n8han

U.S. v. Pakistan on transparency and accountability

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 22:34:43 -0500

U.S. v. Pakistan on transparency and accountability:

Yet this type of accountability just brought to Pakistan’s intelligence service is simply inconceivable in the United States. It is virtually impossible to imagine the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the CIA to disclose documents about its treatment of detainees or, even more unrealistically, to permit the victims of CIA abuse to have their grievances heard in court. Anyone who doubts that can simply review the past decade of full-scale immunity bestowed by the Justice Department and subservient American federal courts on all executive agencies in the War on Terror. We should think about that the next time some American pundit, politician, or media figure righteously holds forth on how undemocratic and oppressive is Pakistan as opposed to the U.S.

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:40:06 -0500

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups:

Meanwhile, the Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar yesterday patiently explained that drone strikes — which Americans widely support, including American liberals — are “completely illegal and unlawful” and “counterproductive” because they “fuel terrorism,” since people tend to become quite angry at the foreign power which slaughters their children…

So let me get this straight. A few years after some terrorists used our airliners as bombs in attacks on otherwise unreachable American targets—and that plot was unrepeatable thanks to subsequent passenger awareness—we become pioneers in the business of cheap, remote controlled flying bombers that can go anywhere. We create a thriving market for their components and accelerate the development of these objectively evil machines by many years. And just in case anybody had qualms about using drones against American civilians, we accidentally kill hundreds of civilians with drones over several years, in countries where we are not at war.

If you craved a near-term future of asymmetrical drone warfare encircling the globe and inevitably reaching within our borders, you would do exactly what the old men in charge of our war machine are doing.

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 12:00:05 -0500

Israel, MEK and state sponsor of Terror groups:

All of these mysteries received substantial clarity from an NBC News report by Richard Engel and Robert Windrem yesterday. Citing two anonymous “senior U.S. officials,” that report makes two amazing claims: (1) that it was MEK which perpetrated the string of assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and (2) the Terrorist group “is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service.” These senior officials also admitted that “the Obama administration is aware of the assassination campaign” but claims it “has no direct involvement.”

WTF.

Bad Defunding

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:20:05 -0500

Bad Defunding:

Thus the House transportation bill is bad not only because it’s bad for transit, but also because it’s bad government. It’s not even selective worrying about cost-effectiveness, a charge often thrown by political transit supporters. It makes no attempt to decouple any funding from gas taxes, a decoupling that it necessary for the purpose of making it possible to tax pollution without demands from both APTA and the AASHTO that the revenues raised be plugged back into transportation. It makes no attempt to let go of projects that cost too much while maintaining those whose cost is adequate. It’s purely an exercise in muscle-flexing, a continuation of the US practice of not having a transportation policy that’s separate from the usual political and lobby bickering.

Alon is right that this ugly attack must be opposed its targets—us—but I can only do so halfheartedly, for the reasons he lists. I can not feign passion for a system of “dedicated funding” that I think is stupid to begin with.

Oh, the horror of having to establish once a year that a government entity needs a few billions from the mean old general fund! What is next, will the public want to know how it all worked out each year, whether the expenditures yielded the expected benefits? Will we… gasp … expect an accounting of lives saved, commerce increased, and pollution averted?

Where I work they decided to do performance reviews twice a year, because too much stuff happens in a year. And it’s true, tons of things happen in a year if you actually do work. No one likes doing the reviews so often, for various obvious reasons, but we do them and it makes a difference.

I understand the appeal of dedicated funding. Everyone would like to have a guaranteed allowance in to spend as they please, but guys: you can’t run a railroad that way. Or actually you could, and it would be called Amtrak.

The gas tax is just a thing we should use to wean ourselves off oil, so that we aren’t dragged into resource wars and then economically ruined when production peaks. But it may be too late to do anything about that now.

Part of the reason we failed to act is we wrapped a simple tax in layers of politics, bureaucracy, and ideology. It became a multiplier for motorist entitlement, even as it failed to cover the one category of roads it was supposed to cover. The piddling American gas tax and the frantic politics surrounding it are one of the most pathetic spectacles of our era.

And money remains, stubbornly, money. It’s just an abstraction whose purpose is to allow humans to shift resources. The idea that governments can and should treat money from one source as being bound to particular categories of spending makes no logical sense. People don’t do that unless they have some gambling, shopping, or drug addiction. It’s a weird political gimmick that was supposed to do all kinds of things that it has utterly failed to do. America’s transit system, with its special dedicated funding, is the envy of no one in the first world.

There are simple, honest, and good arguments for taxing gas at European levels, and separately, for subsidizing public transit. There are no such arguments for automatically assigning some random percentage of gas taxes to transit agencies, and to send the rest to disastrous mega-highways. Instead we just hear procedural excuses, mixed with the same overwrought liberal pleading that has been un-winning the hearts and minds of Americans for the past 30 years.

It’s time to try something else.

"In order to prevent smart scope changes from leaving the cost-ineffective parts out, the planners..."

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:40:05 -0500

“In order to prevent smart scope changes from leaving the cost-ineffective parts out, the planners take the cost-effective lines hostage in order to make sure that they are built.”

- Bad Defunding

Jaywalking and the Motor Age

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:20:05 -0500

Jaywalking and the Motor Age:

It wasn’t just jaywalking. Seven centuries of children playing in the streets had to be abolished as well. Drawing at left is from the Chicago Motor Club, a safety poster for their Textbook for Schools in 1932.

This insidious notion, that it is not the responsibility of motorists to avoid hitting children but rather the duty of kindergarteners to survive motorists, has become so orthodox that the telling of its origin sounds like a conspiracy theory, or blasphemy.

But yes, if you believe the answer to children being hit by motorists is to demand perfect behavior from 5 year-olds, you have internalized a view created by 1920s and 30s “motor clubs” that strove to absolve their members of legal and moral guilt for killing children.

Road Danger Reduction Forum » Blaming bollards and trees – and why it’s important

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 18:40:06 -0500

Road Danger Reduction Forum » Blaming bollards and trees – and why it’s important:

Not only trees but stumps “as these can still be aggressive” (p. 541) should be removed, as well as fences since these are “a particularly aggressive form of man-made structure” (p. 544). Those people in the audience not members of the “road safety” community would laugh, while the highway engineers and other ”road safety” types would be unable to understand the laughter.

"This issue is how – supposedly – trees, bollards and other inanimate objects are..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:00:06 -0500

“This issue is how – supposedly – trees, bollards and other inanimate objects are ‘dangerous’. It tells us much of what we need to know about the official view of ‘road safety’.”

- Road Danger Reduction Forum » Blaming bollards and trees – and why it’s important

"However, having recently rewatched Phantom Menace to prepare for its upcoming 3-D rerelease (do you..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:20:05 -0500

“However, having recently rewatched Phantom Menace to prepare for its upcoming 3-D rerelease (do you like the Star Wars prequels but just wish you could also have a headache???)…”

- zunguzungu — zunguzungu.wordpress.com — Readability

"I mean, that’s what No Child Left Behind is about. It’s training for the Marine Corps."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:41:05 -0500

“I mean, that’s what No Child Left Behind is about. It’s training for the Marine Corps.”

- Chomsky

"If that premise sounds familiar, it is because the movie fits the tried-and-true formula of..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:00:05 -0500

“If that premise sounds familiar, it is because the movie fits the tried-and-true formula of patriarchal fantasy wherein viewers are asked to accept that violent death at the hands of others is the primary existential threat and, consequently, that women need male protection to survive.”

- zunguzungu — Sunday reading

"Today’s New York Times contains a fine example of how ideology works at the high end: report..."

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:20:05 -0500

“Today’s New York Times contains a fine example of how ideology works at the high end: report information that might trouble the established order, but conclude on a tranquilizing note that allows the comfortable reader to turn the page (or click “close tab”) without changing his or her worldview.”

- zunguzungu — How to stop worrying about class

nickoftimelosangelesblog: The French really understand modern...

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:40:06 -0500

nickoftimelosangelesblog:

The French really understand modern trams.

Here in LA, the Blue Line could be more like that.

allthingseurope: Azay-Le-Rideau, France (by Anto57 -)

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 22:18:04 -0500

allthingseurope:

Azay-Le-Rideau, France

(by Anto57 -)

"The Myrtle ave collision sounds like it was caused by the car’s failure to yield to the..."

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 10:20:06 -0500

“The Myrtle ave collision sounds like it was caused by the car’s failure to yield to the oncoming cyclist when turning left. I only say this because it happens to me ALL the time. If you’re lucky enough that the driver actually signaled their turn, then they act like the turn signal is the ‘get out of my way you stupid bike’ warning.”

- Today’s Headlines | Streetsblog New York City

Do you know what it means to miss Penn Station?

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 08:40:05 -0500

Do you know what it means to miss Penn Station?:

This, of course, is no secret for many of us. We’ve bemoaned the dollars to be sunk into Moynihan will little to no upgrade to train capacity. It’s a similar story at Fulton Street where the headhouse represents a large chunk of an expensive project and sits a block away from a $4 billion PATH hub that also won’t increase capacity.

It is harder to criticize auto boondoggles like the Tappan Zee for increasing capacity in the wrong way when some transit boondoggles do not increase capacity in any way.

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 20:20:05 -0500

Repulsive progressive hypocrisy:

When one of the two major parties supports a certain policy and the other party pretends to oppose it — as happened with these radical War on Terror policies during the Bush years — then public opinion is divisive on the question, sharply split. But once the policy becomes the hallmark of both political parties, then public opinion becomes robust in support of it. That’s because people assume that if both political parties support a certain policy that it must be wise, and because policies that enjoy the status of bipartisan consensus are removed from the realm of mainstream challenge.

This is how you get to the astounding fact that a majority of “liberals” now support drone executions without trial. It is right because we’re doing it.

Obama promised change, and he has delivered.

Six Lies the GOP Is Telling About the House Transportation Bill

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 18:40:05 -0500

Six Lies the GOP Is Telling About the House Transportation Bill:

If the House GOP really cared about local control of transportation funds, they could draft a bill that distributes federal funding to cities and towns. The problem for John Boehner and the oil companies who back this bill is that cities and towns spend transportation dollars on things like transit, biking, and walking.

Please work this angle, not the one that sounds like us asking for charity from motorists. That wonderful system of diverting a piddling of gas taxes to transit was set up by Reagan (as we are now reminded by transit advocates trying to perform some Republican Voodoo) to make metropolitan regions look like beggars. Never mind that we pay far more federal taxes overall than we get back in any form, this clever shell game successfully convinces the sprawlists that budgetary up is down.

Battles to receive any federal funding are going to be uphill for the foreseeable future. We can do best in this environment by beating back boondoggles like the Tappan Zee and its cousins around the country. As federal highway spending is reduced, local responsibility necessarily fills the void. New Yorkers will not tolerate silly preferences (such as Cuomo’s) for sprawl over subways when it becomes a question of noticeable differences in our state income tax.

"The Manhattan Bridge bicycle path will return to its usual place on the north side of the bridge on..."

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 17:00:05 -0500

“The Manhattan Bridge bicycle path will return to its usual place on the north side of the bridge on March 5, according to a Department of Transportation spokesperson.”

- Manhattan Bridge Bike Path Detour to End on March 5

Chris Quinn’s Parking Agenda Out of Touch With New Yorkers

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:21:00 -0500

Chris Quinn’s Parking Agenda Out of Touch With New Yorkers:

Including public opinion, it appears. According to a Quinnipiac poll released today, a majority of city voters disagree with Quinn and the council that city sanitation stickers are “unnecessarily punitive.” The poll found that 60 percent of voters, including 57 percent who park on the street, support the use of the stickers.

It’s amazing how reliably New York motorists support harsh penalties for auto-rated nuisances, in the abstract. In the congestion pricing debates, all manner of draconian penalties for double parking were bandied about as alternatives that wouldn’t punish the good working people of New York who never double park. We didn’t get to find out if those penalties would have provided some minor gain in efficiency because of course they were dropped the moment that congestion pricing was pushed back. If they were passed, they would surely have been enforced as evenly and thoroughly as the laws against car alarms, horn honking except in case of danger, and blocking bicycle lanes.

The fact that New Yorkers support harsh penalties for acts we often commit is a mix of self-delusion, corrupt privilege (see: ticket fixing scandal), and also a dash of tough New Yawk City bullshit. Look at how we tolerate laws against drinking on stoops and in parks, even as we drink on stoops and in parks, and if we are ever accosted by police for it we will try to get out of the ticket with great passion, but if we fail we will just chuckle and pay the fine. That’s just the way of the world! (Except in most of the world.)

Recognizing this proud civic dysfunction, the best a transportation advocate can do is use it thoughtfully even as we argue for less-insane ways of mitigating simple problems like over-consumption of finite Manhattan street space, such as charging a price for using it. But yeah, bring on the jail time for blocking the box, etc!

Quinn will always fail in her quixotic attempt to play a Real Motorist, because in her circle of elite privilege she isn’t even aware that New York’s commoner oil-addicts have become experts at manipulating the parking kabuki. Lowering the stakes of a misstep removes an advantage they hold dearly over the bumpkins driving in from Pennsylvania.