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Friday, October 17, 2008
Haitian president makes surprise visit to Dade School Board
Haiti's president made a surprise appearance before the Miami-Dade School Board to thank the district for storm- relief efforts and to appeal for more assistance.
Haitian President René Préval -- on a brief layover in Miami while en route to a summit in Quebec City, Canada -- made a surprise visit to the Miami-Dade School Board on Wednesday.
Préval thanked the district for its support of Haiti's hurricane-relief effort and also made a pitch on behalf of his efforts to rebuild classrooms in the storm-ravaged country, asking Miami-Dade for its surplus portable classrooms.
Préval's unexpected visit brought members of the board and others in the audience to their feet with a standing ovation when he entered the auditorium. His appearance came after a private meeting with Schools Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who visited the devastated country last month.
''As you know, over the past two months, Haiti has suffered two hurricanes,'' Préval said, speaking in French with a translator at his side. ``It is like Katrina in Haiti. All of the schools have been damaged, all of the health centers are damaged and all of the homes have suffered damage.''
The portable classrooms, Préval said, would be used for schools, shelters and health centers. ''We still have people sleeping on the street, or on the roofs of their houses,'' Préval said. ``The children are exposed to the sun and the rain. It is unimaginable.''
The request for Miami-Dade's surplus portables comes after Broward School Board member Benjamin Williams offered to donate 600 of that district's portables.
APPEAL FOR DONATIONS
When Carvalho made an expected appearance at a spiritual revival at Notre Dame d'Haiti Catholic Church in Little Haiti Tuesday night, The Rev. Reginald Jean-Mary asked him about donating Miami-Dade's surplus portables to Haiti. Carvalho agreed.
Last month, both men visited two of the hardest-hit areas in Haiti -- the northwestern port city of Gonaives and Cabaret, just north of the capital of Port-au-Prince. Carvalho said he paid for his own ticket.
During a meeting with Haitian Prime Minister Michèle Pierre-Louis, Carvalho offered the school district's assistance. He told board members that the district was supplying 20,000 book bags and supplies to school children on the island, along with an out-of-service school bus.
''The fact that children in the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere still have not begun school is something that we can help with,'' Carvalho said. ``Here, we have an opportunity to turn our surplus into a valuable commodity in Haiti.''
Préval told The Miami Herald that Carvalho told him there were between 6,000 and 7,000 surplus portables statewide and offered to help Haiti obtain them. Carvalho confirmed this, telling the board that he plans to contact Gov. Charlie Crist and the State Department of Education about the portables.
School Board members said they would look into donating the portable classrooms -- which could number in the hundreds -- and would otherwise be destroyed. Board Chairman Agustín Barrera asked that the district ensure the portables are usable -- even if it means tapping into dollars that would have been used to destroy the classrooms to repair them before sending them to Haiti.
''I am very happy,'' Préval told The Herald. The portables were ``something that could rescue Haiti from the situation in which we are living.''
SCHOOLS HELPING OUT
School leaders and students have also been collecting food and supplies at schools throughout the county. And Carvalho asked a number of community organizations and corporations to donate backpacks for kids.
Carvalho said 15 shipping containers worth of goods had already arrived in Haiti and he hoped to send an additional 15 containers in coming weeks. He said he thinks the portables could be sent to Haiti for free.
''In the name of the children of Haiti, I thank you,'' Préval said.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/728086.html
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
The End of American Spending and Reaganomics
The greatest economic crisis since the great depression did not happen because of Wall Street or predatory lenders. No, the greatest economic crisis of our time has occurred for two reasons - American spending and Reaganomics.
American Spending
We can blame Wall Street, or predatory lenders, or the realtors who kept telling potential home owners to “go bigger.” I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around, but the true culprit in this mortgage meltdown is the American consumer and its insatiable appetite for more stuff.
American spending has gotten so out of control it’s become a disease, a pandemic that plaques the majority of American households. The fact is, if the mortgage meltdown didn’t happen it would have been something else, the credit card meltdown, the car loan meltdown, or the equity loan meltdown, this economic crisis was bound to take shape in one form or another, and now that it has everyone is in panic mode.
The reality is we have spent ourselves into a state of financial paralysis, there is a negative savings rate in America, which means that the average American spends more than they take home, and most likely are having to resort to credit cards, with ballooning interests rates, or quick and easy refinancing, which have since disappeared, to pay off their excess bills every month.
Everywhere you look in the American economy, the excesses of our poor spending habits are apparent. The government, with the highest national debt in history; Wall Street and it’s heavily over leveraged banks; Americans and their exceedingly high credit card debt. Over spending has become so much a part of American culture that the economy has come to depend on it. On Black Friday, we see lines spanning for blocks at all hours of the night waiting for the electronic stores to open, or on Christmas, with the latest Christmas toy going for unconscionable prices. American spending has become a pandemic, and unless we end it now and learn to live within our means, we haven’t seen the last economic crises of our great nation.
In middleclass China, there is a 30% savings rate, which means 30% of what middleclass china takes home is saved. I wish I could say that. The Chinese government has bought up billions of dollars of American issued bonds which we use to pay for the war in Iraq, and our economy is falling into crippling debt. If we do not do something about our spending, our children will bare the burden of our debts and they will be paying it off for generations to come. Is this the legacy our generation wants to leave behind? A legacy of unadulterated financial excess, a legacy of lack of self control, a legacy of borrowing and never being able to pay it all off.
We, the American consumer, are as much to blame for our economic woes as the CEOs on Wall Street, or the politicians in Washington. How can we possibly expect them to be fiscally responsible with our money, when we ourselves aren’t?
Reaganomics
After almost 30 years of Tax cuts and Tax incentives we’ve finally realized what the most downtrodden of our society have known all along, the trickle down effect does not work. For close to 30 years we’ve been led to believe that cutting taxes is the way to keep our economy strong, we’ve been led to believe that when taxes are low, it helps to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now we know it was all a lie. The truth is only the rich benefit from tax cuts, the middleclass and the poor end up suffering. The fact is when you cut taxes, as time goes on and inflation drives up the cost of living, those short falls in government spending inevitably lead to the rising cost of government institutions such as our State universities. For example, State universities in the past half-decade have become unaffordable to most middleclass Americans. Cutting taxes lead to budget short falls in cities and towns which inevitably lead to, Municipal issued bonds for new construction of libraries and community centers which lead to even more debt. Only the rich benefit, because they are not concerned with the price of tuition at the State schools because their kids attend an even more costly out-of-state private school. That $3500.00 tax cut, you so eagerly anticipated has led the cost of tuition for the State University to double. Let me do the math for you; that $3500.00 tax break you received just caused tuition to go from, $5000.00 to $10,000; so now you have to come up with an extra $1500.00 in order to send little Timmy off to college. The middleclass has been bamboozled, hoodwinked. Reaganomics is a hoax, a sham, it doesn’t work, it only allows the rich to get richer as individual families bare a greater burden of costs that were once spread throughout the collective.
Taxes are good people. We’ve been led to believe, by the same politicians who are vying so hard for a steady paycheck within the government; that giving your hard earned money to the government is bad; that the government will only use your money to further screw things up. Well if the government is so bad why do you want a job with them? Well if the answer is, as it so often is with these politicians, that they plan to fix Washington, then I should trust that once you’re elected you will do everything in your power to handle my hard earned money responsibly, so why should I be concerned with a tax break.
Taxes help to do for us as a society what the poor and middleclass cannot do as individuals. You see we have been lied to, for almost three decades, we’ve been told that the government is bad, and taxes are evil. But on the contrary taxes help keep the post office running smoothly and keep the cost of a stamp under a dollar, taxes help to build roads, and fund Social Security, and as we watch our 401ks vanish into thin air, Social Security has become that much more important. Could you imagine if Social Security had been privatized? Taxes are good people, it will one day fund Universal Healthcare, and supplement our retirement, it should supplement the cost of State Universities, libraries, museums, and zoos. Taxes aren’t a punishment; what taxes achieve are the spoils of a strong and thriving Nation, which everyone should be allowed to enjoy, not just the rich. All these shortfalls in government spending has forced the middleclass to spend more and more just to maintain the same quality of life their parents were accustom to, which has created this culture of spending that has sent the economy spiraling out of control and collapsing under the weight of it’s on debt. The days of Reaganomics are over.
American Spending
We can blame Wall Street, or predatory lenders, or the realtors who kept telling potential home owners to “go bigger.” I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around, but the true culprit in this mortgage meltdown is the American consumer and its insatiable appetite for more stuff.
American spending has gotten so out of control it’s become a disease, a pandemic that plaques the majority of American households. The fact is, if the mortgage meltdown didn’t happen it would have been something else, the credit card meltdown, the car loan meltdown, or the equity loan meltdown, this economic crisis was bound to take shape in one form or another, and now that it has everyone is in panic mode.
The reality is we have spent ourselves into a state of financial paralysis, there is a negative savings rate in America, which means that the average American spends more than they take home, and most likely are having to resort to credit cards, with ballooning interests rates, or quick and easy refinancing, which have since disappeared, to pay off their excess bills every month.
Everywhere you look in the American economy, the excesses of our poor spending habits are apparent. The government, with the highest national debt in history; Wall Street and it’s heavily over leveraged banks; Americans and their exceedingly high credit card debt. Over spending has become so much a part of American culture that the economy has come to depend on it. On Black Friday, we see lines spanning for blocks at all hours of the night waiting for the electronic stores to open, or on Christmas, with the latest Christmas toy going for unconscionable prices. American spending has become a pandemic, and unless we end it now and learn to live within our means, we haven’t seen the last economic crises of our great nation.
In middleclass China, there is a 30% savings rate, which means 30% of what middleclass china takes home is saved. I wish I could say that. The Chinese government has bought up billions of dollars of American issued bonds which we use to pay for the war in Iraq, and our economy is falling into crippling debt. If we do not do something about our spending, our children will bare the burden of our debts and they will be paying it off for generations to come. Is this the legacy our generation wants to leave behind? A legacy of unadulterated financial excess, a legacy of lack of self control, a legacy of borrowing and never being able to pay it all off.
We, the American consumer, are as much to blame for our economic woes as the CEOs on Wall Street, or the politicians in Washington. How can we possibly expect them to be fiscally responsible with our money, when we ourselves aren’t?
Reaganomics
After almost 30 years of Tax cuts and Tax incentives we’ve finally realized what the most downtrodden of our society have known all along, the trickle down effect does not work. For close to 30 years we’ve been led to believe that cutting taxes is the way to keep our economy strong, we’ve been led to believe that when taxes are low, it helps to stimulate the economy and create jobs. Now we know it was all a lie. The truth is only the rich benefit from tax cuts, the middleclass and the poor end up suffering. The fact is when you cut taxes, as time goes on and inflation drives up the cost of living, those short falls in government spending inevitably lead to the rising cost of government institutions such as our State universities. For example, State universities in the past half-decade have become unaffordable to most middleclass Americans. Cutting taxes lead to budget short falls in cities and towns which inevitably lead to, Municipal issued bonds for new construction of libraries and community centers which lead to even more debt. Only the rich benefit, because they are not concerned with the price of tuition at the State schools because their kids attend an even more costly out-of-state private school. That $3500.00 tax cut, you so eagerly anticipated has led the cost of tuition for the State University to double. Let me do the math for you; that $3500.00 tax break you received just caused tuition to go from, $5000.00 to $10,000; so now you have to come up with an extra $1500.00 in order to send little Timmy off to college. The middleclass has been bamboozled, hoodwinked. Reaganomics is a hoax, a sham, it doesn’t work, it only allows the rich to get richer as individual families bare a greater burden of costs that were once spread throughout the collective.
Taxes are good people. We’ve been led to believe, by the same politicians who are vying so hard for a steady paycheck within the government; that giving your hard earned money to the government is bad; that the government will only use your money to further screw things up. Well if the government is so bad why do you want a job with them? Well if the answer is, as it so often is with these politicians, that they plan to fix Washington, then I should trust that once you’re elected you will do everything in your power to handle my hard earned money responsibly, so why should I be concerned with a tax break.
Taxes help to do for us as a society what the poor and middleclass cannot do as individuals. You see we have been lied to, for almost three decades, we’ve been told that the government is bad, and taxes are evil. But on the contrary taxes help keep the post office running smoothly and keep the cost of a stamp under a dollar, taxes help to build roads, and fund Social Security, and as we watch our 401ks vanish into thin air, Social Security has become that much more important. Could you imagine if Social Security had been privatized? Taxes are good people, it will one day fund Universal Healthcare, and supplement our retirement, it should supplement the cost of State Universities, libraries, museums, and zoos. Taxes aren’t a punishment; what taxes achieve are the spoils of a strong and thriving Nation, which everyone should be allowed to enjoy, not just the rich. All these shortfalls in government spending has forced the middleclass to spend more and more just to maintain the same quality of life their parents were accustom to, which has created this culture of spending that has sent the economy spiraling out of control and collapsing under the weight of it’s on debt. The days of Reaganomics are over.
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Thursday, October 2, 2008
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