Subject: Economic Issues

• Tax Credit Update

  August 14, 2007

• The Morning Brew: Thursday, 4.24

  April 24, 2008

• The Morning Brew: Wednesday, 5.14

  May 14, 2008

• The Morning Brew: Tuesday, 7.8

  July 8, 2008

• Become a Writer for Gut Check!

  NOTE: This is a sticky post. The latest Gut Check item follows.Recession? What recession? That's right: Gut Check is hiring! Specifically, we're seeking freelance writers who can offer unique and interesting takes on the St. Louis food and drink scene.What, exactly, do we want from you? You tell us! Maybe you're a server itching to show what the industry is like from your perspective. Maybe you're a culinary student wanting to describe what your program is like. Or maybe you're a wine geek who

  January 13, 2009

• Business is Cooking at Local Crematories. Thank the Recession

  Flickr Urn-ing your business.If things keep going the way the are, gravediggers will have to find something else to do with their shovels. As the recession deepens, families in increasing numbers, according to the National Funeral Directors Association, are taking their dead to crematoriums -- just another way of cutting back amid the gathering economic gloom."Why just today, I had a family call me from a funeral home. They told me they didn't have the money for a burial and as

  March 3, 2009

• Maplewood Official is Cuckoo for Clooney

  Yesterday, my colleague Kristen Hinman wrote an open letter to George Clooney after observing the actor dining at Niche restaurant last Saturday.Hinman's letter (published in Daily RFT) elicited a quick e-mail from Maplewood Community Development Director Rachelle L'Ecuyer who e-mailed in to tell us how much she enjoyed the blog post. L'Ecuyer also forwarded us her own open-letter to Clooney that included a photo of the actor along with the following caption. Think that's amusing/bizarre? Then y

  March 31, 2009

• Bobby Watson and Horizon

  October 13, 1999

• Café Crumbles: Michael Lieb continues his fight to open a coffee shop in Belleville

  November 5, 2008

• Three-Day-Old California Roll

  $6.99
  Straub’s
  302 N. Kingshighway

  December 19, 2007

• Hotel Tab

  December 23, 1998

• Leave Greenberg's Art Alone

  Hey America: Stop it with your eminent domain and wimpiness, already!

  September 5, 2007

• Lot in Life

  William Peppes’ property suffered a plane crash and a murder. But eminent domain proved his toughest challenge.

  July 5, 2006

• The Grapes of Mirth

  Jonathan Nossiter's wine documentary is subversive, funny and humane

  May 18, 2005

• Doubting Thomas

  Alderman Tom Bauer's stealth schemes are raising eyebrows

  February 23, 2005

• Hell No, We Won't Go!

  A south St. Louis neighborhood raises a ruckus over plans to demolish homes for a shopping center

  December 1, 2004

• Extreme Makeover

  Rollin Stanley is a hotshot city planner -- which begs the question: What the hell is he doing in St. Louis?

  October 13, 2004

• Best Bureaucrat

  Rollin Stanley

  September 29, 2004

• Passing Gas

  Jackass-riding Alderman Tom Bauer and QuikTrip join forces to test the limits of eminent domain

  March 24, 2004

• The Greening of McRee Town

  There was nothing wrong with the Missouri Botanical Garden's downtrodden neighbor to the north that a bulldozer couldn't fix

  October 8, 2003

• Palast Guard

  Crusading investigative journalist Greg Palast looks out for the little guy

  March 12, 2003

• To Dwell in Possibility

  A tour of the city with the Landmarks Association's Carolyn Toft presents views of what is and what could be

  July 10, 2002

• Selling Out

  November 28, 2001

• Letters

  September 5, 2001

• The Gospel According to Paul

  August 22, 2001

• Wrecking Brawl

  June 13, 2001

• Base Motives

  May 16, 2001

• Letters

  December 6, 2000

• Best Role Model

  September 27, 2000

• Wages of the City

  August 2, 2000

• WAGE DELAY

  November 24, 1999

• SEEING THINGS

  August 4, 1999

• Missouri's Eminent Domain Battles Caught on Film in "Begging for Billionaires"

  www.ij.orgJim RoosBegging for Billionaires, a documentary feature examining eminent domain "abuse" in Missouri, makes its initial screening next month in (of all places) Minnesota.  The film -- nine years in the making -- debuts May 2 as a "Best of Fest" selection at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. Telling the story of land owners fighting to keep their properties from private developers, the movie spends much of its time in St. Louis with subjects such as Jim Roos. A

  April 20, 2009

• St. Louis Consulting Firm Declares Recession Over! Or Does It???

  flickr.com/photos/carantiYou may have noticed the article Slate ran yesterday afternoon entitled "The recession is over! (Technically.)" You may have ignored the parenthetical and burst into a joyous rendition of "Happy Days Are Here Again". Or you may have become suspicious of the term "technical," guessing that a "technical" end to the recession will not necessarily mean more money in your own pocket.The bearer of these glad tidings, it turns out, is none other than Macroeconomics Advisers, LL

  July 15, 2009

• A Sprawling Casino Next To A Conservation Area?

  photo by Keegan HamiltonThe Columbia Bottom Conservation AreaLocated at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers just north of St. Louis, the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area is among the last stretches of undeveloped riverfront near the city. The Missouri Department of Conservation, the state agency that manages the 4,300-acre area, describes the land as "a mosaic of bottomland habitats that includes shallow wetlands, bottomland hardwoods, prairie, and cropland. These habitats att

  July 28, 2009

• Joe's trolley, the suffering of the Jews and a casino on bottomland

  August 5, 2009

• FoodWire: Wm. Shakespeare's Gastropub Closed

  ​Just received a note from restaurateur Eddie Neill informing me that Wm. Shakespeare's Gastropub (601 North Grand Boulevard) has closed. It had been operating on greatly reduced "summer hours." Wm. Shakespeare's opened only last fall in the teeth of the economic downturn, and despite generally positive reviews (including from yours truly) couldn't overcome the recession and the curse of Grand Center.

  August 17, 2009

• Forum Tonight to Discuss Eminent Domain, Paul McKee's Northside Development Project

  The North Side Community Benefits Alliance is inviting city residents to attend a forum tonight to discuss developer Paul McKee's massive redevelopment project for north St. Louis. ij.orgChristina Walsh​Leading tonight's meeting (6 p.m. at the Shining Light Pentecostal Church) will be Christina Walsh, a director with the Washington D.C.-based civil-rights law firm Institute for Justice.Topics for discussion include McKee's possible use of eminent domain as well as the developer's plans to fina

  August 20, 2009

• That Little Light At the End of the Recession Tunnel is Actually Five Years Away

  flickr.com/photos/mickdansforth​Last month, Macroeconomics Advisers, LLC, a Clayton-based economic consulting firm predicted that the recession should be ending just about now, with a significant caveat: We won't actually start to feel any relief until jobs start coming back.Economist Ben Herzon told the Daily RFT he expected the job market to start expanding again sometime next year.But now the gloom-and-doom prophets at IHS Global Insight, an economic and financial forecaster, have released

  August 25, 2009

• What to Expect When You're Expecting Economic Recovery

  Dorothea Lange, courtesy of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum​In an interesting piece in the October Atlantic, Benjamin Schwarz surveys a collection of books about daily life during the Great Depression in an attempt to glean some lessons from the past about what we can expect in the near future as the nation lurches toward economic recovery.The good news, Schwarz discovers, is that the Great Depression was not, in reality, as terrible as the mythology that surrounds it

  September 15, 2009

• The Awful Truth: Attn: Wall Street. Michael Moore is a Marxist (but he's still selling the same old shtick).

  September 30, 2009

• Review Setlists: Phosphorescent, Will Dailey, Ryan Bingham and the Dead Horses, Lukas Nelson, Jamey Johnson at Farm Aid, Sunday, October 4

  The 24th annual Farm Aid started with the old-school gospel quartet harmonies of the Blackwood Brothers and enough warm sunshine to persuade all the family farms in Missouri -- the Show Me State has the second highest number of farms in the Union -- that their summer work is far from over. What Willie says, goes -- as much for the weather as for the capacity crowd of old-timers, outlaw-wannabes, fraternal DMB dudes, free-range hippies, redneck women, corporate weasels and children regaled in ant

  October 5, 2009

• No Justice: We've bailed out the banks. When do we go after the crooks behind our financial collapse?

  October 28, 2009

• Conservation Area Casino Faces Final Vote by County Council Tomorrow

  The construction of a sprawling 376-acre resort and casino next to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in North St. Louis County faces it's most critical vote yet tomorrow night.The St. Louis County Planning Commission already gave the initial go ahead to rezone the massive swath of land in a flood plain immediately south of wetlands that border the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, despite the protests from multiple environmental and community groups.If you've never been, her

  November 2, 2009

• St. Louis County Council Clears Way For North County Casino

  Image Via​While thousands of St. Louis county voters took to the polls yesterday to decide important issues like a smoking ban and increased 911 funding, the fate of the largest stretch of undeveloped Mississippi River waterfront in the St. Louis region was left in the hands of six members of the St. Louis County Council.They voted 4-2 in favor of re-zoning 376 acres of wetlands south of the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area for commercial development, specifically a massive casino and resort

  November 4, 2009

• Did A Vegas Casino Boss Try To Make A St. Louis County Councilman An Offer He Couldn't Refuse?

  Image Via​Reporter Paul Hampel has an incredible story in today's Post-Dispatch about the CEO of Pinnacle Entertainment Inc. (the Vegas-based company that owns Lumiere Place, the Admiral and the new casino in Lemay) attempting to "muscle" a member of the St. Louis County Council before Tuesday's vote to re-zone wetlands near the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area to allow construction of a casino to be run by a Pinnacle rival.In a textbook case of life-imitating art-imitating life, Pinnacle's D

  November 5, 2009