Illinois can no longer function

SUBHEAD: It enters third year without a budget, resulting in the state's imminent downgrade to junk status.

By Tyler Durden on 20 June 2017 for Zero Hedge -
(http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-06-20/illinois-comptroller-state-can-no-longer-function-we-have-reached-new-phase-crisis)


Image above: The seal of the State of Illinois with motto "State Sovereignty -National Union". From (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seal_of_Illinois.svg).

With just 10 days to go until Illinois enters its third year without a budget, resulting in the state's imminent downgrade to junk status and potentially culminating in a default for the state whose unpaid bills now surpass $15 billion, Democratic Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza issued a warning to Illinois Governor Rauner and other elected officials on Tuesday, saying in a letter that her office has "very serious concerns" it may no longer be able to guarantee "timely and predictable payments" for some core services.

In the letter posted on her website, Mendoza who over the weekend warned that Illinois is "in massive crisis mode" and that "this is not a false alarm" said the state is "effectively hemorrhaging money" due to various court orders and laws that have left government spending roughly $600 million more a month than it's taking in.

Mendoza said her office will continue to make debt payments as required, but indicated that services most likely to be affected include long-term care, hospice and supportive living centers for seniors.

She added that managed care organizations that serve Medicaid recipients are owed more than $2.8 billion in overdue bills as of June 15th.

"The state can no longer function without a responsible and complete budget without severely impacting our core obligations and decimating services to the state's most in-need citizens," Mendoza wrote. "We must put our fiscal house in order. It is already too late. Action is needed now."

Unveiling the most dire language yet, in her letter Mendoza said "we are now reaching a new phase of crisis" perhaps in an attempt to prompt the Democrats and Republicans to sit down and come up with a compromise:

As Illinois’ Chief Fiscal and Accountability Officer, my Office is responsible for managing the state’s financial accounts as well as providing the public and the state’s elected leadership with objective and timely data concerning the state’s difficult fiscal condition. As you are quite aware, I have been very vocal regarding these issues and the budgetary impasse since assuming office six months ago; however we are now reaching a new phase of crisis.

She then addresses "the full extent of [Illinois'[ dire fiscal straits and the potential disruptions that we face in addressing even our most critical core responsibilities":

Accordingly, I must communicate to you at this time the full extent of our dire fiscal straits and the potential disruptions that we face in addressing even our most critical core responsibilities going forward into the new fiscal year.

My Office has very serious concerns that, in the coming weeks, the State of Illinois will no longer be able to guarantee timely and predictable payments in a number of areas that we have to date managed (albeit with extreme difficulty) despite an unpaid bill backlog in excess of $15 billion and growing rapidly.

The cause for alarm in America's most bananish state is well-known: living far beyond one's means, resulting in soaring deficits and the critical need for constant debt funding.

My cause for alarm is rooted in the increasing deficit spending combined with new and ongoing cash management demands stemming from decisions from state and federal courts, the latest being the class action lawsuit filed by advocates representing the Medicaid service population served by the state’s Managed Care Organizations (MCOs).

As of June 15th, the MCOs, and their provider networks, are owed a total of more than $2.8 billion in overdue bills at the Comptroller’s Office.

There is no question that these obligations should be paid in a more timely manner and that the payment delays caused by the state’s financial condition negatively impact the state’s healthcare infrastructure.

We are currently in court directed discussions to reach a workable and responsive payment schedule going forward, but any acceleration of the timing of those payments under the current circumstances will almost certainly affect the scheduling of other payments, regardless of other competing court orders and Illinois statutory mandates.

There was one silver lining: a default is not imminent, at least not in Mendoza's view, as the comptroller explained that "debt service payments will not be delayed or diminished going forward and I will use every statutory avenue or available resource to meet that commitment."

It is a necessary pledge in order to attempt to avoid further damage to our already stressed credit ratings and to make possible the additional debt financing that we all know will be required to achieve some measure of stability going forward.

And when "every available resource" runs out, that's when things get really bad.

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Meanwhile, as the state's budget director warns of fire and brimstone, in a last ditch attempt to reach an agreement with the legislature, Illinois' Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner will deliver a brief address Tuesday night calling for unity as lawmakers prepare to return to Springfield for a special session, a move Democrats quickly dismissed as a political stunt.

The speech, which is closed to the press but expected to air live on 6 p.m. television newscasts, comes just days after Rauner launched a TV advertising blitz attacking Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan, whom the governor has spent years vilifying as the source of the state's deep financial woes according to the Chicago Tribune. Democrats have long argued that Rauner's frequent political attacks do little to bring about common ground. The governor says political gamesmanship is part of being in public service but should not impact what happens at the Capitol.

Rauner will give his remarks at the Old State Capitol, where Abraham Lincoln gave his "House Divided" speech and Barack Obama kicked off his first White House run in 2007.

The speech will fall short.

Democratic governor candidate J.B. Pritzker called Rauner's address a "sham," saying Rauner "either doesn't have the slightest clue what unity is or just doesn't care." House Democrats called it laughable, saying if Rauner wanted to negotiate he would do it behind closed doors not in front of television cameras. "I find it tragically comedic that a governor who has done more to divide this state than probably any other governor in history is going to give a unity address," said Rep. Christian Mitchell, D-Chicago.

It's not just the Democrats: Republican lawmakers said they would vote for that tax plan, but only if the hike were limited to four years starting in July, and were tied to a four-year property tax freeze. The Senate Democrats' plan makes the tax hikes permanent and applies them retroactively to the beginning of 2017.

While Rauner is expected to talk about the need for unity and compromise, House GOP leader Jim Durkin said last week that Republicans expect "substantial compliance" from Democrats, warning that he would reject "reform light or anything that is significantly diluted."

Finally, in a harbringer of what's to come for the entire state, Bloomberg reports that Chicago’s junk-rated school system just went "no bid", and is paying bond-market penalties similar to those seen during the financial crisis.

The Chicago school district, slammed by the fallout from the Illinois budget gridlock, has been stuck paying punitive interest rates on $167.5 million of adjustable-rate bonds after PNC Capital Markets failed in March to resell the securities once previous owners sold them.

Remember the failure of Auction-Rate Securities just before all hell broke loose in 2008? Well, it's kinda like that.

The rate on the bonds, which are supposed to stay extremely low because investors can resell them to banks periodically, jumped to a maximum 9% on March 1 from 4.64% the week before and has stayed there ever since, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The spiraling interest bills are reminiscent of the chaos that erupted in the wake of the Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy in 2008, when state and local governments were stung by soaring costs after investors sold the variable-rate securities en masse just as banks were scrambling to raise cash. In Chicago’s case, though, it reflects how skittish investors have become about holding the debt of the cash-strapped school system.

In another preview of what's coming once Illinois is junked, the school district agreed this week to pay a rate of 6.39% for a short-term $275 million loan from JPMorgan Chase & Co. to help make a pension payment and cover the cost of staying open through the end of the school year.

As we reported last week, the schools didn’t receive $215 million more in state aid to make the retirement-fund contribution after a measure was vetoed by Governor Bruce Rauner.

Illinois has failed to pass a budget for more than two years as the Republican governor and Democrat-led legislature battle over how to close the state’s chronic budget deficits.

"Chicago Public Schools has been unable to crate a fiscally responsible budget and it relies on outside sources that, as we see, sometimes comes through and sometimes don’t,” said Matt Dalton, chief executive officer of Rye Brook, New York-based Belle Haven Investments, which manages $6 billion of municipal bonds, including about $3 million of insured Chicago school debt.

“That’s unsettling investors."

Unfortunately, that's just the beginning, and once the state itself is junked, investors will be even more unsettled.

But the biggest insult and injury is to the near-insolvent state is that Illinois is facing a full-blown crisis just one day after chronic defaulter Argentina managed to pull off a 100 year bond offering, which was 3.5x oversubscribed.
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Defund Militarism

SUBHEAD: It's time to dismantle Trump's Murder Budget by refusing to fund America's perpetual wars.

By Maya Schenwar on 20 March 2017 for TruthOut -
(http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/39912-it-s-time-to-dismantle-trump-s-murder-budget-and-defund-militarism)


Image above: Candidate Trump speaks during a campaign event aboard the battleship USS Iowa at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California, September 15, 2015. Photo by Max Whittaker. From original article.

During the last three years of the Bush administration, I reported on the military budget, following the supplemental spending bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since Congress has not formally declared war since World War II, these budget bills were the mechanism that was keeping our wars going.

Every time the war budgets came up for a vote, I held my breath. Even though I knew better, I watched C-SPAN for hours, hoping for a surprise. There were a few stalwart Congress members who usually held out -- Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Dennis Kucinich -- but for the most part, Republicans and Democrats alike got in line to flood the war coffers, again and again.

Eventually, I stopped watching; I could practically write my articles ahead of time.

If a flight of angels crashed through the ceiling of the Capitol and announced, "The world is ending tonight," they'd still vote to fund tomorrow's wars.

The predictable passage of blank checks for war was an expression of the acceptability of the status quo. The status quo was murder, but within the halls of Congress and, of course, the White House, there was a level of comfort with that.

From the US's early days, the military evolved largely as a vehicle for colonialism and genocide.

As Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz writes in An Indigenous People's History of the United States,

 "The Iraq War was just another Indian war in the US military tradition."

This country's military has long been more of an offensive force -- charging ahead with the winds of white supremacy and capitalism at its back -- than one of "defense." The Iraq War is one moment in its long legacy of actively disrupting, upending and devastating the lives and communities of millions of people of color, both at home and abroad.

Much of the government seems to view perpetual war as an inevitability, the way most of us, in the words of Angela Davis, "take for granted" the existence of prisons.

Davis has written that, although prisons as we know them are a fairly recent addition to the world, they have become so embedded in our society that "it is difficult to imagine life without them."

The US's brand of imperialist militarism, too, is seen as natural. In the mid-2000s, many liberal Democrats were arguing for a strategy of amelioration: a small-scale withdrawal of troops, the cutting of some "waste" from the Pentagon budget, a halt to the production of a couple of bizarrely expensive fighter jets.

These measures were aimed at mitigating the damage, instead of disrupting the overall project of war, militarism and the destruction of communities, most of them in Muslim-majority countries.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did scale down over the course of Obama's presidency, but in one form or another, they've persisted -- and other undeclared wars have been and continue to be waged. In 2016 alone, the US bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Libya and Somalia.

Every year since 2003, the military has occupied the majority of the US discretionary budget. We are currently spending much more on the military (accounting for inflation) than we were at the height of the Vietnam War.

The way in which US militarism is taken for granted mirrors the ways in which other forms of mass violence are deemed inevitable -- policing, deportation, the genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, the exploitative market-driven health care system, the vastly inequitable education system and disastrous environmental policies.

The generally accepted logic tells us that these things will remain with us: The best we can hope for, according to this narrative, is modest reform amid monstrous violence.

Now, we have a president who has no interest in modest reform. His draft budget, released last week, is a caricature of our bad budgets past.

Not only will the Pentagon continue to occupy the majority of our discretionary budget this year, but if Donald Trump has his way, military spending will jump by 10 percent. Vital programs -- programs that support survival instead of murder -- will be slashed or eliminated.

If his administration gets what it wants, the Department of Education will take a 14 percent hit, Health and Human Services will shrink by 16 percent, the Department of Housing and Urban Development budget will decrease by 16 percent, and the EPA will suffer a 31 percent blow.

Under Trump's proposal, funding would be eliminated for the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Chemical Safety Board, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Legal Services Corporation (which provides civil legal assistance to low-income people).

The proposed budget doesn't simply represent an act of deprioritization or neglect of most people's needs. It is an attack on the lives of poor people and people of color. It is a call-to-arms against the environment, and thus, against the long-term survival of most species on Earth.

It is a battle against the arts, against learning, against recreation, against shared space -- against the things that help give us life beyond mere survival.

We should not be surprised that these attacks on civil society and fundamental human rights are accompanied by a surge in military spending. The cuts and the hikes are part of the same murderous project.
The ground is already laid for that project to be built. Already, the US military budget exceeds the combined military budgets of the next seven countries: China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, the UK, India and Germany.

If we are going to confront Trump's proposed cuts to key domestic programs, we have to also confront the legitimacy that has been granted to endless war and militarism over the course of the past 16 years -- and throughout our country's history.

We can't just add the priorities of health and life to the stock priorities of death and destruction. We can't just advocate for a few less fighter jets or a downsizing of Pentagon bureaucracy.

We have to choose life-giving priorities over violent ones. We have to stop taking all forms of state violence -- war, militarism, deportations, prisons, surveillance, colonial destruction, disinvestment and deprivation -- for granted.

One way to start might be to imagine how we could reroute the money currently funneled toward this violence. For example, the National Priorities Project suggests that instead of increasing the military budget by $54 billion, as Trump suggests, we slash the military budget by that same amount.

That $54 billion could provide Medicaid for 15 million adults, or grant 1.6 million students a free four-year college education, or create 1 million infrastructure jobs, or fund the Meals on Wheels program for 7,180 years.

Taking this a step further, military cuts could easily help fund programs that we don't yet have but desperately need, such as Medicare for all.

With real cuts to the budgets of murder and devastation -- including not only the military, but also police, prisons, ICE and other violent institutions -- we could set viable plans to end homelessness, dramatically step up climate justice efforts, provide universal child care and more.

"Real cuts" would not only mean slicing off a certain number of dollars. They would also mean challenging the specific ways in which that money is spent.

As United for Peace and Justice lays out, in addition to demanding a stop to US wars, we must also demand an end to the drone program, the closure of US military bases throughout the world, the start of active negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons and the demilitarization of local police forces.

I'd go a step further to say that the demilitarization of police forces is not enough -- we should move toward dismantling them.

Moreover, confronting militarism would require a fundamental prioritization of racial and social justice. Both within the US and abroad, the military and other forms of state violence overwhelmingly target, harm, displace and kill people of color.

Within the US, poor and working class people are targeted for recruitment into the military, pulled in via a long string of false promises.

Once we acknowledge that these realities are not accidents, and are not new, we can conceive of how injustice is not simply a side effect. It is embedded in the practice of US militarism.

Trump's budget was released on March 16, the anniversary of the My Lai Massacre, when the US military murdered the majority of people living in the small Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai, including many children and elderly people.

This should serve as a reminder for all of us that rising military budgets are not a prescription for "public safety," as Trump has claimed. They are a prescription for murder.

As long as taxpayers continue to be complicit in filling that prescription, it seems that we have a responsibility to act against it.

We need to call and write to our Congress members and demand they reject the $54 billion increase to our military budget and the brutal cuts to crucial domestic programs.

We have to stop taking our wars, our drones, our bombs, our imperialism and our decades of colossal military budgets for granted.

We have to "imagine life without them." And we have to imagine -- and work to create -- the life-giving, healing, transformational priorities that will take their place.


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How big a deficit with Trump?

SUBHEAD: The U.S. debt ceiling is set to explode beginning this month under Trump’s planned tax cuts and spending.

By Benjamin A. Smith on 7 Mrch 2017 for Lombardi Letter -
(https://www.lombardiletter.com/how-much-is-the-u-s-debt-ceiling-how-high-will-it-go-under-trump-presidency/7724/)


Image above: Political cartoon by Jim Darcy on 12 April 2011  labeled  "Yes, we are open... until the debt ceiling collapses". From (http://www.cleveland.com/darcy/index.ssf/2011/04/us_debt_ceiling_editorial_cart.html).

Like the smell of Washington’s cherished Magnolia trees blooming in April, the waft of deficit spending is in the air.

The U.S. debt ceiling is poised to explode under Trump’s planned slash & burn tax cut policy, bringing with it significant budget uncertainty. How much is the U.S. debt ceiling in 2017 anyway? That’s a moving target depending on how fast Republicans can legislate tax changes through Congress.

As it stands currently, the U.S. debt ceiling is suspended until March 15, 2017 under an agreement struck by President Obama and Congress in late 2015. The last official debt ceiling limit was $18.113 trillion.

On March 16, however, the debt limit will reset to account for all debt issued while it was suspended. This could trigger something called “extraordinary measures” provisions, which are accounting maneuvers the government can use to temporarily keep the debt under the “limit.”

This maneuver would essentially legally prevent the United States from technically defaulting on its debt (Source: “Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015,” U.S. Government Publishing Office, last accessed March 3, 2017.)

Exactly how long these extraordinary measures will last is uncertain. It isn’t spelled out explicitly in the Budget Act, so it could be a few weeks or a few months, though many budget experts say it could last into August or September. It will be up to new Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to avert a potential U.S. debt ceiling crisis before it begins.

Indeed, Steve Mnuchin has already stated his preference to avoid Congressional drama and raise the debt ceiling promptly. There’s no doubt the Treasury Secretary recognizes the importance of the situation. “Honoring the U.S. debt is the most important thing…I would like us to raise the debt ceiling sooner rather than later.” (Source: “New Secretary’s first job: Avoid a crisis,” CNN Money, February 13, 2017.)

Eventually, the current U.S. debt ceiling will be raised again beyond its reset level (likely north of $20.0 trillion). Politicians from both sides of the isle will look to extract concessions for votes, and a new limit will be born. But what will the U.S. debt ceiling 2017 look like once the ink is dry? This depends on several factors.

As the U.S debt ceiling is simply legislation limiting the amount of debt that can be issued by the U.S. Treasury, Congress (with the President as signatory) ultimately decides what the limit will be. Since the incumbent Republicans currently hold majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, there’s reason to believe the President will attempt to push the limits of the debt ceiling.

How Much Is the U.S. Debt Ceiling in 2017?It’s important to look at context when attempting to ascertain how high the limit can be raised. After all, Trump has used debt financing his entire life to build his empire. As a former real estate mogul, the vast majority of properties couldn’t have been developed without it.

Trump has even self-proclaimed himself as “King of Debt.” There’s little reason to believe this mentality has changed significantly since his business years.

In fact, Trump has said as much. On the campaign trail, despite soaring debt levels, Trump stated that America should borrow more while rates are low. “What’s going to happen when the rates eventually will go up and you can’t borrow, you absolutely can’t borrow because it’s too expensive?

It would destroy our balance sheet, totally destroy the balance sheet. So you’d be paying so little interest right now. This is the time to borrow.” (Source: “Trump: This Is The Time to Borrow,” The American Spectator, August 11, 2016.)

And as readers might expect, planned proceeds of a larger U.S. deficit should filter into capital expenditures (CAPEX) projects throughout the country.

Construction development was Trump’s calling card as a civilian, and he’s indicated the desire to modernize the nation’s infrastructure once in the Oval Office.

Just a few hours after his election victory, Trump said “We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none.” (Source: “What You Need To Know About Donald Trump’s $1 Trillion Infrastructure Plan,” Fortune, December 21, 2016.)

While it’s clear that planned infrastructure spending will require the Federal government to borrow more if passed, it isn’t the only thing. Proposed tax cuts could cause upwards pressure on the U.S. debt ceiling as well.

According to The Tax Foundation’s “Taxes and Growth” model forecasts, Trump’s income and corporate tax reductions would cut federal revenue by between $4.4 trillion and $5.9 trillion on a static basis.

Even when the stimulatory effects to the larger economy are accounted for, the Tax Foundation still forecasts that revenues would decrease on aggregate between $2.6 trillion and $3.9 trillion (Source: “Details and Analysis of Donald Trump’s Tax Plan,” Tax Foundation, September 19, 2016.)

If proven true, the U.S. debt ceiling will need to be raised even higher to avoid the ballooning budgets deficits sure to follow.

As we can ascertain from the debt ceiling by year table below, the debt is rising fast enough on its own. Slashing revenue collection, while simultaneously increasing CAPEX spending is not a recipe for narrowing deficits going forward (as needed as it may be).

Components of Debt Subject to Limit, Full Year 1996-2015

	TOTAL
Fiscal Year	Debt Limit	$ Billion (U.S Debt, Actual)
1996	$5,500	$51,37.2
1997	$5,950	$5,327.6
1998	$5,950	$5,439.4
1999	$5,950	$5,567.7
2000	$5,950	$5,591.6
2001	$5,950	$5,732.8
2002	$6,400	$6,161.4
2003	$7,384	$6,737.6
2004	$7,384	$7,333.4
2005	$8,184	$7,871.0
2006	$8,965	$8,420.3
2007	$9,815	$8,921.3
2008	$10,615	$9,960.0
2009	$12,104	$11,853.4
2010	$14,294	$13,510.8
2011	$15,194	$14,746.6
2012	$16,394	$16,027.0
2013	$16,699	$16,699.4
2014	*	$17,781.1
2015	$18,113	$18,113.0

* At the end of FY2014, the debt limit was suspended. It was reinstated on March 16, 2015, at $18,113 billion.
Source: The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases, Congressional Research Service, November 2, 2015

Recognizing the writing on the wall, the administration is already thinking of innovative ways to extend debt maturity beyond what is currently available.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin caused a stir in the 5-30 Treasury yield curve by suggesting maturities on future Treasury issuance could be extended to as long as 50 or 100 years. Mnuchin stated,

“We’ll look at potentially extending the maturity of the debt, because eventually we are going to have higher interest rates, and that’s something that this country is going to need to deal with.”

(Source: “Steven Mnuchin Roils Bond Markets With Suggestion Of 100 Year Treasury Bond,” Zero Hedge, November 30, 2016.)

The United States Treasury’s longest dated issuance currently stands at 30 years, with 5.7 years being the average weighted maturity of outstanding U.S. debt.

What Does Raising the Debt Ceiling Mean for Average Americans?

Since the Federal Government breaks the debt ceiling on a regular basis, a higher ceiling effectively equals higher spending. Higher spending will lead to higher deficits if offsetting revenue is not achieved. Since taxation is expected to lag behind Federal outlays, the end result will be expanding deficits as long as the Trump administration is governing.

This will have consequences regarding consumer financing over time.

As indicated, there may be a plan in place to extend maturities beyond 30 year Treasuries to lock in low rates longer-term. But what if they’re unsuccessful in doing so?

Regardless, when the Federal Reserve purchases Treasuries, they usually unwind their portfolio to drain credit out of the system. If they fail to take action to unwind, they effectively increase the monetary base and erode the value of the dollar by creating excess dollars.

But it’s a tricky maneuver to unwind a portfolio when the Federal Reserve has been the biggest buyer in the market. So once they unwind, there a risk yield curve interest rates increase meaningfully, raising the costs of consumer finance.

Mortgages, credit cards, and car loans are among the most common consumer purchases on credit. This poses significant challenges to people who’ve become accustomed to easy credit and planned for lower payments.

Adding additional layers of debt will make the Federal Reserve’s job that much tougher down the line. It’s basically a can-kicking exercise for a later term, but eventually the consequences .come due.

But it’s not all bad news. Much of financing stemming from a large U.S. debt ceiling increase will flow into infrastructure spending, which is badly needed. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the foremost experts in the field, this is certainly the case.

Their 2013 report card determined that America has a significant backlog of overdue maintenance across several area of infrastructure, and that modernization is desperately required.

Their worst grades were awarded to levees (D-) and inland waterways (D-), and they give the state of American infrastructure an overall grade of D, which is a barely passable assessment. (Source: “Save America’s Infrastructure, American Society of Civil Engineers,” last accessed March 3, 2017.).

And the neglect of America’s crumbling infrastructure is starting to have real word safety consequences for large segments of the population.

Recently, 180,000 residents had to be evacuated due to when heavy rains caused a 250-foot section of the Oroville dam spillway to collapse. The crisis has exposed the vulnerability of many public works projects due to age.

It’s estimated that by 2020, the number of dams in the U.S. living past their designed lifespan will reach 65%. The Oroville dam will be among them; it was built 49 years ago this year. (Source: “What the Oroville Dam Disaster Says About America’s Aging Infrastructure,” Fortune, February 18, 2017.)

So, what is the debt ceiling now? We should find out in the second half of 2017 what the new figure will be. Most would agree that debt is much too high right now, but politically, there’s little chance of a slowdown any time soon. Not with Trump’s extensive history of private deficit financing, or America’s need to modernize infrastructure.

Only a significant pushback from Congress, with deficit hawks like Rand Paul breaking ranks, can seemingly slow this trend down.

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Sequester and Suffering

SUBHEAD: No, Americans are not suffering from 'Apocalypse Fatigue,' they are suffering from an actual apocalypse.

By Jason Linkins on 10 Octoner 2013 for Huffington Post -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/10/shutdown-sequester-suffering_n_4080525.html)


Image above: Philadelphia - Outside Mr. Good Deals on Torresdale Avenue.Photo by Pieter Hugo for NYT. From (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/amtrak-industrial-corridor.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0).

One of the more interesting things about our American life is that since 2008, we have had a financial sector crisis and then an unemployment crisis and then a foreclosure crisis and then an aggregate demand crisis and then a sequestration crisis and then a government shutdown crisis and now we may even get to see what a debt ceiling default crisis looks like, too.

The American people have pretty much taken all of these punches on the chin, and have been left in a state of constant economic insecurity and suffering.

All of which should be a really fertile piece of territory for reporters. But the folks over at Politico -- where post-concern journalism reigns supreme -- take a look at this teeming landscape of possibilities and ask themselves, "Wait, are we supposed to care about these normal human Americans who aren't even thought-leader elites and don't attend all the good ideas festivals? They aren't in our advertising demo! We don't get anything out of having access to these people!"

But every so often, President Barack Obama gets up in front of microphones and talks about the ways in which these manifold calamities impact normal human Americans. And it's apparently left Politico feeling BORED BORED BORED OMG:

This time, President Barack Obama warns, the sky really is falling. Really. His problem: The pitch isn’t a new one — not to a public weary of fiscal disaster countdown clocks and breathless deadlines, one that heard Obama’s predictions the fiscal cliff would be calamitous, his analysis that the sequester would hamstring the economy or his warning that a government shutdown could mean a recovery slowdown.

You see, the biggest problem with the constant economic strain everyone is under isn't the constant strain that everyone is under, it's that Obama keeps noting the fact that everyone is under this constant strain. It's not a new "pitch," you see. The pitch always has to be new, or else it doesn't count. That's just the way things are, guys.

Everyone knows that the biggest burden someone being treated for cancer faces isn't the cancer itself, it's all those doctors who keep talking about the need for cancer treatment, for some reason. Get some new messaging, oncologists!

Of course, while I think the whole "fiscal cliff" was overrated, it was just a tad overrated. But the sequestration is hamstringing the economy, and a government shutdown is imperiling the recovery. Why does Politico think otherwise?

Those predictions could still come to pass. But when the various strokes of midnight didn’t deliver the worst on those fronts, many Americans breathed a sigh of relief, and moved on.

Hey, guys, I am pretty sure that the fiscal cliff predictions won't come to pass because, if you recall, the fiscal cliff was averted. But where are you guys seeing all of this "Americans breathed a sigh of relief" stuff?

Now, with a historic default looming, Obama’s doomsdaying is drawing a been-there, heard-that response from much of the country. More than a few Republican members are publicly skeptical of the risk of failure to raise the debt limit. Polls show a majority of Americans aren’t sold either. And the stock market continues to mostly shrug at the prospect of a default.

Oh, so when Politico says "much of the country," it means "more than a few Republican members [of Congress]" (who are wrong on the debt ceiling), and a lot of whistling-past-the-graveyard Wall Street elites. When you add a handful of Democratic strategists to the mix (and, seriously, who knew that we are still soliciting opinions from Chris Lehane in 2013?), that represents the sum total of the "much of the country" that Politico has bothered to talk to about all of this.

And so, Politico projects its bubblicious perspective upon "much of the country," like so:

It isn't entirely Obama's fault. But his dramatic messaging, combined with the frequency of fiscal crises, has induced an advanced case of apocalypse fatigue. The whole country - including, to hear him tell it, Obama himself - is bone-weary of semi-annual brushes with financial calamity. The result: Obama's still talking. But he's not breaking through.

I don't doubt that Politico is suffering from "apocalypse fatigue," because it is doing just fine, relative to "the whole country" which is currently suffering from apocalypses. Attentional bias, however, causes a blinkered perspective. For another, more realistic take on what's going on in the country, let me pass the microphone to Esquire's Charles Pierce:

It might just be me, but part of the reason that "the country" may not be paying attention may be that the people Out There are too busy scrambling to hold their lives together after being knuckled repeatedly by the frequent fiscal crises. Perhaps someone should go out and report something, and find out if this is the case.

I can help with this, Charles! A vast amount of reporting that my colleagues have produced confirms that you are absolutely, 100 percent correct when you posit that "the people Out There are too busy scrambling to hold their lives together after being knuckled repeatedly by the frequent fiscal crises" to adequately respond to political messaging, in a way that gives Beltway toffs their jollies.

Similarly, our reporting confirms that you are correct when you go on to say, "I think I can assure the kidz here that both the sequester and the government shutdown are having serious material effects on the lives of millions of people all around the country, regardless of what the polls say about their exhaustion with the rhetoric coming out of Washington."

I have examples!

My colleague Arthur Delaney has, for many years, spoken to ordinary Americans about their lives after the financial crash. He wrote an ebook about it, which you can get here. My colleague Sam Stein has repeatedly confirmed that the sequestration is having dire, dreadful economic impacts on ordinary Americans, some of which you can sample here. We are already well ahead on confirming the fact that the government shutdown is having similar dire, dreadful effects on America.

I can also point to many other pieces of reporting that confirm our own: try Gawker's "Unemployment Stories" series or Dale Maharidge's "Someplace Like America," or Frontline's "Two American Families." So, based upon the preponderance of the evidence, I can say without reservation that the whole idea that "Americans" have "breathed a sigh of relief, and moved on," is monumentally insipid bullshit, born from a profound disconnection to, and contempt for, ordinary human Americans. The end.
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California Dreamin'

SUBHEAD: California's Governor Brown introduces a budget that will possibly create a 2013 budget surplus.

By Staff on 10 January 2013 for Reuters -
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/10/california-budget-surplus-2013_n_2450349.html)


Image above: Governor Jerry Brown introduces budget that may result in surplus that could reduce austerity in California schools and public services. From (http://www.neontommy.com/news/2013/01/california-budget-may-result-surplus-gov-brown-predicts).

California's budget deficit is gone after years of financial troubles, Governor Jerry Brown said on Thursday, proposing a plan that raises spending on education and healthcare, boosting total expenditures by 5 percent.

Brown vowed to push back at legislators eager to raise spending quickly, restoring the billions of dollars to social services and other state functions that were cut in lean years.

"I am determined to avoid the fiscal mess that the last few governors had to deal with," Brown told reporters as he introduced the budget for the 2013-14 fiscal year beginning in July.

The state expects $98.5 billion in revenues and transfers and plans spending $97.7 billion, according to the proposal published on the state Department of Finance website.

That leaves a surplus of $851 million for the year, in addition to a projected $785 million surplus for the current fiscal year, which ends in June, allowing the state to put $1 billion toward a rainy day fund.

Brown said he saw a balanced budget for the next four years.

Spending in the upcoming year is set to rise 5 percent, or $4.7 billion, from the current 2012-13 budget. Schools and universities will see a $4 billion boost, health care spending will rise $1.2 billion, while transfers to local government will drop $2.1 billion.

The 74-year-old Governor said he aimed to focus education spending on the neediest students and districts, such as kids in poor areas like Compton, California.

Brown, a Democrat with a national reputation as a liberal, plays up his penny pinching in California. He has repeatedly stressed the need for spending restraint, even amid signs the state economy is picking up.

California job growth tops the national average, unemployment has fallen below double-digit levels for the first time in nearly four years, and voters in November approved a tax increase that closed most of the lingering budget gap.

The state Department of Finance on Thursday projected unemployment will fall to 9.6 percent this year and 8.7 percent in 2014.

California faced deficits of $9 billion just a year ago and $25 billion two years ago. Brown noted that federal government issues could challenge California's forecasts and warned the state not to get over exuberant.

"It's very hard to say no. That's going to be my job," he said.

Signs of improvement in the state's economy have raised hopes among some liberals that cuts made to healthcare and welfare programs of the last few years can be rolled back.

Democrats won a supermajority in the state legislature in November's vote, giving them the power to raise taxes without Republican support.

Republican State Assembly Leader Connie Conway said she supported Brown's messages of fiscal restraint and support for education.

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Weather satellite program in peril

SUBHEAD: As climate gets more chaotic GOP cuts to weather satellite budget will stymy disaster responses. By Suzanne Goldenberg on 24 October 2011 for the Guardian - (http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/oct/24/weather-satellite-cuts-disaster-obama-official) Image above: Rendering of GEOS Weather Satellite. From (http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/41226).

America and Europe face a "disaster in the making" because of Congress budget cuts to a critical weather satellite, one of Barack Obama's top science officials has warned.

The satellite crosses the Earth's poles 14 times a day, monitoring the atmosphere, clouds, ice, vegetation, and oceans. It provides 90% of the information used by the National Weather Service, UK Met Office and other European agencies to predict severe storms up to seven days in advance.

But Republican budget-cutting measures would knock out that critical capacity by delaying the launch of the next generation of polar-orbiting satellites, said Jane Lubchenco, who heads the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa).

"It is a disaster in the making. It's an expression of the dysfunction in our system," said Lubchenco, who was speaking at a dinner on the sidelines of the Society of Environmental Journalists meeting in Miami.

It would cost three to five times more to rebuild the project after a gap than to keep the funds flowing. "It's insanity," Lubchenco said.

2011 has set new records for extreme weather events in the US and around the world, bringing hurricanes, heatwaves, floods, tornadoes, blizzards, droughts and wildfires. Ten of those events, including last August's devastating Hurricane Irene, inflicted damages of at least $1bn.

Climate change is expected to produce more extreme weather events in the future, making accurate long-range weather forecasts even more essential.

Forecasters say the information from the polar orbiters is critical to providing early notice of unusually powerful storms and tornadoes – buying time for governments and disaster responders in both the US and Europe.

Data from the satellite is shared equally between the US and the European satellite agency, EUmetsat, which passes the information on to the Met Office and other agencies.

But budget cuts could delay the launch of its successor by up to 18 months, essentially leaving US and European forecasters with a big blind spot starting in late 2016.

"It will be going backwards in 20 years' time," said Lubchenco.

A new polar-orbiting satellite is due for launch later this week. Its life expectancy is five years, which means Noaa needs to begin designing its replacement and preparing for its launch in this budget year, she said.

Noaa had originally asked for $1.06bn for its weather satellite programme, but Congress cut that sharply. It put some of the money back in the aftermath of last April's tornadoes, which killed hundreds across the south-east and in the town of Joplin, Missouri.

Mitch Goldberg, the scientist on Noaa's satellite programme, said the information and hi-resolution images from the polar orbiters were a big advance from earlier satellites.

During the 2010 Snowmageddon, information from the polar-orbiting satellite enabled Noaa scientists to accurately predict there would be 18-24in of snow up to a week before the storm, Goldberg said in a phone interview.

Forecasts without information from the polar-orbiting satellite predicted only 7-10in of snow, Goldberg said.

He said information from the satellite was also crucial to monitoring crops and wildfires, algae blooms and red tides.

But the accuracy of those forecasts were heavily dependent on maintaining a constant flow of data.

"It's all about the continuity," Goldberg said.

Video above: "2011 - A Year of Extreme Weather", by the Environmental Defense Fund. From (http://support.edf.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Extreme_Weather_Video).

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Skeleton Dance

SUBHEAD: The central truth that reflective persons can take away from these shenanigans is that American polity is unreformable.  

By James Kunstler on 11 April 2011 for Kunstler.com -  
(http://kunstler.com/blog/2011/04/skeleton-dance.html)


Image above: Tinted still frame from video below. Cue the xylophone.

Like the dancing skeletons of film history, here come the elected office-holders of the US government cutting their capers in the graveyard of empire, giving the paying customer - er... citizens - a nice case of the Friday night heebie-jeebies in a mock battle over inanities. It made for a few hours of diverting theater, with an emphasis on diversion - since the whole gruesome melodrama of the US budget finally hinged on a ploy to de-fund the Planned Parenthood organization, one of the few useful endeavors left in this land of depravity, monster trucks, and microwaved cheese snacks.

I don't believe for a moment that the political right cares about the well-being of fetuses, anyway. The abortion issue is just a convenient cudgel to bash their political adversaries on the left. Karl Marx, a useful polemicist if a hinky guide in practical politics, had an apt term for what has become the ideology of the American right wing: "rural idiocy."

It included all the familiar superstitions, phobias, obsessions, bugaboos, misconceptions, animosities, and sadistic impulses of simple country folk. Of course, today we'd have to update it as "suburban idiocy," because that is where the simple country folk of yesteryear have transpired to relocate, most traumatically in the Sunbelt, where today's car dealers, franchise moguls, and country clubbers, were only two generations ago digging chiggers out of their bare ankles after long days in the sharecrop furrows.

These folk believe all kinds of things that are not true, in fact lack the mental equipment for measuring the difference between what is true and not true and, having never known it, don't miss it. How else can you account for the burgeoning industry of "creation" museums all across Dixieland? These are the folks who, in the name of "liberty," want to regulate your sex life in accordance with the Southern Baptist Convention, the folks who want to start World War Three in order to promote the mythical "rapture," the folks who don't think twice about destroying the conditions that tend to support life on Planet Earth.

This is not going too end well for us, despite Congressman Paul Ryan's much-applauded "Path to Prosperity" proposal unveiled last week just before the whole battle degenerated into the ruse over abortion. The central truth that reflective persons can take away from these shenanigans is that American polity is unreformable. Nobody elected to congress will have the backbone to manage contraction, especially to cut payments to old people.

The medical system can't be fixed. It is made up of too many rackets benefitting too many enterprises and individuals. It just has to fail completely so that in the rubble of the system doctors and patients can reestablish some meaningful relationship between services rendered and the rate of payment.

The Obama health reform bill only illustrated the fatal weakness of progressive politics these days - the irresistible impulse to address issues of excessive complexity with added complexity. While most of the overt stupidity in our politics resides on the right, an equally disabling hubris and grandiosity reside in the political left. I suppose people who graduate from very selective and expensive colleges, and receive immense reinforcement from colleagues who preceded them there, develop an inflated sense of their ability to effectively manage things, especially complex things.

Many of these young, bright people cannot believe that our creaking and foundering systems won't yield to their managerial tinkering, and the net effect must be to turn them into very cynical careerists with nothing left but personal ladder-climbing and wealth accumulation - hence, the disgusting biographies of figures such as former public servant Lawrence Summers and Mary Shapiro of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The political left in America makes up in cynical cowardly avarice for all the mendacious stupidity on the political right, so we end up at this moment in history with a perfect blend of every bad impulse in human nature and none of the virtues.

Personally, I don't see how breakdown and revolution can be avoided now. Anyway, outside of politics itself is a gigantic realm of other things that are not trending well at all - things that will aggravate and amplify every political blunder we make. The combination of the breakdown in the world's oil allocation system and the disorders in money and banking are sure to obviate any momentary public relations triumph by one political faction over another. Reasonable people should expect turmoil going forward. The spectacles staged in congress are little more than skeleton dances performed by creatures lacking even the verve to be zombies and vampires.

Somewhere - perhaps in the Pentagon, or on some lonely Air Force base in a desolate corner of the nation - a colonel is watching his country collapse and thinking about what can be done. Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, or just something that naturally happens when things are how they are? I don't know.

Media bullshit shout-out of the week goes to the dim James Suroweicki of The New Yorker Magazine, who said, astoundingly, on his political podcast that the nation's dire fiscal condition was "a myth," that "the recovery is underway...things are getting better." Suroweicki, the magazine's economics writer, also sees no problem with rising oil prices.


Video above: "The Skeleton Dance" by Walt Disney, 1929. From (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h03QBNVwX8Q).

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U.S. Is Bankrupt

SUBHEAD: This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight.

Image above: Political cartoon of Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg, the man who created the "I Want You For US Army" illustration. From (http://www.alternet.org/news/143521/our_economy_was_a_scam_and_now_we're_dead_broke) By Laurence Kotlikoff on 10 August 2010 in Bloomberg - (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-11/u-s-is-bankrupt-and-we-don-t-even-know-commentary-by-laurence-kotlikoff.html)

Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills.

What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.

Last month, the International Monetary Fund released its annual review of U.S. economic policy. Its summary contained these bland words about U.S. fiscal policy:

“Directors welcomed the authorities’ commitment to fiscal stabilization, but noted that a larger than budgeted adjustment would be required to stabilize debt-to-GDP.”

But delve deeper, and you will find that the IMF has effectively pronounced the U.S. bankrupt. Section 6 of the July 2010 Selected Issues Paper says:

“The U.S. fiscal gap associated with today’s federal fiscal policy is huge for plausible discount rates.” ... “closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 percent of U.S. GDP.”

The fiscal gap is the value today (the present value) of the difference between projected spending (including servicing official debt) and projected revenue in all future years.

Double Our Taxes

To put 14 percent of gross domestic product in perspective, current federal revenue totals 14.9 percent of GDP. So the IMF is saying that closing the U.S. fiscal gap, from the revenue side, requires, roughly speaking, an immediate and permanent doubling of our personal-income, corporate and federal taxes as well as the payroll levy set down in the Federal Insurance Contribution Act.

Such a tax hike would leave the U.S. running a surplus equal to 5 percent of GDP this year, rather than a 9 percent deficit. So the IMF is really saying the U.S. needs to run a huge surplus now and for many years to come to pay for the spending that is scheduled. It’s also saying the longer the country waits to make tough fiscal adjustments, the more painful they will be.

Is the IMF bonkers?

No. It has done its homework. So has the Congressional Budget Office whose Long-Term Budget Outlook, released in June, shows an even larger problem.

‘Unofficial’ Liabilities

Based on the CBO’s data, I calculate a fiscal gap of $202 trillion, which is more than 15 times the official debt. This gargantuan discrepancy between our “official” debt and our actual net indebtedness isn’t surprising. It reflects what economists call the labeling problem. Congress has been very careful over the years to label most of its liabilities “unofficial” to keep them off the books and far in the future.

For example, our Social Security FICA contributions are called taxes and our future Social Security benefits are called transfer payments. The government could equally well have labeled our contributions “loans” and called our future benefits “repayment of these loans less an old age tax,” with the old age tax making up for any difference between the benefits promised and principal plus interest on the contributions.

The fiscal gap isn’t affected by fiscal labeling. It’s the only theoretically correct measure of our long-run fiscal condition because it considers all spending, no matter how labeled, and incorporates long-term and short-term policy.

$4 Trillion Bill

How can the fiscal gap be so enormous?

Simple. We have 78 million baby boomers who, when fully retired, will collect benefits from Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that, on average, exceed per-capita GDP. The annual costs of these entitlements will total about $4 trillion in today’s dollars. Yes, our economy will be bigger in 20 years, but not big enough to handle this size load year after year.

This is what happens when you run a massive Ponzi scheme for six decades straight, taking ever larger resources from the young and giving them to the old while promising the young their eventual turn at passing the generational buck.

Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under U.S. President Richard Nixon, coined an oft-repeated phrase: “Something that can’t go on, will stop.” True enough. Uncle Sam’s Ponzi scheme will stop. But it will stop too late.

And it will stop in a very nasty manner. The first possibility is massive benefit cuts visited on the baby boomers in retirement. The second is astronomical tax increases that leave the young with little incentive to work and save. And the third is the government simply printing vast quantities of money to cover its bills.

Worse Than Greece

Most likely we will see a combination of all three responses with dramatic increases in poverty, tax, interest rates and consumer prices. This is an awful, downhill road to follow, but it’s the one we are on. And bond traders will kick us miles down our road once they wake up and realize the U.S. is in worse fiscal shape than Greece.

Some doctrinaire Keynesian economists would say any stimulus over the next few years won’t affect our ability to deal with deficits in the long run.

This is wrong as a simple matter of arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the government’s credit-card bill and each year’s 14 percent of GDP is the interest on that bill. If it doesn’t pay this year’s interest, it will be added to the balance.

Demand-siders say forgoing this year’s 14 percent fiscal tightening, and spending even more, will pay for itself, in present value, by expanding the economy and tax revenue.

My reaction? Get real, or go hang out with equally deluded supply-siders. Our country is broke and can no longer afford no- pain, all-gain “solutions.”

• Laurence J. Kotlikoff is a professor of economics at Boston University and author of “Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World’s Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking.” The opinions expressed are his own.

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Publisher's note: This is from the article that supplied the Uncle Sam image we used, "Our Economy was a Scam and Now We're Dead Broke" (10/27/09) :

"Somewhere in the smoking wreckage lie the solutions. The solutions we aren't allowed to discuss: adoption of a Wall Street securities speculation tax; repeal of the Taft-Hartley anti-union laws; ending corporate personhood; cutting the bloated vampire bleeding the economy, the military budget; full single payer health care insurance, not some "public option" that is neither fish nor fowl; taxation instead of credits for carbon pollution; reversal of inflammatory U.S. policy in the Middle East (as in, get the hell out, begin kicking the oil addiction and quit backing the spoiled murderous brat that is Israel."

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Municipal Bonds for Solar Power

SUBHEAD: Kauai could use municipal bonding authority to finance solar power on private property. imagte above: An integrated solar voltaic roof is installed on new residence. From http://theredmullet.blogspot.com/2008/05/solar-rights.html By Brad Parsons on 6 November 2009 - [Author's note: This is in follow-up to the insightful Garden Island letters "We are all Keynesian puppets" (Nov. 5) by Ron Holte and "Solar is the answer" (Oct. 29) by Kawika Moke among the many letters on solar that Mr. Moke has written.]

Mr. Holte astutely wrote, "...we must take actions at the local level to provide jobs...We cannot rely on the Federal or State governments to solve the problem...We need to take better advantage of our resources: land, water, sun, wind, ocean, by private enterprise...The county can issue Build America bonds established by the stimulus act to raise seed monies..." Mr. Holte and Mr. Moke are spot on a solution. Mr. Holte is exactly right that solutions will have to come locally, and the areas he identifies are where economic localization can take place to capture localized economic multipliers and to fill the void of structural changes that are taking place in the national and global economy. I would like to add one more piece to this puzzle. It is using Municipal bonding authority to finance solar on residential and possibly commercial property. Specifically, the idea would be to use the county's bonding authority to finance photovoltaic solar and possibly solar water heaters on private property. The county would pay the upfront costs of solar installation and property owners would repay those costs over 20 years through an additional modest line item assessment on property tax bills. If a property owner moves, the solar system would stay with the property and the new owners would assume the remaining years of the assessment. Oh, you might say, "Too simple...can't work...no can." Ah, but it is working, in Berkeley since last summer with the Berkeley FIRST (Financing Initiative for Renewable and Solar Technology) Program and in the past year many other states and municipalities have copied Berkeley's idea. Typically the savings on electricity bills are equal to or greater than the slight increase in property tax assessment spread over 20 years. A key point is that the idea caps electricity costs to the property owner with the solar installation costs spread over 20 years, but the electricity itself would basically be free from the sun. As volatile utility rates based on liquid petroleum go higher in the future, a major concern on Kaua'i and Hawaii, the savings to the property owner would become greater. Those savings will create localized economic multipliers. Additionally, in the immediate term the concept would create well paying jobs for electricians and in solar sales jobs as local property owners take advantage of the program over a number of years. Yes, we can...Together we can... For the reader interested in further sources on how to implement this emerging local idea see: 1.) Berkeley FIRST Solar Financing - City of Berkeley, CA http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=26580 and http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=22196 2.) Berkeley Financing Program Brings Renewable Energy Home http://www.newrules.org/energy/news/berkeley-financing-program-brings-renewable-energy-home 3.) Municipal Financing of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Improvements on Private Property http://berc.berkeley.edu/files/BERC%20Events%2009/BerkeleyFirst/2-9-09%20Solar%20FInancin%20Summary.pdf 4.) Santa Cruz Solar Financing Initiative http://www.ecocruz.org/shared/FAQ%20v_3_.pdf 5.) Recovery and Reinvestment Act Boosts Municipal Solar Finance http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/03/recovery-and-reinvestment-act-boosts-municipal-solar-finance 6.) Berkeley going solar - city pays up front, recoups over 20 years http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/25/MNAIT0DQO.DTL 7.) Bright future as Berkeley starts solar program http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/27/MN8T166I2J.DTL 8.) The Roof Is On Fire http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2008/05/roof-fire

see also: Ea O Ka Aina: Renewable Redundancy 8/8/09

Westside levees in trouble

SUBHEAD: In regards to westside levees, the County should attend to safety of residents before subsidizing development. 

By Linda Harmon on 8 July 2009

image above: County has brought concrete blocks to Hanapepe River's edge in preparation for "repair" to deteriorating levee.  In the last few years  the base of the levee has been severely eroded. The Army Corps of Engineers may de-certify Waimea and Hanapepe levees if they are not properly rebuilt.  Photo by Juan Wilson.

To the Honorable Mayor and the County Council of Kauai;

I’m asking you to rethink the intention of spending some $6 million for Waimea expansion and upgrade of the Waimea Waste Water Treatment Plant( that was in the request to the State for matching funds).  I suggest this because neither the Waimea or the Hanapepe Levees have passed certification inspection this year. They require major upgrades. 

I would think they would have funding priority over the above mentioned project because lives and property are at stake.  I was told by the county engineer that they may not have or be able to procure enough money to bring the levees up to revised national standards of safety for future certification. 

July 8th or thereafter the council will consider a loan with the Hawaii Department  of Health from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 to expand the Waimea waste water treatment plant. Seems to me we need to be asking for money for levee repair first.   This county engineer  will be calling a meeting to talk about insurance and safety issues in August after getting all the facts and some figures together regarding the levees issue. It was the Army Corps of Engineers that talked the County into building the levees and because the County built them to the specifications required back in the 60's (when standards were different) we have been granted provisional status for the time being.   The County  has to draw up a plan of how to shore up the levees and do the work required to get them certification in the future. Although the Corps of Engineers has given the county a grace period to come up with a plan, coming up with the funding required seems to be one of the big problems not yet faced.  The waste water treatment plant is primary for future development in the Waimea area. But why would we want to do more development in a place that is unsafe without an upgraded levee?  We can’t be assured there will be money avaible in the future for levee repairs. Certainly property taxes won’t bring in as much revenue as in the past and the State is hard hit as well. I bring this matter before you before you get started proposing spending money on the Waimea Waste Water Plant expansion  when community safety has not been assured for Waimea and Hanapepe.

Linda Harmon 

(808) 335-2737

harmonl001@hawaii.rr.com

image above: The County's work on the Hanapepe levee has recently included spraying pesticide on the embankments and cutting down the only tree (see palm stump) along the river. Photo by Juan Wilson.

see also:

Island Breath: Waimea & Hanapepe levees faulty 4/21/07