A Tyrannical Communist Majority?

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/293633_ltrs26.html

The P-I on Sunday printed a letter by one Edwina Johnston, responding to my letter (which was responding to their editorial -- this is getting a little meta, isn't it) on eminent domain & community renewal. In this letter, it's recommended to me that I "read the Constitution" (by which she actually means the Bill of Rights -- a pedantic distinction, sure, but she started it). She goes on to make a distinction between eminent domain for "use" and for private benefit, which seems somewhat off-point, both in regard to my letter and the larger debate.

It gets better, though:

The Constitution was written to spell out the rights of citizens and to protect them from the power of the government. A government that elevates the "common good" above "individual rights" is a communist government. In our republic, the individual's right is protected from the tyranny of the majority.

The tyranny of a communist majority?! Where, exactly, has this been a threat?

A quick google search reveals that Johnston is involved with reactionary property rights groups and even wrote a guest column in the Seattle Times in support of I-933 and her case was cited by John Carlson in the King County Journal. Her issue: she can't fully exploit the imagined value of the 30 acres she purchased in Preston "to retire on."

So real estate wasn't a secure retirement investment for her? Shocker, that.

A good opponent to draw out, I think.

My domain is more eminent, take 2

Update (11/29): The Seattle P-I prints my letter and with only minor edits!

To the editors:

In your editorial opposing the use of eminent domain to keep Southeast Seattle affordable, you suggest there's a need for community involvement, but don't suggest how else to make this happen. A blue ribbon panel, perhaps? Or maybe a toothless neighborhood plan?

The basic principle of eminent domain is that the common good can take precedence over private interests. This is hard to object to – unless, I guess, you own blighted property and want to hold on to it. But even then, you'd receive fair compensation. So who loses?

Sure, area property owners may want to take another spin on the real estate roulette wheel, hoping to hit another jackpot. But they're already benefiting greatly from public funds and attention to the area—from light rail to rezoning, and beyond. The rest of us deserve something in return: to help make sure there's room for everyone in Southeast Seattle.

A community renewal agency with eminent domain powers is one of the few tools available with the teeth to give the public a real voice in the process, as equals with private developers and property owners. And I suspect that this is at the heart of the objections to the plan.

My domain is more eminent than yours

The P-I on Sunday takes a strong and strongly misguided position on those use of eminent domain for community renewal. No two ways about this:

But the city's role must be limited. Forget using the power of eminent domain to acquire, assemble and sell properties for redevelopment.

Why such strong objections to the use of eminent domain? There's nothing more American than property rights, I guess.

"No one should be denied access to the medications they need"

In the P-I today, in an article about the expansion of Wal-Mart's $4 generic prescription program to Washington State.

"No one should be denied access to the medications they need, and this program is a big step in moving our customers and communities toward access to affordable medicines," Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott said in a statement.

Astonishingly, the article fails to mention that the "no one" in Lee Scott's statement does not include the company's thousands of employees nationwide who have no health insurance. The piece mentions that "critics" call the $4 program a "publicity stunt" -- but what press release isn't a publicity stunt when you're the world's largest private employer? And the article doesn't get to the heart of more crucial criticism: job one for the company ought to be providing its own employees with health care, including prescription drug coverage.

But heaven forbid the mainstream press talks directly about workers. As usual, it's all consumers, all the time. (ok, not all the time -- sometimes they speak as investors instead.) So the piece is organized around what drugstore competitors will do in response.

The answer: basically, nothing. Confirming that the program in fact is pretty much a publicity stunt.

against blocking the halting?

Today's Seattle P-I on Dave Reichert's win in the 8th Congressional District:

"As the UW's Jones observed, "He was able to distinguish himself from the Republicans on issues that mattered to that district" by voting for federal money for stem cell research, against Arctic oil drilling and against blocking the halting of life support for the terminally ill Terry Schiavo."

Read that last clause again:

"against blocking the halting of life support for the terminally ill Terry Schiavo"

There must be a better way to write this instead of the triple or quadruple negative (depending on whether you consider "terminally ill" to be a negative)! I'm not sure if it's even possible to parse that clause as written at normal reading speed, unless you already know what Reichert's position on the issue was -- in which case all you actually need to read is "Schiavo."

The issue itself is not what's complicated. After all, when this was a hot issue, most Americans had strong opinions about it. So no doubt, the issue is completely understandable. The problem is, it's far easier to understand than it is to write. We think about "halting of life support" as a single concept, but on the page, it's not so compact.

Complexity is fun to distill, sprawling phrases rewarding to contain. I'd suggest:

"..and opposing efforts by Republican leaders to keep terminally ill Terri Schiavo on life support, against the wishes of her husband."

Classified Haiku

Try to write a classified for a few minutes and you'll realize, as I just did, that the line between classified ad & haiku is a finer one than suspected.

"How much was it that they charge per syllable?"

Safire: Discrimination Expert?

To the New York Times Magazine editor:

In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, William Safire takes time out to render a judgment on whether or not the term "urchin" is offensive. Safire says it is not.

I don't have an opinion on how suitable the term "urchin" is for polite conversation about African adoptions, though I suspect that Dickensian children are not a protected class in the eyes of contemporary law.

But I do have my doubts that William Safire of all people is qualified to render judgments in such matters. He's a former Nixon speechwriter for god's sake. And he's staunchly opposed to the bulk of the contemporary civil rights agenda, from affirmative action to redistributive taxation to any given social justice effort. But because he's made a second career out of rendering grammatical judgments, Safire gets to make judgments on offensiveness as well?

And so clearly he lays down his decision:

"The word is neither racist nor sexist."

Again, Safire gets to decide this? How about we let those being described as "urchins" (and those close to them) decide? A descriptive view of the vocabulary of taking offense is far preferable to a proscriptive view--no matter what your take on the grammar of Standard Written English.

In any case, I hope the urchins of the world have protectors of more repute than William Safire to look after them.