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When I went to book a rental car for a family vacation up to the Adirondacks yesterday, I was surprised to find SUVs renting for less than small cars.

Last week ABC News had a story about how rental agencies were pressuring customers to take the SUVs off their lots. At an Avis in Manhattan, the midsize SUV is the cheapest vehicle available ($421 a week), followed by the standard SUV ($451), then the compact ($501). Oddly the biggest gas-guzzler, the full-sized SUV, is still the most expensive at $854 a week.

In other words, rental car prices have become even more irrational. That means if you're smart you may be able to get yourself a deal. I don't know the exact model they're offering (how many cylinders, etc.), but I could still take a guess at what the cost would be. A midsize SUV at Avis is the Pontiac Vibe, which according to carseek gets 26 mpg in the city and 33 mpg on the highway. That's pretty good mileage. The Vibe actually resembles your common station wagon. In fact, I bet Pontiac gets around to rebranding it that sometime soon.

The mid-sized SUV is a Chevy Trailblazer. We're moving into real SUV territory here. It only gets 16 mpg city / 22 mpg highway. The full-sized SUV is a GMC Acadia, which gets 17 mpg/city -- 26 mpg/highway.

Back to that compact car -- how does that do on gas? Avis uses a Chevy Cobalt. It only gets about 22/33. So, the Vibe SUV gets better mileage than the compact.

Yesterday President Bush signed bills that fund $162 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That brings the total bill to about $650 billion for the Iraq war and roughly $200 billion for Afghanistan. How do you figure out what your financial share of the $850 billion war tab is?

Your share of the bill is impossible to calculate on a general basis, but let's try with some 2006 Census Bureau numbers. If you calculate by the number of individual Americans over 25 (195 million), you get a bill of $4,360. Only 152 million are in the workforce, so that makes the bill $5,592. If we go by households (112 million) it's $7,590.

Where it gets really complicated is that if you make more money, you pay more taxes -- and a higher percent of the taxes you pay go to the federal government, not social security. The Congressional Budget Office divided the population into fifths by their income. The highest fifth (or quintile) made an average $231,000 pre-tax in 2005. They paid 86% of federal income taxes. (This calculation leaves out not only Social Security, but also corporate and excise taxes.) That means the top 20% (or 28 million households) paid 86% of the $850 billion or $731 billion. So the average Iraq and Afghanistan wars bill for those in the top 20% is now $26,100. The top 1%, who make an average $1.6 million pre-tax, pay 39% of income taxes, so their cumulative bill would be $30,136.

With all the trouble the American car industry is having trying to adapt to high fuel prices, it's amazing to see what an 19-year-old kid can do.

Ben Gulak showed off his Uno, which is powered by a wheelchair battery, at the 2008 National Motorcycle Show in Toronto, then was featured on the cover of Motorcycle Mojo Magazine.

Gulak picked up engineering and design basically by himself in high school, at science fairs and from his recently deceased grandfather, who gave him run of a machine shop. He was inspired to build the cycle after being overwhelmed by the pollution he witnessed in China on a 2006 visit.

A couple big stories out today in BusinessWeek and the Los Angeles Times talk about how state and local governments are getting pinched by both high gas prices and falling home values, which cut property tax revenues. They're just as broke as the rest of us. Governments are coming up money-saving schemes that range from creative to despicable. With expenses up and revenues down, governments are hoping to boost other revenues, like traffic tickets and lottery sales. So unless you plan to make up the budget shortfall, watch out.

Twenty-four states are in the red this year, the Times says, quoting stats from the National Conference of State Legislatures. They're cutting the favorite targets of school budgets and public health benefit. Local governments are cutting back on services like buses or parking the bookmobile. Some places are cutting back on all the unnecessary grass-mowing. BusinessWeek says Stillwater, Oklahoma cut its mowing in half, letting parkland turn into prairie. Somewhere Lady Bird Johnson must be smiling.

As much as no one wants to cut back on public safety, for some districts it's inevitable. Cops around the country have to watch their gas spending. Some are switching to alternate vehicles, like golf carts, or just doing foot patrols. Cops in El Paso County, Colo., saw their gas bill climb from $160,000 in 2003 to a projected $700,000 next year, the Times reported, so they stopped car patrols, a move they say will mean they won't be able to catch as many drunk drivers. BusinessWeek says Arizona is going to boost traffic tickets from cameras -- how many speeding tickets can a cop in a golf cart issue -- and stepped up lottery sales. Earlier this year California hatched a new lottery plan and Colorado decided to increase ticket fees. Expect to see these schemes around the country.

If Kellogg Company (NYSE:K) just responded with a sympathetic letter to the thousand of customers complaining that they retired the Hydrox (the older, better, version of the Oreo), they would have won fans. If they just decided to bring the cookie quietly back for all of us who wanted it back, we would have been grateful. (They just announced they'll bring it back "while supplies last" starting in August.) Oh, if only Microsoft were that responsive to people who want to stick with XP.) But now they're having a contest to see who is the biggest Hydrox fan. I am completely delighted.

For only two weeks, you've got a chance to show Kellogg why you're the biggest Hydrox geek in the country. From Monday June 30 to July 14, you send the story of your love affair with Hydrox. Three winners receive a six-month supply of Hydrox cookies. (I'm not sure if that includes the hoarding that Hydrox fans will inevitably do.) They get a trip to New York for the unveiling. Then, oddly, they win a chance to see the closing bell ceremony at the NYSE. A chance, mind you, not a guaranteed ticket to Wall and Broad. Why the four o'clock bell is supposed to be so enticing--and why Kellogg didn't have the juice to get a few more tickets--is beyond me.

Since this is an internet contest, I think they are skewing the odds heavily in favor of the Gen X and Baby Boomer crowd. I'm personally rooting for the heroes of they Hydrox movement. I'm rooting for Kim Burton, who created this online homage to Hydrox. And surely there should be a seat at the table for Paul Lukas who wrote Oreos to Hydrox: Resistance is Futile for Fortune Magazine.

What most excites me about the contest is this: what Hydrox fans are pulling for is a full re-introduction instead of just a nostalgic special edition. The more Kellogg puts into the revival, the more likely that seems. Then all the Hydrox fans win.

The Attorney General proposed some new updates wants to update the American Disabilities Act this month. The changes were greeted mostly as a boon--a potentially expensive one--to disabled people. One provision of the law actually cuts back on accomodations of people who use service animals.

The main problem with this law remains that some businesses feel like they can ignore it and exclude service dogs. I have a friend who is blind and lives in a building for the blind and a store across the street routinely harasses blind people with seeing eye dogs. We are not in some epidemic of bogus service animals, are we? The DOJ worries that we are. The proposed law claims there has been "a proliferation of animal types that have been used as 'service animals,' including wild animals." If an animal is under someone's care and control can it really be called wild? It's not like people are going into McDonald's with seeing eye deer or hearing raccoons, are they?

The new law will clamp down on animals that provide just emotional therapy, not specific physical services. That's fine. Some people were exploiting the rule--though hardly so many that it seems to warrant a federal crackdown.
The new law will also make it more difficult for animals who are not dogs to qualify for service. The law already requires that the animal "be individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability."

Cameron Hughes is an inspiration to underemployed young men everywhere. He's one of those guys who just did what he loved and the money followed. Cameron Hughes found a way to get paid to be the obnoxious, high-spirited guy at the ballpark.

Portfolio Magazine just profiled Hughes, who has somehow parlayed his merry sports antics into cash--and lots of it. Teams like the L.A. Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays pay him about $2,000 a game to go in and whoop the crowd up. Hughes started as a fan and was a mascot in college. He was spotted at a game, got an agent, then word spread in the sports world.

For the teams, this all smacks of desperation--both in having to hire a fan and in outsourcing the job to a guy from Los Angeles. It's like having a professional mourner at a funeral or paying an escort to go with you to your high school reunion. I don't think we'll ever hear of the Chicago Cubs having to hire a super fan like Hughes to sit in the bleachers.

Couldn't the teams find any local yahoo talent? Did the Yankees have to pay Ari Ramirez, the original cow bell man? Are they paying Frying Pan Man now? (I doubt it or he wouldn't be trying to sell a $25 books of Yankees poetry, stories and pictures.) Are the Mets forking over anything to their current Cow-Bell Man, Eddie Boison? I also have to wonder if giving out $2,000 worth of beer would create as much cheer. Maybe some entrepreneurial kids should start getting themselves noticed at sleepy ballparks this summer and see if they end up with a job.

The Supreme Court's decision today to overturn 69 years of case law on gun issues was not really a surprise, given its down the middle voting record. They went for something kind of middle of the road, weaselly really: they claim that the individual has a right to bear arms, but that it's somehow not an absolute right; the government can put reasonable restrictions on that right.

This ambiguity is inviting a boatload of challenges from anybody facing a gun charge in any jurisdiction across the country. When the Bush administration started throwing around the theory that the Second Amendment gave individuals the right to own any gun they wanted, the New York Times covered how defense lawyers immediately took up the cause, clogging the courts with Second Amendment challenges. Even the most hardened members of groups like Gun Owners of America, which thinks the NRA is weak, may pause before wiping out every weaponry law. Do we want felons owning machine guns? If the court had suddenly decided that the right to bear arms was both individual and absolute, imagine what would happen to our entire justice system?

I'm not going to get into debating the Second Amendment. I could write a book on the subject. And have. I do think the the justices, while giving in to the idea of individual right to gun ownership, also gave into reasonable regulation of guns. The justices write that "Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited." Then they say that other courts have already decided it's OK to ban carrying guns, bringing guns to school or "laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms." While other rights only have small restrictions (you can't cry fire in a crowded theater, etc.), the restrictions they're putting on the right to bear arms are pretty large. Imagine if they thought the same way about religion (The government might say Catholicism was okay, but snake-handling was going too far.) The decision might be the right one for a political compromise and might even reflect the ambivalence we feel as a country, but if you're running a state or local government, you better get ready to spend some money defending your gun laws.

The Rand Corporation just came out with news saying severely cutting our dependence on oil, gas and coal is going to be harder than they intially reported. When Rand did the same study in 2006 and came out with more favorable results, it was because of an error in the computer model. Rand was calculating how hard it would be to cut 25% of our energy to renewable resources by 2025 for the Energy Future Coalition. They run the group 25 by '25, which is trying to make that metric a rallying cry and goal.

Rand says that the getting there will require "dramatic progress in renewable energy technology." They also hint that they would like to get rid of ethanol subsidies, though they aren't counting on it. They're huge fans of the potential for biomass. They'd really like to see the country to switch from making ethanol from corn--which is highly inefficient, though popular with farmers--to making it with agricultural and wood waste or switchgrass.

For many people the report will be a re-affirmation of the obvious: we can't just count on natural progress to reduce energy waste. That's the kind of thinking in President Bush's goal to cut greenhouse gas by 2025 -- but only after letting it go much higher for the next 10 to 15 years. Both major presidential candidates have indicated they're willing to be more serious about the project. Rand thinks the free market may produce some better alternatives now that gas is so expensive. The Rand report also thinks some kind of requirement for renewable energy isn't a bad idea to foster the market--as long as it's phased in sensibly. Right now only 9.5% of our electricity and 1.6% of our motor vehicle power comes from renewable sources. That is a long way to go to 25%.

An editor of mine used to say that he could tell if someone was new to financial journalism because they would eventually suggest a story on barter as the next big thing. Luckily I'm blogging, not journalizing, now so I can mention Swaptree.com, which wants to be the Ebay or Amazon of people sending each other the junk they don't use anymore.

Swaptree is trying to be a true barter site. There are plenty of barter lite sites out there. There's Tradeaway.com, FrugalReader.com, and others that specialize in music. They mainly use some kind of point system (so it's just another version of currency) or charge per listing. Or both. There is the old fashioned Yankee Swop in Yankee Magazine, but it has the desperate quality of those personal ads looking for someone the writer saw on a train in the rain. You just can't believe the specific right person will read the ad and fulfill the wish. Will the guy who owns "Yankees memorabilia picture" really find an owner of a 1974 Buick LaSabre willing to trade? No, probably not. That's why we have currency.

Swaptree does aim to be a little different. You simply list a bunch of stuff you want and a bunch of stuff you want to get rid of. If any matches up--or even matches in a three-way triangle swap--you'll hear about it. But because there's no point system all your stuff is basically worth one point. You can't swap two cruddy paperbacks for one good hardcover; Swaptree can't handle that. You can only do one-for-one swaps. I put some items on there, but I think I'll still end up just stacking my old books in my building lobby to see if my neighbors want them.

If you're the kind of driver who has been spending more and more on car washes in the last few years, you may be thinking of cutting back on all that expensive detailing now that money is tight. I talked with a few car wash experts about what you really need and what really pays off in car washing.

The average car gets washed four times a year, says Mark Thorsby, executive director of the International Carwash Association, which, to no one's surprise, recommends a more frequent cleaning of once or twice a month. Car owners have always had a wide range of what they consider the acceptable level of cleanliness and care for their cars.

Many mix-up the at-home and professional cleaning, depending on the season and occasion. They may get the car cleaned after winter or before a wedding. And a few only begrudgingly go only as often as they take themselves to the dentist or doctor-once a year.

"On the other extreme, we have customers in the real estate business who are washing the car every day because they're picking clients up," says Bruce Milen, owner of Jax Kar Wash, a collection of Detroit area car washes that his family started in 1950, with a downtown car wash that was open 24-hours and cost $1. His operation offers a kind of frequent washer program for these obsessive cleaners: for a flat yearly fee they get unlimited washes.

If you own real estate in New York, you have been no doubt telling yourself and anyone who would listen that prices here were not going to fall like they were in the rest of the country. Limited supply, increasing urbanization of the country, enduring appeal, tight co-op loan restrictions were probably among your reasons. And if you looked at rental or sale real estate ads for the city, where some studios rent for $4,000 a month or sell for $600,000, you would not worry about a downturn. But now some data suggests New York may not be totally immune.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Index out yesterday showed home prices in 20 major markets were down an average 15.3% from a year ago and 1.3% in the latest month of survey data, April. Yesterday the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise said that nationally home prices fell 0.8% in April and 4.8% over the last year. The Pacific region lost the most--down 2% in a month--and the east south central did best--up 0.9%.

Case-Shiller shows that New York peaked in June 2006 at 215.83 on their scale and has slid steadily ever since. The April number was 193.93 (up slightly from the month before.) But Case-Shiller looks at the whole metro area, all five boroughs, parts of Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester, Long Island and even a bit of Pennsylvania. When people think of New York prices, they think of Manhattan. Today The Real Estate Group of New York issued figures showing an uneven market that has been mostly stagnant all 2008. Across Manhattan non-doorman one-bedroom rental prices are down 4% to $2,859 for the last 12 months. (With a doorman it's up slightly. Two-bedrooms were down a little in both categories.) Of course, I'm a renter and prospective buyer, so I've been telling everyone prices will fall.

Stride is one of those companies that's very skillful at marketing in what some call the post-advertising age. They have YouTube videos, contests, games. Earlier this year they put their weight behind a petition to stop the directing career of Uwe Boll (a German director who turns video games into movies.) They pledged to give away a million packs of gum if the petition got a million signatures.

The latest giveaway is a mock lawsuit that you settle and get a free pack of gum. The conceit is that the company is attacking customers to get them to spit out their long-lasting gum so they will have to chew a fresh piece.

Basically Stride just comes up with amusing, publicity-catching ways to give away its gum. One previous giveaway was for a Battle of the Bands. Maybe they gave up on enough people caring about Uwe Boll. So far only 292,607 have urged him to quite.

Wynn Brower, age 10, figured that his family was wasting $1 every night that they kept all four computers on. At just 25 cents per computer per night that adds up to $365 for his family each year. He won an award at the science fair, then went on to save his own Monroe County, Indiana, $25,000 a year by getting them to turn off its 550 computers overnight.

I had scoffed when a computer savvy friend scolded me for leaving my computer on all the time. You must really love Con Ed, she said. I didn't think I was using much electricity at all. In the large scheme I'm not. But if everyone does it every night, then we all are. Brower's project is a great reminder that even though our computer may sleep and the monitor may go dark, we are still wasting a lot of energy.

Obviously, the amount of power and money you waste depends on how energy efficient your computer is and how much you're paying for power. Arizona Public Service Company estimated how much it costs to run various office equipment.They calculated that a computer costs $39 to run 24 hours a day for a full year. A 15-inch monitor was $54. A laser printer was $44. Their calculations for what it saves by turning it off overnight were smaller than Bower's -- turning off all three would save $9, $12 and $14 a year. That's only 2.4 cents for just the computer overnight, but nearly 10 cents for all three.

BioArts International, a California-based biotech start-up, is hoping to kick-start commercial dog-cloning with five successive daily auctions for the service starting July 5.

The opening bid is $100,000 for the first auction, with a 10% buyer's premium. In each of the successive auctions, the opening bid goes up by $20,000. So by the last auction on July 9, you'd need $180,000, plus 10%. Talk about inflation:

Plus you have to either pick up your puppy in Korea, or pay to have him shipped home.

The same guy ran another genetics company (Genetic Savings & Clone) a few years ago and offered cat cloning for $32,000. (That company went under in 2006 after cloning two cats.)

Before we talk about the fascinating peculiarities of this process, I do feel like I have to point out that we're not exactly running out of dogs here. We euthanize nearly 10 million dogs and cats a year. On the other hand, I understand the desire. My dog Jolly is a grumpy 14 years old. As I always tell him, he is the best dog in the world: loving, loyal, clever, funny, brave, silly and handsome. I would do practically anything to extend my time with him. I'd love to be able to see Jolly as a puppy since I adopted him when he was past two. But this isn't that magic opportunity. For starters I don't have $110,000 to spare. But more importantly what makes Jolly Jolly is his life and experience, as lousy as that might have been to start (he was found in a drug dealer's backyard.) A clone would only get me a handsome dog, not Jolly.

Ok, enough about the serious implications. Let's get to the grotesque details. First the financials. You have to have cash or credit of $250,000 just to sign up to bid. If you win, you have three days to put the money in a Wells Fargo trust. They only take the money out if you accept a healthy puppy -- except for some deposit fees.