So, the Texas primary season is over, or at least it is for those whose races did not leave them in a position to face a runoff. But with the season being for the most part over, there comes the usual grumblings and wailings from my friends about low voter turnout whenever Americans hold elections. Several months ago, after the City of Houston elections, there was the same complaint - some 15 percent of registered voters in Houston bothered to vote in the City of Houston general election for Mayor and Council. So, Felicia Cravens asks, "why don’t people vote in primaries?"

The Wizard has a confession to make. Years ago, I used to get incredibly upset about the same issue. "Why don't people vote?", I go screaming to myself. Don't they understand! It matters so much! It's the end of the planet if they don't vote! A woman named Jackie Juntti complains on Facebook of suffering from the battered voter syndrome.

At the same time, the leftist "progressives" have been complaining recently that America is "ungovernable", which really means that they are going absolutely bananas because the Democrats hold three out of five seats in both the House and the Senate, as well as the Presidency. Yet incredibly, the Democratic Party has not been able (yet) to push through Obama Care, nor have they been able to push through Cap and Trade.

So what has led America to this sorry state of affairs? Better yet, one might want to ask whether this is a sorry state of affairs to begin with?

First of all, we need to go back and reread the words of the Founders. Madison had done his homework when he traveled to Philadelphia in 1789. Madison knew from reading history that establishing America as a pure democracy would create a serious danger whereby the fiery passions of the public would end up invoking whipsaws of policy, egged on by the mob. The turbulence that lurks in all of us would be erupting constantly. Peace and tranquility, which is a precursor to happiness and progress, would be a rarity.

Therefore, Madison and the rest of the Founders rendered a Republic. But more importantly, they also knew that even though many Americans would declare that they love liberty and freedom, their actions would often belie their words. So, being ten steps ahead of the rest of us, as they always were, the Founders created a political system that made it very difficult to get anything done. Two bodies of Legislators, along with an Executive, and all the affected interest groups, all have to come to some kind of agreement that this is the way in which things are going to be. Passing legislation on big issues that affect large swaths of the populace in America is like trying to herd around a bunch of cats. You have to corral them all in order to get something done.

"But wait, Wizard!", come the objection. And yes, I know, somebody out there is going to come up with some point where some President or some lower level public official did something quite easily. But people who do that are missing the forest for the trees. How many times have Presidents in America tried to push through universal health insurance? Truman, Kennedy, Nixon, Clinton, and now Obama? Remember, compulsory universal health insurance was something that was enacted decades ago by just about every other wealthy country in the world - except the United States.

That in turn should lead us to examine the political regimes of other countries. Why is it that other countries found it relatively easy to enact such legislation, whereas in America, the progressives have tried over and over and over again to reach the summit?

In the United Kingdom, for example, we don't have such lofty notions such as judicial review of laws, but rather we find such concepts as Parliamentary Supremacy. In other words, Parliaments in Britain and some other countries can make laws on just about anything they damned well please, and they can't be questioned by courts. In contrast, in the United States we have a Bill of Rights and judicial review. Governments can't always do what they want and sometimes legislation is struck down. In other words, there are more barriers in the United States to doing things, but it also means that each branch of government has to pay at least a little bit of attention on whether other branches of government will stomach what each other is doing.

Moreover, we also inherited from Britain the idea of single member representative districts, whose officials are usually elected by a plurality, an electoral system otherwise known as winner take all or first past the post. SMP style electoral systems can produce some stunning results. In the 1997 UK general elections, the Labor Party led by Tony Blair, came to power off of an election where the Labor Party won 43 percent of the votes, yet got 63 percent of the seats in Parliament. Because the Labor Party got over 50 percent +1 seats in Parliament, they got to make all the rules, and since Britain is a unitary state and not a federal state like the United States is, nearly all the power is embodied in one political body - Parliament. Parliament also controls well over 90 percent of all taxation spending in the UK, with town councils being responsible for the petty remainder. To put things bluntly, if Britons decide to elect a Labor government, they are going to get more government than they would if the install a Conservative Party government. In other words, it matters who gets elected.

In contrast, because we have a federalized nation, the political power is far more spread out and atomized in the United States. There is a central government in Washington, but there are fifty states, and thousands of towns and cities. The federal government has taken in some two thirds of all taxes since WWII, but state and local governments are responsible for the other one third. States and local governments also set rules on policing, criminal justice, land and water use matters, transportation, amongst many other issues. The result is what Madison intended - a political system where an attempt to preserve liberty and freedom to put into place by limiting the power of any one political actor or body to do damage to others. Californians may run themselves into bankruptcy and enact all kinds of kooky rules, but the fact that California is doing so is not necessarily going to harm other states or localities. Furthermore, Californians can move if they get fed up with their state of affairs and go elsewhere. In other words, our Founders set up a system where they tried to make it where it didn't quite matter so much who is in charge. How many times have you heard the old phrase, you have a choice between twiddle dee dom and twiddle dee dee?

So, we have single member legislative districts, but does it have to be this way? Of course not, and in many countries it isn't. In Germany, voters cast two votes - one for a district representative and one for a political party. 50 percent of the seats in the German Bundestag are apportioned by single member districts, and the other 50 percent are apportioned by how many votes each party receives in the election in what is called a mixed member proportional electoral system. One result is that there are more political parties in Germany, but another result is that in order to obtain a ruling majority, parties often have to form coalitions with other parties, whereas in the United States that doesn't happen. One of the two parties wins a majority and wins power, but even then, the ruling majorities in Congress are often uneasy majorities, as can be witnessed in the liberal / blue dog coalitions of Democrats that Nancy Pelosi presides over in Congress. Pelosi has big problems holding her coalition together, which again makes it hard to get things done.

To give an example of how things could be different in American government, take the election of John Culberson in November 2008 in the Texas 7th congressional district. Mr. Culberson beat Michael Skelley by a margin of 56 - 42 percent. Since a Republican wins the district, but what about the Democrats who voted against him? How are their views represented, or ask yourself whether theirs was a wasted vote? If it was a wasted vote, then why bother to vote in legislative districts where parties have incentives to gerrymander to gain as many seats as possible, packing votes into the seats held by the minoritity and cracking the districts held by the majority, thereby marginalizing the votes of many.

In a proportional representation system, there would be other ways of capturing the sentiment in that vote and people would find voting more meaningful. If there would have been five members apportioned in each district instead of one, the outcome might have been that three Republicans and two Democrats would have been elected to represent the 7th district. One thing Americans might want to consider is adding more seats to our legislatures in an effort to better capture the public sentiments of a growing population. The U.S. Congress has been stuck at 435 members for quite a while now. America gets trade offs - we lose the far edge sentiments of the left and right, but America gains stability and coherence in its government.

This state of affairs also leads into the question of whether any particular election had any meaning or not? I'll be up front: Most people are not going to know the difference, nor are they going to care, who sits on the Harris County Probate Court #3, or some other random court. In general, the higher up the political ladder, the higher the turnout rates are going to be for an election because there is more at stake. More people are going to turn out for a U.S. Senatorial election than one for a local Justice of the Peace court. Why, because a U.S. Senator has more power than a local JP does.

Ask yourself this: In any one particular election, ask yourself what's at stake? Does a particular election have any meaning, or is it basically meaningless? How much power does a particular office holder have? In the November 2009 City of Houston general elections, what was at stake was who was going to be sitting on the deliberative body of a major city. Under Houston's form of government, the mayor has the power, hence one should expect greater competitive pressures to obtain the job verses that of a city council member.

But, here is another point: What difference was there amongst the candidates? Did any of the four candidates - Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Gene Locke, or Roy Morales propose any radical changes in city governance? Did any of them propose to sell off Houston's two main airports? Did any of the mayoral candidates propose going to Austin and asking for legislation empowering Houston to collect 20 cents of gasoline taxes to solve Houston's transportation woes? No. Did any of them propose doing away with property taxes and implementing sales taxes? No. Did any candidate propose scrapping rail and rethinking Metro Rail? The closest thing to that was Roy Morales stating that Metro was a bully and that we should examine elevated rail for safety reasons. Peter Brown was specifically going to implement greater land use controls if elected, but otherwise there was not that great of difference between the candidates.

So, if there was not that great of difference between the candidates, what else was at stake for the public in competing for a job that one person once described at the Houston Chronicle website as being a glorified dog catcher? If you had to call the fire department because your home or your neighbor's residence had caught on fire, and they showed up, would it have mattered whether Annise Parker, Peter Brown, Bob Lanier, or Roy Morales were the ones sitting in the Mayor's chair when that happened? What about your City Council member? Probably not. So ask yourself - what difference does it make to you who sits in the Mayor's chair or on council, and hence why bother to vote?

In the 2009 Texas primaries, what was at stake? Both main parties (and there are two main parties, because we have single member districts, right?) chose their candidates for the Texas legislature and Governor, but not who was going to be the Governor! And what if you are an independent voter who does not subscribe to either party? Why should you have voted?

Another issue at stake is asking how much does you vote really matter? In the 2008 Presidential and congressional elections, 60 percent of eligible Americans, over 120 million in all, voted in the Presidential election. How much of a probability is your vote going to be the one that mattered? Ask yourself the same thing in any election - in the 2006 Texas primaries, there were over 600,000 voters who voted, a far smaller number. But you still needed to ask yourself what was the probability that your vote was the one that mattered? It was non-existent.

So, do you want people to vote? It is possible to force people to vote, indeed compulsory voting is the law in a number of countries. Such laws are usually enforced by small fines, or threat of disenfranchisement if someone habitually fails to vote. But one needs to ask whether such notions are compatible with liberty and freedom. Do you want to live in a country where it is compulsory to participate in politics? Better yet, how much knowledge do people really possess about political issues? Yet compulsory voting would be compelling them to participate in the political arena.

Admittedly, this entry is a mess, but America's political system was designed to make things bland and unexciting, thereby discouraging participation in politics. Yes change could come, but it would come slowly and in increments, not through sudden explosions or radical change. Elections and voting do matter in America, but they usually don't matter as much as people think, because of systemic barriers to more political parties, of fractured government power, and barriers put in the way of the expansion of the state. By doing this, our Founders wanted people to dedicate their energies into commercialism, to solving problems through private means or by charity, and not by force of the state, and for them that was the way in which liberty and freedom would be preserved. Did it work? Well, for 140 years it generally did, but WWII changed everything.

Barring a meltdown and a revolution, which is a distinct possibility, it will take another 70 years to roll things back and even then there are plenty of interest groups and people favoring bigger government that will stand in the way of liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. And so it goes that the great American experiment roll onwards.

Wizard

Why bother? The NEPA / EIS process, like nearly everything else the federal government does, is full of nothing but bullshit.

Wizard

The trip to Chicago

My father and I left Houston in his rather spacious automobile circa 1-2pm in the afternoon. We went over to my brother's residence where my father left him some instructions and house keys before we hit the open road. We ran into traffic congestion no fewer than five times within the first 35 miles before finally hitting some open road along I-45. We avoided the I-610 loop construction, but it was raining pretty hard that day and there were a number of accidents which were eliciting lots of rubber necking from drivers.

I had wanted to get out of Houston using U.S. 59, but I got into an argument with my father, who wanted to use I-10 to avoid the reconstruction work going on at the 610 Loop and get onto Interstate 45. We were leaving about 1pm and I told him that if we used I-45, we would run into evening rush hour traffic in Dallas. He would have none of it, so off we went, toughing it out up I-45.

The road way finally opened up somewhere around Conroe and off we went. True to form, we reached Dallas around 5pm and promptly ran into Dallas evening rush hour traffic around the point where I-45 ends and the road continues, turning into State highway 75. As with Houston, there are only either three or four lanes that go through downtown Dallas. It took a good one hour and twenty minutes to make it through Dallas and its northern suburbs before the traffic lightened up again. I was amazed how far the region had suburbanized. I spotted a new interchange that was being constructed in the outskirts of the Dallas Metro along highway 75. It will be needed.

As it was, I drove along highway 69 through Oklahoma, eventually hitting Interstate 44 east of Tulsa, which led to St. Louis. While driving along I-44, I saw a night train rolling in the opposite direction along the Interstate, reminding me that many of our roads followed where the trains ran.

We went through St. Louis around 4:00 am. I found the road network around St. Louis to be rather tricky. The interstates around St. Louis are full of turns, and the roads undulate with the terrain. If you aren't careful, then it's very easy to miss the turn offs that you're supposed to hit in order to stay on course.

I eventually made it to Lincoln Illinois by 7:30am. I let my father drive the rest of the way into Chicago. He is up there in age. I had let him drive for about 1 hour during the night, but he kept veering off onto the shoulder of the road, waking me up in the process from a brief nap. I then took back over driving until daylight, when it was safer for him to drive. We got into Chicago after 19 hours on the road.

Chicago

Many people have extolled about Chicago having an extensive mass transit system, and it does. Nonetheless, there was no doubt in my mind as my father and I entered Chicago on that snowy morning in late December that Chicago is in fact a city that is primarily built around the automobile.

We came into town and my father briefly drove around the convention center area. I saw quite a few hotels either directly connected to the convention center, or within a few blocks walking distance. The center also happened to be empty as we drove by. It reminded me that there are only so many conventions to go around and that Houston should not be wasting its energies on the convention business. We have far more pressing business to attend to than worrying about fighting over the scraps with a hundred other cities for convention business.

There was snow on the ground the entire time I was in Chicago. The temperatures hovered in the 20's during the day, and dipped into the teens at night. It was okay for a day or two, but after that I started to realize how thankful I was that I did not grow up, nor spend my adult life in Chicago.

I have a niece who is going to university in Chicago. She, like many students, has a car, but often walks with her friends to nearby restaurants and clubs. She also takes public transportation.

On the other hand, we stayed with my God parents while in the city. They never take public transportation, going everywhere by car - and yes, they have a pair of very nice cars! My sister had rented an SUV for the situation, so we mostly went back and forth between my aunt's residence and my God parents' using both vehicles. Only my mother flew into Chicago. We needed cars because it turned out that my aunt had quite a bit of stuff she had accumulated in her apartment. I ended up throwing away some 100 bags of trash in neighborhood bins before I returned to Houston and we took quite a few trips to the Salvation Army to donate items to charity.

Many of Chicago's older neighborhoods have alleyways in the back, where there are parking garages for residents. The alleyways are also where the trash bins, which are city owned, are located. Another item of interest was that in both my aunt's neighborhood and in my God parent's neighborhood, the streets were configured to be one way streets, with parallel on street parking. And yes, parking was often very hard to come by. On more than one occasion, I ended up parking over one block away from where my God parents lived. My father recalled that when the family still lived in Chicago in the 1960's, the streets in those neighborhoods were two way and there were not nearly as many vehicles parked in the street.

My God parents picked up the Chicago Tribune on the Sunday while we were there. While reading the weather pages, I was reminded of a piece of family lore. My father had a lifelong friend who shot a home movie of the blizzards of 1977-1979. For those of you who are not aware, Chicago endured three consecutive winters, 1976-77, 1977-78, and 1978-79, where the city was buried by an avalanche of snow. I recall seeing the home video, mercifully during a Houston summer, as a teenager, but had forgotten about it until I read that story. Another piece of trivia: The chief meterologist for WGN is a fellow named Thomas Skilling. He happens to be the brother of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling.

But I digress. In 1957, the City of Chicago passed a zoning ordinance that mandated that developers provide one space for off street parking for each residential unit. It became clear to me that this mandate was not providing enough parking for Chicago residents.

We drove up and down Western Avenue many times, as that was the thoroughfare that stretched between my God parents and my aunt's residence. The street has three lanes in both directions, but the outermost lanes are taken up for parallel parking. I also noticed that there were row houses along the street in a few spots, indicating possible spot zoning since the street was obviously commercial. There were some businesses had Houston style parking, such as some CVS / Walgreen's type drug stores and some restaurants we went to. In other words, the zoning codes were clearly not uniform.

There were times where we would see clumps of pedestrians walking in the early evening hours. My father told me that it was likely that those were people who were just getting off work and heading to some neighborhood tavern or nightclub. At one point we passed under an "EL" (elevated rail line). My dad began to reminesce about his life in Chicago before we moved to Houston. He said he would often move to where there was a nearby rail station, as he did not own a car while living in Chicago until he was 36 years old. At one point I asked him how long it took for him to get to work when he lived in Chicago, and he told me about 45 minutes to an hour.

Another item of note was that gasoline prices are some 50-70 cents per gallon higher in Chicago than they are down south. This price discrepancy still held in central Illinois when we bought gas on the way home. I am not sure about why this was the case, but I would not be surprised if the matter has to do with the idea that oil and gas companies have to formulate different type of fuel due to Clean Air Act mandates. This balkanizes the gasoline markets around the country.

The trip home

My mother decided that my dad needed to go home, as he wasn't adapting well to the weather or to the problems of dealing with my aunt's death. Ergo the job fell to me to drive him back to Houston.

My dad directed me to take I-90 / I-94 towards downtown Chicago, then take I-55 south to get out of the city. I'll never forget the view of the skyline of downtown Chicago from a crowded and congested I-90 / I-94. It is not as spectacular as Manhattan's skyline, but it is very impressive. It is that broad downtown area that (at least on paper) justifies Chicago's public transportation network.

As we made it onto I-55, I encountered another amazing sight. It took driving some 30 miles south along I-55 before the traffic finally began to thin out, but that wasn't what startled me. It was that I must have seen 300-400 18 wheelers driving northbound along I-55. At some points, it looked to be that one out of every three or four vehicles was an 18 wheeler. There was a repair facility for 18 wheelers along the road, as well as several parking areas. I caught what I thought was a glimpse of a freight rail line along the way. It reminded me of how Chicago, like Los Angeles, is a vast hub for the movement of freight.

We followed I-55 through as it turned into I-40, down through to Memphis, then turned west through Arkansas on the way back. We made it to the outskirts of Memphis after 9pm, and as we did, I saw hordes of Federal Express freight trucks making their way west bound out of Memphis and into the night.

I reached Texarkana around 1:00am. TX-DOT is constructing a large interchange at the edge of town, and it took several minutes to snake our way through the construction before we hit U.S. 59 for the final drive home. I wanted to make it back into town before the morning rush hour hit with full force. That turned out to be a tough thing to do because U.S. 59, though it is five lanes in many areas, is not an Interstate road. Because of that, the road goes directly through the heart of many towns in East Texas, such as Lufkin, Marshall, and Jefferson. Every time you go through those towns, you have to slow down to urban speeds, whereas the Interstates often bypass or circumnavigate many smaller urban areas which often allows for faster travel.

We made it into Houston at 7:00am, running into rain and mildly heavy traffic along 59 as we reached 610 Loop. I turned at 610 to head towards I-10, and ran directly into the construction work that TX-DOT is doing along the route. I was glad when it was over, as it was another 19 hour drive home.

Final Thoughts

1) I did not run into much traffic congestion driving either to Chicago or back outside the major urban areas. Even St. Louis, which I drove through at rush hour, did not have too much traffic congestion. The big traffic congestion, surprise, surprise, was in Chicago, Dallas, and here in Houston. As such, I strongly believe that the Trans Texas Corridor was (and is) not necessary! The Governor and the political classes can make all the statements they want about traffic congestion, but I didn't see it along I-45, nor along anywhere else.

If Texas really needs new roadway, it would be much cheaper to simply add a lane in either direction along the right of way along I-35 or any of our other major roads. That would be much cheaper on the public coffers than cutting a quarter mile wide swath along the entire state of Texas and building a gigantic infrastructure project costing $150 billion. When doing infrastructure, it's better to make improvements to add to what's already there, if it's necessary, rather than start up gigantic new projects that often lead to disasters.

2) What is necessary is that if government is still going to be the main player in terms of infrastructure funding, then policies ideally need to be developed so that the bulk of the money goes to where the traffic congestion is at - which is the major urban areas. America already has a great road network for its towns and rural areas. What we need to do for them is simply maintain what they have.

In 2010, Congress will probably take up a new six year transportation appropriations bill. The House chair for transportation is Ken Oberstar, who has stated that he wants a massive six year appropriation bill of $500 billion, well over 50 percent higher than the cost of the previous Bush Administration era transportation bill.

Tea Party types should be thinking that considering our country's financial straits, this is utterly irresponsible. The Interstate freeway system, which was the main rationale for collecting the federal gas tax, is completed and there's no stomach in Congress to raise the gas tax. Congress has been funding transportation out of general revenues since the last bill ran out of authorization. Governor Perry might have been ambitious with the Trans Texas Corridor, but his criticism of federal transportation was cogent when he stated that the federal program had become unfocused, because so many gas tax dollars were not getting back to where they came from and they were being spent on items like bicycle trails and light rail systems.

I would argue that the federal government should reduce the gas tax to perhaps 5 cents per gallon. The federal program should go only towards the Interstate system, thereby putting the federal program into maintenance mode, and either let the state and local governments set up policies to fund their own transportation networks, or better yet let the private sector start dealing with the matter. Either way, it's more likely that America would end up with a more rational transportation network for the future and it would be part of a program to start rolling back the centralized power of Washington has drawn the ire of so many.

Wizard

And so it was that the Wizard was somewhat glad to close the book on the end of the first decade of the 21st century, discerning that maybe I'm not doing the best I can with my own life, when I learned of more awful tidings that came from the winds. I received word from a sister stating that my mother's one remaining sister suffered either a massive stroke or a heart attack. The word has it that she was walking back to her car from a night out with her friends (she had not been drinking, or otherwise been under drugs or medication). The story I've been told is that on the way back to the car, she stopped in mid stride and said, "I can't breathe!" She then collapsed to the ground on the edge of winter.

A fire station was several blocks away and help was summoned. She was brought back to life, but she had been without oxygen for many minutes. I received a call from my sister saying, amongst many things, that people are stopping by to say their last farewells and pay their respects. And so it is that the Wizard will be leaving tomorrow on a mighty drive to a far away place to see my mother's sister as she passes on.

I told my mother that her sister's meeting with the inevitable happened 27 years to the day when her own mother passed away, of fluid build up in her lungs. My mother said to me that my sister had noted this also. How strange the fates that take us.

And yet, my aunt's passing strikes me far harder than the death of my grandmother so many years ago. I did mourn all those years ago, but I've become aware that it is likely that I have fewer years left in this world than I have already lived. Yet, what have I done? Where has the time gone? What am I to do with the time I have left? How can I, in my own small way, make the world a better place than it was when I first was brought into it?

I went out on a four mile run along Westheimer the evening I heard the news. I will always remember how the sun was setting in the west as I ran home. Somehow, as I ran, it seemed to me that all the crap I deal with in my own life didn't seem to matter all that much. Indeed, it is only now, as I reach my middle age, that I am beginning to understand the true meaning of the words, may you rest in peace, because it is only at this time of my life that I've come to see that our souls never really will have true peace as long as we are of this world. I wonder - is that the origin of religion, of faith, or of the belief in God?

My aunt did not have the easiest of lives. My mother and her sisters grew up during the Depression and WWII on a family farm in a small town in southwestern Wisconsin. My grandparents eventually took regular jobs, but my aunt followed my mother to the bright lights and to the big city. Women in those days did not have all the opportunities that they do today, and she did mostly odd jobs to make do. She met her first husband, whom I barely remember, but that was not to be. However, she grew wiser and better at living as she became older and met a second man who was to be with her until he passed away five years ago.

Her second husband, I believe, was the best thing that ever happened to her. He worked in the cattle yards and slaughter houses, then drove a bus, ferrying handicapped children until he was felled by a stroke well into his 70's. They brought stability into each others' lives and they raised a foster daughter, the child of some former employers of hers, both of whom had passed onwards when the girl was small.

My aunt was wonderful at giving me Christmas clothes that I didn't want to wear, but once again she got better as she got older. I still have some sweaters she gave me from 20 years ago. They never went out of style and are nice and warm. We are supposed to go to church on Christmas Day. I think I will wear one as a tribute to her.

And so her life was. I now go to help clear what's left of her life, but the biggest thing I want to take with me are some photos or memories she may have left behind. I am sad, but in a way it was better for me that my aunt passed on before my parents did. I now have a warning of what I will feel like when my own parents leave this world forever and I know it will not be easy.

So did my aunt live a full life, and try in her own small way to make the world a better place? The answer in my own mind, no doubt, is yes she did. May she rest in peace.

Wizard

The Wizard has several items he wants to write about, but rather than belt out a long epistle at the moment, I thought I would simply drop a quick note on an announcement. The Houston Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel reported that unless a Member of Congress objected, the FTA would approve advancing Harris County Metro's so called University Line into preliminary engineering (PE) status. No FEIS has been issued by Metro on the rail line. A discussion about the issue can be read here on BlogHouston.

Well, today the Wizard received notice of a Letter from John Culberson - who happens to be my Congressman - that the Congressman intends to object to this advance of the rail line, or the western portion of it which is in the 7th Congressional district, into PE status. Culberson's 14 page letter, along with documentation supporting Culberson's grounds for objecting based on Metro's stated financial health, and pertinent news stories from KHOU-TV concerning statements from Gene Locke and Annise Parker regarding Metro's 25 percent general mobility funding, can be downloaded here.

As to what this means to the status of the rail alignment, I am not yet sure. The Wizard thinks this will cause the FTA to scrutinize Metro's ability to meet the local matching requirements, but probably will not stop the project from advancing into PE status. As always, what will really stop Metro is the massive cost escalations of Metro Rail, along with its ongoing general mobility obligations.

Houston will know who its next Mayor will be next week. Otherwise, the world rolls onwards.

Wizard.

The first of my writings concerns a rather obscure issue that should matter to all citizens of Harris County. As of late, there has been inquiry made as to whether Harris County should have a Public Defender's office, for purposes - at least on paper - of insuring that the poor and indigent have constitutionally guaranteed legal counsel available to them in the event that they are charged with a criminal offense.

The current regime of criminal defense for the poor in Harris County, which can be read in this excellent paper published by the Houston area League of Women Voters, is for a judge who is presiding over a criminal case to assign an attorney to handle the case. However, as the LWV paper states, there are two other primary methods by which legal representation can be provided for; one is via the Contract method, by which the government contracts out with a non-profit group or a law firm to provide legal counsel for the poor. What usually happens is that the firm gets a fixed sum regardless of how many cases are dealt with. The other means by which indigent defense can be dealt with is via a Public Defender's office. One of the things I learned was the nearly all other large municipalities and counties around the United States - for better or worse - employ a public defender's office. The LWV pamphlet states that as long as 30 years ago, 90 of the 100 largest counties in the U.S. had a public defenders office.

As for the meeting at the Democratic Party headquarters, it was an interesting affair. Much like the quarterly Republican Party precinct chair meetings, the D's have free food at their "brown bag" events. The bonus for the Wizard is that the Dems were holding their brown bag issue townhalls during the day, but now they're holding them in the evening.

Presiding over the evening's talk was HCDP chairman Gary Birnberg. The evening's guest speakers were State Senator Rodney Ellis and HC District Attorney (and former Houston City Council member) Vince Ryan. There were about 100 people attending the meeting, indeed it was standing room only for the crowd. There was definitely a sentiment that Bill White "would be our best candidate for Governor." One person mentioned that "it changes all of the state races."

Mr. Birnberg said that some 100 candidates had filed for Judge. Pleas were made for precinct chairs by Mr. Birnberg, who stated that it was through the PC's that you won races. Sheila Jackson Lee showed up at the meeting, and did speak, but much to my amazement, she didn't try to take up all the time at the podium.

The first featured speaker was Rodney Ellis. Senator Ellis stated that Harris County does have a Public Defender office, but that it is a federal office, not a county office. Ellis stated that "most people around the country look at Texas and think we're lost our minds." Ellis went on to say that yes, "criminal justice is a government program, and because it's a government program, there are going to be screw ups." Ellis stated that we in Texas send more to the death chamber and to prison than anywhere else. He argued that a public defender system is fairer to the accused than any other regime of indigent defense. He said, "if you're poor, you'd want a federal public defender."

Ellis also pointed out that if you have a judge making appointments of counsel to the defendant, there are conflicts of interest. So, gentle readers, where are the conflicts of interest in a judge appointed counsel system for the indigent? Two main ones: One is that the judge, in theory, has the power to hand out appointments to lawyers, like those who contribute money to that judge's political campaigns. Another possible conflict is if the lawyer is not doing too well financially and decides that he needs some cases to work on.

In a broader sense, what is it that judges campaign on when they are candidates for the post? Do they promise that they will be fair? No, they promise to voters that they will run their courts efficiently and keep their dockets clear. The issue (or danger) that arises with a court appointed attorney for the indigent is that since the object is to keep the dockets clear, if you have a court appointed attorney representing an indigent defendant, the possibility arises that if a defense attorney is hungry for cases and wants to stay on the good side of the judge (or judges) who appointed him or her to defend the client, then the court appointed defense attorney could conceivably sell the defendant short through encouraging guilty pleas, plea bargaining, or doing things that serve the interest of the judge and the attorney, rather than that of the defendant. In the words of one retired defense attorney who was present, "we're supposed to have an adversarial judicial system!", the implication being that with a court appointed lawyer system that we really don't. Instead, we have a conflict of interest.

Someone whose name I didn't get argued that the only reason why the State of Texas hasn't been sued over the issue of court appointed attorneys for the accused is that everyone points the finger at everyone else, ergo where does the fault lie within the system? Again, this issue is not a vote getter when it comes to campaign time.

Senator Ellis went on to way that corruption is something to consider, but noted that judges make nearly $100,000 per year. Ellis, who authored the Texas Fair Defense Act in 2001 (and more here), stated that a public defender office would be scalable, but noted that whether a PD office would be better than a court appointed attorney system depended on whether it was set up right and was given enough funding.

Harris County Attorney Vince Ryan then took to the podium. He largely agreed with Senator Ellis, stating that Harris County has perhaps the harshest criminal justice system anywhere to be found in America. Ryan noted that the GOP leadership is dead set against a PD system for indigent defenders, and stated that Gary Polland gets paid $250,000 per year by Republican judges.

Sheila Jackson Lee took to the podium - we couldn't have a public meeting where Sheila didn't get to talk, could we? Sheila said that "there was power in justice", and that the Obama Administration is investigating the Harris County Sheriffs department for why there were 110 deaths in prison over the past 10 years. Also being investigated are a lack of medical care of prisoners and Ms. Jackson Lee said that there needs to be a substantial mental health component in the jail system. Sheila also decried what she called "the proliferation of guns in the community."

Mr. Ryan resumed command of the podium. He stated that it costs some $50 per day to have someone in jail. A study that was commissioned for the Harris County commissioners recommended that to relieve overcrowding, there should be a Public Defender's office, it recommended that three days of time be given for every day in jail, rather than two as it is now in Harris County, that there be personal recognizance bonds allowed, and that pre-trial release be given for low risk offenders.

Another topic that was raised was bail reform in Harris County. Mr. Ryan said that twelve bondsmen get 47 percent of the bail bonds in the County. A point was raised that there should be a series of questions asked of a defendant before a defendant is allowed to obtain a pre-trial bond.

Senator Ellis resumed speaking. He argued that implementing a PD office would institutionalize knowledge on indigent defense. He believed that yes, most defendants are in jail because they are guilty, but some are in there because of their lawyers pleading them out. Ellis stated that a PD would be an appointed office, not elected. Ellis said that sixty percent of defendants are in jail because they weren't processed properly and that the average number of cases for a juvenile PD is 1,200 per year, compared to a recommended level of 150 per year. He stated this to reiterate his point that to have a functioning PD office, you need to adequately fund it. Currently the County staffs the Attorney's office with 100 lawyers with a budget of $16 million. About $30 million per year is now spent in indigent defense.

Further discussing the funding and conflict issues, Ellis asked, "when was the last time a lawyer asked to reduce a bond?" The answer was never, because they make money when a defendant stays in jail. Senator Ellis stated that 50 percent of the jail population is black and poor. He went on to say that this is obviously a political issue for him because his voting base was being eroded.

Long time defense attorney David Mitcham was present. Mitcham handed out a November 9th, 2008 New York Times story stating that public defender offices in seven states are refusing to take on cases citing heavy workloads. Mitcham argued that the problem was political, stating that the current judiciary overturned the pre-trial release regime, but Senator Ellis stated that the court appointed attorney regime was put in place by Democrats. Ellis told the audience that Dick Raycraft was all for a PD office, and that some Republicans also recognized that lawyers felt an allegiance to a judge in order to get more cases.

It remains to be seen whether the Democratic Party will adopt, as a resolution, the formation of a PD office next year, but it is on the table. The Republicans are strongly against it, witness this article by Court Koenning in the Texas Conservative Review.

So, is this political, or is this good justice? Should we have a hybrid PD office and court appointment system? The Wizard has yet to make up his mind. By the way - as a word of warning to the Republican Party. The Wizard heard a lot of talk about how Harris County was now 62 percent black and brown, and that there would be a Democrat County Judge soon. Clearly the local Democratic Party is taking it for granted that Hispanics and Blacks will vote for them in the future.

Well gentle readers, this was a long scribe. If you want to read up more on this issue here are some helpful links:

1) Here is the Texas Fair Defense Project's report on a Harris County Public Defender's office, where it is argued that a PD office will result in increased public accountability and will control costs.

2) Two stories back from 1999 from the Houston Press tell a story that the rights of defendants get compromised via the court appointed attorney system in order to keep the dockets cleared, and having defendants plea guilty to get out of prison.

3) An excellent blog entry from the always readable Murray Newman where he states that the real problem with our court system is that there are heavy caseloads and that defendants will be - in a memorable phrase - cooling their heels for a while, because of heavy caseloads. Newman also joins David Mitcham in countering the Houston Chronicle (and Senator Ellis), arguing against the establishment of a PD office.

When I initially published this blog entry, I identified the owner of the Washington Wave jitney service as Erik Ibarra. That information is incorrect and is hereby retracted. The actual founder and President of the Washington Wave jitney service is Lauren Barrash. The Washington Wave jitney service is in no way owned, operated by, or affiliated with Mr. Ibarra or his Eco Shuttle service. The Wizard formally apologizes to Ms. Barrash and to Mr. Ibarra for any confusion that may have resulted from my error.

(What follows is the resuming of my original blog entry)

Apologize for not blogging for several weeks, but I've been busy mostly on the social front.

The Washington Wave site notes that this service is the first jitney service offered in Houston in 15 years. Why is that? Much of that has to do with the barriers to entry caused by the the restrictiveness of the jitney ordinance (Chapter 46, article 6 of the City of Houston ordinances), which state that a would be jitney operator cannot operate a vehicle that is older than five years old, on top of a pile of other fees that have to be paid and rules that have to be followed. It's not hard for people to imagine that such barriers to entry make it very hard for anyone to break even on operating a jitney service, much less turn a buck.

Moving onwards, the weekend that Randal was in town, my 20 year old Honda CRX with 192,000 miles started having problems with the clutch. A consulting with my mechanic that I've been with for the past 12 years confirmed that pretty much the entire clutch, clutch cable, and probably the transmissions seals were all shot.Getting the car repaired was a cool $900, but I now have a car that can probably last another 100,000 miles if I so desire, and I've been finding I'm getting about four miles per gallon better gas mileage since the transmission work was done.

I was able to make it to and from my car mechanic's shop via Metro bus. Metro has the #81, the #82, and the #53 all at my disposal. No $130 million per mile rail lines, along with the disrupted businesses, nor the 1,500 foot radius condemnation zones needed, but here was the kicker. It was Friday afternoon and a Metro bus was stalled, dead in its tracks at the corner of South Shepherd and Westheimer. The bus driver had put out a set of blocks to indicate an out of service bus. I asked her what was the problem with the bus and she said there was a battery problem. The lost lane of traffic, not to mention the fact that her bus had broken down at the corner of a very busy major intersection, was a recipe for a major traffic tie up. Vehicles were backed up at least 50 deep back along Westheimer.

Fortunately (for me at least), there was another #81 bus just a block and a half up the road, so I waited until the next bus showed up and went home. However, the trips back and forth took 40 minutes for a five mile trip, which meant that the bus traveled an average speed of 7.5 miles per hour. On both the trip home and back the next day, fellow passengers looked at me and complained about how slow the bus was. Granted, these routes were navigating Westheimer during busy afternoons, but those passengers were looking at me as though they were hoping I could do something about the situation.

This got me to thinking about the idea of elevated transit. Last week at the HPRA meeting, Barry had an engineer from Tubular rail speak (or perhaps tout is the better word) on his product, but he didn't get away without having to answer a bunch of questions on the safety of his concept.

This has gotten me to thinking that there seems to be this idea out there that if a social decision is made to elevate transportation, it must be in the form of rail transit. But what about the idea of simply building an elevated road via double decking a thoroughfare, and allowing only buses, bicycles, and pedestrians to access it? Granted there are issues (there always are), including the cost of building anything that is grade separated, which would probably double the cost of a road built at grade.

A double decking of a thoroughfare would have to be at least 4 lanes wide, 2 wide lanes for buses, a middle lane for maneuvering, perhaps a four foot wide buffering strip for planting of vegetation, flowers, or scenery, and outside lanes for pedestrians and cyclists. There could be overhead cover provided for cyclists and pedestrians to allow for shelter against rain. Bus stops could be placed at gaps between the buffers every one-third of a mile.

A host of issues that would arise include resistance from neighborhoods (i.e. would such a project be politically feasible), constructing stairs or elevators for egress, where to put support structures for elevating a road, building the road high enough for vehicles to pass underneath, worries that such a structure would be a visual eyesore, and possibly water drainage. Costs per mile for 60 feet of elevated roadway would probably run at somewhere around $10 - 20 million per lane mile or $40 - 80 million per mile. If there were to be an elevated busway built over a freeway, then additional costs would incur from having to cross over the freeway. Here is a webpage that shows what an elevated busway might look like.

On the positive side, there would be no need for acquisition of additional right of way, but rather simple easements. There would also be no electric stray current leakage to worry about which is a substantial contributor to maintenance costs of rail lines, and some construction costs would be saved via not having to provide electrical power stations or infrastructure. Traffic congestion would ease on the streets below and motorists would not have to worry about unsafe at-grade trains going through our busiest intersections every 3-6 minutes. It's also conceivable that some property owners would build extensions to an elevated bus way from their own buildings.

If an elevated, exclusive busway were to be built over Westheimer, that would conceivably cut the travel time that I experienced a few weeks ago in half. Placing a bus stop every one third of a mile would have meant 15 bus stops to sit through on the way to Shepherd, which at twenty seconds a stop would mean a stop time of five minutes. Given that there would be segregated traffic with no stops at intersections or traffic lights to worry about, the bus could probably average 30 miles per hour between stops. That would result in an overall five mile trip of 15 minutes, or an average speed of 20 miles per hour. That would cut the overall travel time on that bus trip by more than half, and faster trips mean more transit riders. I could conceivably make a work trip to downtown within 30 minutes from where I live, and if I could do that, then I would consider regularly taking a bus to work.

A separated guideway along the elevated busway for cyclists and pedestrians would allow for getting around town without having to tear up the existing infrastructure and current business owners just might be able to survive the construction.

It's admittedly implausible that elevated busway will make it into the public discourse, but what such an idea goes to show is that in order to make public transportation (or via other methods) attractive to anyone is that transit has to be able to compete with automobiles in terms of speed, convenience, and overall safety. That means for the smart growth crowd to get what it wants, then the entire City of Houston would have to be completely redone and that's not going to be cheap. I would imagine it would be cheaper to do that via elevating the roadway, but that all depends on what you're after - improving mobility, or reshaping people's behavior.

Wizard

And so it was. Yet, it is a good thing to look over offers with an open mind. I ran into this same fellow about two weeks ago, and sure enough we started going over the idea of me buying into something along Washington Avenue. The street is brimming now, of course, with new development, the area being ripe for redevelopment.

So this past Saturday, the Wizard found himself taking a tour of Washington Avenue. There was a carnival atmosphere at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, as well as plenty of people enjoying themselves at various bars and clubs. It was a beautiful day out.

My landlord friend showed me his properties, and described the overall situation he was in. I had to admit it was a bit of gordian knot. To wit, the wine bar which I would have invested in ran into a bit of trouble with an ornery City inspector and had their outside porch ripped out. There went some of their business and the bar had to let go of several employees, and that wasn't the last of what I heard from my landlord friend, or his associates I met with that day, with regards to complaints about being a businessman dealing with the City.

But we moved onwards. We went to another of my landlord friend's properties, another of which is host to a bar. Now here is where I was really leading to with this blog entry. The bar has parking, but there is a lot along the street behind Washington Avenue that recently came up for sale. The lot is undeveloped and needs only to be cleared by its future owner. Now here's the kicker. The lot will probably go around $350,000. Adding the lot would be a bit asset to my landlord friend's property, but he's a bit tied up financially. Hence the possibility of my involvement.

But here's the catch. Ideally, we would be using the property for about 25 parking spaces, and one guy came up with the idea of putting some sand on the lot and allowing bar patrons to play some off street volleyball (this was their idea, not mine!). Now the Wizard has a degree in Economics and you can imagine what is going through my mind. How am I going recoup or otherwise justify investing over a third of a million dollars on a lot that is to be used for 25 parking spaces? That works out to some $14,000 per parking space. I'm not sure a commercial lender will look at me and say that - yes - I can carry another note like that in my current financial condition. Can I amortize something like that over 30 or more years?

Several ideas went through my mind. My landlord friend and I could charge for parking space. My partner has made it clear (as has the City) that parking - not sidewalks or walkability - is the biggest problem along Washington Avenue. Maybe parking is indeed the highest and best use for this lot and that I could generate sufficient monthly fees to justify utilizing that lot as a parking lot. Maybe it would enhance the value of my friend's property and business, thereby we could figure out a way to capture that value and get it back to me.

But ultimately, all of that is not what I'm getting at here. What I am getting at is is that it's an article of faith amongst those who are angry about automobiles or suburbanization that automobile use is subsidized and that automobile use does not pay for itself. I've often wondered how many of those gripers have actually run a business, have been faced with a real world decision on how much parking to provide potential customers, or tried figuring out how to best use a plot of land in a spot market that is both in a recession, yet is dynamic and rapidly changing.

Tom DeGregory was right. In a competitive market economy, the competition in capital markets, in the form of land, labor, and investment, is much more fierce than it is for product markets. It's not an easy thing to figure out, and as George P. Bush said the other night at an event I attended, there are no guarantees in a free market economy. Others will no doubt covet that lot of land, but such a decision on the use of that land certainly isn't something that I would trust to some starry eyed urban planner, or some moron employed in a City bureaucracy, even if the neighbors get noisy and start complaining.

Yes, I know what the answers are going to be. The planners are going to gripe about how City codes dictate how much parking there is supposed to be. They're going to gripe about strip centers and shopping malls full of acres of concrete. They're going to gripe about off street parking, a lack of sidewalks, and all the rest of it. But it still doesn't erase the dilemma I find myself in - whether to pull the trigger and buy?

Multiply this conundrum hundreds of thousands of times over and maybe, just maybe, you can begin to understand why I'm not all that thrilled with zoning or other far distant planning.

The world rolls onwards...

Wizard

Hmmm.

The Wizard is not surprised at this and neither should his gentle readers. Metro's 30 miles of light rail will most likely end up costing somewhere around four billion dollars!. What is amazing is not that Mr. Locke was able to garner campaign funds from establishment for this campaign, it's that Mr. Locke was only able to obtain $46,000 from would be light rail contractors! He should have been able to obtain many times that amount considering that billions in contracts are at stake here.

Paul Magaziner, a Richmond Avenue businessman who has become a fiery critic of rail transit, emailed an Adobe file to members of the media that showed that Metro has spent about $1.38 million on legal counsel from three politically connected law firms to defend itself in court from a lawsuit filed by a Richmond Avenue businesswoman. Why does it take three law firms for Metro to defend itself in court? Did it only cost a few thousand, or perhaps $10-20 grand to generate $1.38 million in legal billings? If so, then what a payoff!

This reminds me of an ongoing theme of the Wizard's, namely that I do not care much for campaign finance limits. The reason I don't care for them is that campaign finance limits are almost always pushed by big government advocates who are fearful that, once they've pushed through the big government they desire, they suddenly wake up to the fact that creating big government also creates the conditions for fighting over control of all that big government. In other words, how much of your time and money is it worth to you (and your friends) to be able to get what you want?

Are you one of Houston's 5,000 police officers and want a $5,000 - $10,000 per year pay raise? Then why is the Houston Police Officer's Union (HPOU) PAC only allowed to give up to $10,000 for the mayoral election? After all, we're talking about a public issue (how much police officers are paid) that would cost taxpayers $25 - $50 million per year. So, why isn't HPOU allowed to give - say - $500,000 to the campaigns of mayoral hopefuls? After all, such a figure would only cost each police officer $100 apiece and the pay off to each police officer could be 50 - 100 times that much.

Similar logic could be applied to nearly any interest group in politics, whether it be teacher's unions, fire fighter's unions, Houston Intercontinental airport operations, municipal employees, all of whom have huge financial stakes in the form of underfunded pensions and general funding for their operations. It gets even worse at the state and federal level. Some people might wail that the 2008 presidential election cost over $1 billion, but you have to remember that the federal government now has a budget of over $3 trillion! Spending $1 billion to control Congress and the Presidency is quite a bargain when you can control three trillion dollars per year of spending, as well as the armed forces, tax collecting agencies, and the regulatory powers of the federal government.

In addition to revealing how much it's worth to control government, or to have a dominant voice in government, lifting campaign contribution limits would also allow small groups of people to pool together a substantial amount of money in order to make a candidate viable. It could also help cut down on time spent raising money.

Another issue is that it always seems that interest groups seem to have a much easier time coming up with money. The Tea Party movement has to resort to selling T-Shirts at events to raise money, while insider interest groups seem to effortlessly generate money for their causes.

The whole point being made here is that for all the griping about corruption from campaign contributions, there is an argument to be made that there would not be such a need to pony up that much money for political campaigns if there wasn't so much being fought over. Bear that in mind the next time you read a story about campaign finance.

Wizard.

The problem, politically, is that I've been to five or six townhall meetings with almost all Republicans in attendance. What I've heard maybe 10-15 times now from elderly people is that they all agree on how wonderful Medicare is! They just go berserk over the idea that there may be illegals who might be eligible for something too. I told that audience last Tuesday in Pasadena that when you go on Medicare at age 65, you become a ward of the state. In other words, YOU become a welfare queen, and that you are no different than those damned illegals.

There was silence in the audience when I got done saying that. You could have heard a pin drop.

I grew a little gentler at the end of my 2 minutes of allotted time with the mike. I let the audience off by asking the panel if anybody had any cost estimates on what ObamaCare would cost, to which one panel member piped up something to the effect of, "take the Congressional Budget Office estimates and multiply it by 5 and you're on track".

One member of the audience pointed out that the Republican party didn't do anything about rolling back the welfare state when they were in power. He was right. And why was that?

Maybe it's because we are NEVER going to be able to contain government if there are millions of Republicans (much less Democrats) who love Medicare, but merely object to ObamaCare. All those so called Republicans are then doing is admitting that Lyndon Johnson was right all along and we're merely arguing over how much socialism in medicine there is going to be. But more importantly, you've already given up on the argument of whether government should be involved in health care at all. Otherwise, I don't care if I'm Republican or not. Taxpayer funded health care is good for me but not for thee!

Addendum: David Jennings at Big Jolly writes this post on the Pasadena townhall meeting. Here is the Harris County Republican Party's idea platform presentation on health care reform.

Another addendum: See and hear the Wizard himself in action! I do admit that it is impossible to hear what I or the panel members are saying.

Enjoy!

Wizard

The Wizard has noted before that I can in fact reach my downtown job from where I live via Metro bus. It's just that it would add 1 hour of time to my round trip commute to do so and I've decided that it's not worth my time to put up with a 1 hour and 45 minute round trip work commute every day.

I subscribe to the Journal of Urban Economics, ergo I know there have been plenty of studies that have been done to estimate what the value of people's time is on transit trips. The learned literature strongly suggests that the in time spent in transit is valued at some 40-50 percent of their per hour wage rates, while time spent in accessing and waiting for transit vehicles is perceived at a considerably higher rate.

Another part of the transportation mobility equation for me is that I have social interests that would be a bit hard to satisfy via transit, but not by my car. My social interests are almost all located between my work place and my home, ergo I don't have to drive much in order to live what for me is a reasonably satisfying life. Now if I were to get married that would be another story.

So, KHH has much of it right, but not all of it. Transit does limit your mobility to the extent that you only get to go where Metro goes, so it alters your lifestyle in that extra dimension. It sucks up your time and it is not 24x7. Transit also limits at least some of your shopping opportunities vis-a-vis a car because it's very difficult to haul that 52 inch plasma screen TV onto a Metro Bus or rail car. Allowing jitney competition would aid in transit mobility, but it's still impossible to understand why 30 miles of rail lines have to be built when Metro already has a bus network that runs into the thousands of miles, and where we could achieve close to the same thing rail would offer via adding dedicated bus lanes to major thoroughfares which would remove much of the speed and reliability problem that transit vehicles have to contend with.

Always remember, it's added mobility, not mobility substitution that we're after. As for why the votes for Metro Solutions came from the inner city and not the suburbs, maybe that has more to do with the idea that folks in the inner city might be able to reach the Medical Center via a $1.5 billion train that would run from the Hillcroft transit center, but a suburbanite will not be able to take a train that runs from Katy to Kingwood.

Wizard

For the past 10 days or so, the Wizard, along with untold thousands of other Houstonians, has had to put up with the fact that the illustrious Texas Department of Transportation has scrapped up the top 4-6 inches of pavement off of FM 1093, also known as Westheimer Road. Since the Wizard lives right off of Westheimer, the matter has been of some importance to me, especially since I experienced a flat tire last Thursday while driving to work. I found a nail in my old tire, had to wait for AAA to pump up my baby tire so that I could drive the following morning to a Firestone to buy a new tire. The new tire set met back $90.

And so it was. As with many people, I was left wondering exactly why it was that the powers that be decided to repave what was for all practical purposes a perfectly fine road? The official answer was posted on Channel 2 news:

TxDOT says the roadway was hardly perfect before.

"There is a criteria established with the stimulus money, and if you don't use it and go by their guidelines, then we do lose it," Othon explained. "So this is something that we definitely wanted to take part of and use the money that is offered to us."

TX-DOT's website reports that this repaving project is currently estimated to cost $9.45 million.

And yet, that still begs to ask the question. Was this really necessary? I understand probably better than anybody that Westheimer, all eight lanes of it, probably carries some 100,000 (or more) vehicles everyday. Yet the road was in perfectly fine condition. This reminded me of when I lived off of Kirby Drive, where I saw the City of Houston lay asphalt on stretches of the street 2-3 times before deciding in 2001 to tear up the street - yet again - because the City decided to lay an underground storm sewer under the median connecting Buffalo Bayou and Braes, a project now in its second stage between San Felipe and Kirby south of Interstate 59.

It's actions like this, where people decide to do something about what is a non-issue, all because they are chasing after some handout money, that drive me nuts. That money could have been used to repave Richmond Avenue, for example, but God forbid we should repave parts of a badly bruised up Richmond Avenue because we all know that Metro so desperately wants to put a train down that street. So better to spend $1.5 billion to put a 10-11 mile light rail line down Richmond, rather than spend less than one percent of that amount to smooth out the wrong street. How is it that we can so often be so penny wise and pound foolish?

The repaving of Westheimer is not only a $10 million microcosm of the $787 billion stimulus plan, it is a microcosm of irrationality and absurdity of politics as a whole. People wonder why there are skeptics out there who question whether doing stuff like this is worth passing the bill on to our children's future. It isn't.

An item of note: Bob Lemer passes on that there will be a 90 minute workshop of City of Houston finances September 25th from 11:30am - 1:00pm. Cost is $35 for Houston CPA members and $50 for members of the public.

Wizard

Since the Wizard was doing something more important than watching TV or paying attention to politics Wednesday evening, the Wizard missed President Barak Obama's nationally televised address on whether the United States government should pass legislation on mandating that Americans must have universal health insurance coverage.

The reason why the Wizard didn't bother to watch the President's televised address was because he knew that he wouldn't miss much. That belief was validated when I picked up my old fashioned, fish wrapper version of the Houston Chronicle yesterday morning before I headed off to work. The front page story, carried from over the news wires, was of South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, who cried out "You Lie!" when President Barak Obama stated that the new universal health insurance legislation would not cover or benefit illegal immigrants.

Much commentary has been inked and typed over Congressman Wilson's outburst, which he later offered an apology to the President that Mr. Obama accepted. Fairly typical of the commentary offered was by this guy, who complained about the halls of Congress no longer being a place of civility. The Chronicle editorial board spoke of the idea that there was no room for such rudeness in the debate over the future of health care and one-sixth of the American economy.

The Wizard takes a bit of a different view over Congressman Wilson's outburst. It wasn't that Mr. Wilson was rude to the President of the United States - he was. But plenty of people are rude to the President (or for that matter, just about any politician) every day in many sorts of ways. Often that rudeness towards others could be justified in some way. Sometimes we read about it in print, or we never hear about it as they may be words whispered between friends in private. To the Wizard however, it had a lot more to do with the idea that one man called another man a liar to his face in public.

Politicians do lots of stupid things, much like the rest of us. Age is no barrier to doing stupid things, thinking of stupid things to do, or for that matter not knowing how to run your own life. Back in 2001, the Wizard worked many hours on the City of Houston TABOR / Revenue Cap proposition drive. After City Secretary Anna Russell failed to verify, after 48 days, that we had 20,000 valid signatures to place the proposition drive on the November 2001 ballot, I suggested to our most prominent plaintiff in our lawsuit against the City of Houston that we get a mob of people out and drive our cars in circles around City Hall, honking our horns as we went. This gentleman, who happens to be older, much wealthier, and wiser than I was (and am) threw water on the idea. He said to me something that I never will forget. He told me that "Republicans just don't do that sort of thing."

I got the message, but it's a message worth repeating to myself. Even when something does not go your way, try to learn from it and move on. Don't try to act like a jackass.

So, fast forward eight years and what do I find Republicans doing? Well, I find that lots of people who call themselves Republicans acting just in the same way that I suggested they do eight years ago in front of City Hall. They are running around holding rallies, flash mobs, and acting like a bunch of jackasses. Those mobs and rallies are being attended by Republicans who tell me that they deserve their Social Security check because they've paid into it, or that they don't want politicians to touch Medicare because they like it. Every time they do that, they're acting like a jackass. Every time a Republican politician proposes some expensive new public welfare entitlement, they're acting like a jackass. In my view, that means that both Bush the elder and Bush the younger were a pair of jackasses. Arguably, the last politician who wasn't a jackass was Ronald Reagan.

And so it is. Hearing things like Congressman Wilson's outburst, or learning that California assemblyman Mike Duvall having to step down because he was caught on tape telling salacious stories of his romps with mistresses lobbyists, point to a political party that has been electing too many guys who turn into jackasses once they get into office, but has not been doing enough intellectual thinking, offering new ideas, alternatives, nor is it a party with members who have spine. Otherwise, the future of the Republican party will belong to the Mike Duvalls, and the Joe Wilsons of the world, and that's not a party worth paying attention to or voting for. Why? Because deep down, those guys (and they constituency they represent) are no different from the jackasses who happen to be sitting on the other side of the aisle.

Wizard

Addendum: In today's Houston Chronicle, the newspaper carries the AP wire story about President Obama now holding the bullhorn. The story states that

Keeping Americans safe, the president says, is "the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning; it's the last thing that I think about when I got to sleep at night."

Bush used to say the same thing.

That's too bad, because both men didn't swear an oath upon ascending to office to keep Americans safe. They swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Further addendum: A story just came across the wires from Politico. It wonders whether petty GOP cranks are dominating the public debate.

To wit, the Onion weighs in on the subject of cities and countries bidding for hosting the Olympic Games, noting that Haiti has made a bid to host the 2216 Olympic Games. Haitian officials are

Emphasizing the country's warm tropical climate, vibrant culture, and long-term plans to cultivate farmland capable of sustaining actual crops...

Haitian officials promised, naturally, that the 2216 Games would be the greatest ever seen given that they will have 207 years to get ready for them.

I just hope I'll be around to see them!

Wizard

It was a great idea. I really didn't give a damn about going to hear some long winded politicians get long winded about whatever it was that pissed them off and fired them up, but the prospect of walking along the beach on a hot sunny August afternoon and spending $20 to sit down and enjoy a nice plate of barbeque with some friends for a few hours really sounded like a wonderful thing to do.

And so it was. We took off about 11:30am, got stuck in traffic around Clear Lake City, but made it into Galveston around 1:15pm. The first thing I noticed was that the trees along the medians and esplanades were drab and gray. It occurred to me that the trees might be dead, maybe because of salt water that had been pushed in from the ocean from Hurricane Ike. Otherwise, Galveston seemed lively, though we noticed houses and structures here and there that had been abandoned or were still boarded up. Still, I would judge that Galveston has made a solid recovery from the devastation wrought upon it by Ike.

We had some time before some pre-dinner speakers were scheduled to speak, so we headed over to the privately held Porretto Beach, where we met up and had a nice 30-45 minute talk with Sonya Porretto, about her legal battle with the State over her family's ownership of a stretch of beach.

As we got out of my car, I immediately caught a whiff of the salty sea air, something I had not smelled in years. We walked through a neighborhood of mostly modest houses, nearly all of which were now repaired. Almost immediately, I realized why it was that people loved living near the sea. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, environmental attorney Jim Blackburn wrote that before people were to be allowed to rebuild so close to the coastline, they should be shown maps of the devastation and misery that occurred as a result of Ike's wrath. All I can say in response to that is that the moment I basked in the sunshine, smelled that salty air and walked through that neighborhood towards the seawall, I knew that no amount of protest or anger from Mr. Blackburn or his friends, nor would any amount of wrath from God and Mother Nature would convince some people to not want to live near the ocean.

We chatted with Ms. Porretto, as mentioned above, and I immediately resolved to try to start blogging about her story. But more to the point, listening to her made me ask myself for the 100th time why it was that I didn't become a lawyer, or at least go through law school? I've listened to this crap over and over again so many times and it makes me think that there's often no accountability anywhere to be found or had in this world. It's time that I started resolving some of these questions that have been simmering inside of me once and for all.

After our visit with Ms. Porretto, we made our way over to the convention center, where there were packed rooms listening to the invited speakers. It didn't really bother me that I could not get in or hear what they were talking about. I wandered over to the main convention room, where I met some friends and chatted about various things. Eventually the room filled up and we had our dinner. There were auctions to raise money for Ron Paul, as well as speeches from the likes of Barry Goldwater Jr. that weren't worth listening to. I mostly enjoyed being with my friends and chatting amongst ourselves about battles from the past, things we wanted to do now, or were thinking about doing in the future.

About half way through Mr. Paul's speech, I got up to go to the bathroom, but instead of going back into the conference room, I decided to sit outside on the steps of the convention center. I sat, staring into the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, contemplating my life and what I would do with what remained of it. It has become far more important of late for me to be doing things like this rather than pay attention to what the talking heads and windbags are griping about today.

And so it was. I stopped by a store to pick up some drinks on the way back to Houston. When we got back to town, the gentleman I was with pointed out that I should try a burger at Stanton's sometime when I'm in that part of town. I feel like I'm catching a second wind, rediscovering that learning something new about the people you care about, your hometown, and doing things that you find are worth doing is what makes living all worthwhile.

Wizard