City Comforts, the blog

Letters - The Anti-Semitism Question

Letters - The Anti-Semitism Question - NYTimes.com

To the Editor:

To feature the inherently anti-Semitic phrase “the Jewish question” on the cover of the Book Review is a reprehensible act, whether the choice was based on ignorance or evil purpose. What it means is: “Do the Jews belong in Western culture and modern society — or in our country? Are the Jews even human?” This heinous question was endemic to the rise of anti-Semitism in late-19th-century Europe and of course underpins Nazism. It makes one wonder about the motivation (conscious and unconscious) of The Times’s editorial stance in general and on Israel in particular.

DANA GORDON
Manhattan

Quite so.

To think we call our age "modern." Disputes in 2010 -- to the blood -- still focus on Christians (Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic), Jews, Moslems (Sunni, Shia) and, Hindues

 

Investment is justified if demand grows. Taxes are not the issue.

Tax policy can play a key role in spurring an economic recovery—but not without sustained reform of both the corporate and individual income-tax systems.

via www.city-journal.org

So you are suggesting that companies which are doing well despite the recession --- like Apple and Google --- are not investment in future productivity? That will surprise the CFOs at those companies.

Business invest because they think they can make money. If they do not see increased demand it would be folly to invest, no matter if they paid zero tax.

The problem as I see it, from my own experience, is that there is no increased demand by anyone, consumer or producer. So why invest? Few have confidence, anywhere, in most business; so fussing with tax rates will do nothing. There is plenty of capacity for making just about anything. What's stopping people is that demand has fallen. Period. QED. They'd be happy to pay current taxes because the marginal gain, even after such tax, is vastly higher than zero they get today.

Against pot? Still?

AJ...pot-smokers all turn out to be “super-concentrating PhDs”

Of course that is not so. Many high-school pot smokers graduated to have an MA, MBA or/and an LLB.

•••

Anyone have idea how much was money spent on pro and con on Prop 19? Anyone know the nature of the groups? Is it “dark money?” (per the encouragement of the US Supreme Court?) Thus easy that anti-Prop 19 money is funded by drug-criminals? I assume it must be.

I am stupefied that anyone is seriously proposing that marijuana should remain the engine of narco-criminality and that people who oppose Prop 19 as a matter of large public policy. I can only guess that opponents are young and simply like to argue, many in rebellion to their pot-smoking parents.

As to abuse of marijuana, of course everyone is against abuse. As should be too much broccoli, red meat and soda pop. Abuse is always bad. But why set the abusers as the standard? By that token guns should not only be regulated but totally banned and making owning a gun (any kind) should be absolutely illegal.

(Indeed Prop 19 may have been poorly drafted and can argue that it’s a good thing it failed — but Prop 19 as a piece of wise drafting is not really at hand. The wording was not the ting — it’s about pot.)

via volokh.com

Some great comments at Crosscut

McGinn stirs the embers with his 'trust' insult to Gregoire 

Prediction: a generation after opening the thing, our children will ask "What WERE they thinking?"

One of the most tragic things about "the Viaduct" situation as a whole is the lack of imagination to examine options. Imagine for example that we were a declining empire, in serious trouble with overseas entanglements, a nation divided by profound cultural outlooks to the point that the nation is governable only by inertia. Imagine that we in Washington _absolutely_ had to maintain north/south mobility through the core city of the region but could "only" spend, say, $500 million. 

In a heartbeat we would simply repair the existing Viaduct. 

What prevents us from considering repairing it seriously  -- (no, I don't believe that WSDOT has thought enough about it) -- because few can imagine that the Viaduct could actually be an improvement and positively benefit Seattle as a piece of urban design. But they are wrong.

Consider something like the Parisian Viaduc des Arts.

http://europeforvisitors.com/paris/articles/viaduc-des-arts.htm

The model is obvious; please just go check out the link or Google it.

Brewster has already correctly sung the praises of New York City's High Line.

Frank Chopp has been going in the right direction -- the Choppaduct --  and I have been waiting for him to further the idea. (I suspect he is going to wait until the decisive moment comes along when we have exhausted ourselves.)

So far we have failed with our conventional, richer-than-we-think-we-are, timidities. The deep-bore tunnel solution chosen for us by the "serious people," like my friend erstwhile environmentalist Richard Conlin, is to simply spend spend spend. 

So I agree with JM Rolls, and staybailey as well -- "still time to do the right thing."

New Urban Network resonds on "Now what..."

If our economy is in trouble and real estate is going to be in the tank for a long time, what will happen to new urbanists? He doesn't offer any answers. Our own view is that new urbanists struggle in a down real estate economy — just like anyone else involved in land use and development. But the long term trends are promising for mixed-use, compact planning and development.

via newurbannetwork.com

My response:

I quite agree that " long term trends are promising."

But how long?

I like to be an optimist but if there is any significant and continuing trend of happy-to-know-nothings, I fear for our country. I have a bit of fun with Kunstler but that may be merely because I hope him to be wrong. (Maybe like Cary Grant who like everyone elsewants to be like Cary Grant, maybe even Kunstler wants to be wrong.) Consider the physical environment emblematic of its emblem: Sarah Palin and Wasilla, Alaska. It's not a very nice place. The physical setting is splendid but the town...well there is no town...it is not even a nice suburb. (And yes, there are some.) It's not the economic poverty at all but the mental. Yet a substantial portion of our fellow citizens like that sort of place. If you asked them to transform Wasilla, say, Carmel- without-the-Tourists, California, I suspect that many of Palinites prefer it the way it is. Again, I hope I am wrong.

But reviving the real estate economy does not seem likely. The very same people who don't like Obama, the stimulus, don't want government etc are also whining that Obama hasn't been successful at "producing" jobs. They don't want government but then they complain when it doesn't work. (It's not impossible for those ideas to be in concert but in this instance, they aren't. TPs are not saying "We don't like government but so long as we have one, it ought to succeed in creating jobs.")

Conversely, Obama doesn't seem to be able to explain to his people (i.e. sensible folks like us) that in fact the TPs are correct in some ways -- government cannot on its own revive the economy. Nor has Obama NOT been able to use the stimulus to provide urbanistic shovel-ready jobs like mundane pro-walkability things like sidewalks and curbs to push urban re-development. (At least that is my understanding of where the shovel-ready money is going.)

So I think it will be a long time to see those great "long-term trends" because our country seems to be uniquely screwed-up: Republicans don't know what to do and the Democrats don't know either, and if Democrats did know, they wouldn't have the political will to do it. I see a stalemate. I hope I am wrong.

 

 

Brewster avoids the issue

McGinn stirs the embers with his 'trust' insult to Gregoire

Good article by David Brewster, in Seattle's always-establishment weekly Crosscut, except for actually getting to the issue.

 

I too cringed a bit to hear the Mayor speak so bluntly. I would rather have heard the Mayor say that the Governor is irrelevant on this issue.  The Governor's promises are beyond her ability to follow through.:

 

1. She may well be gone after 2012. Should the tunnel actually happen, overruns will likely not appear until much later in the project when the book-keeping cannot be avoided. Even before 2012, the Governor may be called to DC for some higher appointive office; or she may be called to some even higher place beyond reach of any act on earth.

 

2. The Governor may veto any act of the Legislature. But the Legislature can override the  Governor. Check-mate. 

 

The Governor, try as she might, simply does not have the power to "protect Seattle."

 

The Governor has so far been unwilling to help resolve the cost overrun issue through the Legislative action. Perhaps she is sure that if the Legislature is actually asked, the answer to the Legislature might be "Hell yes! Seattle wanted a tunnel. So let 'em pay."

 

Or perhaps she really thinks it's rough justice for Seattle to  pay for the extra costs of a tunnel. 

 

In any case, while the Governor may be acting in total good faith, she is trying to make a promise which, by the realities of time and tide, cannot protect Seattle from cost overruns.

 

As an aside, I am curious that tunnel supporters don't seem to care if the overrun issue gets resolved. Maybe it's Don't Ask, Don't Get the Wrong Answer. Supporters too know that  the obvious legislative solution is to ask for clarification and maybe the obvious response, which everyone assumes, will be a "Hell! yes" to Seattle property-owners. Consider the Tacoma News-Tribune's recent editorial; consider whether Spokane and Vancouver are going to say "No problem. We are happy to pay for cost overruns on a project at the behest of Seattle." Not likely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, Now what about new urbanism?

Now What? asks James Howard Kunstler:

Let me tell you something: this problem is not going away. At the very least it is going to paralyze the real estate industry for as far ahead as anyone can see. For another thing, it could force the disclosure of what the banks are holding in their vaults in the way of worthless paper and expose their insolvency. For still another thing, it could lead to rafts of lawsuits that would additionally shove the banks toward collapse, demolish the claims that underlie our currency, call into question the meaning of property ownership per se that is the basis of Anglo-American law, and tie up the court system until kingdom come.

Kunstler is generally too overheated and, while a poet of despair, doesn't offer practical solutions. (Of course it is true that there aren't many practical solutions if you have a nation which would even consider Sarah Palin as President.) Like Vaclav Havel (prior post) KUnstler thinks that the location of the parking lot is a question of morality.

But Kunstler does offer an interesting thought: With so little real estate development, what happens now with new urbanism? Which has become part of the US development industry? With little new development, there will be less political pressure at the local level to embark on planning and charrettes. Less demand for architects and planners means fewer teachers of new urbanism etc etc etc Except for the new urbanist stars, or projects like Qatar's Chelsea Barracks, what happens to the yeoman architects, planners, builders? They all become writers? Since I am part of the problem, I am curious.