Nothing gets the political class to lying their faces off like the chance to spend your money on their legacy.
I saw it in Madison, Wisconsin when the new Frank Lloyd Wright convention center was being pushed through. The lies included (a) we will not build a new hotel next to this facility (it was built a year or two later (b) this facility will not block views/access to the lake it is built on (it does, in spades), and (c) this facility will not be a drain on the public purse (it requires a taxpayer subsidy ad infinitum.
I am seeing it again in Dallas, where the legacy project revolves around the Trinity River that runs through downtown Dallas. Jim Schutze, the excellent political writer for Dallas’ alternative newsweekly (the one with the sex ads) details the lies now on offer from the City of Dallas and its allies and puppets.
For example, recently arrived on my desk is the slickly produced special D magazine Trinity River edition, just out, called “The Trinity: How the river will change Dallas forever.” This magazine–a collection of preposterous whoppers, fibs, prevarications, exaggerations, subterfuge, propaganda and Orwellian doublespeak–is an omen of things just ahead.
The D magazine special edition goes on and on about the recreational amenities the Trinity River project will create: “…the Trinity River will accommodate small sailboats and paddle boats,” the magazine tells its readers. “More interestingly, a reverse-flow lake is planned with a 17-foot drop where it curves back to the river, creating rapids and a perfect whitewater course for winter kayaking competitions…
“But the most visible benefit will be on the Oak Cliff side, which will have easy access to downtown, great views and–most important of all–along the levee, direct entry into the country’s largest urban park.”
All of this is a lie.
Read it and weep.
If these projects were good ideas, there would be private investors falling over each other to fund them. Anything requiring public funding is suspect.
judd, you just don’t know Dallas. This is something business wants. Actually, some of the proposed stuff is pretty cool, well the rafting is, but it will never work. There’s a reason there are levees on the nasty Trinity. It’s a flood plane! Laura Miller is the worst Mayor of Dallas *ever* and she used to write for the Observer and rail against City government. She’s done a complete 180 degree turn. Sell out is the polite and old fashioned word. The arrogance is truly astounding. The Dallas Observer still rocks though.
Only the state could push through a building named for Frank Lloyd Wright, whose own buildings are notorious for their fundamantal engineering deficiencies, impractical design, and never-ending maintenance nightmares. If not lovingly tended at vast cost (often, public cost) by those enthralled by their appearance, most of his dwellings would literally have fallen down or been condemned by now.
Not a bad meme for many state endeavours, is it?
llater,
llamas
Houston has been doing this with sports teams and stadiums. We’ve recently built a second basketball arena, a second baseball arena, and a second football stadium literally in the parking lot of the Astrodome. The new arenas are not larger, necessarily, but they do have more box seats and nicer facilities for the teams. Supposedly having these teams makes Houston a “world class” city, whatever that means. Of course, funding is through tax breaks, subsidies, etc…
Oh, and we’re also going through a downtown revitilization process where city money is used to encourage the building of entertainment and dwellings in the downtown area. Now I can go find pay parking in a crowded downtown area to eat and go to the theater or I can go to one of our many existing restaurants and entertainment venues scattered out elsewhere in the city.
I’m just glad we didn’t get the Olympics… imagine the orgy of legacy building and publicly funded buildings of dubious value that would have gone on.
Bolie IV
The FLW convention center is fairly ugly (IMO) and squat little building, and several times major portions are closed to the public due to private functions. Parking in the lot causes car sickness even in the hardiest of people as access is gained through very tight spiral ramps. The only nice part is the ‘roof’ that is street level, and is a nice view over the lake, but usually is inhabited by the baggy panted teen crowd using the layout for skateboarding. Overall, it is certainly nothing to write home about.
But the most interesting thing is that a portion of the left frizzies were against its building due to environmental impact, while business encouraged it to stimulate traffic in the moribund downtown Madison (just as the new art district used force to displace certain business to ‘improve’ the downtown, which simply was a way to stimulate traffic for the remaining businesses). Also the fact that it is three blocks from the State Capital its building was preordained.
It just shows the political class has many interested constituents, business among them. No private interest was interested enough to use their own capital to build it, but obviously several interests had enough interest to use force to gather capital at large to build it. And the end result is the self interested constituents are simply building a monster that will, one day, turn on them. They will be the ones chosen to sacrifice. The State gets ever bigger, and its influence ever broader.
Bolie, Houston Metro is STILL aiming for the Olympics…what do you think the Toy Train of Death is for???????
Yep, Dallas – Houston Metro says “welcome to the club and how may we meet you in the middle?” Houston, after all, *is* the Blob that Ate East Texas.
Seriously though, look into something called CLOUT, as promoted by KSEV in Houston. It deals mostly with property taxes, but where there are property taxes, there is a Metro official drooling over plans for yet another sports venue.
As simulation software gets better, we’re going to be able to create 3d freespace walkthroughs of potential developments. People will be able to see and sort the lies from the truth a long time prior to when they have to vote for the public funding and anybody putting code in that violates physical laws gets a nice fraud and conspiracy felony conviction. The end result is cutting out the lies because if you can plunk down a start and end point and calculate a path to get between the two before and after, you can calculate whether access will be improved or grow more difficult. Aesthetic judgments will also be possible.
The tools to do such things are under development but the public consciousness hasn’t quite grasped the possibilities yet. When it does, we’ll likely get a great deal better about public expenditures on development.
TM Lutas, that’s all fine, but one of the Big Lies in Dallas is that the politicos have been freed from any obligation to spend the money the voters approved on what they told the voters they would spend it on. You can put on all the snazzy software demos you want, but if its all non-binding, who cares?