Eerie Ghost Towns Rise Up in Southern California

Aaron Deer wrote today after touring developments in Corona and Ontario. “At one master plan community, the entire development appeared to be vacant — with the exception of crews working on new construction, it was a ghost town.”

More from Deer’s note: “The homes all appeared to be empty, and there were no prospective buyers anywhere to be found. Surprisingly, the sales office was open … but the woman working there had questionable English fluency. When asked how many homes had been sold in the past month she simply responded, ‘Uh huh. Thank you. Yes!’ and handed us some additional literature on the property.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/07/analyst-sees-gh.html

Trucker Protests

British truckers protest fuel prices in London

By EMILY RISTOW – 28 minutes ago

LONDON (AP) — Hundreds of truckers drove to Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday to protest the rising cost of fuel.

Police closed a section of a highway into the capital to let the trucks gather, then escorted the 200 trucks in convoys of 20 into the center of town. Dozens of protesters on foot gathered outside the Houses of Parliament, waiting to go inside to lobby members of Parliament and holding placards that said “Fair Play on Fuel.”

http://urlet.com/keno.sensitive

Millions of Indian truckers go on strike to protest rising fuel prices, road tolls

The Associated Press Published: July 2, 2008

 NEW DELHI: Millions of truck drivers went on strike across India on Wednesday to protest rising fuel prices and road tolls, union leaders said, in a move that could paralyze much of the Indian economy.

http://urlet.com/gold.auditing

General Motors Corp. (GM) is burning through cash: May even face bankruptcy

 

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- General Motors Corp. (GM) is burning through cash faster than investors realize and may even face bankruptcy if the market worsens and it can’t raise enough capital, Merrill Lynch said Wednesday.

Merrill downgraded GM to underperform from buy and said that shares may fall below $7 over the next 12 months. GM shares fell 4.5% in recent trading to $ 11.22. A GM spokeswoman declined to comment on Merrill’s report.

“Bankruptcy is not impossible if the market continues to deteriorate and significant incremental capital is not raised,” the Merrill analysts wrote.

http://urlet.com/hong.restaurant

Public List of Malpractice Settlements Draws Fire from Doctors

Malpractice site hearing draws objections

Doctors say plan to post all payouts going back 7 years isn’t fair; lawyer questions legality.

By Sarah Avery

Raleigh News & Observer

 RALEIGH –

It won’t be easy or popular, for the N.C. Medical Board to post medical malpractice payouts on its Web page, judging from the opposition voiced to the idea at a public hearing Monday. 

The board, charged with licensing and disciplining the 22,000 doctors who practice in North Carolina, has proposed posting all malpractice payments going back seven years. The effort is part of a new effort to broaden the kind of information patients can see about the doctors who treat them. About 25 other states have adopted similar rules.

But the measure has met opposition from doctors and hospitals, from the insurers who write their medical malpractice policies and from the lawyers who defend them against patient lawsuits.

http://www.charlotte.com/breaking_news/story/693919.html

Firings fuel immigration debate in Humboldt County

By Susan Ferriss - sferriss@sacbee.com
Published 12:00 am PDT Friday, June 27, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A1

ARCATA - In Humboldt County, where references to buds often mean marijuana, Lane DeVries runs a successful cut-flower operation, one of the biggest in the United States.

….{snip}….
Agents sent a letter to DeVries, alerting him to the 283 discrepancies.

The message between the lines: The Sun Valley Floral Farms employees could be illegal immigrants, and DeVries would be held accountable.

So on June 9, he gathered workers from among the vast complex of greenhouses and announced that he would dismiss 283 of them.

….{snip}….

“It was his own decision,” she said of DeVries’ move to fire his workers.

In Humboldt County, Sun Valley workers represent about 20 percent of the seasonal farm labor work force, county officials estimate. And agriculture, they say, generates about 44 percent of local wages.

….{snip}….

DeVries declined to comment, except to say in a statement: “This incident drives home that we must immediately turn our attention to immigration reform.

 

….{snip}….

DeVries, who initially spoke to local media about the firings, told them that he followed all federal hiring laws. He did not say whether he used the E-Verify system, and would not discuss it with The Bee.

Humboldt County Supervisor John Woolley, whose district includes Arcata, acknowledged that employers have unknowingly and knowingly hired illegal immigrants.

 

….{snip}….

Sun Valley has put out an urgent call for part-time summer employees.

“Our region’s economic and workforce development community believes the solution is not penalizing our small businesses for hiring what is often the only labor available for entry-level production jobs, nor is it turning back immigrants,” Woolley and the county’s other supervisors wrote in their letter to Chertoff and their congressional representatives.

“Our nation and community would be better served if legislative energy focuses on funding and programming solutions that could equip native workers with the skills and attitudes to compete with foreign workers, while also providing a path to citizenship for currently undocumented immigrants.”

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1043861.html

Napa and “The Aspen Effect”

Monday, June 30, 2008

By MATT POPE

A populist frustration increasingly finding voice in Napa County is that the wine and hospitality industries are pulling in services and attractions that cater principally to upscale vacationers and tourists, while neglecting any sense of a local living wage and inadvertently threatening the very Ag preserve that those industries depend on through, among other things, jumbo-sized developments and hotel mega-resorts in areas that were once only the purview of B&B’s.  

Napa County has become a textbook example of what Cornell University Economics Professor Robert H. Frank calls “The Aspen Effect” — his term for traffic and other challenges resulting from that small Colorado resort towns’ transformation into a playground for the wealthy.

….{snip}….

An over-arching angst that I hear and read is that is that Napa County is undergoing a “Disney-fication,” becoming a simulacrum of a once-rural area that is quaint for tourists but not livable for locals or the people who work here.

….{snip}….

http://www.napavalleyregister.com/articles/2008/06/30/opinion/matt_pope/doc48655d4316b43966493572.txt

Hospital Malpractice in California

Calif. hospitals begin reporting ‘adverse events’

The Associated Press

Article Launched: 06/30/2008 02:39:19 AM PDT

 

 

LOS ANGELES—California hospitals reported that during a 10-month period ending in May, doctors performed the wrong surgical procedure, operated on the wrong body part or on the wrong patient 41 times, records show.During the same period, hospitals reported that foreign objects were left in surgical patients 145 times.

These types of errors, officially called “adverse events,” are among the 1,002 cases of serious medical harm to patients disclosed by hospitals statewide, according to figures compiled by the California Department of Public Health. Under a new state law, hospitals must report to health officials all substantial injuries to their patients.

more:

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_9742335

Police State Tactics in Philadelphia

http://urlet.com/while.journal

The cops came, searched and left a mess for puzzled homeowner
By DAVE DAVIES
Philadelphia Daily News

daviesd@phillynews.com 215-854-2595

Four young residents of a North Philadelphia house who circulated petitions questioning police-surveillance cameras were rousted from their home Friday and detained 12 hours without charges while police searched their house.
Daniel Moffat, 28, a co-owner of the house, said police had no warrant when they entered. The house was examined by officials from several government agencies and then shuttered by the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections.

“This leaves me homeless, without access to things I need. My whole life is disrupted,” Moffat said yesterday.

The raid on the property on Ridge Avenue near Parrish Street was led by 9th District Police Capt. Dennis Wilson, who was quoted in an online story by the City Paper as saying of the residents: “They’re a hate group. We’re trying to drum up charges against them, but unfortunately we’ll probably have to let them go.”

And he said the structure on the roof “was similar to what we saw on Osage Avenue,” referring to the rooftop fortification built by the radical group MOVE before the 1985 confrontation that killed 11 people.

 

Food relief line grows long, tense in Milwaukee

Food relief line grows long, tense

Frustration rises, officials caught off-guard as thousands turn out for flood assistance
By ANNYSA JOHNSON, LINDA SPICE and GREG J. BOROWSKI

anjohnson@journalsentinel.com

Posted: June 23, 2008

The chaos that erupted outside Milwaukee County’s main welfare office Monday over disaster-related food aid had more to do with a weak economy and crushing poverty in parts of this community than the devastating floods that swept through the state earlier this month, local government and food relief officials said.

Several thousand people showed up at the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center after rumors circulated about free food vouchers. 
 

Police responded to the building about 7 a.m. after 2,500 people lined up on the sidewalk. 
 
About 3,000 people turned out for the assistance beginning at 3 a.m. Monday, creating a line that stretched several blocks around the Marcia P. Coggs Human Services Center at 1220 W. Vliet St. At least one woman said she was trampled when a crowd rushed the doors as they opened around 7:30 a.m., and dozens of Milwaukee police officers and sheriff’s deputies were called to quell the scene.

“The food crisis in Milwaukee and throughout the United States is worse than many of us have realized,” said Milwaukee Common Council President Willie Hines, who with other elected officials called on the community to support local food pantries.

“We expect long lines for free food in Third World countries,” Hines said. “We don’t expect a line of 2,500 people waiting for food vouchers” in Milwaukee.

more: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=764962

Market Populists Go to the 6th Circle of Hell

Mar-ket Pop-u-list: noun

One who embraces the economic philosophy of the free market, globalisation, and free trade with a religious furvor. Market populists must show absolute loyalty to the whims of the almighty deity that is the free market at all times. Customs of the faith include: daily devotion and reflection on the sacred texts of the New York Times and the Wall Street Jounal, kneeling in prayer twice a day in the general direction of the NYSE at 9:30 AM EST, and at 4:30 PM EST, and denouncing heretics who do not share the faith whenever they are met.

 

….{snip}….

Before we became obsessed with the idea that markets dictate the success of nations and people, we had a decent thing going. During the post World War 2 boom, the American people experienced an unprecedented success, and the middle class was created. This was not a natural phenomenon. Rather, the creation of the middle class was the result of progressive tax policies, strong labor unions, and heavy regulation from a state still wary from the Depression.

more:  http://urlet.com/remember.circled