Stucknation: 21st Century Recovery Can't Take Flight with 20th Century Baggage
Congress returns to Washington this week as "Recovery Summer" withers to "Flatline Fall.” Both parties have their scripts for the off-year election campaign well-rehearsed. Stage left, there is...
View ArticleStucknation: Advance Notes For Your New Jersey Trip, Mr. President
Dear Mr. President,I heard that Wednesday evening you are coming to a fundraiser in Cresskill, New Jersey. I know you have been working overtime to get our economy unstuck, but I just wanted to outline...
View ArticleStucknation: Tunneling Through Muck and Mire
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's call to abandon an almost $9 billion passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River because of fears of potential cost overruns has been denounced as short-sighted....
View ArticleStucknation: The Challenge for NY's Next Governor
Growing up in Bergen County 40 years ago, when things got particularly depressing in our struggling household of six kids, I had a place I would sneak off to at night to feel instantly better and...
View ArticleStucknation: Our Stalled Rowboat Needs More Oars
For decades I have been accosting total strangers about their electoral choices and have always come away learning something. This year, I staked out a mall on Route 46 in Parsippany, New Jersey while...
View ArticleStucknation: Economic Mess Continues after Midterms
Last Tuesday most Americans stayed home. It was a slight majority of the minority that turned out to redirect the nation's course.Republicans bragged about winning. Democrats whined about losing....
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Stucknation: The Sad Saga of 130 Liberty
On September 11th, 2001, when the World Trade Center's South Tower fell, it tore a 15-story gash into the 41-story Deutsche Bank building, letting in the World Trade's whirlwind of toxic waste and...
View ArticleStucknation: Debt and Denial in New Jersey
Fallout from the recession still haunts budget makers in more than 500 of New Jersey's local governments. Scores of communities are resorting to layoffs. School systems, county agencies and...
View ArticleStucknation: Finance Fines and No-Fault Deals
We have yet to recover from the devastation wrought by the credit-default swap global caper. Now, we can look forward to sorting through the allegedly fraudulent robo-mortgage signings that helped...
View ArticleStucknation: Mom, Apple Pie and Bonded Indebtedness
While Washington Democrats and Republicans fret over the federal deficit, scant attention is being paid to the debt explosion on local municipal balance sheets in all 50 states. The federal government...
View ArticleStucknation: Global Capital Eclipses Nation-States
A few years into the Great Recession and unemployment is going up, not down. Across the nation, the protracted cash crunch and towering public debt legacy has local governments laying off police...
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Stucknation: Albany In Between
Albany —Here in Albany, this capital city of a struggling state is bracing for a major reset that will be painful. In less than a fortnight new leadership will arrive that has pledged to take the first...
View ArticleStucknation: Quality Assurance Not Very Reassuring
A decade ago, the FBI announced plans to upgrade its IT systems and create a computer-based case management system. The so-called "Trilogy" project was subcontracted out to defense giant Science...
View ArticleStucknation: After the Blizzard, Let's Look at Our Weakened Foundations
Even as the giant snow piles melt into memory, the inadequate response to the blizzard of 2010 presages some of the great trials ahead for many Americans, their local town halls and their state...
View ArticleStucknation: Another Round in the Mortgage Mess
For months now, the banking industry has been dismissing the fact that they may have been pursuing tens of thousands of home foreclosures with deficient paper work as mere technical glitches.Last week...
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Stucknation: Cashing Dr. King's Promissory Note
Ridgewood, NJ—It was Palm Sunday in 1968, just 72 hours after Dr. King had been murdered. My parents thought it was important that I go with my father to attend an impromptu eccumenical service at the...
View ArticleStucknation: Disclosure, Democracy, and the Federal Reserve
In Tunisia, Wikileaks’ disclosures of State Department cables describing the self-dealing of former Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali's regime greased the skids for his exit. Sunlight may be...
View ArticleStucknation: Less Cops, More Drones?
President Obama and House Republicans are working hard to find ways to cut America's discretionary spending. They both want to take the high ground over the looming debate over raising the federal debt...
View ArticleStucknation: Our Debt Service Time Bomb
When President Obama released his 2012 budget proposal, he spoke of hard choices and investments. What he left out were the real jaw-dropping numbers contained in an obscure Department of the Treasury...
View ArticleStucknation: States Broken While Billions Float Off-Shore
America is fraying. As the states bleed out red ink high unemployment is the new normal. Now public employees are finding that their social contract is up for repeal. Their agreements have their...
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