Who's Listening? Who's SPEAKING UP > Speak Now To Help Secure Land & Financing For Affordable Housing

That's what missing here in Mesa where all we see on the drawing boards is Sprawl and more Sprawl, especially almost everywhere: to the east, to the north, to the northeast and especially to the southeast. Growing fast but is it smart? . . . and I don't mean that Mesa Smart City Re-Branding campaign.

You can see what direction officials inside City Hall want to do at today's City Council Study Session for the measures and presentations made for the Proposed FY2019/2020 and FY2020/2024 Budgets.
Take a look at the list of target areas for Capital Improvement Projects (CIP).
Who benefits?

Indirectly - and at some time maybe in the future - there could be some "public benefits" in the long-term.
In the very near term, Mesa taxpayers are financing and will be asked to finance more millions of dollars in 20-year or 30-year bond debt obligations that pave the way for more sprawl.
Hikes in utility rates for water and electricity, garbage collection and recycling, increases in transaction privilege taxes will finance infrastructure that can be tapped into by real estate speculators to build-out more sprawl.

Other cities are doing this:
We’ve collected hundreds of petition signatures, and rallied for more affordable housing – as a result of our collective efforts, $15 million was committed in the City's 2019 Budget to build new affordable housing!
But will it be near rapid transit stations?
Here are the next steps required to ensure it is:
A report is going to FEDCO (Finance and Economic Development Committee) on Tuesday, April 2nd about possibly committing 20 parcels of government-owned land near rapid transit stations for affordable housing.
Please e-mail your elected officials today and let them know you want all 20 of these sites approved and reserved for affordable housing!OTTAWA, Canada > https://www.healthytransportation.ca

About Us

We are a grassroots movement of concerned citizens, organizations and businesses working together to increase healthy transportation policies and necessary infrastructure investments in the National Capital Region.

OBJECTIVES:
• Achieve a truly healthy transportation network in the National Capital Region, from the perspectives of personal and societal health, the environment, and economics;
• Increase physical activity, improve the built environment, decrease pedestrian and cyclist injuries;
• Help ensure vulnerable populations, and ultimately all residents, are well-served by an accessible transportation network;
• Help people have better access to their communities, local businesses, social support services, and green spaces by their preferred mode of healthy transportation; and
• Help ensure that greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector fall.

Smothered > The Out-Sized Influence of Big Money On Politics

As if we don't know it already, a well-researched and documented report was published today in TruthOut  

When Money Talks, Citizens’ Voices Get Drowned Out

By Rajan Menon, writing in TomDispatch

Over the last four decades, economic disparities in the U.S. increased substantially and are now greater than those in other wealthy democracies.

Despair about the state of our politics pervades the political spectrum, from left to right. One source of it, the narrative of fairness offered in basic civics textbooks — we all have an equal opportunity to succeed if we work hard and play by the rules; citizens can truly shape our politics — no longer rings true to most Americans. Recent surveys indicate that substantial numbers of them believe that the economy and political system are both rigged. They also think that money has an outsized influence on politics. Ninety percent of Democrats hold this view, but so do 80% of Republicans. And careful studies confirm what the public believes.

None of this should be surprising given the stark economic inequality that now marks our society. . .
The political consequence has been that a tiny minority of extremely wealthy Americans wields disproportionate influence, leaving so many others feeling disempowered. . . Polls show that an overwhelming majority of Americans support stricter laws to prevent wealth from hijacking politics and want the Citizens United ruling overturned. But then just how much does the voice of the majority matter? Judging from the many failed efforts to pass such laws, not much.

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A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality   

UPDATED

December 11, 2018

BY Chad Stone, Danilo Trisi, Arloc Sherman, and Roderick Taylor

 

You can find it here > https://www.cbpp.org/research

The broad facts of income inequality over the past six decades are easily summarized:

• The years from the end of World War II into the 1970s were ones of substantial economic growth and broadly shared prosperity.
  
  • Incomes grew rapidly and at roughly the same rate up and down the income ladder, roughly doubling in inflation-adjusted terms between the late 1940s and early 1970s.
  • The income gap between those high up the income ladder and those on the middle and lower rungs — while substantial — did not change much during this period.
• Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened.
  • Income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply, while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly.
  • The concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen 90 years ago (during the “Roaring Twenties”).
• Wealth — the value of a household’s property and financial assets, minus the value of its debts — is much more highly concentrated than income. The best survey data show that the share of wealth held by the top 1 percent rose from just under 30 percent in 1989 to nearly 39 percent in 2016, while the share held by the bottom 90 percent fell from just over 33 percent to less than 23 percent over the same period

Data from a variety of sources contribute to this broad picture of strong growth and shared prosperity for the early postwar period, followed by slower growth and growing inequality since the 1970s. Within these broad trends, however, different data tell slightly different parts of the story (and no single source of data is better for all purposes than the others).
This guide consists of four sections.
The first describes the commonly used sources and statistics on income and discusses their relative strengths and limitations in understanding trends in income and inequality.
The second provides an overview of the trends revealed in those key data sources.
The third and fourth sections supply additional information on wealth, which complements the income data as a measure of how the most well-off Americans are doing, and poverty, which measures how the least well-off Americans are doing.

I. The Census Survey and IRS Income Data

The most widely used sources of data and statistics on household income and its distribution are the annual survey of households conducted as part of the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey (CPS) and the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Statistics of Income (SOI) data compiled from a large sample of individual income tax returns. The Census Bureau publishes annual reports on income, poverty, and health insurance coverage in the United States based on the CPS data,^[2] and the IRS publishes an annual report on individual income tax returns based on the SOI.^[3] While the Federal Reserve also collects income data in its triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF),^[4] the SCF is more valuable as the best source of survey data on wealth.
Each agency produces its own tables and statistics and makes a public-use file of the underlying data available to other researchers. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has developed a model that combines CPS and SOI data to estimate household income both before and after taxes, as well as average taxes paid by income group back to 1979.^[5] Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez have used SOI data to construct estimates of the concentration of income at the top of the distribution back to 1913.^[6] More recently, they have expanded that work to examine trends in wealth concentration and to incorporate the portion of national income not captured in the tax or survey data into the analysis of income inequality.^[7] CBO and Piketty-Saez regularly release reports incorporating the latest available data.

 

Facebook User Data Records Found on Amazon Cloud

More Risks on The Cloud

Published on Apr 3, 2019

Views: 107 [at time of upload to this blog]

Apr.03 -- Researchers at UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, found troves of user information hiding in plain sight, inadvertently posted publicly on Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud computing servers. Bloomberg's Matt Day reports on "Bloomberg Markets."

The internet made us weird – just not in the right way | Douglas Rushkoff

Big Banks Start Adding Staff After Cutting 802,000 Jobs

Mixed results and pressure from tech sector replacing some jobs > "Zombie Banks" no more . . . Listen  up/watch

Published on Apr 3, 2019

Views: 173 [at time of upload to this blog]

Apr.03 -- Some big banks have started to slowly boost staff levels, reversing the trend of Wall Street job cuts since the financial crisis. Bloomberg's Yalman Onaran reports on "Bloomberg Markets."

Mind-Shift Anyone? Medications For Your Brain via Artificial Intelligence

Pardon me, but just gotta get snarky about this one: A Press Release from the City of Mesa Newsroom, written by Marcia Rhodes, who does public relations as the Media Contact for Amendola Communications mrhodes@acmarketingpr.com who gives out her own City Hall employee telephone number at the bottom of the presser in a public article

Myndshft Technologies to quadruple in size in 2019

March 20, 2019 at 3:23 pm

Here's how it starts . . . [read the rest in the link provided]

"Myndshft, a technology company that specializes in blockchain and artificial intelligence in healthcare, today announced that it plans to quadruple its team from 28 to over 100 employees this year. To accommodate this growth, Myndshft relocated from its 4,000-square-foot space to a new 11,000-square-foot office in the Red Mountain Business Park at 3256 N. Higley Road.
Mesa Mayor John Giles led the ribbon-cutting ceremony held March 20 and attended by Councilmember David Luna, Myndshft executives, staff, business neighbors, and local media. The move signals Myndshft's strong commitment to the Arizona technology community . . ."

Link > http://www.mesanow.org/news/public/article/2278

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From Area Development Online News Items 22 March 2019

. . . “We decided to stay in the Phoenix/Mesa area because of its strong local workforce and high quality of living,” said Ron Wince, Founder & CEO, Myndshft.

“There’s a young and educated workforce in place, which helps to create a viable talent pool for a tech company like ours.”

According to company officials, Myndshft’s new office will allow for future growth and expanded strategic partnerships within Arizona’s burgeoning digital-health sector. Myndshft has experienced hypergrowth rates of 400% with plans to aggressively recruit 75-85 employees over the next nine months across all its departments, particularly in sales, software engineering and operations. . . "

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About Ron Wince from https://www.crunchbase.com

Ron Wince has participated in 1 event, Voice of Blockchain on Aug 24, 2018.

Voice of Blockchain

Speaker

Chicago, Illinois, United States, North America

Aug 24, 2018

 

 

 

Myndshft Named 2018 Artificial Intelligence Breakthrough Award ...

Markets Insider - Business Insider

Myndshft Named 2018 Artificial Intelligence Breakthrough Award Winner | Markets Insider

 

The Tate Chronicles: Ron Wince, Founder and CEO of Myndshft ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsTyclugo3o

▶ 25:48

Feb 18, 2019 - Uploaded by Healthcare NOW Radio

Source: https://www.spreaker.com/user/healthcarenowradio/the-tate-chronicles-ron-wince-founder-an Host ...

 

Ron Wince, Founder and CEO of Myndshft - iHeartRadio

https://www.iheart.com/podcast/966.../the-tate-chronicles-ron-wince-founder-30472090/

▶

Jan 25, 2019

Host Jim Tate's guest is Ron Wince, Founder and CEO of Myndshft. Myndshft is focused on solving ...

Press Release From City of Mesa Newsroom

Earth Day, yo-yos and a fashion show at Celebrate Mesa

April 2, 2019 at 9:36 am
Mesa’s free party in the park will celebrate Earth Day, offer an environmentally friendly fashion show, and feature yo-yo’s, live music and many fun, family activities. Celebrate Mesa is being held Saturday, April 13 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Pioneer Park.

Admission and parking are free . . .

For other details > CLICK HERE