From today’s Times-Dispatch:
A man and woman who live in Louisa County face child-endangerment charges after a family member discovered their two young children intoxicated on cocaine last week, authorities said yesterday. … The boys tested positive for cocaine and a prescription drug found in tranquilizers and sleeping pills.
One child was three years old, the other 16 months.
One of my favorite flyspecks is the Tideland town of Swan Quarter, N.C., a tiny burg off the undulating marshes of Pamlico Sound. Years ago, I used to occasionally report from Swan Quarter for a small daily newspaper about an hour’s drive to the west. My late Dad, a urologist, got a fair number of patients from Swan Quarter, named for the thousands of migratory waterfowl that used to haunt its waters in winter.
So, I couldn’t help but note that The Virginian-Pilot had a story concerning Swan Quarter on April 20. Mattamuskeet Seafood, the story reports, had planned to open for crab processing season last week, but it couldn’t find any workers. Usually it gets 100 workers in season who commute up from Mexico for several months each year to do the smelly, dirty work of picking crabs. But not now.
The problem is on Capitol Hill where Congress hasn’t yet renewed a visa program allowing 66,000 non-farm, temporary workers into the U.S. each year. Thousands of foreign crab pickers and other workers are short in towns such as Vandemere and Columbia in Coastal Carolina. Frustrated employers have driven to Washington, D.C. to plead their case, according to the Pilot.
What’s interesting is that these workers, many from Mexico, are not the hated suspects often caricatured by Virginia’s Republican Party and others. These Latinos are not seen as messy, loud, unruly threats to national security as they seem to be in places such as Prince William, Loudoun and other wealthy counties in Virginia that are banding together to stem what is perceived as a flood of fearsome barbarians.
Just the opposite. In Columbia, N.C., a quaint spot just off the Albemarle Sound, Tara Foreman, general manager of Captain Neill’s Seafood, misses her 75 Mexican workers. She told the Pilot that some of the ladies have worked for her for 18 years. They became so close that when Foreman was engaged to be married, the Mexicans threw a shower for her and attended the wedding.
Zip up the coast a bit to Prince William County in Washington’s Virginia suburbs. On Sunday, The Washington Post had a story on its Metro section exploring just how controversial Supervisor Chairman Corey A. Stewart is becoming. Playing to middle and upper-middle class white fears of “illegal” immigrants, the Republican pushed a series of anti illegal immigrant measures. Stewart wants cops to check the immigration status of any foreigner (read: dark-skinned), they stop. The county must not provide any services to undocumented workers.
According to the Post, Stewart drew big fire when he scolded a police chief for having the audacity to meet with a consul from the Mexican Embassy. In most of the world, visits between foreign diplomats from friendly countries and local officials are considered a normal part of life. You get to exchange ideas. But in Prince William, it’s like meeting with a foreign spy.
Stewart’s antics are prompting some local activists and politicians to urge him to get off his illegal immigration kick. It seems to be dampening the county’s reputation as it looks for new businesses and residents.
Maybe the explanation is that Prince William is rich and mostly white and fearful — in other words, GOP country. Little places like Swan Quarter and Columbia are made up of several races and have among the lowest per capita incomes of any localities in North Carolina. Poor though they may be, the folks there have a sense of humility and humanity that is rare these days. They have something to teach Virginia’s well-to-do suburbanites.
Two weeks ago the last PART of THE PROBLEM WITH CARS went on line at Bacon’s Rebellion.
Our mail is running 60-40.
60 Percent say: “Right-on! Cars ARE the problem…”
40 Percent say: “No way! You will have to pry my cold dead hands off the steering wheel…”
I will not do that, but someone will.
With food and energy prices rising in the First World and food riots spreading in the “Developing World” where can citizens turn for answers?
The MainStream Media – as noted in THE ESTATES MATRIX – does prove some information. MainStream Media coverage of airline Enterprises – “restructuring” or “demise”? – presents the opportunity to learn from the most consumptive form of vehicle travel. Air travel also has the most unfair allocation of location-variable costs – pollution, noise, subsidies to encourage Mass OverConsumption…
Understanding the condition of aircraft Enterprises provides a good place to consider the question:
Can humans change settlement patterns, mobility options and governance structure fast enough to avoid Collapse?
Check out “The End of Flight as We Know It” in today’s Bacon’s Rebellion.
In answer to one question we have received today: Yes TRILO-G will have a chapter on “I told you so back when there was time to change.
EMR
Is Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s political future being destroyed by his support for Dominion Virginia Power’s plans for a $1.8 billion coal-fired plant in Wise County?
You may not read about it the mainstream state newspapers, but it’s all over the Democratic Blogosphere and even The Wall Street Journal. Fervor over greenhouse gases has reached such a hot temperature that Kaine’s erstwhile supporters are trashing him for backing the plant proposed by Dominion which has given him up to $230,000 in political contributions.
While backing the Virginia City Hybrid Energy Center, which would be among the top air polluters in the state when built, he is also pushing a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the state 30 percent by 2025.
Is this Inconvenient Truth going to end Kaine’s political future which not long ago was so bright that he was talked about as a vice presidential nominee? Does this show that old-style politics in Virginia, that of cronyism and big corporate political funding, still rules? Some Democrats think so. Hence, “The Kaine Mutiny.”
My e-zine column today, “The Tribune of the People,” is a follow-up of a brief blog post I made five days ago. I take a closer look at Patrick McSweeney’s Dulles Toll Road lawsuit pending in the state Supreme Court.
To refresh your memories: In 2007 the General Assembly created unelected, unaccountable “regional transportation authorities” with the power to raise taxes. The Attorney General’s office signed off on the constitutionality, and no one considered McSweeney’s lawsuit against the law to be much more than the irritating buzz of a gadfly. But McSweeney fought his case to the Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in his favor, forcing lawmakers to get back to work on more ingenious ways to fleece the public.
Now McSweeney has another case before the Supreme Court, this one challenging the authority of the governor’s office to transfer control over the Dulles Toll Road to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA). This, too, violates the state Constitution, McSweeney contends because (a) the toll, to be used to pay for the Metro rail extension to Dulles, is really a tax, and (b) the governor has no power to delegate taxing authority, a prerogative of the legislature, to anyone else. The MWAA and its board dominated by Virginia and D.C. appointees has the power, McSweeney argues, to raise tolls/taxes on Virginia commuters as high as they want to pay for the rail project — and there is no way to hold the accountable.
Victory in this lawsuit seems less certain than the first. There are sticky issues regarding the right of the plaintiffs (two Northern Virginia commuters) to sue, sovereign immunity, exceptions to sovereign immunity, and the rule of self-execution. In oral hearings the other day, two judges questioned McSweeney aggressively, suggesting that they are skeptical of some of his arguments. But McSweeney still appears to have a shot at winning the five other judges.
The lawsuits are important because they set the constitutional parameters of the transportation debate: The Governor and General Assembly can’t slough off the dirty work of raising taxes to unaccountable, unelected entities like transportation authorities. If lawmakers want to raise taxes, they have to take the heat from voters, who have made it repeatedly clear in polls and referenda that they oppose tax hikes for transportation.
I dub McSweeney the “tribune of the people” for his role as protector of citizens against the depredations of Virginia’s political patricians. Most Virginians have never heard of McSweeney, whose lawsuits have drawn only a fraction of the media attention they deserve. But they owe him a huge debt of gratitude. Even if he loses this round, McSweeney has put the political class on notice: Craft your legislation very, very carefully. Don’t overreach.
Once upon a Monday dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore … the April 21, 2008 edition of the Bacon’s Rebellion e-zine popped into my inbox. Suddenly, the clouds parted, the sun started shining, and life was good. And here’s what the e-zine contained:
In two high-profile lawsuits, Patrick McSweeney has defended the interests of the common citizen against power grabs by the political class. Virginians owe him a bigger debt than they’ll ever know.
by James A. Bacon
It’s called road maintenance, and it’s draining the Transportation Trust Fund of revenue for new construction.
by Doug Koelemay
The End of Flight as We Know It
Between fuel prices, terrorism and the environment, air travel is losing altitude fast. In the not-too-distant future, plane rides will be a luxury for those at the top of the economic pyramid.
by EM Risse
Congressional politicking could eviscerate one of the few federal programs proven to help at-risk children in Virginia learn to read.
by Chris Braunlich
And Now, a Kind Word about Tolls
The public prefers tolls to taxes as a method to fund transportation improvements — as long as the public sees a clear benefit and politicians do not divert revenues to other projects.
by Norm Leahy
Is Dominion’s coal-fired plant destroying the Governor’s political future?
by Peter Galuszka
Our call for an alternative transportation policy is indeed “conservative” — organized around free markets, an aversion to subsidies and devolution of government power to the local level.
by Pat McSweeney
Virginia citizens achieved a momentous victory with the defeat of regional transportation authorities. Now is the time to press their advantage and hold politicians truly accountable.
by Ron Utt
Adopting the tried-and-tested agricultural practice of no-till farming could be Virginia’s simplest, most cost-effective strategy for restoring the health of the Chesapeake Bay.
by David Schnare
Beyond Bluegrass: Virginia’s Rock ‘n’ Rollers
by Edwin S. Clay III and Patricia Bangs
Don’t ever miss an issue — for a free subscription, click here.
At 8:50 AM on “The “Mega-State” and the Creative Class” post of 18 April by Jim Bacon, Laura said…
“Groveton, Most of your observations about Europe ring true. The one statement that does not, ironically enough, is about the United States. Human settlement patterns in the U.S. are no less an artifact of government intervention than they are in Europe. The only difference is that U.S. government mandates and subsidizes scattered, disconnected, low-density development, while European governments do the opposite.”
What a great statement!
We spend thousands of bites and do not make that point well enough to keep in check the blabbering, whining, filibustering and obfuscation by those trying to over-wash and ridicule advocates of common sense, democracy and market economies.
To put a bit of historical perspective on Laura’s statement:
The original (1775 to 1794) controls, policies, programs and incentives by Agencies (aka, government) favored a Yeoman, agrarian society and was codified in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. This government sponsored world-view of human settlement might be termed the Jeffersonian Ideal.
The second generation of Agency controls, policies, programs and incentives was ushered in by the Andrew Jackson. Speculative exploitation of the land resource was added to the assumption that the US of A would be a agrarian society forever.
We explore this and the following points in THE USE AND MANAGEMENT OF LAND, forthcoming.
Following the Civil War, as the Industrial Revolution drove the urbanization of First World civilization, various patches (reflecting the insights of U. Sinclair, T. Roosevelt, R. Carson, J. Jacobs and many others) were applied to the Jefferson / Jacksonian framework.
These patches have never addressed urban reality. Witness the failure of The Rule in Dillion’s case, Home Rule, zoning, Corps of Engineers water projects, cotton, sugar, wheat and milk subsidies, REA, urban renewal, the Interstate Highway System (as contrasted with the Inter-regional Highway Plan), annexation moratoria and other well-intended and / or nefarious efforts to shape human settlement based on Myth, Winner-Take-All Economics and now “Supercapitalism.”
For those who understand what Laura is saying, here is a poster for your wall:
“Sub”urban is dysfunctional urban. It is not nonurban and it does not belong in the Countryside.
The Anti Jacksons
EMR
Gov. Timothy M. Kaine has said that the General Assembly could hold a special session to deal with transportation issues as early as May or June this year. But Chelyen Davis with the Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star notes that lawmakers are so far from a consensus about what to do that “it may be months” before such a session could be organized.
The major fault line is between legislators who favor a “statewide” tax increase to finance transportation improvements and those who prefer regional solutions. Republicans, including House Speaker William J. Howell, R-Stafford, tend to fall into the regional-solution camp. Said Howell: “There’s not a crisis statewide that has to be fixed before you can fix what needs to be done for Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.”
Considering that the Republicans still run the House of Delegates, Howell and his compatriots exercise effective veto power over any proposed solution.
The Democrats, including Kaine, want a statewide solution that brings in a sustainable, long-term revenue flow. Trouble is, they can’t agree on which tax they prefer. Senate Majority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, has touted the gas tax, while others have argued for a sales tax. Kaine has not yet expressed a preference.
As far as I can tell, all proposals are based on political expediency — how to extract the most revenue from taxpayers with a minimum of fuss. Very few lawmakers, to my knowledge, have openly endorsed the most economically efficient and environmentally benign scheme of all: “user pays.”
The driving force in the world economy today is not the nation-state, argues “Creative Class” guru Richard Florida, but a new economic unit — something he calls the “mega-region.” The idea that nation-states are receding in relative importance is not a new one. When I was working at Virginia Business magazine some 12 to 15 years ago, we published a cover story on the “Rise of the City State,” based on the thinking of regional leadership consultant Jim Crupi. And no one can read the Bacon’s Rebellion blog for long without encountering Ed Risse’s concept of the “New Urban Region.”
But Florida is suggesting that something else is going on. In a April 12, 2008, piece in the Wall Street Journal, Florida notes that a mere 40 mega-regions around the world account for one-fifth of the world’s population, two-thirds of global economic output and more than 85 percent of all global innovation. By his reckoning, the world’s greatest mega-region is Greater Tokyo, with 55 million people and $2.5 trillion in economic activity, while No. 2 is the 500-mile Boston-Washington corridor, with some 54 million people and $2.2 trillion in output.
Based on the insight that mega-regions are the economic engines of the global economy, Florida suggests that the thrust of public policy should be to make them stronger and more competitive. Stay committed to global trade. Promote more urban densities, not sprawl. Modernize infrastructure. And stop transferring wealth from productive regions to lagging, unproductive ones.
These are all ideas that I’m comfortable with. But I do wonder whether the concept of a “mega-region” is really a meaningful one. Florida did not have the space to elaborate upon his thinking in a short op-ed piece. Hopefully, he has done so in his new book, “Who’s Your City?”, which I have not yet read. So, I remain open to being persuaded, but at this point I have to say that the usefulness of the concept in guiding thinking about economic development is less than self-evident.
The problem of defining the units of economic development is no mere academic issue. If we regard our community as part of a “city state” synonymous with a metropolitan region or a New Urban Region — the Washington region, the Hampton Roads region, the Richmond region, etc. — we will bend our efforts to creating institutions and linkages that match. If we regard our community as part of a “mega-region” stretching 500 miles across multiple states, we will organize our efforts quite differently.
I find it difficult to see how the defining the urban agglomeration stretching from Boston to Northern Virginia as a “mega-region” reflects any political, economic or sociological reality. The Boston-Washington agglomeration has no self identity as a region. It spans some 10 to 12 states (depending on how you define the region) and too many municipalities to count. The mega-region encompasses numerous distinct labor markets. Florida may present evidence to the contrary in his book, but I don’t see the area as being tied together by any special business or economic linkages. To the contrary, to pick one example, the IT-centric economy of Northern Virginia has more corporate and business linkages with Silicon Valley in California than it does to, say, Philadelphia, New York City or even a technology center like Boston.
Using Florida’s own theory of the “creative class” as a basis for thinking about the issue, I would suggest that the fundamental unit of regional economic development is the “labor pool” — a geographic entity within which the vast majority of people who live there also work there. The outer edges of such a region coincide with the “commuter shed” — beyond which people tend to commute to work in a different region. (This is a larger unit than the Metropolitan Statistical Areas catalogued by the U.S. Census. I believe it is how Ed Risse defines a New Urban Region, but I would welcome any clarification from him on that point.)
Looking at a region as a “labor pool” rather than a collection of municipalities puts the emphasis where it rightly belongs in a knowledge-based economy: on the workforce. The most powerful driver of economic prosperity today is the depth and breadth of human capital, and the great economic-development challenge of the age is creating the kinds of communities where the most economically, artistically and scientifically productive members of the workforce (the “creative class”) are drawn to live and work by the regional quality of life.
No one personally identifies with the “Boston-Washington” mega-region. No one moves to, say, the Northern Virginia portion of the mega-region on the logic, “Oh, yeah, I moved here for the great quality of life. We’ve got these really great educational institutions — like Harvard and Yale. And, man, the nightlife — you can’t beat those shows on Broadway!” No… people in Northern Virginia identify with George Mason University and Wolf Trap performing arts center, or maybe Georgetown University and the Kennedy Center.
Florida is right to say that wealth creation around the world is highly concentrated in a few very large, super-productive regions. But what appears to be a “mega-region” may really be a cluster of “city states” or “New Urban Regions” in such close proximity that they overlap with one another. The driving unit, with which people identify and mobilize their efforts, occur at the level of the city state, not the mega-region.
(Hat tip: Larry Gross.)
Dominion spokesman Jim Norvelle takes exception to my reading of the State Corporation Commission rulings on coal-fired power plants proposed by Dominion and Apco. (See “SCC Nixes Apco Coal Plant — Is a Post-Coal Energy Era Soon Upon Us?“)
In its recent rejection of an Apco proposal to build a coal-fueled power plant in West Virginia, I suggested, the SCC had looked skeptically upon the application of fluidized bed combustion technology. Noting that only two such facilities existed in the United States, I referred to the technology as “relatively novel.” Arguing that the SCC’s hands had been tied by General Assembly legislation regarding a proposed Dominion plant that also would use the technology, I concluded: “Kinda makes you think that the SCC never would have OK’d the Dominion plant if given a choice, doesn’t it?”
Norvelle responds that the technology is “fully mature, with over 500 operating units worldwide, with some units in service for over 28 years.” I’ll concede the point immediately: The technology is widely used outside the United States. My bad. He also emphasized that the SCC’s problem wasn’t with the technology per se but the application of that technology on the scale that Apco proposed. Quoting the SCC ruling (my italics):
APCo’s proposed IGCC Plant would be the largest of its kind constructed to date. … The record in this case indicates that there is no proven track record for the development and implementation of large-scale IGCC generation plants like the one proposed by APCo.
That’s a fair point. I did not make it sufficiently clear in my post that Dominion’s Wise County facility would be smaller than Apco’s.
Norvelle also noted that Dominion’s cost estimates are much more solid than Apco’s. While Apco had not nailed down a fixed-cost contract for any appreciable part of its proposed West Virginia facility, Dominion has secured fixed-price contracts covering 86 percent of the cost of its proposed Wise County plant.
According to Norvelle, the SCC’s turn-down of the Apco goal-gasification has few implications for Dominion’s project. Dominion is still committed to “clean” coal as a fuel source for electricity. And quoting CEO Tom Farrell, he says: “Coal is by far our most abundant and economic domestic energy source. If we are serious about improving the nation’s energy security, we must maintain its use while protecting the environment at the same time.”
Bacon’s Bottom Line: There are still valid questions regarding the economics of the Dominion project, but I erred in my previous post: There is no basis for extrapolating from the SCC’s Apco ruling that it would have nixed the Dominion project, too, if given a chance.
Some of my best memories growing up 40 years ago were of standing at the end of the wooden pier on hot, sticky summer afternoons and throwing chicken necks on strings into the Elizabeth River. We kids would patiently tend the lines and whenever we felt a strong tug, it meant that a blue crab was trying to make off with the bait. We’d draw up the string, slowly, slowly, so as not to spook the crustacean until it was visible just beneath the water’s surface. Then we’d swoop in with a net and scoop it up. Next would follow the prickly task of untangling the fins and claws and spiky shell from the net without getting a nasty bite from the flailing pinchers. Often as not, we’d drop the crab, and it would skitter off the pier and plop into the water.
These days, not enough crabs are getting away. According to a joint statement by Gov. Timothy M. Kaine and Maryland’s Gov. Martin O’Malley, crab populations in the Chesapeake Bay and its estuaries “are down 70 percent from 1990 levels and are showing no signs of recovery…”
From the Washington Post:
The governors are ordering state agencies to cut the harvest of female blue crabs this year by a third. That’s fine as far as it goes; last year, watermen caught an estimated 60 percent of the crabs in the bay, far in excess of the 46 percent goal the states had set some years ago as a means of sustaining the fishery. But it is really more of a stopgap designed to avert utter catastrophe than a lasting solution.
Sad to say, but my youngest child, nine years old, will never know the simple pleasures of crabbing. When the species is at risk, the kind of play that my childhood friends engaged in, entailing the death of many innocent crabs left carelessly in crab buckets, is no longer appropriate. The slow-motion destruction of the Chesapeake Bay represents a loss for children whose summers will never be as full as mine — not to mention a tragedy for Virginia’s “beautiful swimmers.” Tolerating the devastation of his remarkable species, so critical to the Chesapeake ecology and so interwoven with our heritage, would be a crime.
Former VDOT Commissioner Ray Pethtel floats an idea for funding regional transportation authorities through a 2 percent retail sales tax on gasoline.
The General Assembly would need to create a statewide transportation district with optional or mandatory participation for localities. The statewide district would be governed by local elected officials. Each local government would be required to vote to become a member, satisfying the constitutional requirement.
The new statewide district would have authority to impose a 2 percent tax, again under existing law. In order to gain voluntary participation, legislation should allocate the funds to the regional entities of Northern Virginia, Richmond and Hampton Roads according to the amount collected in those areas. The district then could allocate the remaining funds through the statewide formulas to those jurisdictions that participate.
Since the tax is based on a percentage of the retail sales price of gas, the revenue would be sensitive to inflation. And there is an existing mechanism to collect retail taxes — so administration would not be costly.
Read the full proposal in the Roanoke Times.
Patrick McSweeney is one of the few public figures in Virginia today who hews to the spirit of the founding fathers who protested taxation without representation. First he challenged the constitutionality of giving unelected regional transportation authorities the power to levy taxes. The state Supreme Court backed him up. Now he’s going after the planned transfer of the Dulles Toll Road to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority.
As reported by the Washington Times, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case yesterday. McSweeney, a Richmond attorney, originally filed the suit in Richmond Circuit Court, where it was dismissed. He appealed, and now the Supreme Court is hearing it. The lawsuit argues that the transfer should be invalidated because the General Assembly never approved it. “The governor and executive agencies exercise no power not granted by the General Assembly,” McSweeney told the court. “They acted beyond their authorization.”
The Kaine administration wants to continue charging tolls on the road, which is scheduled to pay off the last construction bonds by 2016. Now the Axis of Taxes sees the tolls as a multibillion-dollar revenue stream that can help pay for construction of the Rail-to-Dulles heavy rail project. Insofar as the tolls would be applied to a purpose totally divorced from their original function — paying for construction of, or improvements, to the toll road — they constitute a tax.
Making matters worse, the Kaine administration proposes to transfer the road to the MWAA, to which it has given oversight of the Rail-to-Dulles project. As was the case with the regional transportation authorities that the Supreme Court struck down, the MWAA governing body is not elected. Indeed, its board contains representatives not only from Virginia but Maryland and Washington, D.C.!
The unelected nature of the MWAA is not the legal issue in this lawsuit — the authority of the Kaine administration to transfer the toll road is the issue — but from a political perspective, this case is all about taxation without representation. This is all about the forces of Business As Usual getting something they want (Rail-to-Dulles) and have someone other than themselves (Dulles toll road commuters) to pay for it — without the consent of those paying the money.
I’m crossing my fingers and hoping McSweeney hits this one out of the park, too. Two legal grand slams in one season, that would be something else!
Those who are accustomed to our complaining about WaPo ads – and MainStream Media ads in general – may be surprised but today’s WaPo on page A-7 has an ad that is worth a careful look.
After you have looked at the “Do you see a Tree?, We also see a universal challenge.” ad, check out the Veolia web site to find out about this Enterprise that provides “water, waste, energy and transport services” for urban areas.
Here is the story:
The ad has for a background a high-oblique air photo of what appears to be a swatch of French Countryside. It may be Tuscany or Bavaria or ?. It may even be New Zealand or South Africa but it ‘looks like’ the countryside in Europa. In this swatch of Countryside the farmsteads are not centered on hamlets because the artist did not want to distract from the ‘Tree.’
The ‘Tree’ is an Alpha Village scale urban place with a divided parkway serving as the “trunk.” It could be a large Lewenz (‘Parallel’) Village but does not have the Autonomobile Free Core. In the graphic one can identify a number of land uses that ‘could’ represent a Balance of J / H / S / R / A.
What is very apparent is the Clear Edge and the relationship between Openspace inside the Clear Edge with Open Land outside the Clear Edge.
Could it just be that Veolia, an Enterprise that provides water, waste, energy and transport services, knows a thing or two about the settlement patterns the result from the fair allocation of location-variable cost?
OK, perhaps it is just a nice graphic that happens to be useful to illustrate those realities.
We will never know.
On a related topic, NPR did a two part series on 31 March and 1 April on the climate and lifestyle impact of dysfunctional and functional human settlement patterns. The Atlanta New Urban Region is the venue. The functional example – Atlantic Station – was designed based on the Richard Thornton graphic we included and described in our “All Aboard” column of 16 April 2007.
It is a small world and getting smaller with fewer places to hide for the 12 ½ Percenters.
EMR
EMR ruffles feathers. Imagine that!
Ed Risse had a chance to speak truth to power last week when he participated in a round table discussion with Fauquier County’s supervisors on the topic of developing a “functional and sustainable future.” Read a bit more about the session in this advance story published in the Fauquier Times-Democrat. Readers of Bacon’s Rebellion will find most of the ideas discussed in the article to be familiar. But the best part of the article isn’t about Ed’s ideas, it’s about Ed. Permit me to quote at some length:
Risse tends to ruffle feathers.
“Ed can walk into a room and immediately alienate the community-development people,” said [Terry] Nyhous, a former Warrenton town councilman. “I’ve seen it at the town a couple of times. [Warrenton Planning Director] Chris Mothersead would get himself in a dander” listening to Risse, Nyhous said.
Risse even makes him “mad” sometimes, Nyhous said with a laugh.
But he reminds himself that Risse intends his criticism to be constructive, the Center District supervisor said. “And I’ve got to keep [his frustration] in the box and listen” to Risse.
Risse knows he sometimes rubs the bureaucrats the wrong way. A few years ago, he made a presentation to the Fauquier planning commission and staff that implicitly faulted the county’s land-planning practices, assumptions and results.
Risse received a chilly response.
Later, “a planning commissioner came up to me and said that’s just what those people needed to hear,” he recalled.
Yeah, that sounds about right. That’s the Ed we know and love.
The year: 2075. The American colonies on the Moon are getting restless under Washington’s tyrannical rule….
This second edition of “Dust Mites” has a snazzy new cover, includes helpful lunar maps, and is 5,000 words tighter than the original. The sequel, “Trogs,” is scheduled for publication this summer.
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