Memory has a way of playing tricks on the mind, but my recollection is that each of the seven presidential elections since I reached adulthood (I turned 18 the week after Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984) has been advertised - by the parties, by the candidates, by the media - as "the most important election of our lifetimes."

Here comes the eighth. Same shtick, even if the Jerry Springer atmospherics have been turned up a little. The world will end if Candidate X is elected. Americans will starve in the streets if Candidate Y isn't elected. You know what I'm talking about.

Of course, each presidential election is incredibly important to the parties, the candidates, and the media. Elections are their bread and butter. But are they really that consequential to the rest of us? On close examination, the only plausible answer is "no."

I don't know how many public officials or candidates have ridden the Davenport buses recently, but they should. I did recently and learned a lot while talking with the drivers and the riders. More was learned when discussing the problems with other Davenport citizens who don't take the bus.

If we want to make Davenport thrive, improvements must be made. I've already begun working on a public-private partnership for heated bus shelters. However, the hours and days have to be expanded. Some people haven't taken jobs because of the limited transportation. I know some ministers who'd be happy to see new faces at the services. Meanwhile, stores and entertainment centers would see a boost in sales, and Davenport would see more revenue from sales taxes.

Nearly 5,000 people ride daily. That is a lot of commercial activity.

We know the City of Davenport wants to attract young professionals and has steadily been improving the downtown area partly with that intent.

There are great minds in this city. Let's use them to find solutions. We have the money if we use financial resources smartly. Perhaps Scott County and Rock Island County can team up for a regional transportation authority.

We need a public transportation system that will take people from where they live to where they work and where they want to spend time. The bottom line is that we have a good system now, but we can and must make it better.

Bob Babcock
Davenport

Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said last week that state government's backlog of unpaid bills will hit $8.5 billion by the end of December, up from about $6 billion right now.

That's a headline-grabbing number, since the end of December is not exactly the greatest time for people and companies that are owed money by the state. The state's bill backlog was about $8 billion this past January, right after most of the 2011 state-income-tax hike expired. But the backlog fell to $3.5 billion by the end of July, and just $2.3 billion of those bills were more than 30 days overdue.

But let's take a look at another estimate Comptroller Munger released last week. The comptroller totaled state spending from last fiscal year that isn't currently being mandated by federal and state court decrees (Medicaid bills, state employee and judicial salaries, etc.), continuing appropriations (bond and pension payments, legislative salaries), signed appropriations bills (K-12 education), and other things, and came up with $4.3 billion.

The $4.3 billion is the total amount that was paid out last year but is not currently being sent to colleges and universities, state-employee health-care providers, non-Medicaid social-service providers, MAP Grant college-student-aid recipients, and lottery winners over $25,000, plus various "transfers out," including to local governments for things such as motor-fuel-tax distributions.

Eventually, that money will have to be paid in full or in part, or significant portions of the state are gonna be in a big world of hurt.

In the forests of India, something exciting is going on. Villagers are regaining property taken from them when the British colonial authorities nationalized their forests. Just as exciting, in urban Kenya and elsewhere, people are doing away with the need for banks by exchanging and saving their money digitally. All over the world, poor people are discovering the blessings of bottom-up capitalism.

Sadly, though, developed-country governments and anti-poverty activists ignore this fact and insist that developing nations need a paternalistic hand up. Both are missing an opportunity, because there are billions of capitalists in waiting at the bottom of the pyramid.

Later this month, the United Nations will formally announce the successors to its Millennium Development Goals, the global body's approach to poverty alleviation since the year 2000. These new goals will be touted as "sustainable." The event will coincide with a visit by the pope, at which he is expected to concentrate on climate change and materialism as the greatest threats to the welfare of the people of the developing world.

Don't expect to hear much on the way people in the Western world lifted themselves out of poverty: free-market capitalism.