Stadia, neighborhoods and land-use: London and Oakland

Inspired by this post on declining car use in the US population and this edition of the Guardian Football's "The Knowledge", I decided to get a clearer visual image of something I already knew from first-hand experience: how isolated and generally awful sports stadia are in the US, especially those devoted primarily to American football.

I selected two contrasting stadia with a similar seating capacity: Arsenal's grounds, The Emirates, located in north London (capacity 60,361) and the Coliseum in my beloved Oakland (capacity 63,026). This is what the former looks like via Google maps:

Note its setting: despite being located next to a major motorway, immediately to the west, the Emirates is set into an actual neighborhood - it is a part of the area. You can walk from your house to the stadium, and after the match, you can easily walk to a pub and get a drink or something to eat. And no giant parking lots ("car parks") setting it off from everything else.

Now take a look at the Coliseum:

The first thing you notice is the sea of asphalt virtually surrounding the stadium. You have to walk ages just to get anywhere - and in the case of the Coliseum, that anywhere happens to be industrial areas with no amenities (unless you count broken glass as an amenity). Entirely built with the automobile in mind, the Coliseum virtually demands that fans going to see the Raiders or A's get as far away as possible as soon as the game ends.

It's true that the Emirates benefits from better public transit service, with a rail station and several Tube stops in walking distance. But there is a BART station right at the Coliseum, so the Coliseum is served to some extent by public transit as well. The major difference between the two stadia, then, is how they fit into their respective neighborhoods - the Emirates is a part of it, and invites locals to come to matches and other supporters coming from elsewhere to stay, mingle and spend money before and after matches. In strong contrast, the Coliseum is difficult to access, especially for pedestrians or cyclists, and seems designed to send people elsewhere to spend their time and money.

Other examples can be easily pointed to that support this general situation (e.g., take a look at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ or RFK Stadium in Washington DC). Capacity and size are not necessarily deterrents to siting stadia in dense areas of cities, so long as the automobile is not made king in the equation. But from an economic viewpoint - and especially, as is often the case in the US, public money is used to finance these facilities - stadia should be located in areas where their potential can be fulfilled to the greatest extent - in dense neighborhoods.

Capitalist Jesus, Catholic edition

Ayn Rand, Jesus, and a Catholic priest walk into a bar...

A series of recent developments are renewing questions about the Catholic bishops' alignment with the Republican Party, with much of the attention focusing on comments by Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who said he "certainly can't vote for somebody who's either pro-choice or pro-abortion."

So it's a priest is anti-choice - ok. And he's using his position as a Catholic priest to argue against voting for any candidate who is pro-choice - ok, we've seen that before. 

But then comes this:

In a wide-ranging interview published last week (Sept. 14), Chaput also echoed the views of a number of prominent bishops when he praised Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan for trying to address the "immoral" practice of deficit spending through his libertarian-inflected budget proposals. 

"Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don't help the poor, we're going to go to hell. Period. There's just no doubt about it," Chaput told National Catholic Reporter. 

"But Jesus didn't say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments. Anybody who would condemn someone because of their position on taxes is making a leap that I can't make as a Catholic."

Right - so it's ok to use the government, as a Christian, to impose your "morality" on women on something the bible says nothing about (reproductive freedom) - but it's not ok to use the government to help the poor, which Jesus "very clearly" said to do.

Please, Archbishop Chaput, tell me about "rendering unto Caesar" and camels, rich people, and needles - if you can take time from your libertarian quest, that is.

(h/t digby)

Cyclist dangers

Even as cyclists, our first reaction to stuff like this is to ask "was s/he wearing a helmet", rather than "who was at fault?", "what was the driver doing?", or - much more basically and pertinently, "how safe is that intersection/area?"

Olympic cycling gold medalist Bradley Wiggins has prompted debate over whether cyclists should be forced to wear helmets following the death of a 28-year-old man in collision with a bus outside the Olympic Park.

Very few people wear helmets in the Netherlands. Everyone rides. No one is scared. It's very safe.

Got a bridge to sell you...

You'd have to be an idiot to invest in this:

The float stands to net the Glazers around $150m (£96m), despite previous assurances that proceeds would go towards paying down the club's debt. 

The US filing warns potential investors: "Anti-takeover provisions in our organizational documents and Cayman Islands law [where Manchester United are incorporated] may discourage or prevent a change of control, even if an acquisition would be beneficial to our shareholders, which could depress the price of our shares and prevent attempts by our shareholders to replace or remove our current management."...
Andy Green, a football finance writer behind the andersred blog, calculates that £520m has been taken out of United since the Glazers took the club over in 2005, with most of that figure being accounted for via interest and fees related to the club's borrowings. Meanwhile, of the £520m, £38m has been paid directly to the Glazers via £28m in consultancy fees to their companies and a £10m dividend. (emphasis added)

Got that? Even if a takeover benefits the corporation, the corporation's by-laws prevent that from occurring. Late capitalism - why didn't we think of this sooner?


If you think just handing over your money to rich assholes is the thing to do, and especially if you like Manchester United - well, here you go!

Privacy for some, drones for everyone else

So - people who are concerned about spying technology should be spied upon:

"If you're concerned about it, maybe there's a reason we should be flying over you, right?" said Douglas McDonald, the company's director of special operations and president of a local chapter of the unmanned vehicle trade group.

Who is this "we", I wonder? Big business in a league with unsupervised law enforcement agencies?


Speaking of which:

"We are not out there to abuse people's rights, but at the same time we're out there to protect public safety," said Grand Forks Sheriff Robert Rost. "The public perception is that Big Brother is going to be snooping on them and that is not the case at all. It will not be misused."

There you go - a cop says people's rights will not be abused, and you should believe him, and if not, then a drone might make its way to your house.


But some people will always have privacy:

And for all the assurances, there is much that isn't said or revealed. Some of the equipment used by the university can't be seen by the public because of federal privacy rules. Although legal, anyone photographing outside the base can find themselves being questioned by county, state and Air Force law enforcement. When asked how many times U.S. Border Protection has dispatched drones at the request of local police, a spokeswoman for the agency said it does not keep those figures.

No privacy for individual citizens, but complete "privacy" for the government, law enforcement, and corporations. Winning the future!

Pity the rich

Pity the rich art collectors:

Alan M. Dershowitz, the Harvard law professor, is in a similar bind. An antiquities collector, he is eager to sell an Egyptian sarcophagus he bought from Sotheby’s in the early 1990s. But he is stymied, he said, because auction houses are applying tighter policies to the items they accept for consignment.

“I can’t get proof of when it came out of Egypt,” Mr. Dershowitz said.

He didn't seem too worried back in the day about whether or not there was proof of whether it was looted or not. Only when his money is at stake do such things matter.

Pity the rich:

“Even objects that entirely lack history are also not necessarily smuggled or looted,” said William G. Pearlstein, a New York lawyer who advises collectors and dealers in the antiquities trade. “Many owners simply failed to keep records of their objects, which they treated like other household possessions.”

Of course! Because it is entirely sensible to treat antiquities that cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just like other household items, like a coat rack, or a potato masher.

Pity the rich:

What is clear is that collectors are uneasy. They worry that placing undocumented items for auction exposes them to litigation from foreign nations or perhaps a seizure effort from United States authorities acting as their agent. Many expressed their concerns at a forum in March, hosted by the Asia Society in New York and titled “The Future of the Past: Collecting Ancient Art in the 21st Century,” where collectors spoke of a “climate of fear.”

A real "climate of fear" it is, when one can't sell cultural property that may very well have been looted or illegally and unethically exported any old time one wants. Who knows what's next in this "climate of fear"? Gulags and re-education camps, perhaps?

Pity the rich:

One former museum director suggested that when a museum declines a gift, it can strain relations with a longstanding benefactor. Marc F. Wilson, who oversaw the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo., from 1982 to 2010, said museums must be more careful but ought not leave benefactors feeling, in effect: “You can’t take my items? So you can’t take my $30 million either?”

Because we all know that altruism and philanthropy aren't cheap - especially for the rich! Pity them!

Paging the "job creators"

Economic genius Steve King (R-Iowa) on the unemployed:

"One of the things is, people are told they don't need to create opportunities," he said. "It's up to somebody else to offer them a job."

Yeah, because you and your rightwing associates can't shut up about the "job creators" and how they have to be coddled or else they will have their feelings hurt and "Go Galt" and renounce their citizenship and move to Singapore, or whatever. 

Isn't it the job of the "job creators" to offer all these people a job? Duh.

No way to hold his feet to the fire, then, is there?

Yet another example of sniveling-git-ism from "the Left". Liberal critics urge the liberalist-president-of-our-lifetime to be more, you know, liberal, and both he and his "supporters" get angry and defensive and start wagging their fingers and sermonizing. I guess there really is no way of holding President Obama's feet to the fire, as he urged the people of the Left to do, is there?

The President did "the one thing that he actually has the power to do" by instructing the DOJ not to enforce DOMA? Uh, not quite - he could also, you know, be a forceful advocate for what is right, even if there is nothing he could do in terms of legislation or the law.

This applies for many other things as well (but don't try to prevent him from blowing shit up in other countries!) - but Obama simply refuses to even make the case for what is right. And so America will keep getting what it probably deserves - hand-in-hand destruction of the bases of modern American society by the Republicans and the Democrats, while people like BooMan turn their fire against people who don't really like this outcome rater than the people who are doing their utmost to bring it about.

Not *quite* socialist...

The solution to this problem is clear: the military must be privatized.

Not quite liberal...

I hope that even the biggest Obama supporter is happy that his Justice Department lost this case:

A former spy agency employee agreed late Thursday to plead guilty to a minor charge in a highly publicized leak prosecution, undercutting the Obama administration’s unusual campaign to prosecute government officials who disclose classified information to the press.

The National Security Agency official, Thomas A. Drake, had faced a possible 35 years in prison if convicted on felony charges under the Espionage Act. Instead, he agreed to admit to a misdemeanor of misusing the agency’s computer system by providing “official N.S.A. information” to an unauthorized person, a reporter for The Baltimore Sun.
...

The flurry of criminal cases has led to both praise and criticism for Mr. Obama, who entered office promising unprecedented transparency but in less than three years in office has far outdone the security-minded Bush administration in pursuing leaks. Some political analysts say Mr. Obama’s liberal credentials may give him political cover for the crackdown.

The Drake case was seen as a test of the tougher line against unauthorized disclosures. But news media coverage of the charges against Mr. Drake, 54, an introspective computer specialist, has highlighted his motivation for sharing information about N.S.A. technology with a reporter for The Baltimore Sun in 2006 and 2007: the agency was rejecting a $3 million in-house program called ThinThread in favor of a $1-billion-plus contractor-run program called Trailblazer. His supporters have portrayed him as a diligent public servant who was trying to save taxpayers’ money and strengthen national security, not damage it. 

President Obama - the liberalest president ever... only not quite liberal.

Money and positive messaging

This is how easy it is for left/liberal groups to be bought off:

AT&T is lining up support for its acquisition of T-Mobile from a slew of liberal groups with no obvious interest in telecom deals — except that they’ve received big piles of AT&T’s cash.

In recent weeks, the NAACP, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the National Education Association have each issued public statements in support of the deal.
...

AT&T is working hard to win approval of the deal from the FCC and the Department of Justice. It’s not supposed to be a political process, but with Democrats — inherently skeptical of big corporate mergers — in control of both agencies, the company isn’t taking any chances.

It has assembled a platoon of more than 72 outside lawyers and consultants to work the FCC and Justice Department on the deal. 

And it’s brought on public relations agencies and other consultants to craft a message that the merger is more about spreading wireless broadband to underserved populations across America than about enriching the company’s shareholders.

To build support, AT&T employees and consultants have been making personal visits and calls as well as holding luncheons.

Out of about a dozen supporters interviewed by POLITICO, the vast majority said they decided to issue a statement supporting the AT&T/T-Mobile deal after being approached this way. 

Yep - endorsements are forthcoming, after the nice people from AT&T just happen to drop in for a chat. And we get some groups that might otherwise be skeptical of corporate mergers and that have no obvious expertise in telecoms or mergers giving their blessing to this deal. And then we'll get a new company that will probably continue its record of providing more funds to Republicans - who don't really care for any of these left/liberal groups - than Democrats.

It's that easy.

Sports, labor and "progressivism"

This is a rather curious post by the ever-curious Yglesias. First, it purports to lay out a "progressive" case for supporting the Miami Heat in their encounter with the Dallas Mavericks. But this case rests mostly on LeBron James and his decision to move to the Heat. There's no discussion at all about the Mavericks - something we might expect if someone is trying to convince us to pick sides. So there really is no "case" at all.

This brings us to what the post is really about: Yglesias's idea that it is "progressive" to allow full, unrestrained market forces to determine labor policy (and, by extension, employment policy) in the NBA. Simply writing that out - that it should be "progressive" to allow "the market" untrammeled ability to set wages - highlights how bizarre this "argument" is. Would it be "progressive" to export that argument outside of the NBA? How about getting rid of the minimum wage and letting "the market" set lower wages too?

But, then again, we're dealing with one of the leading lights of the American "left", so it shouldn't be too surprising that we get some kind of head-scratching "progressive" proposal that is nothing of the sort. But if Yglesias would like to see how "market forces" play out in sports leagues, all he'd have to do is look at the English Premier League, the Scottish Premier League, La Liga, or many of the other European football/soccer leagues. There's no draft, no maximum wages, no controls on players moving their labor to whatever employer will pay them - Yglesias' workers' paradise in action.

Sadly for this little fantasy, there's no real competition in these leagues, either. Titles are won by one of the same 2 or 3 teams, year after year after year. Competition among these super-clubs has led to the appearance of ultra-wealthy billionaire owners who raise ticket prices above the level average, long-time fans can afford and who sometimes saddle the clubs with huge debts. Smaller clubs' have no chance to really compete, and their best players are regularly picked off by the bigger, richer clubs.

And this should be considered "progressive"? Jesus - just beat what remains of the Left with a baseball bat and let's call time on it.

History repeats

This looks strangely familiar:

A Connecticut mother who says she wanted to give her son a better education will be arraigned on Wednesday on charges for enrolling the 6-year-old in another town, sparking outrage and support from people nationwide.

Tanya McDowell, a 33-year-old homeless woman whose last known address was in Bridgeport, Conn, is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of larceny and conspiracy to commit larceny for allegedly stealing $15,686 from Norwalk schools. Prosecutors allege that figure is the value of her son's education at Norwalk's Brookside Elementary School between the time he was illegally enrolled in January and McDowell's arrest on April 14. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

Where have I seen that before? Oh yeah:

Williams-Bolar used her father's address, where she alleges she lived part-time. Yet the Copely-Fairlawn School District felt she was lying about being a resident, and hired a private eye to follow her, videotaping Williams-Bolar leaving her public housing home and dropping her children off at the suburban school.

They confronted Williams-Bolar, demanded that she repay the district $30,000, saying she didn't have the right to have her daughters in the district since she wasn't a taxpayer.

When she refused, Williams-Bolar was indicted on two felony charges, found guilty and sentenced to 10 days in prison. Because of the felonies on her record, the aspiring schoolteacher will never be able to enter the classroom.

Wanting better for your children used to be part of the American dream. Now, it's a ticket to jail - especially if you are poor and black.

Firefighters' union to national Dems: So long!

The International Association of Fire Fighters has announced that it is shifting its money away from national Democratic races and organizations to state-level campaigns as part of efforts to fight the wave of anti-unionism around the country:

"We are simply shutting down any contributions going to any federal candidates or to any federal PACs or committees until, quite frankly, our friends are willing to stand up and fight on our behalf with the same kind of ferocity that our enemies and those that are literally trying to destroy us are doing on the other side," Schaitberger told USA TODAY.

Good - it's about time.  The national Democrats have taken organized labor for granted for far too long. Talking hasn't sent them an effective message - maybe taking away money will.

(H/T Digby)

Jailbreak

Almost 500 Taliban prisoners have escaped from a prison in Afghanistan:

As the great escape was a break-in rather than a break-out, there was no need to surreptitiously get rid of the earth inside the camp; according to one local media report, the Kandahar plotters simply sold lorry loads of the earth in the city's bazaar from a tunnel stretching a reported 320 metres.
...

According to one of the escapees (whose numbers could dramatically tip the odds in favour of the insurgents on the eve of this year's "fighting season"), the tunnel was of sufficient diameter and high enough for the prisoners to stand upright for most of their walk to freedom.

Sections were lit by electric light and ventilated with fans, he said.
...
"It was very well organised. They only let a certain number of people go through at one time, because they wanted to make sure there was enough air to breath in the tunnel."

When the escapee prisoners got to the construction company compound at the end of the tunnel, they were met by their commanders and taken off in cars to safe locations.

And to compound the humiliation of the Afghan government and its Nato allies, the prison managers appear to have been totally unaware of the escape until long after the prisoners had disappeared into the night.

You know that an operation of this size and complexity had to have had people in the inside helping out, and people elsewhere turning a blind eye to what was going on.

This is not a reassuring sign for the US as it continues whatever mission it is pursuing in Afghanistan. Why are we there again?

See also: how does this new jailbreak rate in comparison to some other classic ones?

A media person explains why the media can't call idiots "idiots"

This column sheds much light on the craven nature of America's large media. In it, someone at the LA Times explains why it just wasn't possible for anyone in the media to come out and say about Palin - a serious candidate for the second-highest political office in the US - "hey - she's a fucking idiot".

This bit right here really brings the "argument" home:

Alas, we cannot [rip idiots like Palin to shreds]. Not only because it would be cheap and lazy and unbecoming, but also because Palin is too well-shielded by her own incompetence.

So: it is now "cheap" and "lazy" to call someone who is cheap and lazy "cheap" and "lazy", even a candidate for one of the highest positions of the land, and incompetence is an effective political strategy. It is difficult to imagine a clearer statement on the mindset that is preventing the press from actually being able to analyze and present in a serious way the major problems facing America today.

Mean-spirited rich assholes who are also idiots, #1

If you'd like a name attached to the sniveling mean-spiritedness, greed, and short-sightedness afflicting America today, try "Peter P. Pulkkinen":

Most family incomes in Bronxville are in the six and seven figures, ranking the village among the wealthiest enclaves in America. But even an additional $100 to $200 tacked onto property tax bills has met enough resistance to make town officials think twice.

Some residents argue that the town should be more businesslike, cutting other costs to offset the outlay for smaller classes. Peter P. Pulkkinen is one. A 40-year-old investment banker, he and his wife, Sarah, moved here in 2004 from the Upper East Side and their two oldest children are now in the first and third grades. He wants small classes for them. But rather than raise taxes, he would restrict the compensation of existing teachers — particularly their benefits.
 ...

“I think it is a false paradigm to have to choose between radically diminished services or exponentially higher taxes,” he said, “without first addressing the structural issue of teacher compensation.” 

A fucking investment banker demanding that teachers take a hit so that he doesn't have to pay a coupl of hundred bucks per year in property tax? That's bad enough - but this jackhole doesn't seem to realize that paying teachers less will certainly result in "radically diminished services", sooner or later.

If idiots like this are in charge of America's financial infrastructure, no wonder we're fucked. 

They named their institute after Hoover

They'll apparently let pretty much any idiot join the Hoover Institute, won't they?

WWJD?

What Would Jesus Do? According to Mike Huckabee, Republican politician and religious huckster, Jesus might very well support dictatorship:

"[T]he events of the past few days in Egypt have created a very tenuous situation, not just for Egypt, not just for the Middle East, but for the entire world, and the destabilization of that nation has the potential of cascading across the globe." [emphasis mine]

Can't have unruly people "destabilizing" their country in an effort to get rid of a dictator! Even worse, those irresponsible bastards might very well cause other countries, around the globe, to become "destabilized" and run out tyrants.

Without any irony, he went on to explain that "The essence of freedom, the very heart of it, is self-determination and self-direction." Uh, hey, Mikey - ever hear of a little thing called "principle"? Jesus might like that.

Freedom of speech

This is an interesting view of what "freedom of speech" entails - one, I believe, that is shared by many these days:

Free speech, not free from consequences speech.  (And remember, it’s only government suppression of speech that is illegal.)

 Right - so, by this definition, there has never been a lack of "free speech" anywhere in the world. Not even Stalin's Soviet Union could prevent people from physically saying "bad" things... even if there were some definite "consequences" for this speech.