Governor announces initial list
NYS Governor David Paterson has announced an initial list of local projects that will receive funding under the Feds spending bill.
Will a high number of well-paid, permanent jobs that send us on the road to recovery be created with this spending? I will let you be the judge but in my opinion I see nothing that will have a lasting impact on our community’s economic foundation.
Projects to receive traditional TEP funds:
- $927,446 for the Downtown to School Sidewalk and Streetscape Enhancement in the Village of Medina, Orleans County;
- $896,513 for the Erie Canalways Trail Development Project in the Town of Arcadia, Wayne County; and
- $984, 550 for the Hamlet Connectivity Project in the Town of Marion, Wayne County.
Projects to receive ARRA TEP funds:
- $523,000 for the Lehigh Valley Trail Extension and Enhancement Project in the Town of Mendon, Monroe County; and
- $3,839,000 for the ARTWalk 2, Urban Art Trail Extension in the City of Rochester, Monroe County.
The nearly $4 million for the ARTWalk expansion is one of the largest spending totals in the state.
So anyway, good news for folks who like to take leisurely strolls but it will likely do little to excite the hundreds in our area who have lost their jobs recently.
News to anyone living north of Henrietta
NYS Assemblyman Joe Errigo (R-130) is taking issue with a component of a gas card program for the unemployed being laid out by Governor David Paterson.
The program would assist in covering travel expenses for those seeking employment. Errigo faults the Governor for not including Livingston and Monroe counties in the program. The two counties were excluded for not being “rural” according to the program’s standards.
Errigo also states that the program as it now exists would be extremely susceptible to fraud due to lack of, if any, oversight of the actual uses of the cards.
Wegmans and Paychex have again made Fortune’s list of the country’s best places to be employed.
Wegmans, which topped the list in ‘05, is number five in ‘09 right behind Google. Paychex ranks 39.
According to the stats, on average, the most common salaried position within Wegmans is Department Manager at a shade over $50,000/year.
Interesting to note is that New York actually has the third-highest number of companies included on the list. The list is based on factors like average salary and percentage of job growth.
No wonder NYers can be taxed so highly, we apparently do quite well for ourselves. Shouldn’t we be ashamed!
The two better states to be in which to be employed? Texas and California.
Headed to see Derek Trucks at Water St. Music Hall, see you there. I highly recommend you check out the opener as well, acoustic guitar as you have never seen.
Our newest segment
Today’s According to the News -
It was really windy today.
Thank you.
Admittedly, things have been somewhat quiet around here since the election.
I have been soaking it all in, the celebration, the pageantry, the setting-in of reality and the ever-worsening economy, the attempts to respond and the utter bewilderment on the faces of our leaders.
I have been revisiting some of my favorite works of political theory in an attempt to more fully evaluate the country’s roots, to see if there is an indication of a light at the end of the tunnel, if words of the past still ring true or if a bold new manner of cultural and political thought is needed to carry us into a new era.
From my bookshelf I pulled Mills’ On Liberty, Hobbes’ Leviathan, even Kafka who wrote some brilliant commentary.
The last work I went to was Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. One of my favorites, an impartial view of an outsider of the young American political system; the potential it held and the possibilities, both good and bad, of what could be born from such a structure.
As de Tocqueville closes his tome he contemplates the rise of despotism in such a democracy, how despotism could arise and in what manner it would exist.
I found his words striking as we consider a giant stimulus package before the money from the last one has been fully doled out, as we face a state government that seeks to tell us what soda we can drink and the safe size of backyard fires.
I had to share them:
… if despotism were to be established amongst the democratic nations of our days, it might assume a different character; it would be more extensive and more mild; it would degrade men without tormenting them.
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I seek in vain for an expression which will accurately covey the whole of the idea I have formed of it; the old worlds despotism and tyranny are inappropriate: the thing itself is new …
I seek to trace the novel features under which despotism may appear in the world. The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men … incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.
And de Tocqueville saw this before the invention of flat screens, SUVs and designer labels.
Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of the all the rest, -his children and his private friends constitute to him the whole of mankind; as for the rest of his fellow citizens … he sees them not … he may be said at any rate to have lost his country.
Above this race of men stands an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications, and to watch over their fate. That power is absolute, minute, regular, provident and mild. It would be like the authority of a parent if, like that authority, its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks, on the contrary, to keep them in perpetual childhood … it chooses to be the sole agent … of happiness, it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their necessities, facilitates their pleasures, manages their principal concerns, directs their industry, regulates the descent of property, and subdivides their inheritances: what remains but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?
… the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of the society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent and guided … it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people till each nation is reduced to … a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepard.
This was first published in 1835.
If you have never read the work I strongly suggest taking a look.
The Senate is poised to make major changes to President Obama’s so-called stimulus plan with one provision already acknowledged as dropped from any measure the Senate would pass. $75 million proposed for smoking cessation programs has been removed from the most recent draft of the bill.
Smoking is bad, New York state tells us so, but what us the reason for striking this spending in a bill full of eye brow-raising proposals? The issue may simply have been put on the back burner but I believe the Senate’s reasoning comes down to one simple thing: tax revenue.
Politicians absolutely love cigarettes, look at our newly elected President. Bypassing the ludicrous nature of pushing smoking cessation while Obama openly puffs, politicians more specifically adore the taxes to be raised from each new adventurer into flavor country.
The U.S. government has no interest in reducing the number of smokers because that would mean less revenue.
Case in point: the State Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion. I cannot sum it up any better than I did in a post last year -
All this would seem to indicate to me that throwing more money at the problem through an extension of a government run health care system is not the answer to ensuring affordable and accessible care for all, especially in a state already facing an ever-increasing multibillion dollar budget gap.
See someone, these very kids who we are supposedly out to help with this SCHIP extension, is going to have to pay the tab someday for all our spending. The Feds are proposing to pay for the added spending with, what else, a tax increase. And not just any tax increase, a cigarette tax increase. That’s right – cigarettes, the use of which is supposedly a public health issue and likely drives at least a small percentage of users into the very program it is supposed to pay for, is going to give Kids their medicine.
Um, sure. According to the Heritage Foundation:
To produce the revenues that Congress needs to fund SCHIP expansion through such a tax would require 22.4 million new smokers by 2017.
Bring back Camel Joe, we need to sign ‘em up young.
The House version of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) expansion prohibits the construction of hospitals owned by the doctors that work in them.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Since 1990, the number of physician-owned specialty hospitals has increased by three times to about 200 facilities nationwide.
From the Kaiser Network:
[The bill] would prevent construction of any new specialty hospitals and restrict the expansion of current facilities. In addition, the provision would limit Medicare payments to specialty hospitals that received final approval to participate in the program by Jan. 1.
NYS Comptroller shows Industrial Development Agencies to be bunk
It may not have been by current NYS Comptroller Tom DiNapoli but a 2006 report by then-Comp Alan Hevesi showed that Industrial Development Agencies (IDA) throughout the state, including Monroe County’s, have no effect on the economy and often fail to abide by the guidelines laid out for said IDAs.
The study cites a number of flaws with IDAs and the manner in which they operate. From the report:
Each IDA is legally required to annually submit a financial statement to OSC that includes data related to the number of jobs created or retained and amount of all tax exemptions provided.
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Unfortunately, a number of studies have shown that inconsistent and inaccurate reporting has limited the utility of the data available through these annual reports.
If you want to witness this first hand try contacting COMIDA and attempting to get employee numbers on a company who has received abatements. I guarantee you will never receive a call back.
The report continues:
A lack of objective selection and evaluation data and criteria – The criteria by which IDAs evaluate potential projects are not always clear and/or consistently used, and IDAs do not always seem to make an attempt to evaluate the potential success of proposed projects.
This has been seen time and time again with COMIDA.
The report also found numerous instances of “pirating,” or the use of IDA incentives merely shuffling jobs from one location to another within the state rather than creating new ones.
A separate report by the Assembly’s Local Governments Committee found that pirating accounted for a “significant portion of IDA activity.”
Another interesting section of the study deals with the then-existing restrictions on IDAs to provide incentives to retail projects such as those proposed by Wilmorite and Bersin Properties LLC that are currently drawing so much attention:
Retail ventures are treated differently because they usually do not increase the level of regional jobs or economic activity and can damage local competitors or put them out of business. For example, a chain store opening up in a community generally will not increase the overall demand for retail goods and may
lure shoppers away from already established (often smaller and independently-owned) stores, potentially putting them out of business. Providing tax expenditure benefits for these “jobs-neutral” types of economic activity generally results in a net financial loss for the community.
I find it amazing that the above principle was understood in 2006 by the very state government that created these entities but seems to have been forgotten just two years later by COMIDA head Judy Seil and her band of marauding corporate cum-dumpsters (see, because Seil and the COMIDA board are constantly getting fucked).
and you can throw in Maggie’s RenSquare, and Duffy’s water features and …
