City Officials Want Trust, but Want to Make the Decisions on Their Own?

September 10, 2010 Leave a comment

The National League of Cities conducted of a survey of more 500 elected officials on local democracy in the US.  The 2007 is recent enough to give a clear view on the state of government and community trust and engagement.

It is very striking that while government officials complain of  lack of trust and engagement, the elected officials also think that citizens trust them to make most of the decisions for the community–a contradiction in views.  In other words, officials think they are not trusted enough by the citizens, but that we, the citizens, trust them enough to make decisions. Curious–sounds just a little self-serving, or not?

See some of the survey results.

Major findings from the latest National League of Cities’ State of America’s

Cities Survey of nearly 500 municipal elected leaders include:

  • Three in five city officials (58%) report that the lack of trust and degree

of disengagement between residents and government is a big problem in the nation, generally.

  • City officials are particularly concerned about the role of the media in

public life. Eighteen percent rate as poor the role of print media in contributing

to civility and responsibility in public life; 15 percent rate as poor

the role of electronic media.

  • Two-thirds of city officials (66%) believe that residents, business owners,

and others in their city trust the city government to do what is right most

of the time.

  • Over 50 percent of city officials (52%) indicate that citizen engagement

in public life of their city has gotten better over the past five years.

  • Over three-quarters of city officials (77%) think that their city government

is doing either an excellent (22%) or good (55%) job of reaching out

to engage residents in local decision and policy making.

Filed under Community, Government, National

Krugman on Lessons from 1938 in 2010

September 6, 2010 Leave a comment

Little to add.  The US in falling into a 1938 trap and forgotten the lessons of the Great Depression.

The economic moral is clear: when the economy is deeply depressed, the usual rules don’t apply. Austerity is self-defeating: when everyone tries to pay down debt at the same time, the result is depression and deflation, and debt problems grow even worse. And conversely, it is possible — indeed, necessary — for the nation as a whole to spend its way out of debt: a temporary surge of deficit spending, on a sufficient scale, can cure problems brought on by past excesses.

via Op-Ed Columnist – 1938 in 2010 – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Economy, National

More on the Economy–Economics 101 (Not Levels, but Growth that Counts)

September 6, 2010 Leave a comment

From Paul Krugman.  This is not political, it is just simple economics.

If you want the economy to accelerate you must keep stimulus growing.  The economy must grow faster to raise absolute levels of employment, otherwise, unemployment stays the same or gets worse.

Delusion #1 is that we’re on the road to recovery, just more slowly than we’d like; to be fair, the White House keeps saying this.

But it’s not at all true. GDP is growing below potential; employment, even if you focus just on private employment, is growing more slowly than the working-age population. If you ask how long it will take us to return to, say, 5 percent unemployment on the current track, the answer is forever.

Delusion #2 is the belief that the stimulus may yet do the trick, because there are still substantial funds unspent. I tried to deal with this last year. The level of GDP depends not on total funds spent, but on the rate at which funds are being spent, which has already peaked; GDP growth on the rate of change in the rate at which funds are being spent, which peaked last year. It’s all downhill from here.

via Delusions Of Recovery – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Economy, National

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