Life Intrudes

Vivian Jones was born in eastern North Dakota in 1926. Known to her friends as Red for her brightly colored hair, she was the life of every party and a cheerleader in high school and at the University of North Dakota, where she received a degree in Social Work. She went on to the University of Chicago, getting her Masters of Social Work in 1949.

Vacationing at the Michigan dunes with fiancé Bob in 1949.

Also at the university, she met Bob O’Toole, a war veteran and captain of the university gymnastics team. They married in September, 1949, then got in their car and drove to the West Coast. After visiting California, Oregon, and Washington, they settled in Eugene, where Vivian got a job with child services.

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Back in the Air Again

The Antiplanner is flying to DC today to participate in a couple of forums. First, at noon on Wednesday, the Antiplanner will join Ryan Avent, Adam Gordon, and Matthew Yglesias in a discussion of The Death and Life of Affordable Housing.

If you are in DC, the deadline for signing up for this event is noon today. As of yesterday, 206 people had signed up to fill Cato’s 200-seat auditorium, but there are always some no-shows. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on your computer.

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Both events offer a “free” lunch (you only have to listen). If you are in DC, I hope to see you at one of these events.

Touring the States at Taxpayer Expense

Secretary of Immobility Ray LaHood, who has announced that he plans to leave office at the end of this year even if Obama is re-elected, is spending his last few months in office taking a tour of the United States. He has recently been to Hawaii (and Guam), and he plans to soon visit Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, South Dakota, and Wyoming, which will allow him to say he has been to 50 states.

Back in the 1970s, a man named Ronald Walker helped coordinate President Nixon’s famous visit to China. As a reward, Nixon offered him any job in the administration he wanted, and he asked to be director of the National Park Service. As director, all he did was tour national parks and float rivers, forcing Assistant Secretary of the Interior Nathanial Reed to do Walker’s job for him. As soon as possible after Nixon resigned the presidency, Reed replaced Walker with Gary Everhardt, a career Park Service employee.
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It looks like LaHood is pulling a Walker, at least for the last year of his lame-duck administration. There’s a reason why he hasn’t visited states like Wyoming and South Dakota during his term in office: they just aren’t places where federal transportation funding is a big issue. If he wants to visit those states, he should do it on his own time and his own dime.

No More Taxes for Art

Oregon has a 1 percent for art law requiring that one percent of all state construction funds be spent on art works. But that’s not enough for greedy Oregon artists, so they have proposed that Portland impose a $35 tax on every non-poverty-stricken resident over the age of 17 in the city that would be used for art. This is projected to generate $12 million a year for art.

The Antiplanner has no objection to people making art and other people buying it. I’ve purchased a variety of art pieces for my home. But what makes art so important that the government needs to tax everyone to make more?
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Some people might say, “It’s only $35 per person.” But, hey, I love trains and love to help restore old trains. For $12 million a year, I could fund a lot of rail restoration work. But just why should everyone else subsidize my hobby? If this measure passes, it will be just one more reason to anyone who actually works for a living to leave Portland.

Wisconsin Isn’t Greece — But . . .

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker handily survived the recall attempt brought by public employees unions angered over his efforts to weaken their ability to negotiate for higher pay and benefits. This proves that Wisconsin isn’t Greece, the nation whose residents violently object to similar reductions in public sector pay and benefits even as the country is going bankrupt.

Fiscal conservatives can take heart from this, but they shouldn’t learn the wrong lesson. That lesson (the wrong one, that is) would be that, once they take power, they can do whatever they feel is needed without regard to the political consequences. As the Antiplanner has previously noted, Walker’s strategy of reducing spending was fine, but his tactic of taking the unions head on was unnecessarily polarizing.

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Selectively Enforcing the Law

Last week, Andrew asked why the Antiplanner hadn’t commented on the federal shutdown of dozens of “Chinatown bus” companies, and the simple answer is that I hadn’t heard about it until then. Although my friends at the American Bus Association, whose members do not include the Chinatown bus companies, are happy about the shutdown, I am not so certain it is a good thing.

If the same criteria used to shut down the Chinatown buses were applied to the Washington Metrorail, Boston T, or Chicago Transit Authority, these systems would be shut down as well. At the moment, the federal government doesn’t have the authority to shut down urban transit systems for safety reasons, but Congress is considering giving it that authority. Can you see the FTA shutting down a major transit system just because it has deferred maintenance for years and its system is deteriorating faster than it can keep it up? I can’t. Somehow I think pressure from Greyhound, Megabus, and other larger carriers have as much to do with the Chinatown shutdowns than safety issues.

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The Nigerian Streetcar Scam

Yesterday, the MacIver Institute published the Antiplanner’s study of a proposed streetcar line in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In response, I received the following intriguing email.

Dearly Beloved,

I know this letter will come as a surprise to you, but I hope you will read it in detail. My name is Chuck Hails, and I am the executor of the estate of a man who has the same last name as yours. When he passed away recently without any heirs, he left an estate of $2 billion. I am willing to share this estate with you by investing, in your name, in a blighted area of your city.

The late billionaire whose estate I represent was very fond of streetcars, so to make this investment appear legitimate, all you will have to do is buy some streetcars; four or five will do. I happen to know of a factory in the Czech Republic that can sell you these streetcars for less than $2 million each.

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