Across the Great Divide

All I Really Need to Know, I Learned on a Bicycle.

"The stereotypes from 10 years ago are not the stereotypes of today," Pflaum said.
– Strib

Though I often pounce here on intolerance, selfishness and injustice, don't get the wrong idea. I habitually scan the universe for hopeful signs.

None have emanated lately from the White House, the Pentagon or the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is one thing...

Mitch Berg is riding his bicycle to work.

It's not as earthshaking as Katherine Kersten marshalling the Gay Pride Parade or as unlikely as Bill Cooper investing in Joel Kramer's online news venture, but it cheers me more than both of these combined.

It will be good for him.

True, the exercise and fresh air we cyclists take in can lead to irrational exuberance. After a ride, I once imagined that President Bush's bike escapades might prove salubrious to the nation. Okay, maybe not. But I remain firm in this belief: It's virtually impossible to use a bike for transportation without growing more tolerant, flexible, generous and joyful.

Unless you were a total saint to start with.

Notice, I said "bike for transportation" — not racing, triathlon training or any other use that requires spandex, logos and titanium components.

For several years I've been weaning myself from routinely using a car. This doesn't require retiring the Jag and becoming a hemp-wearing cyclo-centric fanatic. It does mean making driving a conscious choice. Every time. Before going somewhere, I simply ask myself, do I need to drive?

Sometimes the answer is still yes, but less often than most Americans would imagine. Here's a sample of the week's transit decisions:

Sunday: Light rail from the airport to downtown; hitching a ride the rest of the way from a neighbor.

Monday: Grocery run for two 12-packs of soda, cat food, smoothie fruit and rice & beans makings. "Will you be driving up, sir?" (No, I'm on my bike.)

Tuesday: 90° and humid. Road bike to the office downtown, then to a planning meeting across town. Got home and discovered a letter I meant to mail. Biked it to the nearest mail box to beat the 5:00 pickup by a minute.

Wednesday: Had planned to bike to a meeting in St. Paul that was cancelled late Tuesday. Made a quick morning tee time, and rode to the course on the errand bike, with clubs and shoes. Later, biked to the store to pick up staples, dinner makings and 28 pounds of cat litter. ("Will you be driving up, sir?") Had to return some potatoes with hidden rot; bike again.

Thursday: Meeting in St. Paul with potential client I'm meeting for the first time. Decided I needed to drive.

Admittedly, my schedule isn't yours. This approach might not turn out well for a garage door installer or a working single mother with three kids. But I'm not trying to convert everyone, just inviting you to consider how convention, habit and convenience blind us to perfectly workable alternatives.

Notice how many minor complications presented themselves — distance and timing, weather, sizes of the loads, abrupt change of plans, decorum of a quasi-business meeting, carrying papers and clothes, last-minute errand, unfamiliar route and uncertain travel time,  and "no one bikes to a golf course." Each sent a subliminal signal to hop in the car, and no one would fault me for so responding.

But by conditioning myself to ask instead, "How can I do this?," each otherwise routine or obligatory trip contained the potential for a tiny adventure.

When I did take the car on Thursday, funneling through the 394/94  bottleneck toward St. Paul, it gradually dawned on me that I was driving differently — as if I were still on the bike: 

• Taking only the necessities. My phone and Daytimer. I don't show up with that ubiquitous black leather Tuomi bag any more.
• Leaving ample time for the trip. My former self would wait until past the last minute and then speed to my destination, heart pumping from stress instead of exertion. A bike offers no such option to kick it up 20 mph higher if you're running late.
• Staying closely attuned to the other cars and what they were likely to do next, giving room and yielding without taking offense. A bike's vulnerability engrains this essential behavior.
• Keeping the radio off.

Like I said, it will be good for him.

Raising Cattle and Lowering Taxes.

Norwegianity quotes a New York Times Select column by Timothy Egan that decries how farm subsidies give disproportionate payments to corporate farmers and rancher-investors who think tack is something you do on a sailboat.

But government checks aren't the only feed in the trough for the Wall Street Cowboys.

Jake Dalla did well as a heavy equipment operator. Now he wants to be a rancher, turning 450 acres he owns outside Durango, Colorado, into grazing land. No matter it's better suited for, well, nothing at the moment. Getting it redesignated for agricultural use will save him plenty in taxes until the market becomes right to develop homesites for people flocking to the trendy region.

That's because vacant land is assessed at market value. Agricultural land is taxed based on its productive capacity. In Dalla's case for one 40-acre parcel, that's the difference between a valuation of $160,000 or $920.

If you think all those rich folks are buying up ranches just because they like to ride horsies, I've got some parched land in Wyoming to sell you.

Good News, Bad News on Transportation.

Minnesota ranks next  to California as having the worst urban interstate traffic congestion in the nation, according to a study by the libertarian Reason Foundation. That's the headline you're likely to hear, and possibly the only takeaway you'll get from news reports.

But of course, it's not that simple or I wouldn't be writing about it.

Minnesota also ranks in fifth for deficient bridges and fourth for fatality rate, which sounds bad, but is actually good. We rank first (best) for rural interstate roads in poor condition, but drop to 17th once you get off the freeway.

On overall performance, Minnesota ranks 13th, which is close to our spending on maintenance (15th highest), but far better than our total highway spending per mile (21st highest).

North Dakota ranks first overall. It would be unneighborly to suggest reasons why.

New Jersey ranks worst overall, 48th in urban congestion, and has among the highest proportion of roads and bridges in poor condition. Yet it spends far and away the most per mile — 7.8 times the national average. Price tag of neglect? Or of having to hire New Jersey contractors?

You can see the state-by-state highlights summarized here.

The "free-market environmentalist" Thoreau Institute notes that per capita miles of driving have tripled since the Interstate Highway System was created,  while the share of personal incomes spent on driving has remained stable. Gas taxes are much lower per mile than two generations ago.

In other words, while new roads, suburban growth and dismantled transit systems certainly contributed to Americans driving more, we also did it because we could afford to.

How much longer will that be true?

Property Taxes: Not All Suburbs Are Equal.

The Pioneer Press cites a report that in 2004, metro-area residents paid one-third more of their personal income in property taxes than residents in the rest of the state.

Most Minnesotans would agree this isn't fair. Add to the unfairness that property taxes are rising overall because of reduced state aid to local governments, and it's no wonder property tax relief was one of the issues both parties said they wanted to fix last legislative session.

So why didn't they? Because a giant philosophical fault line underlies the agreement

From a progressive viewpoint, property tax reform must address this question: How do we assure roughly equivalent government services statewide while reducing disparities between individuals' tax levels and abilities to pay? That suggests relying more on other types of taxes and sharing prosperity.

The fix is simpler from a conservative perspective. You cut taxes and government — and let local communities fend for themselves. But as the story by reporter Bill Saulsbury suggests, that's not working for a number of aging suburban communities with neither the tax base to fund their needs nor the political clout to pull in shrinking state funds.

The 2007 tax bill that would have provided increased aid to local governments — and helped lower property taxes — was vetoed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who has heard from upset officials in Minneapolis, St. Paul and many cities outstate. But few suburban officials complained, says the story, because there was little in the bill for them anyway.

Meanwhile, hostility against property taxes is rising and local governments have fewer tools available to develop local fixes.

Read the article for a good overview of the developing suburban tax squeeze. This issue isn't going away.

Multiple Choice: Bush, Coleman, Pawlenty.

Dr. Peter R. Orszag, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, testified before Congress yesterday, saying that the revenue effects of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 are "roughly size of the federal deficit today.”

It's not like the Bush tax cuts caused the deficit. GOP spending — including out-of-control earmarks and that little thing called Iraq — bear a great deal of responsibility. But the implication is that without Bush's tax cuts, we could have paid for Mr. Bush's war. Or maybe some better stuff for the country.

I got the link to Orszag's testimony in an email that attempted to relate the Bush deficit to "the state deficit whose existence [Gov. Pawlenty] set out to 'cure' with massive cuts in social spending." As tempting as the parallel might be to draw, the fact is, Minnesota cannot pass an unbalanced budget  or operate from a deficit — though it can borrow through bonding for capital projects such as roads.

Rather than try to tie Pawlenty to Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, we should hold him accountable for his own cunning.

Two and a half years ago, Britt Robson neatly summarized Gov. Tim Pawlenty's "solution" to a budget crisis he helped create:

In some ways the checkered two-year reign of Tim Pawlenty has looked less like an exercise in governance than a deliberate and increasingly harrowing game of chicken. Since famously signing on to the Taxpayers League of Minnesota's "no new taxes" pledge during his 2002 gubernatorial run — a classic instance of a politician being led in shackles to exactly the spot where he meant to stand all along — Pawlenty has remained steadfast in his commitment to austerity now and forever. His first budget cycle, in 2003, found the state facing a $4.2 billion hole in its finances that Pawlenty himself, as a tax-hawking member of the state legislature, had been instrumental in creating.

Pawlenty balanced that first biennial budget with a flurry of fiscal derring-do that left many legislators and onlookers alike to sort out later what had actually happened:

* $2 billion in cuts to state services

* more than a $1 billion taking of onetime monies, most of it from the tobacco settlement fund

* the imposition of approximately $400 million in additional user fees

* the shifting of more than $150 million worth of obligations onto local property taxpayers

* and the juggling of hundreds of millions more dollars through various accounting shifts and delayed payment arrangements.

The Robson piece also provided an apt historical reminder. As a tax warrior in the legislature, Pawlenty may have helped create a revenue shortfall that necessitated program cuts (the start of the recession also contributed), but he had no intention of dealing with the consequences.

Until Dick Cheney reached out to him and suggested he move aside for Norm Coleman, Pawlenty was ready to run for the Senate against Paul Wellstone. He'd planned to be in Washington when things hit the fan in Minnesota.

In the short term, he had to make a little lemonade out of those bushels of lemons he dropped on our doorstep. But who would you rather be today: George Bush, Norm Coleman or Tim Pawlenty?

Get This Man a Lawyer!

I'm no expert on court room strategy, but it looks to me like double-murderer Steven Van Keuren is setting up grounds for an appeal on the basis of incompetent legal representation with this exchange:

Van Keuren testified that he heard police break into the home and he sat bleeding, facing the bedroom door, hoping they would shoot and kill him.

"You still were alive?" asked his attorney, Matthew Ludt.

"Yes," Van Keuren replied.

Par in the Headlights.

You had to get the print edition of today's Strib to see Par Ridder caught by photographer Glenn Stubbe in a Ramsey County District Court lobby.

My grab of Ritter's thousand-mile stare, as he stands alone but surrounded by Avista executives, only begins to do it justice.

Today, MPR reported Ritter:

acknowledged taking 18 to 20 spreadsheets containing sensitive data on advertising, finances and personnel when he was hired in March. But he said he intended to use them only to re-create the forms with Star Tribune data.

But he became frustrated with "how long it was taking Star Tribune staff to recreate them and load them with the paper's data," MPR reported, so he gave the Pioneer Press spreadsheets — numbers and all — to at least two other Star Tribune officials.

Let's get this straight. He took his former employer's proprietary data, didn't return it when asked, and later justifies his action as simply wanting to duplicate the reporting format. Since he only took the files for that reason, he must've had a premonition that it would take the Strib staff a long time to do it. But then why be frustrated about something he'd expected?

Or...

*****
As a businessman, I was a pretty lenient sort, trusting more to karma than the courts to mete out cosmic justice. That approach worked for me, but I'd seen respected colleagues burned by partners and employees who operated on an ethical plane that ate trust for breakfast and then crapped it in the foyer. [The ***** indicates I'm talking about my experience, not Ritter here, but take the contiguity as you will.]

So when we hired a senior exec with a non-compete agreement, as the potentially sued party, I took pains to find out what it said. Funny, though. The previous employer said, get it from the guy, and the guy said he didn't have a copy.

I tried a different tack with the ex-employer. I want to respect the terms, I said, but if I don't know what's in it, I might inadvertently violate it. Just so we understand each other, why don't you send me a copy? Your new guy knows what's in it, I was told.

This should've been my cue to run in the opposite direction, but sometimes I get the crazy notion that being alert, honest and fair is all it takes to remain in fate's good graces.

I never did see the noncompete, but we signed the guy — with our own non-compete, of course — and we steered clear of trouble on that score. But things got interesting in a different way.

The guy turned out to be more show than go, and he never brought in a drop of new business. Eventually, he started to annoy an important client that had originally okayed hiring him. It was time to cut him loose.

One of the assets he was supposed to turn in upon termination was a company laptop. Well, he was in another city and he asked for a couple weeks grace period. We gave it to him.

When we got the computer back and went to clean up the hard drive, we found some interesting things. Things he'd probably meant to clear from the computer during those two weeks, but being a superficial type, hadn't thoroughly erased.

He'd developed some new business, all right, but he was doing it on the side. And that wasn't the only thing he was doing on the side.

Contracts are nice, but my advice? Look at the hard drive if  you really want to know a man.

Why Journalists — and Admen — are Liberals.

Eric Black writes that "a solid majority of so-called mainstream journalists are liberals" and later asks,  "If you think you know the reason, please advise."

I blog, therefore, I think I know. Or vice versa.

My theory has to do with the nature of the job and the nature of liberals. First, some background that informs my opinion.

I've spent a little time inside a big city newspaper, but any insight I bring comes from my 25-plus years of working for corporate America, helping conservative organizations and executives sell their products, services and ideas. I've worked for bomb makers, insurance companies, banks and investment brokerages, motorsports manufacturers, power companies, accountants, pest control services, engineering firms, health management organizations and medical technology companies. In all those cases and more, I got along with people in power who paid me and my firm good money, despite the fact that I was likely politically to the left of every single one of them.

Based on my experience, and knowing many competitors, I'd venture that a solid majority of advertising people are liberals, too. And like journalists, they do their jobs mostly with enthusiasm and rarely with personal political bias creeping in.

How can I say that? Well, because that's the job, and the terms of keeping the job are defined by institutions — and the clients or publishers who run them. In most cases, these institutions are far more conservative than the individuals working for them — especially those in creative roles.

But why would creative, liberal people go into such work where they might have to suppress their political leanings? And why would not conservative institutions disproportionately hire conservative communicators?

Why, it's the free market at work!

Although they might not put it exactly this way, these organizations have likely figured out that a conservative will give you a good argument, but a liberal will give you a good solution.

Conservatives (at least, my former clients) are pretty good at vetting and identifying weaknesses in a creative product. A liberal mindset is more attuned to sucking up all kinds of information and trying it in different combinations. If you think there's only one solution to a problem, you don't belong in an agency. And if you think you'll never be sued, you shouldn't be running a major corporation.

Liberals may be more attracted to lines of work in which they are exposed to new ideas and challenged to come up with new ones themselves. They may be more comfortable with a job where every  day is different — in fact, should be different. But I think the explanation for the preponderance of liberals in these lines of work may be even simpler.

Doctrinaire thinkers — of any stripe — simply won't perform as well. And weeding out the non-performers is a fine conservative value.

Smash and Gasp.

Coming back into town, I find a car has been stolen late at night from a neighboring retirement center and driven through the front door of the Super America.

The booty?

Twenty cartons of Kents.

No beer. No Doritos. Not even a couple cartons of Marlboros.

Police are are divided on whether the perp suffers from extreme brand loyalty or a severe meth habit.

Cheney's Brain: A Legacy of Little Strokes?

The Washington Post's series on Vice President Dick Cheney is compelling reading, and it has two more installments to go [parts one and two, more extensive than the versions in the Strib, are here].

A question I've often pondered about the Vice President's health is posed in an online Q&A with series co-author Barton Gellman. Gellman, who has worked on this story for about a year, chooses not to speculate on Cheney's health and repeats what he says in print — Cheney has remained consistent; it's his access to power to that's the difference:

Preston, Minn.: I have seen patients that have had startling and profound personality changes following coronary events and other life threatening health problems. Has there been any evidence Cheney has had such an effect? I remember reading a quote by someone to the effect he is no longer the person he once was.

Barton Gellman: There have been two main grounds of speculation that Cheney has changed fundamentally: grave health threats and the experience of 9/11 itself. We can't see inside his head, so we can't know. But I don't think you need either theory. Cheney's views have been remarkably stable over the years; what's changed is his power to apply them. Brent Scowcroft famously said "Dick Cheney, I don't know any more" (that's pretty close if not verbatim). I'd submit that the Dick Cheney he knew had about the same views in the first Bush administration, but lost many of the internal debates to Scowcroft, Jim Baker and of course President Bush (41) himself.   

In other words, we shouldn't worry about diminished capacity or personality disorder, because the Vice President seems to be operating according to long-held principles. But talk to people who spend their days with heart patients instead of Washington politics, and you may hear a more cautionary view.
 
Years ago, a cardiologist friend  remarked how the nation might be truly worried if they could see a scan of Cheney's brain. Cheney has long suffered from serious arterial disease, most recently manifested in a deep vein thrombosis in March. Both his condition and the effects of surgical treatment could starve the blood supply to regions of the brain.
 
Earlier this year, The New Republic said as much:

"Wear and tear on your arteries is converted to wear and tear on your brain," says Merrill Elias, an epidemiologist and psychologist with Boston University and the University of Maine specializing in the heart-brain connection. "People develop infarcts — areas of the brain that are dead because they've been deprived of blood supply. They have little strokes they're not even aware of."

[...]

"Very often, the symptoms of vascular dementia's cognitive impairment are brought on by stress," notes Elias, adding that such troubles are often "accompanied by anger and mood changes."
 
[...]
 
 A 2003 study by researchers at the University of Maryland, meanwhile, showed that patients suffering from peripheral artery disease performed significantly worse than others on seven tests measuring a range of cognitive abilities, including concentration, manual dexterity, and executive function (the ability to control one's behavior by managing other brain functions like complex problem-solving and emotional response).

I've scanned historical photos of Cheney, trying to determine whether his characteristic left-sided snarl is a long-standing expression or might be evidence of one of those little strokes. Hard to say conclusively, but it seems to make an early appearance in this photo from 1987, a year before his third heart attack and quadruple bypass surgery.
 
It might be comforting to assign Cheney's dark performance as Vice President to undisclosed health issues. But the terrible truth may be America got exactly what it elected — George W. Bush propped up between Dick Cheney and Karl Rove — and it was the nation that suffered the silent series of strokes that now imperil us.