The Universe of Discourse

Stuff I wanted to say to the historic district people but didn't

[ Thanks to John Wiersba for noticing that I forgot to publish this. ]

A few weeks ago I wrote a letter to my neighbors about why I thought it was a bad idea to oppose building more housing in our neighborhood.

I didn't write this paragraph:

In the past it has often happened that a group of wealthy landowners conspired to hold onto what they had and keep anyone else from sharing it. I don't think anyone has ever looked back and said “Yep, those people had the right idea.”

But I wanted to.

Also, I omitted a long and detailed fantasy about how local landlords will have to lower rents and fix up their properties because of competition pressure from new apartment buildings.

“I wanted to raise rents this year, but I couldn't because all the rich Penn students moved into that new luxury apartment building. ”

“It was hard to find tenants this year, and I found out it was because Joe up the street fixed up all his bathrooms. If I wanna stay in business I'm gonna have to fix up all my bathrooms too!”

I left out any expression of my idea that if we really want to stick it to those greedy landlords, we should hit them where it really hurts, by expanding the supply of housing and breaking their monopoly.

And I didn't cite the literature that says that even building expensive apartment buildings tends to lower everyone else's rent:

The supply of new market rate units triggers moving chains that quickly reach middle- and low-income neighborhoods and individuals. Thus, new market-rate construction loosens the housing market in middle- and low-income areas even in the short run. Market-rate supply is likely to improve affordability outside the sub-markets where new construction occurs and to benefit low-income people.

(City-wide effects of new housing supply: Evidence from moving chains)

And I didn't vent my rage about Philadelphia's recent cash grants to people waiting for federal housing subsidies, which is an almost direct transfer of cash from the public purse into the pockets of landlords.

Ugh, housing policy is so messed up.

(I did later go to the public meeting about it, and what a fucking fuckhole of fucked-up fuckery that was. Fuck.)

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My reply to the people who want to designate my neighborhood a "historic district"

Last week I received a widely circulated email that began:

With tall apartment buildings being erected all around, we feel it is ever more important to preserve our community.

I sent this reply.

I have been a Spruce Hill homeowner for 16 years. I had to miss the June 26 meeting because I was out of the country. But I think the historic designation is a bad idea and I'd like to explain why.

In brief, our city has a housing shortage and a homelessness problem. There is only one way out of this terrible situation: build more housing. A "Historic District" designation is a direct attempt to prevent exactly that.

I understand why many homeowners might be in favor of it. Homeowners already own homes. We homeowners are the wealthy incumbents, trying to prevent our housing monopoly from being disrupted. If housing is scarce, our houses will be worth more money, at least in theory. But if more housing is built, the price for existing houses, which we own, won't increase so quickly. From an individual homeowner's point of view, this looks like "big apartment buildings could depress my property values."

But I think this is self-deceptive. Having a house in a city with a lot of homeless people, and one where essential workers can't afford to live, will also depress property values. It's not as obvious. It's not as acute. But it's a much bigger problem and one that's harder to deal with.

Also, a house that is "worth a lot of money" is only worth a lot of money on paper. To actually get the money for my house, I'd have to sell it. Then I and my family would have nowhere to live. We'd have to get another house. And because of widespread attempts to keep housing in short supply, that place would be expensive. High property values only help you if you are planning to move out of the neighborhood to somewhere cheaper, or if you're a very wealthy person who invests in multiple properties.

I think letting people live in our neighborhood is good for the neighborhood. The suggested support letter says that current conditions "[allow] small businesses to flourish". But what small businesses need to truly flourish is more customers. More people nearby means more customers for local businesses. More people means more money flowing, more chances for business to develop, more goods and services on offer. I would like to see vibrant stores occupying those vacant storefronts on Spruce Street.

I don't expect many people to be persuaded by this next point, but I have to put it in. I think allowing new people to share our neighborhood is part of the responsibility of living in a civil society. Compare it with jury duty. Nobody likes jury duty. It's inconvenient and troublesome. But we do it because we want to live in a country with jury trials, and we can't have citizen juries if we, citizens, don't serve on juries. I've been a Philadelphia homeowner since 2002. I'd rather have a house that's worth less, on paper, in a neighborhood and a city that are better to live in, one where people who want to live here can afford to do it. Our neighborhood is great! I've loved it since I first moved here in 1990. I want other people to enjoy it as much as I do.

Finally, when community organizations oppose development they often make some claim about "preserving the historic character of they neighborhood." Sometimes that might even be true. But it's clearly not true in this case because this neighborhood has had apartment buildings — low-rise and high-rise — since the 1920s. Garden Court apartments, sixteen stories high, was built before any one of us was born. Writer Isaac Asimov rented an apartment at 47th and Walnut back in the nineteen-forties, in an apartment building that is still there today. Anyone who moved into our area in the last hundred years knew that they were moving into a mixed-use neighborhood where there were rowhouses and semi-detached houses and apartment buildings, all mixed together. Apartment buildings are part of the historic character of our neighborhood, and to say they aren't is just not true.

The suggested letter to the Historical Commission says:

Spruce Hill’s significance lies partly in its variety of housing types that have historically housed an equal variety of people. The diversity of living arrangements and people make the neighborhood unique and valuable.

I agree! Let's keep doing that. Let's work for a more inclusive, growing, evolving neighborhood and for a thriving city that people can afford to live in.

Addendum 20240705

Stuff I thought about putting in the letter, but did not. I've learned a little bit in the last 40 years.

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Horst Wessel and John Birch

Is this a coincidence?

I just noticed the parallel between John Birch of the John Birch Society (“who the heck is John Birch?”) and the Horst Wessel of the Horst Wessel song (“who the heck is Horst Wessel?”).

In both cases it turns out to be nobody in particular, and the more you look into why the two groups canonized their particular guy, the less interesting it gets.

Is this a common pattern of fringe political groups? Right-wing fringe political groups? No other examples came immediately to mind. Did the Italian Fascists venerate a similar Italian nobody?

Addendum 20240517

Is it possible that the John Birch folks were intentionally emulating this bit of Nazi culture?

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Rod R. Blagojevich will you please go now?

I'm strangely fascinated and often amused by crooked politicians, and Rod Blagojevich was one of the most amusing.

In 2007 Barack Obama, then a senator of Illinois, resigned his office to run for United States President. Under Illinois law, the governor of Illinois was responsible for appointing Obama's replacement until the next election was held. The governor at the time was Rod Blagojevich, and Blagojevich had a fine idea: he would sell the Senate seat to the highest bidder. Yes, really.

Zina Saunders did this wonderful painting of Blago and has kindly given me permission to share it with you.

When the governor's innovation came to light, the Illinois state legislature ungratefully but nearly unanimously impeached him (the vote was 117–1) and removed him from office (59–0). He was later charged criminally, convicted, and sentenced to 168 months in federal prison for this and other schemes. He served about 8 years before Donald Trump, no doubt admiring the initiative of a fellow entrepreneur, commuted his sentence.

Blagojevich was in the news again recently. When the legislature gave him the boot they also permanently disqualified him from holding any state office. But Blagojevich felt that the people of Illinois had been deprived for too long of his wise counsel. He filed suit in Federal District Court, seeking not only vindication of his own civil rights, but for the sake of the good citizens of Illinois:

Preventing the Plaintiff from running for state or local public office outweighs any harm that could be caused by denying to the voters their right to vote for or against him in a free election.

Allowing voters decide who to vote for or not to vote for is not adverse to the public interest. It is in the public interest.

…

The Plaintiff is seeking a declaratory judgement rendering the State Senate's disqualifying provision as null and void because it violates the First Amendment rights of the voters of Illinois.

This kind of thing is why I can't help but be amused by crooked politicians. They're so joyful and so shameless, like innocent little children playing in a garden.

Blagojevich's lawsuit was never going to go anywhere, for so many reasons. Just the first three that come to mind:

1. Federal courts don't have a say over Illinois' state affairs. They deal in federal law, not in matters of who is or isn't qualified to hold state office in Illinois.

2. Blagojevich complained that his impeachment violated his Sixth Amendment right to Due Process. But the Sixth Amendment applies to criminal prosecutions and impeachments aren't criminal prosecutions.

3. You can't sue to enforce someone else's civil rights. They have to bring the suit themselves. Suing on behalf of the people of a state is not a thing.

Well anyway, the judge, Steven C. Seeger, was even less impressed than I was. Federal judges do not normally write “you are a stupid asshole, shut the fuck up,” in their opinions, and Judge Seeger did not either. But he did write:

He’s back.

and

[Blagojevich] adds that the “people’s right to vote is a fundamental right.” And by that, Blagojevich apparently means the fundamental right to vote for him.

and

The complaint is riddled with problems. If the problems are fish in a barrel, the complaint contains an entire school of tuna. It is a target-rich environment.

and

In its 205-year history, the Illinois General Assembly has impeached, convicted, and removed one public official: Blagojevich.

and

The impeachment and removal by the Illinois General Assembly is not the only barrier keeping Blagojevich off the ballot. Under Illinois law, a convicted felon cannot hold public office.

Federal judges don't get to write “sit down and shut up”. But Judge Seeger came as close as I have ever seen when he quoted from Marvin K. Mooney Will you Please Go Now!:

“The time has come. The time has come. The time is now. Just Go. Go. GO! I don’t care how. You can go by foot. You can go by cow. Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now!”

Addendum 20240508

I just noticed that the judge, Steven C. Seeger, has appeared here before, also for having said something that maybe federal judges shouldn't say.

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Benjamin Wade

Yesterday Katara asked me about impeachment, and in mentioning the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, I realized that I didn't know who would have assumed the presidency, had Johnson been convicted. Who was Johnson's vice president?

Well, I couldn't remember because he didn't have one. Until the ratification of the 25th Amendment in 1967, there was no provision for the replacement of a vice-president except through a normal election.

Under the Presidential Succession Act of 1792, next in line was the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. This is a largely ceremonial position, filled by a senator, and elected by the Senate. The President Pro Tempore in 1868 was Benjamin Wade, senator from Ohio. Wade, as a senator, would be voting on Johnson's conviction and therefore had an enormous conflict of interest: if Johnson was removed, Wade would assume the presidency.

There were calls for Wade to abstain from voting. Which he did. Not! Ha ha, of course he didn't. He voted to convict.

The conviction, famously, fell short by one vote: it went 35–19 in favor of conviction, but they needed 36 votes to convict. Suppose it had gone 36-18, with Wade's vote being the 36th, and Wade taking over the presidency as a result? Wikipedia claims (with plausible citation) that at Wade told at least one other senator what cabinet position he could expect to receive in exchange for his vote to convict.

1. How could those 1792 folks not have foreseen this? Sheesh.

2. Government is hard. Really, really hard.

3. Thinking about the Civil War era of U.S. history, I always have ambivalent feelings. First, hope and relief: “Our current situation could be much worse than it is”, followed by dread: “Our current situation might get much worse than it is”.

[ Maybe I should also mention that many sources suggest that Johnson would have been removed had his successor been someone less divisive than Wade. ]

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Southern Strategy

According to the New York Times of 10 March 1982:

In 1970, for example, President Nixon and Vice President Agnew did a piano duet built around their so-called ''Southern Strategy.'' No matter what song Mr. Nixon played, Mr. Agnew cut in with ''Dixie.'' The audience found it uproariously funny, as they did the spectacle of the Vice President clicking his heels, saluting and telling Mr. Nixon, ''Yes suh, Mr. President, ah agree with you completely on yoah Southern strategy.''

And yet the cruel earth refused to open and swallow everyone involved.

(Previously)

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Presidential tax return disclosure

The California state legislature passed a bill that would require presidential candidates to disclose their past five tax returns in order to qualify for California primary elections. The bill was vetoed by Governor Brown, but what if it had become law?

Suppose Donald Trump ran for re-election in 2020, as seems likely, barring his death or expulsion. And suppose he declined once again to disclose his tax returns, and was excluded from the California Republican primary election. I don't see how this could possibly hurt Trump, and it could benefit him.

It doesn't matter to Trump whether he enters the primary or wins the primary. Trump lost California by 30% in 2016. Either way he would be just as certain to get the same number of electors: zero. So he would have no incentive to comply with the law by releasing his tax returns.

Most candidates would do it anyway, because they try to maintain a pretense of representing the entire country they are campaigning to lead, but Trump is really different in this way. I can easily imagine he might simply refuse to campaign in California, instead dismissing the entire state with some vulgar comment. If there is a downside for Trump, I don't see what it could be.

Someone else (call them “Ronnie”) would then win the California Republican primary. Certainly Ronnie is better-qualified and more competent than Trump, and most likely Ronnie is much more attractive to the California electorate.

Ronnie might even be more attractive than the Democratic candidate, and might defeat them in the general election, depriving Trump's challenger of 55 electoral votes and swinging the election heavily in Trump's favor.

Did I miss anything?

[ Addendum 20180120: Yeah, I forgot that after the primary there is a convention that nominates a national party candidate. Whooops. Further discussion. ]

[ Addendum 20191123: The tax return disclosure law passed, but the California Supreme Court recently found it to be in conflict with the California state constitution. ]

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… Then you win.

National Coming Out Day began in the U.S. in 1988, and within couple of years I had started to observe it. A queer person, to observe the event, should make an effort, each October 11, to take the next step of coming out of the closet and being more visible, whatever that “next step” happens to be for them.

For some time I had been wearing a little pin that said BISEXUAL QUEER. It may be a bit hard for younger readers of my blog to understand that in 1990 this was unusual, eccentric, and outré, even in the extremely permissive and liberal environment of the University of Pennsylvania. People took notice of it and asked about it; many people said nothing but were visibly startled.

On October 11 of 1991, in one of the few overtly political acts of my life, I posted a carefully-composed manifesto to the department-wide electronic bulletin board, explaining that I was queer, what that meant for me, and why I thought Coming Out Day was important. Some people told me they thought this was brave and admirable, and others told me they thought it was inappropriate.

As I explained in my essay:

It seemed to me that if lots of queer people came out, that would show everyone that there is no reason to fear queers, and that it is not hard at all to live in a world full of queer people — you have been doing it all your life, and it was so easy you didn't even notice! As more and more queers come out of the closet, queerness will become more and more ordinary and commonplace, and people do not have irrational fear of the ordinary and commonplace.

I'm not sure what I would have said if you has asked me in 1991 whether I thought this extravagant fantasy would actually happen. I was much younger and more naïve than I am now and it's possible that I believed that it was certain to happen. Or perhaps I would have been less optimistic and replied with some variant on “maybe, I hope so”, or “probably not but there are other reasons to do it”. But I am sure that if you had asked me when I thought it would happen I would have guessed it would be a very long time, and that I might not live to see it.

Here we are twenty-five years later and to my amazement, this worked.

Holy cow, it worked just like we hoped! Whether I believed it or not at the time, it happened just as I said! This wild fantasy, this cotton-candy dream, had the result we intended. We did it! And it did not take fifty or one hundred years, I did live to see it. I have kids and that is the world they are growing up in. Many things have gotten worse, but not this thing.

It has not yet worked everywhere. But it will. We will keep chipping away at the resistance, one person at a time. It worked before and it will continue to work. There will be setbacks, but we are an unstoppable tide.

In 1991, posting a public essay was considered peculiar or inappropriate. In 2017, it would be eccentric because it would be unnecessary. It would be like posting a long manifesto about how you were going to stop wearing white shirts and start wearing blue ones. Why would anyone make a big deal of something so ordinary?

In 1991 I had queer co-workers whose queerness was an open secret, not generally known. Those people did not talk about their partners in front of strangers, and I was careful to keep them anonymous when I mentioned them. I had written:

This note is also to try to make other queers more comfortable here: Hi! You are not alone! I am here with you!

This had the effect I hoped, at least in some cases; some of those people came to me privately to thank me for my announcement.

At a different job in 1995 my boss had a same-sex partner that he did not mention. I had guessed that this was the case because all the people with opposite-sex partners did mention them. You could figure out who was queer by keeping a checklist in your mind of who had mentioned their opposite-sex partners, dates, or attractions, and then anyone you had not checked off after six months was very likely queer. (Yes, as a bisexual I am keenly aware that this does not always work.) This man and I both lived in Philadelphia, and one time we happened to get off the train together and his spouse was there to meet him. For a moment I saw a terrible apprehension in the face of this confident and self-possessed man, as he realized he would have to introduce me to his husband: How would I respond? What would I say?

In 2017, these people keep pictures on their desks and bring their partners to company picnics. If I met my boss’ husband he would introduce me without apprehension because if I had a problem with it, it would be my problem. In 2017, my doctor has pictures of her wedding and her wife posted on the Internet for anyone in the world to see, not just her friends or co-workers. Around here, at least, Coming Out Day has turned into an obsolete relic because being queer has turned into a big fat nothing.

And it will happen elsewhere also, it will continue to spread. Because if there was reason for optimism in 1991, how much more so now that visible queer people are not a rare minority but a ubiquitous plurality, now that every person encounters some of us every day, we know that this unlikely and even childish plan not only works, but can succeed faster and better than we even hoped?

HA HA HA TAKE THAT, LOSERS.

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Conspiracy theories about Cory Doctorow
Recently I received (via William Gibson) a tweet from Cory Doctorow suggesting that I sign this petition: Reform ECPA: Tell the Government to Get a Warrant. The claim the petition makes is that under the Electronic Communications Privay Act of 1986,

the IRS and hundreds of other agencies can read our communications without a warrant.

The petition web site was put up by the Obama administration, with the promise that any petition that accumulated 100,000 signatures would receive a response. Not a decisive action, or even a substantive response, but a response. Even this very low bar has not always been met. But let's also stipulate that preparing and signing such a petition has some value, at least in making the Executive respond to a demand by a largish group of voters.

Here is the specific action called for by this petition:

We call on the Obama Administration to support ECPA reform and to reject any special rules that would force online service providers to disclose our email without a warrant.

If the main concern is that the IRS is demanding and receiving stored email, under the outdated provisions of the ECPA, there is a quick solution. The IRS is part of the Department of the Treasury, which is under the direct control of the President and his appointee the Secretary of the Treasury. The internal regulations of the IRS are written by the Secretary, by treasury officials they appoint, or by civil service bureaucrats who answer to the Secretary and the President. As long as those regulations don't conflict with an act of Congress, they're the law.

Obama could order the Secretary of the Treasury to write new IRS regulations requiring the IRS to seek and obtain a warrant or other judicial declaration before demanding taxpayer emails from third parties. He could even order this directly: “Executive order 9991: The Internal Revenue Service shall not demand, from third parties, the disclosure of taxpayer emails, except without first obtaining, blah blah blah…” It could be done tomorrow—problem solved.

But the petition doesn't call on Obama or the Treasury department to do this. In fact it doesn't call on them to actually do anything, except to “support” some (unspecified!) “reform”. Does this make sense? If the IRS is doing something you don't like, and you're going to take time to petition the Executive about it, and the IRS is part of the Executive, shouldn't your petition at least include a request that the IRS stop doing the thing you don't like?

So what to think when one sees a petition like this that could so obviously call for an immediate and substantive improvement, and doesn't even do that?

The null hypothesis to explain this is that the guy who wrote up the petition is just some doofus who doesn't know what he's doing. There are a lot of those around. Suppose 17 people wrote up petitions to address this problem; two of them are actually any good; but the one that happened to get viral traction on the Internet is not one of those two.

An alternative hypothesis is the conspiracy theory: the IRS, or the Executive, promoted or even created this particular petition to draw off energy and attention from the two that might actually result in something happening. I'm not sure this is worth considering. As Pierre Simon Laplace said, when asked why he didn't consider such a possibility in a similar situation, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”

A variation on this question asks why Cory Doctorow, who one might suppose would know better, is promoting this petition. Here, the null hypothesis is that Doctorow is also some doofus who doesn't know what he's doing. The conspiracy theory version is somewhat more interesting.

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Election results
Regardless of how you felt about the individual candidates in the recent American presidential election, and regardless of whether you live in the United States of America, I hope you can appreciate the deeply-felt sentiment that pervades this program:

        #!/usr/bin/perl

        my $remain = 1232470800 - time();
        $remain > 0 or print("It's finally over.\n"), exit;

        my @dur;
        for (60, 60, 24, 100000) {
          unshift @dur, $remain % $_;
          $remain -= $dur[0];
          $remain /= $_;  
        }

        my @time = qw(day days hour hours minute minutes second seconds);
        my @s;
        for (0 .. $#dur) {
          my $n = $dur[$_] or next;
          my $unit = $time[$_*2 + ($n != 1)];
          $s[$_] = "$n $unit"; 
        }
        @s = grep defined, @s;

        $s[-1] = "and $s[-1]" if @s > 2;
        print join ", ", @s;
        print "\n";

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"Go ahead, throw your vote away!"
I noticed this back in November right afer the election, when I was reading the election returns in the newspaper. There were four candidates for the office of U.S. Senator in Nevada. One of these was Brendan Trainor, running for the Libertarian party.

Trainor received a total of 5,269 votes, or 0.90% of votes cast.

A fifth choice, "None of these candidates", was available. This choice received 8,232 votes, or 1.41%.

Another candidate, David Schumann, representing the Independent American Party, was also defeated by "None of these candidates".

(Complete official results.)

[ Addendum 20200723: Wikipedia's article on Nevada's “None of These Candidates” option ]

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