Wisconsin, I love you, but I’m married, and you refuse to accept it.

More on that cryptic title in a few lines. I returned from my Midwestern sojourn yesterday after battling too much traffic there and here (big crash on the Deerfoot slowed my trip home, one made longer by a cabbie who has lived in Canada for 37 years and has not mastered English past the lesson on the hour-long unintelligible rant, and I am SO not kidding here) and was really tired when I got back. So let me first say that I had a lovely time, with family and friends and mostly very pleasant weather. I spent three days in Madison and among more formal events I loved to just walk around and absorb that fantastic college town, one that I was a happy (if poor, along with everyone else) grad student from 1986 to 1993.

I lived in seven places in seven years in Madison and for the first time since I left I got to see every one and documented each visit with a picture. Here was my grad student chronology:

First was this private dorm at 1317 Spring Street near Camp Randall Stadium. It was full of foreign students, which was neato, and homophobic undergrads from every corner of Wisconsin, which was not-o.

I got out of there in June 1987 and sublet a room in an apartment at 1034 E Johnson for the summer and then in August moved upstairs into a studio. This building had BATS. Yes, BATS.

After 15 months there (split between two apartments) I moved the next block over to rent a room with a guy named Mike and his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s spaniel named Daniel. I had to walk Daniel the Spaniel because Mike would just as soon as let him starve (and not get walked of course). I was there, at 923 E Dayton, for a year:

Cute house, but I had to move out at the end of my lease since the pending divorce made my presence tenuous. I moved into a townhouse attached to the rear of an apartment building a few steps west at 911 E Dayton:

I lived there with my cool roommate, fellow grad student Tom Conroy. It was nice to have a roommate who wasn’t scary depressed and didn’t bark madly or fly around the room at night. That lasted a year until August 1990, when I moved into my groovy studio- about 180sf, give or take, right off the Capitol Square at 115 S Hancock:

I was there for two years. Then in 1992 I had the misfortune to meet my last-year-of-grad-school abusive partner and we, at his rigid insistence, HAD to move in together, so we rented a one-bedroom in the Cardinal Apartments a couple of blocks east at 416 E Wilson, apartment circled here:

And so ended my life in Madison when I graduated with my PhD in 1993 and absconded for a post-doc at the University of Kentucky.

Madison is, now, a fantastic place to visit; it’s a sort of smaller version of Portland with the same young, laid-back vibe, and one of the coolest things is that everything in the campus and downtown area is priced for poor students… and one thing I am no longer is poor, so value is just insane. My hotel was just fine and there is too much good food, including my two visits to Parthenon Gyros (note that this site wasn’t working when I tried it) for something that is, quite simply, impossible to find in Canada: gyros on a crisp hot grilled Greek pita with a TON of tzatziki and perfect fries in a huge pile. I also made it to Dotty Dumpling’s Dowry where the burgers are without par- beef ground in-house so they ask how one wants it “done,” a rarity nowadays for sure. This pic does not do the massiveness of the burger justice but it’s the best I could do:

I have to finally say in regard to restaurants that I had one “finer” experience on this trip and it was at Restaurant Muramoto on King Street. I had had enough rich stuff in NW Indiana and fries and such in Mad City and my body was crying out for fish, and Muramoto came highly recommended. It was fantastic. I had a starter of a “salad” of deep-fried pork belly (so much for healthy!) on nice greens with shredded apple and a very bright mustardy dressing; I also had two big sushi rolls, spicy tuna and unagi; both were on par with what I might get here at, say, Globefish, but this place was relaxing and not at all crowded (I was the only customer in fact) so I would chat with the staff and such. It was a very nice experience.

The coffee scene in Madison is not quite where I’d hoped it would be; there were a couple of decent places with La Marzocco Lineas and latte art, but both served cappos that STARTED at 12 oz, so I was thrilled to find a REAL third-wave coffeehouse with a Synesso, beautiful beans from a roaster called Kickapoo Coffee (no roast dates sadly- even at Ancora, which roasts their own, no roast dates anywhere) and delicious crepes to boot. I promised to blog ‘em so here’s the exterior:

…with a sign of pure allure outside:

…and the counter with that two-group Synesso:

It was just about perfect. Way to go, Bradbury’s!

So I am almost completely in my element in Madison, and it’s as much a spiritual home for me as Portland or Toronto are, and is (seriously) one place I’ll consider having my ashes scattered. I mean, look at this idyll, a lazy end-of-semester day on Bascom Hill:

And finally yours truly on the Memorial Union Terrace, with sun and people and air that smells of clean water, lilacs, and in a little while, brats ‘n’ beer:

So, since I love the place so damn much, what’s with the weird title for this entry? Well, when I have nice experiences in the States (and this one was enhanced by the great time I had with my family in Indiana and with friends and colleagues in Madison), I start to muse about just maybe moving back. I’ve mused a lot–a LOT–about how awesome it would be to live in Portland, and of course other places as well. But here’s the rub, and it’s not a bad thing, but I’m MARRIED. I’m moreover married, legally and officially, to another man. And this man happens not to be an American citizen. This is a matter much more complicated than most people, Americans or Canadian or gay or straight, can appreciate. Yes, some states have domestic partnership policies and one, Massachusetts, actually allows same-sex marriage. Oregon has one of the best domestic-partnership provisions in the country, and so people sometimes tell me, “you and Brian can move to [Oregon, Massachusetts, California, etc]; they have same-sex marriage there too!”

No we cannot. States do not administer their own immigration programs, and Brian is not a US citizen. I am. He’s not. And the INS does not give the tiniest smidgen of consideration for same-sex couples who are of different nationalities. If he were a refugee then we’d have part of a leg to stand on, but he’s not, and really, the notion of having to subject Brian to the inefficient, protracted agony of trying to get a green card is something I don’t even want to imagine. Being married in a same-sex union and living in Canada and enjoying non-problematic equality as we do now is something that I will not surrender. Ever. I would only consider moving back to the US alone, and God willing, that’s not going to be an option for me for a long time.

Where does Wisconsin fit into this rant? Well, once upon a time, Wisconsin had the most progressive gay-friendly legislation in the US. It was the first state to make discrimination against people on the basis of sexual orientation illegal in the same sense and in the same contexts as was discrimination on the basis of race. Fast forward to today, and Wisconsin has a draconian “defense of marriage” act, one that also prohibits the state from legalising same-sex domestic partnerships, AND my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is not permitted to offer same-sex partners of university employees benefits (aside from tokens such as athletic center membership and stuff like that). No health insurance! No pension! This is a scandal and while I’m thrilled to see the advocacy from the university to get idiots like this monstrous asshole to appreciate the importance of providing staff with this perk (the same as is offered to all heterosexual staff), I really think the “advocacy” should be more aggressive.

I mean, this is fucking APARTHEID, people. Why are the “straight but not narrow” professors still employed there? Rights means voting with your feet sometimes, and in this case, I am asking UW-Madison professors- and sociologists, I am looking at you- to let the powers that be know that you refuse to work in this environment. It’s not up to the tiny percentage of gay employees to fight this battle. YOU are benefitting. YOU must refuse privilege. Nobody, especially that evil and stupid Huebsch ignoramus, is going to listen to the complaints of a few faggots and dykes.

And yes, I am serious. Wisconsin, I adore you, but I’m married, and you have to wake up and accept that.

A few last words (I hope) about McNally-Robinson

Here’s a nice apple-art cappuccino for ya before the venting starts anew:

And now back to this situation. I’ve been getting a fair number of responses (not all posted because I am only posting comments with what appear to be valid email addresses- you know who I am; I want to at least trust that I can know who you are) to my rant about McNally Robinson, and so I think the issue and my stand on it merits some qualification. I want mostly that readers understand why I’m angry, and what I’m not angry about.

First, I’m sad that McNally-Robinson is closing. This does not mean that I don’t recognise their right to run a business as they see fit. By the same token I’m not angry at Clover Equipment for selling their company to Starbucks, which will, from now on and forever, not sell Clovers to any independent coffeehouse, ever ever. It sucks, it makes me sad and angry, but that doesn’t mean I’m claiming, as one commenter said, that M-R shouldn’t be allowed to do what they want to do to make money. That’s not the point. This isn’t about a company being avaricious; ALL companies exist, at least in part, to make money.

The reason I’m so upset is about how this closing is being sold to us, and the recurring theme in it is, “tough shit, Calgary, this is all YOUR FAULT.” It’s our fault because of the increased costs of doing business here; it’s our fault because the value of M-R’s building was too much for them to resist selling; it’s our fault because rents are too high (and as you can read in earlier comments, Balboa was going to charge M-R $1 million a year), and it’s our fault because our downtown is, as one of my commenters put it, “a ghost town after 6pm.” Actually he didn’t even stipulate “downtown” but you get it.

The problem with all of these excuses, aside from being monstrously and (to me) unforgivably insulting, is that none hold up, unless you just accept the fact that M-R are hypocritical, liars, or both.

First, yes, business costs are high. Labour costs are high. But they’re high in Saskatoon, high in Toronto, and really, really, REALLY high in NYC. This has to be put into perspective.

Second, yes, you made a killing on the sale of your building. Why not be frank about this? You want us to feel sorry for you? We feel sorry for your employees. We feel sorry for ourselves for the loss of a cultural institution here. Do you really expect anybody to feel sorry for you? Well, yes, apparently, given the tone of letters to the editor and whatnot- you’re being depicted as a poor independent business chased from downtown. You aren’t and you weren’t. Stop misrepresenting yourselves.

Third, rents are too high?! This is laughable- you OWNED your building, you SOLD it for a huge profit and now you’re claiming there was something unbearable in the lease terms? Didn’t you discuss this with your new landlord? Did Balboa not expect you’d stay? I’d say it’s shocking that you expect the public to believe this pity party, but again, your PR efforts have paid off. All I’ve heard is “poor M-R, rents are too high for businesses like them to survive.” Amazing spin job there. Shameful, but impressive.

Finally, the “business was slow at night.” You had at your fingertips 120,000 downtown workers every weekday, the biggest downtown workforce, per capita, of any city in North America. You were also mere steps from two huge hotels, the  Hyatt and the Marriot, which house hundreds of potential customers every night of the week. These people shop, eat, and after work pack downtown bars and restaurants. Downtown is not a “ghost town” any more and the outstanding success of theatre and restaurants downtown are testament to this- hell, I commented earlier on how Caffe Artigiano is packing them in on Saturdays and Sundays, and they’re not even on Stephen Ave. Holt-Renfrew is expanding. Fashion Central will be open in 2009. We’ll soon see ground broken a new Eau Claire Market with hundreds of new housing units to accompany the thousands in the Beltline under construction right now. I never saw M-R less than brisk, sometimes incredibly busy, on weekends. If evening traffic was so bad, why not close at 6? And for that matter, if the core sucked so much for you, why not do what you did in Winnipeg and move out of it but to another location in Calgary? You could have adapted. You chose not to.

I’m still angry. I’m angry not only because my favourite bookstore (well, my former favourite bookstore) is closing. I’m angry because of how the owners and the store’s reps, like that manager interviewed in last week’s Fast Forward, keep bashing Calgary and Calgarians with this “you didn’t support us, so we can’t afford to stay” nonsense. Tell the damn truth. You closed the Calgary store because it’s the one you COULD sell off, and at a huge profit, so that you could open new stores elsewhere, in Winnipeg and Toronto and New York City. Godspeed, there, but for the Christ’s sake STOP INSULTING US.

Ain’t no panic like a moral panic: The Calgary Herald, LRT crime, and how to misrepresent crime stats

When I moved to Calgary in the summer of 2000, I remember anticipating what I freak I would be for having to rely on public transit, Calgary being, I was lead to believe, a city that was so car-centred that I’d be like the old housecleaners who were the only people consigned to take what passed for “transit” in Mobile, Alabama, where I lived from ‘95 to ‘97. That entailed a 90 minute service for buses, only until 6pm, and only on weekdays. But I lived downtown, didn’t have my car (which was with Brian until he followed me a few months later), and it seemed that I had a convenient commute on the C-Train, so why not try car-free for a while?

And it wasn’t bad. Off-peak service, which was when usually rode because my schedule permitted me not to have to ride during rush hours, was an unbearable 15 minutes back then (it’s 10 now, even on weekends) versus the 5 or fewer during peak. I also learned that it was not only the poor or whatever other American stereotype exemplifies transit users on that train. Everybody uses transit, at least some of the time, here. According to a report by StatCan that will be released on April 2 (I saw the data tables even though the report itself has been delayed), 16% of all Calgary work commutes are with public transit. This is very healthy- well above the national average of 11% and behind only Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver (just barely); ahead of Edmonton, Winnipeg, Quebec City. But the real jewel in the crown of Calgary’s transit system is the success of its light rail (LRT), the aforementioned C-Train. With 270,000 riders per weekday, it’s the most successful LRT in North America, with more than twice the ridership of the oft-lauded MAX system in Portland, a city that’s more than double the size of Calgary, metro-wise. So being a transit user doesn’t make me deviant here, and I’m proud (and relieved) to say that.

In the midst of justified complaints about overcrowding on the LRT (and some buses too- I won’t even bother with the #2), there has also been a lot of hand-wringing lately about crime, especially since the horrific murder of a woman, a hard-working Filipina mother of five, near the Franklin station on the Northeast line a few weeks ago. Yes, this event was sickening and a despicable, unforgivable crime, committed (probably) by a subhuman dirtbag who has (probably) also raped several women in the Beltline. But is the system unsafe? One murder, with its hapless victim, shocking and disturbing though it is, doesn’t necessarily mark a community as “dangerous.” What about the transit system and its “community”?

Enter the Calgary Herald and its hard-hitting expose on crime on Calgary Transit.

When I spotted yesterday’s headline (”Crime Up at LRT Stations,” or something like that), I hoped this wasn’t just overstating, misrepresentation, or just plain innumeracy that would naturally contribute to the public’s sense of siege about LRT crime. Check out this map:

lrtmap.pdf

The report is crap. Yes, “crime” is “up,” but only if they consider a comparison between 2000 (why?) and 2007 (why?). It’s only “up” if they assume that ridership has remained static over that period (which it hasn’t even remotely done). It’s only “up” if you ignore the fact that it went DOWN between 2003 and 2007. And the stats only make sense of they’re STANDARDIZED, taking into account huge (20% in seven years) increases in transit usage during the studied period and the different numbers of riders at different stations. This report did none of that. It reported raw numbers, which is a terrible way to relate crime info- it’s like those idiots who say, for example, that New York City has the “most murder” of any US city but fail to take into account the fact that NYC has more than 8 million inhabitants. Finally, as you can see in the PDF above, the Herald decided to report its numbers in unreadable bar graphs that only clearly report the total numbers of “crimes.” The specific crime categories cannot be read- what does a “big” versus a “small” swath of red mean? Ten crimes against persons versus two, or a hundred versus ten? It’s impossible to tell; there’s no specificity or clarity to it at all. And the bottom line: There was, over the seven years studied, a 23% increase in crime and a 20% increase in ridership. The headline should be, “Crime on LRT Not Increasing,” but if it don’t bleed, it don’t lead, right, Herald?

(Incidentally, LRT crime went down a lot in 2001 because that was the year of the strike- and the decrease in crime coincided perfectly with a reduction in ridership that year.)

It’s only March, but the Weasel Word Award for 2008 already has a front runner: McNally-Robinson Booksellers.

McNally-Robinson Booksellers is abandoning downtown Calgary on August 1, 2008. And that sucks. They opened a gorgeous new store in a historic space on Stephen Avenue in 2002, and it heralded the continuing growth and strength of that street, especially its 100 SW block, which is home to some very good restaurants and lots of well-maintained old (for Calgary) architecture. McNally-Robinson has been one of my favourite hangouts, and Brian and I have both spent oodles and oodles of cash there.

When I read about its imminent (sort of imminent- August 1 sounds far away right now and also sounds like a long, painful death to watch) closing yesterday, it felt like a sock in the stomach, and I was prepared to damn our overheated economy, ridiculously tight labour market and all the other problems inherent in The Boom for killing another independent business, an important and to all appearances viable one for the downtown.

Then I read today’s story about this tragedy in the Calgary Herald, and I changed my opinion.

This isn’t about a struggling business being “victimised” by our hard-to-handle economy. This is about greed, and about carpetbaggers who have made a quick buck and are trying to make us feel sorry for them even while their story holds no water at all. Consider these two excerpts from Paul McNally’s “official statement”:

1. “Current real estate prices in downtown Calgary make it difficult to sustain a bookstore. The value of the real estate over-reaches the potential of the bookselling business.”

2. “In an average cost structure, the store would be viable and profitable. In downtown Calgary, not so much.”

Okay, let me look at each of these like the good critical analyst that I am.

On 1: Yes, “current real estate prices” do make it difficult to sustain a bookstore, but NOT IF YOU OWN THE BUILDING. McNally-Robinson BOUGHT the Clarence Block (the name of their building) in 2004 from the good, community-minded people at Encorp (the developers of the wonderful Art Central project at Centre and 7th Ave) for $5 million after presumably leasing the space for two years. Then a couple of months ago McNally-Robinson SOLD their building FOR EIGHT AND A HALF MILLION DOLLARS. Not a bad profit, especially when it was Encorp that had invested millions in the historical renovation. So Mr. McNally pockets $3.5 million. I guess this is what he means by “the value of the real estate over-reach[ing] the potential of the bookselling business.” He means they made a big pile of cash selling their business. Now, what happens to that money? Read on.

On 2: The money goes to the owners, I guess, but also to pay for new projects in markets THAT DO NOT HAVE ANYTHING REMOTELY APPROACHING “AVERAGE” COST STRUCTURES. I am talking most specifically about McNally-Robinson’s bizarre decision to allow their daughter to open a bookstore in that bastion of “average cost structures” known as Manhattan. So we’re supposed to believe that Calgary is too expensive, but MANHATTAN is not? No; what we should “believe” is that Mommy and Daddy had to dump a Canadian property so this “proud” Canadian (Western Canadian even! Oh, wait, hold that thought) bookseller could support a new venture in an already saturated (with bookstores) and ridiculously, absurdly expensive city like New York. New York, USA. Our loss is your gain! God Bless America!

I might add that McNally-Robinson has a huge store in Saskatoon, a city with labour pressures exactly the same as Calgary these days.

With respect to that Western Canadian thing: McNally-Robinson did once use this angle it their advertising, that they were “Western” (to the extent Winnipeg is “Western” but I digress) and didn’t have to kowtow to publishers or booksellers in Toronto or New York. Well, guess where they’re opening another new store? Why, Toronto!

This closure was about McNally-Robinson’s chance to cash in while they’re also pursuing this quixotic dream in NYC. It shows how shallow their commitment was to Calgary. They had plenty of business and the same patterns of customers as every store downtown: Massive crowds at lunch that keep you afloat, smaller crowds otherwise, but the store was NEVER EVER empty. No bookstore is packed day and night, and thank God for that. If they’d come clean instead of talking in weasel-worded doublespeak I’d say something besides “good riddance,” but right now, I can only say that.

I’m pissed off.

Yes, I’m a “Nanny Stater,” and it’s your fault.

I blogged a while back about how pissed off I was about how the right wing jerkoffs of the world–well, of the US and some of their deluded fellow travellers in Canada like this guy (the subject of the post, not the blogger)–have made a huge symbolic issue out of the NON-issue of “Merry Christmas.” Around that time was the predictable flood of letters to the Calgary Sun about how “we’re not allowed to say ‘Merry Christmas’ anymore” because of the evil lib-left. And it never ends. Being conservative now entails inventing threats to our “freedoms,” and then, having spread word of this threat, to make it clear that the blame lies with liberals, secular humanism, multiculturalism, feminism, and every other positive aspect of our post-stone-age society.

Now that Christmas is over (even for those lucky Orthodox Christians who celebrate it in January- when I was a kid I always envied them) and “Happy Holidays” has been stored in the basement until the FOX news crowd can trot it out next year to remind everybody that liberals’ desires to be culturally inclusive are worse than the capital crimes being committed by Bush and Cheney every fucking day of the year, we have the new old “threat,” and it’s this phantom called “the nanny state.” This term has been rearing its ugly, ugly head with annoying frequency lately with two important, and absolutely wonderful and celebration-worthy, recent changes in our “regulatory climate” here in Calgary and elsewhere (to varying degrees). The first concerns smoking bans, and the second concerns the recent near-ban of “trans fats” in restaurant foods and (I think) other food for purchase in the city of Calgary, the first regulation of its kind in Canada.

All over the world, regulations concerning smoking in public places have been getting increasingly stringent since the late 1990s. I remember my first visit to a “smoke free” (as in, smoking isn’t even allowed in bars) city: San Francisco, November 2000. It was a complete delight to be able to enjoy a beer in a bar–a BAR!–without having to contend with the stench and respiratory issues (I’m asthmatic) that had been a part of my life, my entire life. Such laws have become commonplace in Canada; Calgary was the last major city to go smoke free (mostly) in January 2007, and the whole province is, as of three weeks ago, smoke-free end to end without the loopholes that existed for “workplaces,” a loophole that, honest to God, let people smoke in taxis since the taxis were a “workplace.” No more.

Now, while Canada is pretty much a nonsmoking zone coast to coast to coast–they’ve even phased out glassed-in smoking pens at airports, which are federally regulated–in the US, it is much worse (if you’re a nonsmoker or a smoker with a conscience); in some states, there are no smoking regulations anywhere. Alabama is one such state. So is Indiana, my home state, where the only municipality that has anything close to what we have everywhere in Canada is Bloomington. In the northwest part of the state, where I was born and raised, only one community even has the watered down “no smoking with minors present” law that was mocked and derided in Calgary (that was the extent of the smoking bylaw, 2003-2007) as being pathetically weak. Not so in Amurrica, where “smoking” and “freedom” are apparently equivalent, and, yes, efforts to just make it so that little kids aren’t seated in smoking areas are seen as the trappings of the encroaching NANNY STATE.

And yes, I know that there are smoking laws with teeth all over the US, but to say that the regulatory landscape is “patchwork” is an understatement, and the fact remains that the US is still a smokers’ paradise relative to other countries. Yet the “smokers’ rights” vitriol is very strong there and so is the whole “anti-nanny-state” discourse, the central claim of which is that the government is sticking its nose where it doesn’t belong and–this is just too damn rich–”protecting people from themselves.”

Okay, stop right there. “Protecting people from themselves”? Let’s make this clear: WE don’t give a rat’s ass what diseases you get from your own CHOICES. That’s your problem. You make it OUR problem because you DON’T only smoke in your own private space; you DO litter the world with your despicable butts; you DO burn down houses and apartment buildings and you DO kill innocent people in the process; you DO (some of you) force kids to breathe in your second-hand poison; you ARE bullies and assholes way, way too often. If you didn’t make the world an intolerable place by your choices, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But we’ve put up with your shit for more than a century. You brought this on yourselves.

I could go on and about the “why don’t they just ban cigs then?” nonsense (yeah, I can just bet that smokers really want that)… let me just say that most governments understand, really, that prohibition doesn’t work and that wars on weed, opiates, coca derivatives, and meth are plenty, thanks, without having to deal with what nicotine addicts would resort to if tobacco where prohibited.

But let me save all of that for another time. For now, I just have to say that I am sick of this very important public health effort, one that is intended first and foremost to protect EMPLOYEES and not the smokers, being reduced to a stereotyped example of the “nanny state” going overboard. We NEED these laws, and so I’m going on record as a proud nanny stater.

Oh, about that trans fats ban. For some reason a lot of pundits and average joes took their stupid pills when learning about this one and decided that this was another example of government deciding what’s best for us and that–this is the really stupid part–the government was taking away a delicious, delicious ingredient from our food. “What next, ban bacon?” was the reply.

No, you idiots. Trans fats are not analogous to bacon or eggs or butter or chocolate or any of the little culinary pleasure that we eat even though they make us feel naughty. Nobody has ever said, “let’s have a trans fat pigout,” and that’s because you couldn’t just head to the 7-11 and grab some trans fats from their freezer case. This is a nasty, engineered substance that is DANGEROUS to humans; it saves restaurants and food manufacturers money, but it is easily replaced with more expensive, but NOT as dangerous, products. No restaurant owner has ever selected trans fats for their lovely taste profiles. He chose them to save money.

And again, the “nanny state” bullcrap has emerged in this “debate” and predictably so. The misunderstanding here is perfectly clear: People think that their “choice” of trans fats has been taken away from them, when in fact they were never given a choice to begin with. A “choice” for trans fats is not one anybody would make anyway, any more than would somebody choose lead paint, or mouse droppings in their cereal. The government is acting to ban a substance that is dangerous and superfluous, and neo-con morons are complaining about this.

Incidentally, Alberta’s “nanny state” told me, until 2005, that I would never be able to legally marry my partner in this province. We’re grown-ups. Where were the complaints about the “nanny state” then?