Show #025 Show Notes

Show #025: That Old-Time Tax-Cut Religion

This show originally aired on July 8, 2014. First some local news, then the rest of two interviews: one wioth State Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk and the second with Yahya Madra of Bogazici university in Istanbul.

Show #024 Fund Drive Over Yay

Show Notes

This show was a rare live broadcast for me, as Sam Sebren and I were scheduled to do fund-raising for WGXC's June $10K Fund Drive. We celebrated the end of the fund drive (during the morning show with Petey Pete) and then got down to business, playing clips from my interview with State Senator Cecilia Tkaczyk of the 46th Senate District and discussing the issues raised. There is one twelve minute segment we didn't get to which will be featured on my next show. If you want to just listen to the interview, it can be downloaded here. Here's what we talked about, with some news articles from the previous months that I used as source material.

First we celebrated the successful completion of the fund drive:

Fracking

VIEW: Documents show fracking leaders met with Cuomo's political advisers - Politics on the Hudson:
Why does the department of Health need to redact schedules for a FOIA request? Homeland Security? Please.

Fracking critics call for moratorium, more-inclusive process - Politics on the Hudson

America: Europe and Canada's Willing Chump | naked capitalism:
My favorite quote from the past month:

“Since neither Keystone XL nor fracking are long term job creators, it isn’t even like the US is selling out on these issues. “Selling” would imply some kind of profit. American workers will have virtually nothing to show for either, and the economy will be similarly unmoved. Extraction industry executives will make out like bandits, and that’s about it.”

Well, that and the environmental cleanup costs. We'll get those.

Fracking critics keep pushing for state-backed health study - Politics on the Hudson:
Now there’s radon in the natural gas produced by fracking? This just gets better and better, no?

Campaign Finance

NYPIRG calls on Board of Elections to host donor limit hearings - Politics on the Hudson

Skelos sees ways to fund public financing without taxpayer money - Politics on the Hudson:
And that is? The only thing he says is a check off on … your … income taxes. So voluntary taxpayer financing rather than funding through the general fund. oy.

GOP comptroller candidate will opt in to public financing system: "We’ll happily participate" - Politics on the Hudson:
I’m sure his entering into this program has nothing to do with the fact that he doesn’t have a chance of actually winning.

Farmworkers

Green Party pressuring Tkaczyk to co-sponsor farmworkers rights bill - Legislative Gazette

Cuomo daughter lobbies Tkaczyk - Times Union

Casinos

most of the casino bids dropped out of the running this past month, including the one for Catskill's Point, due to lack of infrastructure.
Catskills casino project goes bust, citing competition in Orange County - Politics on the Hudson
NY racinos struggle in 2014 - Politics on the Hudson:

Racino revenues are down. Let’s build casinos!

West Point Project & Energy Highway

With Power Comes Ambivalence - NYTimes.com:
A very strange title. No ambivalence whatsoever in evidence in this NYT article about the power line project. Nothing but resistance from the folks interviewed from around here.
Residents demand lower tower heights at National Grid forum - Columbia-Greene Media: News:
Lots of questions, lots of stone-walling.

Unrelated to this particular project, FERC's decision to rezone parts of our listening area is raising electricity rates; Tennessee Gas Pipeline wants to run a pipeline through Ancram, New Lebanon and Canaan.

Didn't get a chance to play this either:
Full show can be downloaded here.
The full interview can be downloaded here.

Theme Music:
Drops of H2O ( The Filtered Water Treatment ) by J.Lang
Provided under a Creative Commons Public License

Tyler Cowen misses the point on Coates' Reparations article

Why is economics called the dismal science? oh, yeah:

There is still a moral case for reparations even if most American whites have lost from slavery rather than benefited.  (Although I doubt if the America public would see the matter that way, which is one reason why the reparations movement probably isn’t going anywhere.)  Nonetheless on the economics of the issue I would suggest a very different analysis than what I am seeing from many of the commentators.  And this analysis makes slavery out to be all the more destructive, and reparations to be all the more unlikely. [from How much have white Americans benefited from slavery and its legacy? | Marginal Revolution

Given Cowen's love of liberty and free markets, I wonder what the economic case is if you take into account the fact that the whites who are supposed not to have benefited were certainly free not to participate and as a 'race' had and has power in markets, whereas the same cannot be said to be true for the African Americans. Also, even if only a single white person benefited from slavery, Jim Crow, contract lending, etc., what does that have to do with the argument? The argument Coates makes is about the economic impacts on African Americans, not about who did or didn't benefit. And Coates' vision of reparations is not a strictly economic one, nor does he say that whites are responsible for making reparations. He says that Americans are. All of us, not just the ones who can be proven to have benefited. Maybe Cowen should read the article.

Latest housing market news for Columbia and Greene Counties

Source: Median home prices up statewide and even higher in lower Hudson Valley - Lohud Real Estate - Politics on the Hudson.

Detailed data from the April report from the New York State Association of Realtors is here. In Columbia County, there were fewer listings in April than the prior year and about the same number of sales. The median sales price rose by about 7% in the previous year to $235k, $20k above the New York State median, and inventory* fell from over twenty-two months to less than sixteen. In Greene County, there were also fewer listings but the number of sales jumped by a third. The median sale price was only slightly higher than the previous year, and at $165k, well below the Columbia County and New York State levels. Nevertheless, inventory also dropped significantly in Greene County from nearly twenty-eight moths to under twenty-one. Overall, then a continued improvement in our area, with prices continuing to lag in Greene County.



* measured by dividing the number of homes for sale by the current sales per month.

Show #023 “Wages, Fracking, Casinos and Power Lines. Also, Turkey”

Show available for streaming or download here.

Show #023 Show Notes

Show #023 “Wages, Fracking, Casinos and Power Lines. Also, Turkey” Show Notes

Description

Welcome to Your Friendly Neighborhood Economist Show #023 “Wages, Fracking, Casinos and Power Lines. Also, Turkey” originally aired on Tuesday May 13, 2014. In this show I discuss the minimum wage (again) in light of the recent failure of a minimum wage to get through the Senate, and bring you the first part of my interview with my old friend Yahya Madra of Bogaziçi University in Istanbul on the recent developments in the Turkish economy and their intersection with the Gezi park uprising.

How to learn about the society you live in

As I was thinking about recommendations for #RecommendARadicalBook, I got to thinking that most of the things I've learned about how the world we live in actually works have been from people of color. The two books I thought of to recommend were Vine Deloria Jr.'s Custer Died for Your Sins and Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth, two good examples. Of course I've learned lots more from the people of color I've known in my life than I have from reading, especially about the everyday experience of living in our society. Anyway the though that all of this put in my head was this: if you want to learn about how our society works, you need to talk to people that it's not working for.