Hickory City Council Meeting - December 18, 2012 - Video Presentation

The Following is a video presentation of the Hickory City Council meeting of December 18, 2012.



Two important presentations were made for the benefit of the Citizens of Hickory on this night. At the 7:00 mark, James Davis makes the following presentation to the City Council:

Council members, I appreciate you allowing me to address items of concern on the Agenda that you are set to vote upon. I am asking that the Budget Ordinance Amendment Item Number 2 be removed from the Consent Agenda for further discussion, because it does not fit with the Parking Fund Ordinance created by a Previous Council and City Administration.

Allow me to read the ordinance to you that was passed out to you.

It is my belief, and that of the Citizens for Equity in Government, that this was the issue with the tent constructed last year on Union Square. It had nothing to do with parking. So, you broke the law that you have sworn to uphold.

As section one states, this money is set aside for funding future parking facility Capital project needs. This fund was created to increase Parking Capacity and address its issues, not for the security purposes of Union Square businesses. Let's be honest these cameras have a lot more to do with securing Union Square's private business interests, than securing the parking lots associated with Union Square.

The businesses on Union Square should address their own security issues like every other private business in other areas of the city have to do. We understand the desire for security, but if Union Square businesses want to collectively improve their security, then should they not be doing this through the Downtown Development Association? Wasn't that what that entity was created for?

Now y'all can go on and unanimously do what you intended to do all along, but thank you for allowing us to go on the record about the continued misappropriation of this fund.

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The next presentation was made towards the end of the meeting during Citizens Requesting to be Heard by Cliff Moone at the 26:00 mark.

Cliff spoke once again about the process that has been instituted in relation to allowing Citizens to be heard before votes are taken in relation to second readings,  Consent Agenda Items, and Departmental Reports.

At the end of the meeting Council voted affirmatively to form a subcommittee to formally put this process, allowing Citizens to be Heard before votes are taken, on the Agenda.

Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- December 16, 2012

Sorry Protesters: Your Jobs Are Being Sent To China And They Aren't Coming Back - The Economic Collapse Blog - Michael, - December 11th, 2012 - Did you see the huge crowds of protesters that flooded the Michigan Capitol on Tuesday?  They were there to protest two bills there were being considered by the state legislature that would limit the power of unions in the state.  Michigan lawmakers approved the bills and this absolutely infuriated the protesters.  There is a lot of passion on both sides of this debate, but I am afraid that both sides in this debate are missing the bigger picture.  If we keep shipping millions of our jobs to China, there isn't going to be work for anyone no matter how much power unions have or don't have.  During the month of October, the U.S. trade deficit increased to 42.2 billion dollars.  Our trade with China accounted for most of that deficit.  Our trade deficit with China in October increased to a new all-time one month record of 29.5 billion dollars.  Nearly 30 billion dollars that could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers went to China instead.  Since 1975, a total of about 8 trillion dollars that could have gone to U.S. businesses and U.S. workers went to the rest of the world instead.  Shiny new factories are going up all over China, and meanwhile our once great manufacturing cities are degenerating into desolate wastelands.  So what is going to happen when all of the good paying manufacturing jobs are gone?  Are we all going to fight bitterly over whether we should unionize the low paying jobs that remain at places such as Wal-Mart and McDonalds?  Such an approach is not going to bring back prosperity to America.  We desperately need to start building things and start creating real wealth inside this country once again.  We desperately need to stop sending tens of thousands of businesses, millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of our national wealth out of the country.  Unfortunately, I don't see anyone out there holding protests about our trade deficit.  Nobody really seems to care, so our economy will continue to bleed good jobs and the middle class will continue to be destroyed.
The funny thing is that the workers that are out there protesting these union bills actually voted for the politicians that are killing their jobs.  Both parties are married to the one world economic system and the "free trade" agenda, and Barack Obama has been one of the worst offenders.  He has been pushing for more "free trade agreements" throughout the past four years, and yet union workers continue to support him enthusiastically.                             How foolish can they possibly be?
Yeah, let's merge American workers into a global labor pool with workers in third world countries on the other side of the globe that work in absolutely nightmarish conditions for as little as 45 dollars a month.  That sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?                       Oh, but you don't want to work for 45 dollars a month?                        You don't even want to work for 450 dollars a month?                    Well, then the big corporations that fund politicians like Obama will just take your jobs and send them halfway around the planet.                       Do you think that your unions will save your jobs?
Michigan already has the highest rate of union membership in the Midwest.                  It also has the highest rate of unemployment in the Midwest.                      Over the past couple of decades, thousands of businesses in Michigan have either closed down or moved facilities overseas.                 Did the unions prevent any of that? No.                              If union bosses really wanted to do some good, they would be organizing protests against our incredibly foolish trade policies.                     But instead, they tell their members to vote for politicians like Obama and then they run out to the stores and fill their carts with huge piles of products that were made in China.                          Union workers need to wake up to one fundamental economic fact - in a one world economic system, the big corporations simply do not need you.  They can make their products in lots of other countries where it is legal to pay slave labor wages.                              But instead of getting upset about what is really killing their jobs, union workers in Michigan are screaming mad about a couple of new laws that will take some power away from the unions.                            That is kind of like being obsessed with a broken fingernail when your leg has just been sawed off and you are gushing blood all over the floor.                           Oh, but union workers did put on a good show up in Michigan.  The following is how a Bloomberg article described the protests...



We Are Witnessing The Death Of Small Business In America - The Economic Collapse Blog - Michael - December 13th, 2012 - Historically, small businesses have been the primary engine of new job creation in the United States.  If the economy was getting healthy, we would expect to see the number of jobs at new businesses rise.  Instead, we are witnessing just the opposite.  We are told that the economy is supposed to be "recovering", but the number of "startup jobs" at new businesses has fallen for five years in a row.  According to an analysis of U.S. Department of Labor data performed by economist Tim Kane, there were almost 12 startup jobs per 1000 Americans back in the year 2006.  By 2011, that figure had fallen to less than 8 startup jobs per 1000 Americans.  According to Kane, the number of jobs in the United States at businesses that are less than one year old has fallen from 4.1 million in 1994 to 2.5 million in 2010.  Overall, the number of "new entrepreneurs and business owners" has fallen by more than 50 percent as a percentage of the population since 1977.  The United States was once known as "the land of opportunity", but now that is fundamentally changing.  At this point we truly do have a "crisis of entrepreneurship" in this country, and that is a huge reason why America is in decline.  We are witnessing the slow death of the small business in America, and that is incredibly bad news for all of us.                   Unfortunately, the problems that small businesses are experiencing right now have been building up for decades.  The economic environment for small businesses in America has become incredibly toxic.  Sadly, we can see this in the numbers.  According to Kane, the following is how the decline in the number of startup jobs per 1000 Americans breaks down by presidential administration...
Bush Sr.: 11.3        Clinton: 11.2         Bush Jr.: 10.8         Obama: 7.8
Obviously, we are headed very much in the wrong direction.  Kane speculates about why this may be happening in his paper...

Even as we witness the death of the small business in America, corporations are absolutely thriving.  The following chart shows how corporate profits after tax have exploded to new record highs in recent years...

So has this been good for workers?  No, it has not translated into more jobs and higher wages.  In fact, wages and salaries as a percentage of GDP are now at an all-time low...

The Great Decoupling of the US Economy - Andrew McAfee's Blog - The Business Impact of IT - December 12, 2012 - The French call the thirty years after the war les trente glorieuses, reflecting the shared economic prosperity of the period. Well, we had a bit more than trente spectaculaires of our own.                            In the early 1980s the picture started to change for the average American worker. There were still a lot of jobs available, but they started to pay less well. Median household income became decoupled from the other three stats and grew more slowly than they did. By the time of the 2001 recession, median income was lagging behind pretty badly. If we’re going to stick with Gallic labeling, the years between 1982 and 2001 were the vingt troublantes.                                   By the end of 2011, things had become much worse in two ways. First, median household income was actually lower than it was a decade earlier. In fact, it was lower than at any point since 1996. And second, the American job creation engine was sputtering badly. Between 1981 and 2001 the economy generated plenty of low-paying jobs. After 2001, though, it wasn’t even generating enough of these, and employment growth started to lag badly behind GDP and productivity growth (on all three graphs here, GDP growth is charted on a separate axis because it grows more quickly than the other three). The last ten or so years have been les dix déprimantes.

What’s going on? Why have the things that workers care about – jobs and wages – become decoupled from the the other things that  economy-watchers care about? So far, explanations for this unhappy phenomenon include tax and policy changes, and the effects of globalization and offshoring. These are clearly powerful forces, but there’s one other one: technological progress.                       I’ve been talking a lot about this latter force here and elsewhere, and it’s the subject of Race Against the Machine, a short e-book Erik Brynjolfsson and I wrote that came out a bit more than a year ago (we’re working on a full-length sequel now).                                 Our argument, in brief, is that digital technologies have been able to do routine work for a while now. This allows them to substitute for less-skilled and -educated workers, and puts a lot of downward pressure on the median wage. As computers and robots get more and more powerful while simultaneously getting cheaper and more widespread this phenomenon spreads, to the point where economically rational employers prefer buying more technology over hiring more workers. In other words, they prefer capital over labor. This preference affects both wages and job volumes. And the situation will only accelerate as robots and computers learn to do more and more, and to take over jobs that we currently think of not as ‘routine,’ but as requiring a lot of skill and/or education.                          As a result, I don’t see the four lines in the graphs above re-converging any time soon.


The food stamp economic recovery – Food stamps increase by over 600,000 in last month of data. GDP at record levels yet US employment is 4 million below start of recession. - My Budget 360 - There was a startling figure that came across my desk from the United States Department of Agriculture regarding food stamp usage in the SNAP program.  Food stamp usage has grown dramatically in the last decade even during the debt inspired boom times.  Yet the devil is always in the details as we reported with the unemployment rate really dropping because of the over 500,000 Americans simply dropping out of the labor force.  The food stamp figures are stunning because they show in the last two months food stamp usage has skyrocketed by over 1,000,000.  In the last month of data observation, food stamp usage increased by more than 600,000.  Keep in mind to qualify for food stamps you have to carefully demonstrate that you are earning very little and technically are classified as being in poverty.  So what does it say that our nation now has 47.7 million Americans on food stamps?                       Our Gross Domestic Product is now at record levels yet we are doing this with over 4 million workers less than in 2007.                 

The reason this is possible is that income inequality is simply growing more dramatically.  That is why on one side of the spectrum we see big financial institutions back to making big bets and earning big bonuses while in the last month of data, we added 600,000 more Americans to the food stamp system.  If you want to visualize how things have played out since the recession began here is an excellent chart:

        
These figures are important.  You might be asking how this occurring in a supposed recovery.  A large part of this growth is being juiced up by massive debt programs and pseudo-debt and money creation programs like QE3:

  


QE 4: Folks, This Ain't Normal - What You Need To Know About The Fed's Latest Move
Tyler Durden's picture - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - December 14, 2012 - Okay, the Fed's recent decision to boost its monetary stimulus (a.k.a. "money printing," "quantitative easing," or simply "QE") by another $45 billion a month to a combined $85 billion per month demonstrates an almost complete departure from what a normal person might consider sensible.                         To borrow a phrase from Joel Salatin: Folks, this ain't normal. To this I will add ...and it will end badly.                              If you had stopped me on the street a few years ago and asked me what I thought would have happened in the stock, bond, foreign currency, and commodity markets on the day the Fed announced an $85 billion per month thin-air money printing program directed at government bonds, I never would have predicted what has actually come to pass.                             I would have predicted soaring stock prices on the expectation that all this money would have to end up in the stock market eventually. I would have predicted the dollar to fall because who in their right mind would want to hold the currency of a country that is borrowing 46 cents (!) out of every dollar that it is spending while its central bank monetizes 100% of that craziness?                        Further, I would have expected additional strength in the government bond market, because $85 billion pretty much covers all of the expected new issuance going forward, plus many entities still need to buy U.S. bonds for a variety of fiduciary reasons. With little product for sale and lots of bids by various players, one of which – the Fed – has a magic printing press and is not just price insensitive but actually seeking to drive prices higher (and yields lower), that's a recipe for rising prices.                       Then I would have called for sharply rising commodity markets because nothing correlates quite so well with thin-air money printing as commodities.                       That's what should have happened. But it's not what we're seeing.                         Instead, stocks initially climbed but then closed red. Gold was mysteriously sold in the thinly-traded overnight markets and again right after the announcement in large, rapid HFT blocks that swamped the bids. U.S. Treasury bonds actually sold off on the news. The dollar hardly budged. Commodities were mixed across the board but more or less flat on the day, with the exception of the metals, and especially the precious metals, which were sold vigorously.                     The markets are now well and truly broken. Not because they don't conform to my predictions, but because they are no longer sending useful price signals. Instead, my hypothesis here is that the markets are now just a giant and rigged casino, where a relative handful of big firms and other tightly coupled players are gaming their orders to take advantage of this flood of money.                      When your central bank badly misprices money and then bids up everything related to bonds, nothing can be reasonably priced. Risk is mispriced; the few remaining investors (as distinct from speculators, which are now the majority) are forced to accept both poor yields and higher risk – so we know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.                         QE4 - So what exactly is this new thin-air money printing program all about? Well, unlike any prior Quantitative Easing (QE) announcement, this one was tied to a fuzzy and quirky government statistic: the unemployment rate...                             The odd thing here is that by tying their policy to the unemployment rate, we could be in for a very long wait for the stimulus to end.  The reason is that the unemployment rate has a couple of moving pieces, one being the number of people who are unemployed, and the second consisting of people who have given up looking for work, which is tracked in something called the 'participation rate.'                             As more people leave the labor force and the participation rate goes down, the unemployment rate goes down, too.  Somewhat confusingly, as more jobs are created, the unemployment rate goes down, too.  As you can see, these numbers work in opposition to each other because as more jobs become available, more people re-enter the work force.                            Before the crisis struck, the participation rate was around 66.5%. But now it sits at just 63.6%, meaning that, at roughly 1.4 million jobs for each percent, a bit more than 4 million jobs would have to be created just to absorb the folks who left the labor force but presumably would like to work again. As those 4 million folks come back to work, the unemployment rate will not budge at all.

Ron Paul's Farewell Speech to Congress 

 

Fiscal Cliff Bwahaha -- The Three Card Monte System

I have already personally responded about the issues with the Republican Party and it has been all over the Hound over the last four years. Harry makes legitimate points about how the Republican Party has voluntarily cornered itself by having single themed simplistic messages that don't address the needs of most of the American public. The Republican Party has not had a coherent message of ways to move forward and back towards prosperity for the working class. And the Republican Party has not displayed leadership towards the future and has chosen to follow the path of the entrenchment of the career politician, which goes against the grain of Conservative Principles set forth in the "Contract with America" nearly twenty years ago.

A friend sent me a message the other day that is right on:

LETTER to the EDITOR-- MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE

Let's look at what we have learned from this election:

Twenty-one of 22 incumbent senators were re-elected, and 353 of 373 incumbent members of the House were re-elected.

The American people have re-elected 94 percent of the incumbents who were running for re-election to an institution that has an approval rating of about 9 percent.

This indicates, as an electorate, we are a nation of idiots.

Now I have friends from across the spectrum. I talk to everyone and try to understand people and get them to understand where I am coming from. I don't believe in Redneck World Wrestling Politics. I believe in studying issues and finding compromise where I can and moving forward in a constructive manner where I have disgreements with others. Rednecks don't do this. They draw corners and have a P***ing match and think they are accomplishing something by seeing who can P*** further. Nothing substantial ever happens. I am sick of that and those A-holes need to be drawn and quartered.

And like another friend articulates about the Democrats. The Democrats talk about the Republicans and Bush and we are like yeah uh-huh and besides the debt, deficit, impinging on our liberties, and getting us involved in two wars that there are apparently no ends to, they increased the ethanol subsidies to take care of their buddies in the Midwest and this caused corn prices to nearly quadruple in the last decade, they went along with the deregulation of Wall Street and its marriage to Washington, and they worked to offshore our working class jobs through NAFTA and GATT and a hundred other Free For All Trade Agreements.

Now let's talk about Obama, who said he was going to end the wars, instead we are looking to be headed into Syria soon and Iran right after that and more troops die in Afghanistan virtually every day.. ohh and Pakistan. We look at the issues with Wall Street, which is full scale corruption; and which seems to be getting worse, not better. Who have charges been brought against, but they'll fry some poor guy that can't afford their taxes. We look at problems with running up our debt, which I will go into further in a second.

They say No. No. No. Obama all good... Repubwicans all bad. I say B* S*.

And then there is the talk about the Fiscal Cliff.

Folks we have already gone over the Fiscal Cliff long ago. We could have dealt with this 4 1/2 years ago, but no one wanted to. We had time to reform, but no one could see, because they are Economic Idiots. It was going to be painful then, but it will be exponentially worse now. The National Debt has gone up from $10 trillion to $16.4 trillion in the last four years. That is a 64% increase in four years. In 2004 it was $7.4 trillion, which means that over the 4 year span (2004-2008) the deficit went up   35%, which still is horrible, but you can see the acceleration can't you?

So if the National Debt only went up 35% over the next four years, then it would be (16.4 x 1.35) = $22.1 trillion in 2016. If it increased at the current pace, then it would be (16.4 x 1.64) = $26.9 trillion in 4 years. If it increased at the accelerated pace (1.35 to 1.64) = ^1.99% pace, then it would be (16.4 x 1.99) = $32.6 trillion at the end of 2016. That means that we are going headlong towards oblivion.

There won't be some cataclysmic moment. It is going to be like a boiling frog. Slowly, but surely the costs of necessities are going to accelerate. I have shown it to you here on the Hound. Look at the prices in the grocery store. Maybe you are ignorant enough to not notice the way that they have repackaged the products. Nip an ounce here and add some filler there, yep that's the new American Economic system. The Ponzi economy leading to the Great American Ripoff.

I am tired of the Three Card Monte system. Everyone expects the world to shake when this all goes down. The dinosaur media at every level is in bed with the Government Incorporated. They get you all worked up about whatever the talking point of the day is, while the bureaucracy slides around to pick your pocket.

Everyone is worried about their taxes going up or their benefits getting cut, when they can't seem to grasp that the purchasing power of their money is worth less or worthless.  $100 of goods today cost $74.44 in 2000...  $17.51 in 1971, when we went off the Gold Standard... and $4.28 in 1913, when the Federal Reserve was created. And this is when looking at it through the Governments cooked book calculations, the Consumer Price Index produced for the Bureau of Labor. Other Calculators, such as Shadow Stats, show the 1971 number to be $4.98 and the 2000 number to be $33.88.

Your Standard of Living isn't being destroyed because it is being taxed away or Big Daddy Government isn't giving you enough. Your Standard of Living is being destroyed by the Federal Reserve, because the President and the Congress don't want to make the hard choices and they have their priorities out of whack. The President even seems to think it best to have no debt limit at all and he  has chosen to let the banks be in charge of our money and the bank managers have naturally chosen to look out for their own self interests. The Federal Reserve is putting $40 billion dollars into the system every month by purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds, which allows the Treasury to create money. This money is injected into the banks through nearly ZERO % loans. The banks, now being Financial institutions instead of holding corporations, are going out and purchasing commodities through hedging and derivatives processes. Too many dollars chasing too few goods leads to (Supply and Demand) prices going up.

Your average politician doesn't feel guilty, because they don't understand this. They don't understand MONEY. They really only understand the money in their own bank account and they haven't a clue about yours, nor do they care... Can you vote yourself a raise? Are most of your meals subsidized or paid for? Is your healthcare paid for? Is your retirement set?  

I do appreciate the President and his Economic team taking the ideas that have been discussed here on the Hound. 90% of the people in my community don't understand the significance of this News Source. At least the politicos pay it some attention. I see you ;)

I can't take the credit for "The Race to the Bottom" term that I talked about in April 2010,  I heard Catherine Austin Fitts talking about it about 3 years ago; but the Hound was the first to coin the term  "Middle-Out Economics," introduced here when the President only wanted to talk about the bottom up. I have discussed this since the inception of the Hound. I only wish that his regime would be interested in substantive processes to bring the economy back to equilibrium. Right now there is a war against the Middle Class. It is one thing to talk about jobs. What are you going to do to bring the jobs back to America? What are you going to do to level the Labor Price Parity Dynamic?

The problem is the Middle Class is asleep and frankly I am tired of going to them and trying to wake them up. It is a lot easier to sit back and wait for them to fall and then they wake up on their own and study what has been going on like I had to six years ago. Those who choose to find a way out will join us. Those looking to be bailed out will join the Empire of Rot.



Catherine Austin Fitts interview about Fiscal Cliff at Minute 39

A Response to Harry's GOP Hand Wringing Article - By Talferris

We have talked about this many times, but reading this piece inspired me to respond. First of all, I don’t see it as middle class neglect as it is middle class destruction. When you sit and see the likes of Mitch McConnell willing to throw a huge number of people under the bus by denying or delaying unemployment, or willing to let the tax rate increase on all people and the austerity cuts that are waiting in the wings that will, in all likelihood, send us into another depression, just to not increase the rate on the top 2% of earners, that says something to me.

The Republican party, by in large have never been about or for the middle or lower classes. And lest we forget, there is an entire class of people under the middle and upper classes that fight and struggle to survive each and every day. Sure, we can say that about everyone at the present, but it rings more so with them than others. The ones it rarely affects, those at the top, are too busy looking at things as they were, as they used to be, and how to keep their wealth and grow it under the guise of being “job creators” by investing their excess wealth in the stock market or hiding it off shore in tax havens and shelters.

As an economist, you know that the way to grow any economy is to keep money circulating. A mass of people that have purchasing power are a better engine for the economy than a few at the top that buys high end cars, mansions, vacation homes, and expensive baubles to adorn themselves with. Demand for consumer goods generates manufacturing, improving wages, working conditions, and keeps that money circulating throughout the entire population.

When you have a few at the top that now have the accumulated wealth of over half of the rest of the population, that translates into power. The power to control trade regulation that is beneficial to themselves, the power to change labor and import laws to benefit themselves and their endeavors. And the ability to put out the propaganda to garner support for those over-riding goals to convince enough people that they should buy in this premise as well, giving Republicans the ability to accomplish what is best for them.

GOP’S POST ELECTION HAND WRINGING

There’s plenty of buzz about the GOP and why, despite a lousy economy and a feckless, if not actually diabolical President,  the GOP failed to win in the last election. While the professional campaign operatives may focus on technicalities such as the use of social media or the GOP’s need to improve their grass roots “get out the vote” operation there are serious and I think obvious reasons for the Republican’s failure to inspire their base (beyond fear of the opposition) and attract new immigrants to the party. New immigrants, by the way, often come here for freedom and opportunity and the GOP’s failure to translate this into some higher percentage of votes is one of many failures that need to be addressed if they are to ever gain a real majority status.

While this topic could fill a book, there are three things that are sinking the GOP’s boat: the failure to solve problems that affect the struggling middle class, the failure to articulate a principled, “big picture” vision of America that differs from the Democrats, and simply not leading when they are in power and only counterpunching the Dems.

MIDDLE CLASS NEGLECT.  There simply are not enough country club, Rockefeller Republicans to have electoral success or popular support for legislative initiatives when the Republicans are in power.  Tax rates are a legitimate issue, but does the average voter really go wild over 36% vs 39% on top rates? Of all the problems we face, is this the only or even main issue? What about the over regulating, what about the problems with health care (that aren’t being addressed by Obamacare like costs), what about the out of control costs of higher education, what about the lack of jobs? Anyone paying attention can see that the average Joe’s problems are a lot deeper than a couple of percentage points on the top rate. Yet there is little SPECIFIC talk by Republican pols about anything else.

When there is massive wage stagnation (except for CEO’s and government workers of course), increasing prices, and little ability to move around in the job market, the Republicans myopic focus on tax rates doesn’t begin to understand, much less address the concerns of most working people.

There are solutions that are more in keeping with the philosophy of limited government, market forces, and individual empowerment but if the GOP is not articulating them, educating the people on how it would be better, and fighting for them who will?

THE BIG VISION.   While Republicans express admiration for Ronald Reagan they don’t seem to use the Gipper’s greatest gift – the ability to articulate a vision of a vibrant, special country, energized by individuals pursuing their dreams with as little regulation as possible. Reagan decried governmental overreaching and recognized that other institutions in the US had a role that government could only muck up. Don’t get me wrong, there is a sizeable role for government to play in modern life, but it has gone too far. But the good alternatives to big government are not going to come about unless the Republicans can show how needs can be met (not just slashing government and letting folks fend for themselves) in a way that empowers individuals. A Chilean style retirement system (that was designed by Americans by the way), instead of government controlled Social  Security, is one such idea, there are many more. But change is scary and unless you educate people on alternatives and articulate the big picture philosophy like Reagan did, you can’t expect people to “stay the course” during a transition to a more free and stable economy that will have to be implemented and modifyed over a course of years if not decades to address the problems that crop up from here to there. < Marco Rubio and Jim DeMint do some of this, and it’s tough to get your message to the public but if Republicans don’t have a coherent long term vision, consistently applied, they will lose to the big government crowd. Counterpunching is a poor strategy for politics if you want to lead, not merely avoid worse legislation.  

FAILURE TO LEAD.  Republicans are great at telling us what is wrong with the Democrats, but what about a positive agenda? I  have to give the Democrats credit, they get what they can today and go after more tomorrow. Republicans are gripers and show few results even when they are in power. Reagan was an exception, but when the Gingrich Republicans won in 1994, other than welfare reform, what happened? They promised to reform the federal bureaucracy and get rid of whole departments like the Dept. of Education and return control to the states. It never happened and I don’t hear much sustained discussion of it anymore. The way the feds do business is costly and they do a poor job on many things, there is widespread agreement that a bureaucratic reorganization is needed and would save billions. Why hasn’t it happened?

Republicans are complaining now about Obamacare, but during the G W Bush administration we added a new prescription drug benefit but failed to reform the health care finance system even though it was a serious problem then. Why didn’t they proact with legislation more to their liking when they had control? Why do they have to wait until something worse comes along then gripe?

Republicans are complaining about the deficit and debt now. I agree, it’s bad, but during GW Bush’s presidency, Republicans passed a bloated agriculture bill (with asinine ethanol subsidies among other things), a bloated highway bill, and thousands of “earmarks” spending borrowed money on pork that didn’t bother them at the time. If they did that then, why cry over spending now? It seems hypocritical to like our spending and not like theirs. Where were the lofty principles then when the GOP held power?  Good governance is good politics and if Republican lawmakers aren’t going to deliver on our goals and principles when they have power, what is the reason to return them to power?

There have been some rays of sunshine by some GOP leaders who seem to get it. Others seem to think that if we just change the stance on immigration, taxes and find a better standard bearer than Romney all will be well. Not a chance. It’s time for a fundamental reexamination of who we Republicans are and get about the business of retooling our democracy for the future. If the GOP won’t do it, it’s time for a new party.

Economic Stories of Relevance in Today's World -- December 8, 2012

More Phony Employment Numbers - Paul Craig Roberts.com - November 8, 2012 - Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) calls the government’s latest jobs and unemployment reports “nonsense numbers.”                 There are a number of ongoing problems with the released numbers. For example, the concurrent-seasonal factor adjustments are unstable. The birth-death model adds non-existent jobs each month that are then taken out in the annual downward benchmark revisions. Williams calculates that the job overstatement through November averages 45,000 monthly. In other words, employment gains during 2012 have been overstated by about 500,000 jobs. Another problem is that each month’s jobs number is boosted by downside revision of the previous month’s jobs number. Williams reports that the 146,000 new jobs reported for November “was after a significant downside revision to October’s reporting. Net of prior-period revisions, November’s seasonally-adjusted monthly gain was 97,000.”                            Even if we believe the government that 146,000 new jobs materialized during November, that is the amount necessary to stay even with population growth and therefore could not be responsible for reducing the unemployment rate from 7.9% to 7.7%. The reduction is due to how the unemployed are counted.                            The 7.7% rate is known as the “headline rate.” It is the rate you hear in the news. Its official designation is U.3.                      The Bureau of Labor Statistics has another official unemployment rate known as U.6.                      The difference is that U.3 does not include discouraged workers who are not currently actively seeking a job. (A discouraged worker is a person who has given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found.) The U.6 measure includes workers who have been discouraged for less than one year. The U.6 rate of unemployment is 14.4%, about double the headline rate.                           The U.6 rate does not include long-term discouraged workers, those who have been discouraged for more than one year. John Williams estimates this rate and reports the actual rate of unemployment (known as SGS) in November to be 22.9%.


Unemployment Is Not Going Down: The Employment Rate Has Been Under 59 Percent For 39 Months In A Row - The Economic Collapse Blog - The mainstream media is heralding the decline of the official unemployment rate to 7.7 percent as evidence that the U.S. economy is improving. But it is a giant lie. The truth is that unemployment in America is not actually going down. The percentage of working age Americans with a job actually dropped slightly in November. During the last recession, the percentage of working age Americans with a job fell from about 63 percent to under 59 percent and it has stayed there for 39 months in a row. In September 2009, during the depths of the last economic crisis, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. In November 2012, 58.7 percent of all working age Americans were employed. It is more then 3 years later, and we are in the exact same place! So how in the world are they able to pretend that the "unemployment rate" is going down steadily? Well, they get there by pretending that hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers "leave the labor force" each month. According to the government, another 350,000 Americans left the labor force during November, and when you keep pretending that huge chunks of workers "disappear" each month it is easy to get the "unemployment rate" to go down. But any idiot can see that there is something really funny about these numbers. Barack Obama has been president for less than four years, and during that time the number of Americans "not in the labor force" has increased by nearly 8.5 million. Something seems really "off" about that number, because during the entire decade of the 1980s the number of Americans "not in the labor force" only rose by about 2.5 million. At this point the official unemployment rate is so manipulated that it is of very little value at all.                       But the mainstream media is just eating up this "good news". They are very excited that the "unemployment rate" has fallen from its peak of 10.0 percent in October 2009 to 7.7 percent now...                           But if unemployment was actually going down, we should be seeing the percentage of Americans with a job go up.                      Unfortunately, that is NOT happening.
As I mentioned above, the "employment rate" fell below 59 percent during the last economic crisis and it has stayed there for 39 consecutive months...

Chart Of The Day: Jobs "Additions" By Age Group Reveals The Scariest Picture - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - December 7, 2012 - While the GETCO algos care only about one thing: the headline NFP number derived by the establishment survey, the reality is that in November this number was strictly a divination of seasonal adjustments (which resulted in the typical for November 1.2 million "gain" in jobs), as well as who knows what other Sandy-related adjustments which the BLS has not broken down, the reality is that a more granular dig through the jobs data reveals a far uglier picture, especially for those in the prime working demographic between 25-54. This has been a sensitive issue for the pundits as ever since the arrival of the Obama administration, all the job gains have gone in the 55 and older job category as we now see age outsourcing, while jobs in the 55 and lower age group have imploded. Sure enough, the November data, when seen through the prism of the Household Survey's age distribution, is frankly horrendous.                    First, what that granular data shows is that instead of a 146K gain in November, there was actually a drop of 114K jobs when broken down by worker "vintage." But where it gets simply stupid, is that of the 4 age group buckets (16-19, 20-24, 25-54, and 55-69), the biggest gainer continued to be America geriatric work force, which added 177 jobs. As for that key segment of the workforce, the 25-54? Jobs here declined by a whopping 359K in November. And this is good news?

UMich Confidence Plunges, Biggest Miss On Record As Outlook Crashes - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - December 7, 2012 - After its biggest miss in four years (following the pre-revision spike to the biggest beat in three years), UMich Consumer Confidence came at 74.5 relative to an 82.0 expectation (biggest miss on record). Hugely down from last month's final print of 82.7, this is the first negative print since July to the lowest since August. Expectations for the future crashed its second largest absolute print on record (-13 to 64.6) to the lowest since Dec 11.  In the typical election year we see a rise in hope and confidence into the election and then a drop off after - it seems we are following that path...



Foodstamps Soar By Most In 16 Months: Over 1 Million Americans Enter Poverty In Last Two Months - Zero Hedge - Tyler Durden - December 9, 2012 - And we thought last month's delayed foodstamp data was bad. The just reported foodstamp number for September was a doozy, with 607,544 new Americans becoming eligible for foodstamps, as a record 47.7 million Americans are now living in poverty at least according to the USDA. The monthly increase was the highest since May 2011, and with August's 421K new impoverished America, over 1 million Americans made the EBT card their new best friend. It is unclear just which atmospheric phenomenon will get the blame for this unprecedented surge in poverty, which comes at a time when the pre-election economic data euphoria was adamant that the US economy was on an escape velocity to utopia. Instead what we do know is that in August and September, over three times as many foodstamp recipients were add to the economy as jobs (324,000). We also know that with the imminent impact of Sandy, which will send foodstamp recipients soaring, it is now looking quite possible that the US may end 2012 with just over a mindboggling 50 million Americans living in absolute poverty and collecting the $134.29 average monthly benefit per person, instead of working. Welcome to the recovery indeed. Individual Americans on foodstamps:



End of Jobless Benefit Extension 'the Real Cliff' - AP Thru CNBC - December 8, 2012 - Hovering in the background of the "fiscal cliff" debate is the prospect of 2 million people losing their unemployment benefits four days after Christmas.                "This is the real cliff," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. He's been leading the effort to include another extension of benefits for the long-term unemployed in any deal to avert looming tax increases and massive spending cuts in January.
"Many of these people are struggling to pay mortgages, to provide education for their children," Reed said this past week as President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, rejected each other's opening offers for a deficit deal.                  Emergency jobless benefits for about 2.1 million people out of work more than six months will cease Dec. 29, and 1 million more will lose them over the next three months if Congress doesn't extend the assistance again. (Read More: Boehner: Obama Walking Economy to Edge of 'Cliff')                  Since the collapse of the economy in 2008, the government has poured $520 billion - an amount equal to about half its annual deficit in recent years - into unemployment benefit extensions.



NC unemployment plan hits business, beneficiaries - AP thru Seattle Post Intelligencer - GARY D. ROBERTSON - December 5, 2012 - North Carolina legislators unveiled a long-awaited proposal Wednesday to more quickly pay off the state's nearly $2.5 billion unemployment benefit debt through higher business taxes and scaled back payments to future jobless workers.             The plan presented in a General Assembly study committee would wipe from the books the borrowing from the federal government in 2015, or three years earlier than if nothing occurs. The proposal also is designed to replenish the state's unemployment trust fund after the Great Recession cleaned it out and revealed what Republican legislative leaders called a host of troubles.                          North Carolina is among nearly 20 states that still owe the federal government when unemployment insurance tax payments by businesses failed to keep up with benefits from the flood of applicants starting four years ago. North Carolina's balance is the third highest in the country behind California and New York.                  Employers and those laid off in the future will share the burden of paying the debt and building up the system, a key negotiator said. The proposal would bring the state's trust fund balance to $2.5 billion by 2021, according to projections from legislative analysts.


Fiscal cliff worries may rub off on consumers - USA TODAY - Tim Mullaney - December 4, 2012 - Who understands the economy better: businesses or consumers?                  The question holds the key to the U.S. economy, as the nation confronts the prospect of $560 billion a year of tax increases and federal spending cuts that could cause another recession.                     In a nutshell, consumers have acted as if Congress and President Obama will work out a deal to delay some planned austerity measures and keep the economy growing. Businesses haven't been so sure — and there are signs consumers are coming around to their point of view.                  The conflict came into sharp focus with Thursday's report on third-quarter economic growth.                     Business investment in equipment and software dropped 2.7% — the first drop since the recession's end.                      At the same time, consumers boosted housing-related investment, including new homes and renovations, at an annual rate of more than 14%, one of the strongest quarterly results since the recession ended in mid-2009. And their spending on durable goods, such as cars and refrigerators, climbed at an 8.7% clip, the best since early 2011.            Overall, consumer spending increased 1.4% in the third quarter, compared with 1.5% in the second.               But consumers may be starting to move closer to Big Business' wariness.                   A group of 18 retailers, including Macy's and Target, reported disappointing November sales on Thursday, as Black Friday crowds didn't make up for sales lost after Hurricane Sandy, said Scott Hoyt, an economist at Moody's Analytics.                        Also, surveys by Gallup and Rasmussen Reports in the past two weeks show an increase in consumers who are pessimistic about.......


Amid 'Fiscal Cliff' Stalemate, Main Street Deteriorates - CNBC - Heesun Wee - December 6, 2012 - Anxiety over the "fiscal cliff" isn't just affecting Wall Street. Many entrepreneurs report slower activity as uncertainty swirls about how tax hikes and government spending cuts will affect them. Faced with unanswered questions, entrepreneurs are stuck contemplating trimming costs and laying off workers—not creating Main Street jobs, which has traditionally fueled economic recoveries. (Read more: Four Reasons Why Companies Are Still Reluctant to Hire)                          Arnold said there's a "huge gap" between entrepreneurs' economic reality and the stalemate between Congress and President Barack Obama. "The longer they bicker, the worse my business is," he said. (Read more: The Fiscal Cliff Explained)                    Tax Implications for Entrepreneurs
Changes to tax laws is the major overhang for entrepreneurs. The National Association for the Self-Employed or NASE estimates a self-employed individual making between $60,000 to $88,000 a year would see a tax hit of $2,700 to $3,700 annually if a debt deal isn't reached by year's end. That's when the current tax rates, compliments of the Bush era, expire.                      While that figure may appear small at first glance, that's a lot of money for a self-employed individual or small-business owner. In their world, robust monthly cash flow can mean the difference between staying afloat or drowning financially.                         Roughly $2,700 to $3,700 more in taxes a year, "is huge," said Katie Vlietstra, director of government affairs for the self-employed association. "That is one or two paychecks they won't see in the course of a year," Vlietstra's group includes micro businesses with 10 employees or less. "The self-employed, small businesses, we're not being addressed." (Read more: November Private Sector Jobs Growth Misses Forecasts)...

Newsletter about the City Council meeting of December 4, 2012

This newsletter is about the Hickory City Council meeting that I attended this past week. City council meetings are held on the first and third Tuesdays of each Month in the Council Chambers of the Julian Whitener building.

At right of this page under Main Information links is an Hickory's City Website link. If you click on that link, it takes you to our city’s website, at the left of the page you will see the Agenda's and Minutes link you need to click. This will give you a choice of PDF files to upcoming and previous meetings.

You will find historic Agenda and Minutes links. Agendas show what is on the docket for the meeting of that date. The Minutes is an actual summary of the proceedings of the meeting of that date.

Here is a summary of the agenda of the 12/4/2012 meeting. There were a couple of important items that were discussed at this meeting and the details are listed further below:

Please remember that pressing Ctrl and + will magnify the text and page and pressing Ctrl and - will make the text and page smaller. This will help the readability for those with smaller screens and/or eye difficulties.

 All materials and maps for this meeting are provide at this link:
City Council Action Agenda - December 4, 2012


Lower right hand square in the Youtube box takes you to full screen mode.




Invocation by Rev. Bill Garrard, Retired United Methodist Pastor

*** (3:40) - (The Hound) - Cliff Moone addresses the City Council about the Council's new policy odf making a motion to allow citizen's to address the City Council about items on the Agenda. Cliff and all members of the Citizens for Equity in Government feel that the Council is proverbially flying by the seat of their pants on this. Second they are not following proper protocol, because this is nowhere to be found on the Public Agenda, so technically it is a matter not on the Agenda and should by statute come at the end of the meeting after Citizens Requesting to Be Heard, which takes us back to square one. Hickory Inc. wants to say what's the big deal and we agree. Since it isn't a big deal, then formally put in on the agenda and quit with the ruse.

Election of Mayor Pro Tempore for Calendar Year 2013 Pursuant to NC General Statues §260- A70 and Section 2-54 of the Hickory City Code. - Hank Guess was appointed unanimously for the upcoming year.

Appointment of a City Attorney for Calendar Year 2013 Pursuant to the Hickory City Code, Section 4.151 of the Charter.  John Crone was appointed unanimously for the upcoming year. Stated as being his 20th year.

Special Presentations
A. (5:50) Presentation and Recognition of Neighborhood College Graduates - Dana Kaminske presentation.


Consent Agenda:
A. Call for Public Hearing – Voluntary Annexation of City owned property located at the corner of 21st Street NW and 9th Avenue Drive NW. (Authorize Public Hearing for December 18, 2012)

B. Approval of moving the regular scheduled Council Meeting of January 1, 2013 to Wednesday, January 2, 2013 due to the New Years Holiday.

C. Special Event/Activities Application, applicant Crockett Davidson, Lead Pastor, Vintage City Church, for A Very Vintage Christmas, Christmas Concert, Monday, December 24, 2012, 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Union Square.

D. Special Event/Activities Application, applicant Connie Kincaid, Hickory Downtown Development Association, for Hickory Hops 2013 Saturday, April 20, 2013, from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Government Avenue and 2nd Street SW.

E. Special Event/Activities Application, applicant Molly Underwood, Student Teacher, Hickory High School Band, Flute Choir Caroling, Saturday, December 15, 2012, from 2:50 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., on Union Square NW.

F. Transfer of a Cemetery Deed from Winfred Scott Bedington and wife, Beth H. Bedington, and William David Bedington, to James Claude Richardson Jr. and wife, Judy Wright Richardson in Oakwood Cemetery

G. Change Order No. 9 to Pizzagalli Construction for Northeast Wastewater Treatment Plant
(NEWWTP) Upgrade Project deducting $20,673. Change Order No. 9 consists of seventeen (17) items related to unanticipated conditions and/or design omissions during the plan modifications prior to the start of the project, totaling $65,345 and four (4) deductive items including acceptance of installed equipment or materials and reconciliation of unused allowance items, totaling $86,018. Staff recommends Council approval of Change Order No. 9 to Pizzagalli Construction Company as a deductive change order in the amount of $20,673 for the Northeast Wastewater Treatment Plant (NEWWTP) upgrade project.

H. Approval of Proclamation for Bill of Rights Day, December 15, 2012 I. Budget Ordinance Amendment No. 8 To budget a $28,607 insurance claim check from Argonaut Great Central Insurance Company in the Police Department Maintenance and Repair of Equipment line item. This insurance claim check is payment for damage to a chiller unit. There was a power outage at the Police Department on 09-11-12 and when equipment was powered back on it was found that one of the chillers was damaged.

New Business - Public Hearing
1. (31:35) Amendments to Hickory City Code Chapter 16 – Junk and Secondhand Dealers, Regarding how Pawnbrokers, Precious Metal Dealers and Secondary Metals Recyclers record and report their purchases from the general public. - This public hearing was advertised on November 23, 2012 in a newspaper having general circulation in the Hickory area.

New Business - Departmental Reports:
1.(42:40) Research Regarding Demolitions to Mitigate Dust, etc. Staff Attorney Arnita Dula will give a presentation on mitigating the impact of demolitions. The presentation will focus on existing building codes, state statutes, and local ordinances relevant to this issue, practical considerations in addressing the issue, and possible options for addressing the issue.

*** Video had to be restarted at the beginning of this presentation and the Story Board says November 20, 2012, but it is the December 4, 2012. Sorry for the mistake.

2. (1:11:55) Approval of an Agreement for Shared Costs for the Upgrade and Expansion of the Hickory-Catawba Wastewater Treatment Facility (HCWWTF). - The City of Hickory and Catawba County agreed in a contract signed September 20, 2006 to jointly pursue design of an upgrade/expansion to the HCWWTF. The design has been completed. Funding for the engineering design has been split proportionally between the City and the County with the City serving as the contracting agency. The City and the County are proposing the cost sharing agreement to equally divide all construction costs associated with this upgrade, expansion, and construction administration. Each party will pay 50% of the total annual debt service cost and any other expenses related to this project. The purpose of this contract is to stipulate the terms on which the City of Hickory will be reimbursed by Catawba County for the mutual construction of the upgraded and expanded
HCWWTF.  

This was passed 6-1 with Alder Fox being the dissenting voice. She made a statement that she was going to be the odd man out. She understands shared growth... she is weighing in on the side of investment in Hickory... what about developments here and developing here.

The Hound says way to go Alder Fox. We don't invest in Hickory in anything other than a superfluous manner -- rearranging deck chairs. Look at Conover and the Conover Station and the Manufacturing Solutions Center. Those projects are unique and create value. Hickory Inc. is only worried in their buddies small potatoes investments.

Hickory is constantly the lead municipal investor in all of the multi-jurisdictional developments and constantly we see initiatives going elsewhere. This falls squarely on the shoulders of the Rudy Wright, who says that economic development isn't in his job description. That it is all Scott Millar. I think Scott Millar is as tired of hearing that as I am. Go read Pat McCrory's profile on Wikipedia. It tells you all about the personal hand that he had in Charlotte Economic Development while he was Mayor and I am sure he will do the same as Governor. And that is how he became Governor. That's what Big Boys do!



Matter not on the Agenda - Manager Berry wanted a second reading on Item G on the Consent Agenda. Change Order No. 9 to Pizzagalli Construction for Northeast Wastewater Treatment Plant (NEWWTP) Upgrade Project deducting $20,673. Mayor Wright did not want to do this until the next meeting. Alderman Lail moved to consider moving forward with the second reading and it was seconded by Alderman Meisner. Tyhen it was voted upon unanimously by the Council.