I was blissfully unaware of Joseph Fasano’s existence until one of my dear, Trump Deranged, progressively-addled friends posted that junk above to Facebook, to be greeted (of course) by all sorts of likes and frowny faces. He’s a poet, primarily, which means that Fasano expounds on reality from a perspective of sentimentality and idealism, and of course he is woke as woke can be. (He teaches at Columbia, where he couldn’t if he weren’t ideologically acceptable.)
I don’t know who “the Billionaire” is (I can guess), but of course billionaires are evil because capitalism is evil. Interestingly, when a rare commenter on Fassano’s own Facebook page challenges his facile pronouncements, Fasano refuses to engage and typically tells the writer to buy his next book. I’m sure he gives all his royalties to STOP ICE organizations.
But that’s only on my mind because I just stumbled on the meme above as I posted on Facebook about the incredible Red Sox game last night. (Baseball is my life.) I have to be out for a while, so I hope to return to a welter of fascinating new ethics issues.
Ethics Alarms 
Two completely unrelated open forum topics:
Why do baseball teams mess with successful-ish seasons by making deals that change the chemistry of the team. Case in point, my White Sox getting swept by the Red Sox. I’m willing to bet, post trade deadline, the White Sox don’t make the playoffs.
Much more seriously, I beginning to think the social contract of the US is held in such contempt by some states that our traditional notion of the US is no longer real.
“Why do baseball teams mess with successful-ish seasons by making deals that change the chemistry of the team. Case in point, my White Sox getting swept by the Red Sox. I’m willing to bet, post trade deadline, the White Sox don’t make the playoffs.”
It’s a complex issue: Talent or intangibles? The Red Sox have that problem in spades. Three of the spark plugs of this insane streak are unquestionably not championship level regulars, but infield reserves pressed into service because of injuries. All three were key in last night’s win. Boston also has high-priced and greatly valued regulars who will return from injuries at some point. The team has been winning without them. What do you do?
You ride them as long as you can and hope the regulars return and keep the line moving.
In 2023, the Rangers were having very good seasons by a number of players. Then they had a rookie callup on maybe September 1st, who just tore through the league the rest of the season. Not only that but he had a great postseason and, together with the regulars played a key role in winning the World Series.
Last year, there were a bunch of rookies that had to fill in in August for serveral of our stars. These rookies were on fire together and lifted the Rangers to the cusp of the playoffs. Unfortunately, they all seemed to hit the wall together, and the veterans were not able to return from injuries and pick up the slack. The Rangers finished 81-81 with much hope for this year.
Such is baseball too. It remains to be see how well they will fare this year as injuries continue to bedevil them. They have the potential talent and a weakish American League may provide the opportunity. Also true with the Red Sox, who were having a truly woeful year — up until they weren’t.
In this episode of Memez R Make Us Dummer, we have a threefer of rhetorical cheats (and actually a subtle 4th cheat if you dig deep enough, I would say there’s an even more subtle 5th cheat, but it is really just politics as usual and isn’t centric to memes decreasing our logical abilities):https://x.com/jessmargera/status/2084638126807347684?s=20
The headline is technically is correct, Mamdani did indeed announce a plan. But the headline relies on the human tendency to shortcut positive comments like this one and ascribe credit to the subject of the sentence. Mamdani has rather announced the beginning of implementing a plan to fulfill a local law enacted by Mayor Eric Adams in 2023 to increase NYC’s canopy coverage to 30% from its current estimated coverage of 23%. The assertion then will have us believe that charismatic Zohran Mamdani is even more charismaticker than we thought as the progressive media continues to fawn over this rising communist star.
The 2nd cheat is the response, relying on traditional classism and the idea that dumb poor rubes, not only have no business commenting on what happens in other locales, but that if they do comment, they shouldn’t comment in ways that progressives believe would be opposite of their own material interests. You see, dumb, poor rubes *should want* more government spending on things that would supposedly improve their lives. Never mind that regardless of economic status, people are free to analyze public policy with larger considerations other than their own material circumstance.
I haven’t even seen negative responses to Urban *Reforestry*, so our responder is creating a strawman, I guess because conservatives live so thoroughly rent-free in his head that he needs there to be some dumb poor rube commenting negatively about this policy. My own opinions are that Urban *Reforestry* is great and if it can be done without financially burdening a town (principle of fiscal stewardship) or financially burdening entities outside the town (principle of subsidiarity) or unreasonably burdening citizens, then go for it (as I’d imagine any dumb poor rube would probably also think).
Subtle Cheat: Headline implies this is some sort of super advanced approach to city government while most cities already have comprehensive urban forestry plans. Way to join modernity NYC. The fawning headline then relies on readers to *not know* that their own city probably already has an urban forestry plan and that NYC isn’t being particularly forward thinking here but is rather playing catch up.
Even subtler cheat that isn’t really meme-centric: Promising something in the distant future (2040) gives a politician the ability to not be around for any negative consequences of a policy. If a policy actually ends of failing miserably or not coming about, a goal date 15 years in the future will have plenty of time to find reasons *external* to the policy for why it failed (usually this will be because some horrible conservative messed things up).
**I say Urban REforestry specifically because most Urban Forestry plans are typically building codes requiring property owners to include a specified minimum number of trees and shrubs on their property (especially new builds) which privatizes the burden of adding new trees. I haven’t read the 2023 NYC Local Law to know what it means and given that it’s NYC my own biases lead me to assume it will be some sort of public funded effort.
Why does WordPress allow me to number a list, even includes the functionality as an automatic formatting option *NATIVE TO IT’S OWN CODE* and then publish with all formatting gone?
Is this a google chrome flaw? Should I be using a different browser?
Additionally, a plan is just that. A plan. Until it is accomplished, Mayor Mamdani can announce he plans to cure cancer, make a perpetual motion machine and send a diverse group of cosmonauts to Jupiter if he wants. That doesn’t mean anything until or unless he devises the means to do it and pulls it off. This tendency of people to act as if the Mayor announcing a plan is the same as getting it done is a bit concerning to me.
Yep.
This was the problem with Elizabeth Holmes. She just said “I am going to do blood testing with a few drops of blood instead of vials of blood”. She had no proposal on how to do it, she just said “I am going to do it” and people gave her several $billion.
According to the established narrative, no one ever asked her how she planned to do this or how she WAS doing it (after she was claiming to do it). Well, that isn’t quite true, when asked how they were going to do it, she basically said “I am going to hire scientists and tell them to do it because I said so”. Because that is how science works. No one ever asked her for FDA approval before the tests were offered at Walgreens either.
Good thing a whistleblower got that shutdown before 2020 or we all would have had to go to Walgreens for a blood test before we were allowed to go anywhere for the day.
Yeah, I was going to mention the Red Sox game last night. Wow!! Their turnaround this year since Alex Cora’s departure has been remarkable. I told Dad this morning that maybe this is the year of the much-anticipated Red Sox / Braves World Series. We almost got there in 2021…
I bet there might be a potentially interesting ethics discussion around Cora getting fired – given his history – and the resulting success of the team.
Anyways, the Red Sox are for real, and I know at two fans that are ecstatic.
If you are passing through Wyoming on I-80, about midway through the state you’ll come across the quaint town of Rawlins. It houses the state penitentiary, has a modest rail yard, and one of the best Thai restaurants, Anong’s, that I’ve ever eaten at. Down the road is the refinery, and there are many oil and gas jobs in the area. Overall population is about 8200. Businesses in Rawlins typically have a hard time attracting good help, because the wages at the pen, the railroad, and in oil and gas are typically so much higher than your standard retail job. Because of these, Rawlins has struggled to attract and keep businesses. Taco Johns and Burger King closed for want of good help. We briefly had a Starbucks, but when Starbucks started closing down shops to shore up losses, ours was one of the first to shutter. We do have a Wal Mart, which opened in 2014, and it is literally the smallest Wal Mart Supercenter in the world.
There’s a steady flow of semi truck traffic through Rawlins. Anyone who spends any time on I-80 knows that it is one of the main shipping lanes in the country, and anyone who spends any time driving in Wyoming learns to dread watching one trucker decide to pass another truck… on an incline. Most of I-80 in Wyoming is two lanes per side, but occasionally WyDOT has been generous enough to add a third lane on some of our 7% grades so that passenger vehicles don’t have trudge at 40 mph behind a herd of semis trying to pass each other on the uphills.
US-287 going north out of Rawlins will ultimately take one to Casper, so there is a fair amount of semi traffic that departs I-80, drives through town, turns on to US-287, and heads north. If the semis are coming from the west, they’ll take exit 211 off of I-80 and land on Spruce Street, which then intersects US-287 right by the Catholic Church in the middle of the town. If the semis are coming from the east, they would take exit 215 onto Cedar, which intersects US-287 a few blocks south of the Spruce Street intersection. However, some decades ago, Rawlins built a bypass so those truckers can head north without going through downtown Rawlins.
If you take the bypass north, you’ll pass by Bomgaars, Pizza Hut, and our Kroger-owned City market on the west, and Tractor Supply and Backyard Barns on the east. Then there will be a few industrial business and closed down buildings, and then one will pass by the baseball fields and the Higher Learning Center before finally reaching US-287. On the east side of the bypass is a division of the town that, for all practical purposes, requires one to use the bypass to reach. One of the big establishments in that development is the now solitary elementary school in town. Near the baseball fields and the Higher Learning Center is an intersection that is frequently used, both by vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
As one can imagine, frequent pedestrian traffic doesn’t mix well with frequent semi traffic, so this summer, Rawlins embarked on a project to make an underpass beneath the bypass so pedestrians don’t have to risk the truck traffic to cross. This sounds wonderful, but the ethics issue arises from the competence aspect.
For a pedestrian to use the underpass, instead of crossing the bypass at Aberdeen Blvd, he would have to walk two hundred yards down the new sidewalk to reach the underpass, and then walk two hundred yards back up the other side. Right now, during the driest, hottest part of the summer, that doesn’t seem so terrible, but I can guarantee, even with the drains that were installed on either side, once we have rain and snow, water will pool down there, making the underpass an absolute mess. I would also be willing to bet that transients will utilize the underpass for shelter. We don’t have much of a homeless population in Rawlins, but we do have people who hitchhike their way down I-80, who occasionally drift through town. There is one other underpass already in Rawlins that helps one cross under the rail yard, and it shows signs of people sleeping and using drugs. I envision this happening to the new underpass, as well.
So the question really is whether this underpass was at all an ethical decision by our town. The traffic on the bypass is not constant. There are frequent gaps in traffic sizeable enough for a tortoise to cross safely. Using the underpass requires one to go several hundred yards out of one’s way, when one could just as easily wait a moment, then cross directly. And the underpass is likely to collect water and transients. I predict, though I could be wrong, that the underpass will be ignored in favor of a quicker crossing.
The decision to proceed with this underpass came after twenty years of studies, so I can’t say that thought and effort wasn’t put into this. I agree that there is risk crossing bypass, but when I look at the figures — a single pedestrian fatality back in 1983 — I don’t know that the cost/benefit analysis comes out favorably. The whole project cost $3.2 million, with about $424K coming directly from Rawlins coffers.
Given that Rawlins continually complains about budget shortfalls, and there is a dire need for improving our water lines, I don’t believe this was a wise use of our funds. Any thoughts?
So now wordpress numbering works.
That’s awesome! I can now say we’re just down the road from each other!
Just a quick 15 hour drive! If you need eggs or flour we have some.
My wife thought I should expound on the water issues in Rawlins, since I brought that up in comparison to spending on the underpass.
Rawlins’s water situation is truly dire. Our water needs are supplied from a couple of springs and streams from out of town. (The original spring around which Rawlins came into being, discovered by Gen. John A. Rawlins in 1867, is actually not listed among the current contributors of municipal water, though there is a park where the spring is.) To gather water from our sources and distribute it to Rawlins (and the sister town of Sinclair), Rawlins has to maintain over 120 miles of piping. There are multiple stretches of at least 20,000 feet that are made up of old-fashioned wooden pipe that is over 100 years old. Our collection system is aging, our storage tanks need replaced, and our transmission lines need some significant work.
On top of this is chronic poor management of our water system. We have scores of line breaks a year, with sections of the town losing water for more than 24 hours on a regular basis. It is more common to have a no-water school closure than a snow day. The town council has had various plans in place for years to fix the issue, with the same feet-dragging and endless discussions that characterized the underpass. We have numerous studies that have accumulated to a master plan published in 2024, but whether that plan is implement remains to be seen.
This master plan projects about $60 million for a satisfactory overhaul of our water system. (The total annual revenue for Rawlins is about $30 million.) There are potentially grants for items like this, but mismanagement has hampered us here. We’ve had to return ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds in the past because we’ve missed federal deadlines and compliance requirements, often because engineering and permitting went way too long. We’ve used grants to build a pretreatment facility that turned out to be incompatible with our existing treatment facility, so after going live in 2000, it was shuttered in 2002, though it was re-opened in 2022 after a catastrophic failure in our water system.
I should detail that event. Back in March of 2022, we had several major line breaks that dropped our water storage level to critically low levels. Drought conditions and insufficient snowfall over the winter had already left our water sources in an unusually low state, so while we normally have plenty of water from our sources, we were not in a position to draw heavily and quickly from them. At the same time, we’d just completed a major repair project, which had temporarily stopped the fresh water flow into our tanks. Reopening the water flow hammered the system hard enough to cause several line breaks in downtown Rawlins. Also at the same time, we had a pump failure in our circulation system which allowed a contamination breakout, and the community was forced to a don’t-flush-your-toilet-and-boil-your-water orders for 5 days. The subsequent investigation revealed years and years of deferred maintenance on the water system while there were known leaks and key portions of the system that were known to be critically deteriorated.
Rawlins applied for a $7 million grant from ARPA because the total repairs from this disaster, at the time, would exceed $20 million. Rawlins was turned down in part because the state evaluated our management of our water system unsustainable. One aspect of that was not keeping water-rates up to ensure sufficient funds to cover operation and maintenance. So in order to comply with grant requirements, Rawlins has dramatically increased its water prices. They jumped 15% in 2022, and 50% in 2024, neither of which has been popular with the residents, and that still might not get us sufficiently sustainable to qualify for additional grants.
So here we are looking at tens of millions of dollars of repair costs without sufficient funding to repair them, so breaks are going to continue and possibly get worse as we fall further and further behind. Rates are going up, making citizens grumble, and the chronic line breaks make everyone wonder if our money is being wisely spent.
I know that Rawlins only had to contribute $420K to the underpass implementation (after spending $400K in that 20+ years of investigating), but that is still a chunk of money for a relatively insignificant project when there are much more dire needs in the community.
The one type of camera enforcement I could really get behind is a left lane loafing camera. Ticket the hell out of people who do that.
Some states have various laws making trucks passing on hills illegal. Here in Oregon, they allow shoulder driving for the slowest trucks and the faster trucks can go in the right lane. They post such hills, informing slower trucks to use the shoulder and prohibiting trucks from the left lane.
”The decision to proceed with this underpass came after twenty years of studies”
Any sidewalk project that takes twenty years of study translated to me as “it’s an expensive bad idea, but ‘for everyone’s safety’ we will go ahead and do said bad idea, when we can’t study it longer. I agree with you. It’ll be a larger safety risk and liability with the ice in the winter going up and down a slope like you’re describing, if people will bother to take the more difficult walking route at all.
How do you handle employees and volunteers of tourist attractions who take up your limited amount of time?
Many years ago, we went to the local art museum. We chose to end the day with a new temporary exhibit that would be leaving soon. As the closing time approached, we wound our way past exhibits toward where the temporary one would be. Walking past what looked like a dark room, we were stopped by a security guard who told us to go into the room. I stepped in and the empty room was arranged so that the wall was much closer than appeared. That was it. Har-dee-har-har. Oh, I suppose some people think that’s art and more power to them, but being stopped for such a thing was annoying. More annoying was the guard’s prattling on and on about the nature of art after that which kept us until a few minutes before close and too late to see the final exhibit.
Three years ago, I brought up the subject of a building tour Mr. Golden inexplicably chose to do in which we were the only tourists. The tour guide got so fixated on our novelty hotel, she kept stopping and asking her co-workers if they’d heard of it which got us so far behind, a second tour with a large group of people caught up with us and their guide wasn’t happy, to say nothing of the tour taking much longer than we’d planned.
Two years ago, at a museum, we were followed around by a security guard who kept talking about exhibits we weren’t looking at. I was reading some information on an exhibit when the guard began going on and on about a completely different one I hadn’t got to yet. It was difficult to enjoy what we were trying to look at and we did not have time to chatter.
Last month, we reached an attraction 90 minutes before it closed (our road trip intineraries are packed full and we can’t see everything. Unfortunately, sometimes weather, construction and traffic patterns can affect our ability to get somewhere on time). The desk clerk asked what we wanted to see; advised that one spot closed in 45 minutes and kept right on talking and talking for many minutes. Even knowing we had limited time to get to the thing (he’d occasionally stop and acknowledge we probably wanted to move on), he kept going and urged us to come back the next day (not an option) to see it. Behind schedule now, we did make it to the thing we wanted to see and saw most of the place before leaving a couple of minutes before close.
What is it about us that makes people think they can hold us up even when they know how little time you have? Is it ethical to say, “Hi, you seem nice and helpful, but I’d really rather get on with the visit to make the most of the time we have left.”
Since security guards seem to like to chat it up with you all and focus all their attention on you at art museums, I have a plan that will make us both rich.
You owe me a keyboard.
Would that it were only art museums! 😀
Unfortunately, it happens at parks, historical sites and other attractions, too.
What about the security guards at banks? or near the crown jewels of England?
Ocean’s Eleven is included with your Amazon Prime subscription..
Is it ethical to say, “Hi, you seem nice and helpful, but I’d really rather get on with the visit to make the most of the time we have left.”
Hmmm. Fascinating question. And great background to boot. Given the complexity of the ethics involved, I couldn’t come up with an answer, so I ran it through a proprietary AI program I invented one day to count perforations in toilet paper. It responded: Is it ethical to say to your dog, “Sit.”
(Yes, I deliberately programed it with a Jewish personality.)
Somehow we missed THIS SCANDAL, though it was uncovered by the ever-unbiased and vigilant Washington Post a month ago. (The WaPo story is behind a paywall, so I’ll just add a Wayback screenshot of the headline as a comment below.)
Is anything about Vance’s arrangement unethical or wrong at all, or only if a Republican does it? Isn’t back to nature, organic, etc. a good thing in the progressive universe?
Here’s how WaPo presented the story. If you look up a pic of the structure, it’s really quite attractive and in keeping with the architectural style of the VP residence.
Totally different topic here …
took all your advice about the Odyssey and saw the Minions instead. If you can relax into an animated movie, the Minions are hilarious.
In my goal of creating awareness of property rights erosion, there’s a Supreme Court case being heard about property rights compensation when interstate pipelines are being condemned. Who will win? State laws or federal? I imagine the federal rules will win, interstate issues tend to fall to federal jurisdiction. It’s likely unfortunate in this case, as the landowners would probably fare better under state condemnation laws and it will incentivize condemnation to save corporations money.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/25-159.html