South By North Strategies, Ltd.

The Recovery Act & Rural America

A recent episode of The PBS NewsHour reported on the use of federal recovery dollars to support mass transit options in rural Mississippi.

Around The Dial – October 4

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Beat the Press remembers the truth about “the cost of TARP.”
• Naked Capitalism explains the problem of mortgage document fabrication.
• Economist’s View explores American attitudes about redistribution.
• Off the Charts runs down the issues facing the lame-duck Congress.
• Felix Salmon summarizes arguments about paid and unpaid leave.

Workplace Safety In The Carolinas

The Charlotte Observer reports on the results of a U.S. Department of Labor audit of  workplace safety programs in North Carolina and South Carolina.

Compliance officers in the Carolinas understate the severity of problems by misclassifying violations and rarely label problems as “willful” – the most serious degree.
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N.C. compliance officers issued only one willful violation in 2009 “due to the belief that it would be too difficult to pass the review process,” auditors said. South Carolina had five willful violations.
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Auditors said of the N.C. program: “Some violations that would most likely have been classified as serious by federal OSHA were classified as non-serious by the state, and some violations categorized as low or medium severity would have been categorized as high severity by federal OSHA.”
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Companies receive higher fines when they are cited for serious or willful violations.
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North Carolina lets bureaucrats purge documents from case files when they are closed. Removing the documentation limits the state’s ability to review a company’s history and properly investigate future violations, auditors said.

Comparing Business Perceptions

Free Exchange compares the “pro-business” perceptions of the Bush and Obama administrations.

For all the similarity of substance, perceptions of the two are diametrically opposed. Business may have hated many of Mr Bush’s policies but seldom questioned his business bona fides, whereas they’ve never really given Mr Obama the benefit of the doubt. There are reasons of substance for this, on upper-income taxes and unions, for example. But style is the far more important reason. Business people want to be liked (who doesn’t?). Mr Bush liked the company of business people, picked one as his vice president and stacked his cabinet with them. He clearly thought business people were more competent than government employees, thus his fondness for outsourcing everything, from wars to Medicare, even when it cost more. Mr Obama has no CEOs in his cabinet, and seems to prefer the company of unions, academics and activists. Yes, his speeches regularly pay homage to private enterprise and free markets. But what business people remember are the repeated slaps at fat cats, millionaires, and the many sins of big business from abusing borrowers to outsourcing jobs.
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I’ve seldom thought that the solution to any president’s problem lay in how he talked rather than what he did. Mr Obama’s low standing in the business community may be an exception.

Around The Dial – October 1

Economic policy reports, blog postings, and media stories of interest:

• Which do we have – elite colleges or colleges for the elite?
• The National Skills Coalition tells a tale of two economies.
• Diane Ravitch warns against “trashing teachers.”
• Brad DeLong explains “economics for parrots.”
• Off the Charts breaks down the latest GDP revision.