Across the Great Divide

The Daily Contradictions.

Public transit doesn't need more advocates like this.

[Chuck] Laszewski, who wrote about transportation for the Pioneer Press before switching to a job at a nonprofit group that advocates for public transit, said Sunday was the first time he had tried to buy light-rail tickets. On Monday, he laughed ruefully about the irony. "The minute I go use transit, I get popped."

But that won't stop him from boarding light rail again, he added. "We need it, and I'll continue to ride it."

Laszewski's nonprofit group works more broadly than just transit issues, and he works in St. Paul and lives in Falcon Heights. So, inefficient as it may be, driving to the Lake Street stop 2.5 miles past his Metrodome destination may be the only way he was ever going to catch a train. 

•••••

The Strib's op/ed page takes two swipes at the U.S. Postal Service. 

The first reprints a Washington Post editorial that calls for reforming the agency and extolls Swiss Post as a possible model. (It does not mention Swiss Post is the nation's second largest employer or that it charges the U.S. equivalent of 92¢ to send a standard letter in a country roughly twice the size of Massachusetts.)

Then Peter Nelson of the Center of the American Experiment picks on the USPS to explain why a public health plan is a bad idea.

Obama tells us that we need [a public plan] to compete with private health plans to keep them honest. But everyone understands that UPS and FedEx exist to keep the U.S. Postal Service honest. It never works the other way.

The comparison is apt, but not for the reasons Nelson thinks. Actually, everyone not wearing free market blinders understands that UPS and Fed Ex exist to cherry pick customers willing to pay up to $47 to send a small package across the metro. The non-profit Postal Service provides a comparable service for one-third the price, while being saddled with carrying subsidized junk mail the private carriers wouldn't touch.

Nobody Home.

You want to know the most horrifying thing I've seen from the whole scandal about Nevada Senator John Ensign's affair? Not that he was a Promise Keeper, or that he loudly called for Bill Clinton to resign, or that the woman, her husband and their adult son were all on the senator’s payroll. 

No, it's soul-sucking pictures of the Las Vegas house where Ensign's friends and neighbors live.

Tempus Fugedaboutit.

Orchestra Hall is coming in for a makeover.

Architecture critic Linda Mack, who served on an advisory committee for this project, once described Orchestra Hall as an example of "1970s let-it-all-hang-out brutalism." New York architect Hugh Hardy's design "was a product of its era," she said Friday. "It was avant-garde in its time and meant to be more accessible, but I don't think people embraced it. It's hard to find someone who says, 'I adore that lobby.'"

Sounds familiar. I myself am a product of my era, and my lobby has fallen into disrepair.

As Tom Waits once wrote, "I'm big in Japan." But stuff changes, and at a certain point, you don't get to change with it.

When the ceiling sound cubes of Orchestra Hall were still being plastered, I was putting the finishing touches on a special section I wrote for the Minneapolis Star that was to accompany the opening of the new building. In those days, I wrote as Charles R. Quimby, because it seemed like newspaper readers might take my criticism a little more seriously than from a guy called Charlie. Charles R. had tickets on the aisle whenever he asked.

As another Tom wrote, "The sky was the limit."

The supplement contained a general orchestra history, plus profiles of all the past conductors and an interview with a violinist who'd served under all of them. I also covered how the construction company was both intrigued and a little disturbed that all the building's mechanical systems were exposed. 

As one of the Star's arts writers, I got passes to the opening concert. We were standing around in our dress-up clothes drinking champagne, which made the let-it-all-hang-out lobby look pretty decent.

But my prevailing memory is of the music critic, who shall remain nameless, who showed up in a powder blue outfit the likes of which we had never seen. In fact, the style was so brand new and avant-garde, he could wear it without irony to this major cultural event and no one would even know until he told them that this groovy new ensemble was called a leisure suit.

If they have an opening ceremony for the updated hall, I would hope there's a curatorial display case for that baby.

 

Looking at the building today, it may not be obvious how much time has passed since it was new and adventurous. But my face over that special-section byline and the powder blue leisure suit make it clear that something was due for a change.

Apparently, Twitter Didn't Have Enough Data.

Clawback notes that both stimulus fund opponents and supporters seem to be using the same source for their reports to the public — Google.

While members of the Obama Administration may be unhappy about [Sen. Tom] Coburn’s report, they cannot legitimately complain about the way it was put together. The document seems to be meant as a rebuttal to another clip job — with an opposite message — that was issued by Vice President Joe Biden as a purported progress report on the Recovery Act.

[...]

The cherrypicking of self-serving anecdotes from secondary sources — by either proponents or critics of the Recovery Act — is no substitute for real data.

Pedophile Profile?

My documentation of the season's lemonade stands has fallen short so far.

On Monday, I patronized a well-staffed stand on Summit Avenue in St. Paul. The waitrons all wore bikinis, they cut the sugary Kool-Aid with some water, and the mom was there to approve picture taking. Unfortunately, all I had was a phone camera that I rarely use and, in the bright light, I couldn't see that I didn't properly save my shots. 

I expect they'll still be in business, should I swing past for another portrait, since they have a prime spot along the east-bound bike lane near St. Thomas.

Today, I chanced on an unlikely stand somewhere in Crystal as I wove a route through streets undergoing pavement replacement. It had a nice parasol over the table, but the back-neighborhood location was made worse by the nearly impassable streets.

The boy told me what he was selling wasn't really Kool-Aid like the sign said, but that's what his grandmother called it. He was selling 4-oz. bathroom Dixie cups for 25¢ or two for 40¢. Clearly the worst deal I've found since I began tracking the market. And the product, whatever it was, was something only a kid could love.

Turns out, I only have a dollar and if I make a purchase of one cup, I'll clean out all his change (he had no idea how to make change). Just then, the older sister came out. She said she had a dollar, but actually only had three quarters. She was clearly not part of the Kool-Aid venture, and I didn't want to set up some sibling conflict by making her the banker.

We tried a couple different scenarios, but each one left somebody short.

Finally, I said I'd give the kid the dollar and take two cups if he'd let me take a picture of his stand — definitely the best deal he would get all day. By this time, the mother came out of the house. She made him give me 60¢ change, and when I asked her if I could take the picture, she said no.

This Kool-Aid stand business is sensitive that way. Old guys aren't supposed to ride around on bicycles and stand around talking to little kids. I apparently didn't pass the pedophile profiling going on in that neighborhood. The mom was just doing her job, but I was just doing mine.

Tales of Corporate Efficiency.

Years ago my mother followed the suggestion of some investment advisor to give her grandchildren gifts of stock in consumer companies. The idea was that owning a piece of some recognized brands would get them interested in the market and grow up to be more savvy investors.

As a result, my son came into a few shares of K-Mart, Pepsi, Wendy's and Tim Hortons, which Wendy's spun off a few years back. I can attest it had none of the desired effects.

Today, two quarterly dividend checks came to him from Wendy's Arby's Group — one for 84¢ and one for 38¢.

And yes, they arrived in separate envelopes with 44¢ postage. 

I think we may have sold off the other stocks, but the small lot programs of Wendy's and Tim Hortons still haven't rolled up his shares. We have no particular interest in selling a small amount of stock or wasting our time to stop the company from barely breaking even (or even losing money after printing the checks and paying the transfer agent) on the tiny dividend checks. And the company apparently would rather do it this way, too. 

If somebody tells you this is a cute and inexpensive way to turn kids into investors, forget it. 

Sipping Serendipity.

Riding to a late lunch meeting along the Midtown Greenway today, I ran through a group of kids passing out cups of water near the Kix soccer fields. There was a supervising adult and a big water jug, so it looked like an organized activity — but to what purpose?

Was it a city troop of Cub Scouts doing a good deed or young volunteers practicing how to dispense water on the fly for some upcoming event? To the kids' shouted delight, I snatched a cup as I spun by. Stopping to ask questions would've ruined the effect.

At the Birchwood Cafe, I tried to order a Diet Coke, forgetting they went natural in the soda department. The guy offered some froufy alternatives, but I confessed I was just trying not to order a Surly Furious for lunch.

I took the lack of Coke products as God's will directing me back toward my original path and the man behind the counter shouted amen.

And then it happened, the person I was meeting is a friend and neighbor of the guy who started Surly. There's good news. New tanks have arrived,  which will mean more good beer.

I wound home with the ingredients for laab gai* in my pocket and decided on a route that would take me past a Thai grocery. Working my way through the unfamiliar layout, I passed a cooler full of exotic canned beverages, including the intriguingly named Hello Boss iced coffee. Instead, I went for my first-ever coconut juice, manufactured by the equally inscrutable Thep Padung Porn Coconut Co.

Let's just say I won't be rushing out tonight to find my next can.

The detour to the grocery led me on a non-standard route across Minneapolis on 27th Street, up a closed-to-traffic Lake of the Isles Boulevard to the top of Lowry Hill, then down a smidgen to catch a sidewalk that runs along the 394 sound wall to Penn Avenue.

And there it was, except for a flattened plastic water bottle, the only piece of litter along the entire route  — a coconut juice can!

Another echo from the cosmos.

I can't imagine America's byways have always been sprinkled with coconut juice cans tossed from the cars of Asian gangsters and lying in wait for my altered consciousness to finally notice them. So I can only conclude that there is a God who is slowly letting me in on the joke.

How else to explain this SUV with its fishing boat pulling up to the entrance of a funeral home at Plymouth and Penn this afternoon?

Almost too much to drink in today. 

Almost.

* The laab was excellent, though I substituted pork and tinkered with all the proportions in the recipe.

Could the Nanny State Actually Make Us Safer on the Roads?

The World Health Organization has published a study that found traffic accidents were the 10th-leading cause of death in the world in 2004 — and were growing at a rate that would place road deaths 5th by 2030.

But that's not even the surprising part. 

Pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcycle riders accounted for 46 percent of all worldwide traffic deaths. Most of these deaths occur in low- and moderate-income countries, where automobile registrations are much lower than in developed countries, but the rate of deaths as a percent of the population is higher. Low-income countries, including most of sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, have only 9 percent of the world's cars but almost 42 percent of the traffic deaths. 

In the U.S. [Download PDF], 24 percent of deaths involve vulnerable road users — 2 percent of fatalities involve cyclists; pedestrians and riders of 2- and 3-wheel motorized vehicles account for 11 percent each. In Thailand [Download PDF], the figure is 81 percent — cyclist fatalities are 3 percent, but the 2- and 3-wheel motorized vehicles account for 70 percent of road deaths. That's about equal with the proportion of registered motor vehicles of that type (63 percent).

In the U.S., 32 percent of road traffic deaths involve alcohol; in Thailand, only 4 percent.

I haven't studied the data enough to have any brilliant insights here. But it looks like one factor in the differences between high-income and low-income countries could be the "nanny state" — which provides has stringent safety and licensing laws, greater enforcement, safer public transportation, better infrastructure and quality emergency care.

Origins of the Legal Cannon.

Reader Hal Davis is a constant source of provocative links and excerpts — too many for me to write about them all. But this one is easy. 

 

Hal says he's reading up on Hugo Grotius, legal theorist of the 1600s. Who isn't? 

A workable formula [to the problem of conflicting national claims of dominion over the seas] was found by Cornelius Bynkershoek  in his De dominio maris (1702), restricting maritime dominion to the actual distance within which cannon range could effectively protect it. This became universally adopted and developed into the three-mile limit. 

Hal says: "This snippet suggests, not quite that that the Supreme Court follows the election returns, but that legal theory often accepts facts on the ground."

Except that the theories become enshrined in some minds forever, even after the facts become irrelevant in the present world.

My Favorite Excerpts of the Day.

Unions’ power to fix high prices for their members’ labor rests on legal privileges and immunities that they get from government, both by statute and by nonenforcement of other laws. The purpose of these legal privileges is to restrict others from working for lower wages.
— Morgan Reynolds, via King Banaian

Anyone who takes my lower wages away will have to pry them from my cold, dead fingers.

Then [1935] as now, there was an unresolved cultural question: Is electricity a public good that's supposed to raise the quality of everyone's lives, or is it a commodity to be distributed in a free-market environment only to those who can afford it?

Private-sector utilities found it unprofitable to extend lines into low-density rural areas, and municipal utilities were usually limited -- thanks to private sector lobbying -- to their incorporated limits. That was an answer of sorts to the cultural question. But in the depths of the Great Depression, the Roosevelt administration came down squarely on the side of electricity as a public good.

— "Government capitalism can be a very good thing," George Sibley