Driving Us Nuts

We are hearing a lot about the need to elect a Mayor with a big vision for the city. I agree, but we ought not forget that management skills are also very important. It’s great to have leadership that knows where it wants to go-but it doesn’t do much good to know you want to go to San Francisco if you think you need to drive to the East Coast to get there.

We can argue about the financing of all the road work being done in our fair city–this administration’s willingness to sell off capital assets to fund operating costs, its willingness to shift costs from taxpayers to ratepayers, and the other games it has played, but done is done. What has me frustrated is the lack of management, co-ordination and plain common sense I see daily as I try to navigate the relatively short distance from my home to IUPUI.

I served in City Hall “back in the day” and I know it’s never easy to avoid traffic tie ups when you are fixing streets. Some inconvenience is unavoidable. But I remember the efforts made to minimize those problems, the planning that went into the process. There is no evidence of such planning in the current frenzy to pave every possible street before the Super Bowl (or perhaps before the election.) Work interrupts rush hour on our busiests streets. Equipment needed in Fountain Square to remove buried rail tracks is being used somewhere else, so traffic to stores in Fountain Square remains blocked for weeks more than necessary (with the result that some of those businesses didn’t survive). Streets are torn up, base pavement put down, then ignored for long periods until suddenly the paving crews are back to finish the top coat. If there is any method to any of this, it isn’t apparent.

I’m glad our streets are being paved, even if I worry about paying for it with fiscal smoke and mirrors. I just wish there were someone in City Hall with the ability to recognize the challenge of doing so much work with so many different contractors in so abbreviated a time frame–someone with the skill to manage the process.

Instead, the simplest trip is driving us nuts.

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Doubting Evolution

I am a big believer in science, but I must admit that human behavior over the past couple of weeks has made me doubt evolution.

First, we had the appalling eruptions during GOP debates–first, audience applause when Brian Williams prefaced a question to Rick Perry by noting that executions in Texas during his tenure far exceeded those in any other state; and second, shouts of “yes, let them die” when Ron Paul was asked whether uninsured people should simply be allowed to die.

Now we have the repulsive right-wing reaction to the execution of Troy Davis.

Callers to conservative radio shows last night defended that execution by insisting that the family of the murder victim “deserved closure.” Presumably, closure can come only from the death of another human being.  Now, I am not a supporter of the death penalty, for many reasons I won’t go into here, but even if one does support capital punishment, I cannot conceive of the “closure” that would come from proceeding with an execution where there is such substantial doubt of guilt. How can killing the wrong person provide justice or even retribution? How would executing a possibly innocent man be any different from the murder for which they are seeking vengeance?

Perhaps human evolution doesn’t always produce a capacity for compassion or empathy, but it should at least produce beings capable of a modicum of reason. These sickening displays of irrational blood-lust suggest that some among our human family not only haven’t evolved, they’ve regressed.

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A Question

Watching the news–and what passes for news–it’s hard not to wonder whether we’ve stumbled into an alternate university. The GOP is once again threatening to shut down the government, this time, apparently, over their insistence that funds spent for disaster relief be offset by other budget cuts. We still hear politicians insist that “austerity” will create jobs–despite a broad consensus among economists to the contrary, and despite the last jobs report which showed that private sector hiring gains were entirely offset by government layoffs.

You would think that the people who are trumpeting the need for cost reductions might be looking at long-standing boondoggles and expensive programs that are demonstrably failing to achieve their goals. I’ve written before about the monumentally expensive failure that is the drug war. Senator Lugar has long advocated cuts to agricultural subsidies (I’d start with the sugar subsidy that benefits a few well-connected producers while increasing costs to consumers)–there are plenty of places where we really could make significant cuts without damaging our already threadbare social safety net. (We might consider invading fewer countries…)

And I won’t even try to comprehend the mind-set that insists that “shared” sacrifices are those that fall exclusively on the people most likely to be hurt by them, so that millionaires and billionaires can be protected from returning to the historically low rates during the Clinton Administration. If Congress really believes that protecting millionaires’ pocketbooks leads to job creation, that they are protecting people who will invest in new jobs, why not raise their rates, but give them a generous tax credit for every job they create?

I could go on, but so could most of you reading this. We seem to live in a world where logic based upon credible information has become a very rare commodity.

So here is my question: what should reasonable people living in an unreasonable age do?

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And Now For Something Different……

A couple of old friends who read this blog have expressed surprise that I seem so gloomy (I’ve always been an optimist–not a Dr. Pangloss, but a believer in the common sense and good will of most people). So today I’m going to focus on one of the many good things that are happening around the world, despite our toxic politics.

While governments around the globe continue to dither about environmental policies, nonprofits are introducing bold new techniques that will not only ameliorate environmental degradation, but will cut the costs of delivering services in poor countries and neighborhoods. I found this one particularly impressive.

Now if we could just be that innovative in reforming our politics……..

The Tortoise and the Hare

Okay–this isn’t a very good analogy, but it’s the best I can come up with on a rainy Monday morning.

Today’s Star editorial–with which I strongly agree–reminded me of Eric Hoffer’s observation that the true measure of a civilization isn’t what it builds, but how well it maintains what it builds. Maintenance requires the skills of the tortoise–a steady, persistent attention to what needs to be done. Not flashy, like the hare, but reliable.

The editorial contrasted the money and energy being expended on Georgia Street upgrades for the Super Bowl with past projects like Pan Am Plaza that are now suffering from neglect.  Not too long ago, I commented here about the deplorable condition of the canal–another expensive and important amenity that is suffering from deferred maintenance, despite the fact that it is heavily used.

We are heading into political season, and we’ll hear a lot from candidates about their new ideas and bold plans. We need to hear from them about their intentions to polish existing jewels, and how they will propose to maintain what taxpayers have already built. To put it bluntly, I’m much less interested in building a faux Chinatown than I am in repairing the deteriorating bridges along the canal.

It’s not glamorous, but I’m with Hoffer–it’s the real test of leadership.

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