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Hotel and other travel related taxes are popular in destination states because "other people" pay them and largely can't vote against them. Florida does the same thing with hotels, rental cars, and theme park tickets. It works in Florida and California, but not so much in Iowa. Tolling roads doesn't necessarily mean lower gas taxes. Illinois and PA routinely compete for second highest gas taxes in the country and here in PA we have the highest cost per mile toll road in the world. Part of that is because the turnpike was privatized and the money squandered, so now the state probably will be bailing them out.

One more place I want to go. Our Debate team hosted Students from Rwanda once, it was a great event. I would love to visit the country.

This is a good thing, actually. For both you and Paulino, I want to visit Italy but I want to go right after I retire, while I am still young enough to hike and walk a lot, and also while I am able to afford to spend 6-8 weeks exploring the country. I think the slow fall of the dollar, the decline of empathy for our fellow Americans, the decline in common sense, the propensity for California to over extend itself, the desertification of the southwest, the continued industrial decline of the US, a ton of negative factors will kind of eff California over. Interesting your comments on Expats, because I damn sure intend to become one.

I read the whole post with a lot of interesting situations, but this stood out. First, to be fair, my not so great experience was in and around Pescara, which is Abruzzo. Except that Dean Martin and Madonna have their ancestral roots there, not many people talk about it. It's shielded by the mountain range, which is very high, but only 2.75 hours directly across from Rome and on the sea. My parents have never said anything negative about this region. They sure have about other regions! In fact, because my dad was at work, some Abruzzese family friends came over to pick up my mom when her water broke to have me. My dad joined up a few hours later. I already mentioned the normal Airbnb. As for the really negative Airbnb, it was a problem with the water. In a week, hot water arrived in 15 minutes on 3 days, didn't come at all on 2 days, and would run hot and cold while I was in the shower. I had gotten a temporary fitness center membership and there were a couple Airbnbs near it. I didn't like her face and I was right. She was attractive but there was something pathological about her, in addition to looking like a "lipstick," even though she was married. I took her unit because it was on an upper floor. A very normal looking guy had an Airbnb, but with too many floor to ceiling doors at ground level, with bars. With all my stuff and documents, I didn't want that. Studying faces is something that people should do with their gut. My friend in San Diego told me to turn her in to Airbnb. I did and she had to cough up a partial refund. I then looked at reviews on both ends, and she only had problems with guys and it was about the utilities. She was trying to pin the blame on the solar roof panels. In a building built in the '80s or '90s, those are now reliable technology. The reality is that I've had a lot of problems with hotels, gyms, etc. with climate control. They are the cheapest bastards when it comes to utilities. The warm season may come on very early in June and they don't turn on the central air throughout an entire hotel or they don't turn it up as high as would be optimal for comfort at a gym. My father would say that they are "morti di fame" or "pezzenti." It's ubiquitous. As for their personalities, the people of Abruzzo are very flat. They exhibit very little voice modulation. They are not too interested in anyone who is not from there, and ask, "How is it that you're in our region?" Sicilians never ask that. They've had 6 major ancestral groups occupy them and they know they have a beautiful island. The other thing some Abruzzese do is speak to you in their crappy English if they notice the slightest inflection. Most other Italians in big population centers don't do that. In the hospitality industry in a more economically advanced area, it would be considered rude, almost as if correcting you, and they know better. I had this one waiter at a hotel restaurant where I had already ordered with the main waiter and was eating my pasta. He had also seen me at breakfast. He looked like Mr. Clean, but with a mustache. I'm sitting here eating dinner and he came over and asked in his awful vowel-rich English: "Would you like a glass of wine?" I went off! The other thing is that, what if the person is French, Dutch, Polish ... then what? You start up in English? They have a Union Jack rammed right up their asses. They have this thing with "Inghilterra," as if that's the only place that produces Anglophones. There was a coffeehouse I really liked in Abruzzo where I would take my laptop. The slogan attributed to the people of this region is "forte e cortese," which they probably are, but, except for this one girl who worked there and was always happy to see me and addressed me by name, the other employees were dull. You would see the typical turtlenecked 40 something women with young kids in there and even younger people with not much voice modulation who all seemed as boring as watching paint dry. I asked a few people outside the region about this. One guy in Rome who owned a pizzeria said, "They've been there forever, have never moved around, and everyone is related and knows everyone." One Sicilian guy who lives there and is married to a local woman started talking about the locals and looked to the heavens and rolled his eyes. Yet, I barely went into this local bar in Southeastern Sicily to get a snack, a granita, and mess with my phone and, within about 3 visits, the people behind the counter would recognize me and kid with me. I got a haircut at a place in Sicily I found on Google and they were all goofy ... in a good way. The same was true at a Conad supermarket in Sicily where they had a lunch cafeteria I'd patronize. But I also told them my parents were from the area. I agree with your observation but it's hit and miss in the north. Across the top, all the regions are hard on outsiders living there, but those from the Veneto (more than just Venice, as you know) have always been more friendlier than the others. People from the Veneto have always been great to me. In north-central, Emilia-Romagna has a stellar reputation for being the most welcoming and is like an island that regard. Maybe having the University of Bologna there causes that open mindedness. My cousins who live in pissy Florence which, beyond the historic places, is not at all nice and they were born and raised there. They said that a newcomer to Florence would have a hard time being absorbed yet 1 hour north, in Bologna (obviously Emilia-Romagna) they could work their way into being absorbed by the area and feel pretty good about living there. A lot of more insular Italians keep foreigners at bay, even if from a EU country. I don't think that happens if a Spaniard or Frenchman has a professional position in a multi-national firm in Milan or Turin. If you are raised in America, your accent may be fairly close, but not enough to broadcast the news. I was in Catania and had accidentally taped myself conversing with a local lady by not shutting off the video. The accent is a hair off only on certain words, but not like that of someone from a country where they would not speak a Romance language. With southerners, it's usually more of a cadence than it is an accent. A Roman waiter said, 'yeah, you look "American," but you speak well and the Sicilian cadence can be heard.' I thanked him for that comment. I have been to Puglia once, in 2022. I wanted to see Bari, Polignano al Mare, and Alberobello. The people were nice and I had no problems. Bari once had a bad "port city" reputation and it has now been cleaned up. As for the expats, there are some funky ones. The ones who have the background, such as parents and grandparents, and go back and forth and are now living there tend to be normal. Some of the other ones who have no Italian roots are weird AF. Some have left the workforce too early and are trying to sell their services like translating and being bird dogs for realtors and car rental places. Others are living in the most rural communities up in the hills or mountains and trying to be artists or writers, growing their own food, driving beaters, and having babies delivered by a midwife ... and, even if they speak English, I could not relate to them. Some of the most insular Italians live along the Adriatic and in the Golfo di Taranto north of the touristic places in Puglia and south of Ancona. In other places in the north, they're not dumb, but snobbish. In Valle d'Aosta and Sud-Tyrol up at the top, respectively, they associate with France and Austria, and downplay being Italian. For being 2/3 the size of California, it's a big head trip. My dad was super proud of both Italy and Sicily but, after living in the U.S. for so long, said that Italians in Italy can be "una massa di pavoni." A friend from Madrid acknowledges that the Iberians also see Italians as having an annoying "pavo real" problem. I wasn't planning on responding in so much detail, but I got rolling.

I wouldn't say I feel concerned, but I wonder about the topic because I tend to analyze most things in practical and tangible terms. State and local governments are trying to balance budgets. For states who don't charge income tax or sales tax, I wonder how the other sources pencil out. I know that California gas prices are absurd principally because of the gas taxes to pay for a good and extensive road network with not much in the way of tolling. One thing that makes me feel less "sorry" for them are the hotel charges and guest taxes that people pay. These are often in the 14% to 18% range. A lot of people fill up hotels, whether motels, airport hotels, or fancy downtown hotels. Think of all the revenue that brings in and how it can pay for stuff.

The tests get harder regularly.

There are two 3500s with some years of overlap. The earlier one called the LX9, you are correct, is built on the 3400 block and was offered from 2004 - 2007. This one traces it history to the 3.1 from 1994, and even earlier to the 2.8 from 1980. This one made about 200 hp and between 215 - 220 lb-ft of torque depending on application. The later one started production in 2006 and ran through 2010 as the LZ4 and is entirely unrelated to the earlier one aside from name. It was all new. It is a 3900 with a sightly shorter stroke. This one came with Variable Valve Timing. The blocks of the 3500 VVT and 3900 are basically identical. Horsepower rating changed almost yearly, starting at 211, jumping to 224, then back down to 219 or 217. There is a variant of this (LZE) for flex fuel rated at 211 horsepower and only available in the Impala and Monte Carlo. To make things simple</s>, GM named ALL of these engines the 3500 High-Value engine, though the LZ4 and LZE are also sometimes referred to as 3.5 liter with VVT. The 3900 has all of that plus roller rocker arms (smoother) and a variable length intake manifold. While horsepower maxed out at 240, it has a nearly turbocharged-like torque curve with at least 90% of max torque (240 lb-ft) available from 1500 - 5500 rpm. It had active fuel management and could run on 3 cylinders in certain years, only in the Impala