Locate an Auto Repair Shop in Byron, Wyoming

The Japan Nukes are being all blown out of place by the mainstream sensationalist media. Unless there is a Nuke plant in the US that is near a coast, we have no need to be concerned. The Earthquake isn't what broke the nukes, it was the following Tsunami that did the damage. The Generators, reactor core, cooling plants, pumps etc. are all shock protected and survived intact. when the wave came through though, it destroyed the generators, which knocked out all the pumps. That is when everything went boom. Here in the US, and elsewhere in the world, most nukes are inland, away from the oceans, and are built to withstand most earthquakes. Believe me, if a Tsunami hits Byron here in IL, We have FAR more things to worry about than that plant. So now all the uneducated masses, IE the politicians, are going to go out of their way to make it even more difficult to bring up a new Nuke plant. All in a knee jerk reaction over a devastating situation in Japan, that I don't think many people ever envisioned actually happening. The good news is Japan techs are starting to bring all the pumps back on line to cool the reactors and cooling pools down.

Hi Everyone: Just completed a road trip from our home on the San Francisco Peninsula to San Diego and back. The Sport Auto Fit worked very well as a freeway cruiser - even better than I thought it would. On the way down, with three of us in the car, we averaged 39.7 (computer) despite going 80-85 mph on Interstate 5. Driving around LA and the Palmdale desert, I was pleasantly surprised to get just under 42, despite climbing a few mountain passes up to about 4k'. I did not baby it. On the way home on highway 101 we got about 37. A beautiful time to drive through California. All green with wild flowers everywhere. Byron

How to earn $3.5 trillion and pay zero taxes The April 2 release of a General Accounting Office report on corporate taxes could hardly have been better timed to get press attention. Just as millions of Americans were filling out their federal 2003 tax forms to beat the April 15 deadline, the GAO study indicated that most corporations owed no taxes from 1996 to 2000, a boom period for corporate profits. Those untaxed corporations earned $3.5 trillion of revenues. Any individual who paid taxes provides more money to run the government than these untaxed firms, says Barry Piatt, spokesman for Sen. Byron Dorgan (D) of North Dakota, who, with Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan requested the study months ago. Next time Congress considers taxation, Senator Dorgan will be hammering at the legal "massive tax avoidance" by companies, promises Mr. Piatt. For years, companies and their representatives, such as the National Association of Manufacturers, have complained that businesses are overtaxed. The latest studies of corporate taxation suggest that, in general, this is not true. "The usual arguments may be baloney," says Piatt. The GAO study found that 71 percent of foreign-controlled corporations operating in the United States paid no taxes in those five years; nor did 61 percent of US-controlled companies. The basic corporate tax rate stands officially at 35 percent. In reality, it's far below that for most companies. And the importance of corporate tax revenues for Uncle Sam has shrunk. That's shown by the numbers. Corporate taxes have fallen from 5 percent of gross domestic product, the nation's output of goods and services, in 1946 to 1.4 percent now. As a percentage of all federal tax revenues, corporate tax payments have declined from 23 percent in 1960 to 13 percent in 1980 and 8 percent today. Using data from the financial statements of publicly traded companies, the average effective tax rate was 12 percent in 2002, down from 15 percent in 1999, and 18 percent in 1995, according to a study by John Graham, a finance professor at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. And Washington is not doing as much as it has in the past to see that companies pay their tax bills. In 2003, the Internal Revenue Service conducted face-to-face audits of only 29 percent of the largest firms - those with assets of more than $250 million. That compares with 34.7 percent in 1999, notes a report by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a government watchdog group. The IRS says it's stepping up tax shelter investigations, and adding 250 examiners to its corporate division this year. In 2003, the effective corporate tax rate probably rose as losses carried over from the last recession ran out and profits soared, Mr. Graham suspects. Yet, he adds, "It is surprising that corporations get away with such a little amount of taxes on average." Other factors reducing the corporate tax burden in recent years include more tax shelters, new tax breaks, and the transfer of profits by multinational companies to low-tax foreign nations, figures Martin Sullivan, an economist with Tax Notes, a prominent tax publication. Companies have also written off the cost of stock options from their tax liability, yet largely ignore their cost in their profit and loss statements. Proposed changes in accounting rules may stop this practice. The issue of corporate taxes was also thrust into the presidential campaign by Democratic Sen. John Kerry's criticisms of President Bush for failing to crack down on corporate tax dodgers. As for Senator Kerry's proposal to trim corporate income taxes by 5 percent, Richard Du Boff, a professor emeritus of economics at Bryn Mawr College, outside Philadelphia, calls it a "bad idea." Kerry has mentioned offsetting any revenue loss by "eliminating tax loopholes that push jobs overseas." con't.............

Way too late for a meaningful response to you since by now you've likely found the culprit...your experience sounded like one I had with a Chevy Beretta in the 1990s...ended up being a spring in the rear drum brakes got dislodged after some service work and was getting jammed between rotating metal in the drum brake assembly...made quite the scream until I stopped or after being in reverse until I figured it out. Hope you got it figured out.

hey byron, so you drove the 09 av avant and have an older a4 avant as well? my question is around the new transmission. i have had 4 audis including an allroad and an 07 a4. all were awesome, the only thing i hate is the transmission- slow to react, downshift and just kinda shitty. anyway, just to clarify what you are saying.... it sounds like you agree on my assessment of the previous model's transmission and are saying that the new transmission is new and better? if so, that may mean that i don't need to go to an a3 with the dsg this time (wish they put that on the a4). please feel free to share your thoughts on your older a4 and the new one if you have anything else to add. i am getting a new car in april and right now am thinking about the a3, a4 avant, bw 328xi, volve v50 type r. also, is it me or did audi really bump up their prices? i was just at the la car show and they seemed to be a bit too high. thanks.