Bloggers and blogging – Page 28

Links with the best intentions

If you’re a sharp-eyed reader of monoblogue, you’ve noticed there’s fewer and different links on the left-hand side. (If not – hey, I changed the links you’d see if you looked left and scrolled down!)

Part of this was to reflect the results of Delaware’s primary last Tuesday, but the other reason was to point out some of the candidates which are backed by a number of political action committees I’ve drawn attention to. We all know this has become an issue here because of the bundling of contributions from backers of the Club For Growth to Andy Harris’s Congressional campaign, but the Club For Growth is supporting a number of other hopefuls who support their economic philosophy. Similarly, the other committees I focus on have their slate as well.

Originally, I had planned on actually linking to each candidate website but after seeing the number of candidates some of these groups have thrown their support behind I quickly realized that I’d have a helluva lot of links to come up with. So as a compromise measure I link to each organization’s page. Because of this, you’ll notice that Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC is also pledging themselves behind Andy Harris. (I’m thinking of placing the case for Harris on Huckabee’s site, meanwhile I don’t know who’s suggesting candidates to Fred Thompson’s newly-formed committee. Once he has some I’ll add the link.)

Soon you’ll figure out that there’s a lot of committees out there placing their donated cash behind candidates of all stripes. Certainly there’s others on the Left who I don’t agree with doing their part to elect more Democrats to grow government. (Frank Kratovil had 112 such donations from political and campaign committees as of June 30 while Andy Harris had 2,656 donations. Due to the technicality of FEC rules each Club For Growth bundled individual contribution counts in this category. If unions were forced to itemize each of their individual local dues they used for political contributions Kratovil would have a similar number.)

And when the next quarterly numbers come out you’ll see how much I gave Andy, too. Maybe I need to start the monoblogue PAC and get in on all this action. *ahem*

The next goal of link maintenance will be to segregate some of my right-hand bloglist out. I’m definitely thinking of adding more Delaware links, so suggestions for good local websites are welcome. In the meantime, go ahead and boggle your mind thinking about all the money in politics.

Labor Day leftover

It’s going to be a busy day for the purveyor of monoblogue (not to mention the question of how much online access I’ll have with Tropical Storm Hanna working this way), so this video will hopefully suffice for today. This “undercover” video of a Service Employees International Union rally came to me from the Waterman (Aquaman: Questing For Atlantis) who also asked me to crosspost it over on Red Maryland. It’s definitely worth 4 1/2 minutes of your time to watch and learn a little bit more about unions.

In case you didn’t catch the portion at the end where the primary interviewee reveals her name and secondary job, she’s Delegate Veronica Turner of the 26th District. Out of 141 Delegates who served in 2008, she ranks 110th in the monoblogue Accountability Project with a term score of 3.22. Wonder if she reports her income from her other job on her ethics paperwork? We know that her fellow PG County member of the General Assembly, State Senator Ulysses Currie, has a few issues there.

So I appreciate the heads-up from my young friend and will happily share the news before I head out to help open a campaign headquarters, camera in tow for both monoblogue and the Wicomico County GOP website.

Crossposted on Red Maryland.

Too bad I don’t have the local franchise for this

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last week, the buzz around the nation is the selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Vice-Presidential candidate. Overnight we learned much more about a heretofore semi-obscure governor that we knew about most of the other 49 governors combined. (If only we knew less about Martin O’Malley, particularly his love of spending other peoples’ money.)

Unfortunately, a lot of what we’ve learned about Mrs. Palin is of the tabloid variety, particularly about her 17-year-old daughter who’s unmarried and five months pregnant. Conversely, Governor Palin is a working mother, part of a two-income family who has four other children, one being a son who’s set to ship out to Iraq with his Army unit and another son who was born just months ago with Down’s Syndrome, plus two more daughters. That alone would keep most mothers’ hands full, but she’s like most moms who handle the tasks with aplomb and love.

But the pick has struck a chord among millions of women who can sympathize with the Palin story of juggling work, family, and having a husband who also works. While Palin’s not a prototypical soccer mom, it’s only because there’s not much of a soccer season up in Alaska – instead, she’s a hockey mom. (As she quipped last night, “What’s the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bill? Lipstick.”)

Yesterday, Michelle Malkin chimed in on the controversy with a piece called “Waking up the sleeping giant.” In it, she pointed out as I did above that the Palin pick seems to be a hit with women. (It’s also swept the messiah Obama off the front pages, meanwhile people are now asking “Joe who?”) And it wouldn’t surprise me to see a few women around here with this shirt (it’s gotta be flying off the shelves. Can I at least get a commission?) The reaction among those I’ve spoken with about the pick is just as enthusiastic – it may have saved John McCain’s bacon in this race.

Speaking of folks wanting commissions, I also got this e-mail from the Obama camapign (yes, I get e-mail from both sides.) In it, Obama spokesman David Plouffe assured me that:

In the next 36 hours, the McCain campaign will be pouring millions of dollars — if not tens of millions — into negative attack ads against Barack Obama.

Before John McCain accepts the Republican nomination on Thursday, his campaign has to spend every last dollar of primary funds they’ve raked in from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs.

Just yesterday, they aired a new negative ad in 14 swing states. His campaign manager even admitted that all McCain has to rely on is attacks, saying that for them, “This election is not about issues.”

He doesn’t want Americans to notice that the Republican platform is the most extreme we’ve ever seen — opposing stem cell research, denying a woman’s right to choose no matter what the circumstance, and continuing to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq.

With so much at stake, we can’t allow another election to be determined by petty and divisive political tactics.

After that, it was blah blah blah send us money. But what David Plouffe doesn’t let readers know is that the reason McCain is spending money on these commercials is because John McCain cannot use the money after he’s nominated. As of tomorrow, any checks McCain gets from contributors (which may be from “special interests and PAC’s” but are more likely from the general public) would have to be returned because John McCain has stuck by his pledge to use public financing for his election campaign – unlike Barack Obama, who’s done what he does best and thrown public financing of his campaign under the bus.

Seems to me that politics comes before promises to Barack Obama, but that tends to be true with Democrats once they reach a certain level. It’s just something else to keep in mind when you watch the debates and the thirty-second commercials sure to come – especially with the real special interest money which is paying for Barack Obama’s spots.

Kratovil comment spam?

For the most part, I welcome comments of all stripes but a few days ago I had some interesting comments come my way. And after a little bit of investigation, I found out this same person had commented on at least a couple other local blogs in what appears to be a concerted effort to put out the word about where Frank Kratovil stands.

What got me interested in these comments were that they came in response to posts which were months old, from earlier in the spring. Normally the comments I get come in response to much more recent posts, generally ones on the front page of my site. In this case, my guess is that this person did a search here for Kratovil-related items and found the two posts in question much to his disliking.

Here’s the comment in question, from Joe. This same comment appeared on two different posts:

Frank Kratovil is better on the war –> He wants to end it.

Frank Kratovil is better on Social Security –> He wants to save it and not privatize unlike his opponent Harris.

Frank Kratovil is better on Immigration –> He has a long record as a State’s Attorney fighting illegal immigration on the front lines, which is why Harris never talks about it.

Frank Kratovil is better on the environment –> He believes in renewable energy and a modern solution to the energy crisis, while Harris has the 6th worse lifetime voting record on the environment out of 188 legislators in the Maryland Legislature.

Frank Kratovil is better on Health Care –> He wants to ensure it for everyone, Harris thinks the free market will take care of that which is what free market thinkers have said for 20 years, guess it doesn’t work.

Frank Kratovil is a better man. Andy Harris showed during the Primary that he would say or do anything to get elected and that included demeaning a sitting United States Congressman, the Honorable Wayne Gilchrest, and in doing so showed his true colors of extremism and irrational thinking.

That was one thing, and I shrugged my shoulders, approved the comments and life went on. But then in doing my reading I found a post on Delmarva Dealings and a post on ShoreIndie with essentially that same comment! Also, another commentor named Austin made his rounds about the same time, but with different comments.

So I guess Joe has been blogged. But I may as well have some fun addressing Joe’s comment while I’m at it.

Frank Kratovil wants to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Has he not figured out that the radical Islamists will just follow the troops back? I don’t know about you but I’ve no interest in dealing with another day like 9/11 was.

And what exactly would be wrong with privatizing Social Security? After all, it is MY money, not the government’s. I’d be damn happy to have my 40 large back and certainly my employers could use their share too.

I’m sure Frank is doing a great job fighting illegal immigration from his current post, which is why I’d like him to remain right there until his term is up in 2010. Andy Harris would be more useful fighting in Congress.

While I can’t speak for Harris on the energy issue, I’m in full support of his voting record which supports common sense over additional restrictions on what we can drive, how we do our dishes, and particularly what we can do with our own private property. Renewable energy will come in time, but let’s allow the entrepreneurs of the private sector their crack at making themselves a fortune finding it, not taxpayers paying a fortune to have favored friends of those in Congress lurch down blind alleys on our dime.

Joe, let me say this again: health care is NOT a right! If a person doesn’t want to buy insurance, they assume a risk. It should not be up to government at any level to force us to have health insurance. Please tell me where we have a free market in health care when the federal and state governments spend billions in that field and constantly place new restrictions on what has to be covered.

If demeaning Wayne Gilchrest means taking a look at his record and showing that he votes with Nancy Pelosi as much or more than he does with this party – when he’s sent to Washington to represent the interests of a district that would maybe give the said Mrs. Pelosi 5% of the vote if she’s lucky – then I’d consider him guilty of that charge.

Joe, don’t be scared about having less government. I’m looking forward to having Andy Harris fight for my interests in Washington D.C. Perhaps he could set an example like Senator Tom Coburn does in his legislative body, and not just be another Beltway politician who treats the taxpayers like a piggy bank for his favored special interests.

“Drill baby drill, and drill now!” – Michael Steele at this evening’s Republican National Convention.

Organization man once again

It came to my attention that yet another organization is looking for help spreading the word in the blogosphere. Naturally, NoTaxHikers.org is a product of the National Taxpayers Union, a group that also rates Congressmen on how “taxpayer-friendly” they are. (Out of Maryland’s delegation, only Roscoe Bartlett has a grade above C with a B+ while Wayne Gilchrest has a D and the eight Democrats all graded an F. Delaware’s Mike Castle picked up a C- while both Senators also garnered F’s.)

As they say, “NTU is making notaxhikers.org a signature effort for this fall, and we’re committing significant resources toward getting the word out about the site. We hope you’ll join us in this effort.” Well, folks, I’m going to give it a shot here in my little corner of the country – something tells me most people about these parts will agree with you.

As you’ve probably read here if you’re not a first-time visitor, I’m all for lowering the tax burden on all of us, with a corresponding reduction in the size and scope of government. The NTU also points out as I do that the tax code as it stands also keeps thousands of lobbyists busy angling to adjust the tax code to serve their own special interests. They’re even doing a questionnaire for 2008 Congressional candidates, hopefully every candidate within my reach will fill one out and inform the voters about their taxation stance.

Government Bytes blogger Kristina Rasmussen chimes in:

The election this November will be extremely important. In it, we’ll choose the officials who will control the public purse strings. Many candidates would try to stuff that purse with more of your hard-earned dollars. If you’re sick of the same old tax-and-spend mentality, then you need to let your politicians know it!

If that name sounds familiar, Rasmussen also sent me an announcement about the 2007 NTU ratings I cited above. So I’m happy to spread the word about this organization when I see the opportunity to do so. As they say, I don’t vote for tax hikers.

It’s my money!

On my recent post, Time for refutations, we’ve gotten into quite the discussion about where our tax dollars go, centering to begin with on how I paid for my schooling and extending into government spending in general.

As you can tell right from the headline, my philosophy is reflected in thinking that the money I make through my labors is best spent by myself and not by someone in the Government Office Building downtown in Salisbury, up in Annapolis, or just down U.S. 50 in Washington, D.C. Yes, I am aware that there is a need for various government services for which I do pay taxes; in fact, that bite generally gets bigger and bigger each year as evidenced by the date Tax Freedom Day is celebrated (this year Maryland residents worked until April 28th to pay their federal and state taxes, one of the latest dates in the country.) Ironically, the stimulus checks and slower economic growth pushed the date backwards for the first time since 2003 – the year the second round of Bush tax cuts took effect. My beef is with the vast scope of government that seems to grow each year by the implementation of more government programs and market interference.

Last year I wrote a number of posts on what I considered the proper role of government and suggested changes in a number of areas which most interested me, billing it as a 50 year plan. I know that it’s going to have to be a multi-generational vision and I’m hoping to live long enough to see it come to fruition. Unlike the perception of conservatism that we’re all mean-spirited and just wish to cut government with a meat cleaver, what we’re looking for is government to maintain its proper role as dictated by the Constitution.

Let’s look at what the two major-party candidates wish to do with taxes. Barack Obama wants to continue with policies that “Final Frontier” would appreciate – taxing the “elite” (read: successful people who work hard at their businesses, large and small, and create the jobs most Americans work at) and redistributing a few crumbs here and there for “working families”, teaching them to depend further on the government handing them a check each spring. It’s a short leap from depending on government for a check to having them run much more of our lives through regulation and market interference.

On the other hand, John McCain spells out a case for maintaining the tax cuts President Bush managed to pass but which expire in the next couple years. It’s not nearly as far as I’d like, but it’s a better alternative than watching Tax Freedom Day spiral up the calendar into May or even June.

As I write this, Senator Biden is spelling out what he thinks is “the change we need” under an Obama administration. Unfortunately, that change goes in the wrong direction – it’s a change which would increase the intrusion of our federal government in our lives and our wallets.

Real change would set Americans free from the shackles of dealing with the IRS every spring and allow them to keep every dollar in their paycheck by taxing consumption instead of income.

Speaking to another of Final Frontier’s subjects, real change would allow true educational choice and end the federal incursion into our children’s schools. If states wanted to pick up the baton they would be more than welcome to; in fact some states mandate their presence in education through their respective Constitutions.

Maybe real change does come from thinking about some of those items Final Frontier went into during his her comments. Yes, we do need highways for transportation and it’s a legitimate government use of tax dollars. But do we need to subsidize certain modes of transport while making others which are more convenient also more expensive with mandates regarding what type of fuel they can use or how efficiently they use it? Shouldn’t the person closest to the situation be able to balance the factors in his or her own head and come to an informed decision by him- or herself?

And about that cheese. Why is it that the government is in the cheese business? Farmers are more efficient than ever, and I would think that they’d want to actually grow crops instead of leaving land idle – unfortunately various incentives make it more financially worthwhile for the farmer to leave the land unproductive while they’re paid to do so. Obviously the agricultural market is a fickle thing, but I’m sure farmers who complained for years about how hard it was to make it with the low price of corn aren’t rushing to give back all those subsidies now that corn is near an all-time high price.

Finally, real change would be to get behind our military and our commander-in-chief and allow them to finish their task as they see fit. Call me a neocon, but I don’t think creating an ally in the Middle East and wiping out a large number of prospective people who would do us harm was such a bad thing. Not only that, we’re in the process of shifting our focus from Iraq to Afghanistan but we also have to think about the reawakening of that old Russian bear, one who we can’t trust any farther than we can throw. Nor should we discount the threat of China. (This issue was one thing that endeared me to Rep. Duncan Hunter as a Presidential candidate.) Unlike a Department of Education or a government contract to purchase and process “excess” cheese to support the market, defending our nation and its interests is a legitimate task given to the federal government by our Constitution. And we’ve been projecting power since the days of Jefferson, so spare me the isolationist garbage.

This is why I care so much about where my money goes and I reserve my right to question the decisions made by those who generally have been placed in power against my best judgment, or in many cases without my sayso at all. The scariest part of human nature is that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” and decades of relatively unchecked growth in what I like to refer to as “Fedzilla” has placed a lot of power in the hands of an elite unto their own, not “We The People.”

Crossposted on Red Maryland.

Now we know a bit more about Barack

For this afternoon, the controversial video from the American Issue Project (h/t Michelle Malkin):

When I went to Youtube to embed the video, it had well over 100,000 views already. The Obamanation tried earlier to flood television stations who were airing the spot with thousands of e-mails demanding it be taken off. (My e-mail is up top, let’s see how they do. It won’t work for me either.)

Is this a little over the top? I believe it is, but the spot is definitely effective. (I think it would be better for 30 seconds, perhaps that is too little to make the point though.) Certainly it calls the character issue into play, and Obama has known his share of seedy characters over the years (Tony Rezko, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, and probably most of the bit players in the Chicago political machine, for starters). It’s certainly put the heretofore unknown to me American Issues Project on the map – so if that was an aim of theirs they did well.

I know that a number of my readers on the left are going to call me out as a shill to the vast right-wing conspiracy, but this is a legitimate issue in the campaign that’s not being raised. (Yes, I can hear you asking again how many houses John McCain has and screaming “Keating Five!” from here. That will surely come out from the Obama side before all is said and done.) More telling is that Obama hasn’t thrown Ayers under the bus yet because it only took him a few days to shove Jeremiah Wright there. (Maybe Obama is in Baltimore, since the buses there are apparently having problems staying on time.)

Without knowing just how many markets actually showed the ad and the timing involved (whether it aired during prime time or was buried at 3 in the morning), it’s arguable that just taking the number of Youtube views and adding the number of readers Michelle Malkin gets in a day (about 1 – 1.5 million a week, you can check her Site Meter) that the ad got many times more free exposure for the American Issues Project than they have gotten in paying for them to air on television. It was their Holy Grail and definitely scored a bullseye with their target audience.

That, my friends, is the beauty of the internet and why I keep plugging away at this sort of stuff.

Not just a wall, but a weapon

As one of the recent newsletters I received from my affiliation with the American Institute of Architects has shown, we in the field have our deep, dark satrical fantasies too. The one in question here is a new idea for a border fence that puts the hawks to shame.

Oddly enough, the man who came up with it is, to put it charitably, pro-amnesty. “Toxicwall” was intended, as Boston architect Henry Louis Miller notes, to “respon(d) to the bullying, isolationist tone creeping into the national debate on immigration.” But good humor has an element of truth in it and there are a lot of people who would say about such a wall, bring it on! (I don’t think we need to go to quite that extreme. Just finishing the border fence we’re planning now would be a big help, but the problem also lies partly in the employers who hire illegals and a wall doesn’t stop much on that count.)

This also serves as fodder to introduce another group I’ve become aware of which I’ll be tracking as things go forward. Because I was a contributor to onetime Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter’s campaign, I also get e-mail from his son’s. USMC Capt. Duncan D. Hunter is running to succeed his father and has the backing of the pro-border security Minuteman PAC (as do several Congressional incumbents, including Eastern Shore of Virginia Rep. Thelma Drake.) In their view:

These United States are at war, and under siege by forces and interests that have the capacity, over time, to destroy our great experiment of responsible self-government.

So perhaps a wall like Miller describes would suit the Minuteman group just fine. And having the two items come almost simultaneously from such varied sources seems to indicate that border security and immigration aren’t going away as issues, despite the best efforts of both Presidential candidates to sidestep about their pro-amnesty positions.

Time for refutations

It took him awhile, but ShoreIndie decided to take issue with my argument about oil supplies and needing more exploration to both help reduce the per-barrel price and potentially create thousands of energy-related jobs.

The straw man argument that is provided to prove that there’s a “lack of reason” among conservative bloggers relates in part to two posts I recently did, Overtime inside the Beltway and Response to comment #94462. Well, ShoreIndie wanted a source to confirm that the oil leases which are off-limits have more oil than the areas currently leased by oil companies. The Democrats who sponsored H.R. 6251 claimed that areas leased but not currently explored could produce 4.8 million barrels a day but there’s no total provided. Meanwhile, spokespeople for the oil companies claim that much of the leased area is already “tapped out.”

Even if I were to take the Democrats at their word, figures from the federal government’s Mineral Management Service show that there’s 18.9 billion recoverable barrels unavailable to extraction on just the Outer Continental Shelf alone. According to my public school math, areas unavailable would provide that 4.8 million barrels a day the Democrats claim would result from recovering oil on already-leased land for 3,938 days (or 10.7 years). This doesn’t count the billions of barrels available in ANWR or the 1.8 trillion barrels of oil shale on land which is 73% under the control of the federal government but barely leased under research and development leases.

Even worse, in telling me that I “can’t have it both ways” in talking about my post hoc argument regarding the do-nothing Democratic Congress (when it comes to productive energy legislation), he cites a bill which was signed by President Bush on December 20, 2006 – the problem there is that Congress was still in GOP hands at that point. Pelosi and company didn’t start ruining the country until January of 2007. Additionally, even if you take the 30 million or so acres that ShoreIndie cites as recently opened for oil development in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, it’s a small fraction of the 611 million acres off-limits based on the report I cited above. Granted, it’s progress but scant progress compared to the favoritism granted to a number of “alternative” energy sources and regulation overkill in just this bill (all 310 pages of it.)

It’s unfortunate that ShoreIndie doesn’t get the point that it’s not just about oil, it’s about more and better jobs for Americans and maintaining both our high standard of living and our security should there be another energy crisis. And the argument that we’re years away from extracting all of this new oil can be answered by noting that we’re also years away from, as a local example, the Bluewater Wind offshore wind farm (scheduled to go online in 2012) or most other examples of renewable energy. Neither solution is immediate, but already having the economy that’s oil-driven means that we should strive to eventually change over with as little impact on the market and as little government interference as possible.

Coming forward with info

Over the last few days, I’ve had a thread going in my noontime posts about bloggers and their influence on national issues. On Tuesday I alluded to one particular person who sent me an e-mail unsolicited and represents an organization which has goals that are reflected closely by what I write. At the time, I decided not to reveal her name or organization but then I saw another post where she was referred to by name. That made it obvious that she wouldn’t mind too much if I did the same.

The “she” in question is Jane Van Ryan and she works for the American Petroleum Institute. In this video, she asks a number of people their opinions on additional drilling for oil:

Admittedly, I’m sure that’s not all of the responses they received and some weren’t camera-suitable, but the polls do suggest that opinion is on the side of her organization.

Since I had her ear (or in this case eye since I e-mailed her), I also asked her about the impact bloggers have had on her organization:

To answer your question, API has had 327 blog hits since we started corresponding with bloggers about a year ago, and my name has been mentioned on blogs about 160 times. There is an important reason for our outreach: We believe the US will never have a sound energy policy until the American public understands energy – what it is, where it comes from, and why it’s essential to our way of life and standard of living. Our online efforts are aimed at providing facts, not rhetoric, about energy so people can make their own decisions about what makes sense for America.

Since her group represents the people of the American oil and gas industry and one reason I’ve harped on the subject of exploring for domestic resources is the true economic stimulus that would be triggered if oil and gas companies would be allowed to use their profits to create thousands of good-paying jobs in both extraction and refining of crude oil and natural gas, the two of us would have a mutually beneficial relationship if she alerts me to content I find interesting and worthwhile to share and in turn that content brings my readers a better understanding of their point of view.

It’s why I have a number of e-mail sources that I go through. Most of the time there’s something I can use; in fact, if I didn’t already have a full-time gig that pays me pretty well I certainly could find the time to post several times a day just sharing and commenting on those items I do get. In the last month I’ve used material from a number of advocacy groups besides API, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, the Center for Immigration Studies, Vets for Freedom, and Nozzlerage.com. For the most part, I agree with what these groups seek in terms of policy and in turn they’re seeking exposure. (Of course, if they wanted more constant exposure I also accept advertising!) And this didn’t count the overtly political items I also get from the Maryland GOP and Andy Harris’s Congressional campaign.

So perhaps I’ve let out the dirty little secret of blogging – it’s really hard to find original thought. Most of what we do is reaction to either events performed by or opinions of others. I’m probably more adept at adding my opinion to a given piece of information than most (and not just simply reprinting a press release), but the information still has to come to my attention for me to comment on it. It’s sort of like the old parable about a tree falling in the woods – if I don’t see it I’m not going to write about it. And considering that my website is my hobby/obsession, having nothing to write about would be like a chain smoker trying to quit cold turkey. It was a nice little vacation I had recently, but I was ready to get back in more ways than one. Lucky for me nice folks like Jane Van Ryan give me more than enough to comment about.

In the preview, the video wasn’t working properly, so here’s a link just in case. ~~I think there’s an embed issue again.~~ The embed issue is fixed as you can tell, I had to trick WordPress into taking the HTML text properly.

Two views on disability

Having worked in the architectural field for almost 22 years, I’ve gone from doing ink-on-mylar drawings hunched over a drafting table to spending my days on a computer putting together project drawings and specifications, all while having much of the information I need at my fingertips thanks to the internet. All but gone are the days of drawing up plans and running them through an old-fashioned blueprint machine with the special yellow printing paper, sucking in all those nice ammonia fumes.

Besides its computerization and the design flavor du jour, two other changes have radically affected my chosen profession over the last two decades. While I’ve regularly been critical of the movement toward sustainable architecture as an expensive mandate of dubious benefit (readers can browse the “Radical Green” category for some examples), another expensive mandate of dubious benefit came into being in the early 1990’s and is on the verge of being updated in the next few months. In 1990 President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and changed the way our profession looked at the design of spaces.

I bring this up as an introduction to two recent articles by writer Hans Bader, who toils for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Both of these look at disabilities in light of the legislation I referred to earlier. The more tongue-in-cheek article was written last week and asks whether we’re all disabled now. In Bader’s case, he points out a recent court decision made insomnia a disability, and since he only gets a few hours of sleep a night that makes him “disabled”, even though he’s otherwise healthy. I probably qualify as “disabled” myself once or twice a month on that count alone. Even moreso, I qualify in that category due to my sleep apnea – I must be in like flint on that disabled classification. Actually I would be, because that particular condition prevents me from doing an activity like camping where there’s no electrical outlets to plug my CPAP machine into. (Never mind I really have no desire to sleep outdoors on the hard ground anyway.)

The more recent and meatier Bader piece talks about the impact of the ADA on building design. He cites a New York Times story which claims 100,000 apartments in New York City alone may have to be renovated because the Justice Department says so. This is in spite of a local ordinance which is stricter than the federal one in many cases.

By hook or by crook, I’m sort of the go-to person in my firm when it comes to the ADA and similar code compliance issues. It’s probably because I’ve been in the architectural field long enough to have these things become second nature in design, but I’ve also sat through a couple seminars on the subject in my time as well. (The most recent one fulfilled a good chunk of my continuing education requirements for maintaining my registration in the state of Maryland; however, that sore subject is a post for another day.) But the problem with making more and more conditions legally considered disabilities is that more and more provisions have to be made architecturally for the new disabilities.

Let’s take my condition to the extreme. I’ve only run into one place where plugging in my CPAP was an issue, and the solution was unplugging the alarm clock in my motel room and asking the front desk for a wake-up call at a certain time. But wouldn’t I have a case that my disability required not just an outlet dedicated for the machine close by the bed, but one which is connected to a backup power supply because I need the machine to overcome my medical condition and get the proper amount of sleep, even if the power failed for some reason? Imagine the cost of retrofitting millions of domiciles around America if that were placed into federal regulations. And having done an architectural job renovating parts of a well-known area nightclub in response to legal action brought against the owner of that particular property, I’m well aware that with the right circumstances there are trial lawyers more than happy to take any case I could come up with if I believed my rights had been violated. It’s small wonder that one joke in my profession is that ADA truly stands for “Attorney’s Dreams Answered.”

In most respects, accessibility for the vast majority of the disabled has been addressed with the original ADA regulations. As I said earlier, those have pretty much become second nature for design and with Baby Boomers getting older and taking advantage of Medicare benefits to snatch up accessibility aids like power scooters, it’s likely that some provisions will need to be numerically increased to account for the larger population who depend on these devices, such as the number of accessible stalls in a toilet room or van-accessible parking spaces. But there needs to be a limit placed on just how far the regulations go, as it’s almost impossible to design a public space that truly accommodates all people regardless of disability in a cost-effective manner.

Regardless of the new regulations, the provisions which exist in current law that need to be retained are ones where spending to comply with accessibility regulations is prioritized in favor of accomplishing certain common accessibility goals first, then less important ones completed if funds remain available to do so. This also establishes a budgetary cap which dictates that only a certain percentage of the price needs to go to accessibility renovations and allows for exempting items which would exceed that percentage. Similar exemptions are also in place for changes which would disrupt the building structurally or damage the historic character of a building undergoing renovation.

I think both Bader and I agree that these regulations need to be reined in rather than expanded; unfortunately the trend with almost anything that comes out of Washington in this day and age is to go the opposite way. Having glanced through the 300-plus pages of the revised ADA regulations, I can vouch for the fact that there’s no exception in this case either.

The rump convention

Since I’ve made this a theme of sorts, I decided to bring up a true internet phenomenon today – the 2008 campaign of Presidential hopeful Ron Paul. The guy who used all the tricks of the internet to raise millions for a campaign which barely registered when it came to actual votes has moved on to form yet another net-based organization called the Campaign for Liberty. Their big opening event (the Rally for the Republic) could be construed as a thumb to the eye of the GOP establishment, seeing that it will be held in Minneapolis concurrently with the Republican convention.

I’m not saying this to disparage the effort – after all, I signed up to be a member of the Campaign for Liberty because there are a lot of Ron Paul’s ideas I do agree with. (He and I just don’t see eye-to-eye on combatting terrorism.) I do happen to think that the GOP is more amenable to these principles for the most part and it will be interesting to see what if any interaction occurs between the two sets of conventioneers.

But there are going to be some unique quirks about this Campaign for Liberty shindig, particularly as it will feature as much entertainment as political speeches. (It’s great if you’re into country music, to me not so much.) I had to chuckle when I saw the part about Ronvoys, though.

For those who are dying to go but can’t afford plane tickets or gas, they have come up with a low-budget way to get to Minneapolis via van or bus called a Ronvoy. There are ten Ronvoys which will stop in various cities to get to the Rally, with the closest one to us here on Delmarva starting in Washington, D.C. and stopping in Hagerstown, MD. So I wouldn’t expect these folks to be a strain on the limousine business in the Twin Cities, unlike the situation in Denver.

And with an eclectic guest list of speakers, I’m sure the participants in the Rally for the Republic will have plenty to think and talk about as they make their way back home. Certainly the C4L site will have an array of video and blogging from the event, and it may make for more interesting stuff than will come from that other convention in town. (Hey, I tried to liven things up at that one, but everyone probably assumed I was a Ron Paul supporter anyway.)

It’s yet another source of blogging fodder that I’ll be getting in the future, one of many such organizations trying to be like me and make a difference.