Across the Great Divide

Why "Threshold Economic Principles" Aren't Selling.

Spot pokes fun at Craig Westover — again.

Reading Westover lately reminds me of my early days as a freelancer, when the game was to see how many times you could rewrite the same article and resell it.

Westover wrings yet one more post out of the notion that progressives fight dirty because they fail to acknowledge "threshold economic principles." This forces conservatives to argue about the details of tax and spending plans, where they lose because... well, free market economic principles have not had a great record when it comes to fixing potholes and helping poor little kids get breakfast.

My favorite Westover reworking of an old line is this:

The dollar spent by the government is an unearned dollar not spent by the person who earned it. The dollar used by the state to “create a job” is a dollar not available to the person who earned it to create a job, support an existing job or invest so as to allow someone else to create a job.

With the help of a good editor, he might have said something like this:

A dollar spent by the government might create a job that wasn't there before. But the job isn't a "new" job, in my view, because no matter who spent it, the dollar would have contributed to employment somewhere.

Even a liberal could agree with that. But the man just can't stop himself — and goes on about how nonessential government spending is nonessential spending, and it's nonessential because:

When government subsidizes something because the market will not support it, government is diverting capital from its most efficient use to a lesser use and the community as a whole loses, which is hardly a line to pull us out of a recession.

You know, like how foolish it is to spend money on public education because those highly efficient securitized mortgages are a so much better deal for the investor — not to mention for the community as a whole.

We've just been through a couple decades in which the objective of the smart money was not to create jobs, but to exploit the fault lines, chinks and timing of complex financial markets. And that is what makes the Captain's free market principles so hard to swallow right now.

Discomfort is in the Eye of the Beholder.

I can't speak for when Mitch Pearlstein's experiences on Hennepin Avenue, but his offices at the Center of the American Experiment place him at the scene. Consequently, it seems odd he can't summon personal experience to illustrate Hennepin Avenue: One Mean Street. Instead, he makes generic references to  vaguely specificied past horrors.

I'm happy to stand corrected if I'm wrong. But I've spoken to any number of women as well as men over the years who say they feel a lot less comfortable on Hennepin than they do on other signature streets such as Fifth Avenue in New York, Michigan Avenue in Chicago and Connecticut Avenue in Washington.

Of course, it's possible he doesn't have any good stories about how bad it is downtown. Neither do I, despite working downtown for 15 years, walking to lunches and client meetings, attending Timberwolves games as a season ticket holder, and passing through as a runner, cyclist and transit rider.

I won't say there aren't issues downtown, but a lot of discomfort is designed in.

First of all, the skyways siphon off most of the street life. When streets are for traffic, people lose. Lack of a diverse human presence on the street creates unease — especially if the only people left on the street are the poor, the destitute and the criminal.

Second, street level facades without windows or regular foot traffic are forbidding. Block E and City Center, the two suburban-style downtown developments closest to Mitch's office, turn their backs to the street. Many businesses along Hennepin are only alive at night, including bars and theaters. Add to that entrances that only lead to elevator banks or parking ramps, and you have Gaza-in-the-making — where streets feel like blast wall-lined gauntlets instead of places where it's safe or enjoyable to stop.

And a lot more is in the eye of the beholder.

Ride an inner city bus once and it might be scary. Ride it more often and it's routine. Drive through the North Side once, and you'll have shields up the whole way. Bike through it daily and you'll say hi to people.

If you live in a city, accept responsibility for your fears. Respect the people you meet. And don't be stupid. Otherwise, you'll be like my commenter of the day.

Hennepin Ave in and around block E is disgusting. My wife and daughter are in the entertainment business, and frequently are downtown in the evening. There is absolutely no reason that groups of mannerless, vulgar, loud mouth, in-your-face, push-it-to-the-limit black youths should be allowed to loiter, and pollute our city. Add to this the uber-panhandlers that refuse to let my wife pass without giving her a hard time. And other exepiences such as where one 'sister' decided it would be 'funny' to open my daughter's car door, while she was stopped for the light at 6th and Hennepin. IT'S OUR CITY. THE OTHER 99.5% OF THE CITIZENS IN MINNEAPOLIS HAVE GOOD MANNERS. SEND THIS SCUM HOME!

posted by dgb049

Of course, Discordian Stooge has total dispensation to disagree on this.

And Norwegianity points out the Robocop subtext of Mitch's meanderings.

UPDATE: And I neglected one other obvious design factor related to discomfort downtown. Don't be female.

Spreading Toxins.

We were assured securitized mortgages and more exotic financial instruments were spreading risk. Actually, they were spreading smallpox.

Why This Just Might Take Awhile.

Three times, I've started novels, and twice before, they never got finished. These efforts have been sufficiently spaced in time that the writing was done using different technologies.

The first was composed using a typewriter and sheets of newsprint. That meant any page requiring significant revision had to be retyped from the start, which encouraged even more revision. This laborious process was not responsible for the novel's incompletion. I was freelancing and had a lot of spare time. It was a coming of age novel, and in the writing, I discovered I had not yet come of age.

Having learned my lesson, years later I started what I called my potboiler. It had no literary pretensions but it did have a pretty good premise and explored a world of intrigue that most writers never attempt because holding a corporate job long enough to learn the real twists and turns of business is harder than making up stuff about international spies or serial killers.

Anyway, this time, I came into work several hours early each morning and wrote on an early "office automation system" my company had developed. It had a word processing system that at the time was competing with the centralized typing pool. My files were stored on a central server somewhere, and I could print them out on a tractor-feed printer.

My son was born before I got even halfway, and that changed everything in my days. Eventually, the company discontinued the system, and an alert department secretary asked me if I wanted her to print out a copy before all the tapes were scrubbed.

For a long time, the draft sat in a box. I started it up again much later, but world events had moved on to make the central plot device much less original. So had technology. OCR scanning the old paper version into my computer proved to be more than I was ready to take on. And an even bigger problem was I was no longer the same writer.

Novel number three is now under way, and there are even more miraculous tools for turning words into books. Research is also considerably easier. But using an internet-connected computer also poses hazards.

For example, today I wondered if a character would refer to a Quaker Oats container as a "box." Instead of just calling it a box, since it is not a significant point, I decided to search for terms people might use and came across this video.

Then another, by the same creator.

Then, of course, I had to write about this. Meeting the video creator was a gift. I'm just not sure it was any help.

Who Deserves Help When Disaster Strikes?

With the Red River still yet to crest, the Strib commenters rush in. One theme is that some people "deserve" help and others don't.

No need to guess who's who. The comments start off with this exchange [click link above for full comment]:

People should be able to live where they want and be responsible for where they live as long as they don't look to the Feds for help. If the North Dakota government wants to provide assistance for their own people for the choices they have made, so bet [sic] it.

posted by nomeds on Mar. 27, 09 at 7:48 AM

[...] At least the people along the Red River use the fed money to fortify their flood defenses. New Orleans used the fed money to build river boat gambling operations and yacht slips. Also, there will be no blame of Obama for the flooding along the Red like Bush was blamed for Katrina. The people along the Red are fighting the disaster to save their cities. The people of New Orleans used the Katrina disaster to riot, loot, rape and murder. If anyone deserves federal aid, it's the people along the Red - they've earned the right to get help.

posted by pdempsey on Mar. 27, 09 at 8:00 AM

There's a morality play in pdempsey's version of the two floods. New Orleans spent money on playtime for the rich, while the 9th Ward poor rioted; the good people of the Red River Valley suited up and stacked sand bags. The subtext of race and class is inescapable.

I won't try to untangle everything in that comparison — including his statements about crime that even Michelle Malkin says are false — but... there's a significant difference between:

• self-organizing defense against a rising river on the edge of farm country — and doing it in a poor urban community in the face of a Category 4 hurricane where the ocean meets the largest river in America.
• driving to safety where your neighbors look like you do — and having your escape on foot blocked by suburban police who don't want you to enter.
• being able to reach a functioning store when you need food and water — and being caught where aid isn't coming, stores are abandoned and remaining law enforcement is busy protecting the casinos.
• living middle class in a well-run state — and living poor in a corrupt state.

Last week, I saw Trouble the Water, a documentary of Katrina's arrival in New Orleans and the aftermath. It challenges assumptions about people in the 9th Ward, by providing depth and texture that simply can't be conveyed through a TV news camera.

One moment that stuck with me. A well-meaning National Guardsman from Oregon reclining with his unit outside an abandoned school building tells the camera,  "No offense to civilian people, but they have no idea how to survive."

On one level, he may have a point. But he's saying it in front of people we have watched surviving without the backing of the government, without guns and vehicles, without any of the resources that keep him comfortable and them barred from an empty, decommissioned military base inside the city.

No offense to military people, but their training on how to survive relates to a different set of problems.

From relative comfort, it's easy to spot the unworthy. Out here in Colorado, we see stories about people who head into the back country without sufficient preparation and think they are idiots when they require rescue. We insured non-smokers have trouble mustering sympathy for uninsured smokers who face the high costs of cancer treatment. Secure in our homes, we herd those who face foreclosure into the not-okay corral.

This is natural. Our "tribe" gets smaller under scarcity and stress. Some people stock up on ammo, but just about everyone will start mentally counting the cans on the shelf, the gallons in the tank and the dollars under the mattress.

From the distant sidelines of the Red River flood, it's worth reflecting: Will America have to decide who has "earned the right" to get help? And how would we know?

Shoving Perversion Down Society's Throat.

Osseo schools got hit with a king-size legal bill -- $460,143 -- in its fight to keep a Maple Grove High School student-run gay-rights group from having the same privileges as other, officially approved, school clubs.

— Star Tribune

Reading the comments attached to this story, I wonder if all those people who "canceled their subscriptions" because of liberal bias are the only ones still reading the paper. Angry, intolerant sorts certainly seem to make up a disproportionate number of commenters.

Here's one of my favorites:

Gay activist trash - Quit demanding public santion of your perversion! I'm tired of Gays shoving their perversion down societies throat! Demanding we "approve" of their lifestyle. Nobody is stopping you from practicing your immorality, so quit acting like your being discriminated against. Bunch of trouble making whiny brats, now trying to bankrupt struggling schools unless they allow them to preach their perversion over the school PA system..... posted by bob0001 on Mar. 26, 09 at 10:24 PM

Many of those outraged have trouble connecting the election of a moralistic school board with wasting money on lawsuits that other school districts have managed to avoid. No, it's the gays' fault because they want to sit around and talk about sex. No matter that the student organization is Straights and Gays for Equity (SAGE).

Maybe the answer is an all-gay charter school.

That money would have made a nice down payment for an all-gay school somewhere (think Alaska), then wouldn't everyone be happy! To hell in a handbasket is right. I suppose next week the Blondes will be suing wanting their own Club, then the Mexicans over five eight Club, and on and on and on. And yet people can't figure out why kids are stupid, lazy, attack teachers, budgets are overrun, etc. Send the damn Nukes out and put us all out of our misery (hopefully the lawyers, judges and politicians melt first).  posted by sloey51 on Mar. 26, 09 at 11:14

Then there was the commenter who cites this as one more reason he "left the state and never looked back" — except, perhaps, to read the old hometown paper looking for something that will offend his sensibilities from afar.

Chicago Tribune Introduces New E-Edition.

For an introductory rate of $2.50 a week, the Chicago Tribune is offering online subscribers an e-edition that is a mash-up of print and standard web presentations. The email offer is not very promising. The graphics look like they were done by a promotions department retiree.

I've played with the demo a bit (skipping the instructions, naturally),  and though the interface and features will take some getting used to, the e-edition does allow full-page and -spread browsing and serves up ads in the take-em or leave-em mode of print — instead of the annoying pop ups and clicks that make navigating most online news sources an annoying experience.

The question is whether this is an improvement or is trading one annoyance for another.

Spring Snow, Echo Canyon.

A minute ago, the sunlight brightened the red rock of Echo Canyon. I stood on my patio in bare feet, waiting for the moment to return. It never quite did.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

UPDATE:

I took this shot later that afternoon...

 

And hiked the canyon today in shirt sleeves. The uncertainty of March is much nicer here.

Number of the Day: Oil and Gas Leases.

Last December, the Bureau of Land Management tried to sell some scenic Utah public lands for oil and gas drilling, but the high bidder had no intention of paying, throwing the whole process into chaos. Some of the lands were in close proximity to Arches and Canyonlands national parks, Dinosaur National Monument and Nine Mile Canyon.

In February, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled the sale, saying the auction was the result of "midnight actions" by the Bush administration.

This week, a new auction resulted in the sale of drilling rights for 55 parcels covering about 76,000 acres — about half of the land offered in  the new sale.

When you hear about oil companies buying up oil and gas leases and wonder why they don't rush to actually develop them, consider this: The average price for the latest sale was $8.52 per acre.

Free Firewater.

What's the big deal? How often do you light a cigarette while you're brushing your teeth? On the other hand, no one in this Colorado family yells "light a match!" through the bathroom door.

Their tap water is flammable.

Natural gas from nearby wells is seeping into their water. At least one other family drawing well water from the same aquifer has discovered their water ignites, too [video with this link].

Rural families report finding benzene or other contaminants in their water as a result of oil and gas development. One potential cause is a process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which injects water and other substances into petroleum-bearing formations to increase output. It's difficult to trace water pollution back to specific sources, such as waste pits, fracking and spills because the industry doesn't reveal what chemical ingredients are used in specific formulations of drilling fluids.

Obviously, this doesn't happen everywhere, everyday, but if it happens to you, "drill, baby, drill" isn't such a cute slogan.