North Coast Online

Why This Runs Counter To All The Theories

The Instapundit theorizes on downtown Knoxville's comeback.

JAMES LILEKS ON DOWNTOWN BEAUTIFICATION: "If you’ve ever visited one of those sad deindustrialized cities with a moribund core, you know how they tried to bring the downtown back: banners and trees. If not trees, then flower baskets hanging from ornamental light fixtures. But certainly banners. If you hang something from every block that says History District or Pennsylvania’s Culture: On the Grow or Home of the 2003 Upper West New York Jazz Festival people will come back."

He's right that that doesn't work.  But downtown Knoxville has gotten better -- the Insta-Daughter and I had lunch downtown on Market Square today (her idea) -- and it was a bustling scene. Knoxville tried the trees, banners, brick-paved sidewalk stuff. But what mostly worked was businesses starting on their own, and people moving downtown. There's now a booming downtown scene, but it's pretty much happened spontaneously, not because of the city's various development schemes, which have been going on since Nixon was President. But one thing has made a difference: Parking! It's easy and cheap to park, and that's key.

It happened spontaneously and there's lots of cheap, easy parking?  The planning class will not be pleased.

 

Carbon-Constrained?

There's one huge flaw in the Buffalo News editorial today on the siting of new energy plants.

The [Republican-controlled] Senate may argue that this is a review process and every type of technology should be considered, but in a carbon-constrained world, in which this country now exists, and in a world in which safety and security is an issue, it makes sense not to fast-track every coal or nuclear power plant. [emphasis mine]

We do not live in a "carbon-constrained" world.  Carbon is a most plentiful element.  If it's constrained, that's only through the efforts of those who adhere to an unproven scientific theory that it's causing the earth's climate to warm unnaturally. 

I suspect that Senate Republicans are probably reacting more to big business interests out of concern for campaign donations than they are the principals of sound science.  Nonetheless, they're on the right side.  But damn, just for once, I wish they'd stand up for a principal.

By Gosh, We'll Just Plan Our Way Out Of This Mess

Donn Esmonde starts out his column today with that most patronizing of liberal racial platitudes:  minorities should be spread evenly throughout the community.  I'll give him credit for admitting that what he calls "segregation" here isn't caused by racism; it's more the fault, he claims, of the suburbs' supposedly high cost of housing and the lack of public transport.

The problem is, you can’t live on a lot of streets unless you have the bucks. The suburbs have weak public transit and lack lower-income housing. For the most part, only folks who can afford a house and a car can afford to live there. The segregation is economic, but — because minorities are disproportionately poor — it means that it’s racial as well. It does not have to be that way.

Oh, he sighs, if we could only be like, get ready, "other cities regions".

Other regions made laws to bring have-mores and have-lesses closer together. Other regions saw that separate-but- unequal towns, villages and neighborhoods make the community weaker. Other regions saw that warehousing the poor in cities only deepened problems.

City schools filled with baggageheavy kids from bleak streets do not spawn many success stories, no matter how good their teachers are. Uneducated kids are more likely to turn to crime, to end up on welfare, to be a burden to a community — instead of a jobholding, tax-paying asset.

Other regions saw economic — and racial — segregation as a problem and did something about it.

This whole thing ends up a plea to support regionalism and regional planning.  He never does get around to naming all those other regions that have done so much to erase supposed racial economic injustice -- just one -- the Valhalla of meddlesome control-freaks everywhere, Portland.

Portland, Ore., decades ago drew a growth boundary, limiting new development beyond a perimeter. It turned growth back toward the city, so you do not have Buffalo-style streets of abandoned, worthless houses. It kept jobs reachable to all and avoided the cost of new roads, bridges and sewers that come with sprawl.

While Portland is, no doubt, an excellent example of nanny-government regional planning, it's a very odd choice to illustrate solving racial economic problems.  In 2005 the Census Bureau estimated that that the non-white (minority) population of Buffalo was 49.7% of the total.  Portland's minority residents constituted just 20.5% of its.  The comparison starts out shaky at best.

And as for all that turning "growth back toward the city"?  Well, after "decades" of trying to dictate where Portlanders may live; and for all the thousands of trees that have been killed to report on the great social experiment that is Portland; and despite all the praise lavished on it for its foresight -- the City of Portland's population dropped by about 16,000 from 2000 to 2005.

And with all that public transport and all those jobs being brought "closer to the people", the percentage of Portland's residents living below the poverty line increased from 13.1% of the population in 2000 to 17.8% in 2005 -- that's a 36% hike. Now, it's only fair to point out one of the good things that happened during this period -- the median housing value in the city increased from $176,000 (in 2005 dollars) to $225,900.

If regional planning could accomplish that in Buffalo, I doubt it would be a hard sell at all.  But I'm not terribly sure that those extra 36% of Portlanders living below the poverty line were much heartened by all the cheery real estate "Sold" signs, in fact it cause me to wonder if maybe rents increased, too.

The truth is that these huge government planning schemes don't ever do much to affect the overall economic conditions of something so big as a city much at all.  Billions are spent on the priorities of a relative few and while things look different, the underlying strengths or weaknesses of the city continue on as they would have anyway.  Houston, for example, which is famous for no planning and no zoning had much the same results in population and poverty as micro-managed Portland during the first five years of the century.   

Before we let the local government-planning zealots loose with their very own new bureaucracy, we must make them prove by specific example where their ideas have actually shown the results they claim.  During the 90's we were regaled by the wonderful goings-on in Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Cleveland.  We all know now that they're still just as bad off as we are.  More recently, Milwaukee is the city we're told to emulate but it's hemorrhaging people, too.

Well, if the next role model is to be Portland, I'm not convinced yet.  Prove it.  Regionalism in Buffalo started out a decade ago as an effort to reduce government overlap, but it's been hijacked by by a small bunch of people congenitally disposed to telling the rest of us how we should live.  We'd do well to ignore them.

The Rest Of The Story

Finally, a coherent explanation of the causes that led to the Soviet Union's seemingly sudden collapse.

The timeline of the collapse of the Soviet Union can be traced to September 13, 1985. On this date, Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the minister of oil of Saudi Arabia, declared that the monarchy had decided to alter its oil policy radically. The Saudis stopped protecting oil prices, and Saudi Arabia quickly regained its share in the world market. During the next six months, oil production in Saudi Arabia increased fourfold, while oil prices collapsed by approximately the same amount in real terms.

As a result, the Soviet Union lost approximately $20 billion per year, money without which the country simply could not survive. The Soviet leadership was confronted with a difficult decision on how to adjust. There were three options--or a combination of three options--available to the Soviet leadership.

First, dissolve the Eastern European empire and effectively stop barter trade in oil and gas with the Socialist bloc countries, and start charging hard currency for the hydrocarbons. This choice, however, involved convincing the Soviet leadership in 1985 to negate completely the results of World War II. In reality, the leader who proposed this idea at the CPSU Central Committee meeting at that time risked losing his position as general secretary.

Second, drastically reduce Soviet food imports by $20 billion, the amount the Soviet Union lost when oil prices collapsed. But in practical terms, this option meant the introduction of food rationing at rates similar to those used during World War II. The Soviet leadership understood the consequences: the Soviet system would not survive for even one month. This idea was never seriously discussed.

Third, implement radical cuts in the military-industrial complex. With this option, however, the Soviet leadership risked serious conflict with regional and industrial elites, since a large number of Soviet cities depended solely on the military-industrial complex. This choice was also never seriously considered.

Unable to realize any of the above solutions, the Soviet leadership decided to adopt a policy of effectively disregarding the problem in hopes that it would somehow wither away. Instead of implementing actual reforms, the Soviet Union started to borrow money from abroad while its international credit rating was still strong. It borrowed heavily from 1985 to 1988, but in 1989 the Soviet economy stalled completely.

Read the whole thing.  It turns out that Gorbachev was really not the marvelous and far-thinking leader he's often portrayed as in the West.  His country was broke and about to starve; about all that can be said for him is that he didn't pull a Kim Jong-Il and allow that to happen.

American Health Care

Some perspective on American health care.

Last week, the British Medical Journal ran the triumphant headline "US comes last in international comparison on health care", based on a survey by the US-based Commonwealth Fund. However, the notorious anti-American bias of this publication actually buried the real shock, which was that:

The United Kingdom was ranked first overall, scoring highest on quality, efficiency, and equity.

The other countries in the list are Australia, Canada, Germany and New Zealand. It is crucial to remember that studies like this (using highly aggregated data) tend to compare apples with pears. For example, key health data like infant deaths and live births are recorded differently with the US counting extremely low-weight infants as live births. This led to false accusations on poor US standards regarding infant mortality.

The editors of The Australian Private Doctor recently provided some revealing figures, confirming that socialized NHS style systems ration services not by price but by waiting times:

While only about 5 per cent of Americans have a wait of more than four months for surgery, the figure for Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and Britons ranges from 23 per cent to 36 percent.

The American system is more expensive because it delivers premium healthcare with high cost technology and pharmaceuticals, as well as super-specialist physicians and treatments. Most of those are rarely elsewhere available. The US also pays for the bulk of clinical research and is pivotal to medical innovation.

Much is made of the 40 million uninsured in the US, but they should really be labelled free-riders – they obtain health care on an emergency basis and others pay (roughly $1000 per year). Even more important, thanks to a range of State and Federal programmes for low-income individuals and families, "The per capita spending rate (on health care) for individuals is the same for those above and below the poverty line."

We have to be careful that in an effort to improve access to health care we don't ruin the really good parts.

Much Ado About Nothing

George Will highlights a couple days of our do-nothing Congress.

So the Senate took Friday off, wasted Monday in the predictable futility of failing to pass a nonbinding nullity (a resolution expressing constitutionally irrelevant lack of confidence in the attorney general), then debated lowering gasoline prices - or cooling the planet; or something - by spending taxpayers' money to raise food prices. It took up legislation to quintuple the mandated use of mostly corn-based ethanol, which already has increased Americans' food bills $14 billion in the last 12 months. For such silliness, Reid scuttled the bipartisan attempt to improve the eminently improvable immigration status quo.

Not that a Congress which does nothing bothers me particularly.

Gore In His Neo-Con Days

Enjoy a chuckle while watching this video of a much younger, but even then pedantic, Al Gore chastising the elder Bush for having ignored the obvious connections between Saddam Hussein and Muslim terrorists.

Rudy Gears Up

Early on I was a Giuliani supporter but have recently been pining for Fred Thompson to enter the race.  Rudy's responding, though, and his Twelve Commitments To The American People are worth considering.  Competition is good.

Turnabout And Fair Play

The Instapundit reports on what I agree is an outrage.  Hey, if the cops can record me, I'd like the same privilege.

The 'Call Your Bluff' Tax

If we have to tax carbon dioxide emissions (and I don't think we do) then at least let's do it based on measured atmospheric temperature increases.  If the temperature goes up, so does the tax.  If the global warming crowd is wrong, though, and it remains constant or even drops, um, so does the tax.

We skeptics would be mollified and the advocates couldn't refuse -- that is unless stopping global warming isn't their real goal. 

Apple Goes After The Heathens

I read today that Apple has launched a Web browser for Windows and my interest was piqued.  I've been sorely tempted to defect to the Apple camp many times over the years, but have stuck with Windows because of my previous employment as a Windows software developer and the sad fact that Apple has never allowed anyone the opportunity to become an independent Apple software developer. 

Nonetheless, I downloaded a copy of Safari to see what Apple software looks like on a PC and I've got to say that it's pretty good.  The browser is still in beta and so there are still mucho bugs, but it is obviously very fast.  I can't use it to blog, though, because the Typepad posting screen doesn't display properly.   Apple has provided a helpful bug-reporting icon which I duly used and I look forward to improved versions to come.

Dropping the barriers between PC's and Apples can only be a good thing.

Time To, Um, Move On (but not dot org)

I usually bristle when the Buffalo News editorial board goes on a rant about the Bush administration -- usually, but not today.

Memo to the next president: Laws don’t enforce themselves. Passports don’t fall from the sky. Requirements that many more people need any kind of government document to do something should also mean that the bureaucracy that provides those documents has to be ramped up to provide them. The Bush administration failed to do that. The next administration will have to clean up the mess.

After this immigration debacle, I'm down to my last nerve with George Bush.  I still support him on the Iraq War and I'll always praise him for the tax cuts which have helped the economy to boom.  But with the exception of those tax cuts, his domestic policies have been horrible and this passport fiasco is a good example.

What's For Lunch Tomorrow, Spitz?

Governor Spitzer really cares about the chiiiildren, and to prove it he'd like to tell them just exactly what and how much of it they should eat.

Since introducing legislation he called “an important step in the fight against childhood obesity,” Spitzer has seen both houses of the Legislature reshape his proposal, removing such items as precisely how many calories a milk carton may contain or the percentage of whole grain products that must be offered each week on a lunch menu.

Lawmakers bristled at the extent of the food mandate. Spitzer’s bill was so precise that it had to include a clause assuring that its provisions are not meant to apply “to the consumption of water from drinking fountains.”

I know this is the kind of policy that Democrats just love -- government planning out our lives in great and organized detail.  But I find it bemusing and quite alarming that our Governor is such a micro-manager (control freak in the vernacular) that he'd submit legislation this detailed to solve what most of us don't even consider a problem.

I'm sure that school food can be improved but I'm also pretty certain that there are wise and skilled people in each and every district capable of doing that.  Perhaps some gubernatorial exhortations might be in  order to get the ball rolling, but can the Soviet-style planning -- please.

[UPDATE:] In an unrelated story, Congressman Higgins is hinting that news may soon be forthcoming about some changes to the highway system on the Outer Harbor.

Pressed for details, Higgins would say only that the office of Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer is working on more detailed plans.

Oh, you can just bet they are.

Environment's Gotten Better -- Who Knew?

The UK's ever so much cleaner than it used to be.

Britain’s green and pleasant land has just got that bit pleasanter, researchers have concluded after measuring pollution levels.

Levels of a group of toxic chemicals polluting gardens and fields have fallen to their lowest point for more than 100 years, a nationwide survey has revealed.

Emissions of dioxins from factories and power plants have been stemmed so effectively by bans and caps that contamination levels in soil have fallen for the first time since the Industrial Revolution.

The most comprehensive survey of toxic chemicals polluting Britain’s towns and countryside has revealed that carcinogenic dioxin levels have fallen by 70   per cent since the late 1980s.

“Britain is definitely a pleasanter land than it was 30 years ago,” said Declan Barraclough, of the Environment Agency, who led the research that measured toxins at 200 locations across Britain.

The same has happened here, too, as anyone who remembers what driving down Route 5 when the Bethlehem Steel plant was still operating can attest.  I wonder sometimes if the current push to label CO2 a pollutant isn't partially the result of how successful we've been in controlling the real ones.  It's informative, I think, that the environmental movement never takes a time out to reflect on how far we've come.

You'd think they might want to pat themselves on the back occasionally for the huge strides America has taken to clean up its environment in the last 1/4 century.  But they never do.  I tend to interpret that as evidence that purifying the air or the soil isn't their primary objective.  Getting rid of the industry that caused the pollution is the real goal -- and they have to keep upping the ante to try and make that happen.

What's Yours Is Theirs

Here's a rather significant victory for private property.

The state's habitual seizure of supposedly unclaimed property in bank and stock brokerage accounts, safety deposit boxes and other repositories of wealth has always been more than a little questionable.

The theory of "escheat," as it's called, is faintly medieval, assuming that idle property can be taken by a king for his personal use by divine right, a distant cousin of the doctrine of "eminent domain" under which property may be taken for public use.

California, however, refined it into a lucrative source of income, even making it easier to seize property when the state's budget was, as it often is, out of balance.

Banks and other holders of property have been required to transfer the assumed unclaimed assets to the State Controller's Office (although they often held onto it as long as possible for their own reasons). The controller would then make a token effort at finding the rightful owner, often nothing more than a fine-print newspaper ad, before depositing the property -- sold if necessary -- into the state treasury. So far, the state has seized $5.1 billion in property from 8.2 million accounts over the last half-century.

Last week, a federal judge ordered the state to stop seizures until it had vastly improved its efforts to find the rightful owners -- rejecting the state's rather unseemly claims that it would lose a lucrative source of income, about $400 million a year currently. His ruling followed a federal appellate court ruling that seizing property and giving faint notice to owners was unconstitutional.

Politicians, almost always Democrats oddly enough, who are beating the bushes to find more revenue to fund their pet projects love this unclaimed property scam.  Recently there have even been efforts in some states to force retailers to turn over the value of unredeemed gift certificates to the government.  And whenever some solon somewhere claims to want to help the environment by expanding the deposit laws to juice and water bottles, but directs that the unredeemed deposits flow quickly to the state capital, well, you know what he's really after.

Back To The Future

What do the Europeans know that their sycophants, the Democrats, don't?

Now that French voters are giving him a decisive parliamentary majority, President Nicolas Sarkozy is going to launch a pro-growth, tax cutting, deregulation, reform plan.

In other words, Reaganomics finally comes to France.

Here at home, all the Democrats running for president (except New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson) want to raise personal and corporate taxes. They want to punish profits.

So, let me get this right: while Reaganomics spreads from Eastern Europe—with low flat tax plans proliferating everywhere—into Western Europe, the supply-side model still has not infiltrated the Democratic party.

And to make matters worse, House Dems are now proposing a 4.3 percent surtax on successful earners that will allegedly solve the AMT problem, but in fact, might end up hitting families making as low as $75,000 according to last Friday’s Washington Post article.

The Democrats are stuck in a punitive, soak-the-rich time warp with class warfare written all over it.

Indeed.

Light Rail -- The True Last Refuge Of Scoundrels

Evidently someone has suggested putting a light rail line along the Niagara gorge once the Parkway has been removed.  A letter-writer to the News properly points out that Olmsted didn’t envision light rail along Niagara.  He should have stopped there.

Light rail for the greenway in Niagara County is only worth further discussion if proponents are willing to keep it a quarter to half mile away from the gorge rim. Champions of light rail should consider linking the Wine Trail with school districts and Sanborn “streetscapes.”

There's no need for light rail anywhere around here.  It's a monstrously expensive, currently stylish boondoggle that almost no one rides anywhere it's built.  We've seen what a fiasco these things are right here in Buffalo.  Can anyone honestly say we'd be worse off if we had frequent express bus service between UB and downtown instead of the subway?

We'd have saved American taxpayers around $1 billion and wouldn't have destroyed Main Street in the process.  Foisting something like that on Niagara County is just evil.  If ever in a weak moment you're tempted to agree with the light rail advocates, play the Monorail Song then lie down for a couple minutes and get over it.

Niagara Falls International -- Still Not A Good Idea

The Buffalo News remains opposed to building a new terminal at Niagara Falls Airport and correctly identifies the impetus behind the project.

NFTA and local public officials have concentrated, correctly, on making the Niagara site a major air cargo facility, and trolling for Falls tourism and casino-related charters. Strong efforts must continue in those areas, because that’s where the potential is greatest. But the push for regular air service is motivated by political pressure rather than operational reality. The record is thoroughly convincing — every single airline that has started scheduled service from Niagara Falls has failed. Small-scale and vacation-targeted scheduled flights could be an added value — but they alone cannot justify the cost of a new terminal. [emphasis mine]

Regularly-scheduled jumbo jet service is the only sensible justification for a new terminal -- and the NFTA should at least have a "promise" from an airline for that before we just let them build.  Using the $9.5 million in casino revenues on the airport will not result in noticeable economic development and will have wasted those funds.  Niagara Falls can't afford to squander them on a, um, wing and a prayer.

Well, By Gosh, It Can Be Done

Solving the problem of millions of illegal Mexican immigrants isn't at all a new phenomenon. President Eisenhower dealt with it successfully more than a half century ago.

Fifty-three years ago, when newly elected Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, America's southern frontier was as porous as a spaghetti sieve. As many as 3 million illegal migrants had walked and waded northward over a period of several years for jobs in California, Arizona, Texas, and points beyond.

President Eisenhower cut off this illegal traffic. He did it quickly and decisively with only 1,075 United States Border Patrol agents - less than one-tenth of today's force. The operation is still highly praised among veterans of the Border Patrol.

It wasn't a popular political move in all quarters.

Influential politicians, including Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson (D) of Texas and Sen. Pat McCarran (D) of Nevada, favored open borders, and were dead set against strong border enforcement, Brownell said. But General Swing's close connections to the president shielded him - and the Border Patrol - from meddling by powerful political and corporate interests.

Read the whole thing.  It's not as impossible a task as we've been led to believe.  Once the illegal tide has been stopped, we can decide how to assimilate the illegals already here and set up sensible regulations for those who wish to enter.

I'd be find with unlimited immigration as long as entrants to the country applied, went through a background check, had a sponsor and couldn't become eligible for welfare, food stamps or free health care until they become citizens.  There's no good reason I can think of, though, to just let every half-assed, underdeveloped, tin-pot country to use us as a dumping ground for their excess poor.

Wouldn't give them much incentive to improve, would it?

If This Works, Then It's True -- Markets Can Solve Everything

Once frowned upon and even illegal, ticket scalping reselling has become a big -- and legal even in New York -- business. Today's article in the Buffalo News brings up one interesting aspect of reselling, it may boost season ticket sales.

Both the Bills and Sabres consider their season-ticket sales the lifeblood of their existence. The vast resale market, with the click of a few computer keys, can make that season ticket more valuable, as long as there’s a demand for tickets.

“If you’re a season-ticket holder, your investment is worth a little bit more, because you can sell your tickets [at a profit],” Teal said.

Those increased season ticket sales and easy access to ticket resellers via the Internet will have another effect.  They'll allow the the local teams to raise season ticket prices higher than they might have once dared as they struggle to stay profitable in what have become "big city" games.   Local fans will be more likely to pay those high prices because of the opportunity to "hedge" the cost by selling off a few games (or all of them for that matter.)

A lot of people won't like it (I can picture Donn Esmonde's outraged column in my mind now), but wouldn't it be ironic if, in Buffalo of all places, a free market in tickets ended up saving our sports teams and not the Governor shoveling out our taxes?