The Argument

I am a black nerd, which is to say I am Black and I also tend to engage in media generally associated with dedicated and energetic fanbases. The two are not mutually exclusive.

My idea of a good weekend is ordering a pizza and marathoning whatever the new hotness is on Crunchyroll with intermediate bouts of video games and maybe a fantasy novel on the sly. That is my fun.  That is my jam. That has always been my jam. That will probably always be my jam.

But I am also black and fully aware that at least a reason why Trump won the white house was his overt appeals to white grievance.  Let me say it explicitly. DONALD TRUMP IS A RACIST, MADE APPEALS TO RACIST SENTIMENT, AND CONTINUES TO MAKE APPEALS TO RACIST SENTIMENT!

He did that.



But more than that from where I sit Trump is incompetent and the reason why the electorate and yes even Republican leadership is willing to dismiss that incompetence because of that  racism. For a lot of them, it's a feature, not a bug.


People are willing to ignore everything about Donald Trump BECAUSE he reassures white racists, or sexists "or whatever" else that yes they are firmly in control of the country. And since they won the White House and the congress and are well on their way to a Supreme Court majority, yeah they kind of do. Life sucks get a helmet.

That is my reality. That that is the world I live in. That is the nail in my brain. That is my life. I don't like it but it is what it is.

...

Damn near every week I have hear some new controversy about ehem a "fan movement". And regardless whatever the spark was this time they all boil down to being mad about the same thing. And that same thing is directly related to all the crap I just described.

"I A MIDDLE-CLASS STRAIGHT WHITE GUY DON'T SOLEY CONTROL THE DIRECTION OF THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE!!!!"

I am just about sick of all that noise.

I know other groups of people have it worse off than me, a black dude from the burbs. but I've had to put up with a lot of shit over the years from media that otherwise, I'm pre-disposed to loooooooove.



(To anybody who comes at me saying I want to destroy Star Wars and hate it. Shut up! I love Star Wars, and I will probably die loving Star Wars.)

I also want to be clear. I kind of sucks when your favorite show or movie series, or comic book series veers off in a direction you can't stand and you have to give it up. And it's not out of bounds to criticize cast and crew when that happens.

But all of these fan movements have the same central complaint, that these pieces of fiction are trying to appeal more to people who aren't them and that criticism almost always immediately devolves into racist and sexist harassment as people start crying "SJWs (anybody concerned about issues race, class, sexuality or gender) ruin everything".

And it's not cool. It's not alright. And it's going to keep happening. Because that's where we are right now.

That is my reality. That that is the world I live in. That is the nail in my brain. That is my life. I don't like it but it is what it is.

For the Sake of the Record

So I ran out of money to keep doing the blog... again and I have some strong feelings about that. In order to keep what I call, "brain leakage" (a state where I am unable to keep negative thoughts and feeling from affecting what I say and do) at bay I've been mostly writing stuff offline to sort out how I feel about it but somebody asked so here goes.

It takes money to keep up the blog and it's never been self-sustaining. I've also had trouble finding money otherwise in my personal life and am in huge amounts of debt. In all honesty, restarting the blog in January was a pretty irresponsible move on my part along with other things I did, that shall go unmentioned. But at the time I wrote down (again offline) what I was doing and why and I understand the logic of me of six months ago even if I can't say with a straight face I'd make the same choices, though yeah I probably would. I'm a predictable little bastard. 

This sort of stuff is what I want to do with my life and if I have the capacity to do it I will. I just don't right now. And yeah it bugs me but it is what it is at the moment.

All that having been said I'm not as angry as I was the last time things kind of fell apart. Even if I don't have the power to do all the stuff I want to do right now, I know how to rebuild things in my head and know that me not being in a position to do what I want isn't a permanent state. Or to put it another way in 2017 I was a bit of a junkyard dog, but the simple act of proving to myself that I can rebuild things has helped calm me down and find ... peace.

And Megalobalboa didn't hurt either.

Everything is Politics and Politics is Everything

So a lot of hay has been made about Republican political officials being heckled in public spaces. And none of the usual scuttlebutt from the usual places seemed to feel right.

The "Can't we get along pieces" from Washington Post seemed totally tone death from this moment in time and I just haven't seen an article from the opposing side of that sentiment that articulated exactly going on without talking about the incredulity of specific policies and well as much as I hate to say it elections have consequences.

And then I saw this video from Extra Credits about political and something clicked for me.

There is a sentiment in this country that politics is divorced from daily life, that is in the broad strokes politics does not matter. And that sentiment is one that's really been subtly under question for the past few years.

From where I sit of course politics matters because public policy matters and is one of the great forces that affects lives on a massive scale.

Because of that sentiment, it's not unusual to view politics as just a job. Something that can be slipped into and out of at the end of the workday. But I would argue it's more than that.

In the 2016 election, there was this great cynicism. This feeling that if the citizenry couldn't change the system they should revolt and dismantle it. And part of what led to that was a feeling that politics, the stuff people see on cable news, was divorced from their everyday experience.

And that runs counter to how I think. For me, everything politics. I can look at even the keyboard I'm typing on and work backward to environmental policies about manufacturing which affect the durability and pricing of the thing. We are a society of law even when the law is obtuse or invisible.

I don't know if I support the heckling of Republicans in these spaces but it speaks to a larger ideological divide. A politician doesn't stop being a politician at the end of the workday. The effects of their policies don't stop at the office door.  The effects of decisions about who gets what money and who doesn't, or who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, or who gets to vote and who doesn't don't just stop 50 feet from the office.

And the notion that it does is from where I sit why we ended up with a party in power that doesn't believe the government helps people in their daily lives because for the representatives of that party government doesn't exist outside of the physical workplace.  And that's something worth changing

SMART (and Mass Transit in Metro Detroit As A Whole) as It Is Right Now Does Not Work But The RTA Millage Would Go a Long Way to Helping It Get There

So Mark Hackel and L. Brooks Patterson's solution to regional transit is to essentially expand the SMART BUS system, which on its face doesn't sound like a bad idea except ... SMART is kind of broken. It's not the institution's fault. From where I sit a lot of the problems associated with SMART are caused the by the opt-outs and the lack of resources that those opt-outs cause which these two fellows are absolutely stuck on.

All the same, I can't get behind the idea that SMART as exists right now works. That is that it does its job of efficiently and cheaply getting people from place to place in a timely manner, which by the way is something that I consider essential.  We have to make this work. We can't just keep shrugging and dusting it's failings under the rug.  Don't get me wrong it's better than nothing but if we really wanted to (i.e. supported the RTA) we could do better.

So here is a list of long-standing gripes big and small I have with SMART many of which, though not all, the RTA plan explicitly seeks to fix

• The ordinance that keeps SMART from picking up passengers in the city of Detroit (the word is that it's not being enforced but still). 
• I don't know if it's a hole but I'd like to take a train to Ann Arbor. It's a nice place I don't get to visit often. 
• The service holes in Oakland and Wayne Counties (Novi,  Rochester Hills, and Livonia specifically but there are many more. )
• Even for communities that opt-in if they boarder an opt-out community it can wreak havoc on passengers attempting to make return trips if they get off the bus on a main road that also acts as a municipal border. (LATHRUP VILLAGE!)
• Moreover, it's absolutely infuriating when a bus THAT'S IN SERVICE flies right past you or where you need to go but can't stop because it's an opt-out. ("Sorry I can't stop in ...")
• Opting out gives cities who don't really know that much about SMART's routes essentially the ability to force the institution to make radical changes to move around the holes at best extending the time it takes to complete routes and at worse moving and cutting off stops that have nothing to do with the opt-out communities themselves, especially if those stops act as service hubs.  IT DOESN'T JUST AFFECT THEM! 
• The buses for SMART come roughly once every hour which is a pretty long time between buses, especially if you need to transfer to get to where you got to go. I have spent a lot of dead time. 
• While you can use transfers between some of the multiple systems in the region they are limited and we could really use a universal fare system so you don't have to get more than one transfer per trip.
• The SMART buses generally don't run past around 7 pm which often makes return trips impossible and may strand people particularly those coming home from work or school. 
• This doesn't have much to do with the SMART themselves but we need more crosswalks. Over the past few years, I have heard horror stories about people trying to cross the street to get to a bus stop. A quarter-mile, maybe a half-mile tops off the top of my head is about the length of road to walk before the temptation to just screw it and jay-walk sets in especially if the stop is right across the street in the first and getting to a crosswalk doubles the walk. 
• I don't really use the SMART BUS phone app to track buses but I've heard complaints about it.
• Right now Northland is kind of a mess and it kind of acted as a hub where people could transfer from the SMART buses to the DDOT busses and vice versa. I know with the construction why did what they did but all the same, it went from one central stop for nearly 10 routes to a lot more stops all over the place and it's confusing to understand which buses stop where and course correct if you're wrong.
• While I'm on the subject of Northland it acted as a sort of de facto transit center and I think we could use more of those. They're expensive but they make things so much easier for passengers with clear markers for different routes and places to buy passes. Plus if you put a convenience store in you can make a mint on cigarettes, soda, and newspapers.  
• Speaking of which add a convenience store to the Rosa Park Transit Center. I see folks selling cigarettes and water at the stops getting hassled occasionally, but people really want that stuff on the go. And on a hot summer day who doesn't want water. 
• You can argue they're obsolete and redundant with smartphones but Ann Arbor's bus system used to put out a single information booklet of all the routes, schedules, and maps instead of individual pamphlets. I preferred how the information was organized there over the pamphlets.
• Which brings me to something there are fewer paper bulletins than there used to be. And I know arrow of time, creative destruction and all but a lot of people don't have smartphones or your phone runs out of battery. It sucks to have to take a leap of faith when the next bus is coming.   
• I haven't had much of a problem with SMART buses being that late and DDOT buses are better than they used to be but it's been an issue in the past and a lot of it was due to aging buses that were unreliable.
• Again it's getting better but safety has been an issue, especially on DDOT buses. 
• We could use more benches, and the schedules, and waste bins at the stops are nice. We could use more of those.  Let's just call it "pedestrian amenities"

P.S. As it is the RTA plan is dependant on SMART. So we actually need both SMART and RTA millages to pass in order to actually enact that plan. 

The Case Against L. Brooks Patterson

So if you haven't guessed already I am in favor of Warren Evans' transportation plan as I was also in favor of the original 2016 RTA plan.

Right now the main obstacle from keeping it from happening isn't so much that people are against it, though they very well might be but rather that Macomb and Oakland County executives Mark Hackel and L. Brooks Patterson via their representatives on the RTA Board of Directors essentially have veto power over any attempts to even put it on the ballot.

Which is to say I kind of hate those guys right now.

I don't know Mark Hackel but not counting college I've lived in Oakland County my whole life. L. Brooks Patterson is my guy and has been since childhood. And that thought makes me want to bang my head on a desk.

Despite that and my own personal fortunes, I have to admit Oakland County as a whole is in a state of relative prosperity.

But I would also argue that a lot of that prosperity is the direct result of white flight from the City of Detroit which Patterson directly encouraged. Which is one of the most frustrating things to me about this.

Patterson's rationale for not "giving" "Detroit" (for the record those are irony quotes, the money the RTA millage would raise would in no way be under his stewardship except maybe via his representative on the board of directors and the REGIONAL Transportation Authority as its name suggests is a regional body that encompasses not only Detroit but also Oakland County and as mentioned I for one as a resident of Oakland County would very much like a functional mass transit system which right now we do not have.) is that the city is politically dysfunctional but from where I sit at least some of that dysfunction though admittedly not all of it is his fault.

P.S. I also have beef because he continuously advocates for the widening and expansion of highways which have historically, especially before his time, been to the detriment to the neighborhoods of the city.

Oh. And the bus integration thing... WHY IS THIS GUY STILL IN CHARGE!?

RTA May 17, 2018 Board of Directors Meeting

RTA May 17, 2018 Executive Meeting

May 14, 2018 Southfield CIty Council Meeting at Lawrence Tech

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Southfield April 30, 2018 City Council Meeting

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

I Am The Darkest Fear of Grover Norquist and the Koch Brothers... A Tax and Spend Marxist

So this year there are a lot of local millages coming up in the Detroit metro area. Part of me wants to talk about the importance of taxes and my hatred of the current anti-tax environment both nationally and statewide but after some thought, I realize I might have the blinders on. The past two, if I'm being honest eight years of my life, both politically and personally has been a laundry list of things I want and need not getting done because the money isn't there so I have a natural bias towards the shiny new policy proposal that could change my world save for the lack of funding.

Indeed, it is easier to tell people what would make me oppose a tax rather than what would make me support it because supporting taxes is my default position. My baseline is that the government does a lot of important stuff and in order for it to keep doing all that important stuff, it needs money. "Starving the beast" is a very bad no good horrible idea.

Accountability

I know everything I just said. But taxes are still essentially "the people's" money regardless of how necessary I think they are. There are lots of reasons Donald Trump bugs the hell out of me but this is one of them. Even if you think the amount of graft in the administration is negligible compared to the size of the actual federal budget, which it is, the graft degrades trust that tax dollars will actually be spent on the missions of their departments which is something citizens are absolutely in the right to expect and be upset about when it does not happen. That graft is making every conservative right when they complain about the inefficiency of the federal government. And I hate it. 

Transparency

Part of that accountability is having a clear, understandable, and accessible purpose for each dollar the government spends. And honestly, I do think government budgets are a bit too complicated. Not so much that the government itself should be paired down but in how they are prepared in presented to both lawmakers and the public.  Budgets are more than a bunch of numbers but practical records and mission statements of the priorities of their organizations. If you want to know what the government actually does rather than what it says it does look at the budget

Progressiveness
Notice I didn't say tax and spend liberal in the title. I have drunken from the fount of Engels and Marx. Capitalism is inherently exploitative but we have so oriented our society around that system of production that replacing it would require radical revolution: cultural, economic, and political.

... But Communist revolutions don't exactly have a great track record of advancing the interests of the proletariat. 

Apart from throwing off the oppressive yoke of the bourgeoisie, ... a progressive tax along with services aimed towards helping poor and middle-class people (and maybe universal basic income)  is about the fairest and most practical means of the wealth re-distribution needed to create a more equitable and egalitarian society short of the alternative.

Which is to say I am tired of hearing rich bastards bitching about taxes while gutting worker pensions and arguing against raising the minimum wage. I do not like the republican party right now.

And  I wish they would knock it off before I give up the pretense of respecting property rights and show them what a real pinko commie bastard would look like rather than the limp center-left policy advocates that pass for socialists/communists in their heads.

I have family that works for the local energy company. Seizing power plants would go down great at the family barbecue.

(For the record that was sarcasm. Seizing power plants is a very very bad idea that I do not support. It was just an idea of something a hard-line old school commie would want that nobody is seriously suggesting. The mainstream left is pretty far from out-right communism or even socialism right now, despite the fever dreams of Fox News, Breitbart and whatever crazy Youtube talk show host is in my suggestions this week.)

April 26, 2018 RTA Detroit Community Meeting

On April 26 2018, the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan held a community meeting at the Detroit Historical Museum to educate the public about the Connect Southeast Michigan plan.

April 25, 2018 RTA Birmingham Community Meeting

On April 25, 2018, the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan held a community meeting at the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham Michigan to educate the public about the Connect Southeast Michigan plan.


More information about the plan can be found at http://www.connectsoutheastmichigan.org.

Southfield April 24, 2018 Board of Education Meeting

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Southfield April 16, 2018 City Council Meeting

An agenda and related documents can be found here.



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Opioid Town Hall

On April 11, 2018, a town hall meeting was held on the Opioid Crisis at the Southfield Public Library in Michigan.



The town hall featured remarks from:

• 46th District Court Judge, Debra Nance
• State Representative, Jeremy Moss
• Oakland County Commissioner Janet Jackson
• Oakland County Sheriff, Michael Bouchard
• Southfield Police Chief, Eric Hawkins
• Fire Chief, Johnny Menefee
• Oakland County Health Network, Christina Nicholas
• Attorney, Mark Bernstein

Also, the presentation included a clip from a speech from Sam Quinones, Author of Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic.