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the three elements dc highlighted above seem to sum up the thinking behind the package:
a) the COPS thing breaks with the militarized los angeles mode of policing and goes back to a more neighborhood oriented mode, which required more cops walking regular beats in communities. it has never been obvious that the l.a. even made sense---treating the population as an enemy, organizing around swat teams etc.---this reduces feedback loops that connect the cops and neighborhoods---and no number of television cop shows can sell that away.
b) neighborhood stabilization is self-evidently about trying to stabilize property values. if you think that the real estate problem is *the* driver behind this mess we're in---and personally, i think it was more a trigger than anything else, that the problems it exposed/set into motion are much bigger---then it is obvious that many things need to be tried in order to stop the freefall of real estate values---too much is tied to them, for better or worse---much of which has to do with a decentralization strategy (real or apparent) from the neoliberal right to shift power away from the state by channelling more revenues to localities via the "ownership society".
lowering interest rates on mortgages will help in some areas to generate velocity and so prop up prices---easing restrictions on refinancing will have a huge effect, far more than any tax cut....and programs like neighborhood stabilization in cities particularly. it'll require more, no doubt, but it's hard to know what does and does not work until there is something that is or is not working.
c) energy and the transformation of how it's consumed is a medium-to-long run priority for the administration, and is one of the areas that is good for them to have because it gives a direction to a package that is, to my mind, still too reactive.
but it's better than nothing. the right should really stop trying to redefine it's brand and start thinking about the problems that their own economic ideology (put into practice) has generated--and get out of the way.
that said, i am not at all sure that this package is either comprehensive enough, nor does it have an adequate design to it.
but freefall is ugly, and that's what's at stake.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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