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.

Information on erectile dysfunction/impotence Basically the two issues just hold different cialis cheapest names but they mean the same. The infection originates by means of sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned levitra prescription levitra pregnancies. People wanting to gain weight, should make It a routine to consume maximum amount of dates on a weekly basis. levitra 40 mg You should never shop levitra entrust your health to a company that specializes in creating products to enhance sexual performance of males. On Thursday, the Antiplanner will join Sam Staley and Alan Pisarski at a forum on Capital Hill about Saving Urban Transit from the Federal Government. The Antiplanner will present a new paper on the Great Streetcar Conspiracy, which is more detailed (but more generic) than the Antiplanner’s critique of the Milwaukee streetcar scam. This forum will be at noon in room B-340 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

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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CNN Does a Number on HSR Numbers

CNN reports that the cost of California high-speed rail has tripled, and it correctly points out that federal taxpayers will be expected to pay for most of it. While this is a somewhat belated report, it is nice to see this boondoggle get the attention it deserves.

CNN gets some numbers wrong; as the Antiplanner has previously noted, the original $34 billion cost was adjusted for inflation while the current $98 to $108 billion projection is not, so the cost estimate has really doubled, not tripled. But the basic point is correct. We can supply generic medicines purchase viagra online http://www.heritageihc.com/buy8816.html as per the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse. Single moms often tend to fall victim to these issues because they have more responsibilities on their shoulders, and that burden can purchase viagra in canada be overwhelming. A useful and simple way to distinguish between physiological and psychological impotence is to determine whether the condition of your spine has already improved. buy cialis usa Brown Spot Remover Lightening of brown spots or hyperpigmentation involves a lot of patience and india viagra understanding of a variety of treatment selections. This project really made no sense at $34 billion. It certainly makes no sense at the much-higher current projected cost, whatever that is.

Two Driverless Models

After demonstrating its driverless car to Nevada’s governor, Google obtained the first official license for a self-driving car.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Volvo is pursuing the convoy model of driverless cars. In this model, a human-driven truck or bus takes the lead and anyone whose car has the appropriate technology can follow with the cars being driven by signals from the lead vehicle.

That’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it will go very far. People won’t want to pay for the added hardware in their cars until there are a lot of highways with a lot of professionally driven vehicles providing the lead service. Trucking companies will have little incentive to add the electronics their trucks would need to become lead vehicles, which means government will need to subsidize it. Until lots of cars have the equipment needed to take advantage of those services, governments will have little incentive to provide the subsidies.

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Time to Say “No”

Peter Rogoff, the FTA administrator who once said the federal government should say “no” to cities that want federal grants to build rail lines they can’t afford to maintain, is unable to say “no” to Portland when it asked the feds to pay half the cost of a ridiculously expensive light-rail line. Moreover, Rogoff insists that local voters can’t say “no” to providing local funds that their elected representatives have committed to the project.

That’s something of a double standard. Rogoff knows full well that the federal government can still say “no” to funding its share of the project even after he has signed the “full funding grant agreement.” The law specifically states that when such agreements are funded out of “general funds” (as New Starts are), they are a “contractual obligation of the Government to pay the Federal share of the cost of the project only to the extent that amounts are appropriated for such purpose by an Act of Congress” (see p. 493). So Congress can still say “no.”

The light-rail line in question is expected to cost $1.5 billion for just 7.4 miles, making it one of the most expensive light-rail lines ever built on a per-mile basis. By comparison, Portland first light-rail line, which was ten miles longer, cost only about $200 million. The communities the new line will serve, once it leaves Portland, have voted against funding it every time it has been on the ballot.

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