Comments

• On the Blog Post Would You Still Choose Belmont?

  David Chase

  8:00 pm on Wednesday, May 22, 2013

  We seem to be good at obstruction and short-term thinking. The recent decision to keep the pool where it is instead of moving it uphill is an example of this -- we save a little money on the pool, but lose the chance at library funds, and now we have to cross our fingers that we don't run into ADA legal problems with the library till we come up with a new plan.

  I don't see that we're ever going to build enough commercial/industrial to really blunt the tax rates; we've got no room, and (again) no consensus for doing it at the scale we would need (which is large). Everyone wants it to happens somewhere else in town, and everyone complains about business bringing traffic, even though (to my eye, and I've looked at Trapelo a lot over the years) it's all cut-through commuters anyhow.

  I keep on thinking that eventually enough people will agree with me. That might be foolish.

  Reply

• On the article The Week in Review: New Library Proposal Killed, Town Meeting, Days Three, Four

  

  David Chase

  4:29 pm on Sunday, May 12, 2013

  Art, #1, that's a silly proposal. Government is not a charity, government runs on taxes, paid by everyone, according to whatever rules we establish. No freeloaders. We don't hold bake sales for bombers, we don't hold raffles for paving roads. #2, some of are already kicking in a little bit extra every time we pay our property taxes. Are you?

• On the article Bicycle Breaks in Half in Pleasant Street Crash

  

  David Chase

  9:07 pm on Wednesday, May 1, 2013

  Why shouldn't people ride bikes on Pleasant Street? I do it often enough, though I wish the pavement were better. The problem you're referring to is caused by an excess of cars, not an excess of bikes. Think, for a moment, how I can possibly be the cause of the traffic jam that I pass?

  And what you refer to as "down the center" is also known as "passing on the left". Cars passing bicycles often touch or stray slightly over the center line; why shouldn't bicycles passing cars do the same?

• On the Blog Post Massachusetts Gas Tax: Its Punch Has Been Decreasing for 20 Years

  

  David Chase

  3:24 pm on Tuesday, January 29, 2013

  Recent study (by the Tax Foundation, no less) suggests that gas taxes only cover half the expense of roads, if that: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/01/23/drivers-cover-just-51-percent-of-u-s-road-spending/ .

  And Massachusetts has extra expenses for plowing and salting and wear-and-tear from plowing and salting.

• On the article Patrick's Budget: Can The State Afford It Right Now?

  

  David Chase

  10:20 pm on Saturday, January 26, 2013

  We could say "yes" to tax increases and "no" to tax cuts. That works, too. There's more than one way to balance the books. Taxes were higher when we moved here, and it was no big deal, and the economy was healthy then, too.

• On the article TELL US: Have You Reviewed with your Children What to Do in 'Danger' Scenarios? Should You?

  

  David Chase

  1:09 pm on Friday, December 28, 2012

  No, it's not logical to treat schools and homes in the same way. Schools and homes are different, and we have years of statistics to prove it. It's silly to get all excited about gun control because a school is attacked, but gun control is a good idea, and was before the school was attacked. A fair number of us had pretty much just given up on the idea being politically practical (e.g., Obama -- notice any action from him on guns in his first term?), but if it comes up, people like me are going to say "yes, that is a good idea". Big picture, for the amount of work it would take to make gun control work, there are bigger fish to fry -- better health care (universal health care, especially for pregnant women and young children) will prevent far more early deaths (if we could achieve Canada's quality of care, 8000/year in infant mortality alone).

  And I'm talking pure numbers here, just plain net death reduction.

• On the article TELL US: Have You Reviewed with your Children What to Do in 'Danger' Scenarios? Should You?

  

  David Chase

  10:23 am on Friday, December 28, 2012

  There's several reasons to regard such as sign as okay on a school. First, there's history. Schools are very, very safe. Safer than riding in cars, safer (on average) than being at home. Second, what's the point of attacking a school? There's not much money there. The only people who have done these attacks have been exceptionally, extremely nuts. And third, you are completely discounting the possibility of gun accidents, which history also tells us occur at a low but steady rate. Unless we decide that we don't really care about other deaths, we've got to consider net deaths, not just one-cause deaths.

• On the article TELL US: Have You Reviewed with your Children What to Do in 'Danger' Scenarios? Should You?

  

  David Chase

  8:00 am on Friday, December 28, 2012

  Your question is ill-posed. We wouldn't do it that way, and we would keep some "weapons" (clubs, knives, feet, yappy dogs). So to your specific situation, no, I wouldn't. But that's not what is proposed. You start out with licensing and restrictions on carry, and close up gun sale loopholes. It would take years to get to where it would feel safe to post that sign, not overnight. Hunting guns, licensed, small magazine/clip, probably those stay legal forever.

• On the article TELL US: Have You Reviewed with your Children What to Do in 'Danger' Scenarios? Should You?

  

  David Chase

  10:48 pm on Thursday, December 27, 2012

  If we had the gun regulation that we hope for, then yes. Your question is not unlike asking someone who advocates for higher taxes why they aren't paying the higher rates their own selves already; one person acting alone may make no difference, or put themselves at special disadvantage, but if we are all compelled (by the government that we choose) to act together, we can obtain a better outcome (the quantity of crime is not changed much, but the quality becomes somewhat less violent, as in the case of the crazed man who recently attacked in a school in China. 22 children stabbed, but none died).

• On the article TELL US: Have You Reviewed with your Children What to Do in 'Danger' Scenarios? Should You?

  

  David Chase

  11:20 am on Monday, December 24, 2012

  Michael - it's highly likely that banning handguns, requiring trigger locks, or locked gun cases would sharply reduce gun accidents involving children (i.e., how do you make it very hard for young kids to get to guns?). These are "practical" in the sense that they don't cost that much (the locks and cases do impose costs on gun owners, but not taxpayer-funded costs) and are likely to work, "impractical" in the sense that they would not pass current Supreme Court muster. Since handguns loom large in gun death statistics, that's where you would go if you wanted to cut deaths.

  In addition, the claim that if a gun is unavailable, someone intending murder, robbery, suicide, or accident would just find some other way of accomplishing the same thing is at odds with the usual rules for how humans behave and markets work; if something is made more difficult and/or expensive, it will happen less often. It's even been accidentally tested in England; suicide rates track the ease of actually accomplishing suicide: http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/176/1/64.long . Removing monoxide from gas supplies reduced suicide rates; wider ownership of cars increased suicide rates (availability of monoxide in exhaust); the spread of catalytic converters (removing monoxide again) reduced suicide rates.