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

Please Face Economic Reality Coral Gables: A Note From a Taxpayer

December 1, 2010 Leave a comment

More views for us that we are years away from reducing unemployment [these are the people that consume things], from a recovery in housing and from rising property values [also, years ahead, if at all].  Will the city government of Coral Gables, its commissioners and city manager face economic reality, or will they continue to hit taxpayers with ridiculous annual tax increases [of course, Miami-Dade county is worse and its mayor may soon find out about citizen unhappiness].

It could take years for the millions of people once employed by the housing industry — from construction workers to real estate agents — to find new careers or return to their former careers when and if a strong housing market returns.

“I think we also have a bubble in the labor market for state and local government employees,” he said, “and over the next two years we might see as many as one million of these employees lose their jobs.”

via Some Very Creative Economic Fix-Its – NYTimes.com.

Filed under Coral Gables, Economy, Miami-Dade County

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