Kane County budget showdown looms :: The Courier News :: Local News

Could we learn something from this neighbor? 

Throughout the discussion, she[county board chairwoman] put the onus on elected officials to hit their cost-reduction mark and explained that board members have few options to assist or direct how that happens

If officials don't hit the mark, a recently approved policy change allows the board to not pay expenses that exceed an elected official's budget.

The board already has approved an unpaid furlough policy, and will continue to look at insurance and buyout ideas.

Click on the following for the rest of the story:  Kane County budget showdown looms :: The Courier News :: Local News

Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home, Forever - NYTimes.com

In 1990, Japan — facing growing industrial labor shortage — started issuing thousands of special work visas to descendants of these emigrants. An estimated 366,000 Brazilians and Peruvians now live in Japan.

The guest workers quickly became the largest group of foreign blue-collar workers in an otherwise immigration-adverse country, filling the so-called three-K jobs (kitsui, kitanai, kiken — or hard, dirty and dangerous.)

Critics denounce the program [of paying workers to return to South America] as short-sighted and inhumane, and a threat to what little progress Japan has made in opening its economy to foreign workers

Read the rest of the story by clicking on the following:  Japan Pays Foreign Workers to Go Home, Forever - NYTimes.com

Jenkins: GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle - WSJ.com

A very critical op-ed from Wall Street Journal.  Unfortunately it tells too well the possible downfalls in the administration current auto bailout.

[At Chrysler, bondholders give up] nearly full recovery in a bankruptcy in return for 15 cents on the dollar

current bailout strategy amounts to asking thousands of bondholders and GM retirees to buy stock in a GM that the king's[Obama’s] own policies mean they'd be loony to buy

Click on the following to read the full story:  Jenkins: GM Is Becoming a Royal Debacle - WSJ.com

An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It - NYTimes.com

An urban plan to deliberately shrink--

Indianapolis and Little Rock, Ark., have recently set up land banks, and other cities are in the process of doing so. “Shrinkage is moving from an idea to a fact,”

Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.

Click on the following to read the rest of the story:  An Effort to Save Flint, Mich., by Shrinking It - NYTimes.com

Burlington election may not be quite over :: The Courier News :: Local News

a turnout of 56.51 percent of the registered voters

the turnout was stunningly large for a village and school election in April.

handful of votes still left to be counted could be enough to change which of five people running for three trustee seats won.

Burlington election may not be quite over :: The Courier News :: Local News