Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

We can tell that an energy policy is not aimed at ending our nation’s oil addiction in time when the speech presenting it follows up:

The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more and more expensive to extract from the ground. …

with

I set this goal knowing that we’re still going to have to import some oil. It will remain an important part of our energy portfolio for quite some time, until we’ve gotten alternative energy strategies fully in force.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I believe that America can be greater than it ever was before.

That does not mean that its destined to be. Destiny makes us lazy. Destiny is like those post-Tour de France cycling criteriums where the top three places were guaranteed to the three big TdF heroes taking part ~ if you are in shape and need to keep going, maybe Destiny can keep the momentum going ~ but its no way to build up to race fitness.

Indeed, it does not mean that its at all likely. It may well be massively unlikely. But whether an outcome is likely or unlikely is an issue for passive spectators, watching from the sidelines. The issue for participants is whether the game is worth the candle ~ whether the prize substantial enough to make it worthwhile playing to win.

Our modern mess media trains us to the passive observer role, with their habitual “trackside race call” coverage of public affairs. However, if we participate, that trains us in the active player role, and the real life experience is a deeper lesson than the color and noise on the noise box.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Suppose that you wanted to inject a framing into a purely political strategy which also happened to involve sabotaging the future of the nation’s economy? “We sabotaged the future economy” would be a bad talking point there.

“The project we sabotaged was not justifiable on its merits, and was only pursued for purely political reasons”. Aha, much better: the benefit of this framing is when someone points out that the cancellation was purely political, now you have charges of pure politics going in both directions, making it sound “controversial”, which in itself makes it sound risky to support spending billions on a useful piece of infrastructure.

And where better to inject this framing than the pages of the New York Time or the Washington Post? Well, this time it was the Times taking dictation and not bothering to report the whole story. NYT new slogan, it seems, should be “All the news that can fit the Village Frame”.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Way back before the Super Bowl, the White House had a series of exciting announcements, covered at The Transport Politic under the heading The White House Stakes Its Political Capital on a Massive Intercity Rail Plan.

That article is accompanied by the map reproduced here ~ and I stress that the map if Yonah Freemark’s work, not a map presented by the White House ~ of what a HSR system that rises to the “80% of Americans” target would look like.

And one reaction to that map is the same as the reaction to the designated DoT HSR corridors: how is that a national network? Its just bits and pieces.

How to fix this image problem, while also providing a substantial upgrade to the program, below the fold.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

It’s one thing to call for a Nationwide Network of Electric Rapid Freight Rail Tollways, to take freight damage off the Interstate Network, or for its compelling national security and emergency preparedness reasons.

But the argument regarding its sustainability is that it provides modest reductions in carbon emissions on the back of dirty electricity, and massive reductions in carbon emissions on the back of clean, sustainable electricity. So the climate impact gains massive leverage if at the same time we are pursuing sustainable carbon free and carbon neutral power.

And so today’s Sunday Train is on a quiet piece of good news on that front ~ good news that allows states that wish to pursue green jobs to do so without the Grossly Oil-addicted Party in the House of Representatives being able to get in the way.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

The Republicans have won one of the established political Power Positions in American Politics, and so they propose to eliminate funding for Amtrak:

The Bush budgets for 2006 and 2007 proposed ending federal support of Amtrak, the only US national passenger rail service.In fiscal 2005, the federal subsidy to Amtrak was $1.2 billion, which is what Bush spends in six days in Iraq.

Now, that was a 2005 fight by Resident George W. Bush, after he won his first Presidential election and his second term in office. So as one of their “new ideas”, the new Republican House proposes the same old same old.

What a big surprise. Really, you could knock me over with a feather  {Legal Disclaimer: Strictly speaking, a bronze plated ostrich feather when I am already in danger of losing my balance}.  

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

I’ve mentioned several times that there are lots of Federal Rail Authority regulations that are impediments to developing sustainable transport in the United States.

One of these is in the area of “superelevation” and “cant deficiency”. Superelevation is the term used in railroading for the degree of banking provided in a turn. Just as banking a turn on a road makes it possible to take the turn at a higher speed more safely, banking the track on a railroad line makes it possible to take a turn at higher speed more safely. In US rail, its measured in the inches of the higher rail above level.

And it might seem minor technical details, but this is really critical for how much new passenger transport we can get out of our existing rail alignments for how much money.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

We are in the Lame Duck Period. We have real unemployment rates of approximately 14% (counting headline unemployment, marginally attached, and involuntary unemployment as roughly 50% employed, 50% unemployed), and if the economy still sucks this bad in November in two years times, all manner of absurdly idiotic reactions could be elicited from an angry electorate by skillful corporate marketers.

And if the the Republicans are willing to sabotage the security on loose nuclear bomb making material for political gain, surely they will sabotage the economy, as they have been doing.

And with transportation from the Recovery Act creating 630,000 direct and indirect jobs ~ a larger share of jobs than share of funding … attacking transport funding is a critical step in sabotaging the economy.

So, an idea on what can be done about it.  

Burning the Midnight Oil for the Arc of the Sun

We are sabotaging our main labor resource with mindless rote learning to pass “achievement” tests to avoid being punished for not being full of kids of upper middle class households, we are allowing our equipment resource to collapse through lack of demand and we are sabotaging our natural resource through treating nonrenewable resources as an excuse to destroy renewable resources and treating renewable resources as non-renewable resources, which is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In fifty years we have gone from technological leadership on all fronts to technological leadership only in some of those areas under the umbrella of War Department Industrial Policy, and from massive trade surpluses that demanded recycling via overseas investment and imports to maintain international liquidity, to massive trade deficits to allow the Chinese to export their unemployment to us.

In forty years we have gone from energy independence to importing twice as much oil as we produce.

And thirty years, we have shifted our record on land wars in Asia from 0-1 with one draw, to at best 0-2 with two draws, and at worst 0-3 with one draw.

If this damn Empire collapses soon enough, we might have a chance to start rebuilding from the catastrophe it represents, but an equally plausible outcome is falling apart into a squabbling series of small and mid-sized nation states, many harboring revanchiste dreams of re-establishing the Empire.

Burning the Midnight Oil for Living Energy Independence

Last week I raised the certainty that Kasich will return $375m of Ohio’s $400m grant for laying the 110mph 3C corridor track and running 79mph trains on them … and the likelihood that Wisconsin’s Governor-elect Jobs Walkabout will return all or most of Wisconsin’s $810m for the Milwaukee to Madison Emerging HSR corridor.

Thing is, even if the opponents of HSR killed two (or, see inside, three): they had to kill them all. Every HSR line that gets finished will undermine their case, and raise intra-regional and inter-regional jealousies as a force ensuring that HSR funding is provided at the Federal level and matching funds are raised at the state level.

I’m not going to tell you who to vote for. Its a fraught political calculus, whether to vote for a wing of an establishment that is committed to the slow destruction of the US national economy and the slow onset of catastrophic climate chaos simply because the other wing of the establishment is committed to the rapid destruction of the US national economy and the rapid onset of catastrophic climate chaos.

But for Criminy Sake Vote. Not voting is not protest, because the power that be want you to not vote. Not voting is, indeed, compliance with our corporate feudal overlords, or corporate feudal overlords in waiting if I am in an optimistic mood.

Not voting is compliance. Not voting makes you a full fledged member of the Suck-Up Society which our corporate feudal overlords (possibly in waiting) is eager to expand and perpetuate.

I am just an economist of small political brain, so I am not going to tell you whether to vote Democratic or Communist Party or Green Party or Progressive Party or WAS(fr)P {White Anglo Saxon (former republican) Party, eg, Chaffee & Crist} or whatever fringe or protest party you can find. If you’ve got a Clown Party to vote for, vote for them.

But freaking vote. You can vote against the Replicants, You can vote against the Democ-Rats. You can vote against the Constitution Party if you care too. Whatever.

Just vote. Install you and your finicky, dogged, whimsical, bitter, jovial, and/or whatever else or whatever mix of the above that you care to name self into the equation.