deeply disturbing

Click here to see something that's really fucked up.

trains are better than buses

I've seen and heard the argument that Minneapolis and other US cities shouldn't expand light rail networks because building devoted bus lanes is just as good and would save a lot of money. Having lived in a city with effective rail transit and having ridden the bus a fair amount, I can now say this is false. There are differences between trains and buses that go beyond getting stuck in traffic.

Getting on and off
This is a two-fold benefit of trains. Since train tracks are recessed below the platforms, there are no steps to climb when boarding a light rail or subway train. Furthermore, a train has many doors that run the length of the platform. This eliminates the queuing problem busses face because they have just one or two entrances.

Riding itself
Trains are much smoother, much quieter and just generally a lot more pleasant to ride than busses. Try reading a book on a city bus. It's not easy.

Trains run established lines
The infrastructure of a train system is such that you can't just up and move a station or line. This makes the trains system much more intuitive and easy to use. It also explains why train lines are responsible for economic development around stations, since businesses can count on easy accessability and a stream of passersby through public transit.

Carrying capacity
A train line will always be able to transport more people than a bus line, because you can put more people in a 300 foot long train than a 50 foot long bus. It only makes sense.

Ridership
There are a lot of people who will ride the train but won't ride the bus at all. I have no idea what their reasons might be, but this is the case for 40% of Minneapolis LRT riders. Further expansion of bus lines totally ignores this demographic. There is no way a bus line can ever be as well used as a train line.

Infrastructure
Infrastructure for a bus system deteriorates a lot more quickly that train tracks and such. Dedicated bus lines quite expensive to maintain, which at least partially mitigates the seemingly stunning cost savings for dedicated bus lanes. The cost advantage is clearly eliminated and then some by the other factors I have listed. For a large city trying to build a high capacity line like Minneapolis on University Avenue, there is no way bus transit in any form is cost effective compared to some sort of light rail.

oppressing workers

It's not just for American companies. Apparently, German retailers are compiling a track record similar to Wal*Mart. Die Zeit has a scathing expose about the kind of shit Aldi and other discounters pull on their employees.

Basically, it's your standard Wal*Mart fare: shitty wages, unpaid overtime, nasty working conditions and anti-union activism. Just like Wal*Mart there were entire stores shut down because of union rumblings. What really struck me here though, was how up-front this executive was willing to be on the record:

The discussion about dismissal protection is overdrawn. The only thing of importance is that everybody plays by the same rules. Only associations and certain middlemen gain when this debate is continually incited.

Wow! The anti-union message made it across the Atlantic! Land of milk and honey for workers? Not so much.

auf wiedersehen

Schröder is officially done, off to make millions in the private sector and canoodle with his fourth wife. Which reminds me of a joke: Why does Gerd drive an Audi? Their logo also has four rings.

Gerd, you'll be missed. Angie just ain't the same.

sugar quotas

I've now experienced the best argument for abolishing corn subsidies and sugar quotas in the United States. Coca-Cola in Europe, which is made with cane sugar, tastes markedly better than corn syrup based Coca-Cola in the United States. Plus, corn syrup is far worse for you.

ok

Dear Legion of Commentators,

Comment spam is getting out of control, so I am enabling word verification. Don't let this discourage you, because it shouldn't be all that difficult.

Love and Peace,
Chris

this is personal growth

Three years ago, Michael Ballack was the random guy who scored the goal against the US to knock us out of the World Cup. Ronaldinho was a guy whose name sounded like Ronaldo. And hell if I knew who Thierry Henry, Zidane, Pavel Nedved or Kaka were. Yesterday, I finally understood how good Ballack is. I was able to appreciate that he was dominating the midfield play, getting the ball to Schneider and Deisler in the right spots to attack up the field and always reversing field at the right time. No matter that he missed a header that would have won the game and it ended 0:0; the Germans were better than the French and it was just a friendly. But the difference was clearly that the Germans had their star Ballack and the French were missing Zidane. I feel like I am a better person for being able to appreciate the play of my team in the much-maligned 0:0 football draw.

By the way, Ballack is the world's most complete player. He distributes, defends, dribbles and can score with both feet and his head. Ronaldinho may be more spectacular, Kaka more fluid and artistic and Henry more of a goal machine, but Ballack is a complete footballer.

new coalition agreement

The Union and the SPD have finally nailed down the details of their policy arrangement and signed the contract which will put Merkel in as Chancellor when the Parliament votes on it. The document is titled "Mut und Menschlichkeit," or "Courage and Humanity." This outlines the basic tension in German policy. Essentially, the new government will need to have the courage to make some significant cuts in spending, but also will have to do so with a human touch.

Der Spiegel compares "Courage and Humanity" to "Pride and Prejudice," saying that this is the happy end compromise that everybody has known to be in the offing since the personell agreement for the cabinet was made a couple of weeks ago. Indeed, making the agreement was more or less a foregone conclusion. Of course, the title does demonstrate that some more tensions are inevitable. Mut or Menschlichkeit? Which will they choose? Well, Küchen Kabinett has a pretty good idea: look at the actual contents of the document.

The contract is titled "Together for Germany with Courage and Humanity." Courage is mentioned in the document 17 more times, while humanity is only mentioned in the title.

Quick! Who wants to claim to be a compassionate conservative? This is not some unfortunate freak occurance of wording, either. The policy agreement also appears to be "we'll cut your social benefits, but we'll give you a hug while doing it."

The first was the agreement to raise pension retirement age from 65 to 67, which makes a lot of sense since people are working longer, living longer and the pension system is going bankrupt. I would say this is a total no brainer.

The policy that really doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense is raising the value-added tax (which basically amounts to raising a sales tax). There are a couple of problems with this. First, it's regressive (so much for "humanity"). Apparently the idea is that taxing rich people will drive down investment, so it's better to take it out on the poor people.

The other issue I see is that the biggest problem in the German economy is domestic consumption. People just don't have the confidence to buy things, because they are afraid of losing their jobs. How exactly you solve problems in consumer confidence by raising taxes is way beyond me. So basically the value added tax appears to be anti-poor and ineffective. But Franz and Angie didn't ask my opinion, and it's not even my country, so we'll just see how it plays out.

this hurts, but....

I'm swearing off all American politics news for as long as I can resist. It's been a nasty addiction for a while now, and no good really comes from reading all those blogs. Plus, they're in English. Damn. Anyway, my new reading list is in the new blogroll (German proficiency required).

gay marriage

The first argument against it that seems legit to me.

holy shit

Pirates!

the bundesliga's "yankees" problem

If you think money in baseball is a problem, then you certainly wouldn't be a big fan of European football. Yesterday, in a matchup between the two best teams in the Bundesliga, FC Bayern Munich beat SV Werder Bremen 3:1 to go five points up in the standings. I like Werder and was angry about the result, because I can't stand Bayern. Why? Because they are destroying German football.

FC Bayern is the only club in the Bundesliga that can afford to stock their roster with top flight European talent; everybody else has to bring people up through the youth system. This is fine, money is boss in every single European soccer league. However, unlike other club powers, Bayern poaches almost exclusively from other German teams. This has the two-fold effect of making Bayern essentially another version of the German National Team (check Deisler, Kahn, Ballack, Schweinsteiger) and pushing down other clubs so it's almost impossible to compete.

Compare this to Spanish teams like Real Madrid and FC Barcelona. Real has Ronaldo and Rivaldo from Brazil, Zidane from France, Beckham from England while FC Barcelona has Ronahldino. With this, Real can improve and dominate la Liga without crippling the rest of the Spanish teams' chances of doing well in the Champions League and UEFA Cup. It's a little different in England, where Manchester United certainly does try to buy everybody (see Rooney, Wayne). However, there are other English teams rich enough to buy top players from other countries. Arsenal with Henry comes to mind, but Liverpool and Chelsea are also very well off.

So while Bayern thinks they may be pulling off a coup, what they are doing is really terrible for German football. And it makes it a lot less fun to watch as well I hope to see Werder win the Bundesliga and Schalke win the Champions League. Screw Bayern.

everybody loves bush

Even the greatest soccer player of all time.
Picture source.

sdp not sdo

I'm not a lawyer and I normally have better things to worry about than worry about constitutional law issues, but the inconsistency from both sides on substantive due process is really something to think about. The biggest concern is that application of substantive due process to economic rights could lead to very unfriendly results for liberals. BinkyPing:

The fact is, if it can prop up rights as disparate as privacy and contracts, it can prop up pretty much any right a crafty judge chooses to put under its umbrella. Or, worse yet, it could bring back Lochner-era rulings that gutted economic regulation for several decades: the right to contract resulted in maximum hour and minimum wage laws being struck down, which means there's a lot of contemporary stuff us liberals like that would disappear pretty quickly (such as Social Security, the Environmental Protection Act, and the Civil Rights Act). The political process will never allow conservatives to take these things away, so the Court is their only recourse.

Of course, as a liberal who likes the right to privacy but is a little bit squeamish about striking down laws that protect workers, I'm always looking for something to square what seems to be a hopelessly hypocritical position. Armando at DailyKos gives it his best shot:

Liberals of course have a different view. Economic rights are protected through the just compensation clause of the 5th Amendment and the political process. It is our view that the Bill of Rights concentrated on individual rights for a reason, the rights of individuals can be trampled by the majority. Those holding economic rights generally have the wherewithall to defend their interests from majorities in the political process or through other means. And it seems clear that the Framers were correct in their assessment.

This is an extremely results oriented argument. He makes no real attempt to explain what text exactly would support his holding that economic and privacy rights are actually fundamentally different. It's pretty clear that Armando is just working backwards from his (and my) policy preferences and constructing legal reasoning from it. I just don't see how we can make coherent law when there are really no consistent guidelines on what rights should be protected under substantive due process.

Schizophrenia with regards to substantive due process is just as pervasive on the conservative side, who would love to see a return to Lochner era jurisprudence. Jack Balkin wrote an excellent piece comparing the dissenting opinion in Kelo to Dredd Scott. The kernel is that the most conservative justices on the court latched on to a substantive due process argument:

So where *do* we get the principle banning takings for purely private use that was at stake in Kelo? We get it from the basic idea of substantive due process, which prohibits A to B transfers and protects vested rights from being destroyed by government. Justice Thomas tries to avoid recognizing this in his dissenting opinion, arguing that despite its language the Public Use clause cannot apply merely to public uses; otherwise, it would allow takings for private use without compensation, which would "contradict a bedrock principle well established by the time of the founding: that all takings required the payment of compensation." He artfully elides the question of what textual provision in the Constitution prevents takings for private use with compensation. We know the answer-- it's the Due Process Clause. That's what most people at the Founding thought, and that's why the Fifth Amendment is written that way.

But, wait, that would mean that in Kelo Thomas is actually making an argument from (shudder) substantive due process.

Read the whole thing if you have time, it's really good. It seems to me that conservatives wouldn't mind bringing back substantive due process in order to strike down labor regulations and return us all to indentured servitude. However, since this position is so politically unteneble, they claim to be entirely against "pulling rights out of thin air" and "legislating from the bench." Fortunately for them, Lochner era thinking is more or less dead, so nobody really worries about it. However this doesn't at all take away from the deeply intellectually dishonest position of their darlings on the court, Thomas and Scalia.

Without stricter tests on how to apply it, substantive due process appears to be simply a vehicle for reading one's policy preferences into the Constitution. Unfortunately, this is really a pretty difficult problem to solve. Who doesn't want to legislate from the bench, after all?

vice presidents

Al Gore looks pretty good, now doesn't he?