Projo Subterranean Homepage News

Monday, 9:47 a.m.
I'm still sick, not in the newsroom today, but want to pass this on for those who might be interested:

From R.I.'s Future, a Democrats' blog:

TODAY, MONDAY, MAY 22nd You are invited to join Markos Zuniga (of DailyKos.com) & Jerome Armstrong (of MyDD.com) authors of Crashing the Gate: (Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics)

* Book Signing – 4:00-5:30pm at Brown U. Bookstore on Thayer St.

* Meet & Drink Beer – 7:00-8:30pm at Trinity Brewhouse in Downtown Providence

Sponsored by the RI Young Democrats and the RI Future Blog

link

Sunday, 12:41 p.m.
I've been sneezing, coughing, fevered with a large heavy head all weekend. Nevertheless, and unwisely, I made a brief appearance last night at a going-away party for a young couple leaving our lovely state because they can't buy a house here.

She's an architect, -- ironically, Sandy has been managing the teardown and construction of a multimillion-dollar mansion on Blackstone Boulevard. Travis does fine cabinetry and finish work. They're married, with no children, no significant debts, and both work full-time. The bank told them they just don't make enough to qualify for a mortgage.

Who can buy an entry-level home here for $369,900? That's the asking price of a tiny house on a tiny lot around the corner from where Travis and Sandy rent now. It's a modest, quiet neighborhood near the Pawtucket line, long home to teachers, public defenders, journalists, postmen and firefighters. New couples buying in seem to have a doctor in the pair.

ONE AREA the report highlights is the disparity between housing prices and typical incomes for Rhode Island's five most common occupations. The jobs and their incomes are: office, clerical and other administrative positions, $28,787; sales and retail, $22,506; food preparation and serving, $16,910; manufacturing, $25,854; teachers and librarians, $40,685.-- Providence Journal (Home price, income gap widening) May 17 report on the HousingWorks RI 2006 fact book. (pdf)

They started thinking about relocating to an area where they could buy a home, perhaps to Saratoga, N.Y., where they both went to college and Travis's father lives.

She started looking in the fall, and has just landed a job with an innovative firm in Glens Falls, N.Y. that designs buildings for colleges and universities. It even pays a little more than what she's making here now. He's got a foot in the door at a construction firm, hired to do finish work on a group of townhouse renovations.

The Saratogian newspaper's real-estate classifieds today include a display ad with pictures of houses that range from $154,900 to $339,999.

The smaller asking price buys a long one-story peaked box on two acres; 4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths (master suite with garden tub) , three-tiered deck, cathedral ceiling throughout, open floor plan.

The top price gets a custom raised ranch 20 minutes from Albany with a stocked pond, gazebo, heated pool and views (there seems to be plenty of land, too.)

Catching my eye, a 4-bedroom mint Colonial with a pool in a family area close to shops and schools. Looks like it has a sun porch on the front for plants, too. Asking price: $165,000.

There, Travis and Sandy will be able to buy a nice house.

If Rhode Island drives its creative youth away to states where incomes cover housing costs, who can buy these houses?

Much of the blame for rising prices is placed on people who work in Boston for higher wages but can't afford that city's even-higher housing prices. (Who can afford Boston? Same problem there for young creatives.)

Boston commuters buy here at top dollar, consider it a bargain and drive housing prices out of reach for local, lower-wage workers. Young artists, musicians and craftspeople -- the cast of the Renaissance City -- find they can longer live here.

That could change. Increased fuel costs could make commuting unattractive; the inability of workers to afford housing closer to the workplace could spawn widespread telecommuting to virtual offices. Workers could then live where we really want to, rather than near our workplaces, and our differing desires might let the demand spread out more, to hamlets, mountaintops or wherever you are now.

The Bostonians could finally flee to the rocky coast of Maine.

Rhode Island could just be a nice, provincial place again, that we live in for itself, for its easy life, where we meet new people knowing we're likely to know at least one of their relatives or friends.

Sandy and Travis might come back, and become part of building Rhode Island again.

I know, it's just a fevered dream...

We know everything about you: The Eternal Value of Privacy in Wired by Bruce Schneier

Fat excerpt:

...Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.

We do nothing wrong when we make love or go to the bathroom. We are not deliberately hiding anything when we seek out private places for reflection or conversation. We keep private journals, sing in the privacy of the shower, and write letters to secret lovers and then burn them. Privacy is a basic human need.

Journal/ Frank Gerardi

A future in which privacy would face constant assault was so alien to the framers of the Constitution that it never occurred to them to call out privacy as an explicit right. Privacy was inherent to the nobility of their being and their cause. Of course being watched in your own home was unreasonable. Watching at all was an act so unseemly as to be inconceivable among gentlemen in their day. You watched convicted criminals, not free citizens. You ruled your own home. It's intrinsic to the concept of liberty.

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

How many of us have paused during conversation in the past four-and-a-half years, suddenly aware that we might be eavesdropped on? ...

He concludes, "Widespread police surveillance is the very definition of a police state. And that's why we should champion privacy even when we have nothing to hide."

Further: Do you really have nothing to hide? Nothing big, just something that would be embarrassing to you. A medical record you'd rather not tell your mother/your boss/your boyfriend about? An ill-advised or indiscreet phone call? A brief, mutually unpleasant work experience? A long-ago memory you still wince at?

Suppose it's all out there, recorded and available to any number of government agencies for any purpose, and perhaps revealed in the course of developing a case involving someone else who knows your secret.

Do you think it's your patriotic duty to be embarrassed in the name of stopping terrorism?

McCartney: Let's get this out of the way: Paul McCartney is ending his marriage to Heather Mills one month short of his 64th birthday. Britain is aquiver.

Two takes: The real reason Macca snapped (Macca is the former Beatles' nickname there) in the Daily Mail.
-- Lady Macca: the case for the defence. Guardian, with lots of comments.

Nice: I'd Thank You If I Could Find You

BBC: Cure for cancers 'in five years'

Crow a la mode: An Apology From A Bush Voter: Conservative radio talk-show host Doug McIntyre at KABC in L.A. suffers buyer's remorse.

Still kickin': Leonard Cohen: A troubadour at Charles's court

Back to bed, sniffling.