JayB

Not to introduce data into this metaphysical discussion of spending but I saw this article by one of the regressive warmongering neo-con corporate shills at the NYT: "Democrats Retain Edge in Campaign Spending By MICHAEL LUO and GRIFF PALMER Published: October 26, 2010 Lost in all of the attention paid to the heavy spending by Republican-oriented independent groups in this year’s midterm elections is that Democratic candidates have generally wielded a significant head-to-head financial advantage over their Republican opponents in individual competitive races." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/us/politics/27money.html

1. How does your preferred economic policy differ from mercantilism? 2. The policies that you advocate can be found all over Europe. How do you explain the difference in economic performance vs Germany? 3. Germany has actually been engaged in structural reforms to liberalize its economy for a number of years now. Per you, they should thus be underperforming relative to France, Greece, etc - no? 4. Can you quantitatively define what constitutes the middle class and provide empirical evidence that it's disappearing?

"Mercantilism is an economic theory, thought to be a form of economic nationalism,[1] that holds that the prosperity of a nation is dependent upon its supply of capital, and that the global volume of international trade is "unchangeable". Economic assets (or capital) are represented by bullion (gold, silver, and trade value) held by the state, which is best increased through a positive and healthy balance of trade with other nations (exports minus imports). The theory assumes that wealth and monetary assets are identical. Mercantilism suggests that the ruling government should advance these goals by playing a protectionist role in the economy by encouraging exports and discouraging imports, notably through the use of subsidies and tariffs respectively. The theory dominated Western European economic policies from the 16th to the late-18th century" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercantilism Who says "progressives" can't be overtly sentimental and backwards looking! My only quibble with the definition is the inclusion of an effective end-date.

Thanks for making folks that can no longer differentiate between reality and marathon D&D sessions look like steely eyed realists. Swap out "surplus value" and "proletariat" for "character levels" and "orcs" and you haven't compromised the fantasy-quotient one iota.

Quite simply, rails should not be parallel to the lane of travel unless there is a physical barrier between the tracks and the lane. If you can't take the personal responsibility to cross tracks that are perpendicular to you direction of travel, especially when signs warn you of your impending crossing, then you deserve what you get. But they are parallel to the lane(s) of travel with no barrier. Designed and built that way, and will likely stay that way forever. The grate issue was borderline for me - since even when I was riding back to campus from The Zoo, barely drunk enough to stay upright and helmetless - I opted for the wide and perfectly smooth concrete path available on either side. I realize this puts me in the regressive neocon personal responsibility fundamentalist camp, but the SLUT rails are way over the line for me. If you can't manage to ride from A to B without planting your front tire in the massively obvious steel slot that traverses the length of the street, then you are physically incapable of operating a bicycle in a safe manner anywhere, and brick walls at the end of dead-end alleys are likely to to represent a mortal hazard for you.

\ What are you responding to here, exactly? It doesn't appear to be what I'm actually writing. If it was, you'd be directing similar comments towards Jim, who wrote the following: "My first reaction was - why was he riding across the grated bridge deck when there was a safe option? I regularly ride over that bridge and the University Bridge and have seen bicycles ride over the grated portion on a handful of times,and even then wondered why take the risk. But - I was not aware of the history. Really - if WSDOT had other accident reports then do one of two things - 1) post a sign that requires bikes to use the sidewalk, or 2) fix the dang thing with cheap epoxy; which is what the did - too late. Option 1 likely would not avoided a lawsuit. But for the rider, a little common sense goes a long way." Just a couple of weeks ago I saw a dude on a fixie, chatting away with his buddy, eat shit and go down hard when he planted his front wheel in the SLUT tracks. That's another fixture built into the road surface that poses zero hazard for cars, but can present a hazard to cyclists. "Will First Hill Streetcar tracks be a hazard to cyclists? With the city facing a lawsuit from six cyclists who were hurt when their tires got wedged in the South Lake Union Streetcar tracks, some bike commuters wonder how their safety will be considered in designs for the First Hill Streetcar...." http://blog.seattlepi.com/transportation/archives/208797.asp The odds are high that as long as you've got steel grooves built into the roadway, cyclists are going to plant their tires in them and crash. If we apply the principles that you've outlined above, where does that leave us in this case?

Last I checked, a project manager does their job by managing a project, not randomly trolling their company's finished projects for mistakes. In an earthquake retrofit of a bridge, more than one PM was intimately involved in every aspect of the project, and as others have stated, the design flaw that resulted in the injury had been repeatedly pointed out after the fact by cyclists (at which point it was well beyond the point where the problem should still have even existed). It's fine to be all idealogical about personal responsibility as a matter of principle concerning personal safety, but on an indivicual case basis, there were some PM's that shirked THEIR personal responsibility. And the law agreed. And in this country, I don't care if Ayn Rand controls the Senate and Sarah Pailin the House Speaker, the law would still agree. So - did you miss the fact that the first thing I said was: "I'm all for the folks that maintain the roads addressing structural hazards to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians in a timely fashion when they become evident. It may be that the cyclist in question has a legitimate case against the city."? I feel for the guy. The city should have responded when multiple people on road bikes ate shit when trying to ride across the grate. That would have kept the guy in question from getting crippled, and the city from being sued. If you actually commute by bike, by all means use the "every feature on every road is guaranteed to be safe for cyclists" as your default and ride accordingly. I don't.

So, if you have your skull crushed by a baseball bat wielding racist thug who mistakes you for a darkie or get shot in the chest by a cop who thinks you're reaching for a gun when you're getting out your cellphone, it's all the same and your own damn fault, right? Quite a leap from A to Z there! Reminds me of the halloween costume post from a few years back!* My point is that even if there were roving patrols of MIT trained civil engineers out in force inspecting every bikable city-maintained surface for design flaws that would potentially present an outsized hazard to cyclists and instantaneously modifying them to remove the hazard - there'd still be distracted drivers, patches of grit, folks opening doors, leaf-piles, etc, etc, etc that could make you crash and leave you crippled.some of which are foreseeable, some of which are not... so in the final analysis it's up to you to actively assess what's safe and what isn't rather than relying on the wisdom and foresight of the SDOT. *Scary!

Not sure what demographic this applies to, but it certainly doesn't fit in Seattle - unless by "coolie" you mean aging-hippie environmental laywer, vintage-frame and hipster-hat wearing software engineer, avid-hiker-accountant-guy, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Plenty of paperwork to process. Or they can wax the floors at the station, wash the patrol cars, sit in a chair and dispatch the younger folks, investigate crime scenes, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. instead of outsourcing them to people who could do those tasks more efficiently - like janitorial companies - you use them as a pension plan? no situation that a cliche can't solve! no need to know what police do! cut! cut! cut! keep your government hands off my research grants and subsidies! I applaud your use of j_b hyperbole with paramilitary and jackboot though. that's a nice touch. You forgot to mention union though. ooga booga! The point is that there's plenty of non-physical police work that can be done by officers who are too old to go out on patrol. I'm pretty sure that one OT-vacation-and-unused-sick-day spiked pension plus the cost of employing another person full-time to perform the non-patrol work is greater than keeping one 55+ guy on the force. There are any number of situations where conducting a night-time raid with a bunch of officers armed with serious weaponry break into a structure and use overwhelming force. A 50 year old dude with chronic migraines and a medical marijuana card growing a couple of pot plants in his apartment isn't one of them. Doing some basic *police work* would have established that.

Eliminating paramillitary raids as a law enforcement tactic of first resort for non-violent drug offenders would be a start. [video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwSwvUaRqc I'll take 64 year-olds waxing the floors at the HQ in chinos over using paramilitary tactics to subdue a family in a private home and slaughtering the family pets over some pot resin any day. "Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence." -- Milton Friedman

Plenty of paperwork to process. Or they can wax the floors at the station, wash the patrol cars, sit in a chair and dispatch the younger folks, investigate crime scenes, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. Farmers, commercial fishermen, loggers, etc all work in fields that are vastly more dangerous and physically demanding, and none of them feel entitled to force others to subsidize their early retirement Life is hard, money is tight, and it's time to think about what's an essential use of public money and what isn't. Paying police and fire folks to hit the links at 55 or sooner isn't one of them.

I already voted no on the tax increase to insulate law enforcement from scheduled raise, pension, and benefit expense driven manpower cuts - but if I hadn't - this'd be more than enough to put me over the edge. Convert everyone to 401(K)'s, raise the retirement age to 65, bring out of pocket expenses up to the private sector average, and...end the idiotic arrest, prosecution, and detention of non-violent drug offenders and if there's still a shortfall then we can talk. Until then- cut away.

I'm all for the folks that maintain the roads addressing structural hazards to drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians in a timely fashion when they become evident. It may be that the cyclist in question has a legitimate case against the city. Having said that - there are a gazillion hazards that you encounter as a cyclist, some of which are foreseeable, some of which are not. The stuff that isn't engineered into the road surface, like a pothole, an oil-patch, a bit of road-grit, someone opening their car door, etc, etc, etc, etc can cripple you just as easily as a structural feature of a roadway with a design flaw, so in the final analysis it's up to you to actively assess what's safe and what isn't rather than relying on the wisdom and foresight of the SDOT. I've commuted by bike for all but three years since 1992, and have ridden across the bridge in question dozens of times. I can actually remember thinking - "Hey - it's a grate, but no problem, since my tires are wider than the gate." I've also eaten-shit a dozen times when I failed to recognize hazards that the fellow in the story may have had the presence of mind to avoid, so I'm not sure what the moral of the story is other than a)it helps to develop a healthy sense of paranoia if you commute by bike and b)it's much better to be lucky than good.

"The Stranger has obtained a copy of the search warrant Seattle police used to conduct an armed raid on Monday—replete with submachine guns, full tactical gear, and a battering ram—on a man who was legally cultivating two marijuana plants for medical reasons. Records filed in King County Superior Court show that police had every indication the grow was small, no evidence that were sales involved, no electricity records that would show a large operation, and no suggestion of any other potentially illegal activity." http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2010/10/27/search-warrant-shows-police-raided-apartment-based-only-on-smell-of-pot-fan-in-window

Because the Praetorian guard spent lots of time beating the crap out of union members? Oh, no, they didn't. The Pinkertons did. Neither has been seen in person for quite some time. There's a much more contemporary anthology of violence committed by members of organizations that still exist here: "Since 1975, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research has collected more than 9,000 reports of union violence. These incidents are recorded and electronically maintained in the Institute’s Violent Event Data File." "West Virginia miner shot dead for working during a strike On the orders of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 16,000 miners went on strike in 1993. One subcontractor, Eddie York (who was not a UMW member), decided it was important to support his wife and three children and crossed picket lines to get to his job. He was shot in the head as he left the job site to go home. UMW President Richard Trumka (now Secretary-Treasurer at the AFL-CIO) told The Washington Times that "if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you're going to burn your finger." UMW strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe was found guilty of weapons charges and conspiracy in York's death, and York's widow Wanda sued the union for her husband's wrongful death. The UMW fought the lawsuit for four years, but settled with Wanda York only two days after federal prosecutors announced that they would share evidence from the criminal trial with York's attorneys" Etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc... Yes - dainty little things always on the side of the angels, those unions.

July 16, 1978. 4:03PM.

Might as well invoke the praetorian guards.

They must have been inspired by watching footage of the Teamsters.

Quite amazing all of the virtues and aptitudes that the American public has lost in the space of a single election cycle. Wonder how this one will rate on the Verbal Exodus to Canada Index.

LOL. "What's the Matter with Kansas Michigan."

The firing of Bill Maher for saying 9-11 was blowback was fine, the firing of Donahue for being anti-war was fine, the firing of Sanchez for saying jews controlled the media was fine, the firing of Helen Thomas for saying jews should get out of Palestine was fine, ad-infinitum ... In fact, the firing of anybody because employers can fire at will is fine ... but the firing of Williams for his bigoted comment on the most racist cable network in the US is an attempt on freedom of speech. Williams is clearly not the only one having a problem with consistency. They're all fine. As long as they aren't being punished by the government, there's no First Amendment issue at play in any of those cases.

Nice "liberalism" you got there that upholds the denial of First Amendment rights for most people during the majority of their waking hours (while at work). Add to that the "right" of property owners to censor speech while on their property and you've effectively restricted speech to people's cars and homes. Funny kind of freedom... When the veneer comes off the "liberty" rhetoric, it becomes clear that only the right to private property should be enforced according to regressives. To think these people claim ownership to the main current of thought coming out the enlightenment is rather laughable. Free speech is a property right? Interesting.

I'm always delighted and surprised in equal measure when contemporary "liberals" lose their bearings and stray into the ideological terrain that's always belonged to classical liberals. I suspect that the folks at the Nation will soon realize they've lost all of their bearings and signposts and flee back to the familiar territory of illiberal statism when it suits them. Nice "liberalism" you got there that upholds the denial of First Amendment rights for most people during the majority of their waking hours (while at work). Add to that the "right" of property owners to censor speech while on their property and you've effectively restricted speech to people's cars and homes. Funny kind of freedom... What kind of free-speech protections would you like to see the government enforce in workplaces and on other people's property? When will you be making your living room available as a no-holds barred free-speech venue, and when can we expect to see the flyers for the Westboro Baptist Church rally you'll be hosting there?

I'm always delighted and surprised in equal measure when contemporary "liberals" lose their bearings and stray into the ideological terrain that's always belonged to classical liberals. I suspect that the folks at the Nation will soon realize they've lost all of their bearings and signposts and flee back to the familiar territory of illiberal statism when it suits them.