Hawaii Reporter is reporting that the Akaka bill will go to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights January 20, 2006 for a hearing. This is likely to delay Senate action on the bill yet again.
Sources in Congress tell Hawaii Reporter this will likely be the only official government hearing on the bill, also known as the Akaka Bill, in D.C. — at least until March or April of 2006.
Read the whole article here.
Here is a link to pdf and Word versions of the GET repeal Petition you may download.
There is a petition circulating to amend the City Charter to allow the people to vote to repeal the GET increase to fund rail. The Honolulu Advertiser covers the story here.
The WSJ’s Opinion Journal has an article about the disfunctional manner in which rail is being built in Seattle. One particular sentence explains the problem of rail about a succinctly as it could be put:
But nowhere is the misallocation of public money more evident than in public transportation, where Rail Madness eats billions that could otherwise be devoted to truly efficient transportation technologies.
The details of this waste of billions of dollars here.
Federal transportation officials are taking an increasingly critical view of rail projects. They apparently have reversed themselves in their support of the BART to San Jose.
The Federal Government is now creating problems in plans to extend the Bay Area Rapid Transit system to San Jose. Federal officials now say they will not help pay for the extension.
This is a $4.7 billion dollar project for a mere 16.3 mile extension.
Link to the federal officials’ intention to abandon the project here.
And a link to the American Dream blog with many more links on the issue here.
This article is fascinating in its implications.
On the World Bank’s rule-of-law index, the United States scores 92 out of a possible 100. The Swiss are even more law-abiding, achieving a score of 99 out of 100. By contrast, Nigeria’s rule-of-law index score is a pitiful 4.8; Burundi’s 4.3; and Ethiopia’s 16.4. The OECD’s average score is 90, while sub-Saharan Africa’s is 28.
The World Bank study notes, “A one-point increase in the rule of law index (on a 100-point scale) boosts total wealth by over $100 in low-income countries, over $400 in middle-income countries, and nearly $3,000 in high-income countries.” So if Nigeria were somehow overnight to become as punctilious as Switzerland, its wealth would rise to $12,168 per person, a $9,420 increase that would more than quadruple the average Nigerian’s wealth. If Americans were to become 100 percent law abiding, our wealth would increase by $24,000, or little more than 5 percent.
It is the stability of government and belief in a system of laws that produces wealth. Business cannot exist without it and neither can individual freedom.
The cost of environmental regulations are in part to blame for the slow growth in worker’s wages.
According to the 2005 Economic Report of the President, the growth of real output declined because annual labor-productivity growth slowed from 2.5 percent (prior to 1973) to 1.5 percent (from 1973 to 1995). Consequently, real weekly earnings — what workers took home in inflation-adjusted dollars — actually decreased during much of the latter period.
Although the oil-supply shocks, stagflation and price controls of the 1970s have often been blamed for inaugurating the economic slowdown, environmental regulations — particularly air- and water-pollution compliance — also took a heavy toll. In a study published in the 1995 Yale Journal on Regulation, economist James C. Robinson (currently with U. C. Berkeley’s School of Public Health) found that between 1974 and 1986, manufacturers’ direct costs of complying with environmental regulations had increased to just over one percent of the value of manufactured goods. Furthermore, multifactor productivity — the efficiency of labor, machinery, and other inputs working together — had fallen about 11.4 percent short of where it would have been without the edicts of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The unintended consequences of restricting business and economic growth is that employers have fewer resources, capital, with which to pay higher wages. There is a price for everything. Whole article here.
Another blog post at Out of Control on how zoning laws are part of the reason for higher housing prices. Short quote with three links.
Does this sound familiar? This is the same direction that our local government is taking us based upon this city’s failed program. Why can’t we learn from their mistakes instead of copying them?
The Portland area spends about $630 million on transportation projects each year, about half for transit and half for roads. Congestion is getting worse and businesses are complaining that it is dramatically increasing their costs. Yet the city and region say they have no money to build new roads to relieve congestion.
Yet they seem to have money to build light-rail lines, streetcar lines, and other transit boondoggles. In 2003, transit carried just 2.3 percent of passenger travel in the Portland area, about 0.9 percent of which was rail and the rest bus. Of course, transit carried virtually none of the region’s freight. Why should the region spend half its money on 2.3 percent of travelers?
The Blog article this quote is taken from is here. And the news article Here.
And you thought this only happened on Oahu.
Every time it rains in Portland, the sewers dump raw sewage into The Willamette river . Even when the new big dig is finished in 2011 to 2020, Portland still will not stop all the dumping. Youwould think Environmentally friendly Portland planners would havePlanned better.
Portland has millions of dollars to subsidize Baseball Stadiums,Trams, and expensive streetcar projects, extending Light Rail,expanding the Convention Center and adding a taxpayer subsidizedconvention center motel.