Akron METRO Doubles Down

Akron METRO the local transit authority is planning to stem it's fiscal woes by placing a sales tax increase on the ballot. According to the report in Tuesday's ABJ and the METRO rider email I subscribe to, the Board of Trustees agreed to place a .25% (that means ¼ percent) increase on the March ballot. The article in the Beacon spares much of the detail on what METRO will have to cut in the event the tax increase measure fails. The information from METRO's email goes into how cuts in State funding and triple digit increases in fuel mean tough times. It continues:

METRO has been fiscally responsible, raising bus fares by 60 percent, cutting more than 30 percent of service, eliminating 52 employees, and freezing wages for more than three years. METRO is facing a $1.8 million deficit in 2008 and $1 million in 2009. Without additional income, METRO and METRO SCAT will be facing some of the most critical service cuts of its history, including eliminating up to 50 additional positions in 2008...

The old ”METRO has had no new sales tax revenue since 1990” narrative is also thrown in for good measure. Never mind that sales taxes by design are indexed with inflation so while the rate has not increased the revenue collected has.

Times are tough for local governments and authorities like METRO and are probably not going to pick up in the near future. Unfortunately for them they don't have many options other than cutting staff or service. They already raised fares in the last go around so that is off the table (except for the North Coast Express). I had an informal conversation with the finance director this summer and he said that the last fare increases actually reduced ridership enough to cancel out the additional revenue that was generated. So here they are having to mess with the grand-daddy of all local taxes. I know property tax is a big fish but the sales tax is a broader and more pervasive tax, some (actually most) would even say regressive in nature. Let's face it the chances of that passing in March can't be that good. Throw in tougher economic conditions on the horizon for the average person and it seems almost impossible.

Long term all of the transit authorities will have to pool resources and think big picture. I am of course referring to a tapping into a new gasoline tax to fund operations and development of local transit systems. When and how this will happen is beyond the scope of what i can do here. I'll pick up this again in a month or so.

GOP and the YouTubes

Here's to hoping tomorrow's Republican Presidential debate is a entertaining as expected. I'll be honest I haven't cared to watch most of the debates for either party so far. For some reason I feel compelled to watch this one. Maybe seeing how Rotten Rudy will react to the snowman's question or the Mittster's propensity for bullshit colliding with the in your face forum provided by YouTube is drawing me.

I would love a monkey to ask the Huck about his views on evolution and whether he realizes that humans are actually primates. Oh, and someone could even ask McCain a question too.

Chum Bucket Gets His Revenge

Scottie "chum bucket" McClellan has decided to come clean and reveal that he was indeed pressured by persons including Bush, Rove, Cheney et al to pass bad information to the press on White House involvement in the Valerie Plame leak case. I'm not sure there is anyone left who is surprised by what the former Medicare & Medicaid Services Director's little brother has to say on this subject. Oh wait the Wall Street Journal Editorial page is surprised.

Whether he spills his guts on the Plame affair to vindicate himself or to sell some books it makes no difference to me. I just wish he would have spoken up sooner but, of course he can't comment on an ongoing investigation. I plan to get the book just to read the chapters on why he hates David Gregory and how Jeff Gannon Guckert landed a press pass.

Also curious how the story was not picked up by the American press with the same furor as foreign media outlets. BBC news had it as their lead story for much of the day.

FCC Creatively Destroying Local Media

The motive behind the proposed FCC rule changes for media ownership is no longer a secret. In an op-ed article in today's New York Times, FCC commissioner Kevin Martin makes a case for media consolidation as a means to bail out America's failing newspapers. He is suggesting that relaxing just one area of the cross- ownership rules, in which newspapers could buy local television or radio, would provide much needed breathing room for lagging print media.

It's hard to believe that this is where the proposals for rule changes would end. The ideology at the FCC since the Michael Powell days (or since the 1996 Telecomm. Act) is one that espouses letting a free market philosophy termed creative destruction work it's magic. It's kind of a social Darwinism of markets approach that relies on peeling back the regulatory limitations and seeing what happens when the winners take all of the resources. The winners are of course big media conglomerates and the losers in the end are the general public. The only thing more insidious than allowing the ownership rules to be relaxed is a tiered internet. Both of which screw the consumer in the race for the bottom line. It's no wonder that the FCC is fast tracking the rule change in hope of getting it approved by December.

Last week's Bill Moyers Journal featured a story on the push to further relax ownership rules and the effect on minority owned radio. The potential damage that could be done to an already bleak media landscape is alarming. No wonder I can't trust anyone in politics named Kevin.

It Always Rains on Election Day

My wife reminded me tonight that it wouldn't be election day with out crappy wet weather. Some scenes from the polls:

I voted tonight at around 6PM. The same crew was manning table 8Q. They were kind of quiet tonight. Looked like the Ensure and Centrum Silver was wearing off.

I knew Issue 1 was on the ballot but there were no signs or verbal heads up from the polling pals reminding us not to bother voting on it. Our General Assembly is looking to change the deadlines to avoid these hold out issues from sticking on the ballot.

I like to feed my ballot into the reader. I was number 182. One additional step this year, you have to push a button to acknowledge your vote once it's in the reader. Thanks for the sticker.

Now we sit back and wait for the results.

Islamofascistan?

The upheaval in Pakistan is now in its third day and the country doesn't look like a beacon of nascent democracy in the middle east. What to do if you are on the Bush foreign policy team and have spent so much time propping up the Musharraf regime as a bulwark against terrorism in the region. There hasn't been much tough talk coming from Dr. Rice or The Decider in the past few days. What can you say when that ally is emulating the very catch phrase we are supposedly trying to defeat in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq(n)? There hasn't even been a strong commitment to cut the billions of dollars of aid we provide.

Yes I mean Islamofascism. That phony-ass term created by neocon's to conflate Iraq with the terrorism of 9/11. The same evil following that is brewing trouble in Iran and leading us to the precipice of WWIII (The Decider would have me insert a LOL here but, I digress). If this ideology does exist then it looks like the makings of it are available in the current mix in Islamabad. Let's see there's an Islamic republic,let's not forget they have a nuclear capability, led by a General that took power by military coup. Now that general has suspended the constitution , jailed dissidents of all political stripes, closed down independent media outlets and declared martial law. All this in order to cling to power and claim it's necessary to fight Islamic extremism in the country.

Isn't the system blinking red? Where is Joe Lieberman and the Freedom's Watch gang? Is Pakistan today an eerie parallel of what could happen in the name of fighting terrorism here? Unfortunately most American's are probably watching the news to see when the screen writers strike will be over.