details of the USS Stout (DDG 55) and USS Chosin (CG 65), which both failed their InSurv recently:

Problems included numerous safety violations, guns unable to fire, missiles unable to launch, and inoperative radar and CIWS systems. Click the image for an interactive display.

Shipbuilders may decline to bid on next LCSs

Littoral Combat Ship problems continue:

Sources at Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics confirm that officials are hard at work preparing responses to the Navy’s March 31 Request for Proposal (RfP). But they say the Navy’s desire to transfer risk to the contractors may abolish any incentive to respond.

“‘No bid’ is always an option,” said one industry source...

Navy Secretary Donald Winter has insisted that further LCS vessels be built for a fixed price, rather than the cost-plus contracts normally used for early ships in a class.

After the original contract awards, the shipbuilders expected to build their second ships under a cost-plus arrangement. But last year, Winter launched negotiations with each company, seeking to change to a fixed price. Those talks failed, and the Navy cancelled Lockheed’s LCS 3 and GD’s LCS 4.

Congress also has imposed a cost cap of $460 million on the ships, although current estimates are that the first ships might cost around $500 million.

Both designs are still evolving, and both contractors are reluctant to commit to fixed prices without a final design in hand.

StarWars.com:

Star Wars fans will get an unprecedented look at the newest intergalactic adventure on Thursday, May 8, when the world-premiere trailer for the upcoming CG-animated movie Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuts across five Turner networks simultaneously.

At 7:58 p.m. in all U.S. time zones, Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, CNN, and Boomerang will debut an action-packed, two-minute preview of the animated adventure from creator George Lucas and Lucasfilm Animation. It marks the first time a theatrical trailer has received a simultaneous, cross-network airing on Turner Networks. The trailer debuts in theaters on Friday, May 9, along with the first poster for the movie. The poster is available for pre-order exclusively at StarWarsShop. Check it out here.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars opens in movie theaters Aug. 15.

The original animated series on Cartoon Network was pretty good, to be honest.

Air Force Tanker Decision Driven by Faulty Data

Jed Babbin, editor of Human Events, on the controversial (to say the least) decision to go with the EADS Airbus-based tanker:

The Air Force determined the ability of each competing aircraft to perform the tanker mission using a complex computer model called the “Integrated Fleet Air Refueling Assessment” (“IFARA” in the inevitable military acronym). One key part of that assessment relied on data which determined the capacity of airfields to accept the weight and size of the aircraft.

In mathematical approximations, you “round up” or “round down” fractions to the nearest whole number. A well-informed person who attended that meeting said that the Air Force “rounded up” the data on each airfield’s capacity -- the weight-bearing capacity of runways, taxiways and parking ramps and the size of the parking ramps to base enough aircraft -- so that if any of those aspects was judged adequate, the entire facility was judged capable of having the aircraft operate from it.

That person said that the IFARA computer model could only accept one variable on the issue of airfield capability. It could not include any differences to account for variances in different parts of each airfield’s capabilities. Thus, the model was flawed and the data fed into it were further skewed by the assumption that the larger aircraft could operate from airfields which in fact it cannot.

This is the sort of thing that, if accurate, can really give Boeing some punch in its protests. Concrete numbers, and especially examples of concrete numbers that don't add up, could carry the day. This appears to be a case where the numbers simply don't say what they claim to say.

There are arguments both ways in the tanker size debate, but I've long maintained that more smaller tankers will generally serve better than fewer larger tankers. I want the Air Force to get the best tanker available, and I guess that I'm not all that sure that the EADS tanker is it.

Meanwhile: Aussie KC-30 (EADS) Needs Mods. This is the boom that I previously noted the Air Force had been a bit concerned about.

Not that the Boeing plane is without concerns. But EADS should have needed a slam dunk to beat out the 767, and it doesn't appear that they had one.

Kyle Cassidy is working on a new book of veterans tattoos called "War Paint". You can see some of it on his website at www.kylecassidy.com/warpaint.

At the moment, he's specifically looking for WWII and Korean war vets with military tats. If you work with a VFW post or know a group of vets with ink, Kyle's interested in coming out and spending a weekend taking photographs and recording stories.

Murdoc interviewed Mr. Cassidy and discussed his book Armed America recently. The photos were great and the info was, too, so though I'm not into the whole tat scene, I'm sure "War Paint" will be a good read.

If you're interested, contact Kyle at the War Paint site by clicking become involved at the bottom of the page.

Myanmar Cyclone: Women and Children Make up More than Half of Victims - UNICEF

The scale of this disaster is astonishing. Latest reports indicate at least 22,000 dead and 40,000 or more still missing.

But this headline is odd. In almost any society, won't "women and children" make up more than 50% of the population? [Female Adults] + [Female Kids] + [Male Kids] > [Male Adults], no?

No wonder women and children were hardest hit.

Meanwhile, AFP reports that

Myanmar's reclusive military rulers insisted foreign aid experts would still have to negotiate with the government to be allowed into the isolated nation.

Wife guilty of draining guardsman’s funds

A jury has convicted a woman of draining her husband’s investment accounts while he was serving in Iraq with the Minnesota National Guard...

John Kieser gave his wife “power of attorney,” before he left but said he intended her to use it only if he was incapacitated or if he died in Iraq. She said she thought incapacitated meant “not available.”

She also sold the house and bought a new one in North Dakota.

I believe that the "Halp us Jon Carry -- We R Stuck in Irak" troops were Minnesota National Guard. Maybe Kerry meant that it's military wives who suffer from bad education...which would also be an insult in most cases.

Georgian minister: War with Russia 'very close'

"We literally have to avert war," Georgian State Minister for Issues of Reintegration Temur Iakobashvili told a news briefing during a trip to Brussels.

Asked how close to such a war the situation was, he replied: "Very close, because we know Russians very well.

Among other issues, the Rooskies are upset that Georgia is trying to join NATO.

I wonder if we'll see the EU Army step in and address this.

Saddam feared getting AIDS, venereal disease

He must have seen the Oprah episode where she said that by 1990 1 in 5 Americans might be dead from AIDS.