Tag: "government"
Governments Innovate in Response to Fiscal Crisis
Who says governments can’t be innovative. AZCentral reports on ways local governments there are creatively responding to the fiscal crisis: Responding to a growing demand for library services in east Mesa, the city in 2011 opened an express library at a vacant strip mall for $360,000 rather than building a stand-alone library for as much [...]
Who’s Your Debt Daddy?
Amid all of this foolish brinkmanship, it might be worth remembering who owns our national debt. The Congressional Quarterly has an interesting interactive chart here. You can also see the past (noncontroversial) history of the US debt limit here.
You’re Not Using the Internet. . .
It is using you. That’s the spectre raised in a recent article by Sue Halpern in the New York Review of Books. Among other works, she reviews Eli Pariser’s Filter Bubble (which we have previously commented on). Here is just one of the many troubling issues she raises in her article: Why this matters is [...]
Happy Hundredth Hubert
In the New York Times today, Rick Perlstein muses about the legacy of one of the forgotten figures of 20th Century politics, Hubert Humphrey: Argue against his supposed heresies if you will. But the post-1970s deregulatory consensus that replaced them, embodied as much by Reagan then as Robert E. Rubin today, has hardly done a [...]
Poll: Voters support gov’t consolidation if it is good, oppose it if it’s bad
That’s the “take away” from a new survey on public perceptions about government consolidation in New York State. New Yorkers will support consolidation if it improves the quality of services, makes the community more attractive to business or promotes efficiency in services. Of course, there’s no guarantee that consolidation can do any of these things. [...]
How We Helped Cut Taxes
The headline in Wednesday’s Kingston (NY) Freeman read: “Village of Saugerties Tax Rate to Drop Sharply.” Good news and highly unsual in these difficult times. How did they do it? Village officials have revised their budget draft for the coming year to reflect a 21 percent decrease in the property tax rate and a slight [...]
