Saturday, October 15, 2011

Ron Paul Takes Herman Cain to School

From the Daily Paul site, h/t Mike Marnell. While Paul wants to abolish the Fed, Cain and Romney, looking on, are insiders who have benefited directly from the Fed. Alan Greenspan's record is one of having created the tech bubble that led to his real estate bubble. That is who Herman Cain aims to emulate.  If you like to be destroyed financially, keep voting for Cain and Romney, and listen to the New York Times's moronic comments about Paul's eyebrow.  

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Town of Olive, Board Member Bruce Lamonda, Olive Town Board, and Supervisor Berndt Leifeld Mismanage Special Reserve Funds

The Town of Olive has mismanaged its special reserve funds according to a report from the New York State Comptroller's office. 


Points from the above report that should have been brought up at the October 10, 2011  meeting:

Currently, the Town of Olive does not budget reserve funds in its annual budget.  This is poor practice. Written reserve fund policies ought to be developed.  Legal counsel concerning the establishment and continuation of funds needs to be sought on an ongoing basis. The board should be provided with ongoing reports of reserve fund activity. There should be ongoing review of reserve funds and on-the-record discussion of whether the reserves are reasonable and necessary.  Reserve balances should only be retained at appropriate levels. The board should openly discuss whether the needs of taxpayers are being met. Boards should also periodically assess the reasonableness of the amounts accumulated in their reserves. All reserve fund transactions should be transparent to the public. When conditions warrant (subject to legal requirements), the board should reduce reserve funds to reasonable levels or liquidate and discontinue a reserve fund that is no longer needed or whose purpose has been achieved.

In general, boards should behave as though they have fiduciary duties to the public.  That means disclosure and reasonable discussion of management policies that are public.  Reasonable discussion includes evaluation of the purposes and limits of the reserve funds, and whether the funds ought to be discontinued.  

Quotations from the above report:

1.       Reserve funds should be used for appropriate, stated purposes that are well designed. They should not be parking lots for excess cash.
2.       Local governments and school districts should balance the desirability of accumulating reserves for future needs with the
      obligation to make sure taxpayers are not overburdened
3.      There should be a clear purpose or intent for reserve funds that aligns with statutory authorizations.
4.      Each statute that authorizes a reserve fund should set forth a particular underlying purpose for the fund.
5.      All too often, however, reserve funds are established and substantial cash is accumulated without due diligence in monitoring the reasonableness of reserve fund balances.
6.      Is the board provided with periodic financial reports on reserve fund activity?
7.      Are reserve balances at an appropriate level?
8.      finance reserve funds on a regular basis should develop a written policy that communicates to taxpayers why the money is being set aside, the board’s financial objectives for the reserves, optimal funding levels, and conditions under which the assets will be utilized. Boards should also periodically assess the reasonableness of the amounts accumulated in their reserves.
9.      Boards should also periodically assess the reasonableness of the amounts accumulated in their reserves. When conditions warrant (subject to legal requirements), the board should reduce reserve funds to reasonable levels or liquidate and discontinue a reserve fund that is no longer needed or whose purpose has been achieved.
10.  All reserve fund transactions should be transparent to the public.
11.  Ideally, amounts to be placed in reserve funds should be included in the annual budget.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

HUD, Section 8 Housing Assault Saugerties, NY

It appears that developers Regan Development Corporation, Dickerson’s Keep LLC, and Orange County Rural Development Advisory  along with Saugerties Town Supervisor Gregory L. Helsmoortel and New York State Housing and Community Renewal Commissioner Darryl Towns, likely funded through HUD, are at their economy-destroying worst in Saugerties, NY.  The townspeople are rightly up in arms at a proposal to build a tax exempt cluster housing that will raise taxes on homeowners.  With double talk of and bogus studies of "shortages" by Ulster County's inept department of economic development,  the town supervisor and developer aim to provide economy-destroying subsidized housing at the expense of taxpayers who have been thrown out of work by excessive taxation.   

Saugerties's Darryl Towns and the developers are economic illiterates who have never heard of markets addressing shortages.

The Daily Freeman has posted edited video of the meeting.


http://www.dailyfreeman.com/video/?va_id=2926879&pl_id=21369&ref=synd

Monday, October 10, 2011

From the Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in 1848.  The following is an excerpt:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.


These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

The United States has already adopted six or seven of Marx's ten points.  Murdering an American overseas and the Patriot Act are steps toward number 4.  Through the recent bailout of the auto industry, President Obama took steps toward item 7.  President Obama proposed 8.  Nine has been accomplished in part by agribusiness. Agenda 21 proposes to extend item nine.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Future of America at the Wall Street Demonstration

H/t Contrairimairi.  I wonder what percentage of the Wall Street demonstrators are as smart as this guy.
.