Day: July 16, 2021

Closing Thought–16Jul21

Blues comes to my town!

Film star Morgan Freeman, a Mississippian by birth, is bring his blues club to the Mississippi Gulf Coast….Biloxi to be exact…..

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman is bringing the Blues to Biloxi with plans to open a second location of his popular Clarksdale juke joint in on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

WLOX in Biloxi reports that Freeman’s second Ground Zero Blues Club will be will be located inside the old  Kress Building in downtown Biloxi. The 20,000 square foot space was formerly called Kress Live, a live music and entertainment destination.

Freeman co-owns the club with former Clarksdale mayor and attorney Bill Luckett. They started the original Ground Zero in Clarksdale in May 2001 and since then, the club has become a tourist attraction in Mississippi.

The juke joint got its name due to Clarksdale being described as “Ground Zero” for blues fans from around the globe.

(magnoliastatelive.com)

As a big fan of the Blues I wish them lots of luck and I will see them soon.

Enjoy your upcoming weekend…

Be Well….Be Safe….

Economic Development?

I have always thought that the promise of ‘economic development’ was a “LIE”…..it is the promise of something that is not going to happen to justify some sort of con perpetrated on the community.

I got thinking about this term more when I watched a piece on the local news…..the head honcho of the country economic development was taunting the building of several small strip malls.executive offices…as a bright world in which the county lives in……

First of all let’s define the term ‘economic development’…..

Economic development is a concerted effort on the part of the responsible governing body in a city or county to influence the direction of private sector investment toward opportunities that can lead to sustained economic growth. Sustained economic growth can provide sufficient incomes for the local labor force, profitable business opportunities for employers and tax revenues for maintaining an infrastructure to support this continued growth. There is no alternative to private sector investment as the engine for economic growth, but there are many initiatives that you can support to encourage investments where the community feels they are needed the most.

That definition is all blue skies and unicorns.

My question is to the city council where is this building economic development?

They built a structure that may remain empty….they employed a couple of guys to erect the structures but where is that economic development?

I mean where these couple of small malls were built sits in an area full of unused space……just two blocks away is a large strip center that sits 90% unoccupied….about one mile away is a large strip mall that is only about 70% occupied and 2 miles away is a strip center that has many open spots for businesses to jump on…..and this does not include the smaller strip malls within a 5 mile radius that sit basically unoccupied…so why were these new malls necessary?

So with this said where is all that ‘economic’ upside?

All this is just my area…..the broader look at local development is just as bleak…..

The average minimum wage in my county is $7.25…that is about half what is needed for a living wage.

So again I ask what ‘economic development’?

Land speculators and contractors are the only people making out like bandits…..by using the BS of ‘economic development’….there is few economic benefits for the average worker in this county.

My next question is….how with so many open spaces for businesses to expand how does a contractor/developer get the cash to build something that may go unused?

Of course I am told that these new structures will benefit the community…..and how does a empty office space enhance my community?

Just who will benefit from this non-existent economic development?

What makes anyone on the council think that business will rush to snap up this new space?

Are the objectives of development met by these structures….those objectives are 1) provide for basic needs.  2) Raise the level of living.  3) Expand the range of economic and social choices.

These structure fail.

How does these ‘new’ buildings offer any of those?  Just who profits from this wish and a hope of destroy land and cutting down trees om a wish and a hope?

My thought is that if we truly wanted economic development then maybe paying livable wages would do more than the promise of empty buildings.

The council needs to design a plan and program for filling empty spaces before the destruction of more land….the council works for the people of the city and should not bow to the cash and wishes of developers….especially on the lie of ‘economic development’.

Just a thought.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

GOP Unemployment Lie

Since the pandemic and people working from home or unemployed have been subsidized by the stimulus packages from the government.

Another of the GOP ‘Big Lies” is that unemployment benefits is keeping people from returning to work because they are making cash without working.

Yeah, what crap! At $300 a week I will be buying my much cherished Ferrari any day now.

So with an election looming, 2022, the GOP has decided that instead of finding solution they will just keep repeating the same damn lie….over and over…..

Republicans promoted the conspiracy theory that Americans weren’t going back to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic because they were too busy living the comfortable life on the U.S. dime. Data now shows that they were wrong.

The New York Times reported Sunday that in Missouri when federal pay for the unemployed was scrapped, workers still were being choosy. Gov. Mike Parson (R) proudly proclaimed that his state would be among the first to kill unemployment benefits. It still hasn’t worked, however.

“Work-force development officials said they had seen virtually no uptick in applicants since the governor’s announcement, which ended a $300 weekly supplement to other benefits,” said the report. “And the online job site Indeed found that in states that have abandoned the federal benefits, clicks on job postings were below the national average.”

It’s early on in the post-pandemic era, but thus far, the GOP claims appear to be false.

https://www.rawstory.com/republican-unemployment-lie/

Axios has taken a good look at the people that are staying home…..https://www.axios.com/high-unemployment-insurance-people-reject-jobs-9e426791-65b6-453b-9803-81aa3d0ca7e7.html

For those with economic tastes here is a deeper dive into the situation from the Morning Consult…..

  • The termination of federal unemployment insurance benefits is likely to produce an estimated 1.84 million jobs through the end of the year, particularly as more UI recipients begin actively looking for work.

  • The U.S. economy will remain roughly 4.7 million jobs short of where it was prior to the pandemic even after workers on unemployment insurance return to working.

  • Most unemployment insurance recipients know that their benefits have started to expire and feel the pressure to find jobs, likely leading them to reduce spending and save a greater share of their benefits as they transition to a more permanent source of income.

Expiring Unemployment Insurance Could Add Up to Nearly 2 Million Jobs This Year

As usual the GOP finds some non-existent problem to demonize for an election….sad part is the American voter is so damn ignorant they will believe the lie and vote accordingly.

The GOP never has a solution of perceived problems….all they ever have is lies, misinformation and finger pointing as well as demonization.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”