It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s driven through any mid- to large-size American city that we Americans are a first-world country with a third-world infrastructure. As we bounce along pot-hole ridden streets that would be considered disgraceful in Manila or São Paulo, it’s hard to imagine that our streets, roads and highways were once the envy of the world—as were our bridges, dams, tunnels, telephones, and power systems—just a couple of generations back.
In the 1930s, during the height of the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt exercised real leadership—and congressmen and senators gladly followed in a spirit of bipartisanship which we haven’t seen in half a century—in promoting a massive public works program to get America working again. Roads, schools, public buildings of all kinds (some quite beautiful and impressive), power grids and phone systems, harbors, dams, hospitals—all were built by government-paid workers, mostly men, who were glad to get a steady paycheck to take home to their families. Not only did it stanch the flow of red ink in state treasuries—after all, people earning paychecks tend to spend them, including such things as taxes—but it dramatically restored the pride and self-respect that American workers had lost after long periods of unemployment.
A second phase of infrastructure-building occurred during the 1950s when, under the leadership of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Congress authorized the funding of the National Interstate System. This program was first proposed in the late 1930s under the leadership of Pres. Roosevelt. In 1941, he appointed a National Interregional Highway Committee to conduct a needs assessment and prepare a feasibility study for what was ultimately to become a nationwide grid of first-class roads and interstate highways. The intervention of World War II and the Korean War delayed work on the National Interstate System, but once it received serious funding from Congress, it created many, many thousands of jobs, spurred the development of whole new industries, promoted a tremendous expansion of commerce, increased our tax base by an enormous amount (some say by as much as 90 times the pre-World War II levels)—all without adding to any budget deficit, because it was funded by the Federal Gas Tax on a “pay-as-you-go” basis.
During the 50 years or so since the National Interstate System was built, our bridges, dams, roads, highways, and most of the rest of our infrastructure has been neglected. This especially applies to our aging (and aged) train system. We are the only advanced industrial country that lacks a coherent public transportation policy and adequate public transportation.
I remember early-adolescent trips in the mid-’60s on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Super Chief leaving Union Station in downtown Los Angeles and arriving in Chicago’s Dearborn Station some 39 hours later. Contrast this with an Amtrak trip in early December 1993 departing the same Union Station and arriving in Seattle some 45 hours later, a trip of approximately half the distance taking six hours more. This was due to the long-neglected roadbed on which the tracks were laid and the indifference of our political leaders who got large sums of campaign contributions from the auto, oil, tire, and insurance industries.
I have read with great fascination (and more than a little envy) about the recent developments in China regarding their rapidly-expanding, world-class high-speed rail network. Although the Chinese have benefited greatly from misguided and unfair U.S. trade policies (been to Walmart lately?), thus allowing them to accumulate massive amounts of money to devote to infrastructure programs at U.S. consumer (and taxpayer) expense, I have to applaud their ingenuity and foresight in developing a really good, really national high-speed rail network.
What have they discovered that we seem to have forgotten?
That rail is the road to recovery.
This country was BUILT because of the railroads. Whatever you might say about the “Robber Barons” of the “Gilded Age” — the Jay Goulds, the Jacob Astors, the Leland Stanfords, the Mark Hopkinses — they actually built the railroads and it was through the railroads that America expanded from ocean to ocean.
Our economy and culture were largely developed through the notion of expansion: west from the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific. Railroads were an integral part of that development.
In the decades following World War II, the Big Four industries in California—auto, oil, tires, insurance—engaged in a massive program of political bribery, i.e., campaign contributions, to elect right-wing tools and compliant “yes-men” to Congress (and the state house), politicians who would pass laws that promoted these industries’ automobile-centric agendas. Coupled with this political chicanery, massive amounts of propaganda in the form of movies, television shows, radio programs, and major sustained advertising campaigns convinced an unsophisticated and uninvolved electorate to keep electing these politicians, who kept passing laws that were lopsidedly in favor of Big Oil, Big, Auto, Big Tires, and Big Insurance, all to the detriment of the middle class and the poor. The result? Urban sprawl, no land-use planning, no city-centers like they had in Europe or in the Eastern Seaboard cities such as Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington. And to hell with the environment.
These short-sighted policies resulted in continued sprawl, the ghettoization (some call it the “Balkanization”) of large parts of California (and Texas and other areas), of massive traffic jams and declining quality of life. Automobiles represented “freedom,” but in reality they have enslaved us.
From a strictly self-interested economic perspective, one has to have one’s head examined to consider owning more than one car (if that). Why?
Commute times have trebled in the last 10-15 years; the cost of gas likewise is about three times higher than it was in 2000; insurance, repairs and maintenance, the purchase price, the interest costs, all have gone through the roof. A top-of-the-line luxury car (Cadillac Coupe deVille) cost about $5,250 in 1960 (about 10 months’ average salary in those days). Now, a similar quality car costs about $90,000, about 30 months’ average salary in today’s dollars).
Rail travel, by contrast, still represents a relative bargain, even though our passenger rail system in this country is extremely low quality and decidedly passenger-unfriendly. Let’s compare three modes of travel and consider the average Passenger Miles Per Gallon (PMPG) for each.
The average PMPG (as of 2007, the last year for which statistics are available) for rail is 700; for passenger vehicles it’s about 100 PMPG, fully-loaded with five passengers; and for airplanes it’s 36 PMPG (of course, the tradeoff is speed).
We have to consider that we, as a nation, are waiting more and more: at stoplights, in traffic jams, in airports. The collective “down time” in lost productivity is staggering.
The Texas Transportation Institute estimated that, in 2000, the 75 largest metropolitan areas experienced 3.6 billion vehicle-hours of delay, resulting in 5.7 billion U.S. gallons (21.6 billion liters) in wasted fuel and $67.5 billion in lost productivity, or about 0.7% of the nation’s GDP. It also estimated that the annual cost of congestion for each driver was approximately $1,000 in very large cities and $200 in small cities. Traffic congestion is increasing in major cities and delays are becoming more frequent in smaller cities and rural areas.
By late 2010 the five cities in the United States with the worst rush hour traffic congestion were New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Seattle, and Los Angeles. Recent estimates are that our delay-related costs of wasted fuel and lost productivity now amount to 16.1 billion U.S. gallons and about $200 BILLION.
These figures don’t include the extra accidents, the health costs of the extra smog produced by all those idling engines, the increase in global warming because of the huge increase in carbon emissions from those cars, the extra heart attacks and strokes generated from traffic-related stress, and other social and political costs associated with having a gasoline-based economy.
In short, cars create a HUGE burden of costs that come with the so-called “freedom” they allegedly provide.
We can do something about these burdens by going back to what worked very well in this country for about 140 years (1830 – 1970): get back to the passenger train as a major part of an integrated, multi-modal public transportation policy. Make it really high-speed (200 MPH at a minimum) and you will beat the socks off cars, motorcycles, buses, and even airplanes (on trips of up to 1,000 miles).
Because of security concerns, we spend a lot of time waiting at the airport. It is common to have to arrive there three hours before a flight. On a flight from Los Angeles to Portland (roughly 1,000 miles) a typical flight time is a little over two hours; add the travel to the airport, plus the wait time, and your total time from door to door is closer to six – six 1/2 hours. Conversely, a high-speed train traveling at 250 MPH could make the trip in about four hours, thus shaving an hour and a half or more off the trip.
But it’s not just cost-savings, time-savings, convenience, and environmental protection (all worthy goals in and of themselves). No, developing a U.S. (preferably California)-based rail manufacturing industry would have profound national benefits in terms of job creation, improving our transportation infrastructure, increasing the tax base, and expanding the economy.
I would like the U.S. to be as committed to a “green economy,” including high-speed rail, as we were to the goal of putting a man on the moon.
To make this a serious effort, the federal government would have to invest something on the order of $55-$60 billion in Research and Development and Phase I subsidies for high-speed rail programs in the following high-population areas:
WEST COAST:
(A) Northern Corridor: San Francisco – Portland – Seattle;
(B) Central Corridor: San Francisco – Santa Barbara – Los Angeles;
(C) Southern Corridor: Los Angeles – Santa Ana – San Diego;
(D) Eastern Corridor: Barstow – Victorville – San Bernardino – Riverside – Santa Ana.
EAST COAST:
(E) Northern Corridor: Burlington/Montpelier – Boston – New York;
(F) Central Corridor: New York – Philadelphia – Washington, D.C.
(G) Southern Corridor: Washington, D.C. – Atlanta – Orlando – Miami
Later, in Phases II and III, east-west traffic would make a lot of sense, too (e.g., Minneapolis-St. Paul – Milwaukee – Chicago; Chicago – Indianapolis – St. Louis; St. Louis – New Orleans routes could intersect with east-to-west, and west-to-east routes, thus forming a national grid).
I envision the development of U.S. factories in the San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, and Camden, New Jersey areas, employing between 36,000 and 48,000 engineers, production workers, and office staff to design and build rails, the trains themselves, and the necessary electronics and control apparatus. Additionally, between 100,000 and 120,000 workers would be needed to work on the road beds, lay rails, and install all of the necessary infrastructure (stations, power poles, etc.) A further complement of approximately 10,000 – 12,000 lawyers, paralegals, legal secretaries, file clerks, and other support staff would be needed for acquisition of rights of way, drafting of contracts, handling the myriad of legal, financial, accounting and insurance tasks associated with this massive project. Let us not forget the additional 20,000 – 30,000 workers to develop new alternative power technologies (electrically-oriented, from renewable resources) over the next 15 – 20 years.
At the end of the day, California, Massachusetts, and New Jersey would not only be leaders in world-class public transportation that was “clean and green” but they would have stimulated a huge production capacity that could be used for the rest of this country AND the export market. Why should America buy its trains from the Europeans or the Chinese when we have plenty of bright engineers here who could and should be put to work on life-enhancing technologies instead of on weapons systems? Why not create great, socially-responsible manufacturing jobs that provide career paths for kids who would otherwise be flipping burgers or working in warehouses?
In summary, we could spur tremendous national economic recovery (and a resurgence of national pride as a world-leader) based on advanced technology. Just as the space program led to the development and spin-off of multiple industries, so, too, could this national high-speed rail program put us back on track (forgive me: I couldn’t resist) to achieve long-term, sustainable economic growth.
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Osama bin Laden: the Ogre is dead; Long Live the Ogre! Wednesday, May 4 2011
Politics and Social Commentary Afghanistan, bogeyman, campaign finance reform, Citizens United, defense budget, education, Iraq, Osama bin Laden swatkinslaw 2:53 am
To paraphrase Voltaire, if Osama bin Laden didn’t exist, we would have had to invent him.
America has had a long history of first supporting, then disposing of, dictators, throughout Asia, Latin America and Europe. Although we are not unique in harboring an “us versus them” attitude, our polished hypocrisy (learned at the feet of our former British mentors) in advancing an imperialistic agenda tinged with sanctimonious justifications and appeals to our American form of xenophobia was breathtaking in its scope and knew no bounds. We spoke of fighting to “make the world safe for democracy,” and (my personal favorite) apparently “we had to destroy the village in order to save it!”
I won’t bother to catalog all the things we did to show bin Laden our support when he was the financier for the anti-Soviet mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the Soviet Union’s occupation there; suffice it to say that when it was convenient, we found it expedient to look the other way when bin Laden formed his anti-Western policies and started to rail against the Saudi royal family for allowing U.S. troops to be stationed in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War in 1991.
By the time bin Laden’s anti-western attitudes and pronouncements got him expelled from his native Saudi Arabia in 1991, he had become completely radicalized and was the charismatic focal point of a lot of pan-Arabian/Wahabi Muslim ideology. Imagine Glenn Beck on steroids, albeit in a much more primitive, tribal context (maybe there’s not that much difference between them?); that’s what bin Laden was.
When the Taliban took over control of Afghanistan, they offered safe-haven to their ideological “brother,” bin Laden. The Taliban and al-Qaeda worked hand-in-glove together and turned back the clock in that poor country by several centuries. Democracy? Nah. Women’s rights? You gotta be kidding, right? Women are just chattels, fit only to be repositories for semen and sources of really cheap domestic labor.
So when George “Dubya” Bush declared “Mission Accomplished” on May 1, 2003, what exactly was it that had been accomplished? An end to the war on terrorism? An elimination of the Third World’s frustrations with American imperialism and the brutalities of our surrogates (e.g., Hosni Mubarak)? An infusion of a genuine love of democracy in America’s foreign policy? No, no, and no yet again. What was “accomplished” was the commitment of American blood and treasure to two wars of occupation in Afghanistan and Iraq at a cost of trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, enriching the bank accounts of the “Merchants of Death,” aka the U.S. military-industrial complex and the multinational arms-dealers who gin up conflicts where none existed before in order to create the climate for military intervention on the part of Uncle Sam.
You can thank the Bush Crime Family, as well as Dick “Darth” Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for the ruination of the American economy, the loss of untold billions and trillions of dollars, the destruction of the last vestiges of America’s reputation around the world as an advocate for democracy, and for the creation of a completely unconstitutional political machine designed to suppress democracy in America—the Department of Homeland Security—put into place through the mechanism of the U.S. Patriot Act, the most shameful piece of legislation ever to come out of Washington, D.C.
Now, if President Obama REALLY wants to impress me (and why wouldn’t he?), he would fight for the complete roll-back of the U.S. Patriot Act, the disbanding of the Transportation Safety Agency, the removal of all troops from Afghanistan and Iraq (and, while we’re at it, from Germany, Japan, and Korea), the use of the savings to pay off the national debt, and the switching of the Defense and the Education budgets for 25 years. (In other words, let us just switch the funding for defense with education, and vice versa; let’s do that for 25 years and see what kind of nation we’ll have. I bet it will be full of people who know how to think; who don’t have any time for “American Idol” and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”; and who are actually politically involved).
Since we’re on a roll, let’s institute “Medicare for all!” (a universal, single-payer health care program providing, well, universal health care for all U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents); genuine political campaign finance reform (public funding for ALL political campaigns); amendment of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection clause to provide equal protection of the laws to all ***natural*** persons and explicitly exempt corporations, limited liability companies and partnerships from the legal definition of the word “person.” Might as well have the U.S. Supreme Court reverse its holdings in Buckley vs. Vallejo and in Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission. Roll back the tax schedules to what they were in the period of 1954 – 1961; and ditto for our tariff schedules.
(I can dream, can’t I???)
But in reality, what is most likely to happen is this: after the euphoria of Osama bin Laden’s death dies down, we’ll need to invent a new bogeyman to justify our continued presence in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world. Don’t be surprised if a new “terrorist group” shows up, thus creating a threat to feed our stupid American paranoia, and making us willing to give up even more of our rapidly-disappearing liberties.
I bleed for you, my beloved America…
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