Category: Society

Symbols are important. Among the symbols that have cause some significant controversy in recent years are those state flags that incorporated the Confederate battle flag, finally eliminated a few years ago. While not perhaps as controversial, Utah and most likely Minnesota will be getting new flags this year while the voters of Maine will decide whether to keep the current flag or go back to an older version. In all three of these cases the flag to be replaced is one of the hideous “seal on a bedsheet” variety, so that is to the good.

Utah’s new flag was approved by the state legislature last March and will become effective March 9, 2024.

In Minnesota a special commission selected a new design on December 19, 2023. It will become the new state flag on May 11, 2024, unless the legislature vetoes it.

In November the voters of Maine will decide whether to keep the current flag or go back to a version of the flag that was replaced in 1909.

Illinois has approved legislation creating a flag commission to consider the design of a new flag.

In my view all of the flags to be replaced fail several aspects of good flag design. They are overly complicated, difficult to distinguish when actually flying, and contains words and/or numbers.

Jay Bohn

January 1, 2024

I believe that the price should be the price. If you’re shopping for a cell phone plan, you should be able to, as they say, compare apples to apples. Instead, the carriers advertise a price (or perhaps an introductory price), but you have to pay various taxes and fees on top of that, which means that you will pay more, sometimes a lot more.¹ In keeping with this view, I have previously stated: “I would prefer that the waitstaff be paid a full wage by management and that cost be reflected in the cost of food and drink with no tipping expected or required to assure that servers are paid fairly.”

Last week CNN.com published an opinion piece, “Restaurants should end tipping for good,” which has this (accurate) observation: “[T]ipping has always been a scam that enables restaurants to suppress labor costs, which keeps menu prices down. This sustains the illusion of an affordable dining experience because the customer is expected to pay for the labor of service staff instead of the employer.”

This goes for any other service where a “voluntary” gratuity is expected. The customer should be told (in advance) what they service will cost and expected to pay that amount (and no more). The service establishment should adjust its price and pay its employees accordingly.

Jay Bohn

October 30, 2023

1. I also believe, perhaps a bit to the contrary, that taxes should be separately stated so that the consumer knows how much is being taken by the government. ↩︎

In his NJ.com column yesterday, “New book on parking is just the ticket” (also published in yesterday’s Star-Ledger, for once with the same title), Paul Mulshine discusses a recent book by Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World. As articulated by Mulshine, Grabar traces a lot of modern evils to the requirement the new development include a minimum number of parking spaces.

In my day job I’m an attorney, in part practicing land use and zoning law. (I often represent clients before municipal boards that meet in the evening, so I guess it’s a night job too.) The towns in which I appear all have minimum parking requirements. (Even in one city that had a zone that specifically did not require onsite parking, the planning board always wanted to know where the residents of the apartments that my client was going to create would park. What part of “no parking requirement” didn’t they understand?)

I think that a lot of the impetus behind parking requirements is the desire to use the requirement as an additional limitation of what can actually be built. Residential developers usually want to know how many units they can get while commercial developers want maximum floor area. Modern zoning codes control the intensity of residential development by limiting density, the number of dwelling units per gross area of land, as well as by limits on building and impervious cover and floor area compared to the total area of the site. The intensity of commercial development is controlled by similar coverage limits as well as detailed minimum parking requirements, usually based upon the floor are of the building (often one parking space is required for every 200-300 square feet of floor area depending upon the use.)((Parking requirements for restaurants and houses of worship are often based upon stated seating capacity, on the order of one space for every three seats.))

Whatever the ostensibly permitted floor area for a commercial development based on lot size, once you add required parking spaces, you may have no room for the building. Towns regulate not only the number of parking spaces, but also their size. Typical minimum stall sizes are 10 x 20 and 9 x 18 feet. Even at the smaller size a 9 x 18 space is 162 square feet (not counting pavement needed for drive aisles and driveways.((Some towns allow a developer to “bank” spaces, meaning that they are all designed but do not have to be built unless the town determines that they are needed. The land is still reserved for future parking and so is still subtracted from what can actually be developed.))

Buildings can be multi-story (depending on local height limitations), but parking lots are usually a single level. (Mulshine’s column contains a cost figure for parking garages at $40,000 per parking space.)

Now, in addition to providing off-street parking spaces, developers must make a certain number of the spaces “EV-ready” so that electric vehicle drivers will be able to charge them. That legislation contains a small compensation, EV spaces count as two towards minimum requirements, but cannot reduce that actual requirement by more than 10%. Nothing, however, prevents municipalities from raising the requirements to soak up that bonus.

Jay Bohn

June 26, 2023

Aside from Jesus and His mother Mary, every human sins. The means that we all have things that we’ve done or failed to do of which we are ashamed, sometimes deeply so. This truth applies to societies as well. One of America’s greatest shames is slavery. We learn in history that the first African slaves were brought to America in 1603, and the legal institution lasted until 1865, but its pernicious effects continue until today.

I am reminded of this particular passage from Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, delivered during the Civil War:

“Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

America’s long history of slavery and the bloody war that was necessary to end it as a legal institution has led to the continued existence of racism almost 160 years later.

Racism in its most conventional application is judging other by the color of their skin. Racism in its widest sense, the belief that any particular ethnic group in inherently superior or inferior to another, is as wrong as it is commonplace. It is a widely shared trait to fear the “other,” to be more comfortable with those “who are like us,” who, for that very reason, must be better than “others.”

I don’t believe that this will be ended by reversing the hierarchy for a similar period of time. Any scheme that seeks to allocate benefits based on race will only make the divisions stronger. I agree with Chief Justice Roberts when he said: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop
discriminating on the basis of race.”((Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701, 748 (2007).)) The desire to see every governmental organization, college class, or other group “look like America,” as if that will signal triumph over racism, can only be achieved by a quota system.((And once you define a non-racist society as one in which every group is represented everywhere in proportion to its representation in the general population, every “group” that sees itself under-represented will clamor for recognition and its reserved spaces.)) Look at the articles((For example, Joseph Ax says “A decision banning affirmative action would force elite colleges and universities to revamp their policies and search for new ways to ensure diversity in their student populations. Many schools have said other measures would not be as effective, resulting in fewer minority students on campuses.” What happens if the Supreme Court bans affirmative action? Aya M. Waller-Bey writes in her article for The Atlantic, “A Big Problem With College Admissions Could Be About to Get Worse ,” that the college admissions essay has become the place to write about one’s trauma to increase the chance of success in gaining admission to selective colleges that are looking for “diverse” student bodies.

This reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Andrea Doria,” the one where George uses tales of the tragedies of his life in an attempt to prevail over an Andrea Doria survivor in the competition for an apartment. In the end neither gets it.)) about how colleges are going to deal with the Supreme Court’s widely expected decision to end affirmative action in college admission.((Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.)) They indicate that the schools are determined to force a racially diverse class, one that “looks like America” even if they cannot openly consider the race of the applicants. Using quotas to achieve racial diversity is still judging applicants by the color of their skin. It is going to create winners and losers. The losers will resent the system and blame “the other” for the loss of “what might have been.”((I cannot help but think that many of the institutional leaders who push “affirmative action” are comfortable doing so because they will not personally bear the burden of losing a college seat or a job under such programs. Someone else is paying that price.))

Jay Bohn

June 19, 2023

The song starts “99 bottles of beer in the wall,” but Belgian customs officials recently destroyed (with the utmost respect for environmental concerns of course) 98 cases, that’s 2352 cans, of Miller High Life, the “Champagne of Beers.” In fact, it is exactly that nickname that led to the action.

Trademarks and brand names can be very valuable, and their owners will go to great lengths to prevent their genericization. The Coca Cola Company does not want “Coke” to be used for just any carbonated beverage, and “Xerox” is not a synonym for photocopy.

In Europe various regions have given their name for certain products and legal efforts are made to prevent the use of the regional name for similar products made elsewhere through the European Union’s protected designation of origin (PDO) regulations: feta for cheese produced in certain areas of Greece; Parmigiano-Reggiano and Parmesan for the Italian cheese,((“Parmesan” can legally be used outside the EU.)) and champagne for sparkling wine produced from certain grapes grown in the Champagne region, pressed in certain way and vinified by the méthode champenoise.((French wine regions have long had similar protections under the appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) system.))

I get it that Europe has its own laws and it could be misleading to label a sparkling wine as “champagne” if it does not meet the legal requirements, but even “coke” has other meanings beyond the carbonated soft drink, e.g., a solid carbonaceous residue derived from the destructive distillation of coal. There should be no confusion between the sparkling wine and beer (especially in cans).

Jay Bohn

April 24, 2023

First, it was accessible spaces, which have been with us a long time and are required and regulated by law. But then you started to see more and more spaces reserved for all sorts of categories of people: employees of the month, pregnant women, (in Germany there are spaces specifically for all women), veterans. Go to a municipal building parking lot and you may see that every department head has a reserved space right next to the building. Some New Jersey legislators have introduced a bill to require special parking spaces for those driving with children 12 and under in their car.

It may seem churlish to oppose what may bring a degree of convenience to those with young children (although I think by twelve they should be able to work out how to walk into a store), but it just makes me feel that everyone wants to play a victim’s card to get some privilege, not because the 20, 50, or even 100 extra feet that they’ll have to walk to get to the store will make a world of difference, but because they want to be special.

The reform we really need in shopping center parking lots is getting the shopping carts that many can’t be bothered to put in a cart corral out of the way.

Jay Bohn

April 6, 2023

As a reader of political and legal rhetoric, I have noticed that often the writer of such documents will use “crutch” words, often adjectives and adverbs, in place of details and logical arguments. It becomes a battle of slogans rather than ideas.

As one example, let’s take the term “common sense.” When used as a modifier it is often hyphenated, as in “common-sense ideas.” We need not be told what these ideas actually are, it’s just “common sense.”

Some years ago there was a big push for “smart growth” What, other than the opposite of “dumb growth” does that mean?

How often do newspaper headlines and articles vouch for an argument by labelling its proponent as an “expert”?

All of these terms are used as a shortcut by a writer telling the reader, “Just trust me.”

Jay Bohn

March 23, 2023.

In my last post I commented on discourtesies shown to the President of the United States during various addresses to Congress by individual members and the then-Speaker. Such childish behavior is not limited to our legislators as the President and presidential staff have been equally disrespectful.

Donald Trump, both as candidate and as President, seemed to revel in insulting comments and pejorative nicknames. It’s not just that he was blunt, he constantly belittled those with whom he disagreed.

But I thought the adults were supposed to be in charge now. As part of its argument in favor of student loan forgiveness the White House twitter account identified six Republican members of Congress as having had PPP loans forgiven. NJ.com reported this event with apparent glee and pride that it appeared that a former Murphy staffer was behind it. As I previously noted, PPP loans were intended to be forgiven from the get-go, so long as the proceeds were used for specified purposes, primarily to continue to provide salaries, wages and benefits to the borrower’s employees. Not the same thing at all. Are the President’s political opponents’ tax returns going to be released next?

Insults, snarkiness, and trolling may give the speaker momentary self-satisfaction, but ultimately they are not a reasoned response and only serve to increase the partisan divide, the them versus us mentality that considers politics only a game.

Jay Bohn

February 16, 2023

I didn’t watch last week’s State of the Union address, but I did read that there were some discourteous remarks from some of the “Honorable” members of Congress. NJ.com/Star-Ledger Washington correspondent Jonathan D. Salant wrote about it in another unlabeled editorial yesterday.

The recent comments brought to mind the incident in 2009 when, during another presidential speech to Congress, Representative Joe Wilson responded to one of President Obama’s comments, “You lie.”

Once one party does it, the other feels it has to follow. Even more egregious that these comments by individual members was the conduct of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi who ripped up the copy of the State of the Union address that President Trump handed to her. As Speaker Kevin McCarthy did not repeat the gesture, perhaps individual members thought they had to, what?, defend President Trump’s honor?

The State of the Union address is one of our few “state” occasions, with a bit of pageantry. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you must have realized that I am in favor of free speech. But that doesn’t mean that everyone is entitled to the same microphone. There is plenty of opportunity for the other party to respond, including prime time immediately after. And just because the government cannot forbid discourteous comments doesn’t mean that our elected representatives should engage in them. Let the President say his piece.

NJ.com used to allow readers to comment on articles. Every so often I feel a bit nostalgic about that feature, until I remember that most of the reader’s comments were . . . (well, let’s just say that they did not raise the level of public discourse).

The professional journalists are usually more courteous that the reader comments, but that’s to be expected. What I would really rather have is an actual discussion of the issues rather than the personalities. Ultimately name-calling does not advance the debate.

Jay Bohn

February 13, 2023