Progress, finally
I wrote about the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement eight months ago. Yesterday, our mayor, spurred on by the impending election, no doubt, took up the recommendation of our city council and signed on to the agreement. The day is looking up already.
Gone already?
And the award for shortest blog ever goes to Pittsburgh City Councilman Jim Motznik, whose foray into online slander lasted two whole inglorious posts. Thankfully someone had the foresight to resurrect the site for posterity’s sake. I guess when the mayor speaks, you listen, even if he is fifteen or so years your junior. (Oh, and also, just so you know, he started a new blog to tell everyone he is no longer blogging.)
There are over nine months to go before the special mayoral election and there’s already been some snide comments between the two camps. I can’t say I’m surprised, but I can say that I am disappointed. This election has the promise to be the most progressive one the city has seen in years — probably ever — and the possibility for fresh ideas is very exciting. I would hate to see the race degenerate into the mud-slinging party that all too often substitutes for political discourse in this country.
Partisan humor
From my mom, bless her bleeding liberal heart:
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld are flying on Air Force One.
The President looks at the Vice President, chuckles, and says, “You know, I could throw a $1,000 bill out the window right now and make somebody very happy.”
The Vice President shrugs and says, “Well, I could throw ten $100 bills out the window and make ten people very happy.”
Not to be outdone, the Secretary of Defense says, “Well, I could throw one hundred $10 bills out the window and make a hundred people very happy.”
The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, “Such arrogant asses back there. Hell, I could throw the three of them out the window and make 56 million people unbelievably happy.”
Fun with mail merge
Not one to shy away from letting my elected officials know how I feel about them, I got back on my high horse and went after several area legislators who felt it necessary to join in on the latest piece of junk legislation, “defending” the sanctity of marriage.
Showing less sense than the U.S. Senate, the Pennsylvania House, in an uncharacteristic burst of legislative activity quickly introduced, voted on, and passed a bill that seeks to amend the state’s constitution to define a valid marriage as one only between “one man and one woman.” Not since voting themselves a pay raise in the middle of the night have the wheels of Pennsylvania government run so smoothly.
Feeling feisty, and inspired in part by a recent episode of This American Life, I collected the names of the Pittsburgh-area Democrats who voted for the measure and harvested their addresses (use as you see fit) from the House website. I drafted a letter, did some mail merge magic, and soon had a stack of 20 neatly-printed letters and envelopes, sharp enough to get the attention of any congressman. It’s as close to instant activism as you can get. Thank you, Microsoft Office!
Why, why, why?
President Bush’s response to a question inquiring if he will see Al Gore’s new movie, An Inconvenient Truth, isn’t surprising, but it irritates me nonetheless. How much more of an arrogant prick can one be?
How did someone with absolutely no intellectual curiosity get elected to the most powerful office in the world?
No need to answer that; it’s merely rhetorical. I think I know.
Shameless politicking
A local state senator has taken it upon himself to propose a measure to suspend the Pennsylvania state gas tax until October 31. He claims that “people can barely afford to travel to work” and that they “end up spending a large portion of their paycheck on gas.” My heart bleeds. Really.
It’s an pretty bad piece of legislation given the loss of revenue to the state and, even more so, the complete and utter lack of any action to combat our oil-fueled hedonistic culture. And I said as much (in less crazy terms) in a letter to the editor.
But what really gets me is Mr. Logan’s attempt to “humanize” the issue by telling the story of a 7-year old blind boy who won’t be able to get to summer camp because of the expense of getting him there.
Well, I feel for you and your son Ms. Travisano, but you’re being used as a shill.
Using the magic of the Internet, I discovered that such a trip to camp is approximately 14 miles. Round-trip, 28. We’ll round it up to 30 for good measure and to take into account the stop-and-go nature of the trip.
Let’s pretend that camp is 5 days a week, all summer long. June 1 to August 31. I’m sure it’s not. But I like to be on the high side of things. That’s about 70 days, give or take a few.
All said, that’s about 2100 miles of driving. Assuming a fuel efficiency of 20 mpg, one will use about 105 gallons of gas to make all of the trips.
The current fuel tax is 31.2 cents a gallon. For 105 gallons of gas, you will be paying about $33 in tax. Amortized over 70 days, that comes out to about fifty cents per day.
I don’t presume to know the details of anyone’s finances (beyond what is publicly available), but come on. Half a dollar a day? I’ll pay you $33 not to be used as the face of a piece of ridiculous legislation.
The fastest way to the country’s heart…
My bold new prediction? Once suicide bombers pull off a successful attack on Saudi oil facilities and our gas prices double, or triple, U.S. support for the war will be all but finished. Whatever following the President has left at that point will vanish and, hopefully, so will he.
Hell hath no fury like a suburban nation without cheap gas.
Pushing that ol’ boulder up the mountain
I occasionally get emails from various groups that have managed to get my name on their rolls, for one reason or another. Most of these are requests to sign some petition or submit a pre-written letter via their website, all of which I imagine end up at the desk of some congressman’s intern and are promptly thrown away.
However, hope forever springs eternal and I often take the time to customize these missives in a self-serving attempt to spice things up and make my letter stand out from the rest.
As it turns out, my various national representatives from Pennsylvania aren’t too good in writing back. However, I have found one pen-pal in Senator Rick Santorum. Or his letter-writing robot. But either way, it’s pretty funny. Never did I think I’d spend my free time crafting letters to someone who, save for being a white male, is my complete opposite.
Unsurprisingly, ANWR and energy issues have been my topics of choice. My most recent letter was put in the mail today; if all goes well, I should hear back from him in a month or two. I wonder if I should request he send his letters in a brown paper wrapper, lest the mailman starts to get the wrong impression of me?
Now I get it
With the release of Terri Schiavo’s autopsy findings I think I finally understand the right’s position on her case. It was nothing more than a feeling of understanding from a group whose capacity for reason was equal to that of the afflicted.
Looking at it from that perspective, one can hardly blame them for the fuss.
Business as usual
Well, first off, what happened this week only strengthens my cynical worldview of “never underestimate the stupidity of your fellow man.” I believe in that more than ever now.
I guess the big issues don’t matter as much any more: the economy, education, foreign policy, the environment. Because on every count, the current president has been a miserable failure. He and his White House cronies have, however, been successful at cleaving our country up over social and moral lines. America is a religious country, predominantly Christian, and any candidate that appeals to that part of the electorate is always going to have a large number of supporters in their camp. Few other institutions or causes connect people in such a fevered manner. Getting the homophobes out on election night was a genius move on their part.
I believe that this kind of opportunistic vote-getting, while crafty and ultimately successful, is so wrong for our country. It seizes upon the foolish blind faith that normally rational people gladly ascribe to religion. It gives the elected a blank check upon which he can incur the most horrendous debts, for which his only justification need be an appeal to a higher power. This is madness. For so many to buy into this line of reasoning is a sad indication of the number of shit-eating sheep that this country has raised. Kings claimed divine right to the throne. Should we let our president do the same? Apparently so.
The distribution of the vote
Turning it down a few notches, I’d like to make mention of the number of maps that have popped up showing the distribution of the votes.
- First, there’s the standard state-by-state winner-take-all map. While good for tallying the final electoral college distribution, it is misleading with respect to deeper divisions within our country.
- Then there’s the country-by-county winner-take-all map. Even more red, this map give some interesting insights as to the urban/rural split in voting patterns. Look for other patterns too — state capitals often go Democrat (see Austin or Topeka, for example), as do indian reservations in North and South Dakota. Although rather detailed, it casts each county into a clean red-blue split when, really, things exist somewhere in between, someplace that’s…
- …purple, for example. This map shows that the total results of each state were all awfully close to being split down the middle.
- Continuing in the purple vein, this map combines #2 and #3 into a beautiful representation of the county-by-country results. Notice how the South, overwhelmingly red in #1 and #2, was really more evenly split than those maps would suggest.
- Very interesting is this map that incorporates population into the fray. The bright red of the Midwest is reduced to almost nothing, while both coasts, a purple and blue mix, balloon up impressively.
So what does this say? There’s a city-country split out there. And it’s based largely on moral issues. The landed suburban and rural population is in direct opposition to the urban population. Maybe history repeats itself in odd ways.
