Shortly after the election I was looking at Vichy France as a model for what was going on in America. Now, though, I am afraid I'm looking more at the Spanish Civil War.
The break came for me with the mini-coup d'etat in North Carolina, where the Republican legislature and the Republican lame-duck governor convened in a hastily organized special session and stripped the governor's office of much of its power. The incoming occupant of this much-diminished office is, of course, a Democrat. Elected by popular vote.
What we're looking at here is an entrenched but threatened oligarchy that is willing to do anything to hold onto its power. Very much like Spain, really.
It's true that the move away from democracy has been under way for some time, most notably with voter suppression laws. But a bridge was crossed in North Carolina. On this road we'll still have elections. But pretty soon they won't matter.
As for the foreign angle, we're about to have a Texas oil man who wears a Russian decoration on his lapel preside over the U.S. State Department.
The analogies with Spain are not exact, but they don't have to be. For instance, in Spain, the Soviets supported the popularly elected, legitimate Republic. It was the Germans and the Italians who supported Franco.
But the point is that foreign intervention, whatever its form, was critical. I for one fail to see how Franco's Army of Africa would have gotten across the water to Spain if Hitler had not airlifted them. And it is difficult to imagine Trump rising to the presidency without Vladimir Putin and Julian Assange and the hack of the Democrats' email.
The fascists in Spain used to boast that they had four military columns converging on Madrid, but they had a fifth column working for them inside Madrid. In the American context, that would be Jim Comey and the FBI.
But at least in Spain, there were usually front lines. Our conflict may lack carpet bombing and actual firing squads, but there will be no front lines. Perhaps, in this regard, Vichy France is still the better model. Not much actual gunfire. Just the occasional roundup. And always the apprehensive waiting, the not knowing what is coming next.
I greatly fear what we are about to experience in our own land.
Saturday, December 17, 2016
Monday, December 5, 2016
Parking Protected Bike Lanes in Baltimore
Little Baltimore is beating the pants off big Philadelphia when it comes to bike lanes. Below are two pictures of parking protected bike lanes installed in Baltimore this year. I took the pictures on Saturday, December 3.
The first photo shows Roland Avenue, where the bike lanes went live early in the year. Before the lanes went in, there were complaints about the loss of a number of parking spots. Parking appeared to be readily available on Saturday.
The second photo shows the parking protected two-way cycle track on Cathedral Street. It went in later in the year.
Philadelphia should install a cycle track just like this on the bridge at the beginning of Martin Luther King Drive, near the Art Museum. There's plenty of room on the bridge - inbound cars have a second lane they don't need.
Installation would require some paint, a few flex posts, and what Ernest Hemingway used to call cojones. The Streets Department should do this in April.
Baltimore provides us with an example, and also with an opportunity. We can't send the whole City Council to Denmark to study the bike lanes. But we could load them all on a bus and send them to Baltimore for a day.
For the 2015 Baltimore City Bike Master Plan, click here.
See also Drunken Episcopal Bishop Kills Bicyclist, Zombie Arguments in Bike Safety.
The first photo shows Roland Avenue, where the bike lanes went live early in the year. Before the lanes went in, there were complaints about the loss of a number of parking spots. Parking appeared to be readily available on Saturday.
The second photo shows the parking protected two-way cycle track on Cathedral Street. It went in later in the year.
Philadelphia should install a cycle track just like this on the bridge at the beginning of Martin Luther King Drive, near the Art Museum. There's plenty of room on the bridge - inbound cars have a second lane they don't need.
Installation would require some paint, a few flex posts, and what Ernest Hemingway used to call cojones. The Streets Department should do this in April.
Baltimore provides us with an example, and also with an opportunity. We can't send the whole City Council to Denmark to study the bike lanes. But we could load them all on a bus and send them to Baltimore for a day.
For the 2015 Baltimore City Bike Master Plan, click here.
See also Drunken Episcopal Bishop Kills Bicyclist, Zombie Arguments in Bike Safety.
Thursday, December 1, 2016
Fascism
Looking for an Analytical Tool Underneath the Epithet
I started thinking seriously about the concept of fascism when my son, Ben, was still in college. He wrote a course paper on Franco's Spain that questioned whether it was actually a fascist state. After all, the pillars of the regime were the army, the church, and the large landowners. This would seem to put it more in the category of a traditional authoritarian state, only with a dictator at the head instead of a king.
So what does the word fascist mean? I was aware that many people used the word "fascist" to describe people they didn't like who were of an authoritarian bent - basically making it a synonym for the sixties word "pig." This made it difficult to distinguish among right-wing authoritarians.
I had an interest in such distinctions because I'd written my bachelor's thesis on the French army in Indochina and Algeria, and therefore spent a fair amount of time studying people who were often called fascists. But they weren't really. They were just soldiers who kept losing one war after another, and some of them lost their way. I was writing my thesis in 1967 and 1968, and I was concerned that the Vietnam war might have a similar effect in our country. Fortunately we did not copy the French experience, at least in this regard.
So I found my son's paper illuminating. I still didn't really know what fascists were, but I was extending my ideas about who they weren't. We had a number of interesting conversations on the topic. And there the matter rested for quite some time.
More recently, as I was watching the rise of Donald Trump, I found my interest in fascism rekindled. And I took a book down from the shelf and read it. It was Robert Paxton's Vichy France. I had bought it when it came out in 1972, but then I got diverted onto other things, like land surveying before the invention of the surveyor's transit.
Vichy France and Fascism
Around the middle of the book (pages 228-233), Paxton wrestles with the question of whether Vichy France was a fascist state. He starts by comparing fascism with traditional authoritarianism. Perhaps the most striking difference is that fascism always is, or aspires to be, a mass movement. Conservatives, on the other hand, "show distaste for mass participation and prefer government by a few established families."
There are also points of agreement: "authoritarianism, hatred of liberals as weak-kneed harbingers of leftist social revolution, defense of property." So one quick definition of fascism is "mass antitraditional authoritarianism."
Paxton then looks at how fascism played out in five countries: Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. He notes that "No undiluted fascist regime has wielded power." They all had to compromise with traditionalists in order to gain power. The question is: How much did they compromise?
Paxton suggests placing these regimes on a spectrum, "ranging from those in which fascists dominated the partnership to those in which the conservatives dominated the partnership."
At one end of the spectrum he puts Germany: "The Nazi party and the paramilitary organizations eventually broke the power of even such conservative elite groups as the diplomatic corps and the army." Italy ranks second as a fascist state. There, the king, the church, and the army "retained sufficient autonomy to regain their independence and overthrow Mussolini and the party in order to make a deal with the advancing Allies in July 1943."
Salazar's Portugal occupies the other end of the spectrum and is best analyzed as a conservative, Catholic, authoritarian regime.
Franco's Spain relied on the army, the church, and the great landowners, but it also had a political party that, in the early days at least, was strongly fascist: the Falange, which means phalanx in English. As Hugh Thomas explains on page 70 of his book The Spanish Civil War (1961), the name was "ominously taken from the Macedonian unit of battle responsible for the destruction of democracy in Greece in the fourth century BC." As Paxton notes, "Franco gradually muted the Falange."
This leaves us with France, which was defeated by Germany in 1940, with the northern part of the country (including Paris) occupied and directly administered by the invaders, and the southern part administered by a regime located in the resort town of Vichy.
Vichy was basically two things: traditionalist and collaborationist. There was, however, a distinct fascist tinge that grew over time. The fascist influence is particularly strong in the deportation of the Jews and the rise of the Milice, a paramilitary group organized in 1943 to combat the Resistance.
All of these disparate regimes shared one thing: They played on the fears of the middle class in a turbulent time. This is what fascism does. Paxton sums it up this way: "Hard measures by a frightened middle class - that, indeed, is one good general definition of fascism. In that broader sense, Vichy was fascist. And in that sense, fascism has not yet run its course."
Where Does the Fear Come From?
So fear lies at the base of fascism. But where does the fear come from? It comes when people start to think that they may lose what they have. Or, as James Carville put it, "It's the economy, stupid."
This deep fear is usually overlain by more superficial fears. For instance, in the 1930's many people felt a pervasive fear of communism. But what underlies this? The fear that the communists are going to come and take my dairy farm in Normandy, or my trendy boulangerie in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris. Great croissants, and a baguette to die for.
Today, Donald Trump's followers want to build a wall and abrogate trade agreements. These demands may appear as xenophobic (and they are) but they are also clearly based on deep economic fears.
And these fears are real. The middle class is getting hammered, and it's been getting hammered since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. In 2014, Thomas Piketty noted the hollowing-out effect of more than three decades of policies that shifted income from the middle class to the rich. In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he wrote that "what primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large)." (P. 265.)
And he observes, "It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." (P. 297.)
And here we are.
I agree that the recent election results have numerous causes. Anything human is bound to be complicated. But, deep down, I believe this was a change election driven by income inequality.
What Will Trump Do?
Whether Trump's middle-class voters will see better economic days is, of course, an open question. But things aren't looking good. Tax cuts for the rich, eliminating Obamacare and possibly Medicare, maybe even Social Security. Shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All these things will only hurt the middle class in their pocket books and, frankly, their dignity.
On the other hand, Trump can play the old distraction game and give his voters a raft of things that they did ask for - basically fierce pursuit of external demons and internal scapegoats.
All this is a recipe for profound instability in this country, for the foreseeable future.
Sources of Stability
As the country lurches in unpredictable directions, it would be nice to look around and find some institutional sources of stability. However, it seems likely that Donald Trump, once he is inaugurated president, will find that he has a relatively free hand. The Supreme Court and both houses of Congress will be dominated by conservative Republicans. And Trump clearly has more than one friend at the FBI.
At the state and local level, resistance is more likely, and I think it has a real chance to be effective. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Donald Trump will soon have the powers of the president of the United States, and he will use them. How? I don't think even he knows.
Who Will Trump Ally Himself With?
Franco had the army, the church, the large land owners. I think Trump will look for allies in the business class. He will seek out people he is comfortable with, and they will ride the roller coaster together. I'm afraid I don't see anyone in this group seeking to moderate Trump's whims. Rather the opposite.
What Can the Dems Do?
The electoral process will be increasingly stacked against Democratic candidates. This means that the Dems need to find a way to get Trump voters on their side. This is not going to be easy.
The Dems need to face some hard facts. Attacking Trump voters for their racism, sexism, and xenophobia will only drive them further into the arms of Trump.
My father was a doctor, a surgeon actually. One day he said to me - I forget the context - "You know, sick people aren't very attractive." Doctors of course have an obligation to look beyond the surface and see what they can do to help.
I believe the underlying sickness here is income inequality. I think if we could fix that, the ugliness would fade to manageable levels, although it would certainly not disappear.
The only problem is, with Trump in the White House presiding over an utterly complaisant Congress and Supreme Court, I have no idea how to fix income inequality.
Finally
I've been thinking, all the while I've been writing this story, about the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, and what happened there in 1942. The Vel' D'Hiv, as it was called, was a place to go watch bicycle races and other sporting events. It was located near the Eiffel Tower and no longer exists.
In July 1942 French police rounded up a large number of Jews in what is known as the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv. Many of the 13,000 arrested were held at the Vel' d'Hiv in very difficult conditions. They were then moved to internment camps, including Drancy, which is in the suburbs of Paris, and later transported further east. Very few returned at the end of the war.
I've given some thought to what sports venue could play the role of Vel' d'Hiv in Philadelphia. Bicycling is not a very big sport in America, but basketball is. Perhaps the Palestra, out at Penn.
Today, I'm guessing nobody thinks this can happen here. But the craziness has only begun. And here is something that I do know. If the French were capable of this, so are we.
See also Mr. Piketty's Book.
 |
| Boardwalk, Asbury Park |
So what does the word fascist mean? I was aware that many people used the word "fascist" to describe people they didn't like who were of an authoritarian bent - basically making it a synonym for the sixties word "pig." This made it difficult to distinguish among right-wing authoritarians.
I had an interest in such distinctions because I'd written my bachelor's thesis on the French army in Indochina and Algeria, and therefore spent a fair amount of time studying people who were often called fascists. But they weren't really. They were just soldiers who kept losing one war after another, and some of them lost their way. I was writing my thesis in 1967 and 1968, and I was concerned that the Vietnam war might have a similar effect in our country. Fortunately we did not copy the French experience, at least in this regard.
So I found my son's paper illuminating. I still didn't really know what fascists were, but I was extending my ideas about who they weren't. We had a number of interesting conversations on the topic. And there the matter rested for quite some time.
More recently, as I was watching the rise of Donald Trump, I found my interest in fascism rekindled. And I took a book down from the shelf and read it. It was Robert Paxton's Vichy France. I had bought it when it came out in 1972, but then I got diverted onto other things, like land surveying before the invention of the surveyor's transit.
Vichy France and Fascism
Around the middle of the book (pages 228-233), Paxton wrestles with the question of whether Vichy France was a fascist state. He starts by comparing fascism with traditional authoritarianism. Perhaps the most striking difference is that fascism always is, or aspires to be, a mass movement. Conservatives, on the other hand, "show distaste for mass participation and prefer government by a few established families."
There are also points of agreement: "authoritarianism, hatred of liberals as weak-kneed harbingers of leftist social revolution, defense of property." So one quick definition of fascism is "mass antitraditional authoritarianism."
Paxton then looks at how fascism played out in five countries: Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and France. He notes that "No undiluted fascist regime has wielded power." They all had to compromise with traditionalists in order to gain power. The question is: How much did they compromise?
Paxton suggests placing these regimes on a spectrum, "ranging from those in which fascists dominated the partnership to those in which the conservatives dominated the partnership."
At one end of the spectrum he puts Germany: "The Nazi party and the paramilitary organizations eventually broke the power of even such conservative elite groups as the diplomatic corps and the army." Italy ranks second as a fascist state. There, the king, the church, and the army "retained sufficient autonomy to regain their independence and overthrow Mussolini and the party in order to make a deal with the advancing Allies in July 1943."
Salazar's Portugal occupies the other end of the spectrum and is best analyzed as a conservative, Catholic, authoritarian regime.
Franco's Spain relied on the army, the church, and the great landowners, but it also had a political party that, in the early days at least, was strongly fascist: the Falange, which means phalanx in English. As Hugh Thomas explains on page 70 of his book The Spanish Civil War (1961), the name was "ominously taken from the Macedonian unit of battle responsible for the destruction of democracy in Greece in the fourth century BC." As Paxton notes, "Franco gradually muted the Falange."
This leaves us with France, which was defeated by Germany in 1940, with the northern part of the country (including Paris) occupied and directly administered by the invaders, and the southern part administered by a regime located in the resort town of Vichy.
Vichy was basically two things: traditionalist and collaborationist. There was, however, a distinct fascist tinge that grew over time. The fascist influence is particularly strong in the deportation of the Jews and the rise of the Milice, a paramilitary group organized in 1943 to combat the Resistance.
All of these disparate regimes shared one thing: They played on the fears of the middle class in a turbulent time. This is what fascism does. Paxton sums it up this way: "Hard measures by a frightened middle class - that, indeed, is one good general definition of fascism. In that broader sense, Vichy was fascist. And in that sense, fascism has not yet run its course."
Where Does the Fear Come From?
So fear lies at the base of fascism. But where does the fear come from? It comes when people start to think that they may lose what they have. Or, as James Carville put it, "It's the economy, stupid."
This deep fear is usually overlain by more superficial fears. For instance, in the 1930's many people felt a pervasive fear of communism. But what underlies this? The fear that the communists are going to come and take my dairy farm in Normandy, or my trendy boulangerie in the Sixth Arrondissement of Paris. Great croissants, and a baguette to die for.
Today, Donald Trump's followers want to build a wall and abrogate trade agreements. These demands may appear as xenophobic (and they are) but they are also clearly based on deep economic fears.
And these fears are real. The middle class is getting hammered, and it's been getting hammered since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. In 2014, Thomas Piketty noted the hollowing-out effect of more than three decades of policies that shifted income from the middle class to the rich. In his Capital in the Twenty-First Century, he wrote that "what primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large)." (P. 265.)
And he observes, "It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." (P. 297.)
And here we are.
I agree that the recent election results have numerous causes. Anything human is bound to be complicated. But, deep down, I believe this was a change election driven by income inequality.
What Will Trump Do?
Whether Trump's middle-class voters will see better economic days is, of course, an open question. But things aren't looking good. Tax cuts for the rich, eliminating Obamacare and possibly Medicare, maybe even Social Security. Shutting down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All these things will only hurt the middle class in their pocket books and, frankly, their dignity.
On the other hand, Trump can play the old distraction game and give his voters a raft of things that they did ask for - basically fierce pursuit of external demons and internal scapegoats.
All this is a recipe for profound instability in this country, for the foreseeable future.
Sources of Stability
As the country lurches in unpredictable directions, it would be nice to look around and find some institutional sources of stability. However, it seems likely that Donald Trump, once he is inaugurated president, will find that he has a relatively free hand. The Supreme Court and both houses of Congress will be dominated by conservative Republicans. And Trump clearly has more than one friend at the FBI.
At the state and local level, resistance is more likely, and I think it has a real chance to be effective. But we shouldn't kid ourselves. Donald Trump will soon have the powers of the president of the United States, and he will use them. How? I don't think even he knows.
Who Will Trump Ally Himself With?
Franco had the army, the church, the large land owners. I think Trump will look for allies in the business class. He will seek out people he is comfortable with, and they will ride the roller coaster together. I'm afraid I don't see anyone in this group seeking to moderate Trump's whims. Rather the opposite.
What Can the Dems Do?
The electoral process will be increasingly stacked against Democratic candidates. This means that the Dems need to find a way to get Trump voters on their side. This is not going to be easy.
The Dems need to face some hard facts. Attacking Trump voters for their racism, sexism, and xenophobia will only drive them further into the arms of Trump.
My father was a doctor, a surgeon actually. One day he said to me - I forget the context - "You know, sick people aren't very attractive." Doctors of course have an obligation to look beyond the surface and see what they can do to help.
I believe the underlying sickness here is income inequality. I think if we could fix that, the ugliness would fade to manageable levels, although it would certainly not disappear.
The only problem is, with Trump in the White House presiding over an utterly complaisant Congress and Supreme Court, I have no idea how to fix income inequality.
Finally
I've been thinking, all the while I've been writing this story, about the Velodrome d'Hiver in Paris, and what happened there in 1942. The Vel' D'Hiv, as it was called, was a place to go watch bicycle races and other sporting events. It was located near the Eiffel Tower and no longer exists.
In July 1942 French police rounded up a large number of Jews in what is known as the Rafle du Vel' d'Hiv. Many of the 13,000 arrested were held at the Vel' d'Hiv in very difficult conditions. They were then moved to internment camps, including Drancy, which is in the suburbs of Paris, and later transported further east. Very few returned at the end of the war.
I've given some thought to what sports venue could play the role of Vel' d'Hiv in Philadelphia. Bicycling is not a very big sport in America, but basketball is. Perhaps the Palestra, out at Penn.
Today, I'm guessing nobody thinks this can happen here. But the craziness has only begun. And here is something that I do know. If the French were capable of this, so are we.
See also Mr. Piketty's Book.
Friday, November 18, 2016
Unsustainable Income Inequality
This is an excerpt from a longer story that I did last year about Thomas Piketty's book Capital in the Twenty-First Century. To see the full story, click here.
The Other End of the Pay Scale: Supermanagers and Their Pay
Meanwhile, at the other end of the pay scale, we have another graph that destroys an entire imperial wardrobe of false justification, prevarication, and artful misdirection. Figure 9.8 compares income for the top 10 percent in the United States versus Europe (in this case Great Britain, Sweden, France, and Germany). It's on page 324 of the book; it's also in the Technical Appendix: click here.
The chart goes back to 1900, but for our purposes the story begins around 1980, when salaries for what Piketty calls supermanagers started to skyrocket in the United States (pp. 291, 294). Top salaries also increased in Europe, but to a much lesser degree.
Piketty says "what primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large." (P. 265.)
He adds, "The increase was largely the result of an unprecedented increase in wage inequality and in particular the emergence of extremely high remunerations at the summit of the wage hierarchy, particularly among top managers of large firms." (P. 298.)
And he observes, "It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." (P. 297.)
The Other End of the Pay Scale: Supermanagers and Their Pay
Meanwhile, at the other end of the pay scale, we have another graph that destroys an entire imperial wardrobe of false justification, prevarication, and artful misdirection. Figure 9.8 compares income for the top 10 percent in the United States versus Europe (in this case Great Britain, Sweden, France, and Germany). It's on page 324 of the book; it's also in the Technical Appendix: click here.
The chart goes back to 1900, but for our purposes the story begins around 1980, when salaries for what Piketty calls supermanagers started to skyrocket in the United States (pp. 291, 294). Top salaries also increased in Europe, but to a much lesser degree.
Piketty says "what primarily characterizes the United States at the moment is a record level of inequality of income from labor (probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world, including societies in which skill disparities were extremely large." (P. 265.)
He adds, "The increase was largely the result of an unprecedented increase in wage inequality and in particular the emergence of extremely high remunerations at the summit of the wage hierarchy, particularly among top managers of large firms." (P. 298.)
And he observes, "It is hard to imagine an economy and society that can continue functioning indefinitely with such extreme divergence between social groups." (P. 297.)
Monday, November 14, 2016
For Athena
Athena Ford was 33 years old when she died on October 23, 2016. About a year before she had been a passenger - with her seatbelt fastened - in a violent car crash that left her with a traumatic brain injury.
I'm having difficulty dealing with my grief. Athena and I were soldiers together in the campaign to get Obamacare passed, and we wound up walking from Philadelphia to Washington to promote the cause. It was a stunt. There were, I believe, eight of us. We had a lot of support, but it was a grueling march.
When we got to Baltimore, Athena wasn't feeling very well, and in a church where the historian Taylor Branch talked with us and an attentive audience, including my friend Greg Cukor, our organizers found a doctor to evaluate her.
I never knew what the doctor said, but she continued the walk, and we finished together.
About the organizers. One was Dave Ninehouser, who was my roommate in various hotels on the trip. A great guy.
One day, we were a little confused about what our various headquarters wanted us to do. In addition to walking, there were side missions to meet people and talk with them.
Dave, who had the unfortunate responsibility to be a force of authority in our little commune, said, "Well, they're in charge. They must know what they're doing."
We all waited a beat, and then everyone, including Dave, laughed heartily. It was a sixties moment.
When we got to Washington, a crowd of people greeted us in front of Union Station, and then we walked one last leg up to a Senate office building. There, in a cavernous caucus room, Harry Reid told us he was going to pass the bill.
And, by God, he did.
Now, with the election of Donald Trump as president, it looks like the Affordable Care Act may be repealed.
How do I feel about that? I feel like walking to Washington again. Only Athena won't be there. And that breaks my heart.
See also Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Having Fun Reforming Health, and We Were There All Along.
I'm having difficulty dealing with my grief. Athena and I were soldiers together in the campaign to get Obamacare passed, and we wound up walking from Philadelphia to Washington to promote the cause. It was a stunt. There were, I believe, eight of us. We had a lot of support, but it was a grueling march.
When we got to Baltimore, Athena wasn't feeling very well, and in a church where the historian Taylor Branch talked with us and an attentive audience, including my friend Greg Cukor, our organizers found a doctor to evaluate her.
I never knew what the doctor said, but she continued the walk, and we finished together.
About the organizers. One was Dave Ninehouser, who was my roommate in various hotels on the trip. A great guy.
One day, we were a little confused about what our various headquarters wanted us to do. In addition to walking, there were side missions to meet people and talk with them.
Dave, who had the unfortunate responsibility to be a force of authority in our little commune, said, "Well, they're in charge. They must know what they're doing."
We all waited a beat, and then everyone, including Dave, laughed heartily. It was a sixties moment.
When we got to Washington, a crowd of people greeted us in front of Union Station, and then we walked one last leg up to a Senate office building. There, in a cavernous caucus room, Harry Reid told us he was going to pass the bill.
And, by God, he did.
Now, with the election of Donald Trump as president, it looks like the Affordable Care Act may be repealed.
How do I feel about that? I feel like walking to Washington again. Only Athena won't be there. And that breaks my heart.
See also Follow the Yellow Brick Road, Having Fun Reforming Health, and We Were There All Along.
Friday, November 11, 2016
What Can Pierre Laval Tell Us About Donald Trump?
Pierre Laval is remembered today, if at all, for his role as a high official in France's Vichy government during World War II. However, he also was a very prominent politician before the war, serving as foreign minister and prime minister. His behavior in those pre-war roles may give us some clues as to what we may expect from a President Trump. Here is historian Robert Paxton's take:
"Personally, Laval brought to foreign and financial affairs the supreme self-confidence of a self-made man, contempt for the cautious upper-class rituals of professional diplomats and international bankers, techniques of direct bluff talk, and the inveterate fixer's enjoyment of knot-cutting, which had worked so well at Chateldon and Aubervilliers. This political and personal mixture was disastrous. Laval rushed into delicate affairs with inexperienced directness. In 1931 his personal negotiations with German Chancellor Bruning and President Hoover did nothing to stem the world financial crisis or to ease Franco-German relations. In 1935 he seemed to give Mussolini a free hand in Abyssinia, was unable to prevent the storm that followed in French and British public opinion, and managed to antagonize everyone. It is not clear to this day what he told Mussolini. After negotiating a mutual security agreement with Stalin in 1935, he made no effort to have it ratified at home."
This is on pages 27 and 28 of Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France (1972).
"Personally, Laval brought to foreign and financial affairs the supreme self-confidence of a self-made man, contempt for the cautious upper-class rituals of professional diplomats and international bankers, techniques of direct bluff talk, and the inveterate fixer's enjoyment of knot-cutting, which had worked so well at Chateldon and Aubervilliers. This political and personal mixture was disastrous. Laval rushed into delicate affairs with inexperienced directness. In 1931 his personal negotiations with German Chancellor Bruning and President Hoover did nothing to stem the world financial crisis or to ease Franco-German relations. In 1935 he seemed to give Mussolini a free hand in Abyssinia, was unable to prevent the storm that followed in French and British public opinion, and managed to antagonize everyone. It is not clear to this day what he told Mussolini. After negotiating a mutual security agreement with Stalin in 1935, he made no effort to have it ratified at home."
This is on pages 27 and 28 of Robert O. Paxton, Vichy France (1972).
Sunday, October 30, 2016
A Sense of Perspective
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| Boardwalk, Asbury Park. |
This was a terrible thing. The governors of New York and New Jersey held a joint press conference, and soon thereafter Governor Christie of New Jersey finally agreed to raise the gasoline tax. (Revenue from this tax in New Jersey supports mass transit as well as roads and bridges.) The institutions of government actually responded to the event and changed their behavior.
But guess what? The streets of New York City kill and maim the same numbers, on average, every two days. Government officials occasionally express measured concern over the violence on our roads, but there is hardly a sense of urgency.
I have some ideas about why the responses to train wrecks and car wrecks are so different, but first let's look at some numbers. Actually, let's take a little detour first.
Oh, That Can't Be Trew!
South Philadelphia housewives - at least some, of a certain generation - love to say this: Oh, that can't be trew! For full effect it should be accompanied by a sideways movement of one hand, something like half of the safe signal that an umpire would use in baseball, but meaning the opposite. If you're ever on the receiving end of this expostulation, as I have been, it's important to bear in mind that your interlocutor has no facts; she just doesn't like yours.
This is a basic flaw in the political discourse of Philadelphia, and perhaps many other jurisdictions. I suspect that it is related to Alberto Brandolini's Bullshit Asymmetry Principle, which states that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. In the present case, it's easy to deny someone else's proposition, especially if you don't feel the need to bring any facts with you.
Still, as a believer in the rational development of policy based on data, I feel the need to engage in this asymmetric warfare, even though I know that it may well be futile.
A Festival of Automotive Carnage
The five boroughs of New York City play host to a year-long festival of automotive carnage that, in 2015, killed 232 and injured 54,821. That works out to 1.27 deaths every two days, and 291 injuries every two days. In contrast, as the New York Times reports, "The accident in Hoboken was New Jersey Transit's first fatal crash involving a commuter in 20 years."
The national numbers are similarly lopsided. In 2014, the latest year for which comprehensive figures are available, 32,675 people died in crashes on the nation's roads. The death toll for passenger trains was 3; for rail transit it was 135.
In the passenger train data, if you include people killed in rail crossing crashes and also trespassers - people who wander onto the tracks - and 8 people categorized as "other," you get to 217 dead. Versus 232 dead on the streets of New York alone.
The national data here are from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The New York City data are from something called the Bicycle Crash Data Reports, put out by the New York City DOT.
The bike crash reports got their start in 2011, with something called Local Law 13. Every year a new report pulls together data on crashes involving motor vehicles, and also on bike crashes that do not involve motor vehicles. Both kinds of data are aggregated from police department crash reports, which are written on a form called MV-104. The numbers are broken down by borough and police precinct.
So Many Dead Pedestrians in the City
I'd like to point out an interesting difference between the national data and the NYC data (at least I find it interesting). Pedestrians are the largest category among the dead in New York; nationally, the overwhelming majority of deaths are among the occupants of motor vehicles. People who pay attention only to the national data are missing a big story in New York and, I expect, other cities.
Nationally, pedestrians were 14.9 percent of total motor vehicle crash fatalities in 2014. In New York City pedestrians were 59 percent of total motor vehicle crash fatalities in 2015.
Bicyclists and pedestrians together were 65 percent of deaths in New York and 17.1 percent in the United States.
Meanwhile, in Bucolic Central Park
I'm afraid we've gotten to the point where these statistics are more mind-numbing than useful. So let's take a break and talk about Central Park for a while.
Something bad happened in Central Park in 2014. Two pedestrians were struck and killed by bicyclists.
On Sunday, August 3, 75-year-old Irving Schachter, jogging on the east park loop near 72nd Street, was hit by a 17-year-old cyclist around 4:52 p.m. Schachter died of head trauma on August 5. He had been an active cyclist as well as runner. He was a long-time member of the New York Cycle Club, and he had been training for the 2014 New York City Marathon.
On Thursday, September 17, 58-year-old Jill Tarlov of Fairfield, Conn., was struck by a 31-year-old cyclist while walking across West Drive near West 63rd Street, about 4:30 p.m. Tarlov died on September 20. She was married to Mike Wittman, an executive for CBS Television Stations, and was reportedly in town shopping for a present for her daughter.
"My wife was beautiful in every way imaginable," said Mr. Wittman in a statement. "Jill was the most amazing mother to Matthew and Anna, who taught them above all that kindness, compassion, and a spirit for life were the right morals to live by."
You may have noticed yourself paying more attention to these two very sad stories than you did to the previous eight paragraphs of statistics. There's an old line in newspapering: If it bleeds, it leads. Statistics don't bleed. People do.
Oops. Here Come Those Pesky Numbers Again
The unhappiness over these deaths was intense, so much so that the New York Times published an editorial about "the bicycle menace," urging that "A little perspective would help here." The editorial continued: "The real threat, as ever, is cars. Bicyclists have killed three pedestrians since 2009. Drivers killed 178 pedestrians and cyclists in 2013 alone."
This data set can be extended. In fact, the NYC DOT has already done so. From 2000 through 2014, bicyclists killed 11 pedestrians. In more than half of those years, bicyclists didn't kill any pedestrians. Meanwhile, from 2000 through 2014, drivers killed 2,434 pedestrians. The smallest number that drivers killed in one year was 136, in 2014.
Still, people were right to be upset about those two deaths in Central Park. Something was going on in the park in 2014 - a real surge, not just in deaths, but in crashes. Bicycle-pedestrian crashes went from 20 in 2013 to 34 in 2014 (there were no fatalities in 2013). Bike-on-bike crashes held pretty steady, increasing from 26 to 29. And single-bike crashes leapt from 78 to 114.
These numbers are in the Bicycle Crash Data Reports that I mentioned a while ago. Central Park and the 22nd Precinct in Manhattan are coterminous.
I'm a bit intrigued by the solo bike crashes. I was surprised that there were so many of them. After all, the pavement on the Central Park loop is quite good - not a lot of potholes to fall into. I toyed with the idea that solo bike crashes might be a marker for excessive speed, while bike-bike and bike-ped crashes might be a marker for excessive congestion. But then it's possible that solo crashes come from successfully avoiding a crash with someone else. So, I don't know how to explain solo bike crashes.
A Place Where Death Is Rare
Here's my main takeaway from these Bike Crash Data Reports: Death in the absence of motor vehicles is extremely rare. Citywide, if you take the years 2012-2015, bike-ped crashes killed four pedestrians and two bicyclists. Bike-on-bike and solo bike crashes killed four cyclists.
This is a far cry from the profligate slaughter that we see with cars. And I would argue that it is a cause for hope. If we can establish some oases without cars, perhaps we can figure out how to get deaths all the way down to zero. And perhaps we can use these lessons profitably with cars. Or perhaps not.
Making Central Park an Oasis
After the 2014 crashes, the City moved pretty quickly to improve conditions in Central Park. In November it announced major upgrades to four important crosswalks in the park; it also lowered the speed limit from 25 mph to 20 mph - for both cars and bicycles. And then, effective June 29, 2015, it banned cars from the parts of the loop road system north of 72nd Street.
So here we may have one of the first of our oases. How's it going?
We can call 2015 a transition year, with some changes in effect on January 1 and the major road closing coming halfway through the year. Ped-bike crashes declined from 34 in 2014 to 14 in 2015; bike-on-bike crashes declined from 29 to 17; and solo bike crashes declined from 114 to 100. Nobody died in any of the 2015 crashes.
And so far in 2016, things are also looking pretty good in Central Park. The Bicycle Crash Data Reports are only issued annually, but New York City's Vision Zero program has a nifty map that shows the number and location of both fatalities and injuries, with 2016 data currently available through September.
(The history of closing Central Park to cars dates back to 1966. The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has a timeline and a story on the struggles of the last half century.)
(Why are the park drives from 72nd south still available to cars? This report from NYC DOT offers a detailed rationale with supporting data. It is an elegant version of the basic argument that was used to keep all the park drives open to cars for so many years.)
I Paid a Visit
I visited Central Park recently, along with my wife and son. It was a beautiful fall Sunday. We got sandwiches at the Whole Foods on Columbus Circle and then walked into the park. Things were quite busy, but, unlike Columbus Circle, there were no cars in the park. I managed to walk on a part of the roadway where I wasn't supposed to walk, but with some gentle guidance from my son I soon learned the ropes. We walked and talked and sat on a bench and ate lunch and talked some more, and all the time I was watching the battalions of runners, the squadrons of bicyclists, the many, many people just strolling along enjoying the afternoon. And the pedicabs and the occasional horse-drawn carriage.
It struck me that I was looking at a modern version of the old, pre-car park. Back in the 1890's there was no asphalt; there was gravel. And I doubt there were many runners. Of bicycles there were plenty, back in the 1890s.
And one more thing, as we sat together on our bench in the sun. We talked and occasionally just sat together quietly, and I almost fell asleep once or twice. And here is the one more thing. There was no roar of traffic. You could easily hear people's voices; they didn't need to shout to be heard.
The park was crowded with people - tourists, locals, just about everybody having a good time. And it was quiet. Quiet, and peaceful.
In the passenger train data, if you include people killed in rail crossing crashes and also trespassers - people who wander onto the tracks - and 8 people categorized as "other," you get to 217 dead. Versus 232 dead on the streets of New York alone.
The national data here are from the U.S. Department of Transportation. The New York City data are from something called the Bicycle Crash Data Reports, put out by the New York City DOT.
The bike crash reports got their start in 2011, with something called Local Law 13. Every year a new report pulls together data on crashes involving motor vehicles, and also on bike crashes that do not involve motor vehicles. Both kinds of data are aggregated from police department crash reports, which are written on a form called MV-104. The numbers are broken down by borough and police precinct.
So Many Dead Pedestrians in the City
I'd like to point out an interesting difference between the national data and the NYC data (at least I find it interesting). Pedestrians are the largest category among the dead in New York; nationally, the overwhelming majority of deaths are among the occupants of motor vehicles. People who pay attention only to the national data are missing a big story in New York and, I expect, other cities.
Nationally, pedestrians were 14.9 percent of total motor vehicle crash fatalities in 2014. In New York City pedestrians were 59 percent of total motor vehicle crash fatalities in 2015.
Bicyclists and pedestrians together were 65 percent of deaths in New York and 17.1 percent in the United States.
Meanwhile, in Bucolic Central Park
I'm afraid we've gotten to the point where these statistics are more mind-numbing than useful. So let's take a break and talk about Central Park for a while.
Something bad happened in Central Park in 2014. Two pedestrians were struck and killed by bicyclists.
On Sunday, August 3, 75-year-old Irving Schachter, jogging on the east park loop near 72nd Street, was hit by a 17-year-old cyclist around 4:52 p.m. Schachter died of head trauma on August 5. He had been an active cyclist as well as runner. He was a long-time member of the New York Cycle Club, and he had been training for the 2014 New York City Marathon.
On Thursday, September 17, 58-year-old Jill Tarlov of Fairfield, Conn., was struck by a 31-year-old cyclist while walking across West Drive near West 63rd Street, about 4:30 p.m. Tarlov died on September 20. She was married to Mike Wittman, an executive for CBS Television Stations, and was reportedly in town shopping for a present for her daughter.
"My wife was beautiful in every way imaginable," said Mr. Wittman in a statement. "Jill was the most amazing mother to Matthew and Anna, who taught them above all that kindness, compassion, and a spirit for life were the right morals to live by."
You may have noticed yourself paying more attention to these two very sad stories than you did to the previous eight paragraphs of statistics. There's an old line in newspapering: If it bleeds, it leads. Statistics don't bleed. People do.
Oops. Here Come Those Pesky Numbers Again
The unhappiness over these deaths was intense, so much so that the New York Times published an editorial about "the bicycle menace," urging that "A little perspective would help here." The editorial continued: "The real threat, as ever, is cars. Bicyclists have killed three pedestrians since 2009. Drivers killed 178 pedestrians and cyclists in 2013 alone."
This data set can be extended. In fact, the NYC DOT has already done so. From 2000 through 2014, bicyclists killed 11 pedestrians. In more than half of those years, bicyclists didn't kill any pedestrians. Meanwhile, from 2000 through 2014, drivers killed 2,434 pedestrians. The smallest number that drivers killed in one year was 136, in 2014.
Still, people were right to be upset about those two deaths in Central Park. Something was going on in the park in 2014 - a real surge, not just in deaths, but in crashes. Bicycle-pedestrian crashes went from 20 in 2013 to 34 in 2014 (there were no fatalities in 2013). Bike-on-bike crashes held pretty steady, increasing from 26 to 29. And single-bike crashes leapt from 78 to 114.
These numbers are in the Bicycle Crash Data Reports that I mentioned a while ago. Central Park and the 22nd Precinct in Manhattan are coterminous.
I'm a bit intrigued by the solo bike crashes. I was surprised that there were so many of them. After all, the pavement on the Central Park loop is quite good - not a lot of potholes to fall into. I toyed with the idea that solo bike crashes might be a marker for excessive speed, while bike-bike and bike-ped crashes might be a marker for excessive congestion. But then it's possible that solo crashes come from successfully avoiding a crash with someone else. So, I don't know how to explain solo bike crashes.
A Place Where Death Is Rare
Here's my main takeaway from these Bike Crash Data Reports: Death in the absence of motor vehicles is extremely rare. Citywide, if you take the years 2012-2015, bike-ped crashes killed four pedestrians and two bicyclists. Bike-on-bike and solo bike crashes killed four cyclists.
This is a far cry from the profligate slaughter that we see with cars. And I would argue that it is a cause for hope. If we can establish some oases without cars, perhaps we can figure out how to get deaths all the way down to zero. And perhaps we can use these lessons profitably with cars. Or perhaps not.
Making Central Park an Oasis
After the 2014 crashes, the City moved pretty quickly to improve conditions in Central Park. In November it announced major upgrades to four important crosswalks in the park; it also lowered the speed limit from 25 mph to 20 mph - for both cars and bicycles. And then, effective June 29, 2015, it banned cars from the parts of the loop road system north of 72nd Street.
So here we may have one of the first of our oases. How's it going?
We can call 2015 a transition year, with some changes in effect on January 1 and the major road closing coming halfway through the year. Ped-bike crashes declined from 34 in 2014 to 14 in 2015; bike-on-bike crashes declined from 29 to 17; and solo bike crashes declined from 114 to 100. Nobody died in any of the 2015 crashes.
And so far in 2016, things are also looking pretty good in Central Park. The Bicycle Crash Data Reports are only issued annually, but New York City's Vision Zero program has a nifty map that shows the number and location of both fatalities and injuries, with 2016 data currently available through September.
(The history of closing Central Park to cars dates back to 1966. The advocacy group Transportation Alternatives has a timeline and a story on the struggles of the last half century.)
(Why are the park drives from 72nd south still available to cars? This report from NYC DOT offers a detailed rationale with supporting data. It is an elegant version of the basic argument that was used to keep all the park drives open to cars for so many years.)
I Paid a Visit
I visited Central Park recently, along with my wife and son. It was a beautiful fall Sunday. We got sandwiches at the Whole Foods on Columbus Circle and then walked into the park. Things were quite busy, but, unlike Columbus Circle, there were no cars in the park. I managed to walk on a part of the roadway where I wasn't supposed to walk, but with some gentle guidance from my son I soon learned the ropes. We walked and talked and sat on a bench and ate lunch and talked some more, and all the time I was watching the battalions of runners, the squadrons of bicyclists, the many, many people just strolling along enjoying the afternoon. And the pedicabs and the occasional horse-drawn carriage.
It struck me that I was looking at a modern version of the old, pre-car park. Back in the 1890's there was no asphalt; there was gravel. And I doubt there were many runners. Of bicycles there were plenty, back in the 1890s.
And one more thing, as we sat together on our bench in the sun. We talked and occasionally just sat together quietly, and I almost fell asleep once or twice. And here is the one more thing. There was no roar of traffic. You could easily hear people's voices; they didn't need to shout to be heard.
The park was crowded with people - tourists, locals, just about everybody having a good time. And it was quiet. Quiet, and peaceful.
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