Isaac Laquedem

Senator Alexander (and many others) will trust an alien with a gun, but not a car

Forty-six United States senators voted today against a bill that would have required background checks on people who want to buy guns in the United States, including Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, both Republicans from Tennessee.

In 2007, Senators Alexander and Corker sponsored legislation to denounce states that issue driver's licenses to aliens in this country unlawfully, saying that allowing illegal aliens to carry dirver's licenses presents a risk to our national security.

This leads to the delightful conclusion that Senators Alexander and Corker, and many others, trust illegal aliens with guns but not cars.  They're apparently fine with undocumented immigrants going to the gun shows to buy guns as long as they take public transit to get there.

The Portland Streetcar: TriMet contracts, but Portland's cost expands

Here's an interesting question about contracts.  TriMet is suing Clackamas County because the county commission is asking the voters to decide whether the county should give TriMet two pieces of property that TriMet says the county promised to give it.  TriMet's position is that a contract is a contract, and Clackamas County needs to honor its promises to TriMet.  At the same time, TriMet is asking Portland to chip in $2.1 million for the eastside streetcar (here's the city's proposed resolution), even though the 2010 contract between the city and TriMet called for the city to pay TriMet only $600,000, increased to $1.25 million in 2011.

Is a contract with TriMet binding?  It depends on who's paying.

Interstate Bridges dilemma solved: span will be 150 feet high and carry light rail

In a joint press conference this morning, the Oregon Department of Transportation, the Washington State Department of Transportation, TriMet, and the Coast Guard announced that they have agreed on a design for the replacement of the Interstate Bridges with a fixed span that will carry light rail without impeding navigation.  Affected upriver users have also signed on to the plan.

The agencies' dilemma was that a large part of the bridge funding will come from federal grants for light rail, but if the bridge is built with the 150-foot clearance necessary to accommodate existing river traffic, its approach grades will be too steep for light rail to climb.  The proposed light rail line also faces active opposition from Clark County residents who fear that it would become a conduit for crime.

TriMet general manager Neil MacFarlane explained the elegant solution.  "ODOT and WSDOT will build a bridge with 150 feet of clearance over the river and with a lower deck for pedestrians and bicycles.  TriMet will construct a light rail line on the middle span of the bridge, about 500 feet long, but not connect it to the mainland.  Once a year we'll run a Lake Oswego trolley car back and forth on the bridge."  MacFarlane added that this will satisfy the federal requirement for matching funds: the bridge must include light rail, but the line on the bridge doesn't need to connect to the existing system. 

Fiscal analysts for TriMet, noting that TriMet loses money on light rail, said that by operating the bridge light rail only one day a year, TriMet will save enough money to restore service on six bus lines.  Capital costs are also reduced by $500 million, as the Yellow Line won't be extended beyond the Expo Center.

Although the trolley car will carry passengers only one day a year, it won't be idle.  The other 364 days of the year, the trolley car will help raise money to pay the cost of building the bridge, snapping pictures of the license plates of solo drivers in the carpool lane and housing a photo radar unit.  TriMet will get half the ticket revenue. 

"We're going to finally make light rail turn a profit," MacFarlane smiled.

Why the courts will strike down the City of Portland $35 arts tax

It's now been reported that prominent Portland blogger and tax professor Jack Bogdanski has filed suit to declare the $35/head Portland arts tax unconstitutional.  Here's why Professor Bogdanski will win.

In 2000, in the case of Cook v. City of Portland, the Oregon court of appeals described a poll tax as "a fixed tax assessed on each eligible person."  In that case, Vern Cook (1925-2008), a Gresham lawyer, legislator, and longtime civic gadfly, challenged the City of Portland business license tax for four reasons, one of which was that it was (in Mr. Cook's view) an unconstitutional head tax.  The court of appeals easily decided that the business license tax was not an unconstitutional head tax, using these words:

Portland's business license fee is not a head or poll tax. It is not assessed per capita. Rather, it is assessed only on those persons or corporations who choose to do business within the city. Moreover, although there is a minimum tax, the tax is proportional. The amount of the tax is generally a function of the income a licensee earns. The tax does not possess the same characteristics that prompted the people to add Article IX, section 1a, to the Oregon Constitution.

By contrast, Portland's arts tax is assessed per capita (per person), and it is not a function of the income that a Portland resident earns.  The tax is either $0 or $35.

Does the Portland arts tax "possess the same characteristics that prompted the people to add Article IX, section 1a, to the Oregon Constitution"?  Here's how the court of appeals described those characteristics:

Article IX, section 1a, which prohibits those taxes, was added to the constitution in 1910. The amendment's supporters explained that a poll or head tax "is unjust not only because it is collected from very few of the men who are supposed to pay, but also because it bears so unequally on men in proportion to their ability to pay." Voters' Pamphlet, General Election, November 8, 1910, at 24-25.  The problem that the measure's supporters perceived was that poll or head taxes are not graduated. As they explained, "[t]he laborer supporting a family on $2 a day pays exactly the same poll tax as the corporation manager with a salary of ten thousand dollars a year." Id.

That sounds exactly like the Portland arts tax, if you adjust for inflation: the laborer supporting a family on $100 a day pays exactly the same arts tax as the corporation manager with a salary of $200,000 a year.  Based on the 1910 Voter's Pamphlet arguments as interpreted by the Oregon courts, the arts tax is an unconstitutional head tax.

"But wait," you might say, "didn't a judge already declare that the arts tax is not an unconstitutional head tax?"  Yes -- and no.  In August 2012 a Multnomah County judge, John A. Wittmayer, ruled that the arts tax was not a head tax, but he did not rule that it was constitutional.  Rather, he ruled only that the tax did not need to be described on the ballot as a head tax or poll tax, in response to challenges brought against the proposed ballot title and summary.  In Judge Wittmayer'>s words:  "The proposed tax at issue here is not a head tax or a poll tax because it is not assessed per capita -- it is assessed only upon income-earning individuals age 18 or older in households above the federal poverty guidelines."  (Judge Wittmayer's opinion, at page 5.)

The good judge is saying that a flat tax of $35 per person is not a head tax if not everyone has to pay it, suggesting that a $35/person tax is not a head tax unless absolutely everyone has to pay it.  Because the petitioners were challenging the ballot title, and not arguing that the measure was unconstitutional, the judge never ruled that the arts tax is constitutional -- no one asked him to decide that question.  Likely none of the parties invited him to read the 1910 Voter's Pamphlet and the decision in Cook v. City of Portland to see that the voters and the appellate courts consider "head tax" and "poll tax" to include taxes that are assessed at a flat amount per eligible person.

Look for a different decision this time around.

History note: The Interstate Bridges' humps were a solution, not a problem

The humps in the middle of the Interstate Bridges are two of the reasons that proponents of the Columbia River Crossing point to when explaining why a replacement bridge with a light rail line is the most pressing transportation need that merits $450 million, plus interest, of Oregon's tax dollars.  The interesting thing about the humps is that they were built not as a problem but as a solution.

The original Interstate Bridge (what is now the northbound bridge) had a drawspan, but no humps.  The road was level.  When the southbound bridge was built in the 1950s, the highway department wanted to reduce the number of bridge lifts, and built the southbound bridge with a hump, under which some river traffic could go without requiring a bridge lift.  When the southbound bridge opened, the northbound bridge was closed so that a matching hump could be added.

The basic problem with the project, and a possible solution, occurred to me a few days ago, and I'll share the problem and the solution this week.

The Laquedem Plan to restore the original intent of the Second Amendment

The post-Newtown debate over gun control and the Second Amendment has pitted advocates of gun control against believers in the Second Amendment.  Proponents of gun control (generally the same group as opponents of mass killings) can't see the sporting purpose in allowing people to possess and use 25- and 50-round ammunition clips.  Opponents of gun control strongly object to federal and state governments limiting their ability to buy and own any sort of weaponry.

Some government restrictions on private armories apparently withstand a Second Amendment attack: for example, we can't own machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, and tactical nuclear weaponry. If the Second Amendment protects individual rights as broadly as its backers say it does, then the government can't prohibit us from owning these useful items of destruction.

How, then, can the Supreme Court make a principled interpretation of the Second Amendment that protects the private right to own guns without opening the door to my homeowners' association acquiring first-strike capability?  It occurred to me that the doctrine of original intent, favored by Justices Thomas and Scalia, offers an answer. 

The doctrine of original intent states that the Supreme Court should interpret the constitution in accordance with the intent of the Framers -- that is, the original intent of the document -- rather than to accommodate changes in politics and society.  Not every justice agrees with this, but it is a useful starting point.

The Second Amendment states that as a well-regulated militia is necessary for defense, the right of the people to bear arms shall not be abridged.  Most people who talk about the Framers' intent focus on what is meant by a well-regulated militia, and argue that the right to bear arms should be limited to the right to bear arms as part of a well-regulated militia.  I suggest that we should look instead at the Framers' intent in using the words "defense" and "arms." 

"Defense" has a plain and simple meaning.  It means defending territory that one already possesses, rather than attacking territory that one does not possess.  People can defend their homes.  ("A man's home is his ammunition cache," as the saying might be revised to read.)  People can as part of a militia defend their counties and states from invasion and insurrection.  It's consistent with that reading to say that people can't take guns to schools and shopping centers.

Similarly, the term "arms" meant to the Framers single-shot rifles and pistols, swords, bayonets, catapults, and cannons.  "Arms" didn't include automatic and semi-automatic guns, tanks, rocket launchers, and nuclear bombs.  A creative legislature might adopt, and an alert judge might uphold, a gun control measure that protected the right of the people to keep flintlocks at home to protect themselves against intruders, and prohibited people from carrying weaponry on the street.  I think the judge could even quote from opinions of several conservative members of the Supreme Court to show that the prohibition is consistent with the original intent of the writers of the Constitution.  It would be an amusing and possibly worthwhile exercise.

"Enhanced security" protects the visitors, if there were any

Every now and then I drive by a dam on the Columbia that has a small visitor's center.  For the last few years a sign near the dam that points the way to the visitor's center has had below it a smaller sign with the cryptic phrase "Enhanced Security."  What this means I have not figured out.  Perhaps it's meant to make visitors feel safer, knowing that the operator's security team will be watching out for their safety while they visit.  Perhaps the sign is meant to steer prospective terrorists away from this location and to dams without enhanced security.

When I passed by last week I noticed that the security has indeed been enhanced - the visitor's center is closed, keeping out the taxpayers and the terrorists alike.  I feel safer already.

Mark Twain helps Congressman Jerrold Nadler solve the looming debt ceiling crisis

As it does almost every year lately, the United States government is bumping up against the debt ceiling.  Congress sets the maximum limit on how much debt the federal government can issue.  Congress also commands the president to spend more than the government receives; that is, to run a deficit.  The administration can finance the deficit either by printing money or by borrowing more money, which increases the national debt.  Congress has approved raising the debt ceiling 11 times since 2001. 

Within a few months the government will have to print or borrow more money to pay for the spending that Congress has approved.  Several Republican representatives are making noises that the nation would be better off if the government shuts down when it hits the debt ceiling than if it borrowed to pay its bills.

Jerrold Nadler, a Democratic representative from New York, found a way in which the government could pay its bills without borrowing more money.  Possibly inspired by Mark Twain's story "The Million Pound Bank Note," and after some searching through our laws on coin and currency, he proposed that the Treasury mint a trillion-dollar coin in platinum and deposit it with the Federal Reserve.  Why the Treasury?  And why platinum?

The Federal Reserve Banks, not under the administration's control, print and issue our currency.  The Treasury hasn't issued paper money since 1968 when it gave up printing United States Notes.  The Treasury does, however, issue our coins, in denominations and with metal content strictly prescribed by statute.  All gold and silver coins, for example, must contain gold or silver that is worth more than the face value of the coin.  A $50 gold coin, for example, must contain 1.09 troy ounces of gold.  There's no profit to be made in making gold or silver coins.

The Treasury Department may, however, mint platinum coins of any denomination and weight that pleases the Secretary of the Treasury, including, in Mr. Nadler's proposal, a platinum coin with a face value of $1,000,000,000,000. 

Republicans in Congress (including Oregon's own Greg Walden) have lined up to oppose the trillion-dollar coin, though it's not clear whether they also oppose the government paying its bills.  An administration less charitable than the current one might offer to avoid the debt ceiling cliff by cutting federal spending in those states whose representatives vote against raising the debt ceiling.

Governor, it's time to kill the bridge, not build it

At today's Oregon Leadership Conference, Governor Kitzhaber said that it's important for Oregon to allocate $450 million (another two Sellwoods) toward the Columbia River Crossing project by March 1.  So reports Willamette Week, which also says that Governor Kitzhaber expects as soon as next month "to resolve the Coast Guard's concerns that the bridge designed will result in a bridge too low for marine traffic" (WW's words, not the Governor's).

As the proposed bridge is too low for existing federal and private marine traffic, there are only two ways to resolve the Coast Guard's concerns.  One is to build a higher bridge, even if that makes light rail on the new bridge impracticable; the other is to scare away the businesses that send ships and equipment under thexisting bridges now.  Put differently, one approach ticks off TriMet (but saves the region about $1 billion); the other costs jobs and blasts a hole in our maritime industry.

I await with great interest the Governor's choice between jobs and trains.  A better choice, and one he's unfortunately just boxed himself out of, is to declare that no more public money should follow the $150 million already wasted on this project.  The $450 million of state funds that Governor Kitzhaber wants to spend on the CRC would be better spent -- if it has to be spent on highways -- on improving the roads we already have.

The fact that $150 million has been spent pursuing the chimera of a perfect replacement bridge is not a reason to spend more.  It's a reason to stop now.

It's time to kill the CRC.

I found out today how to make these cards

Mathematical philosophers have long pondered why it is that the physical world so often follows basic mathematical principles.  Here's a question for the social scientists to think about.