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Vital Bus Lines are Closing, Leaving People Stranded

13 Oct

From Tahrir Square, Cairo, Egypt, to Town Square, USA, thousands upon thousands of people rely on public transportation to take them to jobs, shopping, to the doctor, and so forth. But bus lines are closing in cities across the nation and leaving people stranded in their homes, especially poor people and old people. It’s happening in Detroit, Longmont (Colorado), Washington D.C., and in my neighborhood in Jersey City, NJ.

Three neighborhood associations met at the Monumental Baptist Church last night to make plans on how to meet the crisis. While there is some reasonable hope that the abandoned routes will be taken-up by other providers, it is clear that this is a recurring problem that must be met by sustained action.

What’s happening in your neighborhood? Have any bus lines been closed in the last two or three years? Are bus lines being closed in the near future? What will happen to people stranded by these closures?

How is it that the so-called richest nation on the planet cannot figure out how to provide transportation for ALL of its citizens?

If you’ve got a story, put it in the comments.

Other stories below the fold. Continue reading →

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Are transmission lines holding America back? – The Washington Post

12 Oct

Local is the way to go! More resilient, more reliable.

That’s why a growing number of people who work in the industry are now questioning whether massive, centralized clean-energy projects really are the future. What good are huge solar farms in the desert if you can’t get them wired? Perhaps smaller, distributed sources of clean energy — rooftop solar panels, say, or small turbines — that don’t need fancy new transmission lines are a more promising option.

“It’s long been conventional wisdom that it’s much easier and cheaper to build those big plants,” Allan Schurr, vice president of strategy and development at IBM’s energy and utilities group, told me. “But, when we interviewed customers, we found a strong appetite for individuals having control over their own energy future.” As an alternate model, Schurr points to Germany, where well-crafted incentives for rooftop panels have transformed the cloudy nation into a solar leader. And there’s a lot of untapped potential here: the National Renewable Energy Lab has estimated that we have 661,000 megawatts of rooftop-solar resources here in the United States.

via Are transmission lines holding America back? – The Washington Post.

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The Decreasing Reliability of Accounting Data for US Firms

12 Oct

This post is rather technical, but it indicates the corporations routinely cook their books and that the practice is very widespread.

While these time series don’t prove anything decisively, deviations from Benford’s law are compellingly correlated with known financial crises, bubbles, and fraud waves. And overall, the picture looks grim. Accounting data seem to be less and less related to the natural data-generating process that governs everything from rivers to molecules to cities. Since these data form the basis of most of our research in finance, Benford’s law casts serious doubt on the reliability of our results. And it’s just one more reason for investors to beware.

H/t Tyler Cowan, Marginal Revolution.

via Studies in Everyday Life: Benford’s Law and the Decreasing Reliability of Accounting Data for US Firms.

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What caused the wealth gap? – Occupy Wall Street

11 Oct

Economist Jeffrey Sachs says the wealth gap got started with globalization, which allowed a small group of highly skilled people to sell their skills in a world market while forcing less skilled people to compete for foreign labor for every lower wages. Then Reagan decided to dismantle government and the federal government’s been unraveling since then.

You, in fact, call for a renewed emphasis on compassion and social responsibility.

What are our deeper economic objectives? Among these is a sense of well-being, of life satisfaction. Income can play a role in that, but so do things like social trust and honest government – and compassion for other people. This kind of discussion is considered odd and I think that is part of our problem right now. We don’t have effective ways to discuss these things in our society.

Instead, we have people who represent a cult of selfishness, what I would consider Ayn Rand libertarianism. They are political figures who say that the goal of America is to leave [people] alone, and that ideas like compassion and so on are dangerous. What the Republicans have on offer – which is based on this 30-year misdiagnosis – is cruel and deeply wrong, because they express disdain for the idea that people are suffering and they need help.

We’ve arrived at a crossroads about the real meaning of our civilization. I think that we will need to reflect on how to achieve a higher level of happiness in this country — [and think about] issues of social trust, social connectedness, decency, compassion.

via What caused the wealth gap? – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

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A Tale of Two Towers: 8 Spruce Street and One World Trade Center

11 Oct

Spruce Street and One World Trade Center I took part in last Wednesday’s Community/Labor March To Wall St. in New York City. I met some musician buddies at Washington Square Park and we marched to Foley Square with the New York University group, though none of us are affiliated with NYU. From Foley Square, a bit Northeast of City Hall. There we joined up with the main crowd, and a passel of musicians, and headed on to Liberty Plaza, flanked and guided by police all the way.

Not long after we left Washington Square Park, say a five or six blocks out, I noticed this building ahead, and I kept tracking it all the way down:

NYC - Civic Center: 8 Spruce Street

Photo of 8 Spruce Street by Wally Gobetz

That’s a new luxury apartment building at 8 Spruce Street, just south of City Hall. It was designed by starchitect Frank Gehry.

Does anyone who lives there care about us marchers? I thought. It’s a pricy building, with studio apartments starting at $3770 a month, which is over $42,000 per year, and two bedrooms at $6045 per month, almost $61,000 per year. I’m thinking that, no, the folks who live there are more likely in the 1% who’re living high off of banker’s bonuses than in the 99% who can’t afford health insurance and who won’t have pensions when they retire.

More likely than not, they think things are pretty much OK as they are. Maybe the bonuses are a little slim, but the rabble down here marching to Liberty Plaza, we don’t figure in their view of the world. They have no empathy with us.

But then how could they?

My father was an engineer. He worked in an office. But his work took him into coal mines to collect samples and to inspect the coal face. He knew that mining was dirty and dangerous work and believed that no one should have authority over coal miners unless they’d worked in the mines themselves. Continue reading →

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Dems backing Occupy Wall St. are funded by Wall St. – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

10 Oct

Ah, yes, life is complicated. And ideological purity is the enemhy of people who want to get things done.

The irony is that the same elected Democrats singing the praises of Occupy Wall Street are themselves major recipients of money from … Wall Street!

Does this mean that the Democratic embrace should be rejected? Not necessarily. Occupy Wall Street could, of course, open up political space for Democrats to address unemployment, income inequality, criminality by banks, the overwhelming influence of corporate money in politics and so on. But it’s worth keeping in mind that most if not all of these politicians have been cozy with Wall Street for years; so there are grounds for suspicion.

via Dems backing Occupy Wall St. are funded by Wall St. – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

“It’s a protest. It’s not Woodstock” – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com

10 Oct

Actually this encourages me. Our problems are deep, very deep. Our existing institutions, certainly including the two major parties, filled as they are by self-serving millionaires, are broken and in conflict. We need to grope about, perhaps aimlessly for awhile, but not forever. New coalitions will emerge. But who knows what they will be.

“I understand their cause, I understand their movement, I agree,” he says. “I’m ex-military, I have a college degree, and look what I’m doing: dirty, sweaty, making hardcore money — yet I get taxed crazy. I agree with everything they’re doing, but this is something out of ‘Lord of the Flies.’ I’m waiting for the conch to come out and people to start burning pigs.” He looks around at the more bombastic characters on the scene — a tear-streaked man angrily yelling “I need money!” while banging an empty white bucket, a woman in a Marie Antoinette costume holding a platter of cake. “This is so unorganized,” the laborer says. “The protesters aren’t doing anything that people are gonna listen to and say, ‘You know what, they’re right.’”

via “It’s a protest. It’s not Woodstock” – Occupy Wall Street – Salon.com.

The Great 8: Billionaires who will pay more – Patriotic Billionaire Challenge – Salon.com

10 Oct

Aka Cheapskates Rise to the Top

Salon queried the Forbes 400 richest on whether they’d be willing to pay more taxes. The vast majority ducked the question. I’m betting that most of them think they deserve what they earn. After all, did they not work hard? Yes, they did. But . . . well, more on that later.

Of 400 billionaires, only eight (including Buffet) say they are willing to pay more. Three others indicated opposition; one said maybe.

But most declined to comment at all. Oprah Winfrey, who endorsed Obama in 2008, did not respond. Nor did liberal media mogul Ted Turner. Prominent Democratic Party donors from Hollywood such as Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Barry Diller did not express a view. Philanthropists Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg — whom we queried repeatedly — refused to comment on Buffett’s argument, even as it became a central part of Washington’s political conversation.

On Sept. 19, President Obama rolled out his jobs plan, calling for individuals making more than $250,000 to pay higher taxes for the sake of paying pay down the deficit and funding the president’s jobs plan.

via The Great 8: Billionaires who will pay more – Patriotic Billionaire Challenge – Salon.com.

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Panic of the Plutocrats – NYTimes.com

10 Oct

What’s going on here? The answer, surely, is that Wall Street’s Masters of the Universe realize, deep down, how morally indefensible their position is. They’re not John Galt; they’re not even Steve Jobs. They’re people who got rich by peddling complex financial schemes that, far from delivering clear benefits to the American people, helped push us into a crisis whose aftereffects continue to blight the lives of tens of millions of their fellow citizens.

Yet they have paid no price. Their institutions were bailed out by taxpayers, with few strings attached. They continue to benefit from explicit and implicit federal guarantees — basically, they’re still in a game of heads they win, tails taxpayers lose. And they benefit from tax loopholes that in many cases have people with multimillion-dollar incomes paying lower rates than middle-class families.

This special treatment can’t bear close scrutiny — and therefore, as they see it, there must be no close scrutiny.

via Panic of the Plutocrats – NYTimes.com.

Protesters Against Wall Street – NYTimes.com

9 Oct

No wonder then that Occupy Wall Street has become a magnet for discontent. There are plenty of policy goals to address the grievances of the protesters — including lasting foreclosure relief, a financial transactions tax, greater legal protection for workers’ rights, and more progressive taxation. The country needs a shift in the emphasis of public policy from protecting the banks to fostering full employment, including public spending for job creation and development of a strong, long-term strategy to increase domestic manufacturing.

It is not the job of the protesters to draft legislation. That’s the job of the nation’s leaders, and if they had been doing it all along there might not be a need for these marches and rallies. Because they have not, the public airing of grievances is a legitimate and important end in itself. It is also the first line of defense against a return to the Wall Street ways that plunged the nation into an economic crisis from which it has yet to emerge.

via Protesters Against Wall Street – NYTimes.com.

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