jasonswadley.com

From the same Wall Street Journal article:

Democrats say the 294 public laws represent a solid record of achievement. Since the party took control of Congress in 2007, they’ve led passage of the largest expansion in college aid in 60 years, increased the minimum wage for the first time in a decade, and extended unemployment benefits. They passed the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Congress has passed a $168 billion economic-stimulus package, a housing-rescue package providing as much as $300 billion to refinance mortgages for people in danger of losing their homes, and the most sweeping product-safety legislation in a generation.

These are all important issues, but I’m amazed that these are the only real legislative concerns when so many other more pressing issues loom. I’m not talking here about off-shore drilling or other recent Republican topics. There are fundamental governmental functions - like maintaining infrastructure (including replacing a 50 year old air traffic control system), spending less than we take in, etc - on which our entire government is failing. Horribly.

The problem is that these issues aren’t sexy - few votes are won by more money for fixing bridges. But history shows that nations rise and fall on these unsexy issues, and apparently our Congress (and each party) chooses issues that ease our pocketbooks and ignore posterity. It’s a dangerous place to be.

A NYT review of ‘Traffic’ by Tom Vanderbilt.

This basic truth — feeling safe kills — lies beneath many of the book’s insights. Americans think roundabouts are more dangerous than intersections with traffic lights. Roundabouts require you to adjust your speed, to merge, in short, to pay attention. At an intersection, we simply watch the light. And so we may not notice the red-light runner coming at us or the pedestrian stepping off the curb. A study that followed 24 intersections that had been converted from signals or stop signs to roundabouts showed an almost 90 percent drop in fatal crashes after the change.

For similar reasons, S.U.V.’s are more dangerous than cars. Not just because they’re slower to stop and harder to maneuver, but because — by conferring a sense of safety — they invite careless behavior. “The safer cars get,” Vanderbilt says, “the more risks drivers choose to take.” (S.U.V. drivers are more likely to not bother with their seat belts, to talk on cellphones, and to not wear seat belts while talking on cellphones.) So it goes for much of the driving universe. More people are killed while crossing in crosswalks than while jaywalking. Drivers pass bicyclists more closely on a road with bike lanes than on one without.

Which College Grads Earn the Most? University of Chicago students, among others. Granted, this is for undergrads, but I’m hopeful the effect holds for graduate students too. The Ivies, of course, are at the top of the list.

Hyde Park Progress: How an occasionally hated development company is doing good things for Hyde Park. It’s an interesting look at the other side of urban renewal and gentrification.

Since acquiring its first rental property in Hyde Park, MAC Property Management has sunk a whopping $200,000,000 in construction costs to renovate, restore, and add to the inventory of rental units to the neighborhood.

The down side is that this activity may add to the pressure for low-rent, off campus student accommodation as much as the boom for condo conversion did. K&G answered that need for many years, and it’s not clear that it was good for the neighborhood as a whole.

One of the excellent improvements in WordPress 2.6 is the addition of a “Press This” bookmarklet that allows you to post just about anything from the current page you’re viewing. It’ll make it substantially easier for me to share my favorite links, and eliminates the need for an external editor. Very, very nice.

I’m in the process of reconstructing the blog after the move. It’ll be back up soon!

It’s Campaign Season!!!

Germany, Japan, China, and the UK as US states

Wow. We’re productive.

The Purpose of a Driven Life

Modern life has made it easier than ever before to live on the surface
of existence and apparently without the need for any deeper sense of
purpose. The pace of life for one thing gives us little time for
reflection, and this suits a lot of us very well. In developed
countries, we don’t have to worry about basic survival and we enjoy
greater and greater freedom to cut our own course in life. This is one
of the great achievements of Western culture, a genuine liberation –
for those who can enjoy it. But the down side is that it is easier than
ever before to avoid commitments and to evade dependence — both the
dependence of others on us and the dependence we have on others. The
worst thing you can be in personal relationships, so we are told, is
dependent. The second worst thing is to have a partner who is dependent
on you.

Elephants can paint. Who knew?

Makes you wonder about all those man-hunting-mammoth cave drawings, doesn’t it?

Obama’s Speech on Race

On the peripheries of this speech there’s plenty with which to disagree. (He’s wrong on trade, especially NAFTA, and he overstates the outsourcing case). But never have I heard such a cogent, nuanced presentation on race by a politician of any stripe. He’s exactly right.

Kinda-sorta waking up to media bias

Two quick media items, both oddly relating to Keith Olbermann and my quixotic quest to transcend partisanship.

The first is this article from the Huffington Post suggesting what we all already knew - Olbermann is no Edward R. Murrow. His trite partisanship is no better than Bill O’Reilly’s, and he’s equally vindictive (a "World’s Worst Person" segment? Really?) while claiming the moral high ground.

The author is angry with Olbermann for hatin’ on Hillary (and his melodramatic special comment was quite funny in parts). What’s sad is that infighting is the only catalyst for us to recognize favoritism. Come November, liberals will be rallying around Olbermann while conservatives do the same for O’Reilly, both groups following their leader as the sole source of accurate political judgment.

Need further proof that we can’t separate the cant from the facts? Look no further than today’s AP headline, ironically about "polarities" in politics. How about polarities in reporting? Do assertions like "feel-good, way-cool" make for objective, let alone accurate, reporting? And how about this line?

And when the campaign moves beyond Democrats, the party of diversity,
and into the general election, it’s questionable how much room is left
for such progress.

Don’t get me started. The need for this awakening to media anti-news is all the more apparent when you understand the echo chamber that exists today. Take this short entertaining tale from Glenn Beck, whom I had never seen until this clip:

First, editorials on Headline News? Second, Beck is wrong to single out liberals here - both sides are equally guilty and equally self-righteous about the other group’s biases. I feel like conservatives are usually more explicit in their bias, since their major outlets are talk-shows and opinion pieces (while most mainstream press only tacitly leans left), but neither side likes to be forthcoming. I welcome counter-arguments on this claim, though.

The point is this: America needs discourse more than it needs lower taxes or universal healthcare. Bias can be a part of discourse, so long as we call it what it is.

Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’

An excellent essay by David Mamet (gasp!) in the Village Voice (gasp!gasp!) on how he slowly realized he wasn’t a liberal.