Foraker

A national sales tax seems like it would be as problematic as the current system. Look no further than the Cleveland RTA to see problems from reliance on a sales tax for revenue. Would the sales tax raise enough to cover our $2B a month war expenditures plus something left over to fill potholes? Completely unknown. Income tax revenue is down now too, and isn't covering our expenditures. Who is going to collect and enforce the sales tax? Businesses would still have to track sales and file returns. Is this an incentive for more black-market (un-reported) sales? We'd have to come up with a policing mechanism. Those wealthy enough to live off their stock market investments would surely win big-time if they only pay tax when they buy their stocks. How would we support Social Security? Remember, SS doesn't just pay out to retirees, it supports the disabled and children in need as well. I also would expect that the system would end up incorporating some elements of the European-style Value-Added Tax on services to generate enough revenue. And when do you apply the tax? To the seller of raw materials, then to the component manufacturer, then to the product manufacturer/assembler, then to the distributor, then to the retailer? Prices would have to go up. And it would encourage vertical integration. Does that lead to more businesses becoming "too big to fail?" The income tax started out fairly simple, but over time politics and politicians have added credits and deductions and moved rates up and down and now it's a spaghetti of rules and regulations. Why would the same thing not happen to a sales tax? Whether it would work well or not is very difficult to tell. So making the switch would be very risky. We could simplify our current income tax system by eliminating all deductions and credits. One rate or graded series of rates, applied to all forms of income, no exceptions. A lot less paperwork. But in view of the history with the income tax, I won't hold my breath that it will get simpler no matter what we try.

I haven't seen any studies, but I would think that positive rail experience is sorely lacking in the US population generally. I've had great experiences on rail systems in Europe and Asia and would prefer to travel by rail than drive or take a bus. Yet very few of my friends seem to have ever traveled by rail, and many have only traveled by car or plane. That's probably typical for the US. Perhaps we'd all be better off if everyone had to travel outside the US at some point in their late teens or early 20s, just to get a feel for how this country compares and what is available elsewhere. For the capitalists, consider it checking out the competition. As has been suggested elsewhere with regard to high speed rail, maybe we do need to get at least one high speed rail line running in the US so that more people can experience it for themselves. If the experience is good, support will grow quickly. Although if those early-adopters do a poor job running the trains, the barriers will be raised even higher. For travel in the midwest and to the east coast I would be happy just to see more frequent and more on-time passenger rail options rather than true high speed rail. 100mph along the 3C corridor or to Chicago would be fantastic.

Ohio has a balanced budget requirement in its constitution. Frankly, I don't think that's working out too well for us right now. The state is completely unable to help Ohioans in a time of need. If the federal government was required to have a balanced budget, the increase in domestic spending by the government would not have been there to take up any of the slack in spending from consumers who are now paying off their debt (if not already bankrupt, foreclosed upon, or laid off). Domestic government spending has softened the impact of the current recession and possibly kept us from falling directly into another Great Depression. In the 1930s Great Depression, the stock market recovered in about seven years, but employment still hadn't recovered after 11 years when WWII started for the US. That is surely more "short-term pain" than we need. Granted, over time a lot of debt can be a problem, but the projected deficits ($9 trillion over ten years?) are still a small part of our GDP, even in a down economy like this. And how much of a problem is difficult to judge in the international economy of today. If you were an exporting country with a lot of money to invest (say, China or Saudi Arabia), what other country looks like a good investment? -- as bad as things are now I think the US is still the place to be, and if that's true, inflation probably will remain low for quite a while. Sometimes government spending is necessary, and I believe that this is one of those times. We ought to be spending it on domestic infrastructure, not foreign nation-building and bombing, so that when the economy recovers we will be even more competitive with the rest of the world. Government by the people, FOR the people and of the people has a duty to provide for the health, safety, and welfare OF the people -- government spending in this situation is necessary.

You're right, although the cost is still about the same as flying with the kids (by that I meant airfare plus car rental). But if I fly to Florida, I don't need a hotel room in transit.

The Auto Train is very nice. Right now it's nearly as expensive as flying, however, and requires the overnight travel, but it's really worth it with young kids.

I wonder whether the author looked at the impact of the pricing structure of utilities and other infrastructure on sprawl. Let's assume that all of the county's water comes from the lake. Shouldn't water costs (both initial construction and maintenance) be a function of distance from the intake? What if everyone in the county pays the same price for hookup and ongoing service -- then there is no disincentive to build on fresh land wherever you can find it no matter how far it is from the lake. The other water users will subsidize the water lines built to the furthest corner of the county. A similar analogy can be made for roads, sewers, phone lines, etc. Maybe there have been some other studies that address these issues, but it seems like there are a lot of costs to society for sprawl outside of pure government intervention via zoning or government subsidies for road construction itself.

Consistency in the timing is so important, glad to hear it.

Here's some research on what costs medical malpractice adds to our health insurance premiums (not much). From the summary: Full report (PDF) http://www.insurance-reform.org/TrueRiskF.pdf

I disagree. It's the lowest building in the block and at one time the plans called for a research building and a street or alley through there to the convocation center, so the tear-down isn't anything new, just a confirmation of a previous decision to tear it down. Not every building is worth saving, it might have other problems that aren't apparent but that would be really expensive to fix. We'll see. Hopefully the park will be nice, and since they're already talking about it providing some space for outdoor dining maybe it will lend itself to a pedestrian mall like E4th.

The problem is that there is nothing else around except parking. Who wants that kind of storefrontage?

The whole point of insurance is to spread the risk. If we put all the high-risk people (elderly and poor) into a public insurance pool, along with children (who also wouldn't be able to pay into the system), the rest of us are going to have to be taxed more heavily than we are now to cover them. It seems to me that if you're going to increase my medicare tax to cover more people, adding a healthy me to the insurance coverage is going to save me from having to pay for private insurance but isn't going to put much added burden on the public insurance. I'm healthy and don't use much healthcare. I work for a small business. Our insurer threatens to raise rates 20% almost every year. So every year we shop around for cheaper insurance, and lucky us our insurance only goes up 15%. And we change insurers almost every year, and slowly keep reducing the coverage and increasing our deductible. It's crazy. Competition in the marketplace is not working for our small business, something has to change. I don't think tort reform is going to make that much of a difference. Despite the occasional big headline I think the damages actually paid out are far lower than what a jury awards. First a judge generally will reduce those outrageous amounts, then there will be an appeal or a settlement for a far lower amount. Those things aren't very exciting and don't get reported. So how would you reform the legal system? What if we hired more judges to handle medical malpractice cases and insurance denial cases and set a "rocket docket" to push cases through the system more quickly so that baseless claims can be thrown out sooner before the lawyers' fees can add up too much?

When I was younger I didn't know what an engineer was, now I are one! (who says engineers can't right?!)

I agree with your sentiments. I believe that democracy requires participation, or money will talk louder than We The People. The current corruption scandal probably went on for as long as it did because not enough people thought they could make a difference, didn't vote, didn't pay attention to commissioners' and committee meetings, etc. How do we get people to be engaged in their governance? Someone once said that any time you have a representative who represents more than about 5,000 people, the people in that district lose the feeling that they have an advocate for THEM, someone that they can personally talk to who will go to bat for them and their problems. Can anyone cite any research along this line to back that sort of thing up? Regardless of what that number is, I think that is the kind of feeling that will make people want to hang on to THEIR government in Solon or Lakewood, etc. How do we create a more efficient form of government in a metropolitan area like Cuyahoga County or greater Cleveland metro such that everyone will still "feel" that there is someone who will go to bat for them personally on an issue and also will encourage more citizens to be engaged in their government? That seems to be a difficult challenge. We could create a large legislative body with small-district "representatives" and former-city/suburb-type-area "senators" that works with an elected executive. But paying all of those people could be expensive, and if it's too big does your voice really get heard? And would there still be too much local-interest-only focus? Or maybe there should be some things that should remain very local and other things that will be delegated to the larger region -- zoning, transportation, and economic development come to mind as regional issues. What local issues would remain? School maintenance? Which streets get paved with the road budget provided by the regional government? I'm really not sure how such a system would work. Again, how do we create a more efficient form of government in a metropolitan area like Cuyahoga County or greater Cleveland metro such that everyone will still "feel" that there is someone who will go to bat for them personally on an issue and also will encourage more citizens to be engaged in their government?

I don't think I fully understand the point you are trying to make. Are you saying that since Americans want roads we shouldn't spend the money to develop other modes of transportation? Although I would like to see the country move to denser, carfree cities over the long term, I also agree that financially it can't and isn't going to happen overnight. Moreover, most Americans never ever want to give up their cars or their big lots and isolated living patterns. So we'll likely continue to bail out the car companies and move toward electric vehicles while clinging to the sprawl method of development for as long as we can. I would add, however, that we can't go on this way forever. At some point it must end, and we should be encouraging a change before the change is required by circumstances beyond our control, such as super-high oil prices. Sprawl will come to an end -- we'll either run out of space or energy first, not to mention all of the extra resources consumed to build (and maintain!) so many miles of roadway, sewer, water, electric, and communication lines so that more and more people can live isolated from one another in ever larger houses and manicured lawns. So when you say "America has already made it's choice" I hope you're not saying we should continue on this path until we reach a crisis point. Yes, money will need to be spent to fix the inner belt bridge and maintain the roadways. But we should stop building new roadway since we're already heading past the point of being able to maintain all of the roadways we have, and we need to build up the alternatives in advance.

Except when the price of air travel goes through the roof, whether it's ten or fifty years from now, and only the wealthy can afford to travel to Paris or Tokyo. Not that the average American is that well traveled at today's rates.... I must agree though, I'm cynical that our "leaders" will stand up and lead on these issues. If we want to maintain a high quality of life for ourselves, our children, and our grandchildren, we're going to need better infrastructure BEFORE the price of oil goes through the roof. The only way to pay for it is to raise taxes and encourage changes in our current behavior. We need a little tough love (and HOPE, for a better future) from our leaders. Living in high-density neighborhoods does not mean living without greenspace or privacy. We need to build more examples of quality high-density neighborhoods in the US that people can see so that they can better imagine what living in such a place would be like. Actually seeing it can only help make it desirable to the average American. I also share the author's skepticism about achieving the kind of mass transit system across the country that will be the envy of the world. It's going to be a long time coming. But I fully expect that in ten or fifty years we'll get there.

Well, that's something. Please make them plant more trees around the beast.

I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that the parking would be for handicapped users. Seems like there's a perfectly good garage with an elevator to serve handicapped students/staff/faculty though, so even if it the new parking will be "handicapped only" I agree that more parking is not needed right there.

Wow. So E.22nd and Prospect will have Viking Hall, the Stephanie Tubbs Jones Transportation Center, the episcopal church, and the Heritage Suites portion of the old Y (never knew that's what it was called, just thought it was part of the Y).

It's also the shortest building on the block, so something with at least as much space probably could still be built on that western side.

No, I haven't read it. Looks like the author also has a website. He seems to spend a lot of energy discussing why sprawl is a problem, and very little on his proposed solutions. You'll like this though -- one of the solutions listed on his website is "Throw out the car and rewrite building and zoning codes." http://www.culdesacsyndrome.com/

I think you may mean battery. As I recall, assault involves fear of physical attack. Battery is the actual physical assault. But I agree with what you mean -- hope he sues the guy.

It looks like a new building is going up by the Cleveland Playhouse on E.83rd. I tried to search for it on this site but didn't find it. Anyone know what's going on there?

As a "greenie" I actually agree with moving the port. The port needs intermodal connections, including easy access to both rail and highway. The current location is difficult to access and takes up downtown, lakefront, and riverfront space that could be put to better use.

My understanding is that it was a developer, the Van Sweringens, who were instrumental in getting the Blue line built in the first place. Certainly the Randall Park Mall site needs work. Maybe a developer would step up to extend the Blue line to the mall and then build a dense mixed-use development at the terminus. Make it both a destination and a livable area. Could be a big success. Any takers?

Plenty of good road biking in the Cleveland area -- but I'm not aware of any cycling retailer in the city itself. Here's one good shop in Rocky River, near-west side, and other locations: http://centurycycles.com/ Local cycling club: http://www.lakeeriewheelers.org Collection of other local bike sites that might be of interest: http://www.lakeeriewheelers.org/links.html