"The real story here is that scooters are actually exposing decades of terrible, dangerous, inflexible, car-centric road design."

This fellow gets it, and the same point applies to bicyclists on the sidewalk.

Why are scooters on sidewalks? Cuz 90% of our public right-of-way goes to car movement and storage. And why not on streets? Cuz we allow cars to travel at speeds that we know are deadly. The issue isn’t scooters. The issue is our obeisance to cars.

The reason why "something must be done, damn it" about lower-impact wheeled conveyances on sidewalks is that it's seldom truly safe for these devices to be on a SHARED street where they obviously should be -- because drivers of automobiles are perhaps the most coddled of privileged classes in America, allowed to dictate the terms of engagement for all of us.

Why is that?

BURYING THE REAL STORY ABOUT SCOOTER CAPS AND PERMITS (Have A Go)

Cities have started coming out with micromobility provider rankings, announcing which companies can operate on their streets and setting caps and handing out restrictive permits ...

I concede to having skimmed over most of the headlines cited by the author. Scooters aren't my personal choice of transit, but this is irrelevant. Here's an extended closing excerpt.

Cities have for decades handed over our public streets to big auto and big oil. They have used taxpayer money to pave over all city streets to help millions of automobiles, which kill tens of thousands of people every year, pollute the air, and heat up the planet, monopolize our roads.

Some cities even ignored their own plans for diversifying roadways with bicycle networks.

Then a new micromobility model appears: the dockless bike and scooter, placing few hundred or a few thousand scooters on city streets. Some riders end up riding on the sidewalks for legitimate safety concerns (since riding next to 4000lb cars piloted by distracted drivers isn’t ideal). Some scooters end up blocking the sidewalk because there are no real parking spaces for them.

And cities (and some annoyed residents) start complaining, citing scooters’ “alarming” safety concerns.

If city streets can handle millions of cars, yet can’t accommodate a few thousand scooters, the obvious real question that must be asked is “why not?”

The real story here isn’t scooter problems. Nor is it the “winners and losers” of scooter turf wars.

The real story here is that scooters are actually exposing decades of terrible, dangerous, inflexible, car-centric road design.

And the other real story here is the extreme mobility and safety double standard of cities.

Yes, shared scooters do cause injuries, as do private scooters, bicycles, skateboards, roller blades, etc.

However thousands of people DIE from car crashes, every month.

When thousands dying is considered normal while a few dozen getting bruised up is somehow considered an extreme safety hazard, so much so that cities MUST do something like restrict, cap, and permit, the real safety story should be the stunning levels of automobile deaths on our roads and the utter lack of perspective that city officials and traffic engineers seem to have regarding road safety.

For those readers who've always been puzzled by my hostility to entities like the Board of Works, it's precisely this. Bad streets are a social justice issue, but all too often the same people who are impeccably versed about more obvious social justice issues wax imperialistically when it comes to their cars.

All I'm asking is for a wee little bit of consistency. 

The Kaepernick-Nike alliance is a "teachable moment, illuminating our relationship with brands."

Nike sweatshop in China.

The Great Nike Wars of 2018 are fascinating, but neither because of Colin Kaepernick nor the "post-purchase boycott" shredding of gear.

Rather, it's about a tacit admission that by now, we're all branded by brands. We accept corporate America's framing of the terms of consumer engagement just as totally as peasants in medieval Europe did the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

We're resisting the wrong thing. You can't burn your Nikes, then grab a bite at Chick-fil-A. You can't make Kaepernick's ad your Fb cover photo, then trot over to Target. Of course, you can -- but there's more than a little hypocrisy in the choices.

In a few minutes, I'll be publishing this entry. Quite a lot of you will open fire from both angles on social media without the essential component of reading the linked essays. Just be aware that in this day and age, genuine resistance takes the form of actually doing homework.

Just saying.

Following are three takes; first, a veteran columnist from the Bay Area.

Nike backs Kaepernick: A declaration of war? by Scott Ostler (San Francisco Chronicle)

Nike has made Colin Kaepernick the face of its 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign.

From its vast roster of superstar endorsers, Nike is shining its gigantic spotlight on an unemployed quarterback who is taking legal action against the NFL, and whose kneel-down protest against police brutality has split America roughly down the middle.

Nike’s campaign means war. Cultural, political, economic, social.

Writing for The Nation, Dave Zirin finds the center of the target.

Global, multibillion-dollar corporations that run an archipelago of sweatshops don’t underwrite rebellions. They co-opt and quash them. If anyone can navigate this snakepit, it is Colin Kaepernick, but it won’t be easy. The revolution will not be branded. We should be honest about that. The message of standing up to police violence and racial inequity shouldn’t end up in a swoosh-laded graveyard. That’s the risk that comes with this sponsorship. But if anyone has earned the right to take that risk, it’s Colin Kaepernick.

But it's The Baffler for the win.

Something for Nothing, by Nathaniel Friedman (The Baffler)

If corporations come off as sinister and oppressive, brands convey a message that’s relentlessly personable and accessible. We’re haunted by the aloof, godlike specter of corporations whenever we pay our bills or contemplate our election-season choices; we engage with brands on a daily basis, allowing them to define us even as we reciprocally try to define their uses and significations. And perhaps most essentially, we ascribe meaning to them apart from what they actually are. In what one might terms the Citizens United style deregulation of commerce in our psyches, we relate to brands as if there were an ideology, agency, and governing sentiment underlying them. Brands are companions, friends, and allies. The alternative—that we’re all dupes incapable of imagining a life not circumscribed by our relationship with these entities—is absolutely grim and raises all sorts of difficult questions in its own right.

Viewed in the context of the charged psychic minefield of brand symbolism, the embrace of the Kaepernick ad as an unconditional triumph is a gesture of self-preservation. The current state of debate surrounding putative loyalty to the national anthem and the NFL—both patriotic brands cultivating a similarly charged sort of signification among a very different consumer demographic—requires us to interpret the Nike-branded message as a token of progress because otherwise we would have to admit how cut off we are from any real version of dissent or meaningful opposition. Our own capacity to trust Nike belies an underlying sickness that we would rather not address. That we are okay with a politics mediated by brands puts the onus on us—which is to say, where it should ultimately belong. Unless Nike stuns everyone by expanding its partnership with Kaepernick to the point of adopting his worldview to influence corporate practices, we should view these efforts neutrally. Having Kaepernick around is good for the discourse; but our own ready inclination to pat Nike on the back for the culture-war troubles it’s now fending off largely by design points to some disquieting truths about ourselves.

Being pro-Kaepernick doesn’t require you be anti-capitalism. Nor does seeing value in the ad make you a sinister sell-out. Ideally, though, the ad’s appearance can serve as a teachable moment, illuminating our relationship with brands even as the Kaepernick-Nike alliance also highlights the consumer psychology at work in establishing and cultivating our loyalty to consumer brands: their agendas, their putative virtues, or their capacity for political action. Corporations wield real power. But brands are a figment that we feed every day—and if we ever we plan to reckon with them, we must also truly reckon with ourselves.

Trump? He's a symptom -- and he's not reading your tweets.

Come to think of it, it's also been just about a year since Dan Coffey demanded city council attorney Matt Lorch's head on a platter -- and both Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey replied, "How'd you like it cooked, SIR?"

ON THE AVENUES: Jeff Gahan and Adam Dickey are Trumping the Donald when it comes to breathtaking moral turpitude. Have they no shame?

It’s where Gahan’s and Dickey’s creation, the Good Ship Democratic Lollipop, currently rests, and taken together, these two narcissistic beached whales in a child’s overmatched wading pool are managing against all imaginable odds to make the buffoonish serial liar Donald Trump look precisely like George Washington.

And it's been 367 days since I mentioned that I can handle only one resistance at a time.

---

If you intend to “resist” Trumpism by doubling down on behalf of the Democratic Party as it currently exists and operates on a daily basis right here in the real world, as opposed to Disney World, then you’re in for yet another apocalyptic shock, because the party requires gutting down to the foundations, and probably beyond.

Speaking personally, I don’t care. Both major parties can go to hell, and the Democrats might as well go first. If the Democratic Party disappears, perhaps something better can be built in its place. How can it be worse?

Our gutless right-wing local version of pretend-Democrats is on life support, and the chairman’s delusional cluelessness seems to have become institutionalized. The humane thing to do would be to euthanize the party, and start all over again.

It’s also time to consider a point that almost none of us are prepared for, including me. This is the element of risk sustained by the resistance during the course of the opposition.

Or, if you will, an occupation.

If you’ve studied history at all, you know that when the going gets tough, the majority usually remains seated atop its collective hands. Meanwhile, the minority resolving to openly act finds that standing up for what they believe requires some skin in the game.

It’s risky, and isn't always pretty, either. Demonstrators are beaten and jailed. Dissidents are harassed and lose their jobs. Neo-Nazis attack people in the street, and Soviets ship them off to the gulag. It’s precisely the sort of retaliation that blacks, union members and Native American pipeline opponents experience as a matter of course, although whites like me tend to think that we’re exempted – because “law.”

Yeah, right.

I’m guessing that precious few Americans have a clue about how painful this “resistance” might become. We’ve taken for granted inalienable rights and freedoms, and when these pipe dreams actually have existed outside our idealized and addled imaginations (again, mostly white), they have been gained through direct action -- agitation, peaceful protest, civil disobedience and at times, regrettably, bloody violence.

That’s history, plain and simple, and a better appreciation of history would at least be helpful, although you may or may not discover the most relevant bits on your iPhone.

Finally, it won’t be enough for the left-of-center resistance to be solely predicated on identity politics and social justice issues of the precise sort that Mayor Gahan routinely and insincerely barters to local Democrats who are sufficiently gullible to accept toothless Potemkin human rights lean-tos in exchange for looking the other way as Gahan’s increasingly self-serving and megalomaniacal “luxury” expenditures exit the rails.

Up and down the line, Democrats have fiddled past the carnage of neoliberal economic orthodoxy for far too long, and it helped bring us to this lamentably idiocratic juncture. Understand that what’s coming over the horizon is very much about economics, too. Capitalism didn’t “win,” and all those –ism frictions have never left us, although we may have left them.

Earlier today, I remarked to friends that there’s nothing like a room filled with annoyed citizens to produce remarkable levels of concentration on the part of local elected officials. Everything changes when humans act together, in concert, as opposed to separately, isolated from each other. I'm a cynic, but I haven't abandoned hope.

Resistance?

I’m trying my best here in Anchor Flats. If there is any time left over, I’ll help you with Trump.

Deal?

---

Now, that was a vintage rant, and I'm sticking with it. Granted, I didn't foresee the Dan Canon candidacy, or the delightfully concurrent way the civil rights attorney's campaign for 9th district congressman has held a mirror up to toxic Gahanism during a time of Lorch purge, Speck grid botch, NAHA putsch and Mt. Tabor subjugation.

By the way, here's some truth from Bernie Sanders. Friends, look past the diversions and shell games ... and follow the money.

Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires, by Bernie Sanders (The Guardian)

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change

Here is where we are as a planet in 2018: after all of the wars, revolutions and international summits of the past 100 years, we live in a world where a tiny handful of incredibly wealthy individuals exercise disproportionate levels of control over the economic and political life of the global community.

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia ...

Street grids, public housing and Councilman Phipps' morally indefensible selective engagement.

New Albany's 3rd council district includes those segments of the street grid currently being reverted to two-way traffic.

New Albany's 3rd council district also includes Riverside Terrace, a component of the New Albany Housing Authority.

Consequently, matters pertaining to either of these topics logically fall within the scope of a council person's brief.

Probably most of us would agree that the condition of one's district is the only relevant item for a person elected to represent it. Greg Phipps is the council person for New Albany's 3rd council district.

Phipps has taken a public stand on two-way streets, indicating his preference for them. This is fitting and proper.

However, he has refused to publicly state his position on recent changes at the housing authority, changes that clearly affect people living in Phipps' council district. His stated reason for doing so? The housing authority is the mayor's business, not council's.

And yet Phipps and his council colleagues have had no say in the implementation of two-way streets, either. In fact, every last iota of the Downtown Grid Modernization Program has proceeded from the mayor and a plethora of appointed, not elected, officials.

In short, Phipps has played no officially delineated role in street grid changes or at the housing authority. Logically, he cannot claim to have had any role in the decision-making process in either instance.

Just as logically, he cannot claim street grid credit when the council has had no say.

And yet Phipps is fond of saying that he staked his political career (a career he formerly insisted he didn't ever want) on two-way streets -- not because he or his council colleagues were involved in the slightest way, but because he stated his opinion aloud, for all to hear. He used the bully pulpit.

Because street grid reform impacted Phipp's council district, he was right to take an interest and be a stakeholder. Interestingly, precisely because the council has had no involvement in the street grid, Phipps might just as easily do an about-face and deny his previous advocacy if doing so seemed politically expedient:

"You can't blame me; after all, council had no control, and it was the mayor's decision."

You can't pick and choose, councilman.

In short, in the case of your automobile's health and well-being, Phipps has found it easy to argue on behalf of quality of life in the absence of council participation.

But when it comes to the destiny of his own constituents, real living people frightened of being cast out into the street owing to the non-transparent dictates of a hostile NAHA takeover, something that just might impact their quality of life, Phipps opts out, and has found it equally easy to say absolutely nothing at all.

Because doing so would anger Jeff Gahan and the DemoDisneyDixiecratic apparatus.

In my view, selective morality of this scope may or may not involve cowardice, but it certainly qualifies as hypocrisy. Refusing to become involved with the future of public housing in New Albany, whether or not one has any delineated, contractual, or mandated input, suggests that Phipps has less concern for the working poor than with political gestures needed to assuage a more posh breed of  supposed Democrats in his district.

Ignoring public housing because it's not his job?

That's not very progressive, is it?

Perhaps it's time for the 3rd district to say "no" to the mayor's "yes" man.

(Note: I'm happy to publish rebuttals from CM Phipps, or for that matter, anyone else.)

Chronicles of New Gahania, demolitions (s)edition: Tear it down! Or, appearances versus fundamental reality.

What's interesting to me about Brexit was the horizontal split in the UK's major vertical political silos.

Among both Tories and Labour, there were "leave" and "remain" factions. There may be a parallel phenomenon in America, in the anti-establishment (nodding to Bob Caesar here) candidacies of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

It's too deep and broad a topic for today, and I mention these developments only as a segue into an observation about life in New Gahania, wherein we find a common view shared by seemingly disparate elements.

This view is the absolute imperative that things must LOOK better, rather than be made to WORK better, or to BE better in any fundamental way.

One of the foremost proponents of this philosophy of the Potemkin facade is Irv Stumler, who created New Albany Clean and Green as a sort of political action-meets-landscaping committee, such that every street corner in town must resemble a well-manicured, idealized manifestation of suburbia, even as one-way traffic roars past it, negating every conceivable benefit from the planting of flowers.

Apart from deeding the city to Padgett, Inc., one of Stumler's many other recent jihads is urging the demolition of derelict houses, which aligns him with folks like Greg Phipps who inhabit spaces across the aisle.

Again, the objective isn't safety; if it was, Stumler would advocate for ways for helping humans find affordable housing and living wages (does Phipps do even that?)

Rather, the aim is to make this place LOOK better, so that people speeding past while texting will know that New Gahania boasts the right kind of propriety.

And the odd part is that Phipps is in agreement with tearing things down and creating vacant lots, absent the sort of principled advocacy (sustainability and the greenest house we have is the one already standing) he'd undertake elsewhere.

It's very strange, this social justice as flower urn. Then again, so is the theory and practice of New Gahania.

Irv at BOW -- and by the way, work on Spring Street between Vincennes and Beharrell begins on Monday, July 11.