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Foresting Crypto In Forest of Social Media
Airdrop Reviews
Crypto Airdrop – Separate Free Money and Scams 16th May 2019
Foresting Crypto In Forest of Social Media 9th May 2019
Local coin or Localcoin? 13th April 2019
There is no point arguing when one says the last decade of social media had been dominated by Facebook. Out of the 3.4 billion social media users in 2019, 2.2 of them are active on Facebook. It has helped bring about changes in society by connecting people together and helps in the propagation of information among these people.
However, while it has succeeded in connecting people together, the way it treats user generated contents and make money out of them without compensation for the owners of the contents had become a major concern. Daily, users of Facebook have their wall pasted with advertisements they are not interested in. Sadly, this had remained unchanged as its business model is centered on revenue from advertisers. Who will come in and be the game changer?
Foresting is a new social media based on the blockchain technology that had come to change the way people use and see social media. Basically, Foresting decentralizes the system, allowing content creators to actually own their contents and monetize them without the fear of security breach or the system making the large chunk of the money out of their content. Will Foresting be the new Facebook? Only time will tell. In this article, we intend to review this new social media based on the blockchain technology.
We live in a world that has been transformed by social media and the internet at large. It has been estimated that the human population in 2019 is 7.6 billion out of which 4.3 billion are internet users. Out of the 7.6 billion people on earth, 3.4 billion are active social media users. That is a staggering 44 percent of the world population active on social networks. The number of people active on social media had made the network so strong that happenings on the social media sites had greatly affected the society we live in.
The importance of social media as a tool for societal change cannot be overemphasized. Take, for instance, the Occupy Wall Street in the United States, the Arab Spring in Tunisia, the Egyptian Revolution and the recent 2019 Algerian Protests all used the social media as a tool for sharing information and even coordinate protests.
In the case of Barrack Obama's Twitter post "Four More Years", social media had proven to be more effective than any advertisement. The post had been liked by 3.3 million people on Facebook, retweeted by 680,000 twitter users and shared on Facebook more than 400,000 times. With this, there is no doubt how great, social media can help bring about the much-required changes in society.
Traditional Social Media – How Foresting Differs?
The traditional social media is said to be stable with the top social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and WhatsApp, WeChat and Instagram) dominating the field yearly. These dominant social media sites have something in common that has come to be the tradition of social media. What do those giants share?
Centralized System
The social media sites are centralized in their approach. They lure social media users with enticing features and these users get attracted, generating contents for the social networks. The user-generated content becomes a pool of wealth for the social media company who does not regard the users and does not care about their privacy. All that matters to them is how to use these pools of user-generated content to make money as they have positioned themselves as advertising companies.
Foresting, on the other hand, is not centralized. It is decentralized with no single authority watching over the user-generated content for the sole sake of monetizing it. It creates a kind of economic freedom for a content creator who creates and earns from his/her contents unlike in traditional social media where the social media earns the money while the users generate the monetized contents.
This makes Foresting a reward based social network where users truly own the content they generate. They are also at liberty to monetize the content with the large chunk of the money being theirs.
Excessive Reliance on Revenue from Advertisement
Most of the current social media sites build their monetizing model on advertising. To many of the advertisers on these social media sites, they see the reward in the amount of traffic they can drive rather than the quality of the contents. These had led to them paying the platform providers money in other to advertise on the platform regardless of if it appeals to the social media users or not.
In the case of Foresting, emphasizes is not placed on traffic but the quality of content where users vote for content they want to see. This will lead to a better content creation culture among advertisers who want to generate lead.
Rather than supporting active click baiting of users into faik content and into violent and sexual content (which is often baned after while, but not before it has done its damage) Foresting prefers to use one of its voting features to "upvote" an article. They do not specify how exactly the mechanism will work, aside of basic description of their "BEAT" system, but it has great potential on reducing violent topics, often displaying brutal scenes, towards the audience.
Furthermore, it has a chance to reduce faik news, which is becoming a big thing of the present.
Information Leakage and Theft
As a result of social media centralized systems, user data and other generated user contents are susceptible to theft. Data are then often abused or directly sold at black market sites, from the deep internet, such as Silk Road. And nobody wants that. Virtually all major social networking sites have experienced some forms of a data breach in the past. Facebook, for example, had been hit by the leakage of user information of over 87 million people. And that is a population of the UK, Czechia and Slovakia combined. Leaked personal data can lead to spamming, privacy invasion and identity theft among other related issues.
As a cryptocurrency platform, information leakage and theft in Foresting is made extremely difficult as the information is secured using blockchain technology. This technology stores data using the most sophisticated software and math we have invented so far which makes it difficult for an attacker or eavesdropper to manipulate.
For new readers, just briefly. Blockchain technology works in a way that all the data, every bit of information is stored simultaneously on every storage unit connected. To be able to hack the system and misuse it, one would have to hack all the points simultaneously, instantaneously, as hacking just a single point would result in the rest of the blockchain to "disagreeing".
This technology was popularized by Satoshi Nakamoto, Japanese inventor, in 2008.
In other words, in a blockchain, a transaction is saved as a block after it had been encrypted. The blocks contain information regarding the transaction and details of the previous transaction. A blockchain contains up-to-date information of all transactions and blocks. When a particular part of the system is affected, the whole system is affected, making them more secured.
The Unfair Value of Distribution
The social media landscape is laced with an unfair distribution of work and reward between the social media providers and the content creators. Some of these includes:
Unfair Distribution of reward: The main drivers of social media are users. They generate the contents, contribute to the key performance indicators like the Monthly Active Users and are advertised to. However, they are not being rewarded. For the platforms that rewards, only 20 percent of the reward is shared with its creator and a large chunk of other users of the sites are not even rewarded.
Irrational Value Distribution: Users on the site create contents. Instead of the social networking company to return the favor by either rewarding them with better content or money, they are rewarded with ads.
Foresting had come to solve the issues.
But will they? We all remember even Facebook started with the purest intentions of connecting people over the small university campus.
Foresting Platform
The Foresting Platform had come to do what similar blockchain based social media sites have not been able to – to replace the centralized social media system with a decentralized one. One, where content owners truly own their content and make money from them. It seeks to follow the theory of distribution and justice that had been in existence since the days of Plato.
Will they succeed? Well, other blockchain sites that have been in existence before them have not been able to do so. However, they are determined and have incorporated some features into their platform to enable them to beat the current traditionalists.
User-Friendly UX/UI
While the concept and implementation of blockchain are quite technical, Foresting managed to simplify UI for the mobile app just like the traditional media sites. From the UX/UI point of view, there are no major differences between the Foresting Platform and traditional social media, aside from a few cool features one wouldn't really expect at the social platform.
Among those interesting features, Foresting provides real-time measurement of content value and their transactions.
Major Categories for Social Media
Most of the existing blockchain based social media are niched. That is, they have a category of interest they focus on, limiting the number of their users. This had made them be seen as online communities rather than full-fledged social media. Foresting had come with numerous categories so that it can appeal to plenty of users. Through these, they might get the chance to disrupt the status quo and bring the needed change.
Security Through Blockchain Technology
Foresting as a cryptocurrency platform is built on the blockchain technology to provide security and privacy for its users and their content by encrypting the data using hard to manipulate methods.
The Foresting Platform seeks to attract users to itself by using some competitive advantages it has over the traditional media sites. Some of these competitive advantages include:
Layered compensation system: Foresting has special features meant for users of certain ranks and other features for ranks above them. Since some features are locked until one reaches a certain rank, this could lead to increased interaction on the platform – if done right. The gaming world now massively struggles against AAA gaming corporations and their "grinding" practices to drive gameplay, resulting only in a massive drop in engagement, share value and angry shareholders and players alike. Companies as EA, Blizzard Entertainment have lost some 60% of share value during pat 6 months. It is expected it will take them years to recover – if ever.
Tradable Contents: Users can sell their contents such as video or photo on the platform and buyers can pay for it using PTON token. A PTON token cryptocurrency that can be exchanged with PTON credit, rewarding point Foresting users receive. This feature we perceive especially positively as platforms like UpWork will have a reason to reconsider their enormous fees for both freelancers and companies.
Shooting: Content creators can be rewarded by others by liking their content and shooting them (donating PTON).
Open Market for advertisers: Unlike in traditional media sites, advertisers deal with content creators directly by writing proposals in the advertising pool category. This gives the users power unlike in the traditional social platforms. How this will work is in stars.
Handy Foresting Wallet: This feature shows how much reward a user has received.
Components of the Foresting Ecosystem
The major components of the Foresting Platform are PTON Token, PTON Credit, Level System, and Commercial Revenue Share.
PTON Token
These are cryptocurrency ERC-20 token used in Foresting. For new readers, ERC20 is blockchain standard of technology used. They are used as a reward and are created by users of the platform when contributing and interacting with the platform.
This cryptocurrency is both on the platform and outside the platform. Internally, users use it to pay for services or buy emojis. It is also being used outside the platform. Foresting has contracted some established mobile commercial infrastructures to enable it to become accepted as a means of exchange.
The token is given based on the activities of a user on the platform and its value is determined by the current market price on trading platforms.
PTON Credit
PTON CREDIT is an internal reputation point assigned to a user according to the interaction of such user on the platform. This credit is earned by users of the platform depending on the content generated and how other users react to them. Credits are earned through likes known as BEAT and can be reduced by DOWNBEAT.
The system, however, had devised means to filter low quality DOWNBEATS to prevent the malicious acts of others from causing users damage. How, and how accurately, remains a mystery.
Level System
The Foresting platform uses a ranking system which offers some special features to users based on rank, as mentioned above. The rank is based on the Foresting Interaction algorithm, which is an index calculated based on the user's interaction and how people react to their contents. Generally, the higher the index, the higher the reward received from activities on the platform.
Commercial Revenue Share
Unlike on the traditional social media platforms where the platform providers earn money from user-generated, Foresting is not advertisement focused. It is focused on the creation of contents, leading to a side-effect generating direct revenue for their creators.
This new Korean platform wishes to disturb the social media industry with its product, trying to attract many by multi categorizing their platform. They blend in the fine art of non-annoying social media and delicacy of blockchain technology with inherited market volatility. The platform posses strong positive elements, like safety. Furthermore, it has a darker side, like right away creating social media with revenue in mind. And then there is shade. Trying to attract all haven't worked quite well in the past with many companies, and most of them went bankrupt.
Does Foresting have enough power to cause winds of change? We shall stick around and see for ourselves.
Did you find this new crypto interesting? Join Foresting airdrop here!
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You are here: Home / Archives for Financial Crisis
May 4, 2019 By Ned Piplovic 1 Comment
Updated in 2019
"Blessed paper credit! Last and best supply!
That lends corruption lighter wings to fly."
Since I wrote "Vienna and Chicago, Friends or Foes?" in 2005, we've suffered another monetary crisis, this one so serious that it undermined the very foundation of our monetary and economic system and is known as the "Great Recession."
How do the Austrian and Chicago economists differ when it comes to answer these questions: What caused the financial crisis of 2007-09? What is the best way out of the crisis and Great Recession? Let's first start with the Chicago school, and Milton Friedman's famous article, "Why the American Economy is Depression-Proof."
Is the US Economy Depression-Proof?
In late 2009, I was in Stockholm, Sweden, for the Mont Pelerin Society meetings, where 300 top experts gathered from around the world. At this meeting, I organized a special ad hoc session reassessing Milton Friedman's famous lecture "Why the American Economy is Depression-Proof."[1] Friedman gave this optimistic lecture in Sweden in 1954, at a time when some prominent economists and financial advisors were predicting another crash on Wall Street and a collapse in the economy. A little over 50 years later, in the face of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, everyone at the meeting wanted to know if Friedman, one of the founders of the international society, would change his mind. Nobody knows for sure, since Friedman died in late 2006, before the crisis started. I do know that until his death, he always defended his bold prediction. From 1954 until his death in 2006, the United States suffered numerous contractions in the economy, an S&L crisis, a major terrorist attack, and even a few stock market crashes, and still it avoided the "big one," a massive 1930s's style Depression characterized by an unemployment rate of 15% or more (Friedman's definition of a depression).
In his lecture, Friedman pointed to four major institutional changes to keep another Great Depression was happening: federal bank deposit insurance; abandonment of the international gold standard; the growth in the size of government, including welfare payments, unemployment insurance, and other "built-in" stabilizers; and most importantly, the Federal Reserve's determination to avoid a monetary collapse at all costs. Because the public and officials are petrified by the possibility of another depression, Friedman predicted that any signs of trouble would lead the Federal Reserve to take "drastic action" and shift "rapidly and completely to an easy money policy." Consequently, according to Friedman, rising inflation would be far more of a threat to post-war America than another Great Depression.
So far so good. But now, following the financial crisis of 2008, I suspect Friedman would be forced to revise his views if he were alive. Admittedly, Friedman is still technically correct. There was no Great Depression in 2008-09, that is, according to government statistics. The official unemployment rate rose to 10% in 2009, far below the 15% rate necessary to qualify as a "depression."
However, it's important to note that the official unemployment rate does not include discouraged workers who have stopped looking, and those numbers apparently are in the millions. According to economist John Williams, editor of Shadow Statistics, if you count discouraged workers, the real unemployment rate exceeds 20%. See the chart below.
Source: www.shadowstats.com
The Fed and the Federal government appear to have averted disaster once again, at least in the short term. Yet they were able to do so only by putting millions on unemployment insurance and welfare (over 47 millions on food stamps and Medicaid), taking on unprecedented powers, and adding trillions of dollars in debt that so weaken the government and the public's trust in its financial capacity to avoid future economic difficulties, and could lead to runaway inflation or a deflationary collapse.
Clearly, bank failures are not a thing of the past, and there have been runs on commercial banks and other financial institutions (money market funds), although Friedman is right that most banks are now either taken over by the FDIC or the Treasury, or forced to merger with a bigger, safer bank. Still, major institutions like Bank of America and Citibank would not have survived had it not been for government bailouts.
Friedman also stated in his lecture, "There has been no major depression that has not been associated with and accompanied by a monetary collapse….Monetary contraction or collapse is an essential conditioning factor for the occurrence of a major depression."
Yet a monetary expansion is no guarantee that a crisis can be avoided. In fact, the U. S. came awfully close to an economic collapse in late 2008 without any monetary contraction. During 2008, the money supply (M2) grew every month and 9% for the year. Clearly, monetary contraction isn't the only source of instability in the economy. Economic disaster can also be precipitated by easy money, irresponsible banking practices, or perverse tax and regulatory policies. One of the weaknesses of the Friedman Chicago school approach is their belief that inflationary asset bubbles only have micro effects on the economy and can be defused without having a debilitating macroeconomic impact. The real-estate crisis of 2007-09 demonstrated otherwise, and that's why most Chicago economists failed to predict
The Great Contraction, Updated
Interestingly, Friedman's famous chapter, "The Great Contraction, 1929-1933," taken from his magnum opus, A Monetary History of the United States, 1869-1960 (Princeton University Press, 1963), was reprinted in 2007, with a new introduction by his co-author, Anna J. Schwartz. The short book had long been out of print, and was brought back just before the real estate crisis started and after Milton Friedman died. It was perfect timing as we were about to witness the worst economic debacle since the Great Depression. Yet Professor Schwartz was oblivious to any evidence of a collapse. She wrote, "As the federal funds rate moves in a low and narrow range in response to low and stable inflation, volatility of the business cycle and real economy has moderated."[2]
The Austrians Response
The Austrian economists, on the other hand, knew full well that the Fed's artificial low interest rate policy and the government's meddling with banks and mortgage companies to encourage excessive home ownership was about to blow up in their faces. Austrian financial economists, such as Peter Schiff, Bert Dohmen, and Fred Foldvary, anticipated the crisis, and said so in 2007 at FreedomFest. That is why I concluded "Advantage, Vienna" in the debate between the Austrian and Chicago schools on the business cycle (see chapter 6 of "Vienna and Chicago").
Based on the Mises-Hayek theory of the business cycle, the Austrian economists proposed their fundamental thesis that monetary inflation is never neutral, and that asset bubbles cause unsustainable structural imbalances on a macro level. Inflation has negative unintended consequences. The Austrians knew that eventually a collapse was inevitable. As Ludwig von Mises once said, "We have outlived the short-run and are suffering from the long-run consequences of [inflationary] policies."
At the end of our special session, I asked members of the Mont Pelerin Society how many of them still agreed with Friedman, that the American economy is "depression proof." Only a handful raised their hands, and they were all American economists. The rest of the crowd, mostly from abroad, pointed out that most other countries did not suffer a banking crisis. The financial crisis was largely Anglo-American-induced. They agreed that until the United States adopts a stable monetary and banking system, it can no longer be considered depression-proof.
Government Response to the Crisis
What should the government do in response to the crisis, if anything? The United States and many other countries followed the standard Keynesian prescription — the government ran massive deficits and the central banks cut interest rates. In short, they engaged in easy money at all levels: injecting liquidity and adopting activist fiscal and monetary policy.
The 2007 reprint of "The Great Contraction" published Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's remarks at a 2002 conference in Chicago honoring Milton Friedman on his 90th birthday. At the end, he said, "I would like to say to Milton and Anna: Regarding the Great Depression. You're right, we did it. We're very sorry. But thanks to you, we won't do it again."[3] Bernanke said he had learned the Friedman lesson well. The Fed would not allow the banking system to collapse and cause another Great Depression. Indeed, he lived up to his word during the 2008 financial crisis in injecting massive amounts of liquidity (fiat money).
Unfortunately, Bernanke failed to recognize the other lesson found in Friedman's scholarly works: activist fiscal policy doesn't work and is unnecessary. In Friedman's testing of Keynesian policy prescription, he found that the deficit spending multiplier was extremely low, not 4 or 5 as taught in the textbooks, but 0 to 1, in its impact on the economy. Recently Robert Barro (Harvard) concluded it was close to 0, no positive impact at all. The increase in government spending was largely offset by private spending declining (crowding out).
Friedman and the Chicago economists argued that the money multiplier resulting from the Fed buying government bonds and injecting liquidity into the banking system was much higher, as much as 3 or 4. Accordingly, Friedman advocated that the Fed should be the primary source of new stimulus to get the economy going again, and fiscal policy should remain stable.
In short, it was unnecessary and maybe even downright harmful for Ben Bernanke to have called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson in September 2008, and encourage the Congress to get involved. According to this view, the trillion dollar deficits and TARP monies were completely unnecessary. Monetary policy could do all the heavy lifting. After TARP became law, I asked Glenn Hubbard, former president of the Council for Economic Policy under Bush and the dean of Columbia Business School, if the Fed had all the emergency powers necessary to buy any asset — Treasuries, mortgages, even stocks — to avert a meltdown, and he said emphatically, "Yes." It was not necessary to get Congress involved.
Did the Fed Cause the Real Estate Bubble?
After the financial crisis, Ben Bernanke refused to take responsibility for the collapse—or the real estate bubble. He noted that the real estate boom was a worldwide phenomenon, ignoring the fact that the dollar is a world currency. But what about the Federal Reserve's responsibility to be the chief banking regulator? I was in attendance in January 2007, when Bernanke presented a luncheon paper on "Bank Regulation," in which he used the words "crisis" and "panic" 34 times. Surely Bernanke knew about the irresponsible "subprime" and "no doc" loans commercial and mortgage bankers were involved in. Shouldn't Bernanke have had the "courage to act" (to use the title of his memoirs) to stop this nonsense when he became Fed chairman; and shouldn't he have resigned in disgrace for allowing it to happen?
The Austrian Response: "Do Nothing"?
The most extreme response to the financial crisis is the recommendation by some Austrian economists to "do nothing," that is, for the government to let the malinvestments collapse on their own weight. Libertarian economist Jeffrey Miron, who teaches at Harvard, wrote an article entitled "The Case for Doing Nothing," for Reason magazine in 2009. According to these economists, government should not increase spending (the Keynesian prescription) nor should the Fed engage in easy money and inject liquidity (the Monetarist solution)—both policies might make matters worse. If anything, the government should retrench like everyone else. This was known as the classical economic policy. Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Austrian economist with the Mises Institute, wrote about the 1920-21 period in American history as an example:
"The conventional wisdom holds that in the absence of government countercyclical policy, whether fiscal or monetary (or both), we cannot expect economic recovery — at least, not without an intolerably long delay. Yet the very opposite policies were followed during the depression of 1920–1921, and recovery was in fact not long in coming. The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover — falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics — urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored. Instead of "fiscal stimulus," Harding cut the government's budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding's approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. The Federal Reserve's activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, 'Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.' By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and it was only 2.4 percent by 1923."[4]
It takes a great deal of faith in capitalism to adopt this laissez faire policy in today's world.
How to Order "Vienna and Chicago"
I refer to my book, "Vienna and Chicago, Friends or Foes?" as the Clash of the Titans. You can read more about it at http://mskousen.com/?s=vienna+and+chicago
It's been endorsed by both sides – by Milton Friedman (Chicago school) and Roger Garrison (Austrian school). Supply side economist Art Laffer wrote me, "I don't know whether I should love you or hate book. Your book was so good I spent half a day plus avoiding what I supposed to do in order to read it. It's great!"
To order, go to www.skousenbooks.com. The price is US$20, and I pay the postage if mailed inside the US. (Add $30 for airmail shipment outside the US.) Or call Harold at Ensign Publishing, 1-866-254-2057.
[1] Milton Friedman, "Why the American Economy is Depression-Proof," lecture delivered in Stockholm in April, 1954, and reprinted in Dollars and Deficits (Prentice-Hall, 1658), pp. 72-96. Friedman's controversial lecture is still not available online, although my response, "Why the U. S. Economy is Not Depression-Proof" is: http://mises.org/journals/rae/pdf/RAE3_1_5.pdf
[2] Anna Jacobson Schwartz, "New Preface," The Great Contraction, 1929-1933 (Princeton University Press, 2007), p. xi.
[3] Ben S. Bernanke, "Remarks," The Great Depression, 1929-1933, p. 247.
[4] Thomas E. Woods, Jr., "The Forgotten Depression of 1920" (Mises Institute, November 27, 2009): http://mises.org/daily/3788
Filed Under: Austrian Economics Article, Featured Post, Main Tagged With: Austrian Economics, Chicago Economics, Economy, Financial Crisis, Mark Skousen

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Access to clean, improved varieties of seeds remain a major challenge to achieving high productivity and profitability in agricultural production in Africa. Improved seed varieties may be unavailable, sold at high costs or sold in adulterated forms to smallholder farmers in rural areas, thereby promoting the use farmer-saved seeds. This has contributed to consistently low yields and poor income levels, increased rural poverty and under-development in the sector.
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Features Of Advertising In The Regional Print Media .
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SCIO briefing on advancement of rural vitalization across the board and acceleration of agricultural and rural modernization
0 Comment(s) Print E-mail China.org.cn, February 25, 2021
Tang Renjian, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs, and minister of agriculture and rural affairs
Zhang Taolin, vice minister of agriculture and rural affairs
Wu Hongyao, a member of the CPC Leading Group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and director of the Secretariat of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group
Chen Wenjun, head of the Press Bureau of the State Council Information Office (SCIO) and spokesperson of the SCIO
Chen Wenjun:
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning! The Opinion of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Advancing Rural Vitalization Across the Board and Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization, or the "No. 1 Central Document," was released recently. To help people more accurately understand this important document, today we have invited Mr. Tang Renjian, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Affairs and minister of agriculture and rural affairs, to brief you and answer your questions. We also have with us Zhang Taolin, vice minister of agriculture and rural affairs, and Wu Hongyao, a member of the CPC Leading Group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and director of the Secretariat of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group.
Next, I will give the floor to Mr. Tang.
Tang Renjian:
Ladies and gentlemen, good morning! As the Spring Festival has recently concluded and farm work resumes, Xinhua News Agency yesterday released the Opinion of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on Advancing Rural Vitalization Across the Board and Accelerating Agricultural and Rural Modernization, or the "No. 1 Central Document" in 2021. This has been the 18th No. 1 Central Document released by the CPC Central Committee in succession since the beginning of the new century, sending Spring Festival "policy" gifts for the Year of the Ox to the vast rural population. It is my pleasure to briefly introduce the document to you all.
Under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, China overcame tough challenges caused by COVID-19 and maintained the momentum of steady and sound agricultural and rural development in 2020. This has contributed to the accomplishment of all the goals set in the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-2020). In particular, substantial progress was made in the following aspects. First, agricultural production capacity increased to a new level. Last year was the sixth consecutive year that national grain output exceeded 650 million metric tons; the science and technology contribution to agricultural growth surpassed 60%; improved varieties were used in the production of nearly all major crops; 71% of plowing, sowing and harvesting were mechanized; and the amount of agrochemicals applied declined for four years in a row. Second, a decisive victory was won in the battle against poverty. All people classed as impoverished by current standards were lifted out of poverty, and the 832 poor counties were removed from the national list. As a result, China has successfully eradicated absolute poverty and region-wide poverty, creating a miracle in the history of poverty reduction. Third, the income of rural residents registered continuous and rapid growth. The income of rural residents has grown faster than urban residents for 11 successive years. The urban-rural income gap narrowed from 2.64:1 in 2019 to 2.56:1 in 2020. The per capita income of rural residents doubled that of 2010 one year ahead of schedule. Fourth, rural areas took on a fresh look. Rural living conditions improved significantly, while weak areas such as infrastructure and public services were strengthened at a faster pace. With rural reforms gaining momentum, more vigorous drivers have been forged for rural development. New and historic achievements in agriculture and rural areas have laid a solid foundation for completing the task of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects as scheduled.
Riding on the momentum of earlier success, we have entered the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), which marks the first five years on a new journey toward the second centenary goal of fully building a modern socialist China. The 5th Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee also made strategic arrangements for prioritizing agricultural and rural development and advancing rural vitalization. While addressing the Central Rural Work Conference at the end of last year, General Secretary Xi Jinping sent a clear signal to all CPC members and the whole of society: Along the new journey, work related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers ("sannong" work) remains a crucial matter that cannot be neglected and requires hard work. Taking into account both domestic and international dynamics, General Secretary Xi pointed out that national rejuvenation calls for rural vitalization, and keeping "sannong" fundamentals stable will anchor efforts to address changes in a new landscape. He stressed that, in our endeavor to fully build a modern socialist China and to realize national rejuvenation, rural areas hold the most challenging and arduous tasks, but also the most formidable and broad-based strength to tap into. Such important remarks have identified the path which should be taken and the principles to follow while drafting the No. 1 Central Document and continuing with "sannong" work in the new development stage.
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The State Council Information Office held a press conference in Beijing on Monday to brief the media on the advancement of rural vitalization and acceleration of agricultural and rural modernization.


Watch Dogs, Forza 5 and FIFA 14? Pah!
Despite Nintendo's paper-thin array of top notch Wii U games, the company's boss in the U.S. has seen fit to throw a derisory 'meh' in the direction of Sony and Microsoft's forthcoming consoles.
Nintendo of America COO Reggie Fils-Aime needed just one three-letter colloquialism to deliver his damning verdict on the Xbox One and Sony PS4 'Day One' games line-up.
Showing a bizarre lack of self-awareness, (which some might be bold enough to call bitterness), Fils-Aime told IGN: "It's all about the games. The competitive systems have announced their launch lineups. I'm allowed to say 'Meh.'"
The U.S. chief prefers the Wii U's existing and forthcoming line-up of titles, made up of old-faithfuls like Zelda, Mario and Donkey Kong, rather than exciting new IPs from in-house or third-party devs.
He added: "I look at our lineup of titles and I feel good about our lineup. We've got Zelda. We've got Mario. We've got Donkey Kong. In addition to great titles like Pikmin 3 and Wonderful 101, I feel very good about our lineup, and I feel very good about the value proposition we're putting out there for the consumer."
Fils-Aime's proclamation is even more surprising given his company's self-professed missteps in giving users a compelling reason to snap up its next-gen console. The Wii U is approaching a year on sale, yet sales of the console are grinding to a halt.
The company caved on an official price cut earlier this week, months after some retailers began dropping the price without Nintendo's consent, while developers like EA and Ubisoft are distancing themselves.
His comments are also rather unexpected given the near-universal praise lavished upon Microsoft and Sony for the next-gen titles rolling out in alongside their consoles this coming November.
Microsoft has claimed its 23 initial titles represents the greatest day one line up "in the history of consoles."
Has Reggie got a case of the green-eyed monster or is he dropping some truth bombs amidst all the hype? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
We've updated our PS4 review. Check it out!


text:
Q: TCP transport long bytes with Aleph I am trying to build RCP server based on aleph. It passed on all the test, but when the byte array for send or receive become large, the bytes seems been corrupted.
For example. I tried to send a byte array which length is 2936, but I only got 1024 bytes at server
I followed the example and did my own modifications for nippy. The encoding and decoding will be done by handlers themselves.
(defn wrap-duplex-stream
  [s]
  (let [out (s/stream)]
    (s/connect out s)
    (s/splice out s)))

(defn client
  [host port]
  (d/chain (tcp/client {:host host, :port port})
           #(wrap-duplex-stream %)))

(defn start-server
  [handler port]
  (tcp/start-server
    (fn [s info]
      (handler (wrap-duplex-stream s) info))
    {:port port}))

A: I finally made my own codec for byte array.
It is simple, but to figure how to make use it with gloss and aleph is time consuming
(defn buffer->byte-array [buf-seq]
  (byte-streams/to-byte-array buf-seq))

(defn bytes-codec []
  (reify
    Reader
    (read-bytes [this buf-seq]
      (let [buf-seq (dup-bytes buf-seq)
            byte-arr (buffer->byte-array buf-seq)]
        [true byte-arr nil]))
    Writer
    (sizeof [x]
      nil)
    (write-bytes [x y byte-arr]
      [(ByteBuffer/wrap byte-arr)])))

(def protocol
  (gloss/compile-frame
    (gloss/finite-frame
      :uint32
      (bytes-codec))
    #(nippy/freeze %)
    #(nippy/thaw %)))

(defn wrap-duplex-stream
  [s]
  (let [out (s/stream)]
    (s/connect
      (s/map #(io/encode protocol %) out)
      s)
    (s/splice
      out
      (io/decode-stream s protocol))))

(defn client
  [host port]
  (d/chain (tcp/client {:host host, :port port})
           #(wrap-duplex-stream %)))

(defn start-server
  [handler port]
  (tcp/start-server
    (fn [s info]
      (handler (wrap-duplex-stream s) info))
    {:port port}))

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Wancheng district, located in the center of Nanyang city, covers an area of 662 square kilometers with a population of 568,700 in 2012. Wancheng district is China's main grain-production base, with a large proportion of agriculture, villages and peasants.
With a water yield of more than 60 tons per hour for a 60-meter well, Wancheng is rich in high quality water, and provides the necessary resources for large-scale industrial projects.


text:
What happened to the global economy and what we can do about it
Take Back Our Party
Jump-Starting America
Economism
White House Burning
13 Bankers
Gaming the PPIP?
By James Kwak
A couple of weeks ago, Yves Smith picked up on the story that the TARP Special Inspector General is investigating suspicious trades in connection with the Public-Private Investment Program. When PPIP was announced almost a year ago, there was widespread speculation about how banks and other private investors could take advantage of the program to unload toxic securities onto taxpayers (technically speaking, onto investment funds containing some private money, some public money, and a lot of non-recourse financing from the government). That story more or less faded away because PPIP never really amounted to much; banks apparently decided they were better off sitting on their toxic assets, counting on favorable accounting rules and regulatory forbearance, instead of selling them.
Here's the relevant section from the SIG-TARP report (p. 141):
"The PPIF management company in question operates both a PPIF and one or more non-PPIF funds that invest in similar securities (i.e., mortgage-backed securities ('MBS')). In the case of this fund management company, the same person is the portfolio manager for both the PPIF and the non-PPIF fund. In late October, the portfolio manager directed that a particular MBS from the non-PPIF fund be sold after the security — in this case a residential MBS — had been downgraded by a rating agency. According to the company, multiple bids were received, and a quantity of the security was sold to a dealer. Within minutes of the sale, however, the same portfolio manager purchased, for the PPIF, the same amount of the same security from the dealer at a slightly higher price. Later in the day, the portfolio manager bought more of the security for the PPIF from the dealer at the original price.
"The management company involved (the identity of which is not being disclosed at this time pending SIGTARP's investigation) asserts that there was nothing inappropriate about these trades, and Treasury has concluded that the trades did not violate PPIF rules. The facts, however, give rise to difficult questions. Was the initial purchase really arm's length, or was the dealer aware that the portfolio manager was prepared to repurchase the securities immediately? How can a manager conclude that it is wise to sell a security at one price but then almost simultaneously repurchase the same securities at a higher price? Were these trades designed to push the risk of this downgraded security from the private, non-PPIF fund onto the taxpayer-supported PPIF?"
I wouldn't necessarily assume wrongdoing. For one thing, the fund manager is just a fund manager, meaning he makes fees (based on assets under management and performance) from both the PPIF and the private fund. So arguably, shifting losses from one fund to another doesn't help him that much. Of course, there are various scenarios under which it would benefit him: the fees from the private fund could be higher; one fund could have profits from which he gets a cut while the other may not; he could have his money in the private fund but not in the PPIF; he could have a nudge-nudge wink-wink agreement with the private investors; and so on.
James Kwak
PPIP
Banker for the CFPA
More on Mankiw
10 thoughts on "Gaming the PPIP?"
Good post. We know there will be people gaming the system. Of more concern is that gaming the system is 99.999% of the time without material negative consequence and 75% of the time (wild guess) is rewarded financially and with recognition for performance within the firm itself.
This has panjandra, tax cheat little Timmy Geithner written all over it.
Mindrayge says:
We don't know enough about the transaction to determine what benefits were accrued and to whom.
The dealer obviously made money by the two-step process of the manager buying a portion higher and the rest at par. No doubt there were fees on top of that at both ends but there was still a premium paid over what the dealer paid on a portion.
Which leads to second unknown and that is just how much did the dealer pay for the MBS security. Clearly this looks like a prearranged tri-party trade. The security was downgraded so the question is how much was the selling price to the dealer. I suspect it was above true market value if offered openly. How much above depends on what rating the security was downgraded from and what it was at the time of sale. Something that went from A to CCC would be effectively worthless for example.
The other thing I would note is that it refers to a MBS security but no one should construe that to mean an entire MBS but likely just a single tranche or some portion thereof.
7 of the 9 PPIP participants are active CDO managers. It would seem likely that this was a tranche or portion of a tranche of MBS that was part of the collateral assets of a CDO. Further, only a small portion of MBS tranche assets in CDOs are actually senior MBS tranches that have active principal payment flow.
Upwards of 70 percent are usually Credit Support tranches. The underlying MBS may have both Mezzanine and Support tranches but having only one class of those is more common than having both. Those tranches, even this many years in, are not likely receiving principal payments and only interest payments. Though if the entire MBS has experience an event of default (this could be percent of prepayment or percent of delinquent or other such triggers) there could be acceleration going on and erosion of the actual principal balances of credit support tranches.
So it is quite possible that what was purchased was an asset that may never receive its principal returned and thus the question is – how much was paid for that?
Let's say an MBS has M1, M2, M3, M4, and M5 support tranches. These typically have principal sizes at a declining scale with the M1 perhaps no more than 2% of the outstanding total MBS principal. The rest are lower. Under stress they erode quickly. Such that if the asset purchased was an M2 and the downgrade was because M5 was exhausted and M4 is well under way you are literally a few months (at best) before M2 is going to zero. And cash flow may be zero depending on distribution rules under events of default.
It is therefore possible that an asset was purchased that has no cash flow and is about to be obliterated completely. Since 85% of the funding (or more) comes from loans via the Treasury and FDIC the only loss to the manager in this case is 15 cents on the dollar. But if they paid more than 15 cents on the dollar during the purchase – i.e. the dealer over-paid then they don't lose anything in real terms and pocketed fees at both ends in current income.
This is the sham that PPIP always was. It was also the sham the TARP was originally written to do. PPIP was only necessary because of the reporting requirements of TARP that would allow Congress (and perhaps eventually taxpayers) to see the transactions on a monthly basis. It will also be the same sham that comes in April with the FDIC and the new securitization rollout. The whole idea is to get all of the losses onto the taxpayers as quickly as possible.
Gaming the PPIP. Isn't that a tautology?
I forgot to mention Geithner's AIG bailout trickery.
Per Kurowski says:
A dollar spent by a bureaucrat is a dollar spent but a dollar lent by a banker does not necessarily mean a dollar spent.
I believe that allowing the banks to help out the economy by lowering their capital requirements now, even at the risk of more bailouts tomorrow, is much better than having government bureaucrats trying to do it directly.
BDS says:
I know this is way, way, way off topic (that's why I picked a low-reply post to broach the subject), but can someone please explain to me in no uncertain terms how and why snowboarding became an Olympic event?
Aren't these the same pimply-face, SlimJim-chomping pains-in-the-asses that crowd the sidewalks of every major metropolitan downtown central business district with their dopey skateboard antics, causing annoyance, and often times physical danger, to countless workaday pedestrians, not to mention damage to public and private building exteriors? Now I've got to stare at these baggy-pants douche bags for five hours every night as well?
I just know those tea party jerkwads are championing this sport. Don't ask me why, it just figures since their reasoning is so screwed up on every other issue.
And, oh yeah, clearly the PPIP is just another Wall Street influenced Treasury and Fed scheme to bailout the bankers at the taxpayer's expense. I wouldn't put any shenanigans past the parties facilitating the trades.
3-D says:
It's probably being used what it was intended for: stealing from the public piggy bank. I was so worried they might disappoint us and not do it!
Jim Coffman says:
You're right, we don't have enough information to draw a definitive conclusion. But as one who spent 26+ years in enforcement at the SEC, this deal stinks to high heaven. Obviously prearranged trading and to what purpose? It is seldom innocent.
Oh yea, BDS. Is it a sport? Does it sell commercials? Exercise the buttons on your remote. Better yet, read a book. The hoopleheads took control a long time ago.
Ginger Yellow says:
It's just about conceivable that the non-PPIP fund has a rating requirement in its mandate that the PPIP fund doesn't. Maybe the fund manager likes the bond at the price but literally couldn't hold it in the non-PPIP fund That's the only way I can think of that this trade(s) would be justified, because otherwise it sounds pretty damn dodgy.
Simon Johnson
Quick Housekeeping Note
The COVID-19 Economy: What Can We Do?
COVID-19: Winners and Losers
COVID-19: Inequality
COVID-19: The Butcher, the Brewer, and the Baker
COVID-19: The Statistics of Social Distancing
COVID-19: Not One Penny
COVID-19: Who Bears the Losses?
All contents are copyright of the others, 2008–2020.


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See Ideas for Managing Daily Writing Activities for more ideas about using the writing activities on this site.
Each of our Daily Writing Activities includes a sentence to edit, as well as a writing prompt. When students share their writing responses with us, we post them on the site for you to read, enjoy, and critique.
These actual student writing samples are a great opportunity for other students to analyze the quality of writing. Your students can identify strengths and areas for improvement in these writing samples, using checklists and guidelines from your class or school district.
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text:
Ceutí è un comune spagnolo di 10.174 abitanti situato nella comunità autonoma di Murcia.

Collegamenti esterni

Ceuti

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


One of my dilemmas, whenever I travel around, is packing the things I need for the entire trip. More often, I always end up bringing fewer things and try to make out of it simply because there isn't just enough space.
As much as possible, I refuse to bring luggage as it adds cost for cabin especially when I'm traveling via budget airlines so I usually end up bringing at most 2 backpacks but still it isn't enough.
Recently, I had the chance to try this British Brand called Cabin Zero that's actually starting to gain popularity due to its reasonable price and sleek minimalistic design. I got the bag and was impressed (and slightly shocked) at how big it was.
With a capacity of 44L, I just can't imagine how many things I can stuff into this bag. The rectangular shape was also a nice feature as it allows you to maximize storage at all cost.
One more thing to love about this bag is that it is very light. It weighs around 760g and is indeed very durable. I heard they use the Japanese ZKK zippers which are used by a lot of trusted brands around the world and I personally never had any issue with it. This amazing feature makes it easy for us to avoid the additional purchase of cabin baggage.
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Cabin Zero offers a lot of colors ranging from dark to bright which will definitely suit everyone personality. I got the Orange Chill and so far I am loving how it adds glow in my travel pictures.
Lastly, for security purposes, Cabin Zero Bags are equipped with a lost and found technology that makes use of the OKOBAN Tracking tags. You would need to register your bag after. Well, I'm not really sure how effective this will be but having some sort of a LOST and FOUND Tag is something.
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text:
"Признание" е български игрален филм (драма) от 1969 година на режисьора Янко Янков, по сценарий на Димитър Валев и Янко Янков. Оператор е Трендафил Захариев. Музиката във филма е композирана от Красимир Кюркчийски.

Актьорски състав
 Стойчо Мазгалов – Стоян Постолов
 Нина Стамова – Калина
 Грациела Бъчварова – Анастасия
 Богомил Симеонов – Петър Овчаров
 Веселин Савов – Боян
 Георги Г. Георгиев – Сашко
 Джоко Росич – Игнат
 Стефан Пейчев – Паралан
 Лора Захова
 Сотир Майноловски
 Никола Рударов – милиционерът
 Никола Анастасов
 Мая Владигерова
 Жанет Митева
 Росица Данаилова
 Иван Джамбазов - бригадира Иван
 Стоян Гъдев
 Георги Русев – председател на селския съвет
 Стоян Стойчев
 Димо Лолов
 Георги Карев
 Марин Тошев
 Евтим Вълков
 Борислав Иванов

Външни препратки

Български филми
Български филми от 1969 година
Филми от 1969 година
Филми на Янко Янков


text:
TxDOT under fire
By JOANN LIVINGSTON
Waxahachie Daily Light
Transportation was a hot subject during the recent legislative session - and it continues to be so in the interim.
This week, several Texas lawmakers, Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Adkisson and state Reps. Joe Farias, David Leibowitz, Nathan Macias and others held a press conference in San Antonio in protest against current transportation policy and the Texas Department of Transportation.
Key among their concerns are recent reports the state agency has launched a public relations plan to promote the Trans-Texas Corridor and to lobby for toll roads. Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom founder Terri Hall is among those criticizing TxDOT for using tax dollars to promote the TTC and tolling.
During the San Antonio press conference, the group also called for TxDOT to install the original gas tax-funded improvement plan for U.S. Highway 281 and drop plans to convert that roadway into a toll road, with Hall saying citizens on hand called for the "immediate resignations of TxDOT leadership."
Hall said TxDOT intends to make some interstates into toll corridors, including Interstate 35 between San Antonio and Dallas and Interstate 10 between Houston and San Antonio and also is looking at highways 281, 1604, Bandera Road and others around San Antonio.
"If TxDOT and the politicians who enable them have their way, it won't stop there," she said, saying, "TxDOT plans to take every single lane on existing highway U.S. 281 and convert them into toll lanes. The only free lanes will be frontage roads, not highway lanes."
According to www.keeptexasmoving.com, TxDOT's Web site relating to toll roads, Texas' population has increased 57 percent in the past 25 years, with road use up by 95 percent.
That's a problem, the agency said, when state road capacity grew only 8 percent. TxDOT further notes on its Web site that the state's population is estimated to increase another 64 percent during the next 25 years, with road use to increase 214 percent.
"Without new funding methods, state road capacity will only grow 6 percent," the agency says on its Web site.
According to a TURF press release, Adkisson, who sits on the San Antonio Metropolitian Planning Organization, said, "TxDOT should begin (improving its relations with the public) by installing the overpasses and improvements at an estimated cost of $100 million and already paid for by our gas taxes instead building the hugely intrusive $400 million toll plan for U.S. 281 at four times the cost (and double the number of lanes)."
Adkisson said the state's transportation policy has failed in several areas by not indexing the gas tax and by not accelerating other forms of transportation. Creative solutions such as contraflow should be implemented and Texas should cease being a donor state that gives away more of its gas taxes than is returned, he said, saying the state is bearing the burden of NAFTA-related traffic.
Macias, Farias and Leibowitz discussed their work during the legislative session relating to control over the toll road and TTC issues - and how that work was subsequently altered. All three encouraged voters to seek accountability at the ballot box in the next election so as to affect needed changes.
During the press conference, Macias characterized tolling of an existing highway as the same as double taxation - and questioned TxDOT's cost escalations for certain projects.
Farias said amendments he tried to put into the two-year private toll moratorium bill, Senate Bill 792, were stripped out, adding that he's concerned with the economic impact of tolls on economically-disadvantaged constituents.
Leibowitz, who also sits on the San Antonio MPO, said he is calling for that board to pass a resolution against TxDOT's public relations campaign and said he will ask state Attorney General Greg Abbott for an opinion on the issue.
"I have never voted for a single toll road bill in my time in the Texas House," said Leibowitz, who also shared his concerns that Texas is paying a disproportionate share of the NAFTA cost.
Hall noted more lawmakers are becoming involved with the transportation issues.
"The citizens support lawmakers' efforts to put accountability and sanity back into transportation policy," Hall said. "With U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison introducing a bill to prevent the tolling of existing interstates this week, calls from U.S. Congressman Ciro Rodriguez to investigate the tolling of existing interstates report, and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and U.S. Congressman Charlie Gonzales adamantly opposed to it, the people may get relief on the federal level first."
Hall said she supports a move back to the gas tax-funded plan for improvements to 281 and a stop to the tolling of other existing highways.
"TxDOT has breached the public trust and it cannot be repaired short of cleaning house at that agency. They've repeatedly sworn to our faces they're not tolling existing roads and then lobbied Congress to do just that," Hall said.
TURF calls for investigation
In another development this week, TURF has called for Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle to investigate the Texas Department of Transportation relating to a public relations campaign it is mounting.
"Unaccountable, eminent domain abusing, runaway toll roads and the Trans-Texas Corridor," TURF founder Terri Hall said. "It's not just smarmy, it's illegal."
In a recent press release, TURF criticizes the agency for disregarding input from Texans, including more than 13,000 people who spoke during hearings on the TTC.
"Apparently they lack the intellectual capacity to understand one of the most basic words in the English language ('no')," the release reads, with Hall adding, "To add insult to injury, they patronize us further by thinking we just haven't gotten the message or that we somehow don't understand their cash-cow, land-grabbing, double-taxing toll road policies, therefore they need to spend our money to further indoctrinate us into submission."
TURF's disagrees with TxDOT's plans to spend up to $9 million on its public relations campaign - which started June 1 - to promote the TTC.
"The politicians who are ramming this down our throats need to realize they can't escape the long arm of the law, especially Ronnie Earle's. Tom Delay couldn't and neither will they," Hall said.
"The citizens of Texas believe the Texas Department of Transportation is illegally using taxpayer money to wage a cleverly cloaked public relations campaign to push the wildly controversial Trans-Texas Corridor and toll road proliferation," the complaint reads as filed by TURF, which notes the agency's public relations campaign includes direct mail, billboards and employee training.
"It's not only an inappropriate and wasteful use of our gas tax dollars by an agency perpetually claiming it's out of money for roads, but it's illegal for a public agency to take a policy position and use the public's tax money to sell them something using an under-handed PR campaign," the complaint reads.
TURF's complaint also notes that a state auditor's report issued earlier this year found "mismarking" of funds on expenditures relating to the TTC, with some expenditures marked as engineering instead of as an actual expense of public relations.
"Please open an investigation and prosecute this agency for its repeated illegal activities," the TURF complaint reads. "The people of Texas want justice. When Ken Lay cooked the books at Enron, he was sent to jail. The same needs to happen with those guilty of breaking the law at the highway department."
Hutchison's response
In response to the tolling controversy, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, has filed legislation that would prohibit the tolling of existing federal highways across the country.
"My bill will protect drivers from paying tolls on roads that were already paid for by taxpayers," Hutchison said in a statement about her legislation, S. 2019.
The legislation's intent is to "prohibit the imposition and collection of tolls on certain highways constructed using federal funds," by blocking the U.S. Secretary of Transportation from approving tolls on existing federally-funded highways. Under current law, states can apply to the U.S. Department of Transportation to place tolls on existing federal highways.
In a press release from her office, Hutchison said she would "vigorously oppose" any effort by Texas Department of Transportation to toll existing interstate highways through the use of buy backs.
Earlier this year, TxDOT officials said they intended to lobby Congress to allow for the buy back of existing federal highways in Texas for the purpose of tolling. Hutchison's legislation specifically disallows states to place tolls on any federal highways they buy back from the DOT.
"I will work with members of the Texas Congressional delegation and the state legislature to ensure that Texans are never asked to pay a toll of an existing interstate highway," said Hutchison, who serves as a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which sets the budget for the federal Department of Transportation
In February, TxDOT released its legislative agenda in a report called "Forward Momentum," which seeks changes in federal law that would allow such buy backs for the purpose of tolling interstate highways, pending approval by local governments.
S. 2019 is similar to a previous effort by Hutchison to block the use of tolls on existing interstate highways as part of the 2005 Highway Bill.
The amendment passed the Senate but was stripped in conference by the House of Representatives.
Cities fight to stop TTC
The cities of Bartlett, Holland, Little River-Academy and Rogers recently formed the Eastern Central Texas Sub-Regional Planning Commission to fight the TTC.
"This is one issue all four cities are united behind to save our rural way of life," said newly elected president Mae Smith, who is mayor of Holland. Other members of the board include Arthur White, mayor of Bartlett; Ronnie White, mayor of Academy; the Rev. Billy Crow, mayor of Rogers; and Ralph Snyder, a business owner from Holland.
"The purpose of this commission is to give us a voice in this process. It's our land that the Texas Department of Transportation and our governor want to take and we are not going to let them pave us over and ignore the concerns of our communities," Snyder said.
The commission reports the TTC would take from 5,000 and 7,500 acres in Bell County alone, while taking in another 50,000 acres of farmland between San Antonio and the Texas-Oklahoma border. The Texas Legislature created the TTC in 2003 "and ever since, landowners have been fighting to protect their rights," according to a press release from the commission.
The commission was formed using Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, which allows cities and counties to form regional planning commissions to work together to develop plans for their local region and to force the state agencies to coordinate with their activities.
Under Chapter 391.009(c), TxDOT is required to coordinate with commissions to ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level.
"TxDOT must coordinate with us before they can implement their plans in our region," said Ronnie White, commission vice president. "The TTC is driven by greed and has no respect for our rural way of life."
The commission says that under state law, TxDOT will be required to work with it and coordinate the agency's plans with the local group before any land is taken or any construction begins.
"If not, they are in violation of the state statute and we are prepared to take them to court if necessary," Smith said.
The individual cities have also requested that the Environmental Protection Agency reject the Draft Environmental Impact Statement submitted by TxDOT, because the agency did not coordinate with local government as required under the federal law.
Waller County rejects proposal
Waller County commissioners announced at a meeting in early August that they had been approached by TxDOT officials and Gary Bushell, a lobbyist for the Alliance for I-69 and the Gulf Coast Strategic Highway Coalition, with a plan to route the TTC along the proposed path of the Prairie Parkway, which had been recently discussed as a thoroughfare from Highway 290 between Waller and Prairie View (James Muse Road), to I-10 and Woods Road.
Waller County commissioners rejected the proposal, according to a press release from Citizens for a Better Waller County.
"For folks that think that the Trans-Texas Corridor is not going to happen - this is a major wake up call," said Don Garrett, president of the citizens group. "Not only does it show that TxDOT and Gov. Perry are going forward with the plans for the TTC-69, but that they still have Waller County dead in their sights for the path of this 1,200-feet wide mobility monster.
"Although there is a two-year moratorium that prevents TxDOT from signing a contract with a private company to build the TTC-69 under Senate Bill 792, that doesn't mean that they can't proceed forward with selecting a pathway for it," he said.
Garrett said he encourages people living in Waller County to stay aware of TxDOT's plans.
"An express toll road that is a 1/2 of a mile wide going through the dead center of Waller County would devastate it. It will change life as we know it in Waller County for generations to come," Garrett said. "This move by TxDOT shows that they are still trying to route this thing through the middle of our county, despite the fact that nobody in Waller County wants it here.
"We are not opposed to a rational approach to solving our future transportation needs, but are adamantly opposed to a system that primarily benefits Wall Street and foreign investors," he said, saying the organization has confirmed TxDOT representatives have met with Fort Bend County officials in regard to routing TTC-69 through Fort Bend County toward Waller County.
According to information from the organization, Prairie Parkway has been on the county's thoroughfare plan since 1985 and has been updated because of development to Houston Executive Airport and expansion plans for I-10 and Highway 290. The route also will provide additional hurricane evacuation capabilities for coastal residents.
"TxDOT saw an opportunity with the proposed Prairie Parkway to piggyback the TTC on top of it. It's now up to the citizens of Waller County to let TxDOT know what they think about that," Garrett said.
A final route for TTC-69 is pending release of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement and additional hearings.
"It is more important now than ever that people pay attention to what is going on around here," Garrett said. "The TTC is alive and well and TxDOT is hoping that folks are asleep at the wheel when they show up with bulldozers."
© 2007 The Waxahachie Daily Light www.waxahachiedailylight.com


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