Bradley and Associates news blog updates, Local government agencies offer holiday tips

Local government agencies offer holiday tips

The Thanksgiving holiday weekend comes with more than just a stuffed stomach and flocking around the television for the Raiders vs. Cowboys game – it comes with heightened risks of kitchen fires and distracted driving.

Local government agencies and law enforcement have teamed up to offer safety tips, ensuring an accident-free Thanksgiving from the highway to the kitchen. Most notably, the Nevada Highway Patrol (NHP) and the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) urged motorists to take extreme caution on the roads at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

Both NHP and NDOT officials acknowledged the heavy traffic on the roadways during the upcoming four-day weekend and said road conditions could turn dangerous quickly. Motorists can keep informed on restricted or closed roads by dialing 511 or checking www.nevadadot.com before driving. Both entities also stressed the dangers of distracted driving.

“It is prohibited to talk on a cell phone unless a driver is using hands-free technology; this includes reading non-voice communication,” NHP Trooper Chuck Allen said. “We are seeing more motorists violating this law by reading emails and texting messages while stopped or stalled in traffic or at a traffic signal.”

Allen added that a citation for running a red light in the Reno-Sparks area can cost more than $200 and will knock four demerit points off a driver’s license.

“We see more red light violations this time of year as motorists hurriedly rush to their next destination,” Allen said. “We also want drivers to be certain the entire intersection is clear before traveling through on a green light. It is also against the law to block an intersection and this practice is seen more frequently during the busy holiday shopping period.”

The roadways are only one of the dangers posed during the rush of holiday shopping and family dinners. Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District Fire Marshal Amy Ray said Tuesday that Thanksgiving dinner preparation causes a spike in the number of cooking fires in northern Nevada.

Bradley Associates: Who is to blame for US economic troubles?

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Regarding their economy’s woes, Americans are more likely to point their finger at former President George W. Bush than to their current leader Barack Obama. According to a Gallup report released on Tuesday, half of the participants believe Obama is at least moderately to blame, while two-thirds lay heavy blame on Bush.

The reason simply may be that the big meltdown happened under Bush. Although in 2002 he tried to set tighter controls over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, he did not get the Congress green light. Also, Bush deeply embraced deregulation, even if to some extent he was following Bill Clinton’s path. His predecessor was actually the one who signed the 1999 law that allowed commercial banks to carry on other financial activities, like investment banking and insurance. Having said that, Bush was solely responsible of something very rarely seen in History: he charged two wars on the credit card while reducing taxes, twice, at the same time.

Today, the economy is picking up and this indeed seems to be helping Obama. The president’s personal approval ratings are quite steady between 51 and 48%, according to several surveys published last spring by Gallup, CNN and Rasmussen Reports.

Overall a number of indicators are improving, like unemployment rate at 7.6%, housing values getting better and gasoline prices going down to a large degree over the last couple of months. As a result, American’s consumer confidence reached its highest level in six years in May, according to the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index.

The million-dollar question is if the U.S. economy will still flow without the Fed’s monetary stimulus. The central bank has been buying $85 billion in bonds every month to keep interest rates low and help the economy, but its Chairman Ben Bernanke has already given a warning: they may start slowing the pace later this year and end it entirely around mid-2014 if the American economy gets back on its feet.

Markets are already nervous. We’ll see how this all play with the popularity rates of Barack Obama.

Bradley Associates: HK serves as warning, academic says

The rising localization movement and desperate calls for democratization in Hong Kong serve as a warning to Taiwan, where Sinicization and the weakening localization movement were grave concerns, an academic said yesterday on the eve of the 16th anniversary of the territory’s handover to China.

“The situation in almost every aspect of life in Hong Kong has gotten so bad that Hong Kong independence — for which support remains very weak, however — has been mentioned among the people,” said Chen Yi-chi (陳奕齊), a doctoral candidate at University of Leiden in the Netherlands.

Chen, who also serves as the secretary-general of the Southern Taiwan Society, analyzed political, economic and social development in Hong Kong between 1997 and the present and made comparisons between Taiwan and the territory, which was handed over to China on July 1, 1997, at a seminar organized by the World United Formosans for Independence (WUFI) Taipei Chapter.

The year 2003 became a watershed year for Hong Kong, which was hit by deflation — a result of the Asian financial crisis, SARS, the controversial Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law regarding national security and the signing of the Closer Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) , which increased Hong Kong’s economic dependence on Beijing, Chen said.

Since then, the “China factor” had infiltrated every aspect of the former British colony as Beijing gradually asserted its political influence and launched an economic invasion by sending more people to the territory and siphoning off its educational, medical and business resources.

By the time Hong Kongers “awoke” from the dream of “one country, two systems” that Beijing had promised, in about 2011 or last year, it was too late, Chen said…

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