July 29, 2012

Latest Proposal to Kill Post Office Ignores Real Causes of Its Financial Crisis

from OnTheCommons.org:


Latest Proposal to Kill Post Office Ignores Real Causes of Its Financial Crisis
Peter Orszag, Obama's former OMB director, stands to benefit from privatization of U.S. mail

July 26, 2012 | by David Morris


If chutzpah can be defined as “killing your parents then throwing yourself on the mercy of the court because you’re an orphan” then Peter Orszag is the poster child for chutzpah. In his recent article in Bloomberg News he insists the best fix for the post office is to take it private.

Where does the chutzpah come from? Orszag was Director of the Office of Management Budget (OMB), an agency that played a key role in crippling the USPS with a manufactured financial crisis.

Here’s the back-story. In 1970, after almost two centuries, the Post Office was transformed from a Cabinet agency to the quasi-independent US Postal Service (USPS). In keeping with its new status, Congress eventually moved its finances off budget. Yet, as I’ve discussed before on OTC, the OMB and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ignored Congress and continued to include the USPS in the unified budget, the budget they use for “scoring” legislation to estimate its impact on the deficit.

Fast forward to 2001. The Government Accountability Office put the Postal Service on its list of “high-risk” programs because of rising financial pressures resulting from exploding demand from both the residential and commercial sectors. Then in 2002 the anxiety level fell dramatically when the Office of Personnel Management found the Postal Service had been significantly overpaying into its retirement fund. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/magazine/latest-proposal-kill-post-office-ignores-real-causes-its-financial-crisis

July 29, 2012

London Crawling

LONDON (AP) — Long lines formed Tuesday and travelers were delayed at St. Pancras, the central London rail station where reporters, Olympic workers and fans with tickets depart for the Olympic Park in east London.

The delays caused two AP reporters and scores of other travelers to take at least 50 minutes to make the 6- to 7-minute ride out to the Olympic Stadium. Other riders complained on the social networking site Twitter about delays up to 2 hours, and barricades were put up to control the crowds at the train station.

Hours later, officials acknowledged that delays up to an hour were continuing Tuesday night, blaming signal problems.

Three days before the Olympics officially begin, London's extensive subway and train system is facing a major test with officials expecting up to 3 million more journeys a day during the games. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.masstransitmag.com/news/10746818/uk-long-lines-delays-at-londons-st-pancras-station

July 29, 2012

How Cities Can Get Drivers Biking

from YES! Magazine:



How Cities Can Get Drivers Biking
How can planners attract the 60 percent of Americans who say they would bike more if they felt more secure? The answer could be cheap and simple.

by Jay Walljasper
posted Jul 27, 2012


You can glimpse the future right now in forward-looking American cities—a few blocks here, a mile there, where people riding bicycles are protected from rushing cars and trucks.

Chicago’s Kinzie Street, just north of downtown, offers a good picture of this transportation transformation. New bike lanes are marked with bright green paint and separated from motor traffic by a series of plastic posts. This means bicyclists glide through the busy area in the safety of their own space on the road. Pedestrians are thankful that bikes no longer seek refuge on the sidewalks, and many drivers appreciate the clear, orderly delineation about where bikes and cars belong.

“Most of all this is a safety project,” notes Chicago’s Transportation Commissioner Gabe Klein. “We saw bikes go up from a 22 percent share of traffic to 52 percent of traffic on the street with only a negligible change in motorists’ time, but a drop in their speeds. That makes everyone safer.”

Klein heralds this new style of bike lane as one way to improve urban mobility in an era of budget shortfalls. “They’re dirt cheap to build compared to road projects.” ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/how-cities-can-make-biking-safer

July 28, 2012

The Poverty Epidemic Hits the Suburbs

from truthdig:


The Poverty Epidemic Hits the Suburbs

Posted on Jul 26, 2012
By Bill Boyarsky


Why is this presidential campaign so centered on the middle class? What about the poor people? Their numbers are growing, but their fate hasn’t made it into the debate between President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Of course, the Democratic candidate and his Republican opponent don’t have the same vision of where America should go. The president favors an activist government. He bet his political future on an Affordable Care Act that makes a big start toward assuring the availability of health care. Romney favors the crimped vision of the Republican economic leader Rep. Paul Ryan, and his plan to reduce taxes for the rich, eventually privatize Medicare and dismantle Medicaid for the poor.

But little, if anything, is said about the disastrous phenomenon of rising poverty, which, as Hope Yen of The Associated Press reported this week, is “on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century. ... Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor.” Census figures that will be released in the fall, she wrote, are expected to show that poverty has exceeded the level it was at in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson’s launched his War on Poverty.

These truly are the forgotten Americans. They are invisible to candidates, strategists, pundits and even journalists, except for those dedicated few who stick with the poverty beat. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_poverty_epidemic_hits_the_suburbs_20120726/

July 28, 2012

Mark Fiore: ALEC Rock

Mark Fiore: ALEC Rock

July 27, 2012
by Mark Fiore


You only thought you knew how a bill becomes a law. In this Fiore creation, “ALEC” ( representing the American Legislative Exchange Council) explains the ways corporations and politicians collude to create self-serving, self-enriching legislation — steamrolling democracy in the process.

July 27, 2012

Chick-Fil-A Wedding Crashers (cartoon)

July 27, 2012

Exposed: Pennsylvania Act 13 Overturned by Supreme Court, Originally an ALEC Model Bill

Published on Friday, July 27, 2012 by DeSmog Blog
Exposed: Pennsylvania Act 13 Overturned by Supreme Court, Originally an ALEC Model Bill

by Steve Horn


On July 26, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled PA Act 13 unconstitutional. The bill would have stripped away local zoning laws, eliminated the legal concept of a Home Rule Charter, limited private property rights, and in the process, completely disempowered town, city, municipal and county governments, particularly when it comes to shale gas development.

The Court ruled that Act 13 "…violates substantive due process because it does not protect the interests of neighboring property owners from harm, alters the character of neighborhoods and makes irrational classifications – irrational because it requires municipalities to allow all zones, drilling operations and impoundments, gas compressor stations, storage and use of explosives in all zoning districts, and applies industrial criteria to restrictions on height of structures, screening and fencing, lighting and noise."

Act 13 — pejoratively referred to as "the Nation's Worst Corporate Giveaway" by AlterNet reporter Steven Rosenfeld — would have ended local democracy as we know it in Pennsylvania.

"It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government," Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), told Rosenfeld. "It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it." ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/27-3

July 27, 2012

Olympic Cash Race: Corporate giants take gold, Londoners lose out

All eyes are on London today as the Olympics extravaganza kicks off. The athletes are all set and spectators are pouring into the British capital - but the preparations for the Games have been plagued by countless security, traffic and political problems.

July 27, 2012

Student loan debt threatens graduates' financial future

By Susan Tompor
Detroit Free Press Personal Finance Columnist


Janelle O'Hara knows her college debt isn't anything close to the financial migraine hitting other college grads.

The 24-year-old pays $150 a month for her $17,000 in federal student loans -- not much next to the $300 or $400 a month that some of her friends pay.

One of her friends who didn't graduate had to choose between rent one month and the student loan payment. Rent won -- the young woman needed somewhere to live.

"It's there, and it's nagging at you while you're in school. But it's nothing like when you get that first notice saying, 'Oh, by the way, you're going to have to start paying,' " said O'Hara, who works full-time as a social media specialist at Michigan First Credit Union in Lathrup Village. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20120727/COL07/307270123/Susan-Tompor-Student-loan-debt-threatens-graduates-financial-future?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

July 27, 2012

How the London Olympics Will Revolutionize Food

from Civil Eats:



How the London Olympics Will Revolutionize Food

July 27th, 2012
By Katrina Heron


Olympic training regimens are the stuff of legend, but here’s one you probably haven’t heard of: spend 18 hours a day for five years researching every fresh, healthy, comestible, and delicious recipe the host nation can muster—and then be ready to serve them all at lightning speed.

It’s a new sport, launched by an intrepid group of food planners charged with feeding the athletes—and everyone else—at the London-based Games of the XXX Olympiad, which kick off officially today. Over a total of 27 days, 14 million meals will be consumed at 44 venues in and around the city. The athletes alone will pack away 1.2 million of them—65,000 on the busiest day.

The food for what has been described as the largest peacetime catering operation in the world is measured in tonnes (2,200 pounds), as in: a staggering 330 tonnes of fruits and “veg”; 100 tonnes of meat; 21 tonnes of cheese. But that’s the warm-up. If a “Food Vision” meticulously plotted under the auspices of the London Organizing Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) succeeds, it will lead the way to a much bigger prize: a new standard for the procurement and consumption of healthy, regionally sourced, environmentally sustainable food in London and beyond.

Beating the nearest rival in the Olympic competition was a snap. At the Beijing Summer Games in 2008, it was a toss-up which was worse, the quality of the food or the fact that it kept running out. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/07/27/how-the-london-olympics-will-revolutionize-food/