Liking the Constitution

When I “like” a page/person/business/group/event on Facebook, I am generally doing two things: I am choosing who I will speak to and hear from, and I am telling other people about it (thereby suggesting that they consider doing the same). I “like” my state representative on Facebook, for example, so that I can hear what issues are important to him, see what other local residents think about those issues, and participate in the conversation myself. I “like” an inn in Maine so that I can hear news from a vacation area I enjoy visiting. I “like” a local contractor so that I can discuss renovation mistakes they highlight along with a group of similarly minded homeowners. And I occasionally “like” a group or event simply as a public statement of support, and then promptly block their updates from my news feed.

This seems to be a perfect congruence of freedom of speech and freedom of association. And yet a federal judge named Raymond Jackson has ruled that Facebook likes are not protected by the First Amendment. Not as (written) speech, not as symbolic speech, not as a conduit to speech, not as freedom of association, not even as a method of petitioning the government for a redress of grievances. I must have missed the day in civil liberties class when the professor explained that the Constitution doesn’t apply to the Internet. It does leave me confused, though, about what happens if I call that federal judge a blithering idiot in this web-based forum. Would expressing such an opinion be protected speech? If expressing an opinion in an electronic way isn’t speech of any sort that the Constitution recognizes, can that opinion nonetheless rise to contempt of court? Because I’m searching Facebook for a group called “Judge Raymond Jackson is a moron,” and I’d like to know if I can safely click on the “Like” button when I find it.

Sunlight shouldn’t hurt

A simple set of principles when you’re responsible for public money:

Keep track of the money.
Keep track of your mission.
Be transparent about where the money goes and why.
Don’t take the money for yourself.
Don’t give the money to your family and friends.
Don’t spend the money on something that benefits you, your family, or your friends: no junkets, no office parties, no fancy anything.
Always avoid conflicts of interest.
If it looks bad to people who agree with your mission, don’t do it.

Any others?

Maybe we should expand tipping

IRS representatives all give out their 10-digit ID numbers when they pick up the phone now. Do you think they ever google their numbers to see if anyone is mentioning them? Should we start yelp-rating individual IRS agents? Is there a market for ratemyIRSagent.com? Ok, I’ll go first.

IRS representative 1000233200 in the individual accounts department is lazy, rude, and wrong.

IRS representative 1002577699 in the tax law department is very pleasant. Not in the department I needed, sadly. She helps people who can’t read. (Well, she helps taxpayers who can’t read. I don’t know who helps 1000233200.)

Crossing the 5-hour threshold and more than 10 people for a simple tax ID number assignment is what finally got me to start writing down ID numbers. Without paying attention, my impression was that they were all terrible. I think that impression was due to some of them being terrible and none of them being able to solve the problem. When I look at the two above, terrible only describes one out of two.

“TSA will not ask travelers to do anything that will separate them from their child or children.”

—TSA.gov

Doesn’t that sound nice? Except for forcibly separating me from my child, TSA fully honored that promise last week.

Lisa, carrying our 2-week-old son, walked through the metal detector. I was sent to the AIT, which I opted out of. At that point, Lisa was on the far side of the checkpoint with our infant and all of our possessions, while I was kept out of sight and out of hearing range to await a pat-down. When I told the TSA again that I was traveling with my wife and infant son, I was told I could not move at all to be able to see them or let them know where I was. A TSA agent inspected our bags without waiting for me to arrive, so I could neither ask nor answer questions. A TSA agent confiscated most of our infant’s purified water for mixing formula without waiting for me to arrive, so I could not protest that decision (or even be informed of it until after the dangerous purified water had been removed to an undisclosed location).

This was in the security screening lane reserved specifically and exclusively for passengers traveling with children in strollers. These TSA agents were not dealing with an unusual situation. These TSA agents were simply acting in blatant disregard for the instincts of parents, the needs of children, and their own published promise.

Perhaps the key word in the TSA’s promise is ask. A careful reader would know that the TSA’s promise is meaningless, because the TSA never asks anything. They simply issue arbitrary and capricious demands, and then whine about the public not showing enough respect to go along with our compliance.

It’s enough to make me wonder out loud when Occupy Wall Street will expand to Occupy Terminal A?

What makes a library?

What is meaningful in a library? The books and media? The access to information, or to story, or to history? The gathering and cultivating and cataloging of those elements so necessary to civilization? The refuge from ignorance? The refuge from isolation? The people who make it all happen and help us understand the resources available to us? The open door?

A library to me is a public place, defined by who is allowed in rather than by public ownership. And on that measure, as well as every measure which I mentioned above, the library tent at Occupy Wall Street was a public library. They had over 5000 published books, original writing and poetry and art, people who volunteered there, and people who used the library. They had all that until New York City made the conscious decision to destroy the library.

That act of destruction was, to me, not qualitatively different from the book burning in Opernplatz in 1933. Both were political acts of destruction intended as statements of power, demeaning and diminishing those disfavored by the state, targeting the tangible instantiations of knowledge and discourse.

I want this week’s act of destruction to feel qualitatively different, because it makes me heartsick to have my birthplace behave in any way similarly to the birthplace of my grandparents, a birthplace they were forced to flee. I want to believe that the authorities’ behavior in New York City was callous rather than calculated. But I cannot find the significant distinctions. Is it because in New York only 5000 books were destroyed rather than the 20,000 in Berlin? Because the books in New York were seized and mangled rather than seized and burned? Because the authorities in New York used police and sanitation workers rather than students to do it? Because the destruction in New York was less fully coordinated with other cities, or because it targeted personal possessions as well as books, or because it was accompanied by police beating and teargassing their own citizens? None of those feel sufficiently distinguishing to allow me an easy rest.

Writing is my only means to scream my outrage and link arms with those who stand against this cyclic violence. I weep that my country would do this.

Got dreidel?

The federal government would like me to buy a Christmas tree.

I don’t think the government should be promoting a particular religion. I don’t want my government telling my interfaith family which holidays to celebrate or how. I enjoy helping Lisa and her family celebrate Christmas at Lisa’s parents’ house, but it’s not my holiday. For me, a Christmas tree is religiously inappropriate.

And these ads should be disturbing to people who do not consider Christmas to be a secular holiday, but who view a Christmas tree as part of how you honor or celebrate one of your religious holidays. Do you really want the federal government telling you how you could make your religious practice better? Or telling you that your religious practice isn’t good enough?

Can you imagine the screaming if the USDA decided to run an ad campaign to promote halal meat?

I’m not sure hypothetical is the right word

Hypothetical scenario:

(1) There’s a city board in charge of granting out public money. (2) A member of the board leads the effort to set aside as much money as possible to pay for administrative expenses. (3) The same member of the board then leads the effort to have the board pay her sister to do administrative work, while simultaneously acting as her sister’s agent and only point of contact with the board. (4) This is administrative work which used to be done by board members for free, which could be done by volunteers, and which no comparable board pays money for. (5) The work will not be put out to bid, and the board will not ask for volunteers to do the work.

Is this more or less corrupt if the board member is also the board’s treasurer?
Aren’t there laws that ban this sort of action?
If the board is determined to throw away money on work that could be done for free or more cheaply, is the waste of public funds more important than the nepotism?
Would sunlight help fix any of this?
I resigned hours after (2) happened. Can I retroactively resign before (2)?
How do I get this rid of this overwhelming nausea?

Let there be light

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 changed the rules for light kits in ceiling fans. Prior to that, most ceiling fans with light kits took regular-base light bulbs. In 2007, manufacturers stopped making ceiling fans that took regular-base light bulbs. Many switched to candelabra bases, and others switched to CFLs. We have halogen bulbs with regular bases that we really like, though, so when we put in a 4-socket ceiling fan in 2008 that came with candelabra bases, I rewired the light kit and attached regular sockets.

I forgot about this silliness until we installed a new ceiling fan in the guest room last week. The last time I bought the identical fan for my office, it came with a single 75-watt-max regular-base socket. When I opened the new one, to my surprise it came with a tiny 75-watt halogen bulb. Very cute, good light output, and completely incompatible with using any new efficient light bulbs. Or even older more efficient light bulbs. In my office ceiling fan, I use a 70-watt regular-base halogen that puts out 1600 lumens. The tiny 75-watt halogen puts out 1300 lumens. The new efficiency rules are forcing me to use a less efficient light. And forget about ever putting in a medium-base CFL or LED, since the socket is wrong. This is clearly the wrong outcome of the new rules.

The ceiling fan manufacturer came through for me when I called, and sent me a couple of replacement regular-base light kits for when I want to switch to a more efficient bulb. But I can’t publicly thank them for that, because I agreed with their wonderful customer service rep that we never had that conversation and that they wouldn’t ship me anything. The correct light kits arrived yesterday, in time for installing the last ceiling fan on Thursday. Or would have arrived yesterday, if they had shipped me anything. Which they didn’t. At no charge.

Step 3: Profit!

The USPS wants to close the West Medford Post Office, because it currently turns a profit of only $300,000 a year and is less than 2 miles from the Medford Square Post Office. They are remarkably bad at explaining their reasoning, so everyone wonders why the USPS would want to give up $300,000 a year by closing a profitable branch. The USPS reasoning is presumably that if they close West Medford then the income will all shift to Medford Square when people bring their mail there, and the costs at West Medford will mostly be eliminated, so their total profit between the two branches would be higher.

On the cost side, the USPS is not exactly being honest. The West Medford labor costs are by far their highest expense. Those costs cannot be eliminated, since the workers cannot be laid off. The USPS will save maybe $50,000 a year on rent, utilities, cleaning, maintenance, and equipment.

On the income side, the USPS is being bizarrely optimistic. Some mail volume will go to the nearest branch, particularly for the sorts of mail which have no competition: postage-paid envelopes, first class mail, international mail. But Express Mail and domestic package shipping is a huge portion of their income at local branches, and that shipping has competition from UPS and FedEx. The USPS is betting that most people and businesses will not shift that sort of shipping over to UPS and FedEx just because of having to bring packages to Medford Square instead of West Medford. After all, it’s only an added 5-10 minutes of travel time, an added 5-10 minutes spent waiting in line, and the extra inconvenience of more difficult and unpredictable parking, parking further away from the door, and carrying packages up an extra flight of steps (or an extremely long ramp). For an infrequent shipper, that’s not a big enough obstacle to change their mail volume significantly. For a frequent shipper, that adds up quickly into an incentive to explore alternatives. And frequent shippers are the customers that the USPS should be most concerned about attracting and keeping.

My particular business situation is not unique among mail order businesses. We spend $10,000 a year on shipping. $1000 of that goes to FedEx Ground, and $9000 goes to the USPS. Of the USPS volume, most is picked up at our location (and is therefore counted as Medford Square income, since Medford Square handles those), some is dropped off at Medford Square, and some is dropped off at West Medford. We are probably only counted as $500 of income for West Medford, since that’s all the mail volume we drop off there.

But when we decide on which sorts of packages we are going to ship through FedEx Ground vs. through the USPS, we don’t know which packages we’re going to have picked up and which we’re going to drop off. What we do know is that the West Medford option, 5% of our annual shipping volume, accounts for the majority of our most important packages, and is by far the fastest and least stressful drop-off location for urgent packages. So we set the USPS as a default for 90% of our shipping because of that 5% that goes to West Medford. If the USPS closes West Medford, we will have to reconsider our shipping plan, and we could easily shift at least 40% of our shipping over to FedEx Ground, rather than shifting that West Medford 5% over to Medford Square. If we do that, the USPS will see $7 of lost Medford Square income for each $1 of lost West Medford income on our mail volume.

The problem for the USPS in modeling these outcomes is that they offer frequent shippers like us no way to express the importance of particular branch locations to our shipping decisions. I’ve asked if there is any way to have the USPS appropriately apportion the income they receive from us between West Medford and Medford Square, and there isn’t. That would require cooperation from Medford Square, and Medford Square doesn’t want to do anything that would hurt their apparent bottom line by attributing any income to West Medford. The USPS can’t figure out how to compete with FedEx and UPS, but they have figured out how to compete destructively with themselves.

A filter by any other name would taste too sweet

Lead paint chips aren’t really the problem with lead paint. The problem is lead dust, which is much more difficult to deal with. And using a regular vacuum on lead paint chips can create a much worse lead dust problem.

An important part of the solution is to use a proper HEPA vacuum (a vacuum with an actual HEPA filter and a sealed system so that all exhaust air is forced to pass through the HEPA filter). And those are expensive: the cheapest HEPA shop-vac that I could find is about $500. So contractors and painters mostly refuse to buy them, and complain bitterly (and somewhat falsely) that HEPA vacuums are at least $1000. The reality is that contractors and painters hate the new lead rules and wouldn’t use a HEPA vacuum if it were free.

Or would they?

I’d like to see Massachusetts simply give a HEPA vacuum to every single licensed contractor and painter in the state. No more excuses about the cost of the vacuum, no more reasons to spread lead dust. Just a proactive approach that makes it clear we are serious about reducing this particular environmental hazard.

And we all benefit, whether the HEPA vacuum is being used in our own home, or on our neighbor’s property, or in our workplace or school, or in the restaurants and stores we go into, or in friends’ homes that we visit. This isn’t a gift to contractors and painters. It’s the smart move for all of us.

Public art follow-up

After sending my letter to the Community Development Office and following up, the city has actually decided to include public art in a survey about what our open space priorities should be. That’s a good start, and every positive response helps! So before May 20, please fill out the online Medford Open Space and Recreation Public Survey. You don’t have to answer every question.

Your answers on this survey will affect the city’s priorities for the next 7 years! The survey is at:

www.surveymonkey.com/s/QFNQR5S

In question 22, select “Public programming” and “Public and community art” as items that you think need the most improvement in Medford’s parks.

In question 23, say that you do feel that public art should be a priority. Here are just a couple of reasons: public art enhances the quality of life in Medford by encouraging a sense of place and by introducing people to works of art that can reach out to them. Public art energizes our public spaces. And public art can engage and involve the community in its creation, creating pride and a welcome sense of public ownership of our public spaces.

Draft letter for public art: please comment!

[I want to send this letter, or something like it, next week. Medford is creating a new 7-year Open Space and Recreation Plan to lay out priorities for upcoming projects.]

Dear Lauren DiLorenzo,

I encourage you to include planning for public art as a key component of the new Open Space and Recreation Plan you are developing for Medford. Public art inspires people, engages communities, and enlivens public spaces. Public art provides highly visible opportunities to improve neighborhoods, to support local artists, and to involve children, teens, and community members.

When we paint a wall, we have an opportunity to paint a mural. When we rehab a field or park, we have an opportunity to install a sculpture. When we create a path, we have an opportunity to add interesting designs in the path itself. When we order park fixtures such as benches or lights, we have an opportunity to commission some of those fixtures from local artists and craftspeople. The value of our community increases when we seize these opportunities.

Boston’s Public Garden would not be the same without the Make Way for Ducklings statues. New murals in Arlington, Somerville, Malden, and right here in Medford have fostered community pride and turned kids into artists. Union Square recently added diverse and functional art benches. Art such as this in public spaces draws people in, changes their interactions with those spaces, and makes spaces memorable.

The McGlynn School playground is a perfect example of thoughtfully incorporating public art, with its colorful ground design showing the historic contours of the Mystic River and the distinctive curving wall following that contour. We can expand on that success across Medford, giving each playground its own signature artistic component for people to explore. We can include display space in our recreational facilities for rotating art displays, benefiting our artists (whether they are students, professionals, or amateurs) and bringing art to new venues and wider audiences. That is a future I personally want for our city, and I know that I am not alone. When the Medford Arts Council most recently surveyed Medford residents in 2009 to find out what projects should be our highest priority, more than 100 people (half of our respondents) said that they wanted to see more public art in Medford. The Open Space and Recreation Plan can and should respond to that need.

There are numerous arts groups in Medford who would be delighted to offer suggestions and feedback. Please let me know if I can help put you in touch with them.

Sincerely,
...

What’s the tax id number of my local Starbucks?

To: Notice.Comments@irscounsel.treas.gov
Subject: Notice 2010-51

Dear Sir or Madam:

I run a small publishing business, and I handle the record-keeping and reporting responsibilities for my business. The new requirement under Section 6041 of the Internal Revenue Code would place impossible burdens on my business.

We often pay for computer equipment, book printing, catalog printing, shipping services, advertising, and other items by check. Those expenditures frequently total more than $600 per vendor to numerous vendors in any given year, and so would be subject to the new reporting requirements. I am familiar with the record-keeping and reporting burden of issuing 1099s, because we have to send 1099s to our authors who receive royalties. Having to issue a Form 1099 to each vendor as well would simply take more time and resources than I can afford.

We use accrual accounting for our business, following IRS rules. The new reporting requirements will force us to do a separate and redundant non-accrual accounting for all of our purchases. This added accounting burden is a serious concern and a significant expense for us.

The preferential treatment of credit cards being exempted from the new reporting requirements will introduce further friction into our economy. We currently pay as much as 5% per transaction in credit card fees. The new rules will put tremendous pressure on businesses to use credit cards for purchases and accept credit cards for payments in order to avoid the new reporting requirements. The costs will be enormous, and the only parties that will benefit will be the merchant account servicers collecting their fees.

I have not seen guidance yet on how the exception for credit cards will interact with the $600 reporting floor, but I am sure that the IRS realizes how confusing this will be for businesses. Will the reporting floor be $600 of non-credit-card purchases, or $600 total if the purchases include any non-credit-card purchases? With the exception for credit cards, should the amount reported include credit card purchases or not? When I purchase items from multiple stores in a chain, how do I know whether to combine them? When totaling my annual purchases, what happens if the vendor has changed ownership or tax structure or otherwise wound up with different tax id numbers for different portions of the year? The potential for confusion and error is enormous.

On a practical level, how do I obtain the tax id number for every vendor from whom I make a purchase? Before this goes into effect, will you require every vendor to put their tax id number on every receipt and invoice? That seems necessary if you are going to realistically expect every business to collect the tax id number of every vendor. Please bear in mind that for small businesses which use the owner's Social Security number as their tax id number, this will dramatically increase the risk of identity theft.

Please change the new reporting requirements so that they apply only to larger business entities, such as persons or entities that employ more than 25 people.

Please change the reporting floor to $5000, so that small purchases do not trigger a requirement to issue a Form 1099.

Thank you for your time and understanding.

Priorities

The issue of whether the Green Line Extension is built correctly is the most important issue my neighborhood has faced or will face for 50 years. Please send the letter at this link, even if you don’t live near Boston:

http://www.informedreaders.com/greenline/feir.html

Then pass this link along to everyone you know, and ask them to send that letter as well. It only takes a few moments.

Yours,
Michael

Don’t shout FEIR in a crowded auditorium

Comments for the Green Line Extension public meeting this evening, as delivered by Lisa:

I live in Medford Hillside, and I look forward to the day when the Green Line Extension comes to Route 16, so that I can actually walk to the Green Line. I am gravely disappointed that the state is still not planning to extend the Green Line to Route 16 by the end of 2014.

I believe that the decision to use the College Avenue Station as a terminus is a terrible mistake for the project as a whole and for my neighborhood. The Route 16 Station would allow Somerville and Medford residents to take the Green Line to green space and grocery shopping. The Route 16 Station would serve Medford Hillside, West Medford, West Somerville, and East Arlington, including the environmental justice neighborhoods that were used to justify the entire extension, but are ignored by the proposed project. The Route 16 Station would provide thousands of residents with better access to jobs, to education, and to health care. And the Route 16 Station would avoid the negative impacts of having College Avenue as a terminus. The Green Line Extension is supposed to benefit Medford Hillside with access to the Green Line, not burden us with more traffic and more pollution.

College Ave will serve Tufts and South Medford, but it will not serve Medford Hillside. The map of Medford Hillside in Appendix C of the FEIR is wrong. The walk access analysis in that appendix is misleading, deliberately hiding the fact that almost nobody in Medford Hillside lives within half a mile of the College Ave station.

More than 2,500 people signed a petition asking for the Route 16 Station. We filled the Route 16 Station Workshop beyond the room’s capacity. We submitted over 100 letters supporting the Route 16 station in response to the DEIR. We’ve done our part. You’ve said that Route 16 is your preferred alternative. It’s time to start treating it that way.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

And sorry I could not vote for both

Two roads converged in a twisted maze,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one driver, long I stayed
And waited while my neurons frayed;
I doubted if I should ever get home.

The Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (acronym not actually BURP or BUMPY) would like to know which intersections in your town need improvement, or at least a little couch time with a traffic therapist. Yes, you can vote an intersection off the island!

Here in Medford, 2 of the 5 worst intersections for crashes are within 1/2 mile of my house, and it’s not because of the way I drive. Seriously, I strongly recommend you select your town and vote, or just vote for my least favorites.

My votes and submitted reasons for Medford intersections:

Worst: High Street/Winthrop Street
Tied for worst: Mystic Valley Parkway/Winthrop Street

I drive through the High Street/Winthrop Street rotary and the Mystic Valley Parkway/Winthrop Street intersection all the time, sometimes 4 or more times a day. Both intersections are horrible, terrifying experiences, with cars stacked up and frustrated drivers who get aggressive and do stupid moves. The MVP/Winthrop intersection causes longer backups, but the High/Winthrop rotary causes more near-crashes and often at higher speeds. Both intersections are sheer hell to cross on foot safely, which is a grave concern given that there are commuter bus stops at the High/Winthrop rotary.

A lot of traffic uses both intersections, and the intersections are very close to each other, so a unified solution would make sense. I wish I could vote for both.

Bonus intersection: Mystic Valley Parkway and Auburn Street

I've seen more crashes at this intersection than any other. I've seen more red lights run at this intersection than any other. The light cycles are unclear, traffic often blocks the intersection, and a stunning number of cars end up using the wrong side of the road on Auburn Street coming from Whole Foods to turn left onto Mystic Valley Parkway.

Roofers and writers

Why won’t the major textbook publishers hire freelancers who live in Massachusetts? WGBH produced an excellent 10-minute segment explaining the problem. A 2004 rewrite of the independent contractor law in Massachusetts said that a company can only classify a worker as an independent contractor if “the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer.” A restaurant can pay an interior designer or a web designer as an independent contractor, but a sous-chef is an employee. This law was written to target the construction industry in particular, in the hopes that more of the folks with serious work-related injuries would actually have worker’s comp coverage.

Over the past few years, textbook publishers have figured out that the law might apply to them as well. (There’s no reason why it wouldn’t, the way that it’s written.) So they’ve largely stopped hiring freelancers in Massachusetts when they need a writer, editor, proofreader, illustrator, photographer, or indexer. The publishers haven’t stopped downsizing and outsourcing—they’ve just stopped using in-state talent or they’ve inserted an employment services firm as an expensive buffer between themselves and their freelancers.

This is very frustrating for people who have honestly been freelancers in the creative industries for a long time. But the ridiculous part is that the Attorney General, Martha Coakley, has been ignoring her responsibility to issue clear guidance to employers about the law. Enforcement is extremely limited in practice but not in theory, so some companies are avoiding hiring any freelancers in Massachusetts while others are ignoring the law entirely. The law is in a section on fair competition, but there’s no level playing field when companies are taking such divergent approaches to complying with the law. We should have a clear discussion about when we want to allow companies to hire freelancers as independent contractors, and the decisions we make should apply to all companies. The WGBH segment is a good first step.

City Hall: “This conversation is over”

Back in 2006, we changed some aspects of our house: we tore down a shed, removed an enclosed porch, and added a deck. This was all done with a building permit, and I thought that the building department would tell the assessor’s office what changes had been made. That never happened.

So this year I filed an application for abatement to get those changes entered. I asked them to remove the charge for the shed we tore down, remove the charge for the back enclosed porch we took off, and add a charge for the new wood deck we built. I wasn’t sure how it would all balance out, since I didn't know how they valued enclosed porches and decks, but I wanted the official record of our house to at least show the outline of our house correctly.

Turns out they were willing to do all of that, even though they refused to answer questions before, during, or after the process. And the net result lowers our property tax bill slightly, so that’s ok. But the last thing that I asked them about on the application, the chimney that is listed as a bonus item on our property, was apparently one item too many to even ask about.

Almost every house on our street has a chimney. Some have more than one. But we’re the only ones who get charged extra for a chimney. Since property taxes are supposed to be assessed fairly, I think we shouldn’t be charged extra if nobody else is charged extra. But according to the assessor’s office, my view is ludicrous. So ludicrous that they refuse to actually respond to my request or any more questions. I apparently exceeded my secret allotment of questions. “This conversation,” I was told, “is over.”

It turns out that it’s possible to gather more information by the simple expedient of continuing to converse. I learned that they can print out a property card that has far more information than the version available on-line. A finished enclosed porch is worth $60.43 per square foot, a wood deck is worth $8.81 per square foot, unfinished attic space is worth $8.63 per square foot, unfinished basement space is worth $17.27 per square foot, and regular living space is worth $86.33 per square foot. We may have a mixed use occupancy certificate. They pull information from MLS listings when a house is listed for sale, even though those listings are frequently exaggerated or simply wrong. They have no idea how to do a basic count from their own database of how many properties have a particular feature. They charge for printing out listings, but they don’t know how much they charge and there isn’t actually a way to request those printouts. And they really, truly, deeply despise homeowners. Almost as much as they despise answering the phone.

But I still don’t know why my street address changes at random from 11 to 13. Or why they changed Lisa’s last name in their records, or how to change it back. And I still don’t know why my chimney is worth $2600 more than anyone else’s chimney, or why it’s worth $700 more than it was last year. Perhaps there’s a silver lining. In my chimney.

Comcast should stop interfering with elections

A few months before the 2008 national election, Comcast removed MSNBC from our channel line-up. Of the three 24-hour news networks, MSNBC was the only one at that time that did not appear to be a full-time propaganda arm for the Republican party.

Shortly before the 2009 local elections, Comcast removed our public access channel from local subscribers with TiVo service. At that time, our public access channel was running content about the candidates for local office. Now that the election is over, Comcast has restored our public access channel.

What’s next? Selective elimination of televised political ads? Only showing C-SPAN when Republicans are speaking? An emergency alert saying that Republicans should vote on Tuesday and Democrats should vote on Wednesday?

I have other criticisms of Comcast for their lousy service, price gouging, utterly incompetent employees at every level of sales and support, and fraudulent business practices. I’m unhappy that they bought my mayor, with the result being that we can’t have FIOS here. But it seems like interfering with national and local elections is an entirely new level of evil, and should be punished harshly. It’s a shame that nobody actively regulates either elections or cable providers.

SmartSun, StupidLaw

Looking through Home Depot last night, I saw that Andersen is now advertising Low-E4 SmartSun glass as the way to qualify for the 30% federal tax credit on energy efficiency improvements like replacement windows. See, the new IRS rules (as of June 1) require that the Solar Heat Gain Coefficient (SHGC) on windows be 0.30 or less, even though that’s backwards for an area that actually has a winter (such as, say, the entire northern United States). Andersen’s regular Low-E4 glass in the windows we’re planning on has an SHGC of 0.31, so it doesn’t qualify. To get 30% back from the federal government, we have to buy windows designed for use in Arizona.

Andersen touts that the SmartSun glass blocks 95% of UV rays, which sounds much more impressive if you don’t know that their regular Low-E4 glass blocks 84% of UV rays. And the SmartSun glass only transmits 7% less light than the Low-E4 glass, unless you think that going from 72% light transmission to 65% light transmission is more like a 10% reduction. (Aren’t numbers fun?) But the real silliness is that it’s far more energy efficient in the northern US to promote solar heat gain during the relatively long winter heating season, and use deciduous trees to reduce solar heat gain during the relatively short summer cooling season. The Efficient Windows Collaborative shows that choosing windows with a significantly lower SHGC and comparable other specs can raise your total energy bill by 5% or more in Boston. EnergyStar has been scrambling to reconcile their rules with the new tax credit rules, since EnergyStar has had a regional approach to certifying windows that takes into account differences in regional climate.