Category Archives: Government

Mayor Bloomberg’s Speech

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New York City's Republican mayor steps up and explains why the "Mosque at 9/11 Site" story is important, and why it would be wrong to prevent the mosque from being built.  He really hits the nail on the head here:

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

"On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, 'What God do you pray to?' (Bloomberg's voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) 'What beliefs do you hold?'

"The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked."

Who Joins Zoning Boards?

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Apparently someone has studied the composition of zoning boards and has come to the conclusion that people who join them are disproportionately people who have something to gain from their service:

What kind of person would volunteer to serve on a zoning board?  It’s not exactly a lucrative position. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that a new study byJerry L. Anderson, Aaron Brees, and Emily Renninger finds that most zoning board members have something to gain from their positions.

It's shocking, SHOCKING, I tell you.  One might argue that with my job I fall into that category with my service on the Lewisville Planning Board, but I joined the Zoning Board of Adjustment and then the Planning Board before I took my current job.  In fact before I took my current job I had no experience in real estate and I had absolutely no business reason for joining the ZBOA or Planning Board.  I was, however, really interested in learning about how things worked in town and so I happily volunteered to serve.  I guess I'd add one caveat to the findings outlined above, and that is there are geeks like me out there who actually like sitting through planning sessions and find the topic interesting whether or not we benefit from the position.  Mind you there aren't many of us, but we are out there.

Local Pastor vs. NC Legislature

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A local Baptist pastor was invited to offer the NC legislature prayer for a week.  He was told what the approved method of prayer was (in a nutshell, non-sectarian) and that if he didn't adhere to those standards he would be uninvited to pray.  He refused to adhere to those terms, which is his right, and the legislature uninvited him, which is its right.  Now the pastor wants an apology and the opportunity to open a legislative session with a prayer in the manner he sees fit. A quote from the story:

"I was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian when I was told that my services would no longer be needed if I could not offer the opening prayer in the manner prescribed by the House of Representatives, rather that in the manner my biblical faith requires," Baity said.

I guaran-damn-tee you that he's on the side of the sectarian prayer advocates in the case being fought here in Forsyth County.  To refresh your memory the pro-sectarian prayer folks are saying that they should be able to pray in whatever manner they wish, much like the pastor is arguing here.  The anti-sectarian prayer folks are saying, no, you can't because then the government is put in the position of endorsing a specific religion.  

Here's the irony to me: what the pastor is saying, that he's being made to feel like a second class citizen, is exactly how people who don't want to be forced to hear sectarian prayer at a government meeting feel when a clergyman is invited to give a sectarian prayer to open the meeting.  

Walk a mile…

BP Bustin’ Up?

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Things in BP-land ain't looking too good:

THE British government is drawing up contingency plans for a possible collapse of BP.

This is amid mounting fears that the oil giant could be broken up or taken over in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

The talks, which are being led by officials at the Department for Business and the Treasury, reflect growing concern within Whitehall about the implications that a corporate failure of BP, formerly Britain's biggest company, would have on British interests domestically and around the world.

Oo-la-la. Is it possible that a corporation behaving badly could actually be held accountable for its bad behavior?  Well, duh:

Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne are set to discuss BP's future with US officials during a trip to Washington on July 20.

Speaking in Toronto at the G20 on June 25, Mr Cameron warned that BP faced potential destruction unless US authorities stepped in to prevent its compensation costs escalating out of control.

Government supplication to petroleum purveyors begins in 10, 9, 8…

About Those Overpaid Bureaucrats? They Aren’t in Cali These Days

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California hasn't passed it's 2010-11 budget and as a result Gov. Schwarzenegger has reduced state employees' pay to the federal minimum wage: $7.25 an hour.  And if you're a state employed lawyer or doctor you're really SOL:

Some employees, such as doctors and lawyers, would get no pay because federal exempts them from any minimum wage requirement. Managers, supervisors and others who don't get paid for working more than 40 hours per week would receive $455 per week until a budget deal got done.

Schwarzenegger has invoked a 2003 state Supreme Court decision as grounds for the move. That ruling, White v. Davis, held that without a budget that appropriates money for state payroll, employee wages can be withheld to the federal minimum. That condition exists today, which is the start of the 2010-11 fiscal year and the state is without a budget. The back pay would be paid once a budget is enacted.

Full article: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/01/2864148/schwarzenegger-orders-minimum.html#ixzz0sWVNpsyi

The good news for the 'crats is that they'll get their money eventually, but I'm thinking next month's mortgage and car payments are gonna be painful for them.

What Percentage of Personal Income Comes From Private Pay?

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If you had to guess what percentage of Americans' personal income would you say comes from wages paid by private employers?  75%?  60%?  50%?  The answer, my friends, is 41.9%.  That's a record low, and to me it's an amazing number.  From the USA Today article:

Key shifts in income this year:

• Private wages. A record-low 41.9% of the nation's personal income came from private wages and salaries in the first quarter, down from 44.6% when the recession began in December 2007.

•Government benefits. Individuals got 17.9% of their income from government programs in the first quarter, up from 14.2% when the recession started. Programs for the elderly, the poor and the unemployed all grew in cost and importance. An additional 9.8% of personal income was paid as wages to government employees.

Okay, I have a question that I'm hoping someone smarter than me and with more time to do research can answer: If about 42% of personal income comes from pay and about 28% comes from government programs/wages, then where does the other 30% come from?  I can think of medical benefits and interest on investments, but my little pea brain can't come up with anything else.

h/t to Fec for the link.

Pray for Our Horses

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Anyone who thinks Forsyth County is just another sleepy, southern county that's home to a medium-sized city that was founded by members of a mainstream religion that hardly anyone outside of NC or PA has heard of, is smoking crack.  Where else would you have government officials who are simultaneously fighting in court to be able to continue practicing sectarian prayer at the beginning of their public meetings and on another front are lobbying the state legislature to allow them to establish parimutuel betting on horses? 

Budget shortfalls sure do have a strange effect on people.  I mean sheesh, it wasn't that long ago that you couldn't buy booze on Sunday and now we're looking at legalizing gambling in order to fill a budget hole.  If we're that desperate let's go for casinos and brothels and do it up right.  Think of the selling points, not least of which is the easy flight from DC to PTI so that the naughtiest people on Earth (Congress, especially those "conservative" skirt chasers) can easily partake of our wares.  We're also pretty close to some prominent televangelists and they seem to go for this kind of stuff on a regular basis. They could come to fight for public meeting prayers by day, and to explore their sinful natures by night.

The more I think of it the more I think we may be on to something.

Regionalism

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I'm a big proponent of regionalism and I like the idea that some North Carolina and Virginia counties are joining forces to promote their region as a tourist destination, lines drawn on a map be damned.

Several Triad counties are among a group that has formed to promote themselves as a single tourism entity. 


They have branded the areas as Cascade Highlands for the way the Blue Ridge highlands of southwest Virginia cascade into the Yadkin Valley of northwest North Carolina.


The group includes nine counties across two states — Stokes, Surry, Yadkin, Wilkes and Allegheny in North Carolina and Carroll, Grayson, Patrick and Smyth in Virginia.

We Are What We Do

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Russell Roberts, an economics professor at my alma mater, has written a compelling paper about the financial meltdown.  An excerpt from the summary:

How did this happen? Whose fault was it? Some blame capitalism for being inherently unstable. Some blame Wall Street for its greed, hubris, and stupidity. But greed, hubris, and stupidity are always with us. What changed in recent years that created such a destructive set of decisions that culminated in the collapse of the housing market and the financial system?

In this paper, I argue that public-policy decisions have perverted the incentives that naturally create stability in financial markets and the market for housing. Over the last three decades, government policy has coddled creditors, reducing the risk they face from financing bad investments. Not surprisingly, this encouraged risky investments financed by borrowed money. The increasing use of debt mixed with housing policy, monetary policy, and tax policy crippled the housing market and the financial sector. Wall Street is not blameless in this debacle. It lobbied for the policy decisions that created the mess.

In the United States we like to believe we are a capitalist society based on individual responsibility. But we are what we do. Not what we say we are. Not what we wish to be. But what we do. And what we do in the United States is make it easy to gamble with other people’s money—particularly borrowed money—by making sure that almost everybody who makes bad loans gets his money back anyway. The financial crisis of 2008 was a natural result of these perverse incentives. We must return to the natural incentives of profit and loss if we want to prevent future crises. 

A Not So Surprising Effect of New Arizona Law

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A new law in Arizona has garnered a lot of attention nation-wide and in the process has stirred up quite a debate about issues like illegal immigration, civil rights and states' rights.  According to this blog post by Yes! Weekly's Jordan Green it is also already having an effect on the University of Arizona:

We have already begun to feel an impact from SB 1070. The families of a number of out-of-state students (to date all of them honors students) have told us that they are changing their plans and will be sending their children to universities in other states. This should sadden anyone who cares about attracting the best and brightest students to Arizona.

I think this is just the beginning for Arizona.  In the very near future I suspect you'll be seeing business conventions moved to venues in other states, business and leisure travel to the state curtailed, and boycotts called by special interest groups.

Usually hot-button issues like this result in a lot noise without much action for a short time and then blow over, but this one feels different.  It feels like this one could turn into a major economic and social event for Arizona.