David Binnig
@binnig
Portlander. Transportation & housing hobbyist.
Also a plot point in Sinclair Lewis’s “Babbitt”! (Babbitt buys up land options to profit from insider deals with the transit [“traction”] company).
The strong version of this isn’t so much wrong as self-defeating. If there’s no free will, that’s as true for our policy choices as it is for our life choices: there’s no moment where “you” step out of the chain of cultural conditioning etc. to freely choose to accept or reject arguments for UBI.
Like it seemed evident to me, a person with no particular arboricultural knowledge, that it might be challenging to keep trees alive in small pots with limited sunlight
I played “Rubber Duckie” for my kid when she was younger and the middle eight was way more adventurous than I had remembered.
The Euclid v. Ambler historic marker is in the band of commercial zoning (salmon pink) with industrial (fuchsia) behind. Other side of the five-lane arterial is multi-family (orange).
I’m fascinated by the gap between things my kid draws from conceptual knowledge (head, tail, n legs) and things she draws by actually looking at the shapes.
And 2. Voter participation in “participatory budgeting” in cities that have tried it is generally appalling, an order of magnitude lower than turnout for Portland council races. www.brennancenter.org/our-work/ana...
The counterpoint is that ultimately the public would get to vote on the options, but 1. The participatory budgeting voting process is explicitly exempt from all election laws, www.portland.gov/auditor/elec...
Yeah I feel like we’re getting vintage Howard Jarvis rhetorical framing recycled in progressive dress: what are THEY doing with YOUR tax dollars?
But conversely if you *don’t* believe councilors represent your interests, I think you should ask: if we take ~$17 million from the current city budget for a participatory budgeting sandbox, what current spending should get cut? And does a council you don’t trust cut the things you want?
We have a new charter and council system; I voted on my district councilors two years ago and get to do it again this fall. My councilors are pretty easy to find if you want to talk to them; I sometimes disagree with them but they’re not oligarchs imposed on us by some oppressive cabal.
One of the things I find off-putting about the participatory budgeting campaign is the implicit contempt for representative democracy.
“Capital” is funny because after ~2,000 pages Marx says “now I will finally explain what defines classes” and then … dies.
Signature gatherer for the PCEF-police funding petition today told me he didn’t have a copy of the initiative text, which I’m pretty sure is against state law?
Also notable that for both bands the first really distinctively British topic was the tax rates on top brackets.
No, as someone who’s somehow been listening to Boots for 30 years I think his messages regarding women have consistently been good, even cringe:
Critics hated them but this album is very fun. Also appreciate the truth in advertising that an album called “Demons and Wizards” includes songs about both demons and wizards.
Spoilers from 1955 but the protagonist is trying to redevelop a 20-acre estate as small lots and the opposition shows up at the town meeting:
Not sure what the competition is but “The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit” has to be one of the best novels about a residential upzoning fight.
You can still ride your patriotically-decorated bike and know your neighbors, even (especially?) in Portland, Oregon.
My impression is that at least initially it did the thing it was meant to do (reduce roadside & beach litter) pretty well?