The ban parade

This week President Obama lifted the odious bans on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research and for organizations that provide information on abortion. But you can rest assured that just about anywhere in the world, moral busybodies still want to prevent you from having or doing something, whatever it may be. Here are a few examples:

Birmingham in Britain bans the apostrophe.

Lucca in Tuscany bans new non-Italian restaurants from its medieval center.

Honolulu bans texting while driving.

North Dakota won't ban texting while driving.

Hawaii may ban superslim cigarettes.

Minnesotans seek ban on smoking in cars carrying children.

FDA panel recommends ban of Darvon.

Beer ban to be lifted for some U.S. troops in Iraq.

New York weighs ban on horse-drawn carriages.

Neenah, Wisconsin, nears ban on roosters.

TNSTAAFL and Blago's free rides

Blago is gone. Good riddance. Now the question is not who will pick up the pieces, but what pieces should be picked up. Which of the disgraced former Illinois governor's monomaniacal actions should be undone immediately?

My choice is the year-old Free Rides for Seniors plan, in which those over 65, as well as people with disabilities, who live in the six Chicago collar counties can ride Chicago Transit Authority buses, L trains and Metra commuter trains for nothing but the effort to obtain an official free pass.

In January of '08, Blagojevich plucked this puzzling entitlement out of the blue even though nobody was advocating it, nor had a need for it been demonstrated. It was Blago's political pound of flesh for allowing Chicago to increase its tax bite.

The then spaghetti-spined Illinois legislature went along with the scheme just to avoid gridlock with the governor. It didn't matter that the long financially beleaguered Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the CTA and Metra, would have to find $30 million somewhere to pay for the plan. Regular fares would have to be raised -- again and again.

Most of us seniors didn't -- and don't -- need free rides. We already were enjoying a reduced-fare plan, at least those of us needy enough -- or thrifty enough -- to go down and apply for the senior-citizens transit card. The poorest could already ride free, thanks to the "Circuit Breaker" program for low-income citizens.

I will confess that I hold a free-ride card, being a cheap (but not quite needy) geezer. Like a libertarian who rails against a liberal entitlement but wallows in it anyway because he can, I saw the opportunity and took it. In fact, as an unreconstructed rail buff I dreamed of seeing if I could ride every single Metra commuter line and L route within a week for free just to say I had done it. Never did -- the idea was just not that exciting -- and in the last year I've used my free pass maybe three times.

If the Illinois Legislature decides to get rid of the Seniors Ride Free plan -- and it should -- I'll happily burn my card. It is absolutely unnecessary, and its existence is a painful reminder of the former governor's profligate political weirdness.

By the way, if the "TNSTAAFL" reference in this blogpost's headline puzzles you, that was the conservative economist Milton Friedman's shorthand for "There's no such thing as a free lunch." Those free-marketers weren't always wrong.

(With thanks to Gilbert B. Norman.)

JAN. 31: I have learned that "TNSTAAFL" was coined by the science fiction novelist Robert A. Heinlein. Friedman freely credited Heinlein when he used the term.

Booking Blago

It is my firm and considered belief that Blagojevich is angling for a fat book contract.

Why else would he flap jaws with Diane Sawyer and Larry King and a host of other television luminaries? Testifying before what other egomaniacs call "the court of public opinion" is not going to help him withstand the Illinois Senate's impeachment proceedings, nor will it prevent Patrick Fitzgerald from bringing an indictment from a federal grand jury.

What Blagojevic is doing is banking celebrity bucks, making himself enough of a household word so that some desperate New York publisher (they're all desperate these days) will offer a nice advance for a memoir, an advance large enough to keep him and Patti afloat while they appeal the inevitable.

The man is a lunatic, but a lunatic with a plan.

Important news you just cannot afford to miss

Insults to keep our minds off Great Depression II.

Knit tits for tots.

Oh, you mean that kind of thong. Damn. (Be sure to watch the video.)

What wine goes best with Cool Ranch Doritos? Sutton Cellars' Rattlesnake Rose.

Oh, no! Just when we wanted to practice water landings in the Hudson.

Green is back on the map

Last September 18 this blog told how a bump in the road on the southern shore of Lake Superior was coming up in the world: little unincorporated Green, pop. 350 or so, was being restored to its former glory on the official state road map of Michigan.

This is important because Steve Martinez, whom you might know as the sheriff of Porcupine County in my mystery novels, lives in Green. The Lady Friend and I summer in a cabin on the lake shore there, and we often invite Steve and his squeeze, Ginny, over for drinks, munchies, cop talk and salacious gossip about county officials.

Yesterday the Green Hermit, a native of the place and a habitue of this blog, e-mailed the graphic results of his thumpingly successful campaign to elevate Green to its rightful place -- a small corner of the official 2009 Michigan Highway Map, fresh off the press:

Letter from the snowy North

Steve Sundberg's dog Ruby "breaking trail" through deep snow in Ontonagon, Michigan.

Steve Sundberg, a friend away up in Ontonagon on the Lake Superior shore of Michigan -- the place where my mystery novels are set -- writes:

"Winter is well along and shaping up to be one that the kids will brag about to their grandchildren. We passed 200 inches of snow for the season on Monday and we still have at least six weeks of winter to go. It has snowed virtually every day since Thanksgiving, some days a dusting, some days a foot of the lightest, fluffiest powder snow.

"It has made for tremendous conditions for the ski hill, cross country trails and snowshoeing in the woods. The snowmobile traffic in the area is way down, probably due to the poor economic conditions, so their trails are in excellent condition.

"The economy of the area haa been hit hard. The paper mill in town started a partial layoff the second week of December. About two-thirds of the employees were laid off with the expectation that they would be called back the beginning of January. The layoff has now been extended to at least the beginning of February and that timetable may be optimistic.

"The two enormous paper machines at the mill are kept running at an idle speed. If the machines were stopped for any length of time the bearings on the huge rollers would develop flat spots and be ruined, so power plant and maintenance personnel and a millwright and oiler were kept on for each shift.

"Last week Smurfit-Stone, owner of the mill, indicated it is investigating filing for bankruptcy. That may actually be a positive. Smurfit-Stone is highly leveraged and may need to divest some assets to make its interest payments. The Ontonagon mill has a reputation for making first quality corrugation used for cardboard boxes and other manufacturers may be interested in buying it.

"The layoffs, of course, cascade through the businesses in the community. January and February are normally slow months and that is especially true this year. Even the bars, restaurants and motels are hurting due to the lack of snowmobilers this year. Things are slow at the hardware store but we can hold on until spring. The only boom business right now is roof shoveling."

This reminds me that none of the action in the Steve Martinez mystery novels takes place during a hard winter, and I had better get up there and research a chapter or three set during that time for Hang Fire, the novel in progress. I might even have to rent a snowmobile and go haring off into the woods.

The news about the layoff at the mill, however, is disturbing. It is the largest employer in Ontonagon County, and as Steve says, when it shuts down, many more than its own employees are hurt -- for example, the many scores of independent loggers who fell and truck pulpwood to the mill as well as those who provide other goods and services.

Economic hardships are bound to affect an already overextended rural county sheriff's department such as the one in my novels. Petty crime will rise, as will alcohol and drug offenses and domestic disturbances. And it's the deputies who have to carry out the increasing number of eviction notices.

All this, of course, is grist for a novelist's mill. But I deeply wish it weren't.

One for the nonbelievers

There were many things to praise in Obama's inauguration speech today, but the one that struck me the most was his open-armed welcome to "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."

In recent years, acknowledging that good people do not necessarily worship a deity used to be political suicide -- even though many of the founding fathers, including Jefferson, were either agnostics or atheists. (They were, after all, children of the Enlightenment.)

In recent years American politicians have been so terrorized by the Christian right that they often pretended to be believers, faux Sunday-morning churchgoers, in order not to needlessly offend that important voting bloc.

Perhaps no more. It now looks certain that Obama means business when he says he wants government to be all-inclusive. Having Rick Warren deliver the invocation at his inauguration and also, on the same day, recognizing the moral legitimacy of those who do not believe in a higher power is nothing short of revolutionary.

It's about time.