City Pages: Gay community apologizes to Amy Koch for ruining her marriage
So utterly pitch-perfect, I have to post it twice.
Smoke Screening
Bruce Schneier, originator of the phrase “security theater,” takes a Vanity Fair writer for a tour through the absurdity that is airport security.
(I just can’t let go of the shaving cream incident.)
Re-engineering traffic
The stoplights at the main downtown intersection were out for a while this morning while workers did some maintenance. In its place was a 4-way stop with an island of stop signs placed right in the middle of the intersection. I watched the cars move through the intersection for several minutes, and made my way across each of the crosswalks. Not only was there less congestion at the intersection, but it was much easier and faster to traverse the crosswalks. So cautious were the drivers to this new situation that one could have pulled a Hans Monderman and walked across the street backwards with little danger.
Struggling Ely taxpayers confront city leaders
Echos of Strong Towns right here from Ely Mayor Roger Skraba (emphasis mine):
“My community is dying. I don’t like to say that. But it’s a fact,” he said. “And is it my job to bring it back? Yeah. Hell, I’m trying to keep it sustained right now. I used to think I wanted to grow it, but I just want to keep it. What we did this year is try to stabilize this community, physically stabilize it, just to stop it from falling apart.”
I bet we’ll hear a lot more stories like this in the months and years to come.
“Strong Towns” comes to Fergus Falls
I’ve been hoping that Fergus Falls could land a visit from Strong Towns to hear the brilliance of their Curbside Chat program, but so far things haven’t fallen into place. However, I am happy to announce that there will be an opportunity to hear their message via a live webcast on Tuesday, December 6th at 1:00 p.m. CST.
Not wanting to pass this up, I have organized a local viewing party at the library, and am working on getting the word out. Details of the viewing party are as follows:
When: December 6, 2011 at 1:00 p.m.
Where: Fergus Falls Public Library (205 E. Hampden Avenue)
Visit the event’s website for more information and an RSVP form.
Here’s my pitch:
The Strong Towns message really transcends politics and focuses on unraveling the myth that what we’ve built in and around our cities for the past 60 or so years is sustainable. Here in Minnesota, we’ve already begun to see the system self-destruct with the gradual and inevitable erosion of state aid, but as long as we continue to deny the predicament that we’ve gotten ourselves into, we’re just digging ourselves a deeper hole. There is an alternative to what we are doing, and this alternative results in more interesting, vibrant, and active communities that are worth living in and which contain the necessary elements for their continued prosperity.
Anyway, I hope you can join in on the conversation, either in person or online, wherever you may be.
Senator wants accounting from US Airways on Philly fares
The Post-Gazette reported Tuesday that when Southwest Airlines drops its flights between the two cities [Pittsburgh and Philadelphia] next month, the price for a US Airways round-trip ticket will increase from $118 plus taxes to $698 plus taxes. US Airways would be the only airline operating direct flights between the cities.
In the letter dated today, Mr. Casey said an increase of about 500 percent would be “detrimental to intrastate travel.”
You know what’s detrimental to intrastate travel? A passenger rail system that lags behind that of even third-world countries. Even at a modest 90 MPH, the trip could be taken in about three hours. Which is less than what I suspect it would take by air when you take into account the security theater and tarmac delays that are endemic to air travel.
But as it is, unless you’re game for the 8 hour trips, courtesy of Amtrak, that may or may not be on time, and don’t mind arriving in the middle of the afternoon after getting on at 7 a.m. or rolling in after midnight, you’re out of luck.
Let’s work on fixing a system that has proven itself to work in the past, and stop wasting time trying to prop up an industry that was never designed to work in anything but an era of cheap energy.
"Wall Street Isn't Winning – It's Cheating"
If I wasn’t knee-deep in back issues of The New Yorker, I’d consider resubscribing to Rolling Stone just so I could get my fix of Matt Taibbi:
Ordinary people have to borrow their money at market rates. Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon get billions of dollars for free, from the Federal Reserve. They borrow at zero and lend the same money back to the government at two or three percent, a valuable public service otherwise known as “standing in the middle and taking a gigantic cut when the government decides to lend money to itself.”
Or the banks borrow billions at zero and lend mortgages to us at four percent, or credit cards at twenty or twenty-five percent. This is essentially an official government license to be rich, handed out at the expense of prudent ordinary citizens, who now no longer receive much interest on their CDs or other saved income. It is virtually impossible to not make money in banking when you have unlimited access to free money, especially when the government keeps buying its own cash back from you at market rates.
Your average chimpanzee couldn’t fuck up that business plan, which makes it all the more incredible that most of the too-big-to-fail banks are nonetheless still functionally insolvent, and dependent upon bailouts and phony accounting to stay above water. Where do the protesters go to sign up for their interest-free billion-dollar loans?
Oh, progressive periodicals. Maybe I need to turn to The New American to balance things out?
