There's some good local news out today. For one thing, the city government's public private partnership with ClearChannel to launch a bike sharing/rental service is getting off the ground. Good! And the "silver line" new Metro spur to Dulles Airport is back on track with the Bush administration deciding to un-kill the proposal in a rare triumph of sound policymaking from this crew. Good! And last, Prince Williams County is starting to edge away from the draconian anti-immigrant policies it implemented during last year's hysteria.
« Off The Fence | Main | "Obama is Essentially Right" »
What About the Good News?
30 Apr 2008 10:12 am
Comments (11)
Oops - you "forgot" the word ILLEGAL in the phrase "anti illegal immigrant(alien) policies"
as the left wing always does. Makes it so much easier to characterize opponents of open borders and amnesty as racist xenophobes doesn't it?
And I assume your assumption is:
Enforcing Immigration Laws = "Draconian Policies Against Immigrants"
Midwest Yahoo -
No he didn't. If you live in the Midwest (as I used to) you wouldn't understand how Virginia (where I now live) regards immigrants. These laws were ostensibly there to enforce immigration laws, but everyone in Virginia knew that the new laws had one goal in mind: Intimidate the Brown People. It was blatant, and wrong. The new laws effected intimidation on even LEGAL immigrants, just on the fact that they look different. Do you carry your passport everywhere you go? They'd have to, just for Driving While Hispanic.
What Skalite said -- the particular laws in question were a blanket policy of police harassment against folks with brownish skin or spanish names (i.e., me).
Cry me a river, pal.
Where I live illegal immigrants drive around in unregistered cars with no insurance waving Mexican flags and yelling obscenities at you in Spanish. They also hang out in parks publically intoxicated throwing trash everywhere. They also have an unfortunate tendency to steal cars. If you ask the police to do something they say they aren't allowed to. If you point out that if a white citizen did these things they would be arrested you are told "That is different".
Cry me a river, pal.
Where I live illegal immigrants drive around in unregistered cars with no insurance waving Mexican flags and yelling obscenities at you in Spanish. They also hang out in parks publically intoxicated throwing trash everywhere. They also have an unfortunate tendency to steal cars. If you ask the police to do something they say they aren't allowed to. If you point out that if a white citizen did these things they would be arrested you are told "That is different".
Midwest Yahoo - please provide a cite for an instance where a white citizen got arrested for the same thing, with the same available evidence, that an illegal immigrant didn't get arrested for.
While I'm assuming you're just tossing BS, I'm open to reconsidering that assumption, given evidence.
I like the idea of the bike service, but I don't understand who the target market is.
It's clearly not tourists, since there are no locations near the Mall. And I'm including area residents like myself in that. It would be great to bike around the monuments, without having to haul my own bike downtown.
I think this would be even more true for tourists from out of town. There's no way that a family from Albuquerque is going to bring their bikes with them, but I also can't see their going to one of the locations on Clear Channel's map to rent bikes for the day. But if they're right there on the Mall - say, next to one of the Smithsonian stops - it would be perfect.
Because the Mall is a big place, by foot travel standards. But on a bike, even a slow, crummy bike, everything's really pretty close together. The Capitol's not that far, on a bike, from the Lincoln Memorial, which in turn isn't far from Hains Point.
So I have to wonder: why no Mall locations? Was the Park Service bureaucracy uncooperative? Or did Clear Channel bungle it?
I'm surprised "Midwest Racist" didn't add something about them breeding like rabbits too.
About the market for bike share, low-tech cyclist:
I'd imagine the market is those people living in the district who don't want to haul their bike up the elevator to their one bedroom condo where it will drip chain grease on their floors.
Wives tend to frown on this. At least mine does. Well, that and all the bike crap. By your moniker, maybe you understand?
In some ways bicycles are harder than cars to deal with in the district because the infrastructure isn't built for it (zoning requires condos to have x amount of parking spaces, but not a bike cage).
On the other bits, I can't wait for the metro extension. Again, the cycling angle: I'll be able to metro out to Reston and hop on the trail there for some country riding. No car/bike rack required!
That story didn't say whether the funding would be for a tunnel (yay!) or above-ground (booo!) metro. As anyone who works or drives through Tysons knows, "It's not over until it's under."
Comments closed May 14, 2008.
| 
Heads in the Sand
I was flatly stunned when I read about this late last night. The three stooges of Tim Kaine, the VA legislature, and the Bush Administration had destroyed all hope that something would be done along this front. That said, the extension of Metro to Dulles is hardly the most pressing Virginia Metro station need.
Posted by dry_fish | April 30, 2008 10:56 AM