BobWaldrop.net

This is a personal note (as opposed to a hair on fire rant about something stoopid that the government has done) about life in Oklahoma City these days. 

We had the worst winter weather I recall in my 57 years of life starting on Christmas Eve. 

 It took me two hours to get to work that afternoon, I left about 1230 PM and arrived at the church, 11 miles from my house, at 230.  I then promptly got stuck in the church parking lot, and didn’t get unstuck for 4 days.  We had only 35 people at the 5 PM mass, 20 at the 830 PM mass, and 10 at the midnight mass. (This is in a parish of 1600 families!) I spent the night at the rectory, we had about 125 people at the 10 AM Christmas Day mass, and I caught a ride home from a friend with a 4-wheel drive jeep.

Even though the other musicians didn’t make it (well, about 10 choir members showed up on Christmas day(, I just did the music as the program specified.  I drafted cantors for the 5 PM and 830 PM masses from the congregation, such as it was, they were both young women who had cantored for me while in high school, who were home for the holiday.

Driving home was something like driving through an apocalyptic movie.  Abandoned cars were strewn everywhere on the urban landscape, many facing contrary to traffic, indicating that they spun around 180 degrees before coming to a stop.

My house, however, was fine without me.  I was gone 25 hours. When I left it was 65 degrees F inside, and when I got back it was 52 degrees F inside, indicating a decline of only one-half degree/hour, even though the temperature was about 17 degrees F that night, no sun.  My extra insulation, and the indoor insulated window shutters I made this year, really helped.

The snow stopped, but it was followed soon-after by very frigid temperatures (for Oklahoma, anyway), with lows temperatures down to 6 degrees at night, and windchills in the -15 degrees F.

This week we are having a heat wave.  Highs have been in the low 50 degree F.  I’m practically breaking out the shorts and sun-tan lotion and Hawaiian shirts. Well, not seriously, but while this might not be much for our brothers and sisters further north, it has strained our infrastructure to the limits.  There have been water main breaks all over town, power failures, and even natural gas outages, that last were virtually un-heard of in the past, but not now in the “new normal” we live in these days.  Oklahoma City has only 15 snow plows and 14,000 miles of streets, so you can see our problem.  Plus, most people are not used to driving on snow, and their cars are not equipped with snow tires or chains, and we have very minimal public transportation.

All’s well that ends well this time around.  We were lucky the blizzard (14 inches in one day, a record for us), only lasted one day and that our usual moderate winter weather hurried back so quickly.  Next time we may not be so lucky.

I just posted the comment below at the Ice News website, which provides news about Iceland in English, commenting about the coming referendum on the unjust demands of the British and Netherlands governments regarding the responsibility of the people of Iceland to make good on the deposits of British and Netherlands citizens in Icelandic banks.

Begin comment. . .

I say “Three cheers for the brave Icelandic people who refuse to be impoverished by the demands of the crooks and fools running the British and Netherlands governments.” It is at best disingenuous to lay all of this on the nation of Iceland. If the British and Netherlands governments allowed these banks to operate in their territories, then their regulators are at fault for not noticing how thinly the guarantee fund was financed.

In the comment thread above, several statements have been made about the credit-worthiness of the United States government. Anyone who believe this is delusional. Anyone who thinks that US taxpayers will actually be able to pay the many trillions of dollars our own crooks and fools have obligated us for is also delusional (cf all the guarantees we’ve been handing out like candy to the crooks on Wall Street and in the big transnational banks).

Beware of anything you hear the US government saying about its finances. Tax receipts for governments — local, state, national — are plummeting. The feds are fiddling with their statitics just like they did in the old Soviet Union. Unemployment is at least twice what the government is reporting.

So if we ever actually pay our bloated debt and bank/finance system guarantees, it will only be thanks to a hyper-inflation where the price of a cup of coffee at my favorite local cafe has risen from US$1.00 to US$100 or even more. A lot of good your US dollars will do you then. I have thought that maybe they could be shredded and used for insulation, and I suppose they could be composted and used to grow vegetables.

Keep banging those pans, Icelanders. Make a noise loud enough to sound across the world.

About twice as many people as usual voted in the MAPS 3 election yesterday, and that is a heartening sign of civic engagement.  Alas, the end result is a blank check to the current and future city leaders amounting to $777 billion.  Nice work if you can get it.

Another optimistic bit of news is that the Mayor says that the new convention center won’t be built first, but “later”.  On the unknown side is his statement that they want the park to open by 2014, when the “new boulevard” that will replace the I-40 Crosstown Freeway is scheduled to open.

Did I miss something about the funding of said boulevard?  No, I don’t think so, it’s presently unfunded, as is the new jail that we are going to have to build or have our local jail taken over by the federal court system.

I hope I am wrong about the MAPS issue.  I hope that the City Council (and the future City Councils to come) can be trusted with this amount of money.  I hope we aren’t presently experiencing permanently changed economic conditions.  I hope Oklahoma City doesn’t suddenly have an emergency need for a true public transit system due to a renewed and even more vicious energy crisis.

I also hope I win the lottery.

Tuesday, Dec. 8th, is the MAPS 3 election.  My post of November 23rd pretty much describes in detail my reasons for voting “No”.

To what I said before, I can only add this: the reliance of the pro-MAPS folks on ad hominem attacks on opponents of the proposal is a measure of the poverty of their proposal and their fear that they are going down to defeat.  Notice the absence of poll results from the pro-MAPS campaign.  That’s because their polling efforts aren’t giving them much in the way of good news.

The weather on Tuesday is projected as not-so-good, “freezing drizzle” say the local weather prognosticators.  Don’t let the weather keep you from going out and doing the right thing and voting “No” on this MAPS proposal.  We can certainly do better.

I have delayed publishing this because I really wanted to support the MAPS 3 proposals. I have been hoping that more and better information would be made available, but the City’s campaign seems to be all sizzle and no steak.

Below are my concerns about the MAPS 3 proposal, as it is presented at this time.  Advocates of sustainability, social justice, and good governance must weigh the pros and cons of the various projects to determine if, all things considered, a “yes” vote for MAPS 3 is warranted.  At this point, with the information we have, I am voting against the MAPS 3 proposals, and I encourage others to do the same.  We can do much better than the MAPS 3 proposal.

1.  No Assurance of Project Completion.

There is no assurance that the announced MAPS 3 projects will actually be completed.  The specific projects will not appear on the ballot, instead, we will vote on a generic grant of authority to the City Council to keep the sales tax where it is and spend the money on unspecified projects.

The resolution concerning the projects is non-binding and could be changed at any time by this or a future City Council.   Some or all of these projects could be cancelled or replaced with other “priorities”.

The City is doing this to avoid having to list each project as a separate ballot issue, which would allow voters to pick and choose among the projects. Giving the City a blank check for hundreds of millions of dollars is not a good idea.

2.  The City is being stingy with info.

The vote is rapidly approaching, yet there is almost nothing other than fluff at the City’s website,  The Oklahoman’s editors are firmly in favor of MAPS 3. The Gazette seems to have the best reporting I’ve seen, it’s one of the few places where questions are being asked about “operating costs”, for example.

The only local source collecting  “all the MAPS 3 news” is the Doug Dawgz blog, who is doing a fantastic job collecting the meager info about the MAPS 3 vote, at   http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-news-about-maps-3.html .

Among the most important unanswered questions are –
+  How will the projects be staged?  Which will be first?  Last?

The only clue thus far is a statement by the Mayor at a Nov 16 Chamber of Commerce luncheon that the park would be “first priority”.    http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-news-about-maps-3.html (Scroll down to the Nov 16th report.)

+ If revenue estimates fall short due to continued economic instability, which projects get cut?  Although the question has been asked at the City council, no clear answer was forthcoming.

+ Regarding revenue estimates . . . the city’s website notes that previous revenue estimates came very close to the actual receipts, but the website does not disclose the methodology to produce the MAPS 3 revenue estimates.  “Showing their work”, as our math teachers used to demand, would help build confidence in their revenue estimates.

+ What about operating revenues for the convention center, river amenities, transit, park, senior citizens centers, etc?  Will other city expenses have to be cut to pay for these new unfunded operating expenses?

The designer for the park says some city revenues will be needed for park operations, but apparently no projected budget presently exists nor are the future fiscal demands on the city known at this time.  http://dougdawg.blogspot.com/2009/10/all-news-about-maps-3.html .Scroll down to the report of the Oct 29 Chamber of Commerce luncheon and the remarks of Mary Margaret Jones of Hargreaves Associates.

A Nov 4th article in the Gazette says that the city manager has agreed to absorb $2 million/year in operational costs for the downtown streetcar system into the regular city budget.  If there is an estimate on the entire operations budget, nobody is saying anything about it thus far.

Regarding operations costs of the senior wellness/aquatic centers, an article in the Nov. 11th Oklahoma City Gazette says that no budget presently exists for the centers. http://tinyurl.com/yhkr937

This lack of attention to the details of operating costs seems extremely irresponsible. These days, no one in the private sector would be able to get funding for capital projects without an operations budget and a plan for financing the operations.  No bank would loan a business money on the vague promise that “we will have a budget” and “we will get the money”.

+ Is there a map of the proposed trail system?  Is it configured so that it could facilitate bicycle commuting or is it strictly a recreational program?

3.  Equity Issues.

MAPS 3 has some very real social justice and equity issues. Will MAPS 3 accelerate the process of gentrifying/improving the city’s central areas – at the cost of driving the de-gentrification of suburban areas?  MAPS 3 programs $600 million in downtown spending, and only $160 million elsewhere in the city.  No transit dollars are programmed for the suburbs. Dollars spent gentrifying the central city areas can’t be used to support low income and middle class areas elsewhere in the city. Oklahoma City’s  MAPS 3 may therefore increase the risk of de-gentrifying areas of the city that are not served by transit and are not conveniently located for access to the “new and improved” downtown area.  This should be of particular concern to voters and property owners in the city’s suburban areas.

It is evident that transportation decisions have enormous impacts on city development.  The extension of early trolley car lines jump-started the growth of the City’s first suburbs – neighborhoods we know today as Gatewood, Mesta Park, etc. In the 60s and 70s, the construction of freeways and Northwest Expressway enabled a new generation of suburbs far away from downtown.  This reflected the cheap energy and automobile orientation of the late 20th century.  But nothing stays the same. The 21st century is an era of higher energy prices bringing new interest in public transportation options.

In the 21st century, neighborhoods served by public transportation have significant advantages over neighborhoods without access to public transit. The concentration of MAPS 3 transportation dollars in the City’s central core will drive housing decisions.  More people buying downtown and in the central city mean fewer people interested in houses in the suburban areas.  It also displaces lower income people from the areas close to downtown. That is a process that can drive de-gentrification in suburban areas.  Look at the rest of the world – the slums are in the suburbs, not the central city areas.

The decision to go for a central city trolley system, without any improvements elsewhere in the city, means that it will likely be ten years before a significant upgrade in the rest of the city’s transit systems will be considered.  Given the volatility of oil prices, ten years is too long to wait,.

4.  Convention Center.

The proposed new convention center is a great 20th century idea.  Unfortunately, this is the 21st century and we need 21st century ideas, not old, tired, “everybody’s doing it so we have to” ideas from the 20th century. Many questions remain unanswered. Do the Ford and Cox buildings have operating deficits? Will the new convention center make a profit or will it need an annual subsidy?  If so, where will that subsidy come from?

The City brags about tourism jobs, but the fact of that matter is that tourism jobs are hospitality industry jobs and that means “low-paid jobs with few or no benefits.”  Do we really want to give such a major subsidy to an industry characterized by low paid and part-time work?  According to Roy Williams of the OKC Chamber of Commerce, the new convention center will create 1100 jobs.  At $280 million for the convention center, this is a cost of $254,000 per low-wage job. Will the contractors at the new convention center obey the law and collect and pay taxes on the incomes of their workers?  Or will they, as is sometimes the case with contractors for events at our existing facilities, pay workers cash and thus cheat them and the government of taxes and Social Security/Medicare contributions? (NB:  I spoke with a low-income worker last week who confirmed that when he works temp jobs at city facilities, taxes are not withheld from his paycheck and his employer does not pay social security taxes on his wages.)

Instead of investing in a new convention center, we would be ahead financially if that money was instead invested in a comprehensive area transit system that would allow families to save thousands of dollars in commuting costs and reduce pollution and damage to our city’s streets.

5.  Police and Fire-fighter concerns.  

The police and fire-fighter unions have expressed concerns about public safety being under-funded at the cost of expanding economic development (a/k/a socialism for the politically well-connected).  There can be no doubt that in recent years the city has neglected its infrastructure responsibilities.  Projects from previous bond issues remain uncompleted, public safety personnel positions are being cut even as the City’s area and popuation increases, and the City’s transit system is exceptionally poor.  Of the MAPS 3 moneys, well over half the funds are “economic development”.  This comes on the heels of our recent $120 million welfare check to help 3 of the richest families in the state steal the Sonics from Seattle, and the decision to invest all of the property taxes for the next 20 years from the new Devon Energy tower downtown rather than using them to fund the regular budgets of our schools, libraries, health departments, and general government operations.

6.  Sustainability Issues.

Advocates of sustainability should be concerned about the continued mis-allocation of increasingly scarce resources that the MAPS 3 proposal represents.  The convention center and the piece-meal approach to area transit are major sustainability issues.

As noted above, the convention center is an investment in social injustice (using tax money to create low-wage/low-benefit jobs for companies that typically treat their employees with injustrice e.g. not paying social security taxes on their payrolls). Social injustice is never good for sustainability.

The convention center is an investment in the travel industry, and the travel promoted by conventions is mostly air travel, the most unsustainable and polluting of all the methods of travel. Moreover, given the on-going economic crisis, and the possibility of permanently changed economic codnitions, the future of the convention industry is problematic at best.

The sustainability problem with the transit component is that the City has adopted a piece-meal approach to regional transit.  This is inefficient and will greatly increase costs, both fiscal capital costs and opportunity costs to transit patrons.  For example, MAPS 1 built a downtown terminal for the City’s bus system   MAPS 3 now proposes a downtown trolley system — with a terminal not conveniently locatedat the same place as the bus terminal. This builds major inefficiencies into the system for patrons.  It decreases the value of the downtown trolley system by increasing its inconvenience to patrons of the bus system. City leaders promise eventually to build a regional transit system, whose terminal may be in a third location! More inefficiency.

The MAPS 3 proposal accepts the destruction of the rail center of Union Station, and does not conceptualize its replacement with a multi-modal transportation center. So we reject our heritage transportation assets, without a clear plan for their replacement. This uncoordinated approach to transit adopted by the City will make the eventual creation of a multi-modal, regional transportation center much more expensive.

While there are some good pro-sustainability projects in the proposal (trails and sidewalks) there is no absolute assurance that those projects will be built, due to the way the City Council chose to structure the ballot.  As presently configured, MAPS 3 is an investment in unsustainability.  And going into the 20th century, cities that consistently invest in unsustainability will find themselves left behind.

Conclusion

If we continue the City Council’s path of taking from the general public and giving to the politically well-connected, Oklahoma City will continue to look more and more like a Victor Hugo novel.  We need a better MAPS 3 proposal that meets essential city needs, not another give-away subsidy for downtown special interests. I urge everyone to join with their neighbors to send a message to City Hall – “Not This MAPS!”.  We can do better!

The purpose of the Oklahoma Department of Citizen Aggravation is to ensure that every interaction between State Government and its citizens is as confusing, time-consuming, aggravating, and expensive as possible.

M e m o r a n d u m

To: Oklahoma Highway Patrol, Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Drivers License Division
Re: Drivers License Examination Process
1.  Pursuant to state policy, this memorandum is issued for the purpose of increasing the hassle, expense, and aggravation of citizens in their interactions with the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety Drivers License Division.

2.  No citizen shall be allowed to make an appointment for a driver’s test or a written test.  Citizens shall be required to arrive at approximately 4 AM on the day they desire a driver’s test, and wait for a first-come/first-serve test.

3.  At random intervals each week, the Departmentt of Public Safety shall take its computers off line.  No information shall be given to persons waiting in line as to how long said computers will be off-line.  No “rain checks” shall be given to persons waiting in line who are not able to take the test due to the inaccessibility of the Department’s computers. No back-up testing materials (such as paper copies of tests and pencils) shall be kept at testing stations.  Each citizen shall have the option of waiting until the office closes or returning at 4 AM on a future day to wait for a test.

4.  No officer whose job is giving driver’s tests is required to give such tests in a timely manner.  Such officers are encouraged to sit around and look busy doing other non-essential tasks, while applicants wait patiently in line for their driver’s test.

5.  In order to increase the number of citizens aggravated by the Department’s actions, no testing station shall be located on a municipal bus line, thus requiring applicants to have another citizen drive them to the location.

6.  All suggestions that the entire driver’s testing system should be carried out by contractors such as tag agents, which would result in a proliferation of testing opportunities and thus increase the convenience of the system to citizens, shall be condemned as dangers to public security.

I went to see the new 2012 movie yesterday.  I’ve enjoyed Roland Emmerich’s other movies (eg Independence Day and the Day After Tomorrow).  2012 is quite the thriller, but it is mostly a grand series of destructive special effects tied together very loosely by a very little bit of story.

For fans of the Mayan-2012 connection, the film will surely be disappointing, since the calendar is mentioned only a few times during the revealing of the back story and has nothing to do with the plot (other than it being an early revelation that the “Earth has an expiration date”).

LA sliding into the sea, the eruption of the Yellowstone caldera, the destruction of St. Peters in Rome, “what happens to the White House” (to name a few of the major special effects of the movie) are mind-boggling in their intensity, but for my money, “the great escape”, where our hero gets his family out of the destruction of LA, will go down in movie history as one of the greatest escape episodes in cinema.  It is all so improbable and even impossible that it works very nicely in an adrenaline inducing sort of way.
All special effects aside, the movie does have an interesting “point” — and that is the truly epic evil of of all of the world’s governments in the face of the crisis.  Years ahead of the actual event, the world’s governments become aware of the coming geological changes.  They decide to keep it secret, and begin working feverishly on a plan to save 400,000 people  — but not just any people, of course, they are saving elite people, and charging them upwards of a billion dollars a seat in their “arks”.  The world’s population is kept in the dark about this until the destruction is upon them and it is too late for people to do anything to save themselves.

That conniving evil in high places is the most believable aspect of the movie.

I’ve been afflicted by writer’s block lately.  The news seems to be about the same as it has been over the past year.  The government and the Wall Street parasites are jaw-boning a recovery.  The huge collection of government critics keeps debunking the federal propaganda.  Meanwhile, things continue to go from bad to worse for many people.

On the positive side, it was a great year for fruit here in central Oklahoma.  My pantry is loaded with jars f peach jam and pear butter, and the freezer is full of tomatoes and hot peppers and cooked squash, not to mention beef, chicken, pork, and buffalo, all from our own gardens or within a hundred miles or so of Oklahoma City. The backup batteries are charged and the inverter is on the shelf.  I need to fill the propane tanks, and finish the wood pile, but it looks like we ae about ready for winter.  I am still working on following my own advice — 20 resilient responses for troubled times –  and I hope others are doing likewise.

The continued betrayal of We the People by our political, economic, academic, and religious elitesis troubling and dangerous to the common good.  Both political parties are about as dysfunctional as they can be.  If we don’t save ourselves, there will be no resuce.

Comes now the news Ben Bernanke has been reappointed as head of the Federal Reserve.

It seems to me like our whole nation has plunged deeply into a gigantic Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to the parasites, fools, and thieves of our financial system.  How soon we forget the days when the hired political agent of Wall Street — the Tyrant Emperor George Bush II — threatens Congress with martial law and a complete meltdown of the financial system unless they take trillions from Main Street and give it to Wall Street.  And there is Ben Bernanke, right in the middle of the robbery, egging it on, joining in the heist.

So what is our response to these wicked people who held (and hold) our nation hostage? Do we lock them up in jail and throw away the key? Not on your life. We give them even MORE money, and reappoint the arch-criminal of them all, Ben Bernanke, to another term as head of the Federal Reserve.

The worse they treat us, the more we apparently love them.  This sounds like the Stockhold Syndrome writ very large, and it augurs very poorly for the future.  If you reward crime, you get more criminals. That’s the basic facts of this life.  So expect more taking from Main Street so the feds can give more to the fools, parasites, and thieves on Wall Street.

That’s what this game is about, and it will continue right up until the moment our entire nation falls onto the ash heap of history.

Today, in a rousing speech, our beloved Tyrant-Emperor called for even MORE murder and death for the long-suffering nation of Afghanistan.  It’s a war worth fighting, he says from the safety of his Secret Service protection.  If we don’t fight it, and win it, well, Al Queda will set up shop there and come back over here and kill us all.

Whatever.  Same schtick we’ve been hearing. The longer the President is in office, the more he sounds like the previous Tyrant-Emperor George Bush II.

The utter hypocrisy of his statements on Afghanistan are just nauseating.   If we care so much for the Afghan people, why exactly is it that per capita health care spending for this country that we have occupied for eight long yeas is less than fifty bucks?  Why so little development aid?  The answer to that is simple.  This war has nothing to do with helping the Afghan people or protecting America.  It is about greed and gold and oil.  It provides a useful violent distraction from the bummer economic news.  We ignore the fact that the enormous economic cost of our unjust wars is a major contributor to our on-going financial devolution.  All that money spent on murder and mayhem is money that can’t be spent on other more useful and productive purposes. If you want to read some details about that, see Winners and Losers in the American Warfare State.  We think we can do this forever without any consequences, but that just goes to show that as a collective, we Americans are adolescent fools, convinced of our own superiority and invulnerability.

The Bible says, “Pride goes before a fall.”  See also “Sow not in furrows of injustice lest you reap a seven-fold harvest.”

I hope everyone’s plans to adjust to the much-poorer future reality are coming along promptly.  What’s that you say? You don’t have any such plans? Better get busy.  Procrastination is the thief of time.