Category: Politics and Government

Zoning, ORC 519.25, and 8%

ORC 519.25 says:

The board shall adopt a resolution if there is presented to it a petition, similar in all relevant aspects to that prescribed in section 519.12 of the Revised Code, signed by a number of qualified electors residing in the unincorporated area of such township included in the zoning plan equal to not less than eight per cent of the total vote cast for all candidates for governor in such area at the most recent general election at which a governor was elected, requesting that the question of whether or not the plan of zoning in effect in such township shall be repealed be submitted to the electors residing in the unincorporated area of the township included in the zoning plan at a special election to be held on the day of the next primary or general election. The resolution adopted by the board of township trustees to cause such question to be submitted to the electors shall be certified to the board of elections not later than ninety days prior to the day of election at which said question is to be voted upon. In the event a majority of the vote cast on such question in the township is in favor of repeal of zoning, then such regulations shall no longer be of any effect. Not more than one such election shall be held in any two calendar years.

Which made me wonder how many people, exactly, 8% would be. Well, the last election for Governor was 2018, so a quick trip to the Board of Elections site for the 2018 precinct result details shows

2016 Governor’s Race
Precinct Registered Voters Votes Cast
Hinckley A 1437 1009
Hinckley B 1253 867 Total Cast 4059
Hinckley C 1134 735 8% 324.72
Hinckley D 1213 803
Hinckley E 902 645

 

Since the number of signatories needs to be greater than or equal to 8%, that’s 325 people. Which … isn’t really an insurmountable obstacle in a township with just over 5,900 registered voters — about 5.5% of the registered voters.

Police Resignations

Scott came across a video where some cop in Florida rips into this lady who drive for about a mile after he put his lights on — along a dark, uninhabited road — to stop at what looked like a petrol station. It was odd because I had an uncle who worked in law enforcement and I distinctly remember him saying to get somewhere well lit and around people before pulling over. Put on your hazard lights, drive slower … but get somewhere in public. And visibility helps the cop too — they can see that the blob in your hand is just your purse.

The video had some text at the bottom that said the deputy involved had resigned … but that could mean he resigned before the department was able to investigate the incident, got a job elsewhere, and is out there right now hassling some other person who simply made the prudent decision to stop their car in a safer spot.

Which made me think about some of the Township meeting — when someone from the fire department or police department resigns? They don’t just say “hey, I’m not gonna be working after Friday” and that’s it. They submit a resignation. The resignation is then submitted at the Trustee meeting — and the Trustees vote to accept the resignation. It seems like we could better unsure officers are held accountable for their actions by not accepting resignations if there is any outstanding complaint against the individual tendering their resignation. Wait for the complaint to be resolved — maybe it was nothing and they can resign. Maybe it bears an investigation. But there’s no leaving to avoid accountability.

Arguing with the science

A week or so ago, I came across an article referencing a book about how climate impact will be inequitable — and, while reading the article, I rather disagreed with some of their assumptions. I later encountered an online discussion about the article — which included, among a few other dissenters, an admonishment not to “argue with the science”. Problem, there, is arguing with the science is the whole point of the scientific method. The point of peer-review publications. And, really, modeling socio-economic impact of climate change (or even modeling climate change itself) isn’t a science like modeling gravity or radioactive decay. These kind of models usually involve a lot of possible outcomes with associated probabilities. And ‘argue with the science’ I will!

Certainly, some of the rich will move out first. You can air condition your house and car into being habitable. Companies can set up valet services for everything. But your chosen location is becoming very limiting – no outdoor concerts, no outdoor sports games. You can make it habitable, but you could also spend some money, live elsewhere, and have oh so many more options. Most likely you’d see an increase in second homes – Arizona for the winter and a place up north for summers. Which might not show up as ‘migration’ depending on which they use as their ‘permanent’ address.

People with fewer resources, though, face obstacles to moving. Just changing jobs is challenging. It’s one thing to transfer offices in a large company or be a remote employee who can live anywhere. But can a cashier at Walmart ask their manager to get transferred from Phoenix to Boston? What about employees of smaller businesses that don’t have a more northern location? Going a few weeks without pay on top of moving expense (that rental deposit is a huge one – I’ve known many people stuck in a crappy apartment because they have to save the deposit to move. Sure you get your previous deposit back, but that takes weeks)? Really makes me question the reality of mass migration of poor people.

OHM v/s Survey Results – Word Clouds

I was extremely suspect when the term ‘bucolic’ made it to the tag cloud presented by OHM — it’s a great word, sure. But with a thousand responses … I highly doubt a significant number of people used the term (five did, based on the raw survey results). So I generated a few word clouds of my own for comparison. This is the image presented in the Township meeting — now the idea of a word cloud is that the size of the word increases related to the frequency in which the word occurs.

Compared to the tag cloud generated by separating responses on commas — not great because some people space-delimited their three words.

And separating on word boundaries — also not great because some people’s “words” were actually phrases, but it gets those who space delimited their three words.

And separating on word boundaries and aligning similar-meaning words (e.g. farm, farms, farmland => farm) which becomes a little subjective — does “wooded” and “trees” mean the same thing? Maybe and maybe not. Same with ‘country’ and ‘countryside’ … or even the difference between ‘farm’ and ‘agriculture’.

Barr, Trump, and Defense Strategy

Watching the recordings of Barr’s testimony to the January 6th Select Committee I couldn’t help but think “Barr is an attorney” — I’d encountered him as the General Counsel of the company when I worked at GTE. I knew him as our attorney that led an effort to deregulate the telephone industry — but a bit of research let me to understand he was also an attorney who has been involved in a major political deal-e-o before (the Iran-Contras affair).

So when I hear Barr saying Trump was ‘detached from reality’ and that his election conspiracy theory was “silly” and “nonsense” … I hear someone setting up a defense strategy for Trump: the Tucker Carlson defense — no reasonable person would have believed these statements to be true. “I didn’t know  wasn’t true” is not considered a valid defense when you’ve been told by dozens of well-informed people — willful ignorance doesn’t remove culpability. Now, I don’t know that Trump will open the door Barr constructed. Detached from reality isn’t a good slogan for campaigning. And going the Carlson route would mean admitting not only that he lost in a completely fair election but also that he continued to bilk his supporters for millions of dollars by promoting his claim to the contrary.

Making Statistics Work for You

The local newspaper had a poll (in a heavily Republican area) asking if readers support gun control — now they didn’t define “gun control”, so it’s possible some individuals said “no” because they envisioned something unreasonably restrictive or some said “yes” because they think ‘gun control’ includes arming teachers in classrooms or something. Based on the way they elected to bucket the data, there’s no clear “winner”.

But looking at it as just ‘yes’ or ‘no’ — almost 80% of the readers said “yes”

They could break it out by party affiliation and show that only 10% of self-identified Democrats said they don’t support gun control where 28% of self-identified independents and 24% of self-identified Republicans don’t support gun control.

But any of these charts clearly show that a significant majority supports some type of gun control.

Roe v Performance Art

Since the leaked draft overturning Roe v Wade was released, I’ve encountered a number of forums in which women are advocating we all delete any menstruation tracking apps. This seems, to me, like performance art meant as protest. Not an effective solution to the stated problem.

I get the point — people don’t want their data tracked in a place where the state can readily compel production of records. If they have reasonable suspicion that an abortion took place, they can get a warrant for your data. But deleting the app from your phone — that doesn’t actually delete the data on the cloud hosting provider’s side. Deleting the app has the same impact as ceasing to enter new data. Except you’ve inconvenienced yourself by losing access to your old data. Check if an account can be deleted — and learn what the details of ‘delete’ actually mean. In many cases, ‘delete’ means disable and then purge after some delta time elapses. What about backups? For how long would the company be able to produce data if they really needed to?

But before going to extremes to actually delete data, consider if the alternatives are actually any “safer” by your definition. If I were tracking my period on a little paper calendar in my purse or one pinned to the cork board in the rec room? They may get a warrant and seize my paper calendar too. And, really, you could continue to enter “periods” even if they’re not happening. There’s usually a field for ‘notes’ and you could put something in like ‘really painful cramping’ or ‘so many hot flashes’ whenever you actually mean “yeah, this one didn’t happen” — which would make the data the government is able to gather rather meaningless.

On Five Dollar Gas

This is the third or fourth time in the last decade that I’ve been seeing news reports about “5 dollar gas” or, more generally, astronomical rise in petroleum prices. How much it costs to fill a tank, how much a gallon costs, how this impacts family budgets.

Oddly, I’ve never seen any reporting discuss ways to minimize the impact that higher gasoline prices have. Any help at all, from the trivial (make sure your tires are well inflated, drive at less congested times to avoid idling in traffic, plan excursions so you’re not making a trip “into town” for different errands three days in a row) to the expensive (buy a more fuel efficient car). There’s nothing.

This is how the free market works — something becomes expensive, you need to consider other options. Buying an electric car isn’t cheap — expensive enough that it’s not an option for some people. But driving an electric car is a way to minimize the direct impact fuel prices have on you. At an enterprise level, electric trucks can reduce the indirect impact of fuel prices.