Saturday, January 10, 2009

commentary

More BS but STILL no facts presented that would contradict the facts, figures, or witnessed statements presented here. NONE. ZERO. ZIP. No answers to the questions presented here, just more unsupported and unverified assertions that are becoming tiresome to hear and a waste of our time. IF you cant back up your opinions with anything that even resembles facts or figures, take them to the BS R Us website, where they will be welcomed and fit right in. While its true that the City has MANY problem areas, the pool is just ANOTHER area of mismanagement, duplicity, mendacity, and/or incompetence.

proof needed ?

Claim of no knowledge about what other pools charge is a witnessed statement. So is a claim to NOT know the specific details that go into the annual lump sum revenues at the pool. Those have TWO responsible witnesses each. The claim of 15 to 30 Springs swimmers on MDAC is in a memo the City Manager sent to the entire Council and a resident, and has been quoted here verbatim at least TWICE. Same with the Optimist connection. Any questions?

BS R US

Okay, we have somebody who disputes the opinions and figures stated here, one by one. GREAT. Unfortunately, they present NO facts of figures to support their case. NONE. ZIP. ZERO. NADA. IF they have contrary facts or figures present them here so that everyone can inspect them. The facts and figures regarding the pool and its operational problems have been presented here numerous times. WHICH specific facts or figures are you disputing? To make a statement without ANY facts or figures to back them up is a ridiculous waste of our time. Are you saying that MDAC did NOT rent the MDC South pool 4 years ago for at least $1300 a month? Are you saying that MDAC did NOT move from there to the Springs pool for $200 a month? Are you saying that MDAC has NEVER been behind on those $200 a month payments? Are you saying that MDAC can, and will, prove that to be true? Are you saying that MDAC can verify and certify that the numbers of Springs swimmers in their team is from 15 to 30 swimmers each month? To make unverified and uncertified statements with NO proof offered is just blowing smoke! Pure and unadulterated BS! "Its true because I say its true" - that sounds a LOT like city management now. BS R Us could be their motto. Tell us again about the Optimist connection - that is always good for a chuckle.

Friday, January 9, 2009

elections poster

elections

clean sweep of all the administrative staff should be the first piece of business for a new council should that happen in April. Then the first priority should be to have an outside independent line by line audit of all departments to figure out the EXACT financial status of the City. A revamping of the nepotism policy reguarding employees should also be addressed. Hire professionals that will be accountable for their actions. Review and adjust all salaries according to position and responsibilites. Eliminate any position not being fully utilized. Consolidate wherever possible. Fire those that are not accountable. Review and or stop all contracts that are NOT in the best interest of the City. Make all government dealings transparent. If just those messures can be achieved the rest of the issues facing the City should be easy to work with.any person running on this platform gets my vote !

commentary

Sounds like the ELECTIONS poster has a clear and concise plan of action to clean up our town and restore some respectability. He or she should run for Council. I too, would vote for anybody who could make that happen. We can be pretty sure that NONE of that will happen if the Council is NOT changed. The Council will NOT change itself, however, and those candidates of change and accountability need public support!

Marlboro Man

Lung cancer killed the 'Marlboro Man'?

Sad but true.

Philip Morris' ad campaign for Marlboro cigarettes depicted a rugged cowboy known as the "Marlboro Man." The campaign started in 1954, and during a TV run that lasted until 1971 (and a print campaign that kept going), several different men portrayed the iconic figure.

Two Marlboro Men died of lung cancer: David McLean, who appeared in TV and print ads starting in the early '60s, died in October 1995 at age 73. Wayne McLaren, who posed for print ads in the '70s, died in July 1992 at age 51.

Green facts

Did you know?
2 times: U.S. food prices are rising at twice the rate of inflation. Co-op prices are generally 10-40 percent below packaged versions of the same items.

4,000 years: Amount of time it takes a glass bottle to decompose in a landfill.

2-3 times: Arctic ice mass is warming faster than the global average.

Council unconcerned about pool issues

It does not appear that the Council will address the pool issues anytime soon, if ever. Perhaps they consider $200 a month to be fair market value for private swim teams practice at our pool, even tho the facts indicate otherwise. Perhaps they feel that, after having the pool for forty years, not presently having good, verifiable controls and accounting methods in place is too much to ask. It is also possible that they are perfectly okay with handshake agreements as a method for conducting City business, even tho they havent authorized any to be made and they arent legally enforcable if nobody knows what the agreements are. They are also unconcerned when the City Manager sends them a memo that says an Optimist connection exists that makes sales taxes on concession sales unnecessary; however there is no verifiable or confirmed basis for that claim and could leave the city liable for back sales taxes. Perhaps they are not concerned because, compared to other city fiascos, this is small potatoes. Perhaps they dont want to address these issues because it could be embarrassing to them in a campaign season. Or perhaps they just dont care what happens at the pool. Any or all of those possibilities exist, and we may never find the TRUTH if somebody in a position to do something about it doesnt investigate and shed some light on these issues. The people have a right to know where their money is going and for what. Transparency is a good thing in a democratic society.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

the gift that keps on giving

Granted, any system depends on the honesty of its operators to work properly. The problems at the pool have been made apparent several times in several ways: no real admission controls, erratic and inconsistent record keeping, imaginary Optimist relationships, oppressive and punitive style of management, failure to protect employees from taping, rents running YEARS behind in some cases, claimed inablity to know how annual numbers are derived, lack of revenue details, supposed lack of knowledge regarding what fair market value is for our pool,etc. The deficits are myriad and many. Perhaps it is time to start looking at possible remedies to these problems so that they dont continue. Again, even the BEST systems being installed will NOT be effective if the the people running them are incompetent or dishonest, or both. The question seems to be- how much of the problem is in the SYSTEM, and how much is in the personnel? Perhaps it is the personnel involved that constitutes more of the problem than the system in place. Having a great, automatic, almost foolproof system in place with multiple checks and balances could minimize the manipulations of any rogue or less-than-honest personnel, no? None of this begins to address the $200 a month, or even $500 a month, fire-sale discounted gift that the taxpayers of MS give to MDAC every month.

commentary

It is hard to see how all these personal attacks on the new Rec Director are helping to determine what actually DID, or DIDNT happen, and what should be done about it IF something out of line or inappropriate HAS occurred. It may be a measure of the possible outrage felt by the parents of those young ladies, or the young ladies themselves. Either may be understandable, but until ALL the facts are in and have been carefully weighed, it is premature and ill-advised to convict anybody of anything. Questions could be raised, of course, and should be in some cases, and discussed based on the known facts. This could be a platform for that discussion, as a means of seeking out the TRUTH, wherever it may be found. Of course there could also be other, personal reasons to direct a lot of attention towards this situation that may not have anything to do with the situation itself.

information gathering continues

While you may very well be right about the pool beind a dead issue until the elections, it shouldnt stop the information gathering process. When it IS time to address these issues, ALL the facts will be in place. For instance, at the Milander pool there is NO turnstile or camera but you do have to approach the front desk to get into either locker room. There is a $5 registration fee to have your contact information put into their computer. Once you are in their computer, whenever you visit you just give them your contact info- name, address, phone number, etc., and its confirmed by their computer, or not. They charge several different rates for seniors, residents, nonresidents, kids, etc. Residents pay their taxes to the City of Hialeah of course and are given a lesser admission rate than that of nonresidents. This sounds like a process that could work at OUR pool. There are three pools in Hialeah - Bucky Dent, Milander, and a McDonald pool. Only the Milander pool is heated tho, and they have several more kiddy slides, etc. than we do.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Smart homes

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 6, 2009, 12:01 am
The Smart Home Is Still Looking for a Market
By Steve Lohr
The vision of the smart home has been around for decades. And an appealing vision it is — a computerized triumph of automation, controlling a house’s lighting and heating, even the kitchen.
Forgot to turn off the lights in the rush to get out the door? No problem, send a text message or voice command and the lights are shut off remotely. The smart home, of course, will have intelligent appliances, connected to the Internet, which can both cook or refrigerate food as directed from a cellphone or personal computer. A smart refrigerator, with sensors, can detect when goceries have been used and automatically reorder online.

Yet the smart home has remained a dream for years, just over the horizon. And the horizon keeps receding. Along the way, there have been intriguing pilot projects and lab experiments, but nothing that justified the extra cost to consumers.

Today, despite the spread of broadband Internet and home networks, consumers remain deeply skeptical about smart-home technology, according to a new study that will be released on Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“Mass market consumers have almost no interest in using ‘technology’ for home ‘automation’ or ‘control,’ ” concluded a market study sponsored a smart-home research group, supported by companies including Whirlpool, Cisco Systems, Direct Energy, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Zensys.

That suggests smart-home devices are not about to flood the marketplace. Whirlpool, the appliance maker, had long done smart-home research and pilot projects. But Carol Priefert, a senior manager in the technology group, observed, “Whirlpool is a mass company. I don’t bring products out until there is a mass market.”

Still, the technical foundation to make smart homes a reality is spreading. In 2008, 87 percent of American households had broadband Internet, up from 70 percent in 2005, the study noted.

What is needed is a “killer app” — a compelling use — and some government encouragement, according to Tim Woods, a partner in the consulting firm Poco Labs and an expert in smart home technology.

The killer app, Mr. Woods said, will be energy efficiency. To jumpstart that market, he said, the federal government will need to mandate the installation of smart meters in homes, phased in over years, as California is doing.

Then, Mr. Woods added, the government needs to guide the development of open standards in hardware and software, so the smart meters can communicate with a television set-top box, cellphone or PC. Those devices will serve as remote controls that allow a person to see how much energy a house is consuming, at what cost and suggest heating, lighting and air conditioning settings to save money.

The political timing, Mr. Woods said, is right. President-elect Barack Obama, he observed, has vowed to “make a huge effort around energy management.”

Once a technology platform is in place, Mr. Woods predicts, the smart-home market for intelligent appliances and other devices will take off. “The business excuse is going to come from energy management,” he said. “And that is what will allow the broader smart-home vision around time-saving and convenience to gain momentum.”

3 guesses

We are BADLY in need of a Spring Cleaning and whoever can put those principles into effect gets my vote! A resident went to Milander pool in Hialeah today. The pool is heated and a short-course like ours. It is closed to the public from Nov thru March, during which time only the Hialeah Storm, their swim team, practices there. The cost to practice there is $45 per swimmer per month, and they have a LOT of swimmers! If we charged a swim team with an average of 50 swimmers daily or monthly that fee we would take in $2250 per MONTH in revenues! Or $27,000 a year! Lets see.. $2400 a year, or $27,000 a year.. which is better for the taxpayers? A team with 100-strong swimmers would bring in $54,000 a year! Which is the better deal for the OWNERS? WHO is the main beneficiary of the pool practices NOW in place at OUR pool? three guesses

Worst recession since great depression has NO EFFECT on Springs?

WASHINGTON - Planned layoffs at U.S. firms eased in December from the previous month’s seven-year high but they were up an astounding 275 percent annually as the year-old recession cut a huge swathe of destruction through job market. The economic slump, which is likely to be the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, also produced the worst year of layoffs since 2003, outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas said on Wednesday in its monthly report on U.S. job cuts. The report said heavy job-cutting could continue through at least the first half of 2009, and the outlook afterward hinges on President-elect Barack Obama’s plans to stimulate the economy through increased government spending. Economic slump, which is likely to be the longest since the Great Depression of the 1930s, layoffs at 7-yr highs, up 275%.. the writing IS on the wall. Everybody ELSE can see it. Why cant our city officials? Are they blind? Crazy? Dumb? Paid off? ALL of the above? Revenues in Broward are down 5.9% and are projected to double next year. But it will have ZERO effect on us in Miami Springs???????? Dade county is tightening ITS belt with layoffs, suspending projects, etc.- WHY are WE not doing the same? This Council has either lost its tenuous grip on reality, is blissfully unaware of the consequences, or doesnt care. Which is it? Perhaps some of each. Neither is acceptable.

billing statements and payment verification needed

The easy way to find out what payments we have asked for is to make an FOI for the billing statements and deposit slips/bank statements for the money paid by those who use our pool for practices and meets for the last three years. That will be done today.

education is a wonderful thing

These pool visits will be made as an educational gesture toward the City Manager, as he has said in the past he has NO IDEA how much other cities and community pools charge to use their pools! It seems that, since he had NO IDEA, an arbitrary figure of $200 a month was grabbed out of the air and applied to our pool for private and public swim team practices. It would be interesting to see exactly how he came up with THAT figure. He apparently did NO RESEARCH prior to establishing that sum, by his own admission. Why not? Why would he NOT consider getting fair market value for our pool as a part of his responsibility to the taxpayers? Giving MDAC a sweetheart deal was NOT in the best interests of the taxpayers, and ONLY benefitted the owners of MDAC! Where does his loyalties lie? WE pay his inflated salary, not MDAC!

less work, same pay

More pools will be visited in the coming days to see how other cities handle their pool revenues and operations. All of this SHOULD, could, and would be done by the City Manager of course, as part of his responsibilities to justify his exorbitant salary. When he says he didnt ask for a raise last year, he is technically correct. What is NOT said is that 15-20% of his responsibilities walked out the door to the County with the transfer of the Water and Sewer Department. The City was paid 440k per year to ADMINISTER the W & S dept, and was the basis for his high salary. So now he has 15-20% LESS responsibilitites and the SAME pay! That amounts to a 15-20% RAISE. Sweet deal for HIM; bad deal and bad business for the taxpayers! He should be taking a 15-20% DROP in pay! Why has the Council NOT demanded this? People are paid in accordance with the amount of responsibility assumed - less responsibility, less pay - except here.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Enviro Capital

In Wisconsin, for example, about $20 billion is sent out of state to import fossil fuels every year (there are none in the state). Green stimuli that staunch some of that flow will result in expenditures with much higher multipliers for the state economy. Wisconsin already has many leading companies in areas such as energy efficiency (Johnson Controls) and biomethane (WI leads the country at producing biomethane from cow manure, landfills, wastewater treatment, etc) and a green stimulus will help them to compete globally. This doesn’t address the states that produce oil, gas and coal, but the same argument can be made for the nation as a whole with respect to oil since the U.S. imports over 50 percent of the oil consumed.
Comment by Peter Taglia - January 5, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Mr. Harrop, Belfry and Taglia (and I) have one major thing in common which may be overlooked by some. Despite our expressed opinions, there is an implied interest in making a living from, improving, flurishing in pursuing “green” initiatives. Consider that “Pod-people” have focused passion which can overcome many obstacles including economic and fossil fuel-centric thinking. Entrepreneurs provide “noddle-power” and practical application of “green” opportunities that, although first consume capital in the “valley of death” (see article above) without much consumable benefit, in the process create jobs, awareness and yes, some material gain.
My impression is that we, as a nation, are being watched by the world. A nation that is about to rise from the economic ashes. In the interim, I’m learning from those, like you, that are more accutely connected to a specific “go” at green living/being. I’ve gone as far as researching the solar photon density map of N.A. Geeky, yes, but interesting to see that mid-continent is bombarded with solar energy at a rate much greater than coastal regions. I’m all about following the financial incentives to overlay my life with a less-carbon footprint. No carbon footprint is a long-range goal and less is more doable for those of us on a budget.
All, thanks for the common themed but diverse blogs on one of my favorite pursuits.
Comment by Warren Love - January 6, 2009 at 11:27 am
The fallacy of “green” jobs is they’ll lower GDP thus forcing the consumption of MORE goods and labor to maintain a constant income as taxes increase to fund the jobs and “industry” that can’t exist without government welfare.

Barrie, which is it? flooding or drought? how in the hell can your magical AGW produce both? Buy a reverse osmosis system to create the clean water and invest the monies you wanted to waste in something that will actually grow the economy instead raising Uncle Sam’s control of the economy.
Comment by Peter Foley - January 7, 2009 at 12:15 am
Green Jobs can provide a net gain for the economy if we include the value of a clean economy in the equation.
What is that value?
How about we start with the value of healthier children in the Appalachian region, which currently have high rates of asthma as a consequence of TVA Coal. Perhaps true that coal-miners would become home-insulators, but the kicker is the health dividend of the Children. Add to that diminished medical expenses. Moving GDP from doctors to weatherization installers increases the standard of living by flattening the income distribution.
Comment by Benjamin Gatti - January 7, 2009 at 12:40 am
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clarification

Of course the major damage referred to in the prior post was to the pool supports, wiring, plumbing, pumps, etc. The retaining wall between the pool and the gym would have to be removed, and it provides structural support to the pool and pool deck. In these times of recession, unemployment, foreclosures, and an uncertain economic future, can we afford to take on MORE debt? The Council is obviously NOT concerned about ANY of the above factors and continues merrily on their way spending money like drunken sailors (apologies to the drunken sailors). They have NO concern for the longtime residents who are retired and living on fixed incomes, and cant afford repeated tax increases. Thats NOT 100% accurate, of course- they DID allow them another garage sale to get rid of their life possessions in hopes of putting food on the table and keeping the lights on! That IS an indication of exactly how out-of-touch with the everyday realities most of us face every day! Or perhaps they KNOW, but just dont CARE.

questions persist

What are the chances that, when the old gym is being demolished, a beam or support will give way and cause MAJOR damage? So much so that city officials will suggest we build a NEW pool to go with our NEW gym? Adding several million dollars in debt to the taxpayers burden and making necessary FURTHER tax increases? Anybody taking odds out there?

The nation article, page 2

The Political Moment

From all indications, President-elect Obama gets this. In his November 24 press conference announcing his economic team, he pledged to "do what's required to jolt this economy back into shape." In his December 6 radio address, he committed to a bold recovery plan founded on strategic public investment to "help save or create" 2.5 million jobs "while rebuilding our infrastructure, improving our schools, reducing our dependence on oil and saving billions of dollars." Elements of the plan include a "massive effort" to make federal buildings energy-efficient, a project that would save taxpayers billions each year; the "largest new investment in national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s"; a "sweeping" program to upgrade and repair the nation's schools; and a new push to extend broadband to every corner of the country. Aides have floated numbers as high as $800 billion over two years.

There will be pitched battles in Congress over the size and composition of the recovery plan, but it will move rapidly into law. Some conservatives have already begun to discover their suppressed Keynesian ids. Emil Henry Jr., an assistant treasury secretary under Bush, writes that "investment in key infrastructure is consistent with Reagan principles" and that investment in "renewable energy will be key in our future." Neocon William Kristol suggests that "small-government Republicans" are an endangered species and urges Republicans to support a "huge public works stimulus package," directing the dollars to the "underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies." (Apparently, spending about as much as the rest of the world combined on our military isn't enough.) The rabidly antigovernment business lobbies--like the Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers--are climbing aboard the infrastructure bandwagon, their corporate patrons desperate for contracts.

Democratic majorities in the new Congress will make House Republicans irrelevant to the debate, which is a good thing, since minority leader John Boehner argues that tax cuts alone, particularly capital-gains tax cuts, will fix what ails us. Senate Republicans will have greater sway, but given the state of the economy it is hard to imagine even minority leader Mitch McConnell--the Senate's Dr. No, who recently blocked aid to the struggling automakers--standing in the way of a massive recovery plan. Democratic Congressional leaders hope to have a plan ready for Obama to sign soon after he is inaugurated.

At the heart of this effort will be an expanded public sector making the necessary and strategic investments. An early emphasis will be on repairing existing roads and bridges, with immediate efficiency gains. Investment in a smart grid will accelerate the move to decentralized renewable energy. Retrofitting schools and public buildings will save energy and money. Computerizing medical records promises significant savings. Increasing Pell Grants will keep more students in college. As studies from the Minneapolis Federal Reserve show, investing in pre-K on the front side of life saves big time on the back side in lower crime, better health and lower dropout rates.

The New New Deal

Once the economy begins to recover, which may take much longer than people expect, we'll face the real challenge: sustaining the expanded public investment as a centerpiece of the new economy we build out of the collapse of the old.

If the United States wants to retain a broad middle class in a global economy, it has little choice but to finance a public social contract--from healthcare to lifelong learning to pensions above Social Security--that will be vital to providing the security that families need to prosper. Expanded public investment--in research and development, twenty-first-century infrastructure and new energy--will be essential to sustaining a competitive high-wage economy. The new economy will also need several other building blocks: a new global economic strategy (see "Redoing Globalization" on page 30); a sensible industrial policy, beginning with a transition to new energy; an aggressive wage policy (providing living wages, empowering workers to organize, curbing executive plunder and fat bonuses) that helps distribute the benefits of profits and productivity gains fairly; and a reregulation of finance to make banking boring once more.

This broad transformation--a true new New Deal--entails a sea change in values and policy from the conservative era of the past thirty years. It will have to rally a public that yearns for greater security but is sensibly suspicious, after decades of conservative misrule, of the government's capacity to do anything. One of the monumental challenges facing the Obama administration will be to create a government that works. A vastly expanded and revitalized public sector will require a permanent expansion of expenditures that, once the economy revives, can't be funded by deficit spending. Most sensible economists agree that running a small fiscal deficit makes sense. So long as it is below the rate of inflation, the burden of our debt--its relation to the GDP--will continue to decline. But sustained expansion will require new resources that can come from a combination of new priorities and progressive taxes. Bring home the money squandered in follies like Iraq and reduce the flatulent military budget. Collect the $350 billion of taxes owed that the IRS estimates goes uncollected. Pass progressive tax reform, close egregious loopholes and simplify the tax code.

Is Obama ready to lead this broader fight? He'll have to forget about the "postpartisan" era of good feeling that is all the rage. The creation of a new New Deal will be the mother of all battles. In order to transform priorities, he will have to take on entrenched special interests--epitomized by the iron triangle of the military-industrial complex. Gearing up new investments and progressive taxes will require heroic efforts to overcome conservative resistance in both parties and then to avoid squandering the money on local boondoggles. Putting the necessary shackles around the financial sector will challenge the power of Wall Street. A revamped global economic strategy will threaten multinationals like Wal-Mart that prosper from driving down wages across the world.

Obama should have little trouble rallying public support for a bold recovery plan. People voted for change, and they are terrified about the economy. Aid for Main Street rather than Wall Street will be widely applauded. But forging a new New Deal out of the crisis, developing a new social contract and a new global strategy, will be a central struggle of the next few years.

Progressives shouldn't see this fight as a spectator sport. The New Deal we remember from Roosevelt--Social Security, the Wagner Act, the forty-hour week and fair labor standards--didn't take shape in his first 100 days or in his first year in office. It came only as Roosevelt was preparing for re-election and dealing with a broad populist challenge--a growing and militant labor movement, Huey Long, the Townsendites and more. The threat they posed helped spur Roosevelt and persuade legislators to move on what became known as the second New Deal. Progressives should be pushing hard now, girding ourselves for the battle royal that can no longer be avoided.

article in The nation, page 1

A New New Deal? By Robert L. Borosage & Eric Lotke
This article appeared in the January 12, 2009 edition of The Nation.

December 23, 2008

When Richard Nixon announced that we are all Keynesians now, stagflation was confounding liberal economists, and conservatives were about to take over the commanding heights. Similarly, when Bill Clinton announced that "the era of big government is over," economic conservatism was about to take us off the cliff. Now "the era of big government is over" is over.

Robert L. Borosage & Eric Lotke: Because conservatives refused to invest in our future, America is falling apart. Are we ready to expand the social contract?
.Progressives in the Obama Moment Presidential Election 2008

Garry Wills says Americans think of government only as a "necessary evil," a last resort. Well, folks, all the other resorts are boarded up. In November, America shed more than 500,000 jobs, the worst single-month record in thirty-four years. We lost more than 2 million over the course of 2008--and the crash is accelerating across the globe.

At the same time, America is falling apart, literally. We've witnessed the ghastly spectaculars: failure of the levees in New Orleans, collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, bursting of the steam pipe that shut down ten square blocks of Manhattan. But these tragic catastrophes are a small part of the growing costs of a conservative-era failure to invest in our future.

Conservative scorn for government has produced a crippling public-investment deficit. America's core infrastructure--roads, bridges, sewers, airports, trains, mass transit--is overcrowded, outdated and crumbling. The evidence, assembled by Eric Lotke in The Investment Deficit in America, issued by the Campaign for America's Future, is stark. Poor road conditions cost Americans billions in repairs and countless hours in delay. Though China opens a new subway system every year, and Europeans travel from Paris to Frankfurt on high-speed rail, American railroads don't have the funds needed even to maintain their outmoded infrastructure. Cities are suffering an epidemic of broken pipes and sinkholes, with the Environmental Protection Agency estimating more than 40,000 discharges of raw sewage into our drinking water, streams and homes each year from collapsing and overwhelmed sewage systems. The Education Department found that one-third of our schools are in such a severe state of disrepair that it "interferes with the delivery of instruction."

While the old basics are crumbling, twenty-first-century needs are being ignored. We maintain our addiction to oil while forfeiting our lead in renewable-energy technologies that will drive the green markets of the future. As two-income and single-parent families spread, we are failing to provide the high-quality childcare and pre-kindergarten programs vital to educating the next generation. Even as college or advanced training are deemed essential in the modern economy, more and more Americans find them priced out of reach. Our healthcare system is broken, consuming too many resources while providing care for too few. We invented the Internet, yet we rank about fifteenth among developed countries in access to broadband. In Japan, the average broadband speed is many times faster than our own. US federal investment in research and development is half what it was as a percentage of GDP in the 1960s.

It is time to invest in America. Recovery from this crisis provides the imperative; the investment deficit the targets. But turning the crisis into opportunity isn't sufficient. The fundamental question is whether the short-term response will lead to a new New Deal, a permanent expansion of the social contract.

'Substantial, Strategic and Sustained'

In December more than twenty union presidents, 120 economists and 100 progressive leaders, organized by the Institute for America's Future (IAF), released a statement calling for a "substantial, strategic and sustained" recovery plan for Main Street. The alliteration was an intentional contrast to the "timely, temporary and targeted" stimulus bill passed by Congress this past February. That mantra led to a timid plan focused on tax rebates. With Americans reeling from the collapse of housing prices and the stock market, stagnant wages, increasing debt and growing pessimism, the rebates had little effect. Less than 30 percent actually went into spending, as consumers sensibly used the bulk of the money to pay down debt. A good portion of what they spent went to goods imported from China or elsewhere. "Wal-Mart gift certificates," as the Rev. Jesse Jackson dubbed the rebates, had only a marginal and temporary effect on the economy.

The recovery plan has to be substantial--much bigger than the $150 billion spent on tax rebates last spring. Nobel Prize-winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz call for $1 trillion over two years; the IAF statement says the "floor" should be $900 billion over the same time span. The numbers floated for the Obama plan rise with each passing week as the downturn gets worse.

The reason is simple: government spending is the last resort. Interest rates are already near zero; in December fearful investors were essentially paying the Treasury interest to hold bonds. Consumers are cutting back; businesses are laying off workers and postponing investments. Exports will decline as the global economy turns down and the dollar moves up. States and localities are facing deep deficits and beginning to lay off police and teachers. The government is all that is left. The danger, as Krugman says, is that we'll do too little rather than too much.

Many recognize the need but worry about the deficit, headed toward $1 trillion for 2008. But a $14 trillion economy won't get the necessary boost from a small program. And with investors rushing to the dollar, the United States has no problem financing its ballooning deficits. Moreover, if the economy continues to sink, deficits will rise anyway, as tax revenue plummets and the costs of unemployment, welfare foreclosures and crime rise. Better to run the deficit of putting people to work than pay the price of their ruin.

The recovery plan should be strategic: spending on public works has a far greater effect on the economy than tax cuts. More money is spent; more jobs are created here rather than abroad. And if we invest in vital areas like energy, transportation and education, we can make a down payment on a more productive and competitive economy.

Finally, the recovery plan should be sustained. It will take a prolonged effort--two years is optimistic--to get the economy moving. Conservatives argue that New Deal spending failed to solve the Depression. In reality, Roosevelt's program dramatically reduced unemployment until, eager to return to balanced budgets, he raised taxes and cut spending in 1937 and immediately sent the economy back into a tailspin, which ended only when the deficit-financed mobilization for World War II kicked in. Again, the greater danger is to stop too soon, not to continue too long.

page 2 net zero gas tax article

These benefits are blindingly obvious. They always have been. But the only time you can possibly think of imposing a tax to achieve them is when oil prices are very low. We had such an opportunity when prices collapsed in the mid-1980s and again in the late 1990s. Both opportunities were squandered. Nothing was done.

Today we are experiencing a unique moment. Oil prices are in a historic free fall from a peak of $147 a barrel to $39 today. In July, U.S. gasoline was selling for $4.11 a gallon. It now sells for $1.65. With $4 gas still fresh in our memories, the psychological impact of a tax that boosts the pump price to near $3 would be far less than at any point in decades. Indeed, an immediate $1 tax would still leave the price more than one-third below its July peak.

The rub, of course, is that this price drop is happening at a time of severe recession. Not only would the cash-strapped consumer rebel against a gas tax. The economic pitfalls would be enormous. At a time when overall consumer demand is shrinking, any tax would further drain the economy of disposable income, decreasing purchasing power just when consumer spending needs to be supported.

What to do? Something radically new. A net-zero gas tax. Not a freestanding gas tax but a swap that couples the tax with an equal payroll tax reduction. A two-part solution that yields the government no net increase in revenue and, more importantly--that is


why this proposal is different from others--immediately renders the average gasoline consumer financially whole.

Here is how it works. The simultaneous enactment of two measures: A $1 increase in the federal gasoline tax--together with an immediate $14 a week reduction of the FICA tax. Indeed, that reduction in payroll tax should go into effect the preceding week, so that the upside of the swap (the cash from the payroll tax rebate) is in hand even before the downside (the tax) kicks in.

The math is simple. The average American buys roughly 14 gallons of gasoline a week. The $1 gas tax takes $14 out of his pocket. The reduction in payroll tax puts it right back. The average driver comes out even, and the government makes nothing on the transaction. (There are, of course, more drivers than workers--203 million vs. 163 million. The 10 million unemployed would receive the extra $14 in their unemployment insurance checks. And the elderly who drive--there are 30 million licensed drivers over 65--would receive it with their Social Security payments.)

Revenue neutrality is essential. No money is taken out of the economy. Washington doesn't get fatter. Nor does it get leaner. It is simply a transfer agent moving money from one activity (gasoline purchasing) to another (employment) with zero net revenue for the government.

Revenue neutrality for the consumer is perhaps even more important. Unlike the stand-alone gas tax, it does not drain his wallet, which would produce not only insuperable popular resistance but also a new drag on purchasing power in the midst of a severe recession. Unlike other tax rebate plans, moreover, the consumer doesn't have to wait for a lump-sum reimbursement at tax time next April, after having seethed for a year about government robbing him every time he fills up. The reimbursement is immediate. Indeed, at its inception, the reimbursement precedes the tax expenditure.

One nice detail is that the $14 rebate is mildly progressive. The lower wage earner gets a slightly greater percentage of his payroll tax reduced than does the higher earner. But that's a side effect. The main point is that the federal government is left with no net revenue--even temporarily. And the average worker is left with no net loss. (As the tax takes effect and demand is suppressed, average gas consumption will begin to fall below 14 gallons a week. There would need to be a review, say yearly, to adjust the payroll tax rebate to maintain revenue neutrality. For example, at 13 gallons purchased per week, the rebate would be reduced to $13.)

Of course, as with any simple proposal, there are complications. Doesn't reimbursement-by-payroll-tax-cut just cancel out the incentive to drive less and shift to fuel-efficient cars? No. The $14 in cash can be spent on anything. You can blow it all on gas by driving your usual number of miles, or you can drive a bit less and actually have money in your pocket for something else. There's no particular reason why the individual consumer would want to plow it all back into a commodity that is now $1 more expensive. When something becomes more expensive, less of it is bought.

The idea that the demand for gasoline is inelastic is a myth. A 2007 study done at the University of California, Davis, shows that during the oil shocks of the late 1970s, a 20 percent increase in oil prices produced a 6 percent drop in per capita gas consumption. During the first half of this decade, demand proved more resistant to change--until the dramatic increases of the last two years. Between November 2007 and October 2008, the United States experienced the largest continual decline in driving history (100 billion miles). Last August, shortly after pump prices peaked at $4.11 per gallon, the year-on-year decrease in driving reached 5.6 percent--the largest ever year-to-year decline recorded in a single month, reported the Department of Transportation. (Records go back to 1942.) At the same time, mass transit--buses, subways, and light rail--has seen record increases in ridership. Amtrak reported more riders and revenue in fiscal 2008 than ever in its 37-year history.

Gasoline demand can be stubbornly inelastic, but only up to a point. In this last run-up, the point of free fall appeared to be around $4. If it turns out that at the current world price of $39 a barrel, a $1 tax does not discourage demand enough to keep the price down, we simply increase the tax. The beauty of the gas tax is that we--and not OPEC--do the adjusting. And that increase in price doesn't go into the pocket of various foreign thugs and unfriendlies, but back into the pocket of the American consumer.

What about special cases? Of course there are variations in how much people drive. It depends on geography, occupation, and a host of other factors. These variations are unavoidable, and in part, welcome. The whole idea is to reward those who drive less and to disadvantage those who drive more. Indeed, inequities of this sort are always introduced when, for overarching national reasons, government creates incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors. A tax credit for college tuition essentially takes money out of the non-college going population to subsidize those who do go--and will likely be wealthier in the end than their non-college contributors. Not very fair. Nonetheless, we support such incentives because college education is a national good that we wish to encourage. Decreased oil consumption is a similarly desirable national good.

There will certainly be special cases, such as truck drivers and others for whom longer distance driving is a necessity that might warrant some special program of relief. That would require some small bureaucracy, some filings for exemption or rebate, and perhaps even some very minor tweak of the gas tax (say, an extra penny or two beyond the dollar). But that's a detail. Most people can drive less. They already do.

Why a $1 tax? Because we need a significant increase in the cost of gasoline to change our habits--or, more accurately, maintain the new driving habits and auto purchase patterns that have already occurred as a result of the recent oil shock. We know from the history of the 1980s and 1990s that these habits will be undone and unlearned if gasoline remains at today's amazingly low price. In the very short time that prices have been this low, we have already seen a slight rebound in SUV sales. They remain far below the level of last year--in part because no one is buying anything in this recession, and in part because we have not fully recovered from the psychological impact of $4 gasoline. We are not quite ready to believe that gas will remain this low. But if it does remain this low, as the night follows day, we will resume our gas-guzzling habits.

It might therefore be objected that a $1 gasoline tax won't be enough. If $4 was the price point that precipitated a major decrease in driving and a collapse of SUV sales, an immediate imposition of a $1 gas tax would only bring the average price to $2.65.

To which I have two answers. First, my preliminary assumption is that it takes $4 to break the habit of gas-guzzling profligacy. But once that is done, it might take something less, only in the range of $3, to maintain the new habit. It may turn out that these guesses are slightly off. The virtue of a gas tax is that these conjectures can be empirically tested and refined, and the precise amount of the tax adjusted to consumer response.

Second, my personal preference would be a $1.25 tax today (at $1.65 gasoline) or even a $1.50 tax if gas prices begin to slide below $1.50--the target being near-$3 gasoline. (The payroll tax rebate would, of course, be adjusted accordingly: If the tax is $1.50, the rebate is $21 a week.) The $1 proposal is offered because it seems more politically palatable. My personal preference for a higher initial tax stems from my assumption that the more sharply and quickly the higher prices are imposed, the greater and more lasting the effect on consumption.


But whatever one's assumptions and choice of initial tax, the net-zero tax swap remains flexible, adjustable, testable, and nonbureaucratic. Behavior is changed, driving is curtailed, fuel efficiency is increased, without any of the arbitrary, shifting, often mindless mandates decreed by Congress.

This is a major benefit of the gas tax that is generally overlooked. It is not just an alternative to regulation; because it is so much more efficient, it is a killer of regulation. The most egregious of these regulations are the fleet fuel efficiency (CAFE) standards forced on auto companies. Rather than creating market conditions that encourage people to voluntarily buy greener cars, the CAFE standards simply impose them. And once the regulations are written--with their arbitrary miles-per-gallon numbers and target dates--they are not easily changed. If they are changed, moreover, they cause massive dislocation, and yet more inefficiency, in the auto industry.

CAFE standards have proven devastating to Detroit. When oil prices were relatively low, they forced U.S. auto companies to produce small cars that they could only sell at a loss. They were essentially making unsellable cars to fulfill mandated quotas, like steel producers in socialist countries meeting five-year plan production targets with equal disregard for demand.

Yet the great 2008 run-up in world oil prices showed what happens without any government coercion. As the price of gas approached $4 a gallon, there was a collapse of big-car sales that caused U.S. manufacturers to begin cutting SUV production and restructuring the composition of their fleets. GM's CEO, for example, declared in June, "these prices are changing consumer behavior and changing it rapidly," and announced the closing of four SUV plants and the addition of a third shift in two plants making smaller cars.

Which is precisely why a gas tax would render these government-dictated regulations irrelevant and obsolete. If you want to shift to fuel-efficient cars, don't mandate, don't scold, don't appeal to the better angels of our nature. Find the price point, reach it with a tax, and let the market do the rest.

Yes, a high gas tax constitutes a very serious government intervention. But it has the virtue of simplicity. It is clean, adaptable, and easy to administer. Admittedly, it takes a massive external force to alter behavior and tastes. But given the national security and the economic need for more fuel efficiency, and given the leverage that environmental considerations will have on the incoming Democratic administration and Democratic Congress, that change in behavior and taste will occur one way or the other. Better a gas tax that activates free market mechanisms rather than regulation that causes cascading market distortions.

The net-zero gas tax not only obviates the need for government regulation. It obviates the need for government spending as well. Expensive gas creates the market for the fuel-efficient car without Washington having to pick winners and losers with massive government "investment" and arbitrary grants. No regulations, no mandates, no spending programs to prop up the production of green cars that consumer demand would not otherwise support. And if we find this transition going too quickly or too slowly, we can alter it with the simple expedient of altering the gas tax, rather than undertaking the enormously complicated review and rewriting of fuel-efficiency regulations.


Then there are the so-called externalities: national security, balance of payments, and the environment. The most important of these is national security. In July, when gasoline was at $4, a full $3 was going to the oil producer. (On average thus far this year, 70 percent of pump prices went to pay for the crude.) And God in his infinite wisdom has put oil in many unfortunate places. The American people understand that these dollars were going out of the U.S. economy and into the treasuries of Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, the Iranian mullahs (indirectly, since the oil is fungible), and various other miscreants.

The point of a high U.S. gas tax is to suppress domestic demand and thus suppress the world price. Low world prices are a huge blow to overseas producers, particularly ones with relatively large populations, nationalized industries that are increasingly inefficient, and budgetary obligations built on the expectation of a continuing energy bonanza. Countries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran.

A UBS analysis estimates that Iran and Venezuela need $90 oil to balance their budgets. And at $70, according to Russian finance minister Alexei Kudrin, Russia goes into deficit. It is now draining the reserves built up during the fat years. At current oil prices, Russia will soon become a debtor nation. The World Bank's lead economist for Russia, Zeljko Bogetic, said on December 19 that at $30 a barrel, "financing constraint would become so sharp that it's possible even to envisage Russia's return from a creditor to international organizations to [that of] a borrower." This will be a far humbler Russia than the one that invaded Georgia, built a nuclear reactor in Iran, threatens Poland and the Czech Republic, and is reestablishing naval bases in such former Soviet satellites as Syria.

The Russian navy just made calls in Nicaragua and Cuba. It has conducted joint exercises with Venezuela in an open challenge to America. These are, as yet, not serious threats. But with a stronger Russia and Venezuela, they could be. The projection of power is very expensive, as Americans very well know. Oil at $39 would simply starve Russia and Venezuela of the means to sustain this adventurism.

Similarly Iran, which is already under sanctions, already suffering high inflation, already the subject of popular discontent over corruption and economic mismanagement. All this was cushioned by high oil prices. They allowed the Islamic republic to act like the regional superpower, giving military and financial support to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, "special groups" and Sadrist militias in Iraq, and various other terrorists. And, of course, oil revenues permit the continued large-scale operation of Iran's nuclear weapons development program.

Of all the instruments of foreign policy, military and diplomatic, that we have at our disposal against these adversaries, none is as powerful as $39 (or less) oil. It makes power projection by these regimes far more expensive and difficult. And even more profoundly, if world oil prices remain this low for a significant period of time, the very stability of the regimes in Russia, Venezuela, and Iran will be jeopardized--increasing the possibility of regime change without the expenditure of a single U.S. defense dollar and without the risk of a single U.S. soldier.

Not all oil exporters are adversaries. But many are indifferent to the economic repercussions of high world prices on the American consumer and the American economy. Three of the last four global recessions were preceded--and significantly precipitated--by major oil price spikes. Suppressing the world price through the help of a high U.S. gas tax weakens these producers and makes far more problematic their periodic attempt to extort yet more revenue from us by means of cartel-wide production cuts. Combined with reduction of our overall oil importation, that significantly reduces our dependence on--and our helplessness in the face of--their production decisions. It reduces the power of OPEC over oil prices, and thus over our economic life. And it constitutes the beginning of energy independence--particularly if coupled with increased production of various kinds at home. (But that's another subject.)

We underestimate our power. Of course, the slump in China and other rapidly growing economies has contributed to the current extreme price collapse. But China consumes only 9 percent of the world's oil. The United States consumes 24 percent. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia produces 13 percent of the world's oil. We don't generally see ourselves as the Saudi Arabia of oil consumers, but we are. The Saudis have the most effect on the world price because they are the swing producer. We are, in effect, the swing consumer. And since oil peaked earlier this year, we are consuming less. October was yet another month of record year-on-year decline of gasoline consumption in the United States. And that's just the immediate effect, before the long-term impact of changes in our automobile fleet can take hold. And that long-term change will only occur if we keep the domestic price high.

The further advantage of keeping it artificially high by means of a tax is that it keeps a large part of the money paid at the pump at home in the U.S. economy. Last year, we sent $246 billion to foreign countries to pay for oil. With oil fetching a price today more than 70 percent below its peak, billions that just this summer were going overseas are now getting pumped back into the U.S. economy. This does not just look pretty on our trade balance sheet. It helps protect the dollar by reducing the number of dollars that would otherwise be held abroad, often by countries whose attitude towards America is ambivalent, if not hostile.

And finally there is the environmental effect. If anthropogenic global warming is real, a reduction in driving and increase in fuel-efficiency is an unvarnished good. If anthropogenic global warming is as yet unproved, as I happen to believe, then the reduction in CO2 pumped into the atmosphere is a reasonable bet in conditions of uncertainty.

Prudence would suggest taking modest steps. Politics makes such steps imperative. Whatever the scientific truth, climate change has become dogma in the West. In the schools, it is already a religion. Public policy is shaped not by scientific reality but by public perceptions. The environmental movement not only has hegemony in the media. Its political party is now in control of the U.S. executive and the legislature. They will see to it that actions are taken to reduce greenhouse gases.

We therefore have a choice. These measures can either be radical and economically ruinous, such as renewed moratoria on oil and gas drilling, the effective abolition of the coal industry, forced production of green cars that have no market and are so economically unviable that they will ruin the companies that make them. (The Chevy Volt will go 40 miles on a charge and cost about $35,000 after a required $7,500 government rebate. A real winner.) Or we can do it sensibly. Curtail oil consumption and encourage fuel-efficient technologies by means of a net-zero gas tax. It would reduce pollution and CO2 emissions at no economic cost. If we can do environmentally sensible things, particularly ones that will have overwhelming economic and national security advantages, why not pocket the environmental gains, and obviate the need for more extreme alternatives?

I am not a car hater. It is a wondrous source of connectedness, convenience, and individual freedom. But it has its social costs, its externalities. If we can control these fairly painlessly by keeping the price of gas relatively high--though lower than what it was just a few months ago--we can gain this subsidiary benefit of prophylactic environmental action. Again, without mandates, without massive bureaucracies, and with a host of collateral benefits.

In our current economic crisis, there is but a single silver lining--the collapse of world oil prices. This in turn is already stimulating a struggling economy, helping our balance of payments, humbling OPEC, and weakening our adversaries. When economic conditions improve, and oil consumption and prices rise again, these benefits will evaporate precisely as they have time and again since the first oil shock of 1973. A time of $1.65 gasoline is our chance to enact a net-zero gas tax. It is a once in a generation opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.

net zero gas tax

Americans have a deep and understandable aversion to gasoline taxes. In a culture more single-mindedly devoted to individual freedom than any other, tampering with access to the open road is met with visceral opposition. That's why earnest efforts to alter American driving habits take the form of regulation of the auto companies--the better to hide the hand of government and protect politicians from the inevitable popular backlash.

But it's not just love of the car. America is a nation of continental expanses. Distances between population centers can be vast. The mass-transit mini-car culture of Europe just doesn't work in big sky country.

This combination of geography and romance is the principal reason gas taxes are so astonishingly low in America. The federal tax is 18.4 cents per gallon. In Britain, as in much of Europe, the tax approaches $4 per gallon--more than 20 times the federal levy here.

Savvy politicians (i.e., those who succeed in getting themselves elected president) know this and tread carefully. Ronald Reagan managed a 5-cent increase. So did Bush 41. Bill Clinton needed a big fight to get a 4.3-cent increase. The lesson has been widely learned. No one with national ambitions proposes a major gas tax. Indeed, this summer featured the absurd spectacle of two leading presidential candidates (John McCain and Hillary Clinton) seriously proposing a temporary gas tax suspension.

Today's economic climate of financial instability and deepening recession, moreover, makes the piling on of new taxes--gasoline or otherwise--not just politically unpalatable but economically dubious in the extreme.

So why even think about it? Because the virtues of a gas tax remain what they have always been. A tax that suppresses U.S. gas consumption can have a major effect on reducing world oil prices. And the benefits of low world oil prices are obvious: They put tremendous pressure on OPEC, as evidenced by its disarray during the current collapse; they deal serious economic damage to energy-exporting geopolitical adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran; and they reduce the enormous U.S. imbalance of oil trade which last year alone diverted a quarter of $1 trillion abroad. Furthermore, a reduction in U.S. demand alters the balance of power between producer and consumer, making us less dependent on oil exporters. It begins weaning us off foreign oil, and, if combined with nuclear power and renewed U.S. oil and gas drilling, puts us on the road to energy independence.

High gas prices, whether achieved by market forces or by government imposition, encourage fuel economy. In the short term, they simply reduce the amount of driving. In the longer term, they lead to the increased (voluntary) shift to more fuel-efficient cars. They render redundant and unnecessary the absurd CAFE standards--the ever-changing Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations that mandate the fuel efficiency of various car and truck fleets--which introduce terrible distortions into the market. As the consumer market adjusts itself to more fuel-efficient autos, the green car culture of the future that environmentalists are attempting to impose by decree begins to shape itself unmandated. This shift has the collateral environmental effect of reducing pollution and CO2 emissions, an important benefit for those who believe in man-made global warming and a painless bonus for agnostics (like me) who nonetheless believe that the endless pumping of CO2 into the atmosphere cannot be a good thing.

Green Urbanism

Can Cities Save the Planet?
Scientists are skeptical. Planners are hopeful. The Dutch are pragmatic.
By Witold Rybczynski
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2008, at 6:58 AM ET

According to Timothy Beatley, an urban-planning professor at the University of Virginia and the author of Green Urbanism, the per-capita carbon dioxide emissions of American cities are almost twice as high as those of their European counterparts. Hardly surprising, since European cities are denser and more compact, homes are smaller, and people rely to a far greater extent on mass transit. So if Americans are to significantly reduce their carbon footprint, we will have to do a lot more than switch to reusable shopping bags and recycle our soda cans. But as a recent conference on "urban design after the age of oil" at the University of Pennsylvania (where I teach) demonstrated, there is something of a disconnect between the global-warming problem and the available solutions.

CLOSEThe problem is easily stated. In 1950, the global emission of carbon dioxide was 6 billion tons a year. Thanks to population growth, urbanization, the expansion of wealth, and massive industrialization around the world, by 2008 this has increased fivefold to 30 billion tons a year. Assuming that nothing is done to reduce emissions, by 2058, they will be 60 billion tons a year. Thus, to reduce global warming, whose effects are already beginning to be felt, it will be necessary to take drastic measures just to stay at the present level, never mind actually making real progress. For example, to reduce the number of coal-fired generating plants, nuclear capacity in the United States will have to be doubled. To reduce car emissions, either Americans will have to drive half as many miles per year or cars will have to be twice as efficient. Buildings will have to use 25 percent less electricity.
Penn conference featured many speakers proposing changes, large and small, as to how buildings and cities should be designed. The scientists were hard-nosed and slightly scary. Planning consultants were authoritative and self-assured—as planning consultants tend to be. They described new carbon-neutral cities, with wind farms and solar arrays, green roofs and urban farms, far-ranging mass transit, and large-scale water recycling. The Power Point images were mesmerizing. Most of the projects appear to be in the Gulf states. In the present economy, most are, I suspect, on hold.

A word that came up frequently was holistic, the implication being that we shouldn't change one thing until we know how it affects everything else. But that is not the way cities develop. The technologies that improved urban life in the past—gas lighting, pressurized water, electricity, streetcars, elevators—were developed separately, each according to its own technological schedule. This autonomy accounted, in large part, for the success of the industrial age. The other implication of holistic is that, by taking everything into account, we can control the future. But technologies have always had unintended consequences. Streetcars, for example, which replaced horse-drawn omnibuses and were not only faster but considerably cleaner, also encouraged suburban growth, enabled commercial strips to develop along rights of way, and created amusement parks (Coney Island in New York, Natatorium Park in Spokane, Wash.) as end-of-line destinations. One would expect green technologies to similarly produce unforeseen side effects.

Another thing strikes me about green urbanism. Even assuming that anything at all gets built in the coming economic depression—during the Great Depression of the 1930s, building construction virtually halted—creating new cities and reconfiguring old ones will take many decades. We don't have that much time. On the other hand, Americans' rapid change in driving habits during the gas-price run-up of summer 2008 suggests that people can quickly alter the ways they behave: driving less, walking more, turning down the thermostat, turning off the lights. Yes, we should eventually change the way we build and plan cities, but it might be more effective in the short run to change the way we live in them.

Most of the planners at the Penn conference emphasized technological fixes, but if the point of no return has already been passed in global warming, as some of the scientists at the conference suggested, protective measures are at least as important, not least against the anticipated rise in sea levels. In that regard, I note an interesting news item from the Netherlands. The Dutch Parliament has asked a commission on coastal development to examine the idea of building a massive man-made island in the North Sea. The 31-mile-long island will provide 274,000 acres for housing and farming. Not coincidentally, the so-called Tulip Island (named because of its shape) will also act as a storm-surge barrier. The Dutch, who have managed water in their low-lying country for centuries, are the canaries in the coal mine as far as rising sea levels are concerned. Other coastal cities—and most large cities are on the water—should take note.

pool commentary

Apparently the polo camp last week was the one the memo said we are supposed to receive $1350 for, after receiving $500 for the one the year before it. The problem with the daily logs is that the ones who sign for it is frequently STAFF or GUARDS. As noted previously, this practice makes it difficult to determine exactly WHO was responsible for the admissions monies for that day. Whether that practice is just poor management practices or a deliberate attempt to make it difficult to trace, will have to be decided by each person. It is inconsistent, at best, because at other times there are names listed, frequently 2 or 3 names. Maybe 40-50% of the time there is one name at the top. For instance, 7/11/07 the attendance portion shows 3 kids using the pool from 11am to noon. Period. No other swimmers are noted anywhere. At the bottom the children notations have been whited out completely, along with the swim lessons, and the revenues for both. However, on the receipt it notes a $40 check was taken in, along with $67 in cash, for a total of $107. The total number of patrons has been whited out, as have the total amount of revenues, and NO numbers are noted for those categories. NO swim teams were noted either, for that day. This is only one day, of course, but there are several more logs like this.

whiteout concerns

Several copies (30? or more) of the daily logs have forms that appear to have had whitout applied to them at some point. The lines that seperate the brackets are missing about an inch at the left of the form, and again missing at the box for the total numbers at the right of the form. A handful have had obvious whiteout applied but it IS possible that a whited-out form was copied several times and used for a month or so to document the daily logs, as the lines missing beneath the categories (resident adult, child, senior, aerobics, swim lessons, etc.) that seprerate the different categories are missing in about the same lengths and in the same places in most of the forms. So it has become less clear if whiteout was used every day or a copied form that had previously been whited out was used for 4 or 5 weeks. It IS clear that whiteout had been used on the forms at some point, but at WHAT point is hard to ascertain. Good management should have noticed the possible appearances of daily whiteout, if it wasnt being used daily, and ordered clean forms to be used. That apparently didnt happen for over a month, in a best case scenario for the management.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Dotson for the people

Several people already HAVE contacted Mr. Dotson and he has apparently had a couple conversations with other City officials. The results of these conversations have not been revealed yet, as his investigation isnt complete yet but it WILL be revealed once he is finsihed gathering ALL the facts. He will be the ONLY one on the Council to take a stand on this, and other, issues, as usual. The rest will be awaiting direction from Gym and will probably try to sweep it under the rug, as usual. Thank God for Mr. Dotson.

commentary

Mr. Dotson is looking into this pool situation in a serious manner. If you have any further information regarding this situation contact him. Wonder what happened to the report from the HR lady? Why would they be waiting for a report from Wilton Manors IF Gym already has that information form HIS investigation? Can it be that he DIDNT really do any real checking? Are we also waiting for the same checks from Hialeah? Gym should ALREADY have that information too, right? If he did ANY semblance of a background check BEFORE, he would, right? Can it be that Gym fabricated these background checks too? IF they were made BEFORE the hiring, like they are supposed to be done, it would just be a matter of him revealing what his checks found, right? Why is that NOT being done?