Hello,
Thanks for the helpful thoughts about Anita's back. She has been slowly getting better through a combination of chiropractic manipulation, traction, stretching and rest. Perhaps a return to moderate exercise this week is in the offing.
The party in power continues to criminalize immigrants and commodify healthcare. I hope you will take the time to read the immigration and health care articles.There are few alternatives being floated so some new thinking is in order.
Twump lost his twitter fingers this weekend while people were killed and hurt opposing white supremacists. Actually I think white inferiorists is a better term. These are truly the blackguards of Bannon and they are in the process of coalescing; a dangerous trend evidenced by the hundreds of white guys marching with cintronella torches (afraid of the bugs?) from several splinter groups. The term Alt-right being used to describe these groups is not only incorrect, but harmful because it disguises the odius ideology of racism and genetic superiority.
Hateful anti-jewish slogans and chants were in Charlottesville this weekend. And while Jews historically have born the brunt of white inferiorists, these days there are a plethora of targets; people of any color but white, homosexuals, liberals, mass media and more. This November 9,10 will be the 79th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass and the demarcation from anti-jewish policies to personal violence against Jews. If these white inferiorists continue to grow, it is no stretch to say that there will be some activity from them to mark this infamous day.
In the coming months, perhaps a plan of action to combat white inferiorists can evolve.
Fred
COUNCIL AGENDA
background here:
INVOCATION
PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
MAYOR’S PROCLAMATIONS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS:
· Introduction of New Police Officer
· Employee of the Month
THE FOLLOWING ITEMS WILL BE DISCUSSED, CONSIDERED AND/OR DECIDED UPON AT THIS MEETING:
GENERAL BUSINESS:
1. ACCOUNTS PAYABLE: Subject to availability of funds
2. Approval of the Consent Agenda
A. Approval of the Minutes of the Work Session of Mayor and Council held on May 3, 2017 at 5:30PM.
B. Approval of the Minutes of the Special Session of Mayor and Council held on May 15, 2017 at 5:30PM.
C. Approval of the Minutes of the Work Session of Mayor and Council held on May 16, 2017 at 5:30PM.
D. Approval of the Appointment of Charlene “Snoody” Borowiec to the Evergreen Cemetery Committee.
E. Approval of a Park, Facility and Right of Way Use Permit for the Boys and Girls Club of Bisbee for the use of Arizona Street, between D’Autremont and Ruppe for the 9th Annual Cars and Bikes on Arizona Street Show to be held on Saturday, September 2, 2017 from 6:00AM to 5:00PM.
F. Approval of the Park, Facility and Right of Way Use Permit for Bisbee High School for the use of Main Street and City Park for a “Pick Parade” on Monday, August 21, 2017 from 5:30PM to 7:00PM.
G. Approval of the Park, Facility and Right of Way Use Permit for B.R.A.T.S for the use of Tombstone Canyon at the Iron Man to the U.S. Post Office on Main Street to hold an Art Car Parade on Saturday, October 28, 2017 from 3:45PM to 4:30PM.
H. Approval of the Park, Facility and Right of Way Use Permit for the use of Vista Park for Movies in the Park on Saturday, August 19, 2017 from 5:00PM to 11:00PM.
I. Approval of a Special Event Liquor License Application submitted by the Bisbee Radio Project, Inc. (KBRP) for an event to be held at City Park, 62 Brewery Avenue, Bisbee, on Saturday, September 9, 2017 from 12:00PM to 10:00PM; Ryan Bruce Applicant.
Ashlee Coronado, City Clerk
J. Approval of a Special Event Liquor License Application submitted by St. Patrick’s Church for an event to be held at St. Patrick’s Basketball Court from 6:00PM to 11:00PM; Jennifer Ratkovich, Applicant.
Ashlee Coronado, City Clerk
K. Approval of a Special Event Liquor License Application submitted by the Bisbee Coalition for the Homeless for an event to be held at the Warren Ballpark on Saturday, November 4, 2017 from 10:00AM to 8:00PM; Wanda Leikem, Applicant.
NEW BUSINESS
3. Discussion and Possible Approval of an Updated Intergovernmental Agreement for the Cochise County Tourism Council Steering Committee and the City of Bisbee.
Jennifer Luria, Tourism Manager
4. Discussion and Possible Approval for the Bisbee Arts Commission to Sponsor the 2017 Bisbee Blues Festival in the amount of $1,000.00.
Karen Schumacher, Bisbee Arts Commission Chair
5. Discussion and Possible Approval for the Bisbee Arts Commission to Sponsor the 2017 Make Youth Arts Festival and Youth Arts Program in the amount of $300.00
Karen Schumacher, Bisbee Arts Commission Chair
6. Discussion and Possible Approval of an Airport Improvement Program (AIP) Agreement for Transfer of Entitlements of $150,000.00 of Fiscal Year 2014 and 2015 Federal Funds from the City of Bisbee, Municipal Airport (PO4) to the City of Benson, Municipal Airport.
Andy Haratyk, Public Works Director
7. City Manager's Report:
· Other current events (No Discussion)
COUNCIL COMMENTS OR FUTURE AGENDA ITEM SUGGESTIONS: (Council members may suggest topics for future meeting agendas, but Council will not here discuss, deliberate or take any action on these topics.):
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OLD PEOPLE! LAST CHANCE FOR $10 SENIOR NATIONAL PARK PASSESOn August 28, lifetime park passes will increase to $80 for seniors. It is a great deal at $10 and lets you into more than 150 national forests, parks, monuments fa-ev-a. Go here: https://store.usgs.gov/senior-pass <><><><><><><><><><><>
IMMIGRATION AND HEALTHCARE
Repugnicans have been trumpeting some of the harshest rhetoric and enacting punitive actions-initiated by AG Sessions-that is cause for great alarm. And the same can be said for healthcare only initiated by congress, particularly by the neanderthal right.
In an effort to formulate realistic policies on several major issues, I've been doing a lot of reading. Immigration affects us economically and culturally. There has been some evaluation of 'solving' the issue by progressives, but not much. And the same with healthcare.
I like these two articles because they interject some fresh thinking and realism into both immigration as well as health care. The usual disclaimer "I don't agree with everything but...."
I don't support trying to get a single payer health system passed in the next five years. It is too difficult, the political terrain is not there, and the upheaval would be too great. However as Krugman talks about below, there are ways improve ACA, including introducing a path to single payer. There are additional things that can be done such as allowing people 55 and older to pay into medicare before they are eligible.
Have progressives people gone astray about immigration, as the Atlantic article argues? I think somewhat. While many of us promote diversity, there is significant opposition to and resentment of this. Whereas assimilation, a much older 'melting pot' concept, is favored by a significant number of people. I tend to agree with them. The same with language. Arguably the single most complaint about immigrants is that they don't speak English. I'm uncertain whether making speaking and writing English should be a mandatory first language for admittance as a citizen. But I lean to that. Read on, see what you think.
A DIFFERENT VIEW OF IMMIGRATION
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-democrats-immigration-mistake/528678/
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A WAY FORWARD FOR HEALTHCARE
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/opinion/healthcare-single-payer-children.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fpaul-krugman&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=collection
<><><><><><><><><><><><> YOU ARE BEING STALKED....(the marketing word is tracked) Google's "in-store tracking algorithm." lets the search giant tell advertisers how well their marketing campaigns are working in offline sales.
The Store Sales Management program, which Google began testing in May, allows it to tell an advertiser how many people who clicked on an ad actually bought something. For example, it could tell Home Depot or Walmart what percentage of people who clicked on an ad for grills went to a store to buy one. The company gets credit card and other financial information from data brokers and marries it with its own online tracking software.
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PROPOSED FEDERAL TAX 'REFORM' WILL CRIPPLE LOCAL AND STATE GOVERMENTS
Arthur Laffer is at again. Known for the discredited theory of trickle down economics, aka supply side, he is back with more of the same. Reduce taxes on the rich and we all will prosper. It is a recipe for disaster as this article make clear.
Arizona Governor Ducey is a proponent of trickle down and the last few years has seen major cuts in corporate taxes-at the expense of education and services. Kansas is a sobering look at Laffer's supply side economics in practice; it is a disaster.
This article, showing actual evidence, responds to a Laffer blather in the WSJ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/federal-tax-cuts-would-cripple-local-governments-2017-08-03
Art Laffer and Stephen Moore recently penned an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in which they called on state and local policy makers to support the Trump tax cuts. They claimed that the Trump plan would provide a significant boost to state and local tax revenues, thereby allowing states with large budget deficits to “regain fiscal health.”
State and local lawmakers should not be fooled by these claims. The reality is that Trump’s tax cuts are more likely to worsen state and local fiscal health than improve it.
Laffer and Moore’s argument basically goes as follows: the economy grew much faster under Ronald Reagan, who cut taxes, than under Barack Obama, who raised taxes; therefore tax cuts spur growth. And insofar as faster economic growth results in higher state and local tax revenues, federal tax cuts will boost state and local tax collections, while federal tax hikes will typically decrease state and local revenues.
According to Laffer and Moore, state and local tax revenues grew at an anemic rate under Obama, but will grow quickly again if President Donald Trump’s Reagan-esque tax cuts are implemented.
This argument has a number of crucial flaws.
First, you can’t help but notice how Laffer and Moore have tried to write both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush out of the history books. This is an especially convenient bit of historical amnesia for Moore, who surely doesn’t want people highlighting his own wrong predictions about growth under both Clinton and Bush.
In fact, GDP growth averaged 3.4% under Reagan, but rose to 3.7% under the tax-hiking Clinton administration; growth then fell to 1.6% under the tax-cutting Bush administration, but rose back to 2% under Obama.
Laffer and Moore’s blatant cherry-picking aside, stronger growth has tended to follow tax hikes, rather than tax cuts, throughout the past few presidential administrations.
Second, Laffer and Moore mislead readers by asserting that tax policy alone must explain the difference in growth rates between Presidents Reagan and Obama.
In fact, growth really should have been much stronger under Reagan than under Obama, if for no other reason than demographic trends. During Reagan’s eight years in office, the prime-age population — consisting of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, who make up about two-thirds of the country’s workforce — grew by 17 million people. During Obama’s tenure, the same population grew by just 78,000. (In percentage terms, the prime-age population grew 19.8% under Reagan and just 0.06% under Obama.)
This shift in demographic trends has created a major drag on GDP growth that cannot be easily remedied through changes in government policy. Because the Trump years are likely to see prime-age population growth far more similar to the Obama years than to the Reagan years, even if Trump enacts Laffer and Moore’s beloved Reagan-era policies, the economy won’t achieve Reagan-era growth rates.
If we take a deeper dive into the statistics on population growth and the labor market, we see just how thoroughly implausible Laffer and Moore’s 4% growth projection really is.
As Carl Davis and I point out in a recent ITEP paper, in order for the economy to achieve an average growth rate of just 2.8%, per-worker output would need to increase more than 2% per year between 2017 and 2024. As we note, this would require the current rate of per-worker output growth to more than double; and historically speaking, output per worker has rarely grown faster than 2% To achieve sustainable 2.8% annual growth as projected by Trump’s budget, per-worker output would need to grow at least twice as fast as it has been, even under the most favorable assumptions about the increase in the labor force. To reach 4% growth, output per worker would need to grow faster than it has done in modern history.
In order to get to Laffer and Moore’s 4% growth rate, we’d need sustained per-worker output growth of roughly 3% annually, which we’ve never even approached in modern history. This makes Laffer and Moore’s 4% growth figure utterly impossible.
Third and finally, Laffer and Moore paint a badly misleading portrait of Obama’s effect on state and local tax revenues — and in so doing, they also give a misleading picture of what revenue growth will look like under Trump.
Laffer and Moore’s description of the Obama years omits any mention of the economic mess that Bush passed to Obama. The authors surely remember that the economy was shrinking when Barack Obama took office following the 2008 financial crisis. Moreover, the specific ways that state and local governments collect tax revenues only compounded the already-significant problems posed by this shrinking economy:
• About three-quarters of local government tax revenue comes from property taxes, and the bursting of the housing bubble from mid-2006 to mid-2012 was causing home prices to plummet at the time.
• Nearly half of state government tax revenue comes from sales taxes, and consumer spending had been falling for over a year before Obama took office;
• Over a third of state government tax revenue comes from income taxes, and total national income was declining at a more precipitous rate than at any point since the 1940s when Bush left the White House.
These factors alone were placing a significant strain on state and local governments just as Obama was inaugurated.
Moreover, Laffer and Moore forget about all the ways that the Obama administration assisted state and local governments — and, consequently, about how that help might be withdrawn under Trump. It’s true that state and local tax revenues fell from $1.49 trillion (in inflation-adjusted 2016 dollars) in 2008 to $1.41 trillion by 2010; however, during this time, the federal government significantly stepped up its assistance to states and localities.
Specifically, federal assistance jumped from $536 billion in 2008 to $687 billion in 2010, an increase of over $150 billion. By contrast, between 2006 and 2008 — the last two years of the Bush administration — federal assistance rose by less than $4 billion.
It is very odd, in this context, to accuse Obama of having left state and local governments out to dry. Between 2008 and 2014 (the last year for which we have full data), total state and local revenues — including not only tax revenues, but also federal assistance and other forms of revenue — increased by $114 billion. Over $80 billion of this increased revenue came from greater federal assistance provided by the Obama administration.
The Obama experience makes clear that the three levels of government — federal, state, and local — do not operate in isolation. State and local governments receive about 40 cents of assistance from the federal government for every $1 that they raise in tax revenue. So if there is a significant drop in federal revenue, it will most likely result in decreased federal assistance to states and localities, thereby depressing state and local revenues.
And if you want federal revenues to grow rather than shrink, it’s clear that tax cuts for the rich will not accomplish this goal.
In their article about the effects of Reagan’s tax cuts versus Obama’s tax hikes, Laffer and Moore somehow forgot to mention that federal revenue growth was much stronger under Obama than under Reagan. According to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, real federal revenues fell 13% under Bush, rose 26% under Reagan, increased 44% under Obama, and jumped 55% under Clinton (using the GDP deflator to measure inflation).
If President Trump’s tax plan results in large federal revenue losses — ITEP currently projects that his plan would decrease federal revenues by $4.8 trillion over the next 10 years — then state and local governments stand to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in federal assistance.
Contrary to what Laffer and Moore have claimed, state and local policy makers who are concerned about their budgets should not count on the Trump tax plan to improve their fiscal situations, and may in fact need to brace themselves for new difficulties passed on to them by the federal government.
Rapid economic growth is unlikely to accompany the Trump tax cuts, but cutbacks in federal support to states and localities are highly probable.
<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< THE TIRESOME QUEST OF MALES SEEKING TO PROVE FEMALE INFERIORITY
What is it about white guys always seeking to prove that they are superior? A now-fired Google engineer blamed the gender gaps at Google (less than 20% of the workforce are women) are the result of biological differences between men and women, and that the company shouldn’t offer programs that help under-represented groups. Although containing some interesting observations about diversity at Google, the core of the argument is that women are biologically inferior; a claim white men have been making for eons. It is an tired old screed that some white men have also been making about any differently colored people dating back to Eugenics. Read on for a balanced view of the science. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/07/silicon-valley-weapon-choice-women-google-manifesto-gender-difference-eugenics?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Collections+2017&utm_term=238528&subid=20881720&CMP=GT_US_collection
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A few yokes
Three doctors are talking about death.
The first, a dentist, says, “When I die, I think I’d like my tombstone to be shaped like a tooth made of white marble.”
“Hey,” adds the cardiologist, “that’s not a bad idea, I’d love my tombstone to be shaped as a heart…”
The gynecologist is silent for a bit, then says, “I think scattering of the ashes is my option.”
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Wife sends a text message to Paul Ryan on a really cold winter morning in Wisconsin:
"Windows are totally frozen, will not open."
Ryan replies: “Carefully pour some warm water over it and tap the edges first with your hand, if that doesn’t work, then gently with a hammer.” 15 minutes later, the wife texts back: “Oh no, I think the laptop is now totally gone." <><><><<><><><><><><>FM<><><><><><><><><><><>