Neil deMause: The Website

Geared toward small-business owners, but a worthwhile overview of coming legislation for the general public as well. I tackle health care, taxes, and credit cards:

Health care: Still on the critical list

Last year: The cost of providing health insurance to employees continued to skyrocket, jumping by an average of 5.7% per employee after a 6.1% hike in 2007, according to a study by consulting firm Mercer. A survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses found that health care was the number-one concern of small business owners, prompting the NFIB to become a major backer of an advertising campaign calling on the presidential candidates to make health reform a priority.

This year: President-elect Obama has endorsed a sweeping reform plan that would create a new National Health Insurance Exchange to allow more businesses access to insurance pools…[read more]

The long-awaited death of Coney Island looks like it may finally be at hand, and there’s plenty of blame to go around:

Coney Island in winter always feels desolate, but this year the spooky whistle the wind makes as it rattles the Astrotower sounds especially mournful. After two straight years of “last summer ever!” at Coney, 2009 is starting to feel like the end for real. Astroland itself is in the process of being packed up — possibly for shipment to Australia — leaving only the Cyclone and the smaller Deno’s Wonder Wheel Park as remnants of Coney’s once-great amusement district.

Along the boardwalk, huge “For Lease” signs cover the storefronts, and no one’s sure which will reopen next spring.

Such is what’s become of the city’s 4-year-old plan to “revitalize” Coney Island via a sweeping rezoning plan to bring in housing and “entertainment retail.”… [read more]

Paul Krugman has an excellent column in today’s New York Times, making some of the same points I made last week about how education and other social services (food stamps, anyone?) are just as deserving as “stimulus” spending as, say, highway construction. Krugman says it better than me, of course, being a Nobel Prize winner in Op-Ed Column Writing and all:

As a nation, we don’t believe that our fellow citizens should go without essential health care. Why, then, does a large share of funding for Medicaid come from state governments, which are forced to cut the program precisely when it’s needed most?

An educated population is a national resource. Why, then, is basic education mainly paid for by local governments, which are forced to neglect the next generation every time the economy hits a rough patch?

Krugman also notes that Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland is calling for any federal stimulus plan to include increased funding for education, food stamps, and Medicaid along with infrastructure spending. Maybe Strickland can be the Fiorello LaGuardia of the Obama era.

Yes, “Condos Fizzle While Homelessness Burns” would have made a better Nero reference, and it’s what I suggested originally, but character counts are a harsh mistress. In any case, read on about how New York is facing a simultaneous housing glut and housing shortage:

To see one of the dilemmas facing New York in the post-Wall Street economy, just turn on “Top Chef.” When the gourmet gang gets sloshed between challenges, the balcony they’re lounging on belongs to 20 Bayard Street in Greenpoint: one of many apartment towers that have sprung up around McCarren Park to sell overpriced condos to wannabe hipsters — only to see the housing boom go bust, making a temporary rental to chefs look like a good deal.

If construction cranes marked the New York of the ’00s, vacant luxury buildings could be emblematic of the ’10s… [read more]

New York is looking at massive cuts in school spending - should an education bailout be part of Obama’s economic rescue package?

Anyone reading headlines of late has to feel like we’re on the fast track to apocalypse: Unprecedented bus and subway fare hikes; a slash of more than $2 billion from state education funding; and that’s before even getting into the indignity of paying $1.06 a song on iTunes.

The trick, as always, is figuring out which of the harbingers of doom are real, and which are scare tactics meant to shock the populace into finding other ways to stave off disaster… [read more]

More e-mails between city officials have emerged in the Yankees stadium funding controversy, and it looks increasingly likely that the city helped manipulate land assessments to allow the Yanks to use taxpayer-subsidized financing:

As Juan Gonzalez first reported in this morning’s Daily News, Assemblymember Richard Brodsky has obtained more e-mails between city officials on the Yankees’ stadium project — and they’re doozies.

The latest e-mails, Brodsky told Gonzalez, are “the smoking gun” on how the city ended up with two different land values for the site of the Yankees’ new stadium:

“The professionals did their job. The political appointees then ordered them to change the assessment — and they did.”… [read more]

The sports industry is getting hit hard by the sinking economy, and you know what that means:

While most people’s attention focused on the Big Three auto execs’ hybrid-car rally from Detroit to Washington, another prominent American industry was starting to look green around the gills. This month has not been a happy one for pro sports teams: The Houston Comets, winners of the WNBA’s first four titles, shut down when the league couldn’t find a buyer; the NHL’s Phoenix Coyotes were reported hemorrhaging cash and headed for bankruptcy; and the Arena Football League assured fans that, just because it doesn’t have a commissioner or a schedule for next season, doesn’t mean that it’s folding … yet… [read more]

UPDATE: Mere hours after this article appeared, the Arena Football League announced that it was canceling its 2009 season to work on “developing a long-term plan to improve its economic model.” One hopes that bailouts won’t be involved.

In which I learn from the comment thread that metric jokes don’t go over very well in the U.S.:

While CC (or as I prefer to think of him, mL) Sabathia was raising eyebrows with the figure $160 million, even larger numbers were being thrown around in the stadium department the last few days:

• The Yankees and Mets put in an official request to New York City for $342 million in new tax-free bonds, to help pay for additional stadium expenses (a new scoreboard and expanded concessions space for the Yanks, while the Mets haven’t itemized their list)…[read more]

Fun with Google caching!

Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion is “in hot water” after blurting out to Yale students that he’d already been picked for a top job in the Obama administration, as well as the target of “an anti-Adolfo e-mail campaign” to Obama’s change.gov by Bronx residents upset by his role in the Yankee Stadium controversy, according to a story by Daily News Bronx editor Bob Kappstatter. Wrote one angry Bronxite: “If he runs for a dog catcher, we will campaign against him and support the dogs.”

At least, that’s what you would have read on the Daily News website at 2:16 am, when it was posted. By this afternoon, the story, headlined “Adolfo Carrion under fire,” had disappeared from the Daily News site… [read more]

Ever since news broke that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly tried to trade Wrigley Field stadium subsidies for getting Chicago Tribune editorial board writers fired, I’ve been getting lots of calls from radio stations on the topic. So far the list includes:

• Culture Shocks with Barry Lynn (listen to archive here) yesterday.
• Seattle’s KOMO last night.
• WCCO in Minneapolis today at 12:40 pm Central time.

I’ll also be on New York’s WBAI tomorrow morning at 6:45 am Eastern, discussing the latest in the Mets and Yanks stadium deals. If my voice hasn’t given out by then.

(UPDATE: I also just found the archive of my appearance yesterday on The Roth Show, which was, um, interesting…)