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?

Sarko's Coat Tails

France's parliamentary elections are held today and polls indicate the country will move solidly to the right.  Who'd a thunk?

Of course, not everyone's on board.

Collapse

In Washington, D.C. one-quarter of public school students are now attending charter schools.  Here's why.

Wistful For Nixon?

Even the Washington press is beginning to realize how liberal, um, progressive Richard Nixon's domestic policies were.  I wonder if it will take them 30 years to admit that George Bush is cut from much the same cloth coat.

A Bag, A Cow And A Big Girl's Blouse

Ten years on and the saga of Diana still fascinates.

Wasting Away In Margaritaville

The nightmare that flying has become.

Land Of Plenty

George Will has reviewed Brink Lindsey's book, The Age Of Abundance  in The Times.  I haven't read it yet (the book, that is), but I like Mr. Wills's conclusion.

Lindsey rightly says that “today’s typical red-state conservative is considerably bluer on race relations, the role of women and sexual morality than his predecessor of a generation ago.” And “the typical blue state liberal is considerably redder than his predecessor when it comes to the importance of markets to economic growth, the virtues of the two-parent family and the morality of American geopolitical power.” In “the bell curve of ideological allegiance,” the large bulging center has settled, for now, on an “implicit libertarian synthesis, one which reaffirms the core disciplines that underlie and sustain the modern lifestyle while making much greater allowances for variations within that lifestyle.” If so, material abundance has been, on balance , good for us, and Lindsey’s measured cheerfulness is, like his scintillating book, reasonable.

A point that we who labor on the margins of political opinion would be wise to consider.

On Cutting Off Noses And Spiting Faces

Momentum for tearing down the I-190 along the waterfront continues to gather, but its proponents are ignoring the economic importance of the highway to the entire Western New York region.

We also visited the Riverfront neighborhood [in Milwaukee] near the former Park East Freeway, an elevated highway much like the Buffalo Skyway, which was removed and replaced with a surface boulevard. Since its removal, property values have climbed and mixed-use projects are common. Current Mayor Tom Barrett met with us and assigned two of the city’s economic development specialists to showcase the development of neighborhoods, housing initiatives and business strips.

Look, I think the 190 is a monstrosity, too, and I've little doubt that its removal would be a boon to the neighborhoods it passes through.  But we can't simply place a lovely boulevard there and expect it to handle the traffic currently coming into and leaving downtown.  Milwaukee had the luxury of an interstate highway very close to the one torn down,  I-94/I-43.  We don't.

50,000 people work downtown and presumably we'd like to see that number grow, but I've yet to hear any solid plans to provide an alternate route into downtown from the south once Route 5 is converted into a parkway and the Skyway Bridge has been torn down.  And now, the new urbanists are proposing another monumental bottleneck for traffic coming from the north as well.  Do they expect everyone to take the Kensington?

The most vocal advocates for tearing down expressways don't really care about the problems of suburban commuters.  They want to imagine that they'll either move into the city, take public transport or simply put up with a leisurely one-hour morning commute into the city on a stop-and-go boulevard.  They're wrong on all counts.

At a time when it appears that downtown Buffalo is beginning to redevelop, it seems foolish to cut off easy access to it.  This isn't very "regional" thinking.

Let's not also forget that the Peace Bridge is one of the most important border-crossing points in North America.  And ironically enough, its primary access is via the 190 -- the very stretch that would be replaced by the lovely boulevard.  Trade with Canada is still one of our great future economic development hopes here.

For years now, the advocates for a new Peace Bridge (who are by and large the same people who want to tear down the 190) have been justifying it for just that economic development potential. Well, force a few  tens of thousands of trucks each year to travel through choked city streets for an extra hour to get to New York or Pittsburgh and see what happens.  Or better yet, make them head north to the 290, east to the 90 and then back south for 10 miles and we won't even need the old Peace Bridge.

Maybe we could steer them onto the 198?  Oh, that's right -- we're going to make that into a parkway, too.
 

Industry will simply cease using Buffalo as a border-crossing point.  Milwaukee and Chicago (as well as Toronto) aren't border cities.  Their waterfronts can be entirely devoted to recreation and clever urban streetscapes.  At least part of ours will still have to work for a living.  This idea has not been thought through.

Proof That Global Warming Really Does Make Gas Prices Go Up

Here it is, the smoking gun if you will.  Warm gas is cheating the American consumer.

Georgia consumers have been getting burned at the pump because of the weather to the tune of $123 million, even before gas prices reached the boiling point, according to statistics released by the federal government.

Even a federal lawsuit filed in Rome has raised the issue of how the temperature of fuel when pumped can cost consumers — especially those in warmer states.

Click to view a PDF of the lawsuit filing.

National Institute of Standards and Technology data shows temperatures of fuel at gas stations around the country average about five degrees warmer than the federal standard temperature of 60 degrees at which gas is priced to sell.

At Georgia gas stations, according to the federal agency that presented the data, that temperature is 12 degrees higher at 72 degrees.

The physics behind the problem is fairly simple.

At 60 degrees, a 231-cubic-inch gallon of fuel delivers a certain amount of energy.

At 90 degrees, however, the same gallon of fuel expands to more than 235 cubic inches.

Because consumers are still paying for 231-cubic-inch gallons they are forced to spend more money — and pay more tax — for the same amount of energy.

In practical terms, this means a Roman [Rome, Georgia] who pumped 10 gallons of gas into his truck at 90 degrees would be able to drive 196.6 miles, if the vehicle is supposed to get 20 miles per gallon.

In Alaska, with 60-degree gas, someone in Juneau with the same truck would be able to drive 200 miles on 10 gallons.

Nationally, consumers paid more than $2 billion more because of the temperature differences, according to NIST.

My tolerance for frivolous lawsuits goes down as the temperature rises, too.

Hat tip to Division of Labor.

Crimes And Punishments

I'll give the News editorial board partial credit for recognizing that Lewis Libby's sentence was over the top. 

It does seem, however, that a very valid point about the rule of law could have been made without going to the extreme of sending a previously law-abiding, highly accomplished citizen off to prison for 30 months and fining him $250,000. That’s on top of the implosion of his career, emotional pain loaded onto his family and what must be millions in legal fees he now owes.

They're docked points, however, for this piece of spin.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald certainly left no stone unturned in his valid quest for the source of the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. Valid because the CIA feared that one of its prized assets had been compromised just to lash out at a former ambassador — Plame’s husband, Joseph Wilson — who had publicly questioned the White House claim that Saddam Hussein had been shopping around Africa for the stuff to make nuclear bombs with.

Fitzgerald already knew who the "leaker" was before Libby was questioned -- former Clinton administration member Richard Armitage who, you'll notice, has never been charged.  He also knew very quickly that Valerie Plame's name couldn't really be "leaked" because she wasn't in a protected CIA job.  No crime had been committed, yet he continued to investigate until he found a scapegoat to indict on something so as to provide some atonement for the crimes that Democrats insist the Bush administration had committed.

It's all the more infuriating because Sandy Berger (another Clinton administration member, oddly enough) walks the streets a free man even though he admittedly stole classified documents from the National Archives.  Lewis Libby committed perjury to a grand jury and deserves punishment, but his sentence is hardly justice and the Buffalo News isn't telling you the full story.

Carbon Offset Hi-Jinks

This carbon-offset business at some point will turn out to have been a huge scam.

Sterling Sommer was accredited within the past month, a process the firm started at the request of one of its biggest client’s, HSBC. About three years ago, the bank became more interested in environmentally sensitive practices when its London-based chairman Stephen Green announced that he wanted HSBC to be “carbon neutral.”

This means the $1.8 trillion bank with offices in 82 countries, has found ways to make up for the carbon dioxide it emits using energy to heat and electrify its buildings by doing things such as buying renewable windpower.

And if you believe that, I've got a sub-par mortgage for you.

200 Delaware

I don't know how many more boutique hotels, Class A offices and $300,000 condominiums downtown Buffalo can support, but I can't help but be impressed by the plans to renovate the old Federal Building on Huron Street.

I'd like to think that development down there is reaching the proverbial critical mass where one new project helps feed the next.  But I'm still skeptical -- excited but skeptical.  As long as these aren't government projects, though, have at it.

Blame The Foreigners, It's Easy To Do

Donn Esmonde pens a paean to protectionism today.

There are 650 workers at American Axle on Delavan Avenue. That is half as many as a year ago. A year from now, there may be none. Union leaders say the company told them the plant, which makes axles for a declining line of Chevy trucks, will by idled by year’s end.

It is an old story. Higher-wage American autoworkers are an endangered species. Jobs once monopolized by Americans now are done in low-wage, little regulation plants from Mexico to China.

The loss of those 650 jobs will be a huge blow to the local economy, but do you realize that in 23 years the GM Powertrain plant in Tonawanda has lost 8,400?  Yes, and not one of those went to "little-regulation" plants from Mexico to China. 

In 1984, the GM plant was Buffalo's largest employer with 10,000 workers on the assembly lines.  Today, though the numbers seem to vary from one report to the next, it employs only about 1,600.  Yet it manufactures more and better engines now than it did twenty years ago.  Mechanization has made the difference.

And while it is true that some Buffalo jobs have been lost to overseas, the problem is not so much our high American wages as it is our high American taxes.  Adding New York's corporate tax to the federal tax gives New York the honor of charging one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.   It costs too much to do business here.  It's so bad that choosing between France and Buffalo as a profitable location to set up shop would be a real head-scratcher.

Esmonde knows that, too, but it wouldn't have made for a good tear-jerking end of week column.

[UPDATE:] Don Boudreaux with some evidence that labor unions have nothing at all to do with improving workers' economic conditions.

Beware The Study

One shibboleth deeply-held by big-government new urbanists is that rail rapid transit improves property values and spurs development.  A professor of urban planning at UB has conducted a study, and shazam, he concludes its true here, too.

Houses located within a half-mile radius of Buffalo's light rail stations are assessed to be valued between $1,300 and $3,000 more than houses not within walking distance to a station, according to University at Buffalo study.

   The study, "Impact of Proximity to Light Rail Rapid Transit on Station-area Property Values in Buffalo, New York" by Daniel Hess, assistant professor of urban and regional planning in the UB School of Architecture, found property values were increased in neighborhoods close to stations at the UB South Campus, LaSalle Street, Amherst Street, Humboldt Avenue-Sisters Hospital, Delavan Avenue-Canisus, Allen Street-Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus and Fountain Plaza.

Now, it might just be that these are some of central Buffalo's nicest neighborhoods to begin with.  You'll notice that the area around the Utica Street station doesn't figure in the list, for example.  I've seen no evidence after living here for 15 years that Buffalo's middle class gives a damn about being near public transport.  They don't use it.

I have a feeling this study will be widely-cited in the future.  Local light-rail proponents have been looking for some economic figures to justify expanding the system.  But if they do, think back and ask yourself this.  20 years ago we dug up Main Street to build the subway and nearly destroyed it in the process.  If, after all that time, housing values nearby are a measly $1,000 to $3,000 more than those 1/2 mile away -- was it really a good use of our money?

[UPDATE:] Just for the record, I'm a public transport fan, I just realize that it can become an expensive showtoy if allowed to.  Now that the weather's nice I take the Elmwood bus to work in Tonawanda just about every day.  But even though that bus travels through some of Buffalo's wealthiest and supposedly most socially-conscious neighborhoods,  I'm here to tell you that I'm one of two or three passengers in office clothes.

As it travels up Elmwood, there's perhaps one person at each stop -- usually a schoolkid.  There are more at the intersections (Utica, Delevan, etc.) where the east-west buses cross. Ridership is overwhelmingly minority and obviously not so well-to-do.  It seems that even with gas well over $3/gallon, those most likely to advocate transit expansion don't use it themselves.  How odd.

The Verdict Is In

This proves it, John Edwards is stark, raving crazy.

Senator Edwards is outlining a new national security strategy that includes the creation of a 10,000-person civilian peace corps to stem the tide of terrorism in weak and unstable countries.

Mr. Edwards's plan, which he presented in Manhattan yesterday, comes less than a week after he called President Bush's war on terror a "bumper sticker slogan" and said the current national security strategy has not made America safer.

I suppose this fits well with Dennis Kucinich's plans for a Department of Peace, but the naivete that could lead someone to even pretend that a sort of peace corps could stem blind, suicidal religious fanaticism is stunning.  Now, I realize that his far-left base will find this proposal downright thrilling as it allows them to feel that they're not ignoring the problem of Islamic fascism.   It will probably invoke a fair amount of JFK nostalgia amongst his elderly supporters, too. 

How long can the Democrat party continue basing its foreign policy on New Age notions of good deeds and vibrations? Until they win, I suppose.  Though they do have the example of Jimmy Carter who turned the other cheek to disastrous consequences throughout his term -- that's what we should be afraid of.

He Who Would Be King

Charles Krauthammer finds our two year long election cycles to be quite useful.

The final function of the endless campaign, and perhaps the most psychologically important, is to satisfy the American instinct for egalitarianism. We have turned the presidential campaign into a pleasingly degrading ordeal — pleasing, that is, to the electorate. The modern presidential campaign is meant to be physically exhausting and spiritually humbling almost to the point of humiliation. Candidates spend two years and more on bended knee begging for money, votes, and a handshake in a diner.

Read the whole thing.

George Bush -- Diplomat Extraordinaire?

Kimberley Strassel thinks that, at least when it comes to global warming, he just might be.

Don't expect anyone to admit it. When Mr. Bush unveiled his new climate framework last week, calling on the world's powers to reduce greenhouse emissions, it was portrayed as a capitulation. He'd removed the last "obstacle" to world unity on this issue, and seen the error of his ways. At this week's Democratic presidential debate, every candidate vowed to fix the damage Mr. Bush had done to America's international reputation, his Kyoto failure the obvious example.

There's been a capitulation on global warming, but it hasn't happened in the Oval Office. The Kyoto cheerleaders at the United Nations and the European Union are realizing their government-run experiment in climate control is a mess, one that's incidentally failed to reduce carbon emissions. They've also understood that if they want the biggest players on board--the U.S., China, India--they need an approach that balances economic growth with feel-good environmentalism. Yesterday's G-8 agreement acknowledged those realities and tolled Kyoto's death knell. Mr. Bush, 1; sanctimonious greens, 0.

Last week when I heard the mainstream press exulting that Bush had finally come around to Kyoto, I wondered what the heck they were talking about.  He's done nothing of the sort.

Cut Corporate Taxes

A lot of Americans believe that our industries need to  be protected against unfair foreign competition.  It's not fair, they claim, that low Chinese labor costs, for example, shut down American plants.  But labor costs aren't the only problem we've got as Fred Thompson appears to understand.

Here he is on CNBC's Kudlow & Company yesterday:

Mr. THOMPSON: We have, you know—if you include state taxes—the highest corporate tax rate in the world. That makes us less competitive. All those things have to be looked at. And all those—especially as far as the corporate tax rate is concerned, need to be clearly reduced, I think.

KUDLOW: Yeah, it's an interesting point. There's been a bunch of news articles. Europe, believe it or not--I mean, old Europe, believe it or not is engaging in low tax-cutting competition. And...

Mr. THOMPSON: It's ironic that when western Europe starts going lower than you, you need to be concerned about it.

Democrats in particular are pretty convinced that limiting foreign trade is the way to go.  They beat the drum of low Chinese currency exchange rates and even lower Chinese wages.  Of course, they all know that our corporate taxes are an even bigger cause of the problem, but they just can't give up that revenue.

Why else be in Congress if you can't dish out other people's money?

Rage Against The Machine(s)

I see Judy Einach's running for Common Council in my district (Niagara).

The retiring Council member [Bonifacio] endorsed Peter Savage Jr., an assistant corporation counsel favored by Brown. The Hoyt candidate is Buffalo Police Officer David Rivera, while Judith Einach, a community activist who unsuccessfully ran an independent campaign for mayor in 2005, also has entered the race.

Let's see, Brown's endorsed a government-insider lawyer. I think we've got enough of those in City Hall.  Hoyt's mini-machine is supporting a Buffalo Police Office.  Now, I have deep respect for the police, but I'm not terribly keen on city employees serving in government which is, after all, their employer.  Right at the moment I'd have to say that Einach sounds pretty good.

Of course, if there's a Republican in the district who decides to run I'll have to consider that as well.  I do know that it won't be me --  but I can't say for sure what plans the other two have.

[UPDATE:] I don't mean to intimate that Ms. Einach is a good candidate only because the others aren't, the campaign hasn't started yet and therefore no one's really put forward any ideas.  I was able to meet her during the mayoral campaign and was impressed.  Judy and the Common Council might be a very good fit. 

Another Crime By Committee

Have you seen the new logo for the 2012 London Olympics?  It's caused quite an uproar over there, but Perry DeHaviland of Samizdata thinks it's perfect.

What does it look like to you? To me it is obvious: a collapsing structure of some sort, perhaps a building at the moment of demolition. The sense of downwards motion towards the bottom of the page is palpable.

Breathtaking. I mean what truly magnificent symbolism. The entire Olympic endeavour has been a massive looting spree with already grotesque cost over-runs (and it is only 2007), so surely something that conjures up images of collapse and disaster is really on the money... and speaking of money, at £400,000 (just under $800,000 USD) for the logo, it perfectly sums up the whole 'Olympic Experience' for London taxpayers.

"Art"

Why is the art world a disaster?  The New Criterion hazards a guess.

The “arts” at Bard [College] are notable not because they are unusual but because they are so grindingly ordinary. Leon Botstein described Marieluise Hessel as a “risk giver.” An essay in the Bardian, the college magazine, elaborates on this theme:

She was drawn to work that challenged and subverted the status quo, work that flaunted [the author means “flouted,” but, hey, this is Bard] and struggled with urgent, utopian notions of gender and identity, feminism, and the politics of AIDS, among other issues.

Mr. Botstein and the Bardian have it exactly wrong. When it comes to art, Ms. Hessel is neither a risk taker nor a risk giver. Like Bard itself, she simply mirrors the established taste of the moment. Far from “challenging” or “subverting” the status quo, the 1,700 objects she has accumulated are the status quo. And far from “struggling” with questions about gender or feminism or anything else, she has simply issued a rubber stamp endorsing the dominant clichés of today’s academic art world. “Academic,” in fact, is the mot juste: not in the sense of “scholarly,” but rather in the sense that we speak of “academic art,” stale, conventional, aesthetically nugatory. A wall full of photographs of two girls does nothing to “interrogate” (a favorite term of art- and lit-crit-speak) identity any more than a mutilated doll forces us to reconsider our usual notions of whatever-it-is those odious objects are supposed to make us reconsider. Really, the only thing exhibitions like “Wrestle,” or institutions like the Hessel Museum, challenge is the viewer’s patience.

When art no longer required any particular skill, I lost interest.  I know, I know -- how bourgeois.

Is Our Journalists Learning?

One hell of a correction from the New York Times.

They had Iran mixed up with Azerbaijan.  From today's New York Times corrections section:

A map of Central Asia with an article on Saturday about the construction of a bridge linking Tajikistan and Afghanistan misidentified the country shown in the lower left. It is Iran, not Azerbaijan.

But, hey, we trust them to critique the nuances of the administration's Iran policy.

Well, if we agree with them, we do.

Dsylexia

Does dyslexia really exist, and if it does, should "dyslexics" be granted academic allowances for it?

More problematic still, to me, is the fact that dyslexic students can get their degree under less stringent conditions than non-dyslexic candidates, and, crucially, the fact that they had the extra leeway does not appear on the certificate.

This has nothing to do with the issues of whether dyslexia is a real condition (I think it is) or what proportion of those claiming it really have it (I have no sure knowledge, though in considering any question to do with the integrity of the modern British examination I am a pessimist.) It also has nothing to do with lack of sympathy for those who honestly struggle with spelling, for any reason. I sympathise greatly with those who are not cheating and not at all with those who are. The prime victims of the false dyslexics, naturally, are the genuine dyslexics.

But even assuming that the diagnosis of dyslexia was utterly certain and utterly unfakeable, an exam is meant to measure how well the candidates do certain set tasks under certain set constraints. It should not measure how well they would have done them if the world had been different.

Plastics!

When we think of oil, we imagine cars, trucks and jet planes guzzling the stuff.  But, of course, oil is used in the production of a lot of consumer goods, and it's on that point that Tyler Cowen suggests that China's newfound love of the stuff may not hurt us as much as we think.

If you've been to the mall lately, you've probably noticed that China is making scads of plastic. As the world's second-largest plastic producer, it is furiously turning oil and petrochemicals into everything from lobster souvenirs to sneaker soles. By embedding oil in products, China is, in effect, importing oil on behalf of U.S. consumers -- as much as 1 million barrels per day.

While China's demand for energy is driving up oil prices worldwide, its cheap goods are having the opposite effect on the cost of living in the United States. A recent analysis by the U.N. World Economic and Social Survey suggests that Chinese pressure on oil imports may have raised U.S. inflation by 0.23 percent from 2001 to 2005, but cheap imports of Chinese goods decreased U.S. inflation over that same period by 0.28 percent. For the moment, the net winners are U.S. consumers.

What goes up must come down?

Science Marches On

This is a fascinating development.

Research reported this week by three different groups shows that normal skin cells can be reprogrammed to an embryonic state in mice^{1,    2,    3}. The race is now on to apply the surprisingly straightforward procedure to human cells.

If researchers succeed, it will make it relatively easy to produce cells that seem indistinguishable from embryonic stem cells, and that are genetically matched to individual patients.

If this holds true, would there be any reason to continue the socially-divisive funding of research on cells derived from human embryos?   Would Eliot Spitzer abandon his project to spend billions of New York taxpayers' money on embryonic stem cell research?  And if not, for what reason?

Ve Vill Not Allow Dissent

This is pitiful.

The head of NASA told scientists and engineers that he regrets airing his personal views about global warming during a recent radio interview, according to a video of the meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

NASA administrator Michael Griffin said in the closed-door meeting Monday at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena that “unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it.”

“All I can really do is apologize to all you guys.... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this,” he said.

He stated his own opinion -- a rather widely-held one -- but now thinks he must grovel before the anthropogenic global warming mafia.  Here's his "shocking" remark.

“I have no doubt that ... a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin said on NPR. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

That's what passes for controversy these days.   Tell my why, if this is a debate over science, that no opposing findings can be expressed openly without condemnation.  Never mind, I'll answer it myself. 

It isn't a debate over science, it's political.  The theory of greenhouse gases' causing global warming may have started out as science, but it's become little more than a justification to crusade against the industrialization of the developed world.

Al Gore likes to say (cutely) that the Earth has a fever, but the sweat seems to be dripping down the brows of the warming advocates, themselves.  They're starting to realize that as climate science advances, it's getting harder and harder to scare us into passing their anti-human agenda into law. 

Time grows short -- must distort, subvert and exaggerate while they can.

Standard Operating Policies Gone Wild

Did you ever hear of a company that as much as invited thieves?  It sure sounds like Home Depot's policy.

Despite Free Health Care

The Today Show is broadcasting from Cuba this week and as Newsbusters reports, it's fairly bursting with enthusiasm for the island prison.

To hear the media tell it, Cuba is a great country to live in and visit. With propagandist Michael Moore’s “Sicko” soon to debut and glorify the Cuban health care system, NBC “Today host Matt Lauer broadcast from Havana, Cuba on June 5.

Lauer praised the “booming” economy and talked about the country’s stability.

“There’s stability here. Business is booming and tourists are flocking here, some two million a year.”

But those tourists are certainly not moving there.  Robert at 26th Parallel tells the story of