More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero.

City recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools, and a handful of museums will close for good March 31 unless they find private funding to stay open. Buses no longer run on evenings and weekends. The city won’t pay for any street paving, relying instead on a regional authority that can meet only about 10 percent of the need.

Click on graphic for larger view.

The Lost Decade In America. Source: Washington Post

Welcome to 2010. What’s your plan for the next ten years?

Four cities in the top 50. That is eight percent of the total. Considering that Iowa is the 30th largest state, I’d say we are punching way over our weight. So why do some people persist in saying that somehow Iowa’s tax rates are making us less competitive from an economic development standpoint?

San Diego-based Bridgepoint Education, the for-profit operator of online college programs and two universities, was among Wall Street’s top losers yesterday after it announced that it might face fines and penalties for possibly misusing federal student aid.

he U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general opened an audit last year of Bridgepoint’s Ashford University, a former Catholic teachers college in Iowa with an enrollment of about 3,800. The company acknowledged that it could face fines and “corrective action” for its handling of federal student loans and grants. A draft audit report is expected within 30 days, and Bridgepoint will have a chance to respond.

The inspector general’s findings could cover Bridgepoint’s compensation of enrollment officers, returns and disbursement of student aid funds and documentation of students’ leaves of absence, the company said. Ashford University got 87 percent of its revenue from federal financial aid in 2008, according to a company filing.

According to Bridgepoint’s most recent quarterly report, it has faced several issues in recent months in operating its college programs.

When its administration of federal student aid at Ashford fell below federal guidelines, Bridgepoint had to post a $12.1 million letter of credit to guarantee that it would pay the penalties if the standards were not improved. The University of the Rockies had similar issues, requiring a separate, $700,000 letter of credit.

At the end of 2007, Ashford blamed “human error” for missing deadlines to return student loans on time to the U.S. Treasury, but an additional letter of credit was not required.

“Although the company has taken steps to reduce late refunds, it cannot ensure that such steps will be sufficient to address this issue,” Bridgepoint’s second-quarter report said.

In addition, the company settled a shareholder dispute for $11.1 million in March. The issues related to stock options and financing in 2005.

This story was also carried on the Associated Press, Bloomberg and Reuters wires. The story was notable because for Friday, Bridgepoint was in the top ten percentage point losers in that day’s trading, which usually will trigger a blurb of some sort in the financial press even for smaller companies. The stock has recovered slightly as of this writing is trading at $16.20/share.

Interesting how the local print press has missed both notable stories regarding on of the regions’s largest employers/taxpayers this year, that of the BIP initial stock offering and this latest. All of which can be found with a simple Google news alert. I haven’t even looked to see what ADM and Lyondell/Basel are up to.

A couple of weeks ago, I made the argument — knowing perfectly well that it would never happen — that the best thing for the nation and for the US automotive industry would be to let GM and Chrysler fail and bailout their employees instead. Let creative destruction do its thing and allow a new automotive industry to rise from the ashes of the old.

For this morning’s reading, check out this piece by LA Times Auto Correspondent, Dan Niel, When Cars Were America’s Idols:

f you were to walk up to a typical New York executive in the 1960s — think Don Draper in AMC’s “Mad Men” — and tell him that General Motors Corp. would be in bankruptcy by 2009, he would have thought you were delusional, or perhaps a Communist. GM was more than just the world’s largest and most admired corporation; it was the final vindication of the American Way, the perfected and even divinely inspired example of democratic capitalism that stood opposed to the airless atheism and nullity of the Soviet system.

At the height of its power, GM represented 10% of the national economy. It controlled more than 50% of the light-vehicle market. Its products, research and management methodologies were the standard of the world.

The final chapter of that merger plays out this week as GM weathers a reorganization that will leave the federal government owning 70% of the company. In the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, it’s hard not to see GM’s bankruptcy as a signal moment in a larger history. If mighty GM can fail, cannot also the United States? And the answer is, absolutely.

This is the lesson of GM’s bankruptcy, and it has little to do with market share and miles per gallon. It’s a rebuff of the notion of exceptionalism. Any organization that fails to sufficiently safeguard its means of self-correction and reform, that forsakes long-term investment for short-term gain, that piles up debt year after year, will eventually fail, no matter how grand its history or noble its purpose. If you don’t feel the tingle of national mortality in all this, you’re not paying attention.

Read the whole thing.