While Mr. Dawson, the electrician, has kept his job, the drive to distant work sites has doubled his gas bill, food prices rose sharply last year and his health insurance premiums have soared. His monthly expenses have risen by about $400, and the elimination of overtime has cost him $200 a month. Food stamps help fill the gap.
Like many new beneficiaries here, Mr. Dawson argues that people often abuse the program and is quick to say he is different. While some people “choose not to get married, just so they can apply for benefits,” he is a married, churchgoing man who works and owns his home. While “some people put piles of steaks in their carts,” he will not use the government’s money for luxuries like coffee or soda. “To me, that’s just morally wrong,” he said.
He has noticed crowds of midnight shoppers once a month when benefits get renewed. While policy analysts, spotting similar crowds nationwide, have called them a sign of increased hunger, he sees idleness. “Generally, if you’re up at that hour and not working, what are you into?” he said.
I think this Times article ignores one superproject - the Hudson Mass Transit Tunnel - but the general point is sound. This country has a definite "no we can't" attitude towards big infrastructure projects.
The Obama administration on Monday plans to announce a campaign to pressure mortgage companies to reduce payments for many more troubled homeowners, as evidence mounts that a $75 billion taxpayer-financed effort aimed at stemming foreclosures is foundering.
“The banks are not doing a good enough job,” Michael S. Barr, Treasury’s assistant secretary for financial institutions, said in an interview Friday. “Some of the firms ought to be embarrassed, and they will be.”
They're going to try and shame the country's most hated institutions. That will work.
I've long wondered why there hasn't been more innovation in dealing with highway car crashes. One crash can cause a backup for hours, at enormous cost, and no realistic capacity increase is going to take care of that.
One of the not very talked about goodies was the COBRA subsidy. It's going away.
For workers who are laid off or downsized between Sept. 1, 2008, and Dec. 31, 2009, the COBRA subsidy pays 65 percent of their job-based health insurance premiums for nine months.
That subsidy, however, expires Monday for Hall and untold thousands of others who began receiving it in March, when it first became available as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
The right-wing opposes the health care bill because it might be good.
But, you know, it could be a whole lot better - it could save hundreds of billions of dollars and cover everyone if it were a single-payer plan, just as an example.
Fair enough to point out that the arguments the right is making range from crazy-wackadoodle to outright lying (or, usually, a mixture of both).
And that's not even counting the real left-wing option, which is a fully nationalized system such as Britain's very good National Health Service, which costs Britain's taxpayers far, far less than Americans pay in taxes to maintain our own country's commercial health care disaster.
I think it would be an excellent idea for Congress to give my local transit authority money to by streetcars from this company so that various mothballed trolley lines could be restarted.
U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer has announced that, at his recommendation, the White House will invite Chandra Brown, an executive with an Oregon maker of modern streetcars, to participate in President Obama's Jobs Summit Dec. 3.
Top administration officials have pointed to Portland's streetcar and light rail networks as a model for "livable communities" that help people walk and use mass transit, cutting down on auto emissions.
As said, borrowers will sometimes default, and lenders who are getting risk premium interest rates should expect this. In the 90s lots of countries were paying high interest rate for loans - because of the supposed risk - and were simultaneously being told by the world financial community that sovereign default would be a nuclear event. Nice trick. I cheered when Argentina defaulted.
Disclaimer:
This is a personal web site. It is not a production of Media Matters for America (MMFA). Statements on this site do not represent the views or policies of MMFA. Preferences for electoral candidates posted on this site have not been expressed using any MMFA resources.
.jpg)
