Politics

In a great blog post for the NYTimes, Stanley Fish tries to tease out the basic idea behind the two sides in the Supreme Court decision on whether restricting corporate (that is, non-individual) campaign spending is contrary to the first amendment. I fall into the ‘consequentialist’ camp that he names – that there is a reality to things, and ideological opinions, while nice in discussion, do not fit the messiness that is the campaign process.

I am always amazed that this country has a guiding document that is still so relevant, and can still be looked to and quoted for major issues of the day. The constitution is great – but it is not perfect. And the world is a different place today than it was 230+ years ago (see for instance the continuing fight over the 2nd amendment). It seems pretty well accepted that financial markets, along with most other ‘markets’ of ideas and commerce in general, do not function fairly without regulation. The ideal world of a self-regulating market never happens in practice, because information does not flow freely and instantaneously, and large players can quickly game things in their favor.

I think that this well applies to the market of ideas and speech that constitute political campaigns. I know that the corporation is considered a person legally, but in reality the corporation and the individual are not equal. Very few people have the resources that corporations have – not just money, but people, market reach, and the layer of anonymity that comes with the ‘corporate person’ not actual being a person (and the people with resources of corporations are often the leaders of the same corporations, negating the counterbalance that could result). The reality of campaigns is that money talks – it buys ads and tv time and etc.. – and the individual is easily drowned out by the larger sources of money.

To me, enabling the outsize influence of one group does not forward democratic principles and that is what the first amendment should ultimately be trying to protect.

Hopefully I’m wrong, and this decision doesn’t have a bad effect on campaigns. I guess we’ll see.

Note: I say corporations, but that means unions and other entities also.

Photo: takomabibelot

From the Washington Post, a good article (actually talks about both sides of the argument, skeptically) about red-light and speeding enforcement cameras. I’m quite interested in this topic. You may have noticed that I’m not a big fan of official camera surveillance in general, but have generally been in favor of automated traffic enforcement cameras. Is there a big difference? Am I being inconsistent just because I’m a public transit person?

I’m starting to rethink my support of the traffic cams, mainly because if it’s driver behavior modification that we’re interested in, there are better ways – less punitive ways – to accomplish it. The big answer is the complete streets design/movement/philosophy. If streets are designed so that speeding is physically – and mentally – difficult, then people won’t speed. Highways can be designed like highways, but anything local should be designed for all modes – walking, biking – on the same level as autos. If a driver has to be more aware of their surroundings, if they don’t feel as comfortable stepping on the gas, they will actually slow down and pay more attention.

One statistic which doesn’t solicit much handwringing by anyone except transportation people: there were 37,000+ people killed in the US in 2008 in traffic-related crashes. That’s way past epidemic level for anything, and if it were a disease, we’d be scared witless. But since it’s the normal state of affairs, we ignore it (because we have to get around) until someone we know gets seriously hurt or killed. Travel, a necessity for pretty much everyone, shouldn’t be so dangerous.

 The runoff election for a few NYC positions in coming up the XXX. I’d like to encourage everyone to vote, and especially to vote for David Yassky for City Comptroller.

One of my main complaints with John Liu is that he’s a regressive when it comes to transportation issues. Liu likes to spend his time criticizing the MTA, but rarely offers anything in the way of useful solutions. He didn’t support congestion pricing, because he cares more about his outer-boro supporters who drive everywhere than the majority of New Yorkers who take transit. He criticizes the Broadway pedestrian islands in Manhattan for vague reasons, saying the DOT hasn’t done enough public outreach, when frankly they’re doing more now than in a long time, possibly ever. His biggest gripe is that small businesses (no one ever talks about big businesses) have problems with delivery – but what would a business rather have, easy delivery, or more pedestrian traffic that generates more business? If the business is there, the business owners will figure out a way to get goods in and out.

The comptroller is a good check and source of opposing views on the City departments, led by the mayor’s office. We need someone who represents all the City in that office, not just a few small parts of it. Someone who speaks the truth about himself and the issues. Please vote for David Yassky.

photo: laffy4k

Find out how your senator voted for transportation (mainly public transit) on this handy chart. Yes, this is one person’s conception of a voting record on the issue, but I’m more than willing to go with what Yonah says.

Interesting about Arizona (noted in the blog comments) and Colorado senators, since they both have major public transit investments that are going forward (CO: FasTracks) or have recently opened (AZ: Valley Metro).

A bunch of videos from whitehouse.gov on health insurance reform. I sure hope this whole effort doesn't go down in flames again. It's frustrating that something this needed keeps dying due to propaganda. Most everyone says we should do something, but ask them to agree on that something and they refuse to budge on anything.

The Berkeley Center for New Media has created this interesting opinion viewer - you rate you answer to 5 questions (a sliding scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree) and it maps the 3-D (or 5-D ?) combination of you answers into 2-D and plots them against many other opinions. The text answer is just a highlight to see when you click on a particular star.

I like the idea - trying to organize the craziness of comments in web-space. How you would bring the free-form of the web into this sort of model is a question, though - maybe this would be most useful for visualizing poll/survey results?

(by way of Epicenter)

From ED, some basic facts on transportation in the US. Of note - the fact that not owning a car and using public transit can save a decent amount per year (which mortgage companies take into account), coupled with the fact that nearly half the population doesn't have real access to public transit. Then notice that even more drilling for domestic oil production won't have much of an effect for a while (I think ED is shooting a bit long, but at least 10 years is a good guess).

Photo: Matt Mercer

So you'd think this would be something our government would be interested in helping out with. Not really. our current misguided transportation secretary used some carefully constructed words to intimate that since the gas-tax funds for road construction are running out (surprise - people are driving less now), they might want to use some of that transit money to fund road construction. Hopefully we've all misconstrued her (nice to hear from the feds that road projects might actually have to prove themselves the way that transit projects do), but no way to tell at the moment.

I don't even want to talk about malicious neglect that the current administration has shown towards Amtrak. Oh that we had a good regional rail system in this country (on, and on, and on, and on...)

So what we have at the moment: mass transit use is growing pretty much everywhere in the country, and at the same time the transit providers, often forced to rely on sales, petroleum use, property, and other taxes for operating income, are hurting for money. So they're going to the other source they have - raising fares, and some even cutting service.

But hey, maybe the USDOT will find a way to fund those roads that are being used a bit less now.

If you read the news, you'd think we've had some pretty close calls recently with some would-be terrorists. But if you actually find out a few crucial facts, you see that what we have are some morons attempting to be terrorists - or succeeding, if you define it as spreading fear - and not getting very far. Both the would be bombers in London just a few days ago and the guy who thought he could level JFK a few weeks ago apparently have the science knowledge of a 12 year old who has watched too many movies.

But - the parts of explosives and the half-baked plans combined with government agencies that need funding and media outlets that just can't wait for a juicy story all add up to some big fears. It's a good thing we don't have to worry about those 43,000 people killed in automobile accidents last year in the US. That's nothing to get excited about. Or the loss of habeus corpus - who needs it?