March 2009 – Page 3 – The Reticulator

Bicycle stimulus

Mar 102009

The Battle Creek Enquirer tells us that Calhoun County (where I live) is going to get $3 million in stimulus spending, and Governor Granholm is requiring $300,000 of it to be spent on a bike path along Columbia Avenue. The county commissioners are outraged at this, as they should be. It’s a bad decision, and it’s a bad way of making decisions. It may be the result of lobbying by bicycle activists, but it’s not a good thing for bicyclists — at least not for those who use their bicycles for transportation.

Our county’s roads are in terrible shape. I’m told the county has gotten a new highway commissioner in the past year, and some of the things I’ve heard about new equipment and methods for maintaining the roads seem to indicate a good attempt at better maintenance than we’ve had in the past. But this is a step in the wrong direction. Money spent on resurfacing roads would in many cases do a lot more for bicyclists than would money spent on a bike path.

I’ve blogged about this topic of bike paths vs roads before, in “Bike paths and falling bridges,” and over at The Spokesrider, in “Multi-use trails in Holmes County.” In the first of these articles I talked about the bike path in the above photo, which is one of the most pointless I’ve ever seen. It’s an example of where the money should have been spent on the road instead. A bike path along Columbia Avenue wouldn’t be pointless — but it still wouldn’t be the best thing for bicyclists.

Close to my home, some of the roads are so pot-holed that we now drive extra miles to avoid the worst sections. The alternate routes only add about 2/3 of a mile to a trip toward town, and 1/2 of a mile on my commute to work, so I can’t complain a lot. But even the alternate routes have potholes. Even on the alternates, there are places where I fear that the pothole avoidance will cause an accident someday. And when I’m riding them on my bicycle, I don’t like the idea that cars will be too busy swerving around the craters in the road to notice a bicycler who is doing the same.

BTW, in general I am not writing my legislators regarding stimulus funding. Some of that funding, if spent in the right places, would be of direct benefit to me in my place of employment. But I find it highly improper to lobby my legislators for money to be spent on my job. It’s a huge conflict of interest to say, “Please, please, spend money on X. It would make the world a better place, and oh, by the way, it would help keep my job in existence.” The idea that it’s improper to lobby for things of monetary benfit to one’s self is an ethic that needs to be adopted more widely, otherwise we’ll continue to have problems like that described in the WSJ in “When Congress Spends, Worse Is Better.”

I’m not sure it’s right for me to lobby for better bicycle routes, either, since there would be so much of ME to what I say. But if I were to do so, as a bicyclist I would lobby for more money to be spent fixing our roads, and doing it in a way to make them bicyclable, too. (And that means taking it easy on installing rumble strips, which sometimes make riding difficult or dangerous.)

Explaining Obama

Uncategorized No Responses »

Mar 072009

Sam Schulman compares Obama to Hamlet in the March 9 issue of The Weekly Standard.

To the untutored eye, the Obama administration can seem merely lazy. Economic stimulus? Let Nancy do it. Give a heavyweight like Bob Gates a job that would affront the dignity of a Guildenstern–make him plead with the Europeans to help us in Afghanistan, but force him to admit that his boss hasn’t made up his mind about whether to protect NATO members against the new Iranian/North Korean missiles. Close Guantánamo one of these days soon, decide even later what to do with its population. But it’s not laziness; it’s the way that a Hamlet thinks the world works. To a Hamlet, a leader like himself “who can inspire the American people to rally behind a common purpose” issues a decree. And that’s all that needs to be done.

For Hamlet and Obama, leadership is something that one can imagine or speechify oneself into. Hamlet feels that the only thing that stops him from being as effective a king as Fortinbras–or the Player-king–is that he lacks their sincerity and self-delusion. Obama thinks that being FDR is a matter of making FDR-like speeches–so FDR-like that Richard Cohen had a vision of an amber cigarette-holder while Obama spoke! He needn’t bother to study how FDR connived, threatened, charmed, lied, and manipulated to get his way.

But is this really the key to understanding Obama? It might be, but who knows? I’ve called him an empty suit, but really, I don’t know if that’s the key, either. We’re all trying to figure him out.

Obama is not the first president to be in way over his head. Several others have been, too. And some of those soon learned to swim.

IBut in this case it’s new territory not just for him, but for all of us. We’ve never before elected a president who was so lacking in both administrative and legislative experience. So we’ll all have to keep coming up with our theories to explain him and his actions. Eventually, it may become clear just which one has the most explanatory power.

More time with family

Sustainability No Responses »

Mar 052009

I wonder if the Obamanites have lost confidence in their ability to blame Bush for all of the economic troubles:

The person Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wanted as his chief deputy withdrew from consideration Thursday, dealing a setback to the agency as it struggles to address the worst financial crisis in decades… “a personal decision” to withdraw from the process, according to a person familiar with her decision … No tax problems or other issues arose during Nazareth’s vetting… Geithner has been criticized for staffing his department too slowly…Five weeks into his tenure, he has yet to name a single top deputy or assistant secretary. This has left Treasury with too few people authorized to make decisions or represent the department in meetings with stakeholders. — AP article on Yahoo News

Dunno if that would explain this one, though:

Earlier Thursday, an administration official said Gupta “was under serious consideration for the job of surgeon general. He has removed himself from consideration to focus more on his medical career and his family. We know he will continue to serve and educate the public through his work with media and in the medical arena.”

The political dominance of capital cities

Limits on government power, Stimulus spending No Responses »

Mar 022009

The Democrats seem determined to give Congressional voting representation to the District of Columbia, whether it’s legal or not. I suppose it’s bound to happen sooner or later. It’s just another step in the process of giving a greater role to those who govern, whose center is in the capital city.

The Hatch Act, which had been a check on the political power of the governing class, was gutted during the Clinton administration. But it started long before that.

King Banion, in an article titled, “It’s good to be the king’s castle,” points out that the role of the capital city grew along with the New Deal during the 1930s, as shown by a population growth that exceeded even that during the 1940s when there was a world war to fight. New York’s economy is now shrinking along with those of many other cities, while that of Washington D.C. is growing. According to Business Week, “While New York Bleeds, Washington Thrives.”

As the nation’s most populous metro area feels Wall Street’s pain, the fourth-largest—Washington—is barely sensing the recession. In fact, Moody’s Economy.com estimates that metro Washington’s economy will actually grow 2.5% from mid-2008 through mid-2010. New York’s economy is expected to shrink 4.2%.

It wouldn’t be the first time that Washington benefited from a national crisis. Back in 1930 the District of Columbia was a quiet Southern town, scoffed at by New York sophisticates. But as the federal government ramped up to fight first the Great Depression and then World War II, its population grew 65% in two decades, vs. just 14% for New York City.

It’s in the nature of government for this to happen. A capital city that does not rule over the provinces, whose representatives in turn carry tribute to it, is a historical and geopolitical anomaly. In Russia, Moscow is magnificently wealthy while the other oblasts and districts are desperately poor. The history of France is the history of Paris consolidating its power over the provinces and imposing its culture and language on them, and then obliterating them during the French Revolution.

The placing of our U.S. capital in a non-state was part of a unique compromise that was designed allay the jealousy of states that didn’t want Philadelphia or any other city given a position of power and primacy over the others. The proper thing to do now would be to extend this policy with additional reforms. Some possibilities:

Reverse the Clinton era gutting of the Hatch act and go a step further by disenfranchising all federal government workers during the period when they work for the government.
Require all government buildings to be quonset huts. At one time when our nation was barely a nation, it was necessary to build imposing marble structures to overawe the public and make people willing to submit to a national government. The national government is now very well established. Mission accomplished, and then some. Now it’s time to go in the other direction. Now it’s time for public servants to have to look up out of their quonset huts at those whom they are supposed to serve, instead of looking down at them out of the windows of their edifices on high hills (like the Federal Building in Battle Creek, Michigan). It might instill a better attitude in federal workers.

But what’s likely to happen under the Obama administration is quite the opposite. The historical picture I get with each new proposal of this administration is one like this:

It’s from the Titus arch in Rome, and depicts the result of the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Institutions which were seen as a threat to the power of Rome were destroyed, and the booty hauled to the capital city in triumphal procession to enrich the governing class, while crumbs were thrown to the plebians of that capital so they could take part vicariously. There were many other triumphal processions in ancient capital cities. Conquered kings were led in chains in front of the cheering spectators, who were given a part of the spoils. But it was not just in ancient times. Think of banking and auto executives now being made to humiliate themselves before their Congressional overlords, and the giddy crowds cheering on inauguration day.

Once upon a time Calvin Cooledge could say “The business of America is business.” But now, more than ever, we have to say, “The business of America is government.” Giving a vote in Congress to the capital city will help establish that fact and make it irrevocable.

Newer Entries