Fluff

Over at Ace’s, Wednesday’s post (by Monty) on Detroit’s self-inflicted misery (and do RTWT) provoked this reminder about what’s important to a city (and what’s not):

...A city’s number [one] priority should be to keep the city a place people want to live.  At bottom this means decent public safety [police and fire, mostly...], decent transportation [roads, signals], and decent schools; at a ‘price point’ [total taxation] that the average... taxpaying citizen finds reasonable.  Anything else... is basically fluff.

Which reminded me of this story (from the Daily Mail):

People living in Seattle can no longer enjoy a brown bag lunch after city bureaucrats banned the term from official use for being racist

A memo sent out from the Office of Civil Rights also banned the word ‘citizen’, claiming it could lead to people feeling excluded...

I wonder what Seattle’s taxpayers feel about a government that spends their hard-earned taxes on officious claptrap.  (Shut up, Grouch... It gives employment to the otherwise-unemployable!)

(Seattle link:  Jeff Goldstein via Daily Pundit)

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 21:12:19 GMT | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 167 words, total size 3 kb.

How about ‘‘each pays his own way?’’

Over at Instapundit, we have:

...which links to:

... while eliminating debit cards would be a drastic move by the banks, you would more likely see the end of things like ‘‘free’’ checking.

The reason for this is ‘‘interchange fees’’.  Or, more precisely, price controls on interchange fees.  Interchange fees are the fees banks charge retailers for processing the use of debit cards.  The interchange fee used to be about 1.35% of the amount purchased at the retailer.  This enabled banks to cover the costs of debit cards and offer other perks such as ‘‘free’’ checking.

Because the price of the interchange fee may soon be set at .03-.06 cents per transaction, banks have to figure out another way to cover their costs.  Say welcome back to fees for checking.

So let me see:  A system under which all customers pay higher prices^[1] so that some people^[2] get free checking accounts is supposed to be a good thing?

Hey, I’ve got this revolutionary idea...


------

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:32:15 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 197 words, total size 3 kb.

Oh no? Just watch!

Investors Business Daily:

Media Can’t Ignore New Developments In IRS Scandal

LATER: ‘‘Chuba’’ comments at Instapundit:

Sure they can.  This morning, while I was getting ready to head off to work, the TV was on to the local morning news... around the time that subjects of national interest came up... There was something about Trayvon, that NSA guy at some hacker’s gathering in Las Vegas, and something about ambulance-chasers illegally soliciting Asiana crash victims.

But the IRS?  Zippo.

Q.E.D.

Posted by: Old Grouch in The Press at 18:13:35 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 80 words, total size 2 kb.