The Daily Parker

Yesterday's post "Subsidizing rural folk" generated more commentary than usual. All of it was through my Facebook profile (I cross-post the Daily Parker there), so I thought I should copy it over here.

Debbie K. of Highland Park, Ill., wrote: "In urban areas, cities maintain roads, or the Fed maintains freeways. There are more county roads to maintain in rural areas. A fact also conveniently left out of a similar story when in ran in the SF Chronicle about a week ago."

I responded: "But that's the point: the stimulus money is going disproportionately to highways, which are disproportionately rural. Urban areas have old bridges, canals, railroads, buses, and, yes, roads, many of which need repairs, and which provide significantly higher ROI. Even highways in urban areas make better investments. Of course I want the good people of Kittitas County, Wash., to have decent infrastructure, but more people drive on Lake Shore Drive (U.S. 41) every day than will drive on U.S. 2 through Wenatchee, Wash., in a month."

Debbie K. followed up: "My issue isn't necessarily whether county roads are more valuable than city roads, but that the fact, which is relevant to the issue, was left out of a news story. Kind of like how everyone seems to be leaving out the whole 'Manuel Zelaya's removal was required by the Honduran constitution' thing. I'm so incensed that I can't trust newspapers to deliver the entire story anymore."

Samantha D., writing from the U.K.: "David, I am inclined to agree with you, but our fuel is $5.60 a gallon (equivalent) and there's no more investment in public transport. It's so bad, in fact, that people are driving more than ever and the south-east of England is virtually gridlocked at some times of the day. I wish they would invest in it more, but instead they keep hiking up the fuel duty (on which we also pay sales tax, BTW) and spend the money giving themselves pay rises and gold-plated final salary pensions, which the rest of us don't get."

Nancy R., a professional journalist in Lexington, Ky.: "I think it's a bit more complicated than traffic volume. At least my take coming from a largely rural state that is subsidized heavily by the cities, specifically the one in which I live. But I always expect a city perspective on everything from the NYT. Case in point: story on laid-off moms that interviwed only weathy moms who shared how interesting it was to actually figure out where the playgrounds were and what their kids pediatricians looked like. The nannies had always taken their kids to those place in the past. Really representative of most people's experiences, I bet. The NYT always (almost gleefully) plays the rural stereotype, at last that's my experience as a Kentuckian."

John H. said: "David, do you like to eat? I thought so. Those rural roads you are complaining about are used by trucks to get the raw materials used in most of the food you eat to where you can buy it. If those roads aren't maintained well, then the trucks need more maintenance, which costs money, which is ultimately passed on to us. Also, the porkulus money is supposed to go to 'shovel ready' projects. If these other areas are like where I live, these projects have been on the books, ready for funding, for some time. Where I live there is a project to reroute a state highway that has been on the books to be done for 55 years, and it's being bypassed (pun intended) for other projects as far as the porkulus money is concerned. As for the $5 gas; my brother used to think that too, until he had to pay it, and saw the actual impact on the economy, then he changed his mind."

Finally, Yoshio K., Debbie's husband, summed it up neatly: "Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads!"

Roland Burris won't run for Senate after all:

The decision, which is expected to be formally announced Friday, comes as a surprise to absolutely no one in local politics.

... Mr. Burris has raised almost nothing of the millions of dollars he would need for a serious campaign, and another well known African-American figure, Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, has formed an exploratory committee.

So, with Madigan and Burris both out, the 2010 election campaign should be a hoot. I can't wait.

The New York Times has a must-read article today about disproportionately small shares of transportation stimulus money going to places that produce disproportionately large shares of GDP. More simply: we in cities are subsidizing rural roads:

According to an analysis by The New York Times of 5,274 transportation projects approved so far — the most complete look yet at how states plan to spend their stimulus money — the 100 largest metropolitan areas are getting less than half the money from the biggest pot of transportation stimulus money. In many cases, they have lost a tug of war with state lawmakers that urban advocates say could hurt the nation’s economic engines.

...[T]he projects also offered vivid evidence that metropolitan areas are losing the struggle for stimulus money. Seattle found itself shut out when lawmakers in the State of Washington divided the first pot of stimulus money. Missouri has directed nearly half its money to 89 small counties which, together, make up only a quarter of the state’s population.

...Obama administration officials, who have called for ending sprawl and making sure that federal transportation spending is cost-effective, say they are looking at how states are spending the money from the stimulus law...

For example, New York, which produces almost 9% of U.S. GDP, is getting 2.9% of the money; Chicago, at 3.7% of GDP, gets 2.6% of the money. Contrast those figures with Kittitas County, Washington (population: 39,000), which is getting $836 per capita to resurface roads.

We don't need more roads. We need repaired bridges. We need trains and buses. Frankly, I also think we need $5 per gallon gas, which I think would lead directly to heavier investment in public transit, but that's a rant for another time.

Slate's Dahlia Lithwick hypothesizes why Sarah Palin really quit:

[W]hen the dust settles, the lesson may be that she was simply a woman who made no sense. Her meteoric rise and dubious fall will say less about America than you think, beyond the fact that America likes its politicians to communicate their ideas clearly. We will someday come to realize that while it's all well and good to be mavericky with one's policies, it's never smart to be mavericky with one's message.

...It's too easy to characterize Sarah Palin as an irrational bundle of bristling grievance. But I think it's more complicated than her simple love for playing the victim all the time. ... Think of an American visiting France who believes that if he just speaks louder, he will be speaking French. Palin has done everything in her power to explain herself to us, and still we fail to appreciate what she is all about. I'd be frustrated, too, if I thought I was offering up straight talk and nobody was getting the message. Especially if I held a degree in communications.

In any event, after this month, we won't have Dick Nixon Sarah Palin to kick around anymore.

Chicago had its coolest July 8th in more than a century yesterday, capping the coolest summer (to date) in decades:

For the 12th time this meteorological summer (since June 1), daytime highs failed to reach 70°F Wednesday. Only one other year in the past half century has hosted so many sub-70-degree days up to this point in a summer season -- 1969, when 14 such days occurred.

Wednesday's paltry 65°F high at O'Hare International Airport (an early-May-level temperature and a reading 18°F degrees below normal) was also the city's coolest July 8 high in 118 years -- since a 61°F-degree high on the date in 1891.

The flipside, of course, is that the weather is delightful. Unfortunately the forecast for this week calls for much warmer (i.e., seasonal) temperatures. Pity.

As someone who has contributed to Lisa Madigan's campaign fund, thinking it would help her become governor, I'm surprised about her pre-announcement this morning that she's not running for that office in 2010:

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan is expected to announce today that she'll seek re-election to her current office and bypass bids for governor or U.S. Senate, a source told the Tribune.

Madigan has a 2 p.m. political news conference scheduled at a Chicago hotel.

The move comes as a surprise, as Madigan had been strongly mulling a run for governor and had been heavily courted by national Democrats to run for Senate. A Democratic source told the Tribune today that Madigan had ruled out a Senate run.

Dang. I wonder who's running for Senate then? (Presumably Pat Quinn will run for election to the office he inherited from impeached former governor Rod Blagojevich in January.)

Update: Madigan's press release.

Oscar Mayer, perhaps not a celebrity but certainly a household name in the U.S., has left us:

Oscar G. Mayer, retired chairman of the Wisconsin-based meat processing company that bears his name, has died at the age of 95.

Mayer's wife, Geraldine, said he died of old age Monday age at Hospice Care in Fitchburg.

He was the third Oscar Mayer in the family that founded Oscar Mayer Foods, which was once the largest private employer in Madison. His grandfather, Oscar F. Mayer, died in 1955 and his father, Oscar G. Mayer Sr., died in 1965.

Photo: Kraft Foods, Inc.

Andrew Sullivan has taken a moment out of his day to compile a list of 32 of Sarah Palin's most egregious lies:

A couple of months ago, I asked an intern to re-fact-check all of them to make sure new details hadn't emerged that might debunk some. And I also asked to get any subsequent statements by Palin that acknowledged that she had erred in any of these statements that are easily rebuttable by facts in the public record and apologized and corrected. She has not. Since this was a vast project over the last ten months, it's possible there are some nuances or errors that need fixing....

After you have read these, ask yourself: what wouldn't Sarah Palin lie about if she felt she had to?

Palin lied when she said the dismissal of her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, had nothing to do with his refusal to fire state trooper Mike Wooten; in fact, the Branchflower Report concluded that she repeatedly abused her power when dealing with both men.

Palin lied when she repeatedly claimed to have said, "Thanks, but no thanks" to the Bridge to Nowhere; in fact, she openly campaigned for the federal project when running for governor.

Et cetera ad ridiculam.

Seriously, though: it's quite an accomplishment for only 10 months of national exposure.

ESPN moved the start of last night's Cubs game back to 6pm so they could sneak in a second game after it, which gave me the unusual twin opportunies to (a) see the Cubs beat Atlanta and (b) get home before 9:30.

Otherwise, not much to report about the team, except—oh, right, I almost forgot—the Tribune sold them yesterday:

Tribune Co. has finalized a deal to sell the Chicago Cubs to a bidding group led by bond salesman Thomas Ricketts.

Documents describing the fully financed deal were sent to Major League Baseball over the weekend, a source familiar with the negotiations said Monday. The value of the deal is between $850 million and $900 million, the source said.

The agreement reached over the weekend still needs approval from 75% of MLB team owners, as well as creditors and the Delaware judge overseeing Tribune’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case.

I hear Ricketts is a die-hard Cubs fan, who met his wife in the bleachers, according to NPR.

It's time for the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.