Monday, September 5, 2011
The stimulus
Johnell Bell
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| TriMet's new director of equity and diversity. |
MaxRedLine
25 Years of Light Rail
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| Image via Wikipedia |
No wonder The Zero keeps shedding subscribers. Their editorial in praise of light rail is a virtual defenestration of common sense.
What an amazing piece of puffery!
Our marvelous 19th-century fixed-rail system has been constructed over the objections of the electorate, and has spurred development left and right - one need only look at the empty storefronts downtown, the abandonment of the Rockwood Fred Meyer shopping center and the Rockwood Safeway, the massively successful Beaverton Round and the Cascade Station mixed-use developments.
Even with millions of tax dollars shoveled into it, Beaverton Round went bankrupt at least twice, and has yet to be completed.
Cascade Station sat vacant for a decade because nobody, tax infusion or no, was going to build a mixed-use "village" at the end of an airport runway.
Rampant crime accompanying the original line drove out shopping in Rockwood.
And in ten days, Tri-Met will begin chain-sawing all of the 50+-year-old sycamore trees that taxpayers paid to acquire and plant along SW Lincoln so that they can begin building a $2 billion, 7-mile mystery train line to Milwaukie.
Meanwhile, Tri-Met cannibalizes bus services.
Fixed-rail isn't experimental and novel - the experiments were done in the late 1800's, and the novelty wore off in the early 1900's.
TODAY is actually MAX's 25th birthday...along with the 25 year anniversary of TriMet completely cutting 7 bus lines and OWL.
September 5, 1986: MAX Light Rail Debuts
Now ironically(or not so much so), 25 years ago the bus system also got massively cut back.
25 years ago was when the 51 got its Sunday service cut along with 10 other bus lines. 7 bus lines got their Saturday service cut and TriMet completely cut the 46-Maplewood, 49-Arnold Creek, 56-Front Avenue, 65-Walker Rd., 66-Westover, 85-Swan Island, 87-Beaverton-Washington Square, and all OWL service.
And little did people realize; that was just the beginning.
Now ironically(or not so much so), 25 years ago the bus system also got massively cut back.
25 years ago was when the 51 got its Sunday service cut along with 10 other bus lines. 7 bus lines got their Saturday service cut and TriMet completely cut the 46-Maplewood, 49-Arnold Creek, 56-Front Avenue, 65-Walker Rd., 66-Westover, 85-Swan Island, 87-Beaverton-Washington Square, and all OWL service.
And little did people realize; that was just the beginning.
Praising Portland's MAX Light Rail
Apparently MAX 'binds the community together'.
What would we do without it?! Our MAX is the shiny jewel of our city! We must praise it at every chance we get! We can't live without MAX!
What would we do without it?! Our MAX is the shiny jewel of our city! We must praise it at every chance we get! We can't live without MAX!
Happy Labor Day
But heaven help the American worker as the money-crazed plutocracy beats him or her down further, ever further. And we're not just talking union workers -- all workers, from whatever kind of shop.
Here's some excellent, if somewhat grim, reading for the holiday. Yes, the author calls the Republicans out as the greedy, war-mongering religious fanatics that they have become, but he's also wise to the shortcomings on the other side of the aisle:
The reader may think that I am attributing Svengali-like powers to GOP operatives able to manipulate a zombie base to do their bidding. It is more complicated than that. Historical circumstances produced the raw material: the deindustrialization and financialization of America since about 1970 has spawned an increasingly downscale white middle class -- without job security (or even without jobs), with pensions and health benefits evaporating and with their principal asset deflating in the collapse of the housing bubble. Their fears are not imaginary; their standard of living is shrinking.What do the Democrats offer these people? Essentially nothing. Democratic Leadership Council-style "centrist" Democrats were among the biggest promoters of disastrous trade deals in the 1990s that outsourced jobs abroad: NAFTA, World Trade Organization, permanent most-favored-nation status for China. At the same time, the identity politics/lifestyle wing of the Democratic Party was seen as a too illegal immigrant-friendly by downscaled and outsourced whites.While Democrats temporized, or even dismissed the fears of the white working class as racist or nativist, Republicans went to work. To be sure, the business wing of the Republican Party consists of the most energetic outsourcers, wage cutters and hirers of sub-minimum wage immigrant labor to be found anywhere on the globe. But the faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The what? -- can anyone even remember it? No wonder the pejorative "Obamacare" won out. Contrast that with the Republicans' Patriot Act. You're a patriot, aren't you? Does anyone at the GED level have a clue what a Stimulus Bill is supposed to be? Why didn't the White House call it the Jobs Bill and keep pounding on that theme?You know that Social Security and Medicare are in jeopardy when even Democrats refer to them as entitlements. "Entitlement" has a negative sound in colloquial English: somebody who is "entitled" selfishly claims something he doesn't really deserve. Why not call them "earned benefits," which is what they are because we all contribute payroll taxes to fund them? That would never occur to the Democrats. Republicans don't make that mistake; they are relentlessly on message: it is never the "estate tax," it is the "death tax." Heaven forbid that the Walton family should give up one penny of its $86-billion fortune. All of that lucre is necessary to ensure that unions be kept out of Wal-Mart, that women employees not be promoted and that politicians be kept on a short leash.
Read the whole thing -- it's brilliant.
The Democrats are every bit as bad as the man says. But we're not so sure they're that stupid. We strongly suspect that what they're doing, they're doing on purpose.
http://bojack.org/2011/09/happy_labor_day.html
Clusterfuck Nation
The world wants to take us to the place where you don't have to use a car eleven times a day, a different arrangement of things on the landscape than what we're currently stuck with in most of the United States. The American people are not disposed to taking this idea seriously, but we'll get to that place eventually. The first kickings and screamings are exactly what's coming out of the Tea Party. These are people who don't want to change the sacrosanct American Way of Life, but they don't want to have to pay for it either, so the contradiction produces a sound and fury.
Elmonica/ 185th MAX station
14yo on Max platform, diff breathing, has been vomiting, chest pain, has ETOH on board - BREATHING PROB -375 SW 185TH AV
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