TheVoiceOfJoyce

1. NY #1 : 80 days after a devastating fire destroyed the ART WORKS of Pratt students, Pratt has solicited and found space to show the student’s new work. Check out the exhibit, open to the public at 375 Park Avenue, NYC , 8 th floor! SUPPORT THE STUDENTS , consider a trip to the upper East side ” gallery space”. We have choices.

2. NY TIMES 5/8/13 Foreign Food inspections on decline as Illnesses from imported goods rise. FDA budgets and inspectors are underfunded and cannot inspect and protect the Public from contaminated meat entering our Country. After years of budget cuts, only 2.3% of the 10.4 million annual shipments of food is inspected by the FDA. Lax control of our food supply means 2.5 million pounds of Canadian beef made it into US supermarkets, before being recalled. We have a choice.

3.NY TIMES 5/11/13. Heavy load of student loan debt weighing on the Economy, too. Student loans make up a growing share of debt for young people , hampering their ability to take out a mortgage or other loans. Total student loan debt is $1Trillion. Their problem, becomes a middle class parent’s problem, when an anemic economic recovery compounds middle class debt. There are choices. Borrowing at the Fed rate going forward Is one choice. What about a Re- set on the loans already in the system? These loans become a vicious cycle, in bad times, since poor payment performance may decrease a student’s chance of getting work? Why not Re- set mortgage and credit card debt rates, too. Using the Fed’s borrowing rate as a benchmark ? Many choices.

4. LOL: FINANCIAL TIMES 5/11/13 Beyond the politics of fear, a book review, exploring the Economic Crisis at home and fascism aboard forced US leaders of the 1930’s to walk a tightrope between dictatorship and democracy. The book, FEAR ITSELF: The New Deal and the Origins of our Time, written by Ira Katznelson, explains in great detail, that the presentation of FDR as a democratic dictator , has become part of political mythology. Instead, it was Congress that enacted much of the radical legislative agenda; statute , not executive command, transformed American capitalism.

” Much of the infrastructure that FDR created has been repealed, notably the Glass Steagall Act of 1933, which prevented commercial banks from engaging in the investment business: it’s absence is thought of presaging the current financial crisis. We had a choice.