And Still I Persist

Having lived in the Washington DC area for a total of nearly 8 years (and in the District itself for six of those years), I was a big fan and user of the Metro, their subway systems. However, the Metro was was always struggling with funding and maintenance issues, which puzzled me a bit since the Metro was heavily used (to say the least). But, then again, it’s the District.

So now I live outside of Denver, which has been developing its own (above-ground) mass transit system (RTD) over the last several years. The recent spike in gasoline prices has increased ridership on both the RTD light-rail trains and the RTD buses. Finally, mass transit gets to shine, right? Isn’t this the ideal situation for mass transit?

Uh, well, no. RTD may have to cut services because it can’t handle the increased traffic along with the rise in its own fuel prices (emphasis mine):

RTD buses and trains are attracting new riders in record numbers as fuel costs and congestion drive more commuters to abandon their cars.

In fact, ridership is up so much that the agency is having difficulty keeping up with the costs of moving all those new customers.

RTD had an 11 percent increase in ridership last year and, through the first quarter of this year, is up another 8 percent.

But the transit agency is falling victim to its own success as it spends more for fuel while contending with flat sales tax revenue that’s combined to create a potential $24 million shortfall that could force service cuts.

As the agency adds buses to its most crowded routes, it is paying 55 percent more than it did a year ago to fill them with diesel fuel.

Worse, RTD is far off budget in revenue collections. Even with the unexpected increase in riders, farebox revenue is 3.3 percent lower than anticipated in spite of a general fare increase that took effect in January. . . .

And sales taxes, the backbone of RTD’s budget, are nearly 6 percent below budget through March.

I’m a fan — at least, in theory and in terms of my own use — of mass transit, but here’s my question: is there a mass transit system in the US today that is actually self-sufficient? That is, it pays for itself strictly (or even just mostly) by fares and other revenues, not by subsidies from local, state, or federal taxes? ..bruce w..

This is one of the earliest (1993) ‘mainstream’ (non-tech-magazine) cartoons about the Internet and still one of the most famous:

A Google search on the caption yields nearly half a million hits. ..bruce w..

For the past several months all eyes have been focused on the ongoing mess that is the remains of the Democratic primary. The untold and emerging story is the impending beating that the Republicans are likely to take in November. In interest of full disclosure I consider myself a conservative and tend to vote Republican more than Democrat.

The reasons for this upcoming Republican rout are several, but first a few words of wisdom from the Politico - GOP leaders warn of election disaster:

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money. And in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to “save them” in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves.

A good measure of this is the fact that Newt Gingrich loves to tell people that “If you don’t listen to me you are doomed!”. I think Gingrich did some great work when he was speaker of the house, at least at the beginning. But now he is just another media shill, who is eager to generate interest in his books and selling them.

Also from the Politico - GOP loss could threaten leadership:

The dark clouds hovering over House Republicans hold one silver lining for Minority Leader John A. Boehner, GOP Whip Roy Blunt and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole: Expectations for November are now set so low that a loss of fewer than 10 seats could be seen as a sort of victory.

But if Republican losses break into the double digits, the three leaders could find it hard to hold on to their jobs, and rank and file members could throw their support behind a new generation of members — reformers who say their party should be making dramatic changes to prove to voters that it has learned the lessons that cost it the majority in 2006.

These newer members lack the votes now to overcome the wishes of more entrenched members of the Republican caucus. But a GOP bloodbath in November could change everything.

So let me help out the good folks at the Politico who seems to ricochet around near the heart of the matter but can’t seem to hit the target. Right now the Republicans are headed for a lot of races that are going to go to the Democrats. Lets looks at the reasons:

Republicans have enraged the conservative base - Plain and simple, over time the officials of the Republican party became self-indulgant and self-abosrbed. They wallowed in the privilege of power and became the party of big government, massive spending and questionable ethics. While it seems that modern Democrats giggle and wink at such behavior, the conservative core of the Republican party is unwilling to abandon standards so easily.

The voters (in general) are not done punishing the Republicans - The American people took congress away from the Republicans in 2006. In part this was because the conservatives declared that “enough is enough” and in part it was a broader message that President Bush was not popular. Truth be told that very few districts and states can elect a Republican member of congress without support from conservatives. Given who is leading the 2008 ticket, it is tough for any Republican congressional candidate to make the case that there is any interest in conservative goals and principles. Conservatives are still working through the betrayal of such duds as Dubai Ports, FEMA director Mike Brown and hurricane Katrina, Harriet Miers and quite a few others. The Republicans have yet to get a clue and understand why they are being punished, so the beatings shall continue.

The Republican presidential candidate is not running as a Republican - No one thinks McCain is a conservative, nor should they. The core of the conservative movement (with apologies to Michael Savage) are summed up as: Borders, Language and Culture. McCain falls short on all counts. Distain for this career politician with no appreciation of conservative goals is going to lead to the core of the Republican party staying home or voting against the “R” ticket in November.

All told, we are likely to see a less conservative congress in the fall. There is a real potential to have a liberal President with both houses of congress Democrat.

The good news is that Google has taken me off their badware list (as of May 1st), though it took them over a week to do so (along with multiple review requests and a posting at the Google Webmaster groups). You can see quite clearly the impact of this blog having the label of doom (”This site may harm your computer”) — Google’s designation started on 4/21 and ended on 5/1:

I remained appalled at how poorly this program is administered. After I fixed all the problems and requested a review, Google insisted that my site still had ‘badware’, claiming to have done a scan of my website that very day. This continued for a week (with daily checks on my part — nope, still no badware — daily requests for review, and daily ‘Badware found’ designations from Google) until suddenly the ‘badware’ designation vanished yesterday (May 1st). I credit that largely to having posted a message in the Google Webmaster Groups forum the day before (Apr 30th), though no reply was made directly to that posting or to me via e-mail.

Given the disproportionate impact that Google can have on a website’s traffic — thus for sites with ads, the site’s income — and the difficulties that most people appear to encounter in getting Google to lift that badware designation even after fixing the problem (browse through these search results), I’m surprised that Google’s legal department hasn’t urged more caution and diligence on how this ‘Badware’ initiative is administered.  ..bruce w..

I’ve had almost this exact conversation with Sandra.  ..bruce w..