Intersting tid bit. Rudy Giuliani is the only presidential candidate who doesn't drive or own a car.

Just thought it was kind of cool that he was the only person running for President who has lived a car free lifestyle.

Here is a story on it from The Nation:

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?pid=194837

You should have seen the massive SUV he was tooling around in with a large entourage of other vehicles when he visited Riga. If you think he lives a carfree lifestyle, or cares about people being carfree, you're dreaming.

as far as debt vs. paying outright for a depreciating asset, it's pretty simple math.

if the interest rate is lower than what the principal could earn as an investment, it makes most financial sense to borrow. I.e. if car interest rate is 4%, and you can earn 5% in a cd, then it makes most sense to finance!

It only makes sense if you actually invest the money you'd otherwise spend by paying cash for the car! MOST people don't do this, they buy the car on credit, and then use whatever money they're 'saving' by not paying cash for the car to either buy other things, or going out to eat, whatever....

This would only be true for someone who didn't know how to use Quicken. If you take out a car loan you need to setup a loan account which your principle repayments get credited to. Interest payments should be charged to an expense category (probably a sub-category of auto called interest). You also need to setup an asset account whose opening balance equals the purchase price of the car. The balance in this account needs to be reduced periodically to track the used value of the car. These reductions should be charged to another sub-category of auto called deprecation. The asset account is still needed if you pay cash for the car. If you lease you can skip the asset and liability accounts and just charge the lease payments to a sub-category of auto (probably called lease or deprecation). In either case you will also want a few other sub-categories such as fuel, parking, tolls and repair.

You should go though a similar exercise when you buy a house.

Nice. Are you a bookkeeper or an accountant? (Our accountant used to get pissed if someone called him a bookkeeper! :D )

99% of people DON'T know how to track car expenses like that. I'd say that probably 75% of them WOULDN'T, even if someone taught them how. THAT'S why the other poster recommended the books. He's just happens to be recommending it to someone who happens to be in that 1%.

Nice. Are you a bookkeeper or an accountant? (Our accountant used to get pissed if someone called him a bookkeeper! :D )

99% of people DON'T know how to track car expenses like that. I'd say that probably 75% of them WOULDN'T, even if someone taught them how. THAT'S why the other poster recommended the books. He's just happens to be recommending it to someone who happens to be in that 1%.

Actually I am a software developer though I did do a short accounting class back in college (it was mandatory actually). I suspect you are correct that 75% of people would not track there expenses. Some people like to invest some of their leisure time changing their own oil (or rebuilding their bike), others like to tackle major home improvement projects. I find the investment in time required to maintain accurate financial records to be worthwhile. BTW Real Estate expenses should be tracked the same way as auto expenses.

There are ways to lighten the load though, If you lease a new car instead of buying it and taking out a car loan, tracking the cost is easier since deprecation is included in the payment and repairs are covered under warranty and sometimes so is maintainance. If you use a credit card, use one that links to Quicken and charge everything to that card. Most of your transactions will be fed automatically into Quicken that way. If you fly a lot, get a card with air miles.

I will be going car free in about 3 weeks (I am currently car light) and (thanks to Quicken) in about six months or so will have an accurate picture of how much being car free is saving me.

All I know is that you can quicken yourself right into poverty.

Tracking your expenses is not even remotely close to budgeting and controlling them. Its like writing down how many calories you eat without limiting the amount of calories you eat.

I take my expenses (listed every month - bills etc) and my income (same everymonth) minus them and put the rest right into savings.

I put $280 a month into an envelope for groceries for the month (before we were spending about 350) and when its gone....its gone. No more food. It forces you to budget, to buy the cheaper items, to cut couppons etc.

Our "spending money" is also put into an envelope and that is money to spend on things that we do not have to have. For example, if we rent a car or buy any gas it comes from our spending money, so does clothes, going out to eat or whatever.

Also, forces you to make cuts etc.

Helped me go from breaking even every month to saving 40-50% of my take home pay. I dont need quicken because I have cash an in envelope in my safe.

Everybody's got an opinion on money but most people dont have any. I dont take money advice from poor people for the same reason I dont buy Dr. (fatass) phils diet book.

cheers.

All I know is that you can quicken yourself right into poverty.

Tracking your expenses is not even remotely close to budgeting and controlling them. Its like writing down how many calories you eat without limiting the amount of calories you eat.

I take my expenses (listed every month - bills etc) and my income (same everymonth) minus them and put the rest right into savings.

I put $280 a month into an envelope for groceries for the month (before we were spending about 350) and when its gone....its gone. No more food. It forces you to budget, to buy the cheaper items, to cut couppons etc.

Our "spending money" is also put into an envelope and that is money to spend on things that we do not have to have. For example, if we rent a car or buy any gas it comes from our spending money, so does clothes, going out to eat or whatever.

Also, forces you to make cuts etc.

Helped me go from breaking even every month to saving 40-50% of my take home pay. I dont need quicken because I have cash an in envelope in my safe.

Everybody's got an opinion on money but most people dont have any. I dont take money advice from poor people for the same reason I dont buy Dr. (fatass) phils diet book.

cheers.

I doubt that many people who have gone to the trouble of setting up and using Quicken have "quickened their way into poverty". Unless you track your expenses you can't really plan a meaningful budget. Your cash in envelope scheme is rather crude and unwieldy especially for large sums of money and doesn't really work well in tracking expenses. I wouldn't want to have to run home and count the cash in my safe to know how much money I had. Firing up Pocket Quicken on my Treo seems much more efficient.

I am not sure who you are calling poor but if you were referring to me you needn't worry. I am certainly not worrying about spending an extra $70 on groceries a month.

money as debt... (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279&hl=en)
interesting vid. just found it, so i haven't really cross checked it yet, but seeing as i try to operate with as low a debt burden as i can i can say that i'm not being a very supportive cog of the economy. :eek:

Thats a bunch of BS.

I heard a guy call Dave Ramsey one day saying he was going to finance a new car because it was 0% interest.

Dave said, "hey your car is going to be depreciating by a couple hundred dollars per month.....thats NOT ZERO PERCENT."

ha ha ha

I think anyone with true money managing skills does not borrow money. There are those who pretend to have money skills but Im a believer in paying cash for things or waiting.

There are many, many folks who were going to cut a fat hog in the ass by buying too much house on credit.......now they find out the bank really owns the house and they have no where to live.


OK, official troll certification here. You are simply moralizing about other peoples' lives. If you were advocating managing one's own life to the point that you have the cash on hand to pay cash IF that's the most economical option, I would take you more seriously.

Ever heard of low interest financing? Or, when the car manufacturers get really desperate, no-interest financing? Or arbitrage? Or investments that earn a higher rate of interest than what you pay on your car loan?

I hope you're not one of these cyclists who runs stop signs or rides against traffic on a one way street.

OK on to the main topic of political hypocrisy.

I honestly don't see what Giuliani ever did to promote car-free living, But he definitely used transit. So I don't really see hypocrisy, just a rather flaccid approach to funding and promoting transit and other non-car projects.

Bloomberg is a different story, but let's face it, it is a little embarrassing to be above taking the local in order to get to the express, especially when you have a reasonably fast transit system as opposed to some I could mention. Still, on the Lexington line, I'm willing to cut him a bit of slack until such point as the crowding is alleviated by the 2nd Avenue line -- if, that is, he really continues to makes a serious effort to get non-car transportation projects delivered.

I like Mayor Daley with his pro-bike policies, although the contribution the city of Chicago makes directly to transit from fees/tourist taxes/property taxes is embarrassingly small, and as we've all seen the sales tax is no longer doing the job.

No politician is perfect, but while there are clear cases of slacking with all the names mentioned here, I'm not sure there is a clear-cut case of car-free hypocrisy with any of these three -- just enough backsliding to remind us that we need to keep challenging them to do more.

I personally think there's a case to be made for funding car-free projects from the property tax, given that the one thing we clearly know about transit routes and bike routes is that they raise the value of neighboring property.

When I started this thread I wasn't intending it to be political. But since we got off on a bit of a tangent I will say the one thing Rudy did to make car free living easier was he made the subways in New York a heck of a lot safer!!!!

I remember riding the subways to high school before Rudy was mayor in the early 1990's and believe me it was scary and dangerous. The dramatic reduction in crime he orchestrated made it a lot easier and safer for people to ride mass transit in New York.

I also think by making New York safer he helped reverse the urban flight to the more car dependent lifestyle of the suburbs. After all the more people who live in the City means less people who need to commute by car from the suburbs.

As far a pro bike policies, let me say dramatically reducing the risk that my bike gets stolen is as far as I am concerned a very pro bike policy. These days I feel perfectly safe riding my bike at night through neighborhoods that 15 years ago I wouldn't have felt safe walking through during the day.

I am not saying Rudy would be a good or bad President. I do know as Mayor he was a big advocate for increased Federal funding for mass transit. I just hope that if he was elected president he would use his experience as Mayor of NYC to push to transfer more federal dollars from road construction to mass transit spending.

When I started this thread I wasn't intending it to be political.


Give me a break. Nobody is this naive.


:D

When I started this thread I wasn't intending it to be political. But since we got off on a bit of a tangent I will say the one thing Rudy did to make car free living easier was he made the subways in New York a heck of a lot safer!!!!

I remember riding the subways to high school before Rudy was mayor in the early 1990's and believe me it was scary and dangerous. The dramatic reduction in crime he orchestrated made it a lot easier and safer for people to ride mass transit in New York.




debatable that rudy should be credited with this.

there's the controversial freakonomics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime) concept, then the general reinvestment of big business into the core of manhattan, and a general rise in the stock market and economy that brought more people back to the city.

more people making decent money (and staying) in the city would bring down crime just as effectively as any one politician's goals and edicts. more people = more taxes = more accountability required by the police to take care of their neighborhoods.

i wasn't there when the subway was scary... i was there in the mid 90's to the late 90's when things for the most part seemed pretty tame from when i visited even as late as the early 90's. when walt disney moves into times square and pushes out the sex shops, you know something is happening.



as to your claim that you didn't want to make this political - you used the words "car free", "rudy", and "president" in the title of this post. how you couldn't see it coming is beyond me.

You should have seen the massive SUV he was tooling around in with a large entourage of other vehicles when he visited Riga. If you think he lives a carfree lifestyle, or cares about people being carfree, you're dreaming.

Do you really think anybody with ambitions in DC has any real concerns as to the living of a car-free lifestyle?
Kerry certainly does not.
Edwards is a joke.
Certainly can not claim the Clintons would be car-free.
Gore? Worst of them all.
Any republicans are just as bad if not worse as far as supporting of this life style for all americans.

as to your claim that you didn't want to make this political - you used the words "car free", "rudy", and "president" in the title of this post. how you couldn't see it coming is beyond me.

What I meant by wasn't trying to be political was I wasn't trying to advocate for one candidate or another when I started the thread.

Do you really think anybody with ambitions in DC has any real concerns as to the living of a car-free lifestyle?
Kerry certainly does not.
Edwards is a joke.
Certainly can not claim the Clintons would be car-free.
Gore? Worst of them all.
Any republicans are just as bad if not worse as far as supporting of this life style for all americans.

Check out Sen. Mike Gravel from Alaska, a Democratic candidate. He says we can get America off gasoline in 5 years and off carbon in 10.

Check out Sen. Mike Gravel from Alaska, a Democratic candidate. He says we can get America off gasoline in 5 years and off carbon in 10.

off carbon..how?
even if you used all bio diesel, that's carbon....its made from veggie oil..which is medium and long chain fatty acids. The chains are carbon chains.
Ethanol...carbon.
Natural Gas...carbon.

So, where's that energy coming from?

off carbon..how?...So, where's that energy coming from?
Electrification of transportation is one good possibility. Electricity can be generated by non-carbon means like wind, solar or nuclear.

Electrification of transportation is one good possibility. Electricity can be generated by non-carbon means like wind, solar or nuclear.

That's a long way's off.
Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to a less oil/coal dependent energy but I don't think its technically and economically feasible at the moment. Current electrification of transportation is majority coal based. Some energy companies have requested and are persuing nuclear facilities, but that's gonna take 15 years to get online. Unless something changes on the demand side, that will just barely meet the projected growth as is...throw in electrified transportation and it may not be sufficient.

Wind...great if you are in the right place...sucks if you are not in a windy area.

Solar...I'm watching this area with interest. I expect that in the future, most houses and other buildings will be built with a PV rooftop. They will all be tied into the grid and thus relying on the power company for times when there is insufficient light.

Will still be a need for coal/gas/diesel fired units though.

off carbon..how?
even if you used all bio diesel, that's carbon....its made from veggie oil..which is medium and long chain fatty acids. The chains are carbon chains.
Ethanol...carbon.
Natural Gas...carbon.

So, where's that energy coming from?
Liquid hydrogen produced with solar and wind electricity.

Some excerpts from a Grist interview (http://grist.org/feature/2007/08/07/gravel/) with Gravel:

Carbon tax:
By putting a tax on carbon in the United States, we can offer our leadership to the rest of the world and say, OK, you put a carbon tax on your people, and then we'll pool all this money together and we'll use it to integrate the global scientific and engineering communities to get us off of carbon within a decade. Nobody would be permitted to join this international effort unless they put a carbon tax on their people also.


Liquid hydrogen to replace coal and oil:
One of the things we can do is take electricity from windmills, run it through water, and have hydrogen. What is now possible is that we can turn around and have hydrogen liquid. And by altering the technology of our existing cars and gas stations, they can be used to run on and distribute hydrogen liquid. Oh, it blows you away. This can probably be done within five years.

Outlaw coal powered electricity:
You've got to do away with coal. What you can do is outlaw these coal-fired plants and turn them into hydrogen power plants.... But I'm told it's not a big deal to tweak gas stations so that you can come up with a truck, dump the liquid hydrogen in there, and pump it in your car. So we shift everything over to liquid hydrogen and there's no more pollution. The trick is, you've got to produce the electricity to be able to put it through the water to create hydrogen, and you do that with windmills. The technology of windmills is totally replicable. And so now you can put those all over the place where you've got wind, and then later on you can take down those windmills and have another way of doing it.

On ethanol:
What I know about the corn deal, it takes more energy to produce a gallon of biofuel from corn than it does to just use conventional fuel, so that's a negative. Secondly, we have to realize that when we're growing this stuff, we may be displacing the whole distribution of food throughout the world.

Sustainable economy (sounds like he read McKibben's book):
It's more complex than that. Our total economy is based upon growth, growth, growth. Well, there comes a time when you destroy so you can have growth.

I want to change our system of revenue from an income tax to a sales tax. That would change this country from a consuming nation to a savings nation. If we begin to look upon growth from a savings point of view, we could do more in the short run with respect to global warming. Our country right now spends more than we earn, and we're on our way to bankruptcy.



BTW, if Giuliani would be the first carfree president, Gravel would probably be the first carlight one with a simple-life philosophy. From the Grist interview:

We drive a Camry -- we're a one-car family -- but often I use the subway. I also use the train and the bus. My wife read that the bus has the least environmental impact of all public transport. The worst, of course, is the private jet that my fellow candidates all run around on.

My wife and I live in an apartment in Rosslyn, Va., on the 14th floor. We're renters, we don't have enough wherewithal to be able to own something like that -- I didn't get out of the Senate any better [financially] than I went in. Obviously, I've got the ability to go and become wealthy, but that's not what has moved me through my life.

Thanks for the post and link...I'll have to read it when I get a chance.
I will tell you this though...I'm skeptical of the liquid hydrogen approach at this point. It takes a lot of energy to liquify hydrogen and a lot of energy to keep it that way.
Not saying it won't happen...just that I have to do more research on it.

Thanks for the post and link...I'll have to read it when I get a chance.
I will tell you this though...I'm skeptical of the liquid hydrogen approach at this point. It takes a lot of energy to liquify hydrogen and a lot of energy to keep it that way.
Not saying it won't happen...just that I have to do more research on it.

Same here. I didn't know anything about Gravel until a couple weeks ago, and I still don't know much. But one thing is clear--he's the only original thinker in either party right now (Besides maybe Dodd).

Same here. I didn't know anything about Gravel until a couple weeks ago, and I still don't know much. But one thing is clear--he's the only original thinker in either party right now (Besides maybe Dodd).


This is why I wont vote dem. or rep. but I don't want to get this moved to P&R, so I'll leave it at that.

What I meant by wasn't trying to be political was I wasn't trying to advocate for one candidate or another when I started the thread.

ok... but this thread is loaded. :eek:

This is why I wont vote dem. or rep. but I don't want to get this moved to P&R, so I'll leave it at that.

I wonder if the mods would let us get away with a "nonpartisan" thread about the candidate's stands on issues that are related to carfree--like environment, energy policy and urban planning. It would be helpful to me to find out what others on this forum--right or left--think about the candidates.

In response to the solar transportation...I can't find the freakin' link but I saw a design idea for an elevated track where small (4-6) passenger cars are suspended from the mono rail and the top of the mono is covered by high powered solar panels. It would not be for everywhere and I don't recall what happened at night or in the less than sunny areas but it was an interesting concept. The pods were computer controlled and loaded at some type of elevated station then joined the ones already on the track.

Aaron:)

In response to the solar transportation...I can't find the freakin' link but I saw a design idea for an elevated track where small (4-6) passenger cars are suspended from the mono rail and the top of the mono is covered by high powered solar panels. It would not be for everywhere and I don't recall what happened at night or in the less than sunny areas but it was an interesting concept. The pods were computer controlled and loaded at some type of elevated station then joined the ones already on the track.

Aaron:)


i think you are talking about personal rapid transit, with a solar twist.
its a boondoggle and infrastructure / energy / systems nightmare from all i've read.

to me prt means a bike. :)

check out some of these links:
wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit)
prt (http://www.cprt.org/)

asce (http://cedb.asce.org/cgi/WWWdisplay.cgi?0510728)
prt is a joke (http://www.roadkillbill.com/PRTisaJoke.html)
dump mark olson (http://dumpmarkolson.blogspot.com/)
critical views of prt (http://avidorstudios.com/PRTcritics.html) (including a letter by one of my favorite pro bike cartoonists, andy singer (http://www.andysinger.com/))

http://www.andysinger.com/images/samples/zeroemissionvehicle.gif

bmike,
Thanks for the reading...I will catch up on all the links next rain day I get:p I don't recall where I saw it or linked from it, and didn't do any follow up...sounds like another goverment boondoggle in the making.;)

Aaron:)

Same here. I didn't know anything about Gravel until a couple weeks ago, and I still don't know much. But one thing is clear--he's the only original thinker in either party right now (Besides maybe Dodd).

Don't know 'bout Gravel either but met Senator Dodd last night and he signed a copy of his book, Letters from Nurenberg for me at a bed and breakfast in town where the candidate met with the local gentry. A very good speaker and intelligent fellow.

I've ridden beside our mayor before while he was cycling to city hall (I don't think he does this every day, but at least he does this sometimes).

Don't know 'bout Gravel either but met Senator Dodd last night and he signed a copy of his book, Letters from Nurenberg for me at a bed and breakfast in town where the candidate met with the local gentry. A very good speaker and intelligent fellow.

If you want to know about a candidate, ask somebody from Iowa or New Hampshire.

I guess Gravel hasn't campaigned there much because he has no money. You might be interested in some of his ideas. Here's my limited understanding of a couple of them:
"Empower the people" with less power in the legislature and the executive, and more reliance on government by initiative.
Replace all present taxes with a 20 to 25 per cent federal sales tax. Then give annual rebates to people based on their incomes.
All troops out of Iraq within 120 days.

Actually, I always thought that replacing the income tax with VERY high sales tax on gasoline (and a cash rebate for low income people) would solve a lot of problems.

Both economic conservatives and liberal enviornmentalist could support such an idea. It would encourage less driving and the use of more public transport while being pro growth at the same time.

Actually, I always thought that replacing the income tax with VERY high sales tax on gasoline (and a cash rebate for low income people) would solve a lot of problems.

Both economic conservatives and liberal enviornmentalist could support such an idea. It would encourage less driving and the use of more public transport while being pro growth at the same time.

How about a high carbon tax (say $50 per ton) and an equivalent reduction in the income tax? People and corporations won't be spending more net dollars on taxes, just paying them in a different way. You might discourage pollution without disrupting the economy. People would have money to invest in alternative energy startups, which would probably boom.

This is known as a revenue-neutral carbon tax. It's possible to get both conservatives and progressives to support it, maybe.

If you want to know about a candidate, ask somebody from Iowa or New Hampshire.
Yep. Previously met Edwards and Obama in town too.

Yep. Previously met Edwards and Obama in town too.

The Democratic candidates are boycotting Michigan because we're trying to steal your thunder, so Bill can camapign here but Hillary can't. But the GOP had a debate in Dearborn today.

"The wheels of the bicycle turn for liberals and conservatives alike." There's a little political zen for you all. Bicycling as a "cause" is not helped by knee jerk diatribes for the left or right.

"The wheels of the bicycle turn for liberals and conservatives alike." There's a little political zen for you all. Bicycling as a "cause" is not helped by knee jerk diatribes for the left or right.
Here are a couple "zens" for you (although I think you meant "koan" (http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Akoan&ie=UTF-8)):

A. Since you have a strong knee-jerk reaction against politics, why did you open a thread that contains, as mentioned, the words Giuliani, President and carfree?

B. What is a "cause" of bicycling? And what is a result?