John W Rodat

I’m Toast

May 21, 2012 Environment

In our family, people are happy to walk with me during the summer because they know that I’m the one who will attract all manner of biting insects, particularly mosquitos and black flies (why do we own a house in NH?). We just had a winter with no winter. I’m doomed.

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Oh, Maybe You Can Have That Revenue After All … For Now

May 16, 2012 Budget

For the past couple years, Albany County Legislators have been talking about keeping a much larger share of sales tax revenue for their own purposes and reducing the share passed on to cities, towns and villages. Many of those Legislators have such a proprietary sense of it that they call it “our money,” as if […]

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Other People’s Money

May 16, 2012 Economics

The journalist character, Melissa Tregarthen in Justin Cartwright’s, Other People’s Money: “I am a number,” she writes. “I am a statistic. I am a sacrifice on the altar of the free market. I have no power, except the power of words.” This is immediately after being given the “chop,” being laid off.

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More on Too Big to Manage, Too Complex to Manage

May 16, 2012 Economics

Deep in the comments following Maureen Dowd’s Dancing with Deriviatives, on the JP Morgan Chase debacle is the following comment by Diana Moses of Arlington, MA Wasn’t there a theme in 2001: A Space Odyssey about our technological developments escaping our control (I’m thinking about HAL)? I sometimes feel that way not just about Big […]

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Too Big to Fail? Too Big to Govern. Too Big to Manage

May 11, 2012 Economics

Today’s news that JP Morgan Chase had incurred a $2 billion trading loss reminds us again of the risks to the rest of us of organizations that are not only too big to fail, but too big and complex to effectively manage. Simon Johnson, author, with James Kwak, of White House Burning, The Founding Fathers, […]

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Role Reversal in Rockland County?

May 10, 2012 Bond Rating

So right after Moody’s downgraded Rockland County’s rating (a lot), the Republican County Executive Scott Vanderhoef blamed the local Senator, Democrat Sen. David Carlucci because he would not support an increase in the sales tax: We regret that State Senator Carlucci was unwilling to fight for the financial stability of Rockland County by passing the […]

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Big Credit Downgrades Can Say Two Things, One About the Rated, One About the Rating Agency

May 10, 2012 County

Paul Greaves on Twitter on the Moody’s downgrade from A2 to Baa3 of Rockland County, NY: Fundamental problem with super downgrades like Rockland County – investors buy munis for capital preservation, diversity and stability. Greaves is right. But where do abrupt downgrades come from? Either something abruptly changed in financial condition of the organization being […]

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Evidently, Some Believe That Ignorance is Better

May 10, 2012 Census

It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where we’ll come down in this fight. With a tagline, “use the damn data,” one should probably assume that we think it’s not only important, it’s essential that we collect valid, reliable data. And it shouldn’t be a surprise that we believe that for social and economic […]

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Taxes Are Not the Only Factor in Migration

May 8, 2012 Business

We hear a lot in New York about how taxes cause people to emigrate, either directly or indirectly because businesses leave. This is particularly a concern when younger people leave. So it’s interesting to see that New Hampshire, a notoriously low tax state (neither a sales nor an income tax), is also suffering from an […]

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Happiness is a Positive Cash Flow. What’s the Cost of Ignorance?

April 23, 2012 Cash

Unhappiness is a negative cash flow. Even worse is not knowing what your cash position is. For the past year, I’ve been submitting Freedom of Information (FOIL) requests to Albany County, getting their cash position each week. I’ve been using the data to prototype some displays of public data. It’s not cash flow, but rather […]

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