In which business consultants try and fail to utter the words “m— t——.” Tips for trimming business travel costs, distributed by a Dallas PR firm, include: “Avoid taxis. Cab rides can be expensive, and often aren’t necessary. Instead, use an airport or hotel shuttle service to get to your destination. If you’re traveling with more than two people, you can sometimes share a limo for less than a taxi ride.” Gosh, J.B., what are those long silvery trains that keep passing us on the Kennedy?
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“The first need of a city whose population has declined radically is to consolidate those neighborhoods that are viable,” writes Witold Rybczynski, thinking the unthinkable in the Atlantic (October). “Rather than mounting an ineffectual rear-guard action and trying to preserve all neighborhoods, as is done now, the de facto abandonment that is already in progress should be encouraged….It is true that private freedoms would be sacrificed for the common good in the process, just as they are when land is expropriated to build a highway or a transit system. Does this sound heartless? Surely it is less so than the current Pollyannaish pretense of providing services to many poor and depopulated neighborhoods, which are occasionally half revived with community-development projects and then left on their own to decay even further.”
“Those in the organic foods industry aren’t about to jump in the haystack with government to get farm funding,” reports Marie Ostarello in the Chicago-based bimonthly Conscious Choice (September/October). “Katherine DiMatteo of OTA [Organic Trade Association] echoes the industry’s strong opinions against any subsidies. ‘Subsidies create a false economy that cannot be sustained. Subsidies are unnatural input, just like adding chemicals to the soil. The people and the marketplace should determine the price.’”
