Yeah, I realize I’m talking an awful lot about the transit strike here in Minneapolis, and that may not wind everybody’s watch, but it’s interesting to me. Today is also the first day where I have a real need for the buses, since I’ve got a couple things I need to do where a bus would be quicker and cheaper than getting in the car and worrying about parking, but I’ll figure it out. No real choice, is there?
I also find myself thinking about the U of M’s transitway. Before that was built, I’d use the U’s inter-campus buses sometimes, since they stopped at a few places along Como Avenue. There were also a lot of students on Como who’d ride the bus to school. But now that they run along the transitway, the buses are less useful unless you’re already on one of the campuses. Of course the buses are there for students, rather than the general population, but I never really felt guilty about mooching a ride on the free shuttle when it fit my needs.
- The Minnesota Daily says the Strike takes toll on riders and attendance is down in some classes at the University. I expected that would happen, since there are some students who will nearly any excuse to cut class.
- In You Can’t Get There from Here, the City Pages looks at the political realities behind the transit strike, and how changes to the budget for Metro Transit made since 1999 have made this strike unavoidable.
- There’s more at Jim’s essay about how the Minnesota Taxpayers League Declares Class War. David Strom, who wrote the article Jim criticized, stopped by and commented. Jim’s getting noticed in local politics? [jim]
- As renewal date nears, experts debate Patriot Act, and whether to renew it. It’ll be interesting to see how current senators vote on it this time around. Everyone in the Senate in 2001 except for Russ Feingold voted for the Patriot Act, including those like John Kerry who have been criticizing it lately. I’d like to see an actual vote that will show us their positions before the fall elections. I haven’t totalled up the numbers, but I wouldn’t mind seeing all 99 of those senators who initially voted for the act booted out of the Senate.
- The Libertarian Purity Test measures how “pure” of a libertarian you are. I ended up with a 145 of 160, mostly because I think that it’s impractical to privatize everything the government has done, especially roads. [endwar]
- FCC Faces Suit on Regulation of Digital Broadcast Television, or the “Broadcast Flag”. EFF’s suit
charges that the FCC exceeded its jurisdiction, acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner, and failed to point to substantial evidence in adopting a broadcast flag mandate.
[boing boing] - In The Terrazzo Jungle, The New Yorker takes a look at Southdale and its creator on its fiftieth birthday. Fifty years of shopping malls, and by the time he died, Victor Gruen, who created Southdale to try to make America more like Vienna (bringing the civility and planning of the Ringstrasse to Edina), realized the magnitude of his mistake: Malls, he said, had been disfigured by “the ugliness and discomfort of the land-wasting seas of parking” around them. [papascott]