UM Student Dies

December 6, 2010 Leave a comment

There are two factors at play.

First, drivers in Coral Gables and Miami do not respect pedestrians.  In many other cities, a pedestrian in a walkway means STOP.  When you are driving it is your responsibility to watch out for the pedestrian.  For example, there is a flashing activated by pedestrians on Ponce de Leon in front of a series of doctors’ offices that drivers simple do not respect by slowing down or stopping.

Let’s face it, Miami is more like Santo Domingo than it is like Washington, DC.

Second, UM and other students walk around with their heads buried in their iphones and blackberries with total disregard for the traffic around them.  In fact, on the UM campus students just cross in front of you assuming that traffic will stop.  Many times a student has wondered in front of my car while talking or texting without lifting their eyes.

You will not change the drivers in Miami; UM  better reeducate their students, staff and faculty.  (And this is not a judgement on what may or may not have happened in the two recent sad and unfortunate deaths of UM students.)

University of Miami sophomore was killed early Sunday after being hit by a car near the Coral Gables campus, marking the second student within weeks to die from a crash.

via Crash claims life of another UM student – Miami-Dade – MiamiHerald.com.

Filed under Community, Coral Gables, Miami-Dade County

Cable News: Cacophony of Parrots

December 3, 2010 Leave a comment

I watch cable news, reluctantly.  I grew up watching CNN in its prime, worldwide, 24 hour, serious, in depth coverage.  Those days are gone and most serious new sources are not American, they are at the BBC, FT, the Economist, the Guardian, etc.:  great English, clearly written and often bordering on the objective.

In the US I find the constant, incessant repetition of the same irrelevant, marginal, mostly political speculative stories, dancing with the stars, leading to no coverage of the unassailable problems of our times like war, taxes, government spending, influence peddling, poverty and inequality, corruption, government manipulation of the story lines and local and state problems [take your pick].

Rather now we are given our daily thin dose of presidential candidates two years ahead of time.  How fun it must be to talk long hours about something for which nothing is known.

Filed under National

US Inequality–Latin American Model?

December 3, 2010 Leave a comment

Highly unequal countries tend to become unstable and dangerous places. How unequal do you want the United States to become?

via Fixing The US Budget – Straightforward Or The Hardest Problem On Earth? « The Baseline Scenario.

Our country  is gradually imitating the Latin American model of development with the latter’s great inequality (perhaps the worst region in the world), a huge gap between the few at the top of the income and asset pyramid and the mass at the bottom, accompanied by a fairly small middle.  In the US the middle and bottom have access only to increasingly poor education, restricting opportunities to lower paying jobs and not ability to accumulate capital (worse after the housing crisis) during their lifetime.

In the US the chance of progressing, related to education and opportunity, is rapidly narrowing for the middle class in the current unemployment crisis.  There seems to be little political desire to change the system.

The pure capitalist system works now for a few and, unless there is active government intervention to protect the low and middle income people, there is little prospect of changing these trends.  Things will get worse if the US extends income tax reductions permanently to the high income groups.

 

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, National

No Cutoff County Manager Says–But Really Cutoff

December 2, 2010 Leave a comment

In other words, Miami-Dade Transit MDT cannot be trusted.  But I guess we have seen multiple demonstrations of corruption, incompetence and inefficiency in the county government.  Does that remind you of any other local governments?

Now the MDT will have to spend the money first and then try to justify the spending to the FTA.   They don’t trust the MDT and the MDT has “serious accounting deficiencies.”  How can the country manager try to misrepresent the situation so easily?

“Contrary to erroneous reports in local media, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has not suspended payments to Miami-Dade Transit (MDT),” Burgess’ memo to commissioners said.

“Rather than drawing those funds through a web-based system known as Electronic Clearing House (ECHO), MDT will receive money through a manual process on a reimbursement basis,” the memo said.

FTA said late Wednesday it was unlikely Miami-Dade Transit would be able to withdraw funds manually either.

“It is accurate that under FTA’s suspension procedure, Miami-Dade Transit could still receive FTA funds through the submission of extensive documentation,” said Brian Farber, FTA associate administrator. “However, since these improprieties involve serious accounting deficiencies involving federal funds and farebox collections, the FTA will not be considering any such requests until extensive corrective actions are taken.”

via Burgess: No cutoff of U.S. funds – Broward – MiamiHerald.com.

Filed under Finance, Miami-Dade County

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