LyrArc Article Gist
Angela Rayner, Secretary of Housing and deputy prime minister, removed the "beauty" requirement that was unnecessary and blocking new housing development in Britain. 62% of Britons support the aggressive housebuilding program of Labour government, 9% don't know and only 29% are opposed. Britain has a crisis in housing with a shortage of 4 million homes and 20% price increases in housing. Rayner's response on the change in the wording of housing requirements set by the government-  "This is ridiculous. Beautiful is so subjective. Actually, within the planning framework, there is a lot of specifications about in keeping with the local [environment]. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder anyway. It’s actually about [being] in keeping with the area, it’s about protecting nature and having access to nature, it’s about making sure that buildings are safe, they’re warm, they’re sustainable. So there’s a number of guidelines and rules that a developer has to follow. Beautiful? Beautiful means nothing really, it means one thing to one person and another thing to another." ...

LyrArc Article Gist
With Macron refusing to accept Oliver Faure as the pick for prime minister from the largest bloc in the National Assembly, the focus now shifts to selection of the presidency of the National Assembly, the speaker's role in the Assembly. The Popular Front will put forward its own selection for Speaker.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Pirate Party enable's participation by members using its software Liquid Level Feedback. It helps harnesss the internet for what it does. As founder Rick Falkvinge and others who see the potential of the internet in new ways put it: first there was the written word for people to communicate by reading, then the printing press of Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany, sometime in the mid-15th century, so that people could read in the language written for large numbers of people. Now with binary code and technology for the internet it is possible to communicate for large numbers of people- with a final barrier of language removed with automatic translation- creating an active participatory community. The language barrier removed creates a world community, making the essential step needed to cope with the problems created by industry and finance- which operates in an interconnected manner worldwide without any element of participation of an interconnected community worldwide- as seen in the total lack of participation of the global public experienced during the 2008 global banking and financial crisis. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Reasons why class identification and party identification are not the same thing. Other factors besides income go into determining voter preferences, which can change in different periods and situations.

LyrArc Article Gist
As automakers rettol their plants all three GM Ford and Chrysler look for ways to win support at the party conventions in Denver and Minneapolis and in Congress for a bipartisan support to get the $3.75 billion Congress has to appropriate for insurance and other costs to get the $25 billion loan program signed by President Bush in 2007. Debbie Stabenow, a Senator from Michigan backs an increase of this loan program to $50 billion and its presented as a way to help the country become more fuel efficient and develop alternative sources of energy. This loan program could make a critical difference to the cash strapped American companies when credit is hard to get in financial markets or the cost is too high. Note the importance of the states in the midwest like Michigan, Ohio and Indiana to both Presidential candidates make it increasingly likely that both will favor fully funding the automobile companies retooling plants and funding new technologies. These states could decide the election and the weak economy and high unemployment in the midwestern states means the candidates and the political parties will have to support the auto industry's efforts to remake the companies and America's energy future....

LyrArc Article Gist
Germany's social-affairs minister, Ursula von der Leyden, presents the "fourth poverty and wealth report," in March 2013. The issue of inequality is arousing public sentiment in Germany with this becoming an election issue along with the euro crisis and energy reform. The term Gerechtigkeit means "justice" in German and is associated with the idea of equality. The Social Democrats Party and the Greens talk about this in terms of "social scissors" opening wider. The Minder Initiative which passed in Switzerland enabling shareholders to restrict executive pay has led to public discussion in Germany for a similiar approach to be adopted by Germany. The ruling Christian Democratic Party (CDU) of Angela Merkel and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) party are different from other parties in Europe because of their Catholic and Lutheran roots which favor social solidarity. The FDP party in the ruling coalition supports free market principles but lacks popular support. The Economist cites the work of the German think tank DIW on inequality, which shows inequality showing sharp rise after German reunification around 1991, especially in East Germany. The situation moderates with improvements in inequality in East Germany and a slight improvement in West Germany after 2005. Both East and W. Germany have moved up overall in the Ginni coefficeint which measures inequality from about 0.4 in 1991 to about 0.5 in 2010, showing that the situation has stabilized at a higher level of inequality. Part of this could be because of the shift to temporary workers at lower wages about this time as German industry made efforts to keep wages down and improve competitiveness, even as overall conditions in the economy improved in the last decade. The Economist cites another study by the Initiative for a New Social Market Economy, a German think tank, which compares Germany with other members of the OECD. Germany ranks closer to Scandinavian countries in seventh place in this study, but does poorly in equal oportunities with 14th place. Germany lags behind other OECD and European countries in opportunities for women to work full time. Germany lacks enough daycare facilities for small children so that their mothers can work full time. There is a shortage of about 150,000 for preschool daycare openings in Germany, acccording to information cited by Deutsche Welle from government sources....

LyrArc Article Gist
Polls show support for the two main parties in Germany, the CDU and the SDU, Christian Democrats and Social Democrats at new lows. Part of the reason is that the Social Democrats have not reflected their working class base, and the Christian Democrats have dissensions going forward with the CSU. The AfD is stronger in east Germany as the situation evolves with smaller parties having more support.

LyrArc Article Gist
At a time when even nurses and teachers have had to turn of food banks with increasing cost of living including energy costs, the failure to implement a proper windfall tax by the UK Sunak government is seen as egregious and incomprehensible.

LyrArc Article Gist
Institute of Fiscal Studies, IFS, shows where the money is going in Labour's first Budget. See graphs of the household income over the 75 years under Conservative and Labour governments, which shows slower growth in household income over the next 5 years. Healthcsare and Education are growing at 4%. The growth of 6-10% is for local government spending, housing, communities and local government, work and pensions, Justice, HM Revenue. The slow rise in household incomes to 2030 is the result of trickle down economics which is sold vigorously by some groups as economic orthodoxy including the largest corporations paying little in taxes. This is true also of the US. FDR called it Tory policies and policies that say trickle down economics works when it doesn't. FDR said at DNC in 1932- "And we thought the Tories left in 1776." Today this is why UK household incomes show slight growth to 2030, and even this Labour Government is hesitant to boldly question this economic orthodoxy.  For Britain the debacle of Brexit turning some legitimate questions of immigration into isolation from economies of mainland Europe adds to the problem.     ...

LyrArc Article Gist
This is an high exceptional report in the NYT by Rosenthal, Fitzsimmons and Laforgia on the crumbling infrastructure in the U.S., taking the New York subway system as one of the most glaring examples of this failure of public administration since World War II. The woes of the system amount to a kind of defunding of the subway system for update, maintenance and technological improvement to meet the doubled ridership since 1950. Read this to understand why this is happening throughout the U.S. for clues to the possible causes, and what needs to be done. As this is now in the hands of ordinary citizens who suffer daily from the inefficiencies, delays, and rundown conditions on the subways compared to other subway systems in Europe, Japan and China. One report in the media in Nov. 2017 says Japan's Shinkansen railways apologized to customers for a train leaving 24 seconds early. Small details get accounted for in other countries, whereas they are ignored here in one of the largest cities in the world. A former New York transit system president from the 1970's calls it "heartbreaking" making him mad when he thinks about what is happening in the way New York subways are run. Financial deals have saddled the New York subway system with added $5 billion in interest on debt in return for  short term cash infusion. The result is that about 17% of the budget goes to paying interest on debt. In 1997 this was about 6%. So that needed maintenance and capital projects suffer. The New York subway system has only a 65% on time record,  the worst of any subway system in the world. And technology dates back to the 1930's with a signals system from that period,  says this New York Times report. Maintenance needs have suffered under the Cuomo administration says this report.  The system has suffered an enormous stagnation, leaving it in a shape that has not changed for decades. There are fewer miles of track than in 1950 after the war, while the ridership of 5.7 million today has doubled. The budget for maintenance has barely budged from 25 years ago. This report says the politicians who ran the city and the state of New York bear much of the responsibility for the crumbling infrastructure of the subways in New York.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Something that shows how much of a loss of civility, facts and dialogue in public life that has taken place, is the manner in which political campaigning is taking place today. Reports show that Ms. Giffords was among a group of Democratic House candidates featured on the web site of Sarah Palin's political action committee with cross hairs over their districts. This fact disturbed Giffords at that time. "We're on Sarah Palin's targeted list," Ms Giffords said in March. "But the thing is the way that she has depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they've got to realize there's consequences to that."

LyrArc Article Gist
Prime Minister Trudeau suffers a dent in its open, decency image after the scandal involving closing an investigation of a Quebec engineering company SNC-Lavalin. There was increasing pressure on a minister to close an investigation and demotion to a lower position of the minister who did not close the investigation.