Oberstar gives JLO Safe Routes to School Award - FHWA, AASHTO tag along (COMMENT)
Posted Mon, 2007-10-29 20:08
What next? Congressional prizes, orders and medals issued by the grandees of Capitol Hill? Why not titles next? Knighthoods, baronies? Their issuance would be occasions for self promotion and fundraising, and what else is it that modern politicians look for.
US Congressmen are taking it upon themselves to issue "awards." In their own name, to boot.
It used to be that wretched wheeler dealers and favor traders like James L Oberstar, chair of the house transportation committee and a longtime congressman from Minnesota had the decency to do their business behind closed doors within legendarily smoky rooms, and it would no more have occurred to them to be issuing "awards" than to be grading history essays or dance routines, or officiating at a marriage ceremony. And if the Congress ever legislated an award it was the done thing to honor and memorialize those bigshots who have passed on, by naming the award for one of the deceased.
But today's Capitol Hill despicables don't have the humility of the Boss Tweeds, the Huey Longs and Tip O'Neills in whose muddy steps they tread. So shameless are they that they can't forgo a single opportunity to keep thrusting themselves into the limelight. The Oberstars of the contemporary US Congress have all the class of a Paris Hilton, a Christian Slater, or a Robert Downey, and none of their sex appeal.
Why waste the name of the award on the dead, today's puffed up blowhards like Oberstar say?
"Me, me, me, me, me... My award will be named after me."
Thus we have today the "First Annual James L Oberstar Safe Routes to School Award," being announced by the Honorable James L Oberstar, to be awarded by the Honorable James L Oberstar, along with speechifying and evasions at a press conference called by the Honorable James L Oberstar, the award having been adjudicated by the Honorable James L Oberstar, and before that, initiated and conceived by the Honorable James L Oberstar (more likely a smart aide), who we are told is a "staunch advocate of the Safe Routes to School concept."
If you are tempted to think this is all my hoax click here for the press release as a 2 page MS Word doc. This is real.
Notice the threat of another of these events every twelve months.
And if there's a James L Oberstar award for Safe Routes to School, surely we can predict a James L Oberstar Beautiful Bicycle Trail Award, a James L Oberstar Smart Transit Station Award, a James L Oberstar Traffic Trouble Spot Remediation Award, a James L Oberstar Sidewalk Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Award, etc. The staffers must already be reporting demands from constituents for their own special industry or group awards, and be pointing out the lucrative fundraising
opportunities of "JLO awards."
These could become a regular fixture on the weekly press calendar on Capitol Hill. Sponsors for the JLO Awards can be roped in by the bucketload to fund the prizes, the visits to the national capital of the award winners, and the dinners and associated celebratory events with generous charges to the congressman's office overhead.
Safe Routes to School is a baloney issue - a classic of government first creating the problem with overweening federal arrogance, then big spending programs with conditional grants and regulations.
Down the track problems are acknowledged and the same suspects look to remedy the problem with another spending program in which they get to play the Robin Hood good guy again. Plus get to make James L Oberstar Safe Routes to School Awards or somesuch twaddle.
Most countries of the world children walk, take the regular transit bus, ride a bicycle, or maybe even rollerscate to school. As a kid I did all those except rollerscate, first in Britain and then in Australia. The trip to school was never unsafe, at least no more unsafe or safe than any other trip around town. No national government needed to get involved.
Safe routes to school were never an issue, certainly not for an issue for government higher than the suburb, town or village.
Only in America did pandering federal politicians like JL Oberstar decide 40 or so years ago that every school child in America should be "bused" to school at the expense of taxpayers. Vast fleets of thousands of school buses all painted a regulation yellow color were spawned by government programs. With all the kids going to school on school buses there would be no need to design sidewalks or make the roads safe for bicycles, so America's new suburbs developed without any safe routes to school by foot or bicycle. And schools were organized with bizarrely disconnected school bus 'catchment' areas based on theories of social and racial "integration" none of which proved to have the slightest effect on interracial relations or minority achievements. And almost all of which are now abandoned as failures of foolish social engineering similar to slum clearance and highrise welfare housing.
But the school buses that were their instrument outlive it all.
For many children busing was always a transportation absurdity. Kids would spend more time standing around at the bus stop than it would have taken them to stroll between school and home. Some enjoyed the freedom of using their bike.
So to heck with the rules, substantial numbers started to stroll and bike in disregard of policies laid down from on high in the US national capital that all should bus.
Budgetary problems meanwhile led school districts to cut school bus routes, further encouraging a drift back to a diversity of modes.
Now concern over child obesity has led people to think it's healthy for children to get the exercise from walking and cycling to school rather than standing around and being driven.
Even the Awful Oberstar is seen posing with a bicycle helmet. That's him being a Leader, see.
A serious reformer would say: Let's cut the tax handouts for school buses and see if they can pay their way with fares paid voluntarily by kids' families. If the school buses produce a service worth more to the kids and their parents than the costs, then those school bus services will continue. If walking, riding a bike, taking regular transit, or being driven to school works better then fine, the school buses can be scrapped as children move to those modes.
Either way the yellow monsters cease to be a social burden.
The city and county and township engineers will soon work out ways of making the routes to school safe without the "help" of self-important US politicians. Sidewalks and striped shoulder lanes for cyclists are hardly items requiring the attention of a state, let alone the US Government.
It was US grandees like Oberstar who told the local planners: "No need to provide for kids to walk or cycle to school. We're putting them all in buses."
It is the Oberstars of Washington DC who caused the streets of the suburbs to be UNsafe for kids in the first place. To expect people who go around creating problems to solve them is too much. And to have them naming and issuing "awards" after themselves is adding insult to injury -Â enormous egotistical effrontery.
Shame on the FHWA and ARTBA for endorsing this pol's self aggrandizing "awards" nonsense. Editor
TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-29
What next? Congressional prizes, orders and medals issued by the grandees of Capitol Hill? Why not titles next? Knighthoods, baronies? Their issuance would be occasions for self promotion and fundraising, and what else is it that modern politicians look for.US Congressmen are taking it upon themselves to issue "awards." In their own name, to boot.
It used to be that wretched wheeler dealers and favor traders like James L Oberstar, chair of the house transportation committee and a longtime congressman from Minnesota had the decency to do their business behind closed doors within legendarily smoky rooms, and it would no more have occurred to them to be issuing "awards" than to be grading history essays or dance routines, or officiating at a marriage ceremony. And if the Congress ever legislated an award it was the done thing to honor and memorialize those bigshots who have passed on, by naming the award for one of the deceased.
But today's Capitol Hill despicables don't have the humility of the Boss Tweeds, the Huey Longs and Tip O'Neills in whose muddy steps they tread. So shameless are they that they can't forgo a single opportunity to keep thrusting themselves into the limelight. The Oberstars of the contemporary US Congress have all the class of a Paris Hilton, a Christian Slater, or a Robert Downey, and none of their sex appeal.
Why waste the name of the award on the dead, today's puffed up blowhards like Oberstar say? "Me, me, me, me, me... My award will be named after me."
Thus we have today the "First Annual James L Oberstar Safe Routes to School Award," being announced by the Honorable James L Oberstar, to be awarded by the Honorable James L Oberstar, along with speechifying and evasions at a press conference called by the Honorable James L Oberstar, the award having been adjudicated by the Honorable James L Oberstar, and before that, initiated and conceived by the Honorable James L Oberstar (more likely a smart aide), who we are told is a "staunch advocate of the Safe Routes to School concept."
If you are tempted to think this is all my hoax click here for the press release as a 2 page MS Word doc. This is real.
Notice the threat of another of these events every twelve months.
And if there's a James L Oberstar award for Safe Routes to School, surely we can predict a James L Oberstar Beautiful Bicycle Trail Award, a James L Oberstar Smart Transit Station Award, a James L Oberstar Traffic Trouble Spot Remediation Award, a James L Oberstar Sidewalk Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Award, etc. The staffers must already be reporting demands from constituents for their own special industry or group awards, and be pointing out the lucrative fundraising
opportunities of "JLO awards."These could become a regular fixture on the weekly press calendar on Capitol Hill. Sponsors for the JLO Awards can be roped in by the bucketload to fund the prizes, the visits to the national capital of the award winners, and the dinners and associated celebratory events with generous charges to the congressman's office overhead.
Safe Routes to School is a baloney issue - a classic of government first creating the problem with overweening federal arrogance, then big spending programs with conditional grants and regulations.
Down the track problems are acknowledged and the same suspects look to remedy the problem with another spending program in which they get to play the Robin Hood good guy again. Plus get to make James L Oberstar Safe Routes to School Awards or somesuch twaddle.
Most countries of the world children walk, take the regular transit bus, ride a bicycle, or maybe even rollerscate to school. As a kid I did all those except rollerscate, first in Britain and then in Australia. The trip to school was never unsafe, at least no more unsafe or safe than any other trip around town. No national government needed to get involved.
Safe routes to school were never an issue, certainly not for an issue for government higher than the suburb, town or village.
Only in America did pandering federal politicians like JL Oberstar decide 40 or so years ago that every school child in America should be "bused" to school at the expense of taxpayers. Vast fleets of thousands of school buses all painted a regulation yellow color were spawned by government programs. With all the kids going to school on school buses there would be no need to design sidewalks or make the roads safe for bicycles, so America's new suburbs developed without any safe routes to school by foot or bicycle. And schools were organized with bizarrely disconnected school bus 'catchment' areas based on theories of social and racial "integration" none of which proved to have the slightest effect on interracial relations or minority achievements. And almost all of which are now abandoned as failures of foolish social engineering similar to slum clearance and highrise welfare housing.
But the school buses that were their instrument outlive it all.
For many children busing was always a transportation absurdity. Kids would spend more time standing around at the bus stop than it would have taken them to stroll between school and home. Some enjoyed the freedom of using their bike.
So to heck with the rules, substantial numbers started to stroll and bike in disregard of policies laid down from on high in the US national capital that all should bus.
Budgetary problems meanwhile led school districts to cut school bus routes, further encouraging a drift back to a diversity of modes.
Now concern over child obesity has led people to think it's healthy for children to get the exercise from walking and cycling to school rather than standing around and being driven.
Even the Awful Oberstar is seen posing with a bicycle helmet. That's him being a Leader, see.
A serious reformer would say: Let's cut the tax handouts for school buses and see if they can pay their way with fares paid voluntarily by kids' families. If the school buses produce a service worth more to the kids and their parents than the costs, then those school bus services will continue. If walking, riding a bike, taking regular transit, or being driven to school works better then fine, the school buses can be scrapped as children move to those modes.
Either way the yellow monsters cease to be a social burden.
The city and county and township engineers will soon work out ways of making the routes to school safe without the "help" of self-important US politicians. Sidewalks and striped shoulder lanes for cyclists are hardly items requiring the attention of a state, let alone the US Government.
It was US grandees like Oberstar who told the local planners: "No need to provide for kids to walk or cycle to school. We're putting them all in buses."
It is the Oberstars of Washington DC who caused the streets of the suburbs to be UNsafe for kids in the first place. To expect people who go around creating problems to solve them is too much. And to have them naming and issuing "awards" after themselves is adding insult to injury -Â enormous egotistical effrontery.
Shame on the FHWA and ARTBA for endorsing this pol's self aggrandizing "awards" nonsense. Editor
TOLLROADSnews 2007-10-29
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