Rasta Rants

Before I start I must declare that I am a Ferrari owner, racer and lover. As such Porsche is normally an arch enemy. Most of the faithful from each camp very rarely see eye to eye and often avoid each other like the plague. So for me to write this piece on Porsche is a stretch and proves once and for all, above all I am just a true lover of all cars! Porsche has to be respected for their longevity, their racing prowess and their myopic market focus. Porsche's have been racing and winning for as long as I can remember and while they are not a Ferrari their racing pedigree is remarkable. Initially their claim to fame was the basic 911. This is still their bread and butter car and over the decades has been improved markedly. But I am not going to focus on the 911, the Panamera or Cayenne. Today I want to discuss the smaller, younger cousins - the Cayman and the Boxster. These two "entry level" Porsches are worth writing about. Porsche first made the Boxster in 1997 in an...

My wife and I are thrilled that we will graduate the 3rd of our 4 boys with a college degree next week. This is a mammoth undertaking and we are blessed we have been able to accomplish this. Less than 17% of the US population has a four year degree and with the current rising costs of a college degree we worry this figure will get worse. A four year degree is critical to compete in the ever more competitive world economy but it is getting much harder to get. This combined with the tremendous debt that students are accumulating to get a degree, should be a huge national concern. Here are some current education statistics that should frighten all of us: Between 1982 and 2007 US family income grew by 147% and college costs went up 440% According to Bloomberg research, college tuition has gone up over 1120% in the last 30 years. Healthcare only rose 601% in the same time frame and we all consider that an outrage. AP reports that just between 2008 and 2010 tuition went up ov...

Well I have learned a very interesting lesson over the last month. Based on my blog stats it is obvious that my readers are much more interested in what I have to share about cars than current events of the day. Shocking as this may sound the views of my car posts is averaging nearly 5 times that of my regular business/political commentary. So who am I to argue - give the people what they want! To that end I have had many of my younger readers ask me about cool cars below $25,000. They liked my piece on Best Cars under $30K but they want "cool". Well since  I  am no longer young or cool I am thrilled that they would ask for  my opinion. I am blessed with four sons who are all cool and love cars so I have some guidance. With that disclaimer here goes. The List is in order of what I think are the coolest. These are my Top Ten Cool Cars Under $25,000: The Scion FRS This is the first true sports car under $30K since the Mazda Miata came out 25 years ago. This is a great...

This title is hard to say let alone accept but here we are. Earth Day is April 22 and I thought we should take a look at Green Cars. Perhaps it is better to say Greener Cars. As there are many one off and experimental autos out there that I will not address. I mean production cars that pro port to be "green". I find the whole green thing to be very interesting and sometimes hilarious. For example 48 cities in California have banned plastic bags in grocery stores and more are joining daily. (all this in the last few months). I know plastic is very hard to dispose of and I understand the desire to limit its use. I guess my only question is what about recycling? I thought we paid large sanitation bills and segregated all our waste so that plastic could be recycled? In principal I have no issue with doing away with plastic bags in grocery stores but I get pissed when I hear that along with them paper is going too. Yes, LA's new law says after six months plastic is banned an...

I just got back from a week out of the country so there is lots to catch up on. I will address many items but in no particular order. What a week it has been! Boston My thoughts and prayers are with all the families of victims of this horrid tragedy. I can't say I am surprised as I have felt since 9/11 that a sporting event would be a target for these cowardly terrorists. This however stoops to a new low even for these idiots. Creating a bomb that intentionally maimes people by attacking their lower extremities? How vile can you get? A sporting event for the most part never has any lawmakers or government officials that are not heavily guarded so clearly this was aimed at hurting innocent civilians. You know I understand that in the field of war sometimes innocent citizens are killed or injured. I also know that our military does everything it can to avoid this. proof is in the billions we have spent developing systems that allow us to target the enemy specifically. I don...

As a race car driver I know a fair amount about auto safety and believe it or not we do everything possible to be safe when we race. We have specially designed safety features in our cars, we wear protective gear, helmets and use special restraints. We rarely have any serious injuries in our races because of this attention to safety and properly trained drivers. Many states have past laws restricting the use of cell phones in cars. For the most part I applaud these laws. At 60 mph a car can cover 300 feet in just over 3 seconds. That is a football field in 3.4 seconds. So sending a text or trying to dial a 16 digit number could cause a driver to be totally distracted for more than 3 seconds. In that time they could do a lot of damage with a 4000lbs car. So I like the ban on texting and love the laws requiring hands free devices for talking on the phone. Most car manufacturers have responded and are adding more and more hands free or voice activated systems t...

It seems this issue is not going away and that some folks are going nuts about it. America is a country with approximately 300 Million guns. We are hunters, sportsmen and protectors. We have guns in our Constitution for a reason and we accept all the issues that go along with an armed scoiety. Yet many seem to think that rampant gun control is going to stop violence. I have written about this once before but it appears it needs addressing again. Guns don't kill people - people kill each other. We have all kinds of gun control laws being passed or offered up all over the country since the Sandy Hook killings. Some are acceptable and some are just plain stupid. Here are some facts to consider: there were 11078 gun murders in 2010 which is the lowest since 1981 there were 138,336 gun aggrevated assualts in 2011 the lowest rate since 2004 there were 122,300 gun robberies in 2011 the lowest since 2004 Yet gun ownership was up to 88.8 per 100 people in 2007 (last hard stats availa...

I get asked probably three times a week what is the best car under $30,000? I always answer that we are blessed with so many great cars under $30K so there are choices. Actually there are many choices. I decided that it might be helpful to my readers if I provided a list of my top 12 cars Under 30K. Now keep in mind that I am a practical guy but I am also a racer so performance is always going to rate highly with me. I tried to balance my list looking at many criteria. I considered - price, resale value after 3 years, fuel economy, 0-60 times, horsepower/torque, reliability, safety rating, styling and features. Since most have nearly the exact same warranty I did not make that a high priority. I priced all with the standard options (KBB list) to keep things fair. For this list I have not categorized the cars but rather just created a list. I did not consider any trucks or truck based SUV's in this list as I see them as a separate group of vehicles. I hope there will be somethin...

I am deeply concerned about a growing divide in our country. As a very famous quote says - "a house divided must fall." I fear that this national divide that is growing is going to be our demise. While some of this article may sound political it really is not. This is more about stepping back and recognizing what is happening to our country and perhaps suggesting some ways we might fix it. I play with social media because I have to for my job and to keep pace with my large and spread out family. Facebook, Twitter and others provide great communication methods we have never had before and for that I am thankful. However, I think they are a true reflection of what people are thinking and they divide and hatred is running at an all time high. On a side note, I can't believe that some people feel that they need to play out their entire lives on these media but that is a subject for a separate blog. One could argue that these new media have created a single world with inst...

As we enter the new PPACA era I was thinking of all the ways the law does not address the actual cost of health care. I was also thinking about areas where we could have significant impacts on the costs of care without massive system overhauls. There are actually many and I will explore those over the coming days and weeks. Today, I thought we should look at Prescription Drugs. In 2010 we spent nearly $260 Billion on Prescription drugs in the US (about 10% of our health care spend). While the growth rate for prescription drugs has slowed in the last 5 years we still see huge increase from 1999 to 2011 - 43%. We went from about 2.8 billion scripts in 1999 to over 4 billion in 2011. The US population only grew 9% during that same period, showing that we are clearly treating more with drug therapy than ever before. The slowing of the annual growth rate to about 4.3% is a reflection of slower growth in utilization of drugs (part of the recession), increased use of generics at a lower c...