"It's f***ing cold!"

The following story first appeared as a comment to a story reported in The Ferndale Patch.  I'm repeating here because a) it cracks me up and b) it's easier for me to find here than there because of the swearing.

About four years ago when our youngest was three, my neighbor Mike (and he'll confirm this) and his wife were over for dinner. Mike and I were out tending the grill in the cold with our coats on, drinking beers, and talking out-of-earshot of the spouses.

The youngest comes out on the deck and declares, "It's f***ing cold out here."

??!!??

I don't know what expression Mike had on his face but I felt my ears get HOT.

Not believing what I heard, I asked my son to repeat himself. "What did you say?"

"I said, 'It's f***ing cold out here.'"

I still didn't believe such a word would escape his lips, so I had him come off the deck, onto the driveway, look right into my face, and asked him to repeat himself very s-l-o-w-l-y. He looked at me like I was deaf and declared clearly and slowly for all to hear...

"IT'S F***ING COLD OUT HERE."

"I can hardly wait to see how you handle this," Mike said laughing his a** off.

I put on my meanest, most serious face, used my daddy-is-really-pi**ed-off big-voice and told the little guy, "we NEVER say the words f***, f***er, or f***ing. Got it?"

He ran inside scared, cried, and I haven't heard those words from him since.

Glad it was over, and while Mike was still laughing, he and I both agreed the three-year old used the word properly in a sentence.

Why does Detroit make it so hard?

In "The Return of the King", the third book in "The Lord of the Rings," Samwise Gangee observes after finally entering Mordor that, 

"As he gazed at it suddenly Sam understood, almost with a shock, that this stronghold had been built not to keep enemies out of Mordor, but to keep them in."

Perhaps a nod to the USSR's iron curtain, or to Detroit's traffic management and neglect of its visitors.


Tonight I left our house in Ferndale to head to Ford Field an hour before a Monster Truck event.  Only 16 minutes away under ordinary conditions, we were trapped in our car for over 90 minutes trying to work our way downtown.


The closer we got to Detroit, the slower traffic moved.  I felt like the JoBeth Williams in Poltergeist trying to reach her screaming children when the hallway stretches longer and longer as she ran towards their bedroom.


Detroit proponents may protest that between the Monster Truck show, the auto show, and concerts at both the Fox and Fillmore theaters that some delays ought to be expected.  If Detroit wants these events to bring people down, they need to make sure these events don't end-up driving them away.


I was reminded why I don't go downtown for an event but maybe twice a year--tops.


90 minutes with two eight-year olds in the car?  Do you have any idea how many thumb-wars that is?


Someone once told me that the spacing between a woman's children is approximately the time it takes her to forget how painful the previous child's delivery was.  Perhaps there's a similar to affect on how frequently suburbanites visit Detroit.

After more than an hour, I gave-up trying to reach the Madison exit (the correct exit for Ford Field) and bailed-out onto Mack.


Bad idea.


Though not as bad as Judgement Night, so many streets were closed off I had to travel west from I-75 past Woodward before making my way toward Grand Circus Park.  Lots of cars.  Lots of pedestrians.  None of them looking happy to have made it as far as they did, with many more blocks to walk from where they abandoned their cars in neighborhoods as dissimilar from their suburban homes as Mordor is to the Shire.


Leaving the city was only slightly easier than trying to get into it.  I felt like Kurt Russell trying to escape from Detroit's sidestreets.  Just as the approach to Detroit, there wasn't a police officer in sight directing traffic, or sufficient signage to assist visitors find the quickest paths to freeways.


Some may say this is an argument in-favor of public transportation.  Rather, I think, it's an argument against building a new Joe Louis Arena for the Red Wings downtown, and a reminder about the appeal Pontiac's Silverdome had for the Lions, or Auburn Hills' Palace has for the Pistons.  Or for that matter, why it's so much more enjoyable to patronize restaurants in Ferndale, Southfield, Dearborn, Troy, or even Rochester (OK, maybe not Rochester) than to pay the price of going downtown--especially when other events are going on.

Figure out how to bring people in and get them out, and perhaps they'll do more of both.

In the meantime, my next dinner reservation will be at Howe's Bayou.

Most expensive rail in the world?

"And building the 3.4 miles of light rail would cost nearly $300 million."

--  Jeff Gerritt (Detroit Free Press)

The Light-Rail project was canceled recently in Detroit.  Officially, it was canceled due to Detroit's crashing finances and for lack of a regional transit authority.

After reading a Free Press editorial, the real reason is math.

The plan was to spend $300 million dollars on 3.4 miles of track.  That's $88 million-per-mile, or $16,711-per-foot.  Apparently, the tracks are made of precious metal that must be guarded to keep thieves from scrapping it.

Troy's recent decision to cancel its $8 million, 2500 square-feet transit station brought out a lot of comparisons between the Detroit and Shanghai metropolitan areas, mostly about how backward-thinking Troy's city council and other regional leaders are (I'm being euphemistic--the actual statements were much more insulting).

Construction costs for the the mag-lev in China are approximately $28 million-per-mile ($18mm/Km), and could get passengers from Downtown Detroit to Pontiac in less than 10 minutes.  

And according to other estimates--it will be self-funding.

We could go on-and-on about the comparisons, like relative distance between end-points in China and Detroit, the number of people in China and Detroit, the population trends between China and Detroit, the daily ridership, the population density between China and Detroit, and the minimum wage between China and Detroit, but only the minimum-wage is in Detroit's favor.

Oakland County commissioners prove party more important than policy

The Michigan State Legislature recently passed a bill, ready for the governor's signature, that limits the maximum number of commissioners for county's with more than 50,000 residents to 21.


If citizens knew nothing more about that, the major topic of conversation should be, "How does reducing the number of commissioners affect my representation?"


If citizens knew little more than that, but that reducing the number of commissioners might save the county $500,000 in pay and benefits by 2013, and $2.5 million by the next census (the math doesn't work out but I'm quoting here), citizens might amend their first question to, "Is saving $500,000/year in our cash-stretched county worth diluting my potential influence 7.4%?  If so why not cut another two commissioners and save $1 million by 2013?"  Or perhaps declare, "No loss in representation is worth a measly $500,000 by 2013."


But instead of debating policy issues, or whether the number should be reduced at all, or whether having county commissioners responsible for drawing districts as the legislature does for the state is a better idea than a committee that includes two non-elected county party chairs, Democrats are crying about end-runs around the first redistricting plan they've had a majority over in years.


The 25th district is represented by Craig Covey (D), former mayor of Ferndale until his election to the county commission.  Now on the commission, instead of representing his district on the weightier issue of diluting voters' representation for a debatable cost savings, Covey's arguing about which political party is best represented and served by redistricting.

"A years ago, I came here excited and filled with energy — today I'm crushed," said Commissioner Craig Covey, D-Ferndale, minutes before walking out on other votes."

Seven of 10 Democrats on the Oakland County Board of Commissioners walked out of a Board meeting Thursday after failing to get support from their Republican colleagues to oppose a redistricting measure in Lansing that seeks to decrease the number of county commissioners, among other changes.

County Commissioners may not be paid as much as state legislators or City of Detroit councilpersons (one of the few full-time councils even for big cities), but I'm pretty sure voters don't need what diluted representation they do have in government walking out of meetings because they're more incensed at how their political party was "dissed."

Which is really what politics has become about, a myopic take-no-prisoners capture-the-flag by-any-means-necessary battle whose first priority is party-control and thoughtful policy-making and moderates are casualties of war.

Oakland County is the biggest loser in this latest tantrum because it's Oakland County's voters that are being cheated out of the real debate--by all its commissioners.  And instead of discussing public policy like mature adults, our commissioners are arguing which party got the biggest scoop of ice-cream.

Eric Sharp blasts Pilgrims on Thanksgiving

Eric Sharp, staff writer for the Detroit Free Press, is the latest writer proving how arrogant we are when we pass judgement on previous generations. For maximum affect, Mr. Sharp's article appeared in the Thanskgiving Day paper where he proceeded to disparaging the Pilgrims from the safe, and arrogant distance of 390 years.

Mr. Sharp, wrote, "We should not teach our children that the Puritans were any more tolerant than most of their European counterparts." My memory may not be as fresh as it once was, but I don't remember "tolerance" and "diversity" being major lessons. Instead we learned they endured a miserable journey across the Atlantic in search of religious freedom.

Later in school we learned about the Salem witch trials coincident with studying the McCarthy era. In English we were supposed to read The Crucible. All were lessons about intolerance, gave meaning to the term witch hunts. Many years after graduating I realized those lessons also warned against political correctness.

Worse, perhaps, than teaching the wrong things (in Mr. Sharp's opinion) years ago is pretending we did for the purpose of building a strawman against which Mr. Sharp can work out his anti-Christian anxieties and moral-relativism.

Before setting out to re-write history, or even reinterpret it from a safe distance, we should remember the lessons of Professor Thomas Sowell and not judge people from years ago using today's "morality."

As soon as I can find the link to his article I'll include it above.

DDOT is Detroit's poster child

DDOT has a lot in common with the city it serves, and the messages it sends are consistent with the city's, and the message DDOT drivers are sent Friday is, "We aren't safe down here, so we're refusing to show up."

That's not too much different from what many suburbanites feel, and if even the bus drivers feel unsafe, how are folks living outside Detroit supposed to feel safe, or endorse regional mass transit?

Channel 2 (Fox) is reporting today that DDOT bus drivers are refusing to work today because of safety concerns.

Earlier Friday, hundreds of bus drivers haulted their routes after several DDOT employees were attacked by passengers at the Rose Parks terminal on Thursday. "It was a melee," said union spokesperson William Williams. "It was bad."

The Detroit Free Press reported:

A walk-out by at least 100 Detroit Department of Transportation bus drivers today has crippled service for bus riders across the city of Detroit.  About 100 drivers came to work early this morning but refused to get on the buses, (Henry) Gaffney said [president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26 in Detroit, the union representing the bus drivers]. He said they're scared to drive without law enforcement presence.

And The Detroit News added

Dan Lijana, a spokesman for Bing, ... says the safety of passengers and drivers is a top priority.

The problem with cheering on Detroit is that despite the cheers, the story remains the same.  Or at least the story hasn't changed much since May 23 2007 when I wrote,

While Detroit's city council took the time to pass a resolution in favor of impeaching Bush and Cheney they couldn't find the time to debate and resolve DDOT's request for officers on buses to stem assaults and robberies on city buses.

Of course, needing police or sheriff deputies on buses increases the cost of public transportation, just as needing metal detectors and police inside schools increases the cost of public education.  If every public service requires police escort the services will always cost more than they should, or at least more than they do in cities where the customers of public services don't need the police to maintain civility.

.

The redistribution of...

It's worth researching the definition of what an oligarchy is to better understand the article, "Has America Become an Oligarchy?"

If American has, or is becoming, an oligarchy (as OWS protesters believe), the solution is not the redistribution of wealth, it's the redistribution of rule. Or put another way, within the structure of our existing constitution, a return to federalism would simultaneously dilute the power and corrupting excesses (and disappointments) of our federal government and dilute the influence of corporate and private oligarchs.

As a consequence, fewer taxes would accrue to the federal government and more taxes would remain in the states, as the proportion of taxes paid to the federal government over the state government would invert--increasing the 50 states' treasuries.

As an added benefit, federalism increases the representation of "the 99%" by increasing the power of their state-wide and locally elected officials.

All of this is possible within the framework of our existing constitution, but would require a supportive legislature and executive--both of which could be elected by both Tea Party and OWS with a common goal--improving our democracy through a redistribution of rule.

Radio worth watching: WNYC's Occupy Democracy