Tag Archives: bathrooms

$2 Million Bathroom, by John Stossel

Posted on July 26, 2017 | 1 comment

The shit isn’t the only thing that stinks about this bathroom. From John Stossel on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Did you see the $2 million dollar bathroom? That’s what New York City government spent to build a “comfort station” in a park.

I went to look at it.

There were no gold-plated fixtures. It’s just a little building with four toilets and four sinks.

I asked park users, “What do you think that new bathroom cost?”

A few said $70,000. One said $100,000. One said, “I could build it for $10,000.”

They were shocked when I told them what the city spent.

No park bathroom needs to cost $2 million. An entire six-bedroom house nearby was for sale for $539,000.

Everything costs more when government builds it.

“Government always pays above-average prices for below-average work,” says my friend who makes a living privatizing government activities.

–Obamacare’s website was supposed to cost $464 million. It cost $834 million and still crashed.

–Washington, D.C.’s Visitor Center rose in cost from $265 million to $621 million.

–The Veterans Affairs medical center being built near Denver was projected to cost $590 million. Now they estimate $1.7 billion.

Government spends more because every decision is tied up in endless rules. Rigid specs. Affirmative action. Minority outreach. Wheelchair access. “The process is designed to prevent any human from using judgment, or adapting to unforeseen circumstances,” says Philip Howard of the government reform group Common Good, adding, “The idea of a commercial relationship, based on norms of reasonableness and reciprocity, is anathema.”

But New York City’s bureaucrats are unapologetic about their $2 million toilet. The Parks Department even put out a statement saying, “Our current estimate to build a new comfort station with minimal site work is $3 million.”

“$3 million?!” I said to New York City Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, incredulously.

“New York City is the most expensive place to build,” he replied. As a result, “$2 million was a good deal.”

I pointed out that entire homes sell for less. He said, “We built these comfort stations to last. … (L)ook at the material we use compared to that of a home. These are very, very durable materials.”

To continue reading: $2 Million Bathroom

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Border Lines, by James Howard Kuntsler

Posted on May 16, 2016 | Leave a comment

SLL will be on vacation 5/17-5/21 and will resume posting on 5/22.

This is one of the better commentaries on the pick-your-gender bathroom issue. From James Howard Kuntsler at kunstler.com:

If the Obama Justice Department was really honest about its “guidance” on transgender bathrooms, it would have stated clearly a requirement to provide a new, separate, third category of bathroom or changing room for people identifying themselves as transgender. This would have given such persons a safe, private place to perform their necessary bio-functions without making the other two categories of people, male and female, uncomfortable.

Actually, such a third option already exists in many public places: the handicapped bathroom. These could easily be relabeled “Handicapped and Transgender” — the main feature of them being that they allow for one-person-at-a-time occupancy, obviating any effect on others. And it wouldn’t require expensive renovation of public buildings.

But no, Mr. Obama’s DOJ decided to antagonize large numbers of males and females by coercing them to consort with transgender people, threatening to take away federal school funding if they didn’t allow persons of ambiguous sexuality to use whichever bathroom they felt like.

This reveals the fantastic smug certainty of the political Left in assuming that such matters as the nature of transgender behavior are adequately understood and settled — for instance, that transgender is actually a real sexual category rather than a psychological disturbance, a developmental problem, an extreme fashion statement, or a fantasy. I’m not at all persuaded that this is settled, despite the pervasive wishful thinking of the social justice corps that it were so.

It should be clear after some years of social justice hysteria in this country that coercion is now the method of choice on the Left side of the culture war battlefield: you must believe what we believe, or face punishment. As a Vietnam-era registered Democrat I hugely resent this oppressive political approach. I resent even more the supposed public intellectuals and thought leaders in government, academia, and the media who go along with this despotic conduct — which includes ruining the livelihoods and careers of respectable colleagues among them.

Though I am not generally sympathetic to the extreme political Right, especially its evangelical arm which adopted coercive and punitive tactics well before the Left did, I think the governors of North Carolina and Texas have a case in this new transgender bathroom dispute, though I hope their lawyers argue it on some basis besides scripture and sheer boobish obstinacy.

You may have noticed that more and more we live in a society where anything goes and nothing matters. We got there through the incremental eradication of boundaries, especially in social categories and behaviors. Some people find this exhilarating and others find this disturbing. I happen to believe that the elimination of boundaries is not altogether a good thing. We would probably benefit, I think, from more and firmer boundaries than squishier and fewer of them.

To continue reading: Border Lines

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And in Other News from The Burning Platform

Posted on May 12, 2016 | Leave a comment

http://www.theburningplatform.com/2016/05/12/and-in-other-news/

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Obama’s toilet revolution, by Mark S. Hanna

Posted on May 11, 2016 | 1 comment

Where in the Constitution is the federal government given the power to regulate bathroom arrangements? Leaving aside the Constitution, by what excuse for logic do they right to do so? From Mark S. Hanna at americanthinker.com:

As a Western revolutionary, Obama has been relentless in his efforts over the last seven years to use all the machinery and influence of government, whether illegally (since 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled 13 times that Obama’s actions have been unconstitutional) or legally, to fundamentally transform America into the neo-Marxist democracy he and his father have long dreamed about.

His most recent stunt to this end is to use North Carolina’s “bathroom” law, or House Bill 2, as a springboard for the U.S. Justice Department to issue a sweeping dictate in the name of social fairness and civil rights. House Bill 2, which requires individuals to use the public bathrooms and showers that correspond to their birth sex, was drafted and passed in order to negate an unconstitutional Charlotte city ordinance that forced different sexes to share public accommodations.

What’s most ominous about Obama’s latest maneuver is that the letter sent by the Justice Department to North Carolina governor Pat McCrory stakes out a position for the federal government that would apply to every business in America, as well as all universities and colleges that receive federal funds, that are subject to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

According to Gov. McCrory, the demand letter (read the letter here) sent to top North Carolina officials should be understood as follows:

One thing the nation has to realize is this is no longer just a North Carolina issue. This order, this letter by the Justice Department, is saying that every company in the United States of America that has more than 15 employees are going to have to abide by the federal government’s regulations on bathrooms. So now the federal government is going to tell almost every private sector company in the United States who can or cannot come into their bathrooms, restrooms, their shower facilities for their employees. And they’re also telling every university in the United States of America — it’s not just North Carolina — they’re now telling every university that accepts federal funding that boys who may think they’re a girl can go into a locker room or a restroom or shower facility.

Barack Obama and his militant Justice Department don’t care at all about individuals confused or rebellious about their gender. As with all revolutionary activity, the goal is to seize upon crisis in order to further the aggrandizement of the State, and its control over every competing area of society.

Obama’s response to North Carolina is a classic leftist maneuver of setting up a straw man, or transgender in this case, to ensure and continue to expand federal power over the states. From a revolutionary perspective, states with their 10th Amendment constitutional sovereignty are antithetical to the long-term objective of an international socialist system.

To continue reading: Obama’s toilet revolution

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We Need Separation Of Bathroom & State, by Roy Cordato

Posted on April 26, 2016 | Leave a comment

Roy Cordato does a masterful job of illustrating the rights at issue in the North Carolina bathroom debate. From Cordato at mises.org:

The saga of the so-called Charlotte bathroom ordinance — and the state of North Carolina’s response to it — has taken on a life of its own. At the national level leftists are accusing North Carolina of bigotry while, in the name of tolerance, a growing list of performers and businesses are boycotting the state. Unfortunately, what has gotten lost in all the rhetoric surrounding this issue is the truth about both the original Charlotte law and the state’s response to it.

In late February the Charlotte, North Carolina, city council passed an “antidiscrimination” law, scheduled to go into effect on April 1. It was aimed at protecting what, in the view of the city council, are the rights of those in the gay, lesbian, and transgender community. The centerpiece of this law was a provision that prohibits businesses providing bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers from segregating usage of those facilities by gender, biologically defined. Biological males or females must be allowed to use the facilities of the opposite sex if they claim that that is the sex they identify with psychologically. (Note, no proof was required.)

Much of the criticism of the Charlotte bill was centered around two issues: the religious freedom of business owners and the privacy rights of people, particularly women, using public bathroom and shower facilities. Most of the vocal opposition to the ordinance came from religious organizations and advocacy groups that focused on traditional values. As argued by John Rustin, President of the Family Policy Council:

Similar ordinances have been used to force small business owners like florists, bakers, photographers and bed-and-breakfast owners and others either to conform to a government-dictated viewpoint in violation of those sincerely held religious beliefs or to face legal charges, fines and other penalties that have ultimately caused some to go out of business.

Private Property, Not Religion, Is the Key

While religious liberty is an important concern, the issue is much broader. This ordinance was an assault on the rights of private property owners and economic freedom, regardless of one’s religious beliefs.

The primary targets of the Charlotte ordinance were privately owned businesses that offer bathrooms, changing rooms, showers, etc., for their customer’s convenience. The decision of how to structure access to these facilities may, for some, be based on their religious beliefs but for many others it is a secular business decision. Their goal is customer satisfaction driven by the desire to make a profit and earn a living. The property that they use is privately owned, the investments that they make come from private funds, and those who reap the rewards or suffer the losses are private entrepreneurs. The bathrooms in their establishments are part of the product that they provide.

In a free society based on property rights and free markets, as all free societies must be, a privately owned business would have the right to decide whether or not it wants separate bathrooms strictly for men and women biologically defined, bathrooms for men and women subjectively or psychologically defined, completely gender neutral bathrooms with no labels on the doors, or no bathrooms at all.

To continue reading: We Need Separation of Bathroom and State

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