atlantalarry

Gotcha Capitalism

While my wife was dying I was awash in a mysterious world of cost-shifts, hidden fees, charges which were so vaguely specified that determining what had been done in exchange for any given charge was impossible without spending hours on the phone and in billing offices for each of the hundreds of transactions.  Americans expect that of our medical system, so it didn't surprise me.

But after my wife had passed away, and I had a bit of time to reflect, I began wondering what other aspects of my life were filled with unexamined charges.  While I'm a believer in personal responsibility, "caveat emptor"  is not an acceptable slogan when the economic waters are filled with predators.

In mid-January, on NPR's Morning Edition I heard an interview with Bob Sullivan, who'd released a new book entitled Gotcha Capitalism: How Hidden Fees Rip You Off Every Day-and What You Can Do About It.  The book was about the hundreds of hidden fees and small-print generated rip-offs which have become an astonishingly large part of the US economy.  It's an excellent small reference work not only on the manner in which the public is being systematically victimized, but how to resist being the victim.

The book focuses on a number of commonly used services and products, including credit cards, banks, 401-ks and other retirement vehicles, mortgages and rentals, cell phones, home phones, pay TV, internet access, travel, groceries, gift cards, rebates, student loans, shipping charges, health clubs, and a number of other miscellaneous categories.

Not only does Sullivan describe the charges, but there is a Toolkit section which outlines strategies for fighting the charges, with sample complaint letters, and a description of negotiation tactics and legal options.

This book is a very good resource for anyone who is protective of their money.

Walletmouth

I've always been interested in the social, environmental, and economic consequences of the decisions we make.

Where we live, what we eat, where we shop, what we buy, how we travel ... the list is endless.  I  stumbled upon a blog which explores those sorts of decisions in a great deal of detail.  It's called Walletmouth, and the slogan at the head of the blog states:  "Your wallet is a mouth.  When you spend money you  tell the  world how you want it to be".

I've only begun exploring the blog, but it has an amazing array of resources on corporate behavior,  which seems to be the blog's main focus. 

The blog also covers more mundane consumer environmental issues.  The most recent post (as of this writing) is an article on diapers, with a description of a sort of hybrid between disposable and cloth (reusable cloth outer layer with a biodegradable disposable liner.  Not as much discarded as a disposable, not as much transportation energy consumption as a diaper service).

Overall  Walletmouth is interesting, entertaining and informative.   The blog's name and slogan is great, too.
 

The Map Room and the Georgia Map Controversy

The Map Room, a blog about maps and cartography posted an article with links to a longer Christian Science Monitor about Georgia's decision to remove 488 small communities from it's official map.  I haven't studied the issue enough to have a strong opinion, but there's something sad about the disappearance of these former towns and villages, such as Sandtown,  off the map.

The article is here (click this link to visit).

The complete list of affected towns is here.

Fantasy Congress Game

I generally avoid overt partisan politics on this blog.  It isn't that I lack strong convictions in that respect, or that I'm shy about voicing those convictions.  It's that my primary interest in this blog is locally target urban design and quality of life issues, and polarizing the discussion of those issues in advance wouldn't serve very much purpose.  Besides, there are many good sites on the web and in the blogosphere which carry on partisan political banter really effectively, whether on the Left or Right.

That being said, I think a knowledge of the legislative process is a necessity for being an informed and active citizen, so I was very interested when I heard about the Fantasy Congress game.  Below is the announcement I sent out, and I invite any and all of my readers, whatever your political persuasion to join my league and participate:

================================================================================

For my fellow pathologically hard core political junkies I've set up a
league on the Fantasy Congress website. To those of you who either lack
exposure to Fantasy Baseball (and other sports) or don't really care that
the last bill successfully passed and signed into law by the 109th Congress
was entitled "To reauthorize the Livestock Mandatory Reporting Act of 1999
and to amend the swine reporting provisions of that Act." this may seem like
a really weird pastime.

The basic point of the game is to guess which legislators will submit the
most successful legislation. There isn't really any ideological or moral
value judgement on the results. So if you pick a congressman who
successfully submits legislation to tax elderly widows to provide tax breaks
for Exxon and Halliburton, you'll pick up points. Alternatively if one of
your chosen legislators shepherds a bill through mandating marijuana use,
you'll rack up the points also.

I'm really looking forward to making guesses as to which members of Congress
and the Senate will be most successful in passing legislation. And I view
this as a very good educational tool in how the process of producing
legislative sausage actually works.

I'm going to hold off activating the league until January 1st. The 110th
Congress opens January 3rd, but anyone interested in exploring this can log
on, read the rules, join my league, and create a roster of legislators at
any time.

Here are the steps for joining

1) Go to the Fantasy Congress website (click here to enter that site)
2) Sign up
3) There'll be a link called something to the effect of "Join a League"
4) My league is called Political_JunkiesGA
5) When you're asked for a league password you should enter ftmaglte
which stands for "Follow the Money and good luck to everyone"

The main value I see in this is providing education as to what Congress
actually does on a week to week basis.

Larry

Photography Ban at Bellsouth Lindbergh

You'll notice there's no photo with this article.  I took the MARTA train to the TOD (Transit Oriented Development) at Lindbergh to do an update article, and was promptly informed by the Bellsouth facilities manager that photographs of the Bellsouth  building were not allowed.  Instead of finishing my photos of the area I spent my entire alloted time conversing with her about it.  I was on what I assume to be city property (the sidewalk at Morosgo Drive).

Now even prior to 9/11 it wasn't uncommon for a security guard or building staffer to attempt to stop me from taking photos.  I'd normally handle it on an ad hoc basis.  If the person didn't seem to have the immediate power to escalate it to arresting me, I'd politely ignore them and continue taking photos.  If escalation seemed imminent I'd back off and contact the facilities legal department for clarification on the policy and the basis of that policy.  In every case I was told that the staffer was just overzealous, and there was no such policy.

Granted these incidents were all pre-9/11, so the right to implement the policies may have changed.  But can you imagine what taking skylines or street scene shots would be like if every facility was allowed to enact a photography ban?

At any rate at my leisure I'm going to contact Bellsouth's legal department to get some clarification and do a little research on the rights of photography in public places.

Reconnecting II: The 5th Street Bridge

In the comments section to my post Reconnecting, Tom posted a link to the rendering of the 5th Street Bridge project (click here to go the the Midtown Alliance article on the project)  which will connect Technology Square with the main body of the Tech campus in a much more pedestrian friendly manner than most bridge projects.  I'm going to keep hammering away at the issue of reconnecting the broken neighborhoods because to me it's fundamental to transforming Atlanta into truly liveable city.  The intown areas consist of a collection of really good neighborhoods seperated by terrible arterial roads and ill conceived urban expressways.  We need to get the process underway of knitting the fabric of the neighborhoods back together.

ARC's 2004 Population and Housing Data

The Atlanta Regional Commission   has a very interesting set of documents on its website: 2004 Population and Housing Data.  Click here to proceed to the documents.   

The ARC describes itself as

"the regional planning and intergovernmental coordination agency for the Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale counties, as well as the City of Atlanta."

The documents contain a rich set of maps and tables on demographic and housing trends in the ARC's target region.  I haven't digested them well enough to make any meaningful observations yet, but I can say that it's fascinating viewing the maps (particularly the ones dealing with population gains and losses) and trying to determine why the color coding is in its current state based on what one knows about the specific area.

Another interesting report on the ARC's website is their 2004 Annual Report, which summarizes a number of trends in the target area from the ARC's perspective.

(These papers were brought to my attention in a thread on a forum I frequent, I believe it was the Skyscraper Page, but since I can't find the original thread I can't acknowledge the poster.  When I find the original discussion I'll put an attribution here.)

Save Detroit's Historic Statler Hotel

Most of my focus is on Atlanta, but I have a love for all the great cities of North America. Detroit has suffered an enormous population drop over the past several decades, but it's still a great historic American city.

It's come to my attention that another historic Detroit building, the Statler Hotel, is slated for demolition later this summer. An online petition has been created to Save the Statler Hotel. I would encourage everyone to sign this petition, no matter what city you're in. The best prospect for Detroit to have a true renaissance is to build on its history. Click here to visit and read this petition.

List of Atlanta developments

I just noticed this really interesting list of intown Atlanta developments on Skyscraperpage.com. It was posted in February, but is still quite current, and includes a lot of renderings and site plans. This posting gives a good overview of the substantial amount of exciting work going on in Atlanta right now, particularly the dense new sort of "High Urbanism" which is beginning to dominate the Midtown and Downtown areas.

Commuter Rail in Metro Atlanta

I normally keep up with current events affecting Atlanta pretty closely, but one issue which escaped my attention was the recent revival of interest in commuter rail in Georgia. I had assumed that until the political climate changed here that metro Atlanta commuter rail was pretty much a dead horse. I was surprised by a post on cyburbia indicating that
a set of obstacles had been removed to what basically seems to be a demonstration line from Lovejoy to Atlanta. Not wishing to be ignorant of the details for long, I searched the web for recent details and articles on this project, and here are links to a few of my search results. I'm not anywhere near digesting this stuff myself, but thought I'd make it available here. I'll provide more information as I digest and sort through this stuff.

Lovejoy project a hope for rail
Dollars, logic scream for commuter rail
Georgia Rail Passenger Program Fact Sheet
GDOT's Rail Program
Georgia Must Put the Brakes on Commuter Rail (from the GPPF, a right wing think tank with an aversion to pubic transit)
Commuter Rail Draws More Interest
Commuter Rail: Doug Alexander in the AJC
Article from Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers