Catskill Casino Causes Stir In Racing Community

Newest R.I. revenue figures top estimates
The House Fiscal Office provided some good news on the state Budget front Thursday, reporting that revenue collections through the first six months of the Fiscal Year are running $19.2 million ahead of projections. For the period of July 1 through Dec. 30, state Tax Revenues were $17.6 million ahead of expectations and other revenues, such as departmental receipts and those from the state lottery, were $1.6 million ahead. Should a positive trend continue, it would increase the size of any surplu...

When a Tax Hike Is Good News
If you live in Illinois, you got some jarring news recently: Income taxes are going up by 66 percent. Politicians usually want to cut taxes and put more money in voters' pockets, not raise taxes and make their constituents' lives harder. So something must be dreadfully wrong to force such a draconian hardship on earnest citizens. [See 20 industries where jobs are coming back.] Something is, in fact, wrong in Illinois, which arguably has the most dysfunctional finances of any state in the count...

Resource prices inflation to hit resource producers
Brent Crude is still trading above $98 a barrel. And agricultural commodities remain at extremely elevated levels. World food prices are at all-time highs. The worry is Inflation in consumer prices that is not matched by increases in wages. Everywhere you turn, you read about food price inflation: in Brazil, China, Tunisia, Algeria, you name it. Today’s WSJ says there is a growing fear that the Rioting in Tunisia over food prices along with high Unemployment could spread across the Arab wo...

December revenue collections rose 9.5 percent
December tax collections in Virginia were up 9.5 percent from the previous December, Gov. Bob McDonnell reported Thursday. "In a tough economy we are beginning to see real signs of progress and recovery," McDonnell said. The December report was buoyed by strong Christmas sales. Sales Tax Revenues were up 8.6 percent. McDonnell noted that December was the ninth month out of the last 10 in which state revenue collections exceeded the previous year's amount. It was also the second month in a row in...

Motor City Finance: Then and Now
Ten years ago this month the Mackinac Center mailed a special, 28-page, full-color, Detroit-specific edition of Michigan Privatization Report to editors across Michigan. We had recently completed a comprehensive review of the city’s Budget, and were deeply concerned by what it revealed. To mark this anniversary, we’re going to post a series of blogs comparing Detroit’s fiscal status — then and now — and some of the privatization opportunities available to the Moto...

Dealing with Britains overpaid bankers
Bagehot has a very odd column about Britain’s overpaid Bankers. Part of it is spot on: One shorthand description for the New Labour boom years is: Gordon Brown let a deregulated City rip, then used the Tax Revenues to fund a dramatic expansion of the state. He’s quite right about this. If a government starts seeing Tax Revenues from banks rise sharply, it should worry: that’s a sign of a dangerous financial bubble. The exception to that rule, of course, is when a government de...

Reid ignores reality on Social Security
Image by Getty Images via @daylife IBD: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says the Social Security program is "fine." How discouraging that someone who'll ignore an impending catastrophe for political reasons retains such a lofty position. Interviewed Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," Reid said he's bothered that people "run to Social Security" when "we start talking about the Debt." "Social Security is a program that works and it's going to be, it's fully funded for the next 40 years. (So) st...

Racinos Say Catskills Casino Is a Bad Bet For NY
Some of the state’s racinos are teaming up to oppose former Gov. David Paterson’s last-minute deal last month to provide a gaming compact to the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe to build a casino in the Catskills. The racinos who signed the letter—the Aqueduct casino developers, Saratoga, Finger Lakes, Monticello, Yonkers and Buffalo—said the deal with Paterson would cost the state $400 million in Tax Revenue and up to 1,000 jobs. The racetracks were approved to get video lotte...

Trillion Dollar Concern Trolling
JP Morgan head Jamie Dimon is terribly worried about US municipalities and counties going bankrupt because they don't get free money from the Fed like banks do. The JPMorgan CEO said he expects to see more U.S. municipalities declare Bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reports. His concerns echo those of Meredith Whitney, the analyst who has said the next major Financial Crisis will come from a wave of Local Government defaults, and those of famed investor Warren Buffett, who has called the municipal deb...

Pakistan's troubled finances: Economic blasphemy
ON JANUARY 3rd Pakistan’s Central Bank began printing rupee notes carrying the signature of Shahid Kardar, who was appointed Governor of the State Bank of Pakistan in September. Unfortunately Inflation has robbed money of over 15% of its value in the past year, and no let-up is in sight for the new notes. It is the most visible sign of an economy slouching towards another Financial Crisis. At the start of the year the government raised petrol prices, prompting the Muttahida Qaumi Movement ...

Illinois' deficit reduction scheme
by Linda Beale Illinois' Deficit reduction scheme crossposted with Ataxingmatter States have generally suffered during this economic crisis much the way most people have--there's been less money coming in as sales receipts slowed during the Recession, more services needed as many become Homeless, insuranceless and generally more vulnerable during the Recession, and bills have continued to pile up (including for mundane things like utilities and print jobs and more long-term commitments like...

Examiner Local Editorial: Prince George's County Council: Let taxpayers eat cake
Legend has it that when Queen Marie Antoinette was told that French peasants were starving because of a bread shortage during King Louis XVI's lavish coronation in Rheims, she haughtily replied: "Let them eat cake!" That pretty much sums up what Prince George's County Council Chairwoman Ingrid Turner, D-Bowie, told Taxpayers when she announced that the council's annual retreat would be held at the Hyatt Regency Chesapeake Bay Hotel in Cambridge, a tony Eastern Shore resort, so members could "foc...

Sources: Gov wants sales tax share for local roads
Gov. Bob McDonnell will ask legislators to designate a portion of Sales Tax to pay for local road projects in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads. People familiar with proposals the Governor will offer on Friday say his plan would use some of the local discretionary Sales Tax to new construction in the state's most congested regions. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on the condition they not be identified because they were not authorized to pre-empt McDonnell's announcement. Friday's ...

Don't look to North Sea oil | Terry Macalister
Fire crews battle the blazing Deepwater Horizon rig. Photograph: Reuters Everyone knew BP would take a beating in the first independent report on what went wrong in the Gulf last year, but no one expected the wider energy sector to be hauled over the coals. The commission set up by Barack Obama concluded bluntly this week that "the Oil and gas industry has no discernible, broadly embraced culture of safety". That is pretty shocking - not just for BP and contractors Transocean and Halli...

Miliband admits Labour were wrong over debt
Ed Miliband concedes that the last Labour government must take some responsibility for the Deficit. Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Ed Miliband is to admit Labour made itself vulnerable to the charge of racking up excessive Debt in government by being too slow to talk openly and clearly about the need for Spending Cuts in the wake of the Recession. He is also to concede that the last Labour government must take some responsibility for the deficit to the extent that it did not do enough t...

Quinn: 'Our fiscal house was burning'
SPRINGFIELD — — Gov. Pat Quinn on Wednesday defended his plan to sign an Income Tax hike that's twice as big as he promised during his campaign, saying the state's "fiscal house was burning." The Governor rejected criticism he had double-crossed voters when he cut an 11th-hour deal with fellow Democrats in the General Assembly to raise the Personal Income Tax Rate 67 percent. "We have an emergency, a fiscal emergency," Quinn said at his Capitol office. "Our state was careening tow...

Congressional responsibility for the Giffords assassination attempt
Many interacting factors caused the Giffords Assassination attempt. No single factor suffices to explain it. However, the acts and omissions of the U.S. Congress and the nation's two major political parties are among the most significant of these interacting causes. They include the following: 5. Congressional refusal to raise adequate Tax Revenues to fund essential services, Congressional expenditures on costly and counter-productive foreign wars, and Congressional Deregulation and Bailout of i...

Financial Times profiles Fayyadism
This entry was posted in Towards Palestinian Statehood: News and resources on Palestinian state-building efforts and tagged Palestinian state-building, Salam Fayyad. Bookmark the permalink. Today’s Financial Times includes an opinion piece by Robert Danin on the importance of Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s state-building enterprise. ‘A bold new Palestinian approach can succeed’ represents the first time that Fayyad’s efforts have been highlighted in the B...

Germany grows record 3.6% in 2010
The German Economy posted record growth of 3.6 percent last year, provisional figures released Wednesday by the national statistics office showed, while the Deficit grew to 3.5 percent. The Economy, Europe's biggest, had contracted by 4.7 percent in 2009 during Germany' worst post-war Recession, before rebounding to post the strongest growth since its reunification in October 1990. "We grew by twice the European Union average," Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle noted in a statement. It added tha...

Diana Furchtgott-Roth: Number games obscure value of Obamacare repeal
With the House of Representatives scheduled to vote next week on repealing the new Health Care act, the Congressional Budget Office has announced that eliminating the 2010 Health Care law, the program that would insure another 32 million people, would cause the Deficit to increase by $230 billion over the next decade. Last year CBO came up with the absurd finding that the act would reduce future budget deficits. Just as that projection lacked credibility, so does the inverse, that Repeal would...

Home, Home I'm Deranged, Part 14
If I asked you which state was currently leading the nation in steepest home price drops heading into 2011, odds are pretty good you'd rattle off a dozen before you even got close to the answer. Idaho is currently the dubious champion in that category, and no region in Idaho has been hit harder than the state's Treasure Valley, from Boise west along I-84 to the Oregon border. Michele and Ben Pearson need a new home for their family of eight, currently squeezed into 1,800-square feet of living sp...

A Bold New Palestinian Approach Can Succeed
The demolition of East Jerusalem's Shepherd Hotel this week to make way for a new Jewish housing development follows two years of failure by the Obama Administration in bringing Israelis and Palestinians to the negotiating table. Yet it should not obscure a revolutionary new Palestinian approach towards statehood that is producing results. While the international community has spent the past two years focused on Israeli settlement activity – allowing the issue to thwart negotiations to end the ...

Fairy Tales of the Coming State of the Union: Our Grandchildren Must Have the Burden of Repaying the National Debt
In "All Together Now: There Is No Deficit/Debt Problem,” I warned against the message calling for deficit reduction that the President will probably deliver in his State of the Union Address next month. I view the coming narrative as very likely to be composed of a number of Fairy Tales. In previous posts in this series I've analyzed and critiqued six of the fairy tales I expect the President to tell us in his coming State of the Union Speech. In this post, I'll discuss a seventh fairy tal...

Developer, Norfolk abandon lease guarantee for office building
NORFOLK Faced with certain defeat, developers withdrew their request to the City Council on Tuesday for additional incentives to construct a $32.7 million office tower in a low-income neighborhood. The council had previously approved leasing 60,000 square feet in the Midtown Office Building for the city's Human Services Department. However, it balked when Tivest Development asked the city to guarantee taking over 65,000 additional square feet should a private social service organization not be a...

Ken Cook: Money Where Our Mouths Are
Food and agriculture policy always comes down to money: how federal dollars will be prioritized and spent. If anyone needed reminders of this dynamic, 2010 provided at least two. The lesson to be drawn from both is very simple. If "civilians" (as in Taxpayers) don't stand up in politically significant numbers to demand different priorities, the farm subsidy lobby and other vested interests will maintain their iron grip on spending for programs that those in the good food movement don't like. A...