Category: Politics

Trains, horns and taxes

I’ve been  frustrated that my blog has been withering but I just didn’t want to be an endless stream of rants about the #potus45 administration.

So this isn’t about them, at all. While I have in mind a summery I’ll steer clear for now. So, meanwhile back in beautiful Colorado, the natives are getting worked up over a plan to install “quiet zones”  for all the railroad crossings in town.

As much as I can’t envisage enjoying the horn blowing, and we can barely hear them in the night, apparently many can and do like them and have a nostalgia for them.

Well the whole thing went  awry went Rene posted, she said.

If you don’t like the trains, don’t live near the tracks. No body would build within spitting distance of a rail road track if nobody would live there, then no body would be bothered by the noise. All the high density housing along the tracks is ruining my wonderful, small home town. I resent that people come in and then start to try to change it.

Which of course completely misses the point that most of old Town was built around the railroad out of economic necessity, which made people want to live there, rather than people who loved the sound of the horns and built a house there.

Rene, change is not only inevitable but essential.

For the most part the city carries most of its infrastructure on its book as assets, which means they depreciate it over its lifespan, and they have scramble to find ways to replace it.

In essence the only way they have to do that is to raise property and sales tax, or get new residents who make up the difference. Bonds are indirectly taxes.

If there is some road, building or other city or state asset you’ve been using since you arrived here, that hasn’t been rebuilt or replaced, then you have been subsidized by either earlier generations or the new residents. This is especially true for water, sewage, and roads.

As has been previously articulated here, essentially the quiet zones are really doing no more than returning the crossings to pre-2005 safety and horns for post 2015 traffic volumes.

It’s not the new residents that are to blame, I’m one of them. If anyone is to blame its the people that have lived here for 25+ years.

They’ve not been accounting for city resources as liabilities, not taxing enough to support those liabilities, and then selling property off to developers to make a buck for themselves.

Unfortunately development in America, not just Louisville has been a ponzy scheme for 100 years. You either keep growing or you’ll wither and die, or become Boulder. Louisville is headed for the latter since it’s mostly built out.

Edit:8/02/17 12:40 – Add links, change @potus45 > #potus45 and correct typos.

Ahh Austin…

When Texas Governor Abbott took time out of his busy schedule of subjugating his authority, to call a special session for the “part-time” Texas Legislators(1) to pass a bathroom bill and other discriminatory acts, his statements eloquently tried to trash the Capital of Texas, Austin. As Caleb points out, there are plenty of examples where Austin is screwed by Texas arbitrary regulation, and certainly some of those to be considered in the special session are also aimed at Austin.

Naturally, the state-protected view of the dome under which so much anti-regulatory legislation is concocted by worthy statesman from such cultural centers as Woodville, Humble, or Euless deserves to be maintained so that we may all be reminded of the paternal lordship of our duly elected masters, those golden ubermensch of high breeding and indomitable intellect.

(1) Texas is one of only 4-states that still have a rushed, part-time state legislator that has to rush it’s budget and legislation through in just the first half of the year, every two years. No wonder why so many bills seem regressive, backward looking, and discriminatory. The process doesn’t allow the sun to shine where it should.

Mixed legacy and cultural appropriation

[3/22/17 Edit to add audio from soundcloud]

On Friday I had a half-hearted attempt to explain to our 8-year old why I wouldn’t wear green, and why I could NOT celebrate St Patrick’s Day. It’s really quite staggering the level of cultural appropriation St Patrick’s Day has achieved. A celebration of the worst caricatures of the Irish, drunk, leprechauns, and four leaf clovers

Then today, on reporting the death of Martin McGuinness, former deputy first minister, and A former Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) leader. I was listening to BBC Radio, and among the people to be quoted was former British Prime Minister John Major. I never held Major in great esteem but what he had to say, for the most part summed up my feelings.

I do think that is unforgivable and will neither be forgotten nor forgiven when one looks back on the legacy of Martin McGuinness, and I don’t excuse any of that. I cannot find any redeeming quality in what he did over those years.

But I do recognize what he subsequently attempted to do and the part that he subsequently played in building a peace process.

Go 3-generations back and you’ll find Protestant Irish blood, my grandfather’s parents were from Northern Ireland, but that’s not it. Ireland was a non-issue when I was growing up, it was rarely mentioned. sure, we knew what was going on. Events like Bloody Sunday and “the Troubles” had been constantly in the news since 1969.

What followed was years of activity in England and London, throughout my formative years. Starting in 1972 with the Aldershot barracks bombing, and stretching through the Old Bailey Bombing, I was first working at the Rupert St market in London in 1974 on Saturdays. That year was the worst year for IRA bombs, they killed over 50-people, and injured more than 1,000. This included throwing bombs in two London night clubs. Bombs were behind and inside Post boxes, in publish rubbish/trash containers

Through the remainder of the 1970’s it’s hard to explain the content I had for the Irish people. In the summer of 1980, I took my first business trip to Dublin, and during that trip was spat at, and had lighted cigarettes flicked at me while walking down the street, because of my accent. And so it was, that the Irish were just Persona non grata.

We spent most of the 1980’s in the USA, specifically in New York. At that time, fundraising for the IRA in New York and Boston was a big thing. The likes of Adams and McGuinness were often on TV News giving very one sided views of their campaign against the British Government, and the British people.

Having returned to the UK and joined IBM, the random bombings carried out by the IRA continued, while often focussed on military targets, they were not always. Two IRA bombers blew themselves up in our town center while trying to set and detonate a bomb. I was working at the London computer center for the TSB Bank, on an upgrade to their software early morning in London on April 24th 1993, when at 10:27 am, the Bishopsgate bombing occurred. Their office off St Dunstans Hill was just half a mile from the bomb site, we heard and felt the blast. It followed another massive City of London blast in 1992 at the Baltic Exchange(now the site of The Gherkin).

So, no I was never in a bombing, as far as I’m aware none of my family were impacted by a bombing, but somehow it seems like asking a New Yorker to celebrate Al-Qaeda day on September 11th, to expect me to celebrate St Patrick’s Day.

As I said to the 8-year old, I’m happy you are having a fun day, I’m glad there is peace now in Northern Island but I can’t really dress up.

BBC Radio 4 – Faking It: Trump and the Media

Time to take a step back from the precipice or increase the pressure?

In this BBC Radio 4 audio program, Alan Rusbridger, former Editor of The Guardian, talks to journalists and news consumers across America in dispatches from President Trump’s ‘running war’ with the US media Alan asks why the media has been cast as Trump’s ‘opposition party’, how they are responding to the dilemmas and opportunities the new administration brings and whether the President is right to claim that the ‘mainstream media’ has lost the trust of the American people.

Listen here: BBC Radio 4 – Faking It: Trump and the Media

Republicans and Democrats: The Hypocritical Team

>JOSEP GODED has a great example of the all too common hypocrisy of the US two party system.

Since its beginnings, Wikileaks has aroused both hatred and veneration among its followers and detractors as much as any other worldwide organization. However, what is most striking is that a large…

Source: Republicans and Democrats: The Hypocritical Team