Usually, special front-row parking is reserved for the handicapped or the elderly. Not in Orlando, Florida. There, hybrid vehicle owners are starting to get the same privileges.
An increasing number of Orlando buildings and venues are instituting front-row hybrid-only parking spaces in an attempt to earn “green” building status and reward car owners considered environmentally friendly. Places like the University of Central Florida, Ikea in South Orlando, and the Amway Center are just a few who are giving hybrid’s preferential treatment.
For now, the hybrid-only spots aren’t policed like a handicapped parking spot. But defenders are hoping the public will shame people into compliance.
“Right now this is a promotional thing, so I don‘t think we’re seeing enforcement,” Jon Ippel, the city of Orlando’s sustainability manager, told the Orlando Sentinel. “It’s more peer pressure. Hopefully the evil eyes violators get will force them to comply.“ He went on to call the spots ”sustainable spaces.”
A spokeswoman for the city of Orlando agreed. “There are the social-pressure aspects of it that should restrict it for those people it’s reserved for,” Cassandra Lafser told the Sentinel. She also included “green” parking in the same category as special spots for pregnant women.
“We reserve spaces for guests who have premium seating in the arena, and felt that it was important to also reserve spaces for those guests who are driving hybrid vehicles and/or carpooling to events, to recognize them for doing their part to be environmentally aware,” said UCF Arena Marketing Director Melissa Schaaff.
The hybrid-only parking phenomenon has been gaining traction in recent years. Residents have noticed them popping up at a Chicago Home Depot, a Nevada grocery store, and a North Carolina hotel. Enthusiasts and store owners can even purchase hybrid-only parking signs on Amazon.com.
Not everyone around the country approves, however. Some municipalities are even getting heat for the practice. Fort Collins, CO residents recently got the city to reverse its decision to implement the hybrid-only slots after many complained that the signs amounted to the city telling them what to drive.
Similarly, in Orlando some people are “green” with envy. Especially considering hybrids are generally more expensive than a regular car.
“I have heard that some people didn‘t like it because they question whether it’s fair,” Alexa Stone, program manager for ecoPreserve LLC, an Orlando consulting firm, told the Sentinel. “They think hybrids are expensive and elitist.”
And they are. The Nissan Leaf, for example, sells for around $32,000. That price goes down once taxpayers kick in $7,500 in federal tax subsidies. In contrast, one could purchase a small sedan such as the Hyundai Elantra for around $18,000.
As Kermit once said, “It’s not easy being green.” But in Orlando, it does have its perks.
Read the story from the Orlando Sentinel.
UPDATE:
Commenter CAPT_SPALDING points out that in Nashville, TN hybrid owners now get free parking downtown. WSMV reports:
"The Metro Council voted to approve an ordinance to allow environmentally friendly cars owners to park free in downtown Nashville. The vote happened on the same day as one of the most anticipated “green” cars rolled out in Tennessee.
Hybrid car owners will have to pay a one-time $10 fee, according to the ordinance.”I never have to go to the gas station again,” said Ashley Heeren. [...]
The mayor signed an executive order in 2008 to make Nashville a “greener place,” and one proposal to do that is to offer those who drive environmentally friendly cars free downtown parking at meters.
HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — Western visitors to Zimbabwe are looking for zeros. They’re snapping up old, defunct Zimbabwe bank notes, most notably the one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, as an economic souvenir.
The one hundred trillion Zimbabwe dollar bill, which at 100 followed by 12 zeros is the highest denomination, now sells for $5, depending on its condition. That bill and others — among them millions, billions and trillions, were abandoned nearly two years ago, when the American dollar became legal tender in the hopes of killing off the record inflation that caused all those zeros.
“I had to have one,” said Janice Waas on a visit to the northwestern resort town of Victoria Falls. “The numbers are mind bending.” She got her so-called “Zimdollar” in pristine condition, from a street vendor who usually sells African carvings.
“It’s perfect if you like puzzles, calculus and things like Rubik’s Cube,” she said.
Janice’s husband Thomas Waas, a physicist and engineer from Germany, said if the population of the world is 7 billion people, every single person could be a given thousands of old Zimbabwe dollars from this single 100 trillion note.
Janice Waas said Westerners were buying the bills for their curiosity value. An Australian wanted one to display in his local bar back home.
Street vendors said visitors had been so intrigued by the Zimbabwe bills that they were now running out of them, two years after a power sharing deal between longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe and the former opposition leader, Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, made the old currency redundant.
Visitors from countries familiar with hyperinflation, such as the Congo and other impoverished states in the region and in South America, showed less interest in the highly marked bills. Instead, most bought curios and artifacts, said vendor Lloyd Phiri, speaking on his mobile phone in Victoria Falls.
At the height of Zimbabwe‘s economic meltdown in 2008 when Zimbabwe’s world record inflation was running into the billions in percent annually and prices were climbing each hour, the 100 trillion bill scarcely bought a cart of groceries.
Teachers reported the printing of bank notes from millions to billions and then trillions skewed their pupils’ sense of numeracy, making them fail to grasp the realities of numbers.
On one geography field trip, students scoffed at being told granite rocks swept over Zimbabwe by ancient glaciers were 700 million years old. That time frame seemed insignificant.
Back then in 2008, 700 million Zimbabwe dollars bought a loaf of bread.
Scientists and physicists estimate the number of atoms in the universe at 10 to the power of 80 — 10 followed by 80 zeros.
During the worst of Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown and hyperinflation, Zimbabwe’s highest money denominations were logged at 10 to the power of 25 — 10 followed by 25 zeros — or the equivalent of nearly one third of the number of atoms estimated in the universe.
The central bank then sliced off several zeros, but large transactions were still calculated in quadrillions (15 zeros) and quintillions (18 zeros) until the demise of the local currency.
If you are delayed at an airport during your Zimbabwe trip, play the numbers game, advises Waas, the physicist.
He posed this challenge.
“If the pyramids in Egypt are 5,000 years old, there are 155 billion seconds in 5,000 years and 1,000 billion make a trillion. So how many years are there in 100 trillion seconds?” he said.
Waas said he was still waiting for the correct answer from friends and fellow visitors in Zimbabwe.
"‘Modern, big-government liberalism has come home. The Progressives were the first generation of Americans to criticize the United States Constitution, especially for its limits on government’s scope and ambition. They rejected the American Founders’ classical or natural rights liberalism, offering instead a vision of the modern state as a kind of god with almost limitless power to achieve “social justice.”‘ ~ The Claremont Institute
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More hope and change…
President Obama has already played nearly twice as much golf as Bush’s 32 rounds in 8 years.
And, he still has horrible form.
Pro Golf Talk reported:
"Just days after 9/11, President George W. Bush was filmed golfing. He spoke briefly with the press about Israeli security and ousting terrorists, then infamously said, “Now watch this drive.” Since then, progressive critics railed on President Bush for his golf habit until he gave up the game for the remainder of his presidency in 2003, saying:
“I don’t want to some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander-in-chief playing golf… And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”
With American forces still in Iraq and Afghanistan, a stalled economy, and a host of other issues, Barack Obama is playing even more golf than the last Commander in Chief.
On Thursday, President Obama played his 56th (or maybe 57th) round of golf since becoming President. In his two years of golf over two terms, President Bush played 32 times. That has not only drawn criticism from political reporters and enemies, but also from people in the golf world.
Of course, this comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been following this regime the past two years…
DNC Chairman Tim Kaine admitted that Barack Obama was too busy with “wars and Obamacare” to care about jobs.
The Blaze reported:
Barack Obama is the worst jobs president since the Great Depression.
And, he really could care less. He’s already implementing new job-killing policies through the EPA to further destroy the economy.
Al-Qaeda in Iraq released a statement two weeks ago targeting the Alexandria Coptic Christian Saints Church. The order to “bomb churches during the Christmas holiday” was posted online.
21 Christians were murdered when a car bomb exploded as they were leaving New Year’s Mass.
A man mourns over a family member killed in a car bomb attack on a Christian church in Alexandria on January 1, 2011. A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up outside the Coptic church on Saturday, killing 21 people and wounding 79 others in an attack President Hosni Mubarak said was the work of “foreign hands.” (AFP)
Voice of the Copts reported:
"Al-Qaeda affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq, had ordered its militants to attack Egypt’s Coptic Christians two weeks before a Church was bombed in Alexandria killing 21 people, according to a statement posted on the group’s website.
The website, named the Network of Islamic Glory, carried a statement calling militants to “wake up” and prepare for “bombing churches during Christmas celebrations.”
The making of an explosive device by the ‘Islamic State of Iraq’
“Peace be upon those who follow guidance…We did not forget your heinous action in Egypt and your kidnapping of those Muslim women who chose to discard the illusion of what you call Christianity,” the group said, addressing what it called “the Crusader West.”
“Therefore, I call upon myself and upon every Muslim jealous of the dignity of his sisters to bomb churches during Christmas celebrations, meaning at the time when churches are crowded,” the statement added.
The group mentioned names of many churches to be targeted, including the Coptic Christian Saints Church in Alexandria, which was bombed on Saturday.
What fun!
Rep-Elect Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Rep Michele Bachman (R-MN) were brilliant today on “Face the Nation.”
Libs Anthony Weiner and Debbie Wasserman Schultz were absolutely helpless.
It would have been even better if liberal host Harry Smith would have quit interrupting Michele Bachmann as she pummeled the two most obnoxious and vocal democrats in the US House.
Remember tea partiers: Your work is not done until these two horrid leftists are removed from office.
Wasserman-Schultz has a lot of nerve blaming Bush for the trillion dollar Obama deficit. What an awful woman.
The Hill reported:
Rep.-elect Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) appeared on “Face the Nation” Sunday with Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Chief Deputy Whip Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.).
Kelly, a car dealer, said he was coming to Washington with the perspective of the private sector where it’s “not impressive” to run a business in the red.
“I’m looking to really go to work and work very hard,” Kelly said. “I’ve worked hard all my life, and I’ve done it with my own money. I’ve had my own skin in the game. So I’m, kind of, interested in seeing when you get into a situation where, really, it’s not your money. You can spend anything you want. Just throw the charge card out. In fact, keep raising the debt ceiling as much as you want because you don’t have to worry about paying it back.”
Wasserman Schultz said “what remains to be seen is whether members like Mike Kelly are going to be able to turn their essentially campaign rhetoric into some kind of reality.”
“Because with all due respect to his response, there isn’t any ‘there’ there,” she said. “I mean, we haven’t heard any concrete proposals. Anthony is absolutely right. We’ve only heard attacks on what they don’t like.”
Weiner said “Republicans have come in saying that they’re going to not raise the debt ceiling and they’re going to allow the full faith and credit of the American people to go down the tubes.”
“It’s their ship to run now,” the liberal congressman continued. “This is an adult game now.”
Kelly was asked about the looming debt ceiling vote and the prospect of a government shutdown.
“Speaking as an adult who has always paid his own way, I do understand what happens,” he said. “And raising the debt ceiling to me is absolutely irresponsible. We’ve been spending money for so long that we don’t have and keep saying, well, it’s OK; we’ll just raise taxes; we’ll find it somewhere.
“Tax revenue comes from people who are working, people who are profitable. It does not come from raising tax rates,” Kelly added.
For the Record… 111th Pelosi-Reid Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined: $10,429 Per Person in U.S.
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