Word: publicness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Miami's poorer residents have long complained that the city's meager public-transit system makes it harder for them to get to work. So when the Obama Administration announced the $787 billion stimulus plan earlier this year, many hoped some of that money would help fund plans like an expansion of Miami's undersized Metrorail system - especially a 10-mile northern extension that would reach into predominantly African-American and other minority communities largely cut off from downtown and other employment centers. But the project, in part because it's not considered as shovel-ready as jobs like existing...
...home-foreclosure rates. Earlier this year, the Associated Press found that across the U.S., the stimulus plan was "set to spend 50% more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than it will in communities with the highest." In Illinois, President Obama's home state, a Chicago Public Radio investigation this fall found that less than 10% of the Department of Transportation's stimulus contracts had gone to "disadvantaged business enterprises," or DBEs, even though the state says it benchmarked almost a quarter of the dollars for those minority- and women-owned firms. Less than...
...Most of the federal stimulus money is disbursed via states and counties, and the outlook for minorities does seem better once the dollars reach more local levels. Miami-Dade County's Public Works Department has kept its so far $25 million worth of stimulus projects relatively small, and therefore more accessible to minority contractors, to ensure its own 10% DBE participation goal. On some projects Miami-Dade has even 100% DBE involvement. For now, the county is using what stimulus money it can earmark for transit purposes to purchase a fleet of BRT (bus rapid transit) buses that will...
...What they are counting on now, and what they are hoping to inflame, is public doubt. Over and over again on Saturday, Republicans mentioned a new Quinnipiac poll indicating that while a healthy majority of Americans - 61% - are eager to see major changes in the health system, only 1 in 5 believes President Obama when he says that he can do it without raising their taxes. What the GOP Senators failed to note was that the same poll showed 59% faulting the Republican Party for not working in good faith with the Democrats to produce a bill. (Read "Understanding...
...bill is on the Senate floor, it will be very difficult for anyone to make any significant changes, unless they can muster 60 votes for them. Although there will be a number of skirmishes - over abortion funding, illegal immigrants' access to the new insurance marketplace, a government-run public option and whether to help pay for the whole enterprise by raising taxes on the rich or taxing high-end, so-called Cadillac insurance plans, just to name a few - everyone knows that the real test will be the moment, weeks from now, when Reid attempts to shut down debate...