I remember the first time I went for a haircut after this particular pogrom, and the receptionist regretfully offered me an espresso or some sparkling water and explained that they could no longer offer me a glass of the finest sauvignon blanc one can get in a moderately-priced box. It was a tiny little thing, but it was a thing of happiness, and the City took it away from us.

There are many possible options. The simplest would have been for officials to just look the other way and use the existing laws to go after businesses that served minors. Barring that sort of common sense, they could have created a license appropriate to the situation, that could be obtained at reasonable expense, and brought the scofflaws in out of the cold. Or, they could have rewritten the license laws specifically to exempt the sort of thing that probably 95% of Mitt Romney’s congregation would declare to be outside the scope of bar and restaurant licensing. But no, they did the dumbest thing possible, and simply sat right down on top of everything.

No one has probably ever decided to up and leave Boston because of this one thing. But stack a dozen or two such pinpricks, and eventually you may conclude this place is just terminally lame and provincially-minded.

That being said, fuck the Post Office, or as I call it, the garbage delivery service…. I receive virtually nothing in the mail other than Boston Globe coupon circulars, offers for high-interest credit cards, and Fingerhut catalogs. Every day, a pound or so of mail goes straight from the mailbox to the trash can. Forget about a change-of-address, I want to know where to file a deletion-of-address request.

Today’s Wall Street Journal:

The agency, beset by historic losses and a plummet in first-class mail, is running promotions, easing rules and planning television and radio ads to encourage more businesses to send pitches by standard mail, the official term for bulk mailings used by marketers to prospect for customers.

“What we want to do is to make standard mail more interesting for customers so we can grow the total volume,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in an interview. “We don’t call it junk mail—it’s a lucrative avenue for anyone who wants to reach customers.”

When I Tweeted yesterday to that effect, I wasn’t surprised that the first reply was, “What? #TeaParty thinks economy was ruined by poor brown people, #OccupyWallStreet knows it was destroyed by corporate greed.” Left-wing protest movements complain endlessly about media coverage that consistently (a) low-balls crowd sizes, (b) emphasizes in-party squabbles, and (c) gives minutes of coverage to the literal lunatic fringe, and seconds to the speakers at the main podium. All of which describe exactly how the Tea Party is covered by any media outlet which is not avowedly right of center, and explains how a movement started in 2009 and generally regarded as a milder version of the Illinois Nazis in The Blues Brothers could play a central role in the 2010 elections and still be dismissed as a collection of racists, rednecks, and retards.

The tragedy in this is not that it will cost the Left elections–because few things are more fortuitous than to be misunderestimated by your opponents–but that enmity between the two sides redounds to the benefit of exactly that which Occupy Wall Street and its regional subsidiaries wish to overthrow. While Tea Party adherents, and rally-attendees in particular, are more likely to oppose illegal immigration, abortion, and gay marriage, the movement’s raison d’etre is political-economic, directed first against the permanent Washington establishment, and second against that portion of the GOP that is happy so long as its place at the trough remains secure. Ask a Tea Partier what they thought of the AIG bailout, and the number of expletives used should roughly equal those of any Occupy Wall Streeter. No less a voice of the Tea Party than the pretender queen Sarah Palin called General Electric “the poster child of crony capitalism and corporate welfare,” and has lately made it a centerpiece of her non-campaign.

I’ve been tempted to dismiss and deride the Occupy-Blank movement as little more than cheap entertainment for sullen and unemployed youth, but to the extent that their fundamental premise is that something feels deeply broken and askew in this country, and that the locus of the problem lies somewhere between Wall Street and Washington, DC, I don’t actually disagree. If the left sees the problem as entirely rooted in “corporate greed,” the right thinks that big business malfeasance is often, and especially lately, crucially enabled by big government. If the left pines for harder commissars with the power to break Goldman Sachs, the right asks where in the Constitution one finds justification for the monies transferred to so many investment banks, much of it at the hands of a Democratic congress and liberal President.

In the movie Enemy at the Gates, Nikita Khruschev sits down with the Soviet general responsible for the impending loss of Stalingrad to the Germans. “I have to report this to the Boss,” he says, referring to Joe Stalin. He then lays a handgun on the table in front of the general and says, “Perhaps you’d prefer to avoid the red tape.” Khruschev rises and leaves, and as we see him making his way down the hall we hear a single shot followed by a dull thud.

What we know of the operation of the government in the days following that Tuesday morning with impossibly clear skies is dwarfed by the amount we do not know. But we do know that not a single senior government official, from the directors of the CIA and FBI, to the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs, down to many of the various field and station heads, was forced to resign, court-martialed, or publicly held to account for their failure. I am sure some careers ended a few years earlier than planned, and some hoped-for promotions to Headquarters turned into dead-end postings in Idaho, but that seems to be the worst of it. During the 9/11 commission investigation, Sandy Berger, National Security Adviser to Bill Clinton, was caught stuffing documents down his pants like a shoplifter slipping iPods up his shirt, for which he was let off with a few late-night talk show jokes at his expense.

Today, the Right focuses on defending George W. Bush’s handling of the aftermath, while the Left tries to bleach history of their part in it all, from the Clinton administration’s failure to comprehend and deal with Bin Laden in the mid-90s, to congressional Democrats’ near-total agreement with the pre-war assessment of Iraq’s WMD capabilities. The resulting partisan food fight ensures that the true failure–that of the bipartisan and permanent governing class–receives no attention except from the fever swamps.

If the past decade has taught us anything, it is that the highest echelons of our society suffer from a conspicuous lack of accountability. 3,000 Americans were murdered by two dozen thugs sent from the most backward corner of the planet, and not one national security official was forced to resign in disgrace. Millions of lower- and middle-class people are paying for hundreds of billions of bailouts, while Richard Fuld, under whose leadership Lehman Brothers collapsed, was compelled into retirement in his early 60s with nothing to fall back on but the change in his couch and some tens of millions in his personal portfolio. As was said of the dissolute House of Bourbon upon its restoration in France, “they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing.”

Even those Americans who are working are generally working less; the typical private sector worker has a shorter workweek today than four years ago.

Employers shed all the extra work shifts and weak or extraneous employees that they could during the last recession. As shown by unusually strong productivity gains, companies are now squeezing as much work as they can from their newly “lean and mean” work forces.

In three sentences, we go from the typical worker having “a shorter workweek today than four years ago,” to companies “squeezing as much work as they can” from those same employees. Something is missing here….

Not that any of this is a problem though, because the real purpose of this program is vanity. Tom Menino, who has as much business lecturing us all on healthy living as he does being a speech therapist, has decreed that Boston should go “from worst to first” in terms of bike-friendliness, and bike-sharing programs are all the rage in Paris and Montreal, which gives it the progressive hat-trick of being pro-mass transit, anti-individual ownership, and best of all, inspired by the French. The sight of Hubway rental stations will set aflutter the hearts of the farmers-market regulars on Beacon Hill and the South End, who, apart from the occasional post-Sunday brunch cycle along the Esplanade, will otherwise rely on the 3-series in the off-street garage to satisfy their transportation requirements.

If this were merely a fashion statement it would be one thing, but this one comes at the cost of $4.5 million to taxpayers, and it is worth asking whether that is remotely close to the optimal way that money could be spent. If the City truly wished to promote less reliance on cars, I would propose that this sum could be put to far better use making the MBTA network more user-friendly by delivering train and bus arrival and route information by smartphone apps, to give just one of many possible ideas. (And yes, I know the MBTA is not a Boston agency, but funding is fungible). Unlike bicycles, a large portion of the metropolitan area makes daily use of the mass-transit network, and no one who rides it regularly would accuse it of being well-operated.

The study of livability as the concept of looking at what makes a place desirable to live in, is perfectly wise and sensible, but in practice that never happens. This can be seen by looking at any ranking of “most livable” cities, lists of which tend to be dominated by Scandinavian gingerbread villages, trendy third-world hotspots, and places like Portland, Ore., where people go to retire from the rigors of their mid-twenties. To read these studies is to inhabit a world where “livability” is only slightly easier to quantify than the mass of the Higgs Boson; invariably they include a dozen or more attributes numerically scored by subjective opinion.

In fact, the livability of a place can be measured simply and accurately by counting how many people actually live there. The choice of where to live is a complex and highly-personal one, including such things as cultural life, employment opportunities, recreational possibilities, cost of living, and the number of cute single redheads under 40. Creating a single representative equation for all this tells us nothing about the population in general, but a lot about the person writing it. Imprimis:

Livability means being able to take your kids to school, go to work, see a doctor, drop by the grocery or Post Office, go out to dinner and a movie, and play with your kids at the park–all without having to get in your car.
                                                                                                                   –Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood

In other words, downtown Detroit–or, to be fair, Beacon Hill. Roughly 90% of adults in the US own a car, and of the remaining ten percent who do not, it seems reasonable to guess that many are, like me, city mice who choose to spend their shekels on $18 martinis, $24 bites of otoro, and other such things as one does not find outside the largest cities. In other words, even the vast majority of poor households have a car. They also, coincidentally, tend to have more living space per occupant than the average (non-poor!) European, but that’s another story.

The point is that LaHood’s nirvana is almost entirely subjective. Some people (like me) prefer living in dense old urban areas, and some don’t. Even of those who do, a large majority still own cars, as they are wonderfully convenient for things like grocery shopping with two young children even when bus and subway lines could get you door-to-door in reasonable time.

To the extent that government policies in the past have unduly subsidized the suburbs and exurbs, I’m all for getting out of that business. By the same token, I’m opposed to putting a finger on the scale in the opposite direction.

First, the enormity of US debt held by the Chinese government is hardly a coincidence: the Chinese government actively manipulates the value of the Yuan versus the Dollar, and as in physics, for every action there is a reaction. In a floating currency regime, the value of the Yuan and Dollar would adjust to make Chinese imports more costly for Americans and US exports cheaper for Chinese. What is not so obvious to Americans is what this imbalance costs the Chinese people.

Shooting from the hip, the Chinese hold about $2 trillion in US debt and have a population of about a billion, or roughly $2,000 per person. In a country with a per-capita GDP of around $3,800, this is an enormous amount of money. What this sum represents in many ways is money that should be in the pockets of the Chinese people, whose low-paid labor earned it, but is instead held by the central bank. It is one thing that the government has essentially forced everyone to partake of this investment, but if it were to be perceived as foolish–and a major default or devaluation could make it appear so–that’s the sort of thing that provokes major upheavals.

But there is another element, in my mind at least as important, and this one is more bluntly geopolitical. Europe does not pose a serious military challenge to China because no European country (or even the EC as a whole) can afford it. Europe’s governments have since WWII (and particularly since 1990) decisively prioritized butter over guns, and the present economic crisis is calling into doubt their ability to maintain their dairies, let alone their armies and navies.

A similar reckoning lies immediately ahead for the US, in the form of the “triggers” established as part of the recent debt-ceiling deal. Unless a bitterly-divided Congress comes together to agree on higher taxes (which will inevitably reduce economic growth) or entitlement cuts (the very thing on which we are bitterly-divided), then massive cuts to defense spending are inevitable. These cuts are likely to fall hardest on the Air Force and particularly the Navy, which is the most capital-intensive of the services, and arguably the least-central to our security if global terrorism is the primary concern.

But it is the Air Force, and especially the Navy, which are most central to countering a rising China. Vietnam, a longtime target of Chinese ambitions, has in recent years hosted a number of port visits by USN ships, and just a few weeks ago participated in a joint naval exercise. In a move which would have been unthinkable not many years ago, there is serious talk of re-opening Cam Ranh Bay as a free port for US naval vessels. And Vietnam is hardly alone: Japan, South Korea, and India have all rediscovered the virtues of a US presence in the region that was until recently becoming a bit unwelcome.

After nearly ten years of seemingly-thankless land wars in Asia, it is understandable if the US public is not particularly excited about spending tax dollars to defend the Vietnamese communists against the Chinese communists. If liberals think the US generally stuck its nose in too many other countries’ affairs, conservatives are feeling like the rest of the world maybe needs to take care of its own $#@! a little more, and the US DoD serves mostly as a form of “defense welfare” that promotes irresponsibility. Fair enough.

The problem is, we are not the only ones who get a vote on what the future looks like. Liberals who see US involvement in a region as malign need to recognize that where we recede, the void will be filled not by Oxfam and Unicef, but by a China whose political-economic structure is most accurately described as fascist. If the US is often clumsy and inept in its attempts to support the right people in foreign governments, China is gleefully unconcerned with the ethics of its business partners. Nor is this entirely disconnected from the War on Terror, in the sense that the low-level police actions, the drone strikes and surgical raids with which even the relatively liberal agree, rely heavily on intelligence and cooperation from a variety of foreign governments.

So from the perspective of the Chinese government, what could be better than the US ensuring the value of her debt by slashing defense spending? On one hand, the investment remains safe, and on the other, the balance of power in east Asia tilts some more degrees in their direction.

For those unfamiliar, Zipcar is a service that allows any person with a driver’s license to spend $12 per hour to park a rental car at any IKEA or Target location. They may also work at a Wal-Mart, though it is unlikely anyone cool enough to be a member would allow themselves to be caught dead at one, even ironically. All “zipsters” enjoy access to a fleet of professionally-maintained zipcars and the hourly rental rate includes zipgasoline and zipsurance.

The problems with this begin immediately. First, Zipcar is sold as being cheaper than owning a car, and this may be true if (a) you are talking about a new imported car, and (b) you live in a place with no on-street parking. Otherwise, it is nearly complete horsefeathers. From 2004-2009, I owned a rather jaunty 1998 Ford Escort ZX2 coupe (stick, natch), which I bought for $2500, sold for $105 (priced by the pound), and factoring in all repairs, insurance, and bribes to get it through one last inspection, it cost me just under $200 per month over its life.

If you factor in only what it costs to drive a Zipcar, the comparison seems sound: I probably drove that car around 200 hours per year, which in a Zipcar would cost about $2400, and they would be in a much newer sled. But the problem is that you do not only pay to drive a Zipcar, you also pay for every hour the infernal machine is parked. Had I taken exactly the same trips, including multiple weekends out of town to visit friends and family, it is a certainty my Zipbills would have been double or more the cost of my humble Escort.

Likewise, to own that Ford required an investment of capital, albeit a small one, which itself required planning and forethought. Driving it reminded me of the sacrifices I had made in starting my business, among them dumping a fancier car. When I was a wee lad, driving around in a fine executive sedan like a BMW 328i required you to have either a high-paying job, a lease payment that made you cry, or wealthy parents; now, any slobbering dolt from a third-rate school with a 2.0 GPA in psychology can enjoy the same experience for $14.50 an hour. What’s next, ZipFriends, who for a single flat rate will hang with you and compliment your taste in rarely-laundered clothing, your Chalupa-toned physique, or your erudition in matters of which superhero could defeat which prehistoric megafauna? I am refraining from Googling this out of fear that even my wildest fever dreams have by now been superseded by reality.

Go get a drink, because folks, I am just getting warmed up.

Owning a car requires not merely coming up with a payment, but social interaction of several important kinds. First, you have the Registry of Motor Vehicles, which provides young people with an early and formative experience of civic life at its best. Second, you have your insurance company, which for many young people is their first experience of true adulthood: spending vast sums of money on a product you barely understand and hope to never use. And unlike all the cotton-wool experiences young people have, full of “student discounts” and mucilaginous praise of “youth” (which as any reasonable person should know is the only form of mental illness which improves with time), your insurance agent will in fact remind you that your youthful incompetence is a risk to us all, and charge you extra, as well it should be.

Then you have your friendly neighborhood mechanic. For your average upper-middle class brat, the local garage or dealer service department is among the few remaining connections to the visceral, earthy, and casually-criminal world of the authentic Working Class. Learning how to talk down a bill, walk out on a scam, and know a fair shake when you get one are not merely important for getting your ride fixed, but for life in general. It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, babies, and sooner or later you’re going to want to get out of that milkbone underwear.

But last, and perhaps most importantly for a generation whose parents chauffeured them from scheduled play date to violin lesson to professionally-produced birthday party, Zipcar wrings out all the wonderful serendipity that owning a personal, high-speed, long-distance transportation device otherwise provides. With YourOwnCar, you can take off anytime, go as far, and stay as long as your heart dictates. With a Zipcar, the meter’s on, and your reservation is always running out. When was the last time you had that kind of leash? That’s right, when your mom was coming over at 9pm to pick you up from summer camp.

The worst part is, I sometimes think might be just how the little bastards like it.