The Daily Parker

That's what my flight instructor said when the weather looked breezy. Tomorrow's forecast calls for 52 km/h gusts, so I might stay on the ground.

Another flight scheduled, another flight cancelled. Welcome to Chicago.

Via TPM, John McCain, trying to make a point, apparently thinks people won't pick lettuce for ten times the amount that actual lettuce-pickers get paid:

Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here $50 an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So -- OK? Sign up. OK. You sign up. You sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season. OK? Not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend.

Fifty bucks an hour? Ten to twelve hours a day? That's not bad coin. Only trouble is, lettuce-pickers actually only get about $8 an hour, and they only work for a few weeks a year.

As Josh Marshall points out,

Who thinks you couldn't find Americans willing to work in lettuce fields if it paid over $100,000 a year? US labor statistics say the actual wage for this work is about $10,000 per year. And at that wage -- which, let's be honest, we all reap a benefit from in the form of cheap lettuce prices -- no wonder Americans are unwilling to do it.

At least McCain didn't mention cotton picking, unlike Lou Dobbs. But that's a different issue.

Yup. That was, in fact, an earthquake this morning.

Update: Duh. Today's the anniversary of the Great San Francisco Quake 102 years ago. Holy meaningless coincidence, Batman!

Devotees of the ParkerCam will have noticed it has shown a lot of Parker's empty crate lately. This happens because I have discovered the miracle of the dog bus, whereby Urban Out Sitters delivers Parker right to his crate (complete with peeb-stuffed Kong) on days when it's iffy I'll be able to pick him up before 7pm.

The bus usually gets him home around 4pm, in case you're a slave to the ParkerCam.

Just got very bad news from my dad: Reggie died this morning of lung cancer. He was 13.

I'm not usually personal in this blog, but a combination of things have occurred over the past 24 hours that feel pretty good.

First, my apartment is done. Done, done, done. The last door was hung on the last doorframe, the last stick of furniture found a good home for itself, the last drop of paint splatted on the wall. Done.

Second—and this is, I'm not kidding, front-page news in Chicago—the temperature hit 21°C today for the first time in six months (it was 27°C on October 21st).

And finally, I believe I've broken a logjam (passed a kidney stone? sailed around the Horn?) at my office.

I will celebrate with beer, a book, and fresh air this evening.

Living in Chicago, air travelers have two easy options: American and United, both of whom have hubs here (United is headquartered here), and both of whom are two of the top-ten airlines worldwide using just about any measurement.

Astute readers will already know both airlines (accidentally just typed "airliens"—Freudian?) have made news lately. American is just getting around to applying an airworthiness directive to its aging MD-80 fleet, and United just announced serious fare increases that American will no doubt follow as soon as they can update their databases.

<Rant>

Both of them, however, have gone out of their ways recently to demonstrate why we used to have regulated airfares in the U.S. Now, I'm not advocating a return to regulation—in today's dollars, Chicago to Los Angeles would cost around $1,000—but it really irks me that an upcoming trip to Richmond, Va., would cost more than double if I actually flew into Richmond instead of to Washington, even including the $55 to rent a car for two days.

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Via Calculated Risk, the story of Maricopa, Ariz., in which we find Greed, Envy, Sloth, Gluttony, and Pride, but surprisingly little Wrath (and only a brief cameo by Lust):

In the early 1990s, Maricopa was a small farming community with a population of about 600, mostly longtime farmers and Hispanic laborers, along with a few American Indians. Local businesses included a low-profile Nissan testing site and the state’s largest beef-cattle feed lots — industries that chose Maricopa because it was out of the way. But as Phoenix grew, far-thinking developers began buying up tracts of land in and around Maricopa. By 1996, one developer, Mike Ingram, had amassed with his business partners 18,000 acres — an area larger than the island of Manhattan — most of it purchased for $500 an acre or less.

The first subdivision was completed in 2003 and quickly sold out. The median price for a new home in the city was $147,000, about $80,000 less than a new home in Chandler. Other builders rushed to get in on Maricopa. ... Builders literally couldn’t put up houses fast enough, which drove up demand, which drove up prices and buzz. The median house price rose to $160,290 in 2004, then to $212,051 in 2005 and $281,798 in 2006. Subprime financing supercharged the town’s growth; according to First American CoreLogic, a housing-analysis firm based in Santa Ana, Calif., more than a third of buyers in Maricopa in 2004 and 2005 were subprime....

They happily left space in subdivisions for playgrounds and five new elementary schools, which they thought would help bring in the young families they were targeting, but they did not leave space for parks for older kids or for a high school. Each builder worked independently, so there were no paths connecting any of the subdivisions.

I called Daryl Fox in March, when I was back in New York. He told me his house was still on the market — now for $135,000 — and he still had not received a single offer. He said Weiss had told him that a foreclosed house on his block was on the market for $99,000. Meanwhile, the bank had informed him that unless he made payments, his house would go into foreclosure in May.

The story covers just about every reason why trying to get something for nothing, urban sprawl, borrowing beyond one's means, and people trying to make a quick buck make life very difficult for just about everyone.

That's MSNBC's headline on a story that shows how insane people are. Not the woman who let her kid ride the subway—no, I was riding the subway in Chicago alone at about that age during a far more dangerous era—but the people who think she committed some kind of child abuse:

"It's safe to go on the subway," [the boy's mother said in an interview]. "It's safe to be a kid. It's safe to ride your bike on the streets. We're like brainwashed because of all the stories we hear that it isn't safe. But those are the exceptions. That's why they make it to the news. This is like, 'Boy boils egg.' He did something that any 9-year-old could do."

Finally! Someone with a realistic appraisal of risk, and the balance between child safety and child growth.

Requiem et cetera. Who pried out his gun? Just wondering.