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Midnight Oil 
Wed May 20, 2009 at 11:57:28 PDT
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(10 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
 Betwixt and Between, I find myself. I observe the validity of D00m.P0rn shrill warnings about the future ... when seen as possible outcomes rather than when seen as certainties. Yet I also see the potential for better outcomes.
And with respect to the strategy of sitting on the sidelines, weighing the likelihood of one versus the other ... I'm against it. Simply the decision to sit on the sidelines makes the calamity more likely as a result. So I am for getting into the fray and trying to make the calamity less likely and the hopeful outcome more likely.
The Calamity Cavalcade
As far as potential calamities, we do not have to look far for those.
We are on track to have a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere than at any other time in the Holocene. We are engaged in this experiments with absolutely no serious evidence to suggest that it is known to be safe. Indeed, those benefiting in the short term from the reckless experiment will even try to reverse the sane burden of proof and place it on those who do not approve of undertaking the reckless experiment.
The argument being, in essence, that if you are driving through a thick fog, then as long as you don't see any cars coming, its OK to speed.
And of course, before the peril of climate chaos came to our attention, there was already the risk of ecosystem collapse hanging over our head, as more and more populations on the planet rely on an industrial technology that is quite clearly ecologically unsustainable and therefore certain to collapse sooner or later, unless we restructure our technological base to approach sustainability faster than we approach ecosystem collapse.
And then of course, even before the risk of ecosystem collapse was widely understood, the threat of nuclear holocaust.
Flood, Nuclear fire followed by Nuclear Winter, Famine and Plague ... and all three involved in or certainly leading to War ... surely rather than Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is a whole Cavalry Unit.
Against that backdrop, it may seem provincial to worry about a mere collapse of a single national economy from first world to banana republic status, but that is the specific calamity that I am focusing on here.
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Mon Feb 09, 2009 at 11:55:12 PST
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution
 Jerome a Paris at the European Tribune focuses in on the central problem of the Financial crisis, and therefore the central problem of the Bail-Out:
But, pontificating aside, the reality is that we had a large scale grand robbery of the past few years. To make it simple: the Fed printed money, gave it for free to rich people, who lent it to poor people at at nice profit instead of paying them wages; reimbursement was possible only if house prices went up, and that lasted for a while. The rich made out like bandits on their assets, financial or otherwise, and the poor thought they were more or less keeping up with the Joneses (the reality was a large-scale transfer of wealth from one group to the other, no bonus points for guessing which was which). Now that it's no longer the case, the poor lose their house, stop paying their debt at some point, put the banks in a pickles, and the economy unravels. Except that the banks are being bailed out, which means, fundamentally, saving the owners of financial assets (bank bondholders specifically, and bond holders in general) at the expense of taxpayers, thus having the goverment validate and consolidate the past transfer of wealth.
 So leverage is the central problem ... or rather, the central problems:
- For those looking to hold onto their ill-gotten gains, how to maintain the maximum amount of wealth while they deleverage, which means how to convert what was always in a large part fantasy wealth into actual claims on actual productive capacity
- For the other 99% of us, how to prevent those who obtained fantasy wealth from converting it into real wealth at our expense
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Mon Jan 26, 2009 at 08:43:27 PST
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Adapted from an entry at Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence ... links to crossposts may be found there.
 OK, so, to make an egregiously long story merely excessively long, a very strange thing happened on the road to the Stimulus Package. As Rep. Oberstar told the U.S. Conference of Mayors:
That is why we set forth this $85-billion initiative from our committee. It's been reduced in the final going. We expect that it'll come out somewhere around $63 billion, but $30 billion for highways.
The reason for the reduction in overall funding ... was the tax cut initiative that had to be paid for in some way by keeping the entire package in the range of $850 billion.
As I described in Transport Stimulus: You're Doing It Wrong, actual effective stimulus spending was shortchanged -- and in particular spending with substantial long term economic and strategic benefits -- to "pay for" tax cuts.
In reality, if we want to be able to "afford" tax cuts, what we need first and foremost is growth, and economic growth requires effective government investment in the infrastructure of a New Energy Economy.
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Fri Dec 12, 2008 at 21:30:15 PST
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(6:30PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence, also available in Orange
This series started with the following clip:
And I have asked for Electric Trains (Part 1) and High Speed Electric Trains (Part 2). But I am greedy, so I want it all. What I really want is SUSTAINABLE High Speed Electric Trains.
First, it appears that Electric Trains, and Electric High Speed Trains, offer an important step in that direction already, since they offer substantial energy efficiencies ... the most sustainable Watt is intelligent design that eliminates the need for that Watt.
Second, the foundation of the nationwide Electric Train system, the electrification of STRACNET, could be the "donkey that carries its own lunch" ... there may be an opportunity to use the program to cost effectively accelerate harvesting of our nation's sustainable renewable energy resources.
So, yes, I want a coast to coast, 100mph, electric freight and passenger train system. Yes, I want the break through the bottlenecks for the Acela in the NEC, establishment of the Empire Corridor, Keystone Corridor, Ohio Hub, Midwest Hub, Southeast Corridor, Gulf Corridor, T-Bone Corridor, Front Range Corridor, Cascadia Corridor, and the CA-HSR.
And, being greedy, powered sustainably.
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Fri Dec 05, 2008 at 15:07:44 PST
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(8 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Burning the Midnight Oil for Energy Independence also in Orange
 For the last eight years, development of Energy Independent transport has been faced with a dog-in-the-manger administration fighting furiously to move forward into Cartopian vision of endless crude oil fueling endless road works so people can drive endless hours to actually get wherever they need to go to do whatever it is they need to do.
However, there is hope. This year, the Amtrak funding bill included substantial funding for restoring the North East Corridor to an adequate state of repair. On November 4, California passed Proposition 1A, providing $9.95b in bonds for the California High Speed Rail (HSR) and connecting infrastructure. And then, on November 19, John Kerry and Arlen Specter introduced the a bill for funding High Speed Rail projects: Titled the High-Speed Rail for America Act of 2008, the bill would provide money for tax-exempt bonds to finance long-stalled high-speed rail projects.
So let's look at the projects that are on the drawing boards.
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Tue Dec 02, 2008 at 11:30:59 PST
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(9 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence (also in Orange)
Joe talks about trains to the National Governors Association:
(h/t Ryan Avent, Matthew Yglesias)
Three special Federal tasks are the provision of a coast to coast system of electric trains, support for a nationwide "Rapid Rail" network, and support for inter-regional corridors providing true High Speed Rail.
If we pursue the opportunities available to use now, using existing, well tested technology, we can have a big chunk of this job finished within eight years, and can have set things in motion to see an absolute Energy Revolution in inter-regional transport in this nations by 2024.
So it may not be this Christmas, but if we hit hard on this issue, its possible for us to say, "New York, you get an electric train. Boise, you get an electric train. Detroit, you get an electric train. Atlanta, you get an electric train. Amarillo, you get an electric train. ..."
More, including maps, after the fold
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Sun Oct 19, 2008 at 13:04:22 PDT
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(11 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
 Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for Progressive Solidarity,
in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, graciously hosted by the good people at Progressive Blue.
Progressive Solidarity ... its a core concept for building a progressive change coalition. It is, indeed, a core concept for Progressive Populism itself. It says, "You got such a great idea for fixing things? Don't just put it out there and then blame people for not 'getting it'. Go out an earn their attention by finding out what they say they need and working for it."
 Its not exclusionary. If someone is willing to step forward on an important issue ... even someone who is not going to be a partner in the change coalition ... even a moderate conservative like Colin Powell who was and continues to be wrong on one of the central foreign policy decisions in our nation in our time ... accept it.
When Colin Powell says, in his endorsement of Senator Obama for President: But right now we're also facing a very daunting period. And I think the number one issue the president's going to have to deal with is the economy. That's what the American people are worried about. And, frankly, it's not just an American problem, it's an international problem. We can see how all of these economies are now linked in this globalized system. And I think that'll be number one. The president will also have to make decisions quickly as to how to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan. And also I think the president has to reach out to the world and show that there is a new president, a new administration that is looking forward to working with our friends and allies. And in my judgment, also willing to talk to people who we have not been willing to talk to before. Because this is a time for outreach. ... I have no doubt that the economic solutions he would most prefer and those that I would most prefer will not be the same solutions ... I have not doubt that the foreign policy stance he would most prefer and the one that I would most prefer will not be the same stance ... I have not doubt that the terms on which he would wish to "work with our allies" would not be the same as the terms that I would favor.
Colin Powell is, after all, a "moderate Republican" in a time when being a "moderate Democrat" would be considered a center-right political position in most of the industrial world. We almost certainly have different views on how things should be done.
However ...
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Sat Sep 06, 2008 at 18:21:16 PDT
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(9 am. - promoted by ek hornbeck)
The key factoid to be used here is the National Petroleum Reserve. 9.1b barrels of oil. As much or more than ANWR (h/t psychbob).
The sharp edge of the ax is the fact that everyone who is persuadable hates oil companies and their bloated profits.
The tie is simple: "9.1b barrels of barrels of the National Petroleum Reserve. As much or more than ANWR. So why do the Oil Companies want ANWR? Is it because they want the price of oil and gas to go down? Why would they want that?
Its because its cheaper to drill in ANWR, so it will give them more profits from the same amount of oil.
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Fri Aug 08, 2008 at 16:30:41 PDT
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(10 pm. "This is a great essay." - promoted by ek hornbeck)
Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence (8 August 2008), in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by the EENR
Would California have HSR today if it had been settled by France? That's what Michael Mahoney argued last Friday in the SFGate Open Forum.
The French, according to Mr. Mahoney, have a straightforward approach. The High Speed Rail train leaves the city on regular tracks running like an ordinary interurban express. When it gets out into the countryside, the HSR tracks start and it kicks up to full speed ... 220mph and over, depending on the specific train. Then when it gets to into the urban area of its destination, it switches to regular tracks and back to running like an interurban express.
Most of the route is through the countryside, and that's where its cheapest to build ... both directly, and in terms of cutting down on the cost of overpasses.
SO ... what did they do in California?
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Tue Jul 15, 2008 at 07:47:34 PDT
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Now in the Midnight Oil ... also up at Agent Orange, so tipping and rec'ing that diary might help get the word out in a small way.
What do you do when you are a Congressional candidate ... your Presidential candidate is campaigning on the basis of Potemkin Energy policies like drilling for an extra 100,000 barrels of oil a day starting a decade from now (when a Saudi announcement of an extra 500,000 barrels later this year did not move prices by any discernable amount) ... and a gas tax holiday ...
... especially when in the last contentious Ohio State highway funding fight, you as the Republican voted for Governor Taft's gas tax hike, and your Democratic opponent voted against it?
Simple: you lie.
Well, of course, this is a Republican candidate for Congress we are talking about here ... you don't lie yourself, you have an "independent group" with a name like Freedom's Watch lie for you.
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Tue Jul 01, 2008 at 20:28:53 PDT
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(12:00PM EST - promoted by Nightprowlkitty)
{Soon to be a Midnight Thought in Burning the Midnight Oil, also available in Blue and Yellow}I have been reading the commentary in recent transit oriented posts on Matthew Yglesias' blog (explicit links below the fold) ... well, I'll admit it, skimming the commentary of the troll that tries to sidetrack any transit posting by Yglesias ... and as far as I can tell, the idea of the Great American Suburban Retrofit (detailed links below the fold) just has not sunk in at all ... not even a little bit. Instead its the usual "big city transit user saying we all need to live in walkable big cities" versus "happy suburbanite lecturing on how we not only don't all live in Big Eastern Seaboard Cities, but many of use don't want" ... kind of talking past each other. So Once More Into the Breach: We can Retrofit American Suburbia to make it Far Easier to Use Public Transit and offer Walkable Communities as a Suburban Option ... without necessarily abandoning the suburbs and everyone moving to the closest big city. Join me for a design challenge, below the fold. Rough draft in Orange
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Tue May 13, 2008 at 19:54:54 PDT
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Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution (14 May 08),
in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos,
though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
Lets not be under any illusions about the difficulty of the coming election.
And that is: if there is any difficulty, we have made it for ourselves. We are being handed the opportunity of a generation on a silver platter. And while many of use have been distracted by the side issue of who is going to be nominated to run for the Presidency, in another week or so there will be no more excuse for getting sidetracked.
And we can turn our attention to building a House majority so large that the so-called "Blue Dogs" lose their leverage.
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Sun Apr 27, 2008 at 21:09:12 PDT
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( - promoted by buhdydharma )
Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Next American Revolution (28 April 08), in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos,
though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
Roiling through the blogosphere in a slow boil is the fact that the Administration has been caught red-handed engaged in the crime of the precise kind of torture that we tried and convicted Japanese for after WWII ... and for the mess media, the oligopress, its not really any big deal.
And of course it wouldn't be. Avoiding absolutes of right and wrong is precisely what the "he said / she said" style of journalism is supposed to avoid. And there cannot be anything more absolute than the question of whether you will engage in torture ... no ends every justify means that do not work, so torture is not only an evil, but an evil that can never be justified on the basis of preventing any greater evil.
The only word I can use to describe it is abomination.
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Sun Apr 13, 2008 at 20:25:27 PDT
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Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for Progressive Populism,
in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos,
though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
So, how is our fight going a Progressive Populist People's Chamber?
I did a round up before the Ohio primary ... and Ohio is where I live, so I naturally start here (TGAL) ... Burning the Midnight Oil for Edwards' Victories in the Fall
Two of these are listed among some MSM lists of House Races most likely to flip:
John Boccieri, Democratic Challenger for OH-16
John Boccieri's "Get Involved" page
and
Mary Jo Kilroy, Democratic Challenger for OH-15
Join Team Kilroy Sign-Up Page
If you are of a mind to be pushing now in the most marginal races, those are two good ones to support.
Also requiring mention when thinking of flipping seats from Actual Republicans to Actual, Real Deal Democrats, friend of the EENR, Larry Kissell, Democratic Challenger in NC-08.
But the list, as the cliche tells us, goes on.
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Sun Apr 06, 2008 at 19:01:26 PDT
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Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Arc of the Sun (6 April 08),
in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos,
though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
The Coming Revolution in Africa, is how G. Pascal Zachary titles his piece for the Wilson Quarterly (Winter 2008, Vol. XXXII, no. 1, pp. 50-66.{1}) ...
... and yes, it takes a journalist to see the coming Revolution clearly, since so much of the so-called "development" profession has a conflict of interest. As Pascal notes well into his piece: Even as a steady diet of stories about "urgent" food crises in Africa dominated public discussion, these successes became impossible to ignore. In 2004, the International Food and Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) published a series of papers titled "Successes in African Agriculture". The papers both reflected and provoked a revolution in thinking about African farming. They also ended a long conspiracy of silence among aid agencies and professional Africanists. For decades the "food mafia," led by the World Food program and the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, had refused to acknowledge any good news about African farming out of fear that evidence of bright spots would reduce the flow of charitable donations to the UN's massive "famine" bureaucracy, designed to feed the hungry.
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Sun Mar 30, 2008 at 13:38:57 PDT
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 I just recently discussed Tiny Houses as one extreme end of a range of a more sustainable approach to housing. And, because they strike me as really cool, the examples I focused on where the kind of Tiny Houses that can be picked up, put on a trailer, and hauled around, like an old fashioned Shepherd's Wagon, except with inside plumbing, excellent insulation, and 11 foot ceilings in the main living space.
Mind you, I always thought that the old-fashioned Shepherd's Wagon was kind of cool, so add all those "except for's", and its no surprise I thought these were cool.
However, just as cool in their own way are the Tiny Houses intended to be built from modular parts on a foundation on site. And as a one-time Mother Earth News reader (back when it was more of a back to the land for dirty stinking hippies magazine), I was interested when the Tiny House Blog mentioned that the post-80's yuppified "Mother Earth News" has been recently focusing heavily on SIP's, or Structural Insulated Panels.
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Mon Mar 24, 2008 at 13:53:23 PDT
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 Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for the Coalition Change Strategy (24 March), in the Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos, though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
What about the farmers, you ask?
Doesn't seem like a big deal, if you look at the occupations by share of the population.
However, appearances can be deceiving, that way. The thing is, when you look at employment in any local area, you can put the employment into two mental boxes ... export base employment, and local multiplier employment. The export base employment brings money into the local area, and the local multiplier employment spreads it around ... one time around providing services to the export base employees, two times around providing services to the local multiplier employees employed by the first round ... and so on.
Of course, at every go-round, some money leaks out of the local area, so this process is no perpetual motion machine ... just extra leverage to the income that flows into a local area.
(Sometimes a set of jobs get some demand from one box and some from another, but we're people, not robots, so we can are able to see a fuzzy borderline as a normal part of the real world and move on.)
And so that means that when that export base employment leaves an area, it takes additional local multiplier employment with it ... which is something people up here in Northeast Ohio feel in their bones, and can explain in very clear language, even if it is language you will not normally here used in Church on Easter Morning.
Now, go out into a rural area, and they know, equally clearly even if not in these exact terms, that farmers are a big part of their export base employment. So leaving farmers out of the coalition leaves a lot of rural areas out of the coalition.
Even that may not be so impressive if someone is looking at national shares of urban, inner suburban, outer suburban, and rural population. However, shift attention from national averages to national politics, and suddenly one thing jumps out. The killing ground for more progressive populist reforms than any other institution in our political landscape ... even more than the Supreme Court.
 The Senate.
We have, after all, a Federal system, so when particular types of communities are important in the politics of a particular set of states, that is reflected in national politics. In other words, while in a unitary parliamentary system urban populations would be free to exercise a tyranny of a majority over rural populations and ride roughshod over the concerns of rural communities, in a Federal system like ours, there are safeguards put in place against tyrannies ... even majoritarian tyrannies.
So, yes, the farmers.
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Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 21:57:02 PDT
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Excerpted from Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence, forthcoming], in the [Burning the Midnight Oil blog-within-a-blog, hosted by kos, though to the best of my knowledge he doesn't know it.
I've been looking at Tiny Houses, and man, do they strike me as cool.
  
 For example, these above are from The Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. Their smallest house is the 70 square foot Biensi ... but, of course, some people would not consider that a house, since it has no bathroom or shower. To get that, you need to "supersize" to their second smallest floorplan, the XS-House, at 75 square feet.
 Tumbleweed only sells the finished houses that can be towed as a trailer ... for the very largest of their houses, like the 770 square foot monster the Ernesti (pictured above left, at the size that 770 sq. feet must seem in the age of McMansions), they only sell plans, as it must be built on site.
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Wed Mar 12, 2008 at 08:14:07 PDT
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 What if They Threw an Empire, and Nobody Came?
Sometimes there is nothing more tedious than an argument over the meaning of terms. It often gets called an argument over semantics but semantics ... that is meaning ... is what is important arguing over.
The trivial argument that brings "arguing over semantics" into disrepute is which meanings to attach to which word. And, of course, if you want to call that an "argument over semantics" and leave the "of words" implied, be my guest ... if I can work out what you are trying to say, that's good enough.
One of those words that spark endless argument is "Empire". Is there an American Empire? Well, like what Empire? Like the British Empire? Like the Austro-Hungarian Empire? Like the multiple Chinese Empires? Like the several Roman Empires? Like the Zulu Empire?
Whether we call it an Empire or Empire-ish or The Natural and Automatic Consequence of Being the Latest Greatest Country on the Face of the Earth ... is there an alternative?
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Reform Immigration -
March for America
Sunday, March 21
March on Washington
Saturday, March 20
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