Southeast road crews prepare for winter maintenance work - Juneau Empire

Public Works budgets for an average snow year, but big dumps in the last couple of years have pushed the average up. The city also has a reserve fund for emergencies.

"With global warming and all that, we're actually anticipating higher snow levels the next 10 years," said Buck. "But in Juneau, you never can tell."

National Ledger - Barack Obama - Socialism' Is Not the Problem

But just because Obama is not nearly as bad as his detractors claim doesn't mean we have no worries. His biggest shortcoming is a common one in his party: the assumption that every problem can be solved by government intervention, and that if a little intervention is good, more is better.

His plan on climate change shows the problem. He has a sensible idea -- putting caps on greenhouse gas emissions and letting companies buy and sell the right to pollute. That would discourage harmful activity while leaving market forces to find the most efficient means to that end.

Alas, Obama isn't content to leave it there. He unpacks an array of bright ideas to reduce carbon emissions -- demanding higher fuel economy from automakers, showering money on clean coal technology, giving consumers tax credits for plug-in hybrids, and on and on.

This belt-and-suspenders approach reflects a familiar liberal vice: the insatiable urge to meddle. It's like the team owner offering the coach a generous new contract if he wins the championship -- and then dictating the starting lineup and the play selection for the entire season. It presumes that the government knows in advance the right mix of changes to achieve cleaner energy use at the lowest cost, which neither it nor Stephen Hawking nor anyone else does.