They whip the whole community into a chattering froth– “we’re going to close the highway; we’re going to pour concrete until we asphyxiate you in your house”– they get the city and the county and the municipalities to form task forces and draft proposals and breathe into paper bags; they strain the local web sites’ talkback forums to their very breaking point; for a year they do this, and then they look around, confused, and say, “What’s all this fuss? Oh… you thought…? No. We don’t have the money to actually do it. We might put in some new reflectors on the dividing lines.”

This is not bad news. Though this is the only place I have spent any serious time, I tend to agree with the columnist who recently wrote that highway 40 traffic is terrible, unless you’ve ever tried to drive anywhere else. Ever been to L.A., by any chance?