Desiring Machine

Ran across this interesting piece of biking infrastructure from Trondheim Norway. The Trampe Bike Lift. Basically a simple road level lift that you place your foot on and ride to the top of the hill. The city of Trondheim has spent about 3.2 million over the last 20 years to implement this infrastructure much to the delight of the 90% biking population.

This seems like a great piece of technology to implement in Seattle on key hills. Would make biking much more feasible in the city. And it is relatively cheap. Mayor Nickels says he is for reducing green house emissions in the city. Surely with all the talk of spending billions on viaduct tunnel replacements, special trolley cars that go half a dozen blocks, and new bridges to the east side, the city and county could spend a few million making the hills less burdensome for bikers. Build the infrastructure and the people will follow. The Burke Gilman Trail is great. Why not more of this around the city? Seattle is dense enough that we could easily make getting anywhere in the city on a bicycle nearly as convenient as a bus ride.

I live on the north side of Queen Anne near the Fremont bridge. Sometimes I need to go into work on the other side of the Queen Anne near the Seattle center. Generally I would take a bicycle but the Queen Anne hill is such a bear to climb that I end up driving the short route and paying for parking. Waste of gas and waste of parking meter fees. And driving around the hill is a little out of the way when I am in a rush. But with something like the Trampe Bike lift installed it would be a snap. And in Capitol Hill and many other areas of the city a bike lift could really make biking practical around this city. Now if we could just do something about the rain. Actually it is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

I must say that I am mad about the current political climate around online poker. The ban on poker represents a slide towards the worst kind of prohibition that does worse than nothing for our citizens, and pushes these activities into the shadows putting individuals at unnecessary risk against unscrupulous enablers of gambling (risky offshore banks, untrustworthy underground casinos, and violent loan sharks).

Both this Washington and the other Washington have decided to take an active role against online gambling and poker in particular. This state decided to make playing online poker a felony offense with up to 7 years in prison. The federal government decided to put on the hook the financial institutions that allow online gambling transactions with the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). This piece of legistlation was attached as a rider to the port security bill by now retired senator Bill Frist.

There are many valid arguments to made about controlling online gambling, the addictive potential, the threat of money laundering, the inability to tax it. All important points but none that warrant outright prohibition. In my mind these call for sensible regulation. Bring the online casinos onshore, regulate and monitor the operations and hold the card rooms accountable for any financial skullduggery such as money laundering that they might encounter. Criminalizing the activities of ordinary citizens is not how a healthy democracy should operate.

The real issue is not the gambling itself, I fully understand the tension between the moralists and the libertines. But really at the heart of this issue is how society and the state is failing to keep up with the realities of virtual online life. In the “real” brick and morter world we have a well established precedent for gamlbing. You can drive to an Indian casino or play poker at one of your neighborhood card rooms. The laws and regulations around them are well understood and for the most part there is a delicate balance that is struck between all the interests involved. Why should things be different in the online world? Why should the way society operates be any different because it is not place bound? Can’t the same regulatory framework be put in place to contructively deal with the important issues around a particular activity? It strikes me that legislators don’t want to do the extra footwork to address the real issues in virtual life. Prohibition is a default response to the perceived problem rather than a thoughtful legal framework that bridges real and virtual life into a seemless social reality. The primary reason online virtual life is so hard to deal with is because it transcends traditional territories and legal jurisdictions. The law has no defacto standard for this scenario so it must prohibit explicitly everything that crosses jurisdictional boundaries. Washington state’s ban on internet poker seems routed in this very dilemma. They claim that they wanted to make the laws consistent with the federal government and ultimately unify the jurisdictional domain of online gambling. However, the actual approach seems ham handed and inelegant. What happens when the activity is international? Which it clearly is in the case of online poker. The easy answer is prohibition, the hard work comes in building the alliances, political, financial, and legal that allow an effective regulatory framework to exist that is not place bound or state bound. The notion of soveriegnty is so yesterday. As more and more of society moves online and becomes virtual we need to develop virtual legal frameworks that have a corresponding virtual jurisdiction and enforcement mechanism. But this requires developing institutions that are not whetted to notions of autonomy and sovereignty. Coalitions and cooperative institutions between states, countries and citizens across the virtual world will need to be developed, and fostered. Prohibition represents lazy thinking and an unwillingness to address the tough problems of virtual society. By no means is it easy to build the coalitions required for this virtual framework and there will be tensions along the way, false starts, and failed initiatives. But the work needs to be done now because more and more of our life is online and by default deterritorialized. Prohbition is such a provincial attitude and it is far time we started thinking beyond our physical boundaries and embrace all that a virtual world has to offer.

Back to poker. Before the UIGEA was passed as a sneaky rider to an unapposable port security bill, there was a direct proposal to place prohibition on online poker. In July 2006 HR 4411 was proposed in the House of Representatives.

Here is the breakdown of Washington State congress members and how they voted.

Voted to make Online Poker Illegal

Brian Baird Washington District 3 Democratic
Norman Dicks Washington District 6 Democratic
Rick Larsen Washington District 2 Democratic
Cathy McMorris Washington District 5 Republican
David Reichert Washington District 8 Republican
Adam Smith Washington District 9 Democratic

Voted AGAINST the Internet Poker Ban

Doc Hastings Washington District 4 Republican
Jay Inslee Washington District 1 Democratic
Jim McDermott Washington District 7 Democratic

Baird, Dicks, Larsen, and Smith you are all cowards and a disgrace to the Democratic party. I don’t expect much from Republicans who get caught up in the moralist agenda of the right wing but you Democrats who voted for this ban on internet poker have all let down the citizens of Washington state and this country.

Hastings, even though I don’t agree with you on most issues I have to commend you for making the right vote here.

And Inslee, McDermott your vote here confirms why you are rock stars in the Washington state Democratic party and my two favorite congressmen. I proudly voted for McDermott this time around. And your opposition to the War in Iraq and this silly Poker ban make you winners in my book. Keep up the good work.

This announcement by the NY Times that John Kerry is bowing out of the 2008 presidential race saddens me. I have been a Kerry fan from many years ago. I remember watching him in the senate in the mid 90’s thinking he would surely be our next president. A good year before the primaries I remember being in Iowa visiting with a friend. I was approached by an energetic Dean volunteer. I said Dean is great but I am for Kerry the whole way. And I wasn’t surprised to see him seal up the nomination. As much as Dean intrigued me it struck me mostly as hype. Kind of like the Obama hype we have today. Dean is in the perfect position as DLC Chairman, and I fully support his 50 state campaign ideas, but he never struck me as presidental material the way Kerry did, especially on matters of foreign affairs.

Yes, there was a lot of dithering on the war vote, yes Kerry was a master of rhetorically setting his foot in his mouth. But Kerry is and was the real deal. He would have made a fanstastic president and this country will be a lesser country without his service in the oval office.

At the end of the day I think Kerry’s problem is that he is a bit too gracious for the job. He doesn’t exude the dirty fighting characteristics that make presidents. But as the adage goes those that make great presidental campaigners make lousy presidents. And I think the inverse is true for Kerry. He would have made a good president, insightful and genuinely receptive of people’s input. But on the campaign trail he didn’t fight dirty enough. I was disappointed by the swift boat mess and had wished that he punched back at the assholes. But Kerry was a better man at the end of the day, and for that I respect him, even as painful it was to see him lose the general election.

I still have my faded Kerry for president sign taped up in my car, with the plan to proudly display it on his 2008 campaign. But alas it looks like I will not get that opportunity.

But I will say this, beware the fads, and the hype. Activists, and party faithful can be so fickle at times. I am disappointed in people who bad mouth Kerry because of the election results. I can understand how the idealistic can have their enthusiasm turned to cynicism by the lack luster performance of a candidate. I too was one of those folks who was deeply disillusioned by Al Gore in 2000 and was caught up with the Nader thing. Dean represented a similar eagerness to change the face of politics. And today Obama captivates the same spirit. People who want their president to be a superstar. And the Democratic party seems to have little tolerance for thoughtful polticians who lack the celebrity aura about then. I suppose this goes back to Kennedy who represented both winning and celebrity. Clinton achieved a piece of this when he played his saxophone on Arsenio Hall back in 92. But Clinton must also rememer Ross Perot. Kerry didn’t have the luxury of a broken and fractured Republican party (although it looks like Hillary just might get that opportunity again). A lot of people want to hang the misfortunes of 2004 on Kerry’s head. And while I think he could have been a tougher campaigner, to dismiss him is too shorted sighted. I think it misses out on some of the more interesting political dynamics at play in 2004. Also, I think many don’t take seriously enough just how tough of a campaign Bush and his team ran. At the end of the day Kerry ran in a difficult presidental race, and ran up against a very unified majority party. And he still had a good showing. 2004 was not a Mondale/Reagan blow out or Bush/Dukakis disaster. It was a tough and ultimately very close race. And Kerry conducted himself like a true statesman, who would have brought much to the oval office.

John Kerry we hardly knew ye! Keep up the good fight in the senate, and continue the effort to bring our troops home.

This recent flap between Rice and Boxer just floors me. The audacity of the Bush administration would be hilarious if it weren’t so deadly serious. How dare you attack my womanhood? Is Condi for real here? All this distraction, all this dithering over the word escalation. The whole debate about the war has become a farce. But Bush must certainly understand that we the American public are deadly serious about this war. Get out now! No ifs, ands or buts.

To me the Senate hearing just shows how substanceless and trivial the Bush administration is. Instead of offering real points they just retreat to BS la la land. It is past the time for all that. Unfortunately, Bush is all too willing to pass the buck and pass this war on to the next president. And it looks like he has a willing accomplice in the next republican heir apparent John McCain. Even under the most optimistic conditions McCain will be come another Gerald Ford one termer who has to deal with the fall out of Bush’s policies. He may end up having to pardon Bush for war crimes and find himself shackled with an unpopular unwinnable civil war in the middle east. All for what? Because Bush’s team can’t admit fault or pursue diplomatic solutions? For what? Because they would rather throw childish taunts and parse over the meaning of words like escalation as gradeschool nuckleheads?

Come on! The American public deserves more than this. We deserved a real debate in the lead up to the war and we deserve a meaningful discussion on exit strategy now. Not coded signals that we are going to storm the Iranian and Syrian borders in the middle of the night.

Bush is a lame duck but his legacy and the future of the Republican party hang in the balance. BushCo defiant to the end. Well send them all to the guillotine I say. I am tired of their nonsense dismissal of substantive issues.