St. Louis votes for better transit, despite Tea Party campaign
by Jonathan Hiskes
Grist: 7 Apr 2010
St. Louis citizens want robust mass transit, and they're willing to pay
for it. Despite a Tea Party opposition campaign, St. Louis County
voters on Tuesday approved a half-cent sales tax increase to stabilize
and eventually expand the region's ailing transit network.
The measure passed by a monstrous 24 point margin. The St. Louis Tea Party
focused its energy on defeating the civic project, calling the campaign a
test run for defeating Democrats in this fall's midterm elections. So it's a
setback for them.
But it's good news for those wanting to get around the St. Louis metro area.
The "proposition A" measure will restore bus lines that had been de-funded,
pay for more frequent buses, prevent future cuts, and, eventually, expand
the reach of transit further into area suburbs. The future cuts would have
been drastic-about 50 percent of service and 650 jobs, beginning in June,
according to Metro Transit Executive Director Robert Baer.
Even more interesting, voters defeated similar tax increases in 1997 and
2008.
In Los Angeles, too, voters approved a very similar tax on themselves in
2008-a half-cent sales tax increase to fund a large-scale electric rail
system. And now they largely support Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa's plan to
build the network in 10 years instead of 30.
People want this stuff.
***
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/04/03-1
Flat Unemployment Rate Masks the Race Gap
by Aaron Glantz
New America Media: April 3, 2010
The U.S. economy added 162,000 jobs in March, but the unemployment rate held
steady at 9.7 percent, according to new figures released by the Labor
Department Friday.
On the whole, the economic news was mixed, but for African Americans, it was
particularly troubling. The unemployment rate for whites held steady at 8.8
percent compared to February and went down for Asians from 8.4 percent to
7.5 percent. But it rose to 16.5 percent for blacks from 15.8 percent.
Hispanics showed a slight increase as well from 12.4 percent to 12.6
percent.
"It's very disappointing," said Peter Edelman, a former Clinton
administration official who directs the Center on Poverty, Inequality, and
Public Policy at the Georgetown University.
While there have long been disparities in white and minority employment,
Edelman said, the latest unemployment numbers from the Labor Department show
that while "some white people got jobs, some black people and Latinos
actually fell behind more."
"We're seeing a whole set of things happening in the recession that are
making the inequity worse," said Seth Wessler, a researcher at the Applied
Research Center, a racial justice think tank in Oakland.
Chief among those factors are the massive cuts meted out to public services
on the state and local level, particularly to public transportation.
"If the bus line you depend on is cut, it's impossible to look for a job or
even hold onto the one you have," Wessler said, "and we know that across the
country - from New York to Los Angeles - bus service is being cut and fares
are increasing."
"We know that people of color are much more likely to depend on public
transportation," he added. "White people are not being impacted in quite the
same way."
Edelman of Georgetown University believes the primary source of the job gap
is the type of work that is emerging as the economy recovers: "mid-skilled"
jobs in the health care and alternative energy sectors.
"There will be job growth. The question is who gets the job," Edelman said.
"The jobs that we project over the next decade that are reasonably well
paying involve a degree of skills and a degree of preparation," he added,
"and people of color have disparate educational attainment," and will be
less able to land that work without an associates degree or certificate from
a local community college.
President Obama recognizes this, Edelman said, and included a $10 billion
investment in community colleges as part of his health care package, but the
amount was slashed down to just $2 billion as part of the "reconciliation"
process between the House and Senate versions of the bill.
Other efforts at major federal job training and employment programs have
floundered in Congress because of Republican opposition, Edelman said, and
Obama has not done enough to overcome it.
Minority communities will likely see an increase in the coming months as the
Census Bureau hires 700,000 enumerators who help count the U.S. population,
said Heidi Shierholtz, a labor economist at the Economic Policy Institute in
Washington.
But those jobs will be gone by the fall and Shierholtz believes unemployment
will be on the rise again in the fourth quarter of 2010. The latest
unemployment figures from the Labor Department show that more than 400,000
Americans have been out of work for more than six months and have joined the
ranks of the "long-term unemployed."
"I don't think we've turned the corner," she said, "and we will not turn the
corner until early next year."
Copyright © Pacific News Service
***
From: <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>
http://www.newdeal20.org/2010/04/05/the-american-economy-and-the-american-dream-9405/
The American Economy and the American Dream
by Joe Costello
Monday, 04/5/2010
The American economy has undergone tremendous changes over the past several
decades. Presently, we are in an acute phase of a chronic condition that has
been festering for years. In the past 18 months, trillions of dollars have
gone to Wall Street and the mega-banks, while state and local governments
continue to slash their budgets, and millions have lost their jobs. The LAT
has a must read piece regarding devastating cuts to public transit and their
impact, not in LA, but in Georgia. Clayton County is majority black abutting
Atlanta. The bus service is going to be canceled, according to the article:
A large number of suburban working poor may now be stranded: A survey of
riders in April 2008 found that 65% of them do not have access to a car. In
a survey last month, 3 out of 4 said they may lose their jobs when the buses
stopped rolling.
Can you imagine people in the US not having a car, and not having a car
living in a suburban area? Why don't they have a car? They can't afford it.
Why, isn't a car an essential aspect of the last half of the 20th century
American Dream? The article further states:
Since 1995, public transportation use is up 31%, more than twice the U.S.
population growth rate, according to the American Public Transportation
Assn., the nonprofit that represents the nation's commuter systems. Last
year, Americans took 10.2 billion public transit trips.
People didn't increase their public transit use out of environmental
concern, no, solely for economic reasons. Two years ago, when gasoline was
plus $4 a gallon, and with every wisp of news the economy is strengthening
the price heads quickly back, public transit use greatly expanded. Thinking
we're going to rebuild the auto-industry at 35 mpg is stupid, whether looked
at from an environmental, economic, or war and peace perspective. Cutting
public transit is the last thing we should be cutting, we should be doing
just the opposite, investing more, yet:
In a survey of 151 (public transit) member agencies released Thursday, the
association found that about 9 in 10 of them reported flat or decreased
local and state funding. Nearly 3 in 5 had already cut service or raised
fares.
Understand, when the economy fails tens of millions of people on an
essential element like transportation, it is failing grandly. So, when you
see all the anger being vented, remember what really underlies it: an
American economy that increasingly works for fewer and fewer people. Eldrin
Bell, a black Commissioner of Clayton County put it best, "I've lived with
racism, But this is a new one - it's called classism. I've never seen
anything like it."
When class becomes permanently entrenched in America, that will truly be the
death of the American Dream.
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