Will Shaver’s Blog

News item: The Peanut Corporation of America has recalled ALL products manufactured in the past two years! (In related news, fooducate.com is an excellent blog and I highly recommend it.)

This should NEVER happen. This goes way beyond an “oops” style gross negligence, and falls directly into the category of willful deceit of customers and the public. I’m astounded at the negligence and deceit of their customers and the public that this company has pulled.

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If I hear “low hanging fruit” in one more meeting, I’m going to run away screaming.

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Eugene-the-collective desires infill, has almost none of it, and certainly doesn’t want it anywhere near “my house”. While most Eugeneans would agree with the general sentiments of promoting density, limiting urban grown boundary expansion, and generally becoming more European few would have any idea how to go about this.

To this end, the City of Eugene formed the Infill Compatibility Standards Task Team. The goal of the group is to “prevent negative impacts of infill and encourage positive infill.” This would seem like a worthy cause, but I would counter that the name of the group and the goal are not the same.

Eugene has a number of nice neighborhoods where you’ll find beautiful homes, gardens, and public space. But as with any city there will always be a house or two that don’t fit in with the surrounding area. For example consider these three shots from the Whittaker / Skinner Butte area. The first two are examples of infill, with both of these examples being attractive and “in character” with the surrounding area. The final example is an eyesore, but is most certainly not infill.

The problem with being “Compatible” is that sometimes the existing neighborhood is ugly to begin with. I live in a house that was built in the 1970s in the Churchill area. My neighborhood and several others around were constructed in cookie-cutter fashion, with about five different house patterns to choose from. All of them are single story, with a two car garage, a useless fireplace, and are set back from the street approximately the same amount. In short, I live in a mostly-ugly neighborhood.

Now perhaps you live in the house next door and are tempted to take offense at my less than high praise of your house. Let me remind you that your house is probably the same layout as mine, has the same thin walls and the same uselessly small closets that mine has. We live in our respective houses because they had the correct beauty-per-dollar ratio for our wallet size. (The same can be said of those fortunate enough to live in nicer houses.)

Some neighborhoods are simply not compatible with beauty. Don’t put that nice looking multi-family building next to me! My house would look even worse than it already is, and I’d feel like even more of a schmuck for living here. Only ugly homes here please.

What a horrible reality that would be, as we’d never improve the existing neighborhoods that need it most. I would much rather we gradually move in the direction of beauty even if it doesn’t fit the immediate surroundings. If you’d like to buy my house and put an attractive multi-family home here I’m sure we could work something out.

Perhaps the “Infill compatibility standards task team” should be renamed to the “Ugly building elimination task team” and just be done with it.

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Spelling is an arbitrary collection of historical accidents - John McWhorter

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Why not just put my name on the byline and call it good?

Taxing miles, not gallons

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As submitted to the R-G on January 2nd.

Governor Kulongoski has recently been pushing a GPS-based mileage tax to replace Oregon’s existing gasoline tax for road funds. This proposal is directly against Kulongoski’s “cleaner, greener lives” goals, adds taxes that do not increase road funds, ignores out of state drivers, and has serious privacy concerns.

In Kulongoski’s own words, “climate change is the most important environmental and economic issue of our time.” Any reduction in fossil fuel use should be rewarded, not punished. Why propose a $5,000 credit for buying electric and plug-in hybrid cars, only to tax it away?

Taxing based on GPS would require installation of specialized equipment for every car in Oregon. It would also require infrastructure and additional staffing, all costing tax payers and car buyers. These added taxes won’t improve roads, but are a tax paid solely to support paying taxes.

Kulongoski assures us that the day to day positioning data will not be collected. We were also assured that social security numbers would only be used by the Social Security Administration, and warrants would always be required for phone tapping.

I appreciate having quality roads to drive on, and understand that taxes are required to build them. To that end, I offer a counter proposal – a massive increase on the existing gas tax. Current Oregon gas prices of approximately $1.70 are way off the summer high of $4.28. An added .40c per gallon tax would still be less than half what drivers paid this summer.

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