It is time for government, (state,local,and national) to realize Americans are really feed up and are not willing to take it anymore. In fact, It seems Americans are willing to do something very extreme more and more these days, and that is return to taking protests to the street.
Seems Americans have had enough/Baruch Students Clash with Campus Security
|RIP The Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1878 to 2012
|Even as Generation Greed politicians in Washington fail to agree whether to charge younger generations higher taxes than they themselves were willing to pay to make up for the debts and benefits they promised themselves, or to force younger generations of Americans to suffer drastic cuts in public services and benefits to make up for their history of voting for politicians promising tax cuts, the damage has started to accumulate. They have decided it is better if younger generations don’t know how much worse off they are, and have started suppressing the evidence, reversing the internet-driven trend of more information becoming easier to get. In the future, you’ll only know what the Executive Class and the Political Class want you to know.
The federal government has published a Statistical Abstract of the United States every year since 1878. The current, 2012 edition will evidently be the last. The Census Bureau is also scaling back information on state and local government finances and employment, in part due to budget cuts, in part because state and local governments are no longer willing to cooperate by sending in the data. Perhaps the political class doesn’t want people to be able to find out how much of their tax payments are going to the retroactive pension enhancements for public employees enacted over the past 20 years. The executive class certainly doesn’t want people to know how much everyone else’s wages are going down, which is why the Republican Party has called for the elimination of the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. So why can’t the federal government afford to provide information to Americans anymore? What has changed? As I did the last time there was a Presidential election, I expect to answer that question early next year using data on federal revenues and expenditures over time provided in an easily accessible format by the Statistical Abstract of the United States. Perhaps for the last time.
The Gateway [Fairy Tales from Grimm (Oh Brother!) Edition]
|Grimm bravely comes out in favor of adoption. He also favors funding the Fire Department.
What guts.
Chuck Barron: Human Rights Zero
|The problem with political terms, even those which are in common use, is that we often have very different definitions for the same exact words.
Take “Human Rights.”
In America, we generally define them as political rights.
Parallel Faith
|I had written recently that you could create a new world religion by using a common framework that applied to all the world’s religions thereby synthesizing them all into one. It was pointed out that this could not be done because either you believed Jesus is God or he isn’t.
Waking Up from the Railroad Pipedream to the Nightmare of the Vampire State
|Well, that was fun. How realistic do I believe the railroad pipedream outlined in the previous posts is? I had outlined and researched this series of posts in early July, but I didn’t find the motivation to write it until November. Now those who read all the posts might be in agreement, or disagreement, with the particulars of what I have suggested, and the economic, demographic and commercial real estate trends I have described. (Bear in mind that I write reports on those subjects every day, reports people pay to read). You may have other thoughts on the issue. You may be thinking about the possible effect of different decisions on the well being of large number of New Yorkers in the future, and how priorities might be set. You might even be thinking about construction methods, rail operations, and government contract law, commercial real estate trends, global economic trends, and demographic trends.
But I assure you, based on 20 years of observation, that none of those things mean much at all in the state legislature in Albany, New York. There the credo isn’t what is best for us, but what is in it for me and mine. And none of the parties involved could be expected to approach the issue of rail freight from any other perspective. In Albany it is never about “what,” and always about “who.”
The Gateway (Liunatic Edition)
|I'm not going to talk about the legal issues touched upon in this article, but let's not be too dismissive of Liu's chances to become Mayor.
Railroad Pipedream: Economic Development Goals Upstate
|The primary purpose of the Upstate railroad investments imagined in this pipedream is to speed freight traffic between points west of the Mississippi River, and east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River, to New York State, New Jersey and New England. The Upstate investments would take the place of additional highway lanes, such as those being built in on the Turnpike in New Jersey, and make transportation through New York more competitive with transportation through other states. The Upstate investments would also make the New York/New Jersey seaport, located in New Jersey, more competitive with other East Coast ports, and could feed a rail freight tunnel from New Jersey to the Bronx. Finally, the pipedream would remove freight traffic from the Empire Corridor, making high-speed passenger rail more possible.
These are the transportation goals. But the entire pipedream, with the freight tunnel and the investments Upstate, would also have economic development goals for Upstate New York.
Railroad Pipedream: Transportation and Economic Development Goals Downstate
|The primary goal of the pipedream imagined in this series is to solve the problem identified in the first post: the difficulty of moving freight across the Hudson River by tractor-trailer truck due to congestion on the GW Bridge, Verrazano Bridge, and connecting highways. The imagined rail freight tunnel would provide an alternative, freight carried across the Hudson by rail and placed on trucks in the Bronx or, in the case of trailers on flat cars, in Brooklyn and Queens as well. A second goal, related to the investments Upstate that would improve the connection to New Jersey, is to increase the competiveness of the Port of New York and New Jersey for goods heading to and from the Midwest. A third goal, again for the investments Upstate, is to remove freight traffic from the existing New York Central mainline, allowing a gradual increase in operating speeds for passenger service on that route, eventually reaching the point where the line could be described as “high-speed rail.”
These, however, are not the only goals I have in mind. With railroad improvements driving economic development in other parts of the country, I imagine the pipedream would have the potential to create jobs and spur development. And with a little more investment, direct commuter rail service from Rockland and Orange to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan would become theoretically possible – without inflating the cost of a new Tappan Zee Bridge by putting transit there. This post is about the goals Downstate, with the next post about the goals Upstate.
Zuccotti Park Protestor arrested for threatening to burn down city
|This DOES NOT HELP the Occupy Wall Street Cause.
A protester was arrested in Zuccotti Park Wednesday after he threatened to fire bomb the city — specifically Macy's. You can see the video at http://www.dominictv.com/
Nkrumah Tinsley, 29, was busted after cops saw a video of him claiming he would torch the city during Thursday’s mass protest posted online, police said.