The Rag Blog

VIDEO / Jeff Zavala and Thorne Dreyer : ‘Eco Outlaw’ Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Environmental activist Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Video by Jeff Zavala | Interview by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | July 7, 2011

Environmental activist Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper from Seadrift, Texas, and the author of Diary of an Eco-Activist: An Unreasonable Woman Breaks the Law for Mother Earth, was Thorne Dreyer’s guest on the June 24, 2011 episode of Rag Radio. It was a lively, informative, and entertaining affair and Austin documentary videographer Jeff Zavala captured it on videotape. (Watch it above.)

Diane Wilson — a mother of five — has earned the wrath of industrial polluters everywhere. She has been arrested 50 times, has held numerous hunger strikes, and has participated in disruptions of U.S. Senate hearings and corporate shareholder gatherings in Houston, Taipei, and London.

She was Mother Jones magazine’s “Hell-Raiser of the Month,” and was one of Grist‘s “13 Badass Greens.” She was a founder of CodePink, the Texas Jail Project, and Injured Workers United. She is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, was featured in the award-winning PBS documentary, Texas Gold, and received a Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship for 2010.

Jeff Zavala is a native Austin documentarian and activist whose work covers immigrant rights, native peoples’ rights, anti-war protests, and the Palestinian liberation struggle. He created ZGraphix Productions and posts videos at zgraphix.blip.tv and at Austin Indymedia. Zavala is also the founder of the Austin Activist Archive, a virtual collective dedicated to broadcasting citizen journalism, direct action, civil disobedience, social activism, community organizing, lectures, and music in and around Austin, Texas. Jeff also works as a volunteer for the Workers Defense Project, and the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Rag Radio — hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. The show, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. It is produced in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that publishes The Rag Blog. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is co-producer of Rag Radio, and the show’s engineer.

Host Dreyer is an Austin writer, editor, broadcaster, and activist who for years ran a prominent Houston public relations and political consulting firm. An influential underground journalist in the Sixties, Dreyer was the original editor of The Rag, Austin’s legendary underground newspaper, was a founding editor of Space City! in Houston, and was an editor at Liberation News Service (LNS) in New York. Dreyer was also general manager of KPFT-FM, the Pacifica radio station in Houston.

Thorne Dreyer’s guest this Friday on Rag Radio will be University of Texas journalism professor, widely-published author, Austin-based political activist, and leading radical thinker Robert Jensen. Jensen, who is also a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, will discuss his recent essay, “The Anguish in the American Dream,” posted on The Rag Blog, as well as the current ecological crisis and the key role he believes it must play in our political thinking. Jeff Zavala will also be taping this show, and we will post the video on The Rag Blog next week.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Authors, Diane Wilson, Environmental Activists, Jeff Zavala, Rag Radio, The Rag Blog, Thorne Dreyer | Leave a comment

Roger Baker : U.S. Driving Hits the Wall

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Digitized image by Harm van den Dorpel / Today and Tomorrow.
Coming soon:
Peak oil, peak driving, peak cars

Part III: U.S. driving hits the wall

By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / July 7, 2011

[This is the third part of a series by Roger Baker on transportation, centering on the issue of peak oil and its ramifications.]

Peak driving has many causes

In my last post, we saw that total U.S. driving hit a peak back in 2007. This time we will take a closer look at the situation to examine the reasons, the implications, and the prospects for the future of driving in the United States.

There are a number of contributing factors behind the 2007 peak. High unemployment simultaneously reduces the need to commute as well as the ability to afford to do so. There is the deteriorating condition of U.S. roads amidst increasing congestion. U.S. government grants to the states for highways are anticipated to drop further from the current level of $41 billion a year to about $32b next year.

The reduction in driving is not only due to high fuel prices as various observers have noted. It seems to be part of a global trend that predates the big runup in fuel prices.

A fairly recent study by economists Kenneth Small and Kurt van Dender found that a 10 percent increase in gas prices leads to a 0.2. to 0.3 percent reduction in driving in the short run, and an eventual reduction of 1.1 to 1.5 percent. But does this explain the driving slowdown? Maybe partially, but not entirely.

The growth of driving began to abate around 2000, and driving flattened out around 2004; the big gas price hikes didn’t come until late in the decade. Besides, though the graph I showed you last time has a couple of kinks in the 1970s, the relentless rise in driving basically shrugged off a comparable (in real terms) runup in oil prices during that decade.

Another factor is that an aging U.S. population tends to drive less. A recent AARP report, “How the Travel Patterns of Older Adults Are Changing,” predicts that older travelers will change the landscape of transportation in coming years, and concludes that transportation planners and policy makers must adapt to this shift. The number of Americans 65 and older is projected to rise by 60 percent in the next 15 years.

Seniors are piling onto public transportation

This analysis of the 2009 National Household Travel Survey by Jana Lynott and Carlos Figueiredo found that:

Older adults comprise an increasing share of the nation’s travel.

Although individuals are traveling less, particularly in private vehicles, public transportation use is up.

Older men are more mobile than older women; however, the gap has been narrowing.

The number of older non-drivers has grown by more than 1.1 million.

End of a love affair? Cartoon from Wellsphere.
Driving less is mostly due to the economy

If we look at driving trends among young people we see that driving as a favorite teenage pastime is in decline. It is hard not to attribute a lot of this decline to the fact that the unemployment rate among youth is at a depression level of about 24%.

Thanks to a Brookings Institution report on U.S. metropolitan areas released last year, we can easily see the strong link between household income and car ownership.

If we go to the Brookings site we find all kinds of interesting demographic data on an interactive U.S. map, and sometimes yearly data series, for most major U.S. metropolitan areas. In this case, we can choose a city, go to “explore the data,” then “commuting,” and then “Vehicles availability by median household income.” The income cutoff points used are: 80% of average is Low; 81-150% is Medium; and 150% of median or above is the High income category.

The report shows that most of the bottom third or so of households in U.S. metropolitan areas are unable to afford family cars. These households typically only have a 30-40% vehicle ownership rate. Of the roughly third in household income above that, comprising what we might often call the middle class, roughly 80% own cars. In the top third, typically about 90% of households own cars.

Following are NO-CAR family percentages for Texas and other big U.S. cities in 2008.

Since the data above is for 2008 car ownership, such ownership at the bottom end must have declined further, since the cost of driving has now risen above the previous 2008 peak. It appears likely that high imported oil prices are now killing the current recovery.

PRINCETON, NJ — The slight majority of Americans, 53%, say they have responded to today’s steep gas prices by making major changes in their personal lives, while 46% say they have not. Sizable proportions of adults of all major income levels have made such changes, including 68% of low-income Americans, 54% of middle-income Americans, and 44% of upper-income Americans.

What about the family budget available for driving? We can use the interactive map at the same Brookings link to see a series of yearly metropolitan income trends ending in 2009. Here we see that most metro areas show a striking decrease in median family income over the past decade, commonly 10% or more.

Economists often say that the core rate of U.S. inflation is just a few percent, since this core rate calculates inflation to exclude food and energy and focuses more on labor costs. However, at the low end of the car driver income scale, necessities like food and fuel and housing make up a comparatively larger portion of the family income. For low income drivers, inflation is effectively higher.

Another way to track the economic stress level for low income families is food stamps, where we see a large increase in use since 2008. Those who can afford to buy new cars are switching to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Those who can’t are trying to keep their current cars running longer.

People aren’t buying expensive items like cars and durable goods as much as they used to. Not even gas-saving hybrid cars are exempt from this downward trend. Interestingly, spikes in searches for maintenance related issues like “new tires” and “oil change” suggest people are looking for ways to keep their old cars running longer… A record number of Americans — around 45 million — now rely on food stamps. That means nearly 1 in 7 people, or 14%, are living on food stamps. The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% in 2010.

There is a lot of other evidence of a strong shift underway from two car families to one car families. A number of reasons for the decline in car ownership in recent years are reviewed here.

Ten reasons for drop in car ownership

In the United States, we embarrassingly have more vehicles than people with driver’s licenses. We have 246 million vehicles. AAA estimates that it costs $8,000 per year for each car owned, which creates a financial burden on cash-strapped Americans… One Car Households. The average suburban U.S. household has two vehicles. Some more. The average urban U.S. household has one vehicle. More American families and roommates are going from three cars to two cars to one car…

The latest polls show that about 40% of the US population is being squeezed hard by the rising cost of driving which now consumes about 20% of the typical family budget, even while total household income remains flat and families struggle to cope with a backlog of credit card debt and increasingly burdensome mortgage payments. There can be little doubt that American family budgets are now being severely stressed by the rising costs of driving their cars.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday. “We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in. Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said. “Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.”

In Texas, we can see that the big box retailers are quite concerned that their customers are running out of money because of the cost of driving, causing them to shop less, especially toward the end of the month.

High gas costs are changing consumers’ shopping habits, and that’s hurting national retail chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In fact, one in five Walmart moms list gasoline costs as their top expense behind housing and car payments, Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. Wal-Mart recently reported its eighth consecutive quarter of sales declines at U.S. stores open at least one year.“You know, it’s just a ripple effect,” Rossiter said. “These concerns aren’t geographic — they aren’t limited to any part of the country.”

Cartoon by johnxag / toonpool.
Further evidence for a big shift in U.S. driving behavior;
Elasticity of demand with driving cost

It used to be thought that the amount of driving in the U.S. was relatively blind to fuel cost. As economists would say, driving demand is an inelastic function of the cost of driving. In the past, most Americans would tend to spend less elsewhere in order to keep driving about as much. The need for U.S. drivers to keep driving at all costs in order to get to work and do other vital errands meant that they willing to pay a high price at the pump to keep driving.

In economic terms this is called a low elasticity of demand with fuel price. Over the longer run, people can move closer to work, or buy a smaller car, but over the short run they are stuck with paying, no matter what their fuel costs. However, this assumption has its limits when we reach the point that growing numbers simply can’t afford to drive. The decrease in car driving and ownership due to a higher driving cost is resulting in a growing increase in the elasticity of oil demand with higher fuel price.

This snip from an insightful analysis by Tom Whipple reviews the conventional wisdom on the elasticity of driving with fuel prices. The conclusion is that these elasticity numbers may have reflected driving behavior in response to fuel price increases in the past, but not necessarily currently when many drivers are being forced to give up driving in order to support other equally important survival costs like food and housing.

In the very short run, motorists have no choice but to spend whatever it costs to keep their automobiles and trucks running for their livelihoods depend on it. Over the course of a year or so, some can move to substitute forms of transport, cut back on discretionary travel, and, if they have a choice, use more fuel efficient vehicles.

Within a year, all this should add up to an elasticity of demand of roughly -0.26 suggesting that for every 10 percent increase in gasoline prices, gasoline demand should fall by 2.6 percent. If prices remain high for several years, then the elasticity number goes to -.58 suggesting that the demand will fall by 5.8 percent for every 10 percent increase in prices. These numbers of course were derived from past experience in a simpler time before global oil production had peaked and price run-ups were mostly short-lived.

This diversion of spending toward fuel for cars automatically subtracts consumer spending, the bulk of the U.S. economy, from other areas. If the food and fuel and commodity sector of the economy is seeing inflation, this subtracts spending from other discretionary spending areas of the economy.

Inflation in the relatively necessary energy sector subtracts spending and generates deflation in the other sectors, hurting consumer wages of those drivers in the service sector of the economy. With U.S. income stagnant, a combination of inflation for non-discretionary expenses like driving and a simultaneous cutback in discretionary consumer spending in other areas adds up to stagflation. This is bad news to economists, since there is no good economic remedy.

The British Economist has noticed a fundamental shift in U.S. driving behavior.

Yet, here’s the conundrum. Following all previous recessions, petrol consumption has been a leading indicator of recovery, bouncing back sharply as people started using their vehicles more to shop, to dine out, to seek the curious and the entertaining, and, above all, to take vacations. Despite the American economy’s belated and still timid recovery — seen in increasing sales of cars, clothing, hospitality, entertainment, and consumer goods generally (though still not housing) — the amount of petrol being consumed across the country has tumbled to 2001 levels, and shows every sign of falling further.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency that churns out monthly reports on how the economy is faring, believes the 2008 spike in petrol prices and the subsequent recession have changed the consumption patterns of American motorists irreversibly. How so? The short answer is that technology and marketing have altered the type of vehicles Americans are now buying

Driving behavior and public opinion toward driving are both changing in the world’s more affluent countries.

Until now, most projections for future energy use and transportation needs have taken for granted that there will always be more people owning more cars, driving farther and using more oil. But those assumptions are being put to the test by a profound change under way in the countries that have long been the world’s biggest fuel consumers. And it goes beyond the payoff that is already being realized from government fuel economy efforts, like the U.S. government’s announcement today of enhanced consumer labeling to promote efficient vehicles.

We could already see a big change in 2008 when rising fuel price spiked driving costs. “From 1970 to 2008, total highway fuel consumption increased from 92 billion gallons to nearly 181 billion gallons in 2007. The vehicle fuel consumption decreased to 175 billion gallons in 2008.” The fact that we are driving less and using less fuel for years suggests that all the easy changes have already been made.

Driving costs are even higher now, while incomes are relatively lower, leading to a trend toward single car families.

Many families limiting themselves to a single car

Motivated by the declining economy, rising gas prices and a concern for the environment, families like the Rogerses say they are starting to rethink the need to have more than one car. Make no mistake, however: America’s love affair with the automobile is still strong. According to a February study by Experian Automotive, which specializes in collecting and analyzing automotive data, Americans own an average of 2.28 vehicles per household, and more than 35 percent of households own three or more cars.

But there are signs of change. Brian Gluckman, a spokesman for AutoTrader.com, a leading automotive Web site, said more buyers were moving to one car. Until the last three months, Mr. Gluckman said, that car tended to be a midsize S.U.V. or crossovers. He said AutoTrader.com’s more recent data showed buyers shifting toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

U.S. transit demand grows

As both driving and cars on the road peak while the need for transportation remains relatively constant, it is apparent that the public will tend to seek out alternatives to cars. The rapid increase in bikes being used for commuting is one sign of this trend. See Fig. 3: “Trend in Share of Workers Commuting by Bike in Large North American Cities, 1990-2009” Another indication is car sharing, which is also growing rapidly.

A loss of driving affordability tends to turn up as increased transit use whenever the transit is useful and available.

Transit ridership up due to rising gas prices
by Joseph Cutrufo on Thursday, May 5, 2011

It was only a matter of time: Transit agencies are reporting increased ridership due to higher gas prices. With the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded now at $3.98, motorists across the nation are switching to public transportation. We saw it in 2008, when the national average reached $4, and we’re seeing it all over again. According to the American Public Transportation Association, $4 per gallon is the tipping point where people begin to drive less and use transit more — a lot more. If gas prices stay this high, we can expect an additional 670 billion transit trips made this year nationwide.

When fuel prices get high enough, many are willing to shift to transit since they must get to work somehow.

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans are most likely to say they would seek vehicles that get better gas mileage if gas prices keep rising but don’t go above the $5-per-gallon range. Americans are second most likely to say they would use mass transit. Seven in 10 Americans would not move and about the same number of workers would not change jobs or quit working, no matter how high prices rise.

Nothing could be more positive for increasing transit use than for the cost of car driving and car ownership to go high enough so that broad new sectors of the population seek to use it. The current stress of rising fuel prices on the family budget is indeed causing a national increase in transit ridership.

Higher gas prices driving motorists to mass transit

“When gas prices hit $3, we see serious interest,” Williams said. “Some people come and leave (when gas prices recede). Others come and stay. “The link between higher gas prices and increased use of mass transit is a significant one. It could get even more pronounced. According to a study by the American Public Transportation Association, the U.S. will see an additional 1.5 billion mass transit boardings per year if gas reaches $5 per gallon.

A lot of the new potential users are senior citizens. In particular, the aging baby boomer population is increasing its use of transit as this sector of the total population grows. However poor public transit is a threat, especially to older Americans.

A recent Brookings study has thoroughly documented the fact that, in the U.S., transit tends not to go where it is most needed to help low income workers get to work.

These trends have three broad implications for leaders at the local, regional, state, and national levels. Transportation leaders should make access to jobs an explicit priority in their spending and service decisions, especially given the budget pressures they face. Metro leaders should coordinate strategies regarding land use, economic development, and housing with transit decisions in order to ensure that transit reaches more people and more jobs efficiently. And federal officials should collect and disseminate standardized transit data to enable public, private, and non-profit actors to make more informed decisions and ultimately maximize the benefits of transit for labor markets.

Public support for transit will no doubt continue to increase along with decreasing driving, stagnating income, and higher driving cost, whenever the transit can be easily used. The problem is that much transit in the U.S., when it is available, does not go where it could be most useful. The private business sector is not much interested in helping out, so even jitneys are being suggested. Meanwhile, the expansion of transit service is becoming harder for local government to afford, just when it is most needed as an alternative to private cars.

Transit, and especially rail, typically has high up-front capital costs despite the overall cost and energy savings of rail when it has a high ridership (“Electric traction offers a lower cost per mile of train operation but at a higher initial cost, which can only be justified on high traffic lines.”) One problem lies in trying to explain to the public that saving money on the initial cost is not always a smart long range policy. For now we should expect less federal help in spending for transit, and most other public infrastructure, as the result of the Congressional gridlock over the U.S. budget deficit.

Widespread support for better public transportation awaits a broad turnaround in public opinion led by peak oil, higher fuel prices, and less affordable driving. As a nation, the U.S. is still in denial about the unsustainability of its car habit. The economic reality is stubborn, telling us that our transportation habits will soon have to change more than most American are willing to admit.

Why rising fuel prices are likely to prevent a driving recovery

Could we ever recover our previous driving or car ownership levels? The slow replacement rate of the vehicles now on the road strongly suggests that the current level of total U.S. driving cannot increase by very much, nor for very long.

Since the 2007 driving peak followed by the 2008 economic crisis, there has been a partial recovery in vehicle sales, but these sales have never approached the previous peak. U.S. family budgets for car replacement are shrinking as driving costs rise. People are hanging on to their old cars longer than ever, and a lot of SUV owners are financially unable to easily downsize to more fuel efficient cars. Currently, there is a shortage of small used cars and this is reflected in their relatively higher prices.

This is not to say that those who can afford to replace them are not already choosing smaller cars. Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman for the New York regional chapter of AAA, agrees that “we are witnessing a major sea change in both the types and number of vehicles on the road.”

There has been some backsliding on new vehicle mileage since 2008, but recently higher fuel prices will likely help turn this gas mileage trend around again.

Hybrid sales rose quickly in 2007 as gas prices climbed, then dropped noticeably in the second half of 2008 as gas prices plummeted from over $4 to $1.60. This time around, despite gas prices climbing steadily over the past year, hybrid cars shrunk from 2.9% of new vehicle sales in 2009 to 2.4% in 2010, according to Ward’s Auto. Meanwhile, sales of trucks, SUVs, crossovers and minivans rose from 48% of the market to 51% from 2009 to 2010. In addition, the average fuel economy rating of new vehicles sold in 2010 was 22.2 mpg, down from 22.3 mpg in 2009.

Some imagine that electric cars or smaller more fuel-efficient cars could make a big difference. They will make a difference, but probably only a small difference overall. For an economy structurally geared over decades to run on cheap oil to serve low density sprawl development, historic energy transitions like reducing dependence on oil for commuting turn out to be unexpectedly slow and expensive. Electric cars are not well suited for long suburban commutes, and are typically a lot more expensive when new than the current U.S. fleet of gas guzzlers.

Cartoon by JennyBowman / Drive.com.
Little prospect for a U.S. driving recovery as seen by the global economists

Oil prices have moved to center stage as a primary factor governing the recovery of the global economy.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said that the current price of $120 per barrel could be the catalyst for a global economic crisis on the scale of the one experienced in 2008. “If you don’t see any softening of the prices, there is a risk of derailing the economy, of a double-dip,” Dr Birol told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Change Summit. “We all know what happened in 2008. Are we going to see the same movie?”

Oil prices fell nearly $3 in London to $117.30 and more than $5 in New York to $94.84 on worries about the faltering global economy. However, economists believe the price is still at a level near to tipping the global economy back into a downturn. To combat sky-high oil prices, the U.S. is reported to have attempted an ambitious swap with Saudi Arabia in the past month.

The IEA is now warning that a fuel supply bottleneck has emerged in the face of growing demand because the loss of Libyan sweet crude is hard to make up with increasingly low grade Saudi oil.

Last week saw the publication of the IEA’s monthly Oil Market Report (OMR) and its Medium Term Oil and Gas Markets outlook which projects the Agency’s assessment of global supply and demand for the next five years. In recent weeks the IEA has been sounding nearly non-stop warnings that ever since the Libyan and Yemen uprisings took some 1.5 million b/d off the oil markets there was a real danger of higher oil prices and shortages this summer.

The current publications are no exception. The Agency is still expecting global oil demand to increase this year by 1.3 million b/d to 89.3 million b/d with OECD demand down a bit due to high prices and the economic slowdown, and Chinese and Indian demand up a bit. The IEA says that global oil supply for May rose by 270,000 b/d from 87.41 billion b/d in April with 210,000 b/d coming from OPEC. The cartel is reported as supplying an average of 29.18 million b/d in May which is close to the Platts survey which put OPEC production for the month at 29.04 million b/d. The IEA, however, points out that the OPEC’s May production was still 1.25 million b/d below the pre-Libyan uprising level.

Here are the most recent two years of gasoline and diesel price trends which show a slight increase in 2009-2010 and then a big jump in the past year. The recent slight decline in gasoline price at the pump is tied to the poor economy and slack U.S. demand.

Fuel demand in North America will decline this year by 190,000 barrels to 23.7 million a day, the Paris-based IEA said. The agency lowered its forecast for the region by 220,000 barrels a day from last month’s report, citing lower growth projections from the International Monetary Fund… “High gasoline prices are scaring off some incremental demand,” said Rick Mueller, a principal with ESAI Energy, LLC in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “We’re going to see people conserve more and cut down on trips.”

If we look at the next few years, according to this analysis by Chris Martenson (and others equally savvy), we see that, even if nothing unexpected goes wrong, we can expect another serious oil price spike by about 2013, due to declining global supply and inflexible demand. Assuming fuel price trouble over the short term and trouble over the long term, how can U.S. driving recover?

The economists at Levy Institute don’t talk about oil much, but they do have excellent economic models that arrive at a gloomy outcome if U.S. trade cannot be brought back into better global balance. Their recent analysis, “Jobless Recovery Is No Recovery: Prospects for the U.S. Economy,” is pessimistic enough, even without mentioning peak oil. The best economic prescription the Levy economists offer is in part based on dollar devaluation. This, of course, would increase the cost of imported oil priced in dollars, reducing U.S. driving further.

It is not just driving that is in trouble because of fuel cost. This is arguably part of the bigger problem of global industrial production no longer being able to outrun global energy costs.

While it’s a positive that the U.S. is reducing its demand for oil, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are becoming more efficient. More to the point, the U.S. is no longer able to reduce its overall energy expenditures as an input to its GDP. Post 2008, some of the “gains” enjoyed by lower energy expenditures were simply made possible by a lower GDP.

When the U.S. reduces its use of oil, and switches over more to coal and natural gas, its GDP tends to fall. For an economy that structured itself towards oil-dependency the past 70 years, that should be expected. The U.S. therefore can have a higher GDP or a lower GDP, but the Energy Limit model reveals that energy costs are becoming more stubborn on the upside. This is a structural change, that will not revert.

Industrialism in the U.S., and elsewhere in the OECD, is therefore no longer able to outrun energy costs. This means that in order to maintain production, prices for assets like housing, and input costs we can produce less or measure “production” in non-industrial terms.

Either way, this megatrend is simply the reverse of the dynamic which began 250 years ago when humanity moved from wood to coal, and the impact on wages and asset prices was revolutionary. The same model which explains that ascent, now explains our descent.

[Roger Baker is a long time transportation-oriented environmental activist, an amateur energy-oriented economist, an amateur scientist and science writer, and a founding member of and an advisor to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is active in the Green Party and the ACLU, and is a director of the Save Our Springs Association and the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin. Mostly he enjoys being an irreverent policy wonk and writing irreverent wonkish articles for The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Roger Baker on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American Society, Economic Crisis, Peak Driving, Peak Oil, Roger Baker, Transportation | 4 Comments

Richard Raznikov : Bradley Manning and the Obama Grand Jury

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Bradley Manning. Art from Rossi Projects.
Uses of the grand jury system:
Feds move on Bradley Manning

Anyone who might expose inconvenient ‘secrets’ — truths — is an enemy of the state, and what is being done to Bradley Manning, right in front of us, is meant to discourage and to intimidate.

By Richard Raznikov / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2011

Once upon a time, the grand jury was a safety device, a mechanism through which members of a community, behind closed doors, could review the evidence being gathered by a prosecutor and ensure that the rights of the individual were protected.

Predictably, humans being what we are, this intention was long ago subverted when prosecutors discovered that grand juries could be brought to do pretty much anything since the evidence they see is controlled by the state and the targets of the state have no lawyers present to help them.

The Obama government has empaneled a grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia. Since it might have chosen any venue, Alexandria is especially fortuitous for the prosecutors because its population has the highest concentration of government employees in the nation.

Obama is going after Bradley Manning, the Pfc. accused of leaking documents, including the infamous video of U.S. soldiers aboard an Apache attack helicopter joyously committing murder, to Wikileaks, and his Justice Department is using this grand jury to do it.

The U.S. government doesn’t want the American people to know what it’s doing. That is perfectly understandable since much of what it is doing won’t stand the light of day.

Bradley Manning has been in custody, without official charges and without being given any of the ordinary rights of an accused, for more than a year. Much of that time was spent at Quantico, Virginia. He was recently moved to Leavenworth, Kansas. The conditions of his imprisonment have been condemned as torture and as a violation of international law by Amnesty International and other such organizations. It is quite plain that the Obama government’s policy has been to destroy him psychologically since it cannot break him lawfully.

I have no idea whether Manning was the main source of the treasure trove of “secret” documents Wikileaks has been releasing. Whoever did this is a hero to the human race. In the U.S., however, rattle-brained pols such as Mike Huckabee are calling him a traitor and demanding that he be executed.

The Alexandria grand jury has been taking testimony from people who themselves are being deprived of their rights. Witnesses are issued “immunity certificates” which nullify their 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, which coerces compliance with the government’s operation.

The U.S. government doesn’t want the American people to know what it’s doing because if that were to happen there might be serious consequences.

During the Vietnam War, shortly after the Tet Offensive in early 1968, a CBS camera captured video of the Saigon Police Chief summarily executing a bound suspect, shooting him in the head. Although the American people had seen much of the war on television and certainly knew of its brutality, something about this particular film registered with surprising power. Perhaps it was because it is one thing to hear or read of something, to “know” it intellectually, and another to witness it.

The stunning Wikileaks video which recorded the cold blooded murder of more than a dozen innocent people, including several who had stopped their van to try to aid the wounded, and which included the voices of the crew — U.S. soldiers asking for permission to shoot and exulting in their kills — was an ugly contradiction to the bland, phony “Support Our Troops” propaganda with which we are daily assaulted in the mass media.

The Obama government did not investigate the killings or punish the perpetrators; it sought to find and punish those who made it public.

Even now, even with the publication of much of the Wikileaks revelations in some areas of the U.S. and on the internet, it is not at all widely known that the U.S. government and the Pentagon have been systematically covering-up the enormity of the civilian deaths in Iraq. Internal Pentagon documents show that more than 100,000 such deaths have simply gone unrecorded in the figures released to the public, although the actual numbers are internally collected.

During the Vietnam era, the military cooked the books to show far more “enemy” dead than was true in order to make it look like the war was being won. Today, the books are being cooked to make civilian deaths disappear as though they did not happen.

Control of the news is vital to any government which is undemocratic and wishes to disguise what it is doing. When the information escapes into the public space, the lies which support tyranny begin to fail. This is what has happened in much of the Middle East, and although the western media never mentions it, some of the Wikileaks exposure has helped fuel the pro-democracy movements in Egypt, Syria, and elsewhere.

In America there has been a concerted effort to control the news, both through the privatization of the public space — ownership of CNN, NBC, and all the rest in few, corporate hands — and by suppression by the government and its agents of dissent.

Anyone who might expose inconvenient “secrets” — truths — is an enemy of the state, and what is being done to Bradley Manning, right in front of us, is meant to discourage and to intimidate.

By the way, a second federal grand jury has been set up by the Obama regime, this one investigating “antiwar” activists.

Two days ago, the nation’s birthday celebration. Hope you enjoyed the fireworks.

[Richard Raznikov is an attorney practicing in San Rafael, California. He blogs at News from a Parallel World.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged Bradley Manning, Criminal Justice, Grand Jury, Richard Raznikov, U.S. Military, Whistleblowers, WikiLeaks | 1 Comment

Roger Baker : U.S. Driving Hits the Wall

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Digitized image by Harm van den Dorpel / Today and Tomorrow.
Coming soon:
Peak oil, peak driving, peak cars

Part III: U.S. driving hits the wall

By Roger Baker / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2011

[This is the third part of a series by Roger Baker on transportation, centering on the issue of peak oil and its ramifications.]

Peak driving has many causes

The reduction in driving is not only due to high fuel prices as various observers have noted. It seems to be part of a global trend that predates the big runup in fuel prices.

A fairly recent study by economists Kenneth Small and Kurt van Dender found that a 10 percent increase in gas prices leads to a 0.2. to 0.3 percent reduction in driving in the short run, and an eventual reduction of 1.1 to 1.5 percent. But does this explain the driving slowdown? Maybe partially, but not entirely.

The growth of driving began to abate around 2000, and driving flattened out around 2004; the big gas price hikes didn’t come until late in the decade. Besides, though the graph I showed you last time has a couple of kinks in the 1970s, the relentless rise in driving basically shrugged off a comparable (in real terms) runup in oil prices during that decade.

Seniors are piling onto public transportation

This analysis of the 2009 National Household Travel Survey by Jana Lynott and Carlos Figueiredo found that:

Older adults comprise an increasing share of the nation’s travel.

Although individuals are traveling less, particularly in private vehicles, public transportation use is up.

Older men are more mobile than older women; however, the gap has been narrowing.

The number of older non-drivers has grown by more than 1.1 million.

Driving less is mostly due to the economy

Thanks to a Brookings Institution report on U.S. metropolitan areas released last year, we can easily see the strong link between household income and car ownership.

Following are NO-CAR family percentages for Texas and other big U.S. cities in 2008.

Since the data above is for 2008 car ownership, car ownership at the bottom end must have declined further, since the cost of driving has now risen above the previous 2008 peak. It appears likely that high imported oil prices are now killing the current recovery.

PRINCETON, NJ — The slight majority of Americans, 53%, say they have responded to today’s steep gas prices by making major changes in their personal lives, while 46% say they have not. Sizable proportions of adults of all major income levels have made such changes, including 68% of low-income Americans, 54% of middle-income Americans, and 44% of upper-income Americans.

People aren’t buying expensive items like cars and durable goods as much as they used to. Not even gas-saving hybrid cars are exempt from this downward trend. Interestingly, spikes in searches for maintenance related issues like “new tires” and “oil change” suggest people are looking for ways to keep their old cars running longer… A record number of Americans — around 45 million — now rely on food stamps. That means nearly 1 in 7 people, or 14%, are living on food stamps. The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% in 2010.

There is a lot of other evidence of a strong shift underway from two car families to one car families. A number of reasons for the decline in car ownership in recent years are reviewed here.

Ten Reasons for drop in car ownership

In the United States, we embarrassingly have more vehicles than people with driver’s licenses. We have 246 million vehicles. AAA estimates that it costs $8,000 per year for each car owned, which creates a financial burden on cash-strapped Americans… One Car Households. The average suburban U.S. household has two vehicles. Some more. The average urban U.S. household has one vehicle. More American families and roommates are going from three cars to two cars to one car…

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday. “We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.”

Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in. Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said. “Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern.”

High gas costs are changing consumers’ shopping habits, and that’s hurting national retail chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In fact, one in five Walmart moms list gasoline costs as their top expense behind housing and car payments, Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. Wal-Mart recently reported its eighth consecutive quarter of sales declines at U.S. stores open at least one year.“You know, it’s just a ripple effect,” Rossiter said. “These concerns aren’t geographic — they aren’t limited to any part of the country.”

End of a love affair? Cartoon from Wellsphere.
Further evidence for a big shift in U.S. driving behavior;
Elasticity of demand with driving cost

In the very short run, motorists have no choice but to spend whatever it costs to keep their automobiles and trucks running for their livelihoods depend on it. Over the course of a year or so, some can move to substitute forms of transport, cut back on discretionary travel, and, if they have a choice, use more fuel efficient vehicles.

Within a year, all this should add up to an elasticity of demand of roughly -0.26 suggesting that for every 10 percent increase in gasoline prices, gasoline demand should fall by 2.6 percent. If prices remain high for several years, then the elasticity number goes to -.58 suggesting that the demand will fall by 5.8 percent for every 10 percent increase in prices. These numbers of course were derived from past experience in a simpler time before global oil production had peaked and price run-ups were mostly short-lived.

The British Economist has noticed a fundamental shift in U.S. driving behavior.

Yet, here’s the conundrum. Following all previous recessions, petrol consumption has been a leading indicator of recovery, bouncing back sharply as people started using their vehicles more to shop, to dine out, to seek the curious and the entertaining, and, above all, to take vacations. Despite the American economy’s belated and still timid recovery — seen in increasing sales of cars, clothing, hospitality, entertainment, and consumer goods generally (though still not housing) — the amount of petrol being consumed across the country has tumbled to 2001 levels, and shows every sign of falling further.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency that churns out monthly reports on how the economy is faring, believes the 2008 spike in petrol prices and the subsequent recession have changed the consumption patterns of American motorists irreversibly. How so? The short answer is that technology and marketing have altered the type of vehicles Americans are now buying

Driving behavior and public opinion toward driving are both changing in the world’s more affluent countries.

Until now, most projections for future energy use and transportation needs have taken for granted that there will always be more people owning more cars, driving farther and using more oil. But those assumptions are being put to the test by a profound change under way in the countries that have long been the world’s biggest fuel consumers. And it goes beyond the payoff that is already being realized from government fuel economy efforts, like the U.S. government’s announcement today of enhanced consumer labeling to promote efficient vehicles.

Driving costs are even higher now, while incomes are relatively lower, leading to a trend toward single car families.

Many Families Limiting Themselves to a Single Car

Motivated by the declining economy, rising gas prices and a concern for the environment, families like the Rogerses say they are starting to rethink the need to have more than one car. Make no mistake, however: America’s love affair with the automobile is still strong. According to a February study by Experian Automotive, which specializes in collecting and analyzing automotive data, Americans own an average of 2.28 vehicles per household, and more than 35 percent of households own three or more cars.

But there are signs of change. Brian Gluckman, a spokesman for AutoTrader.com, a leading automotive Web site, said more buyers were moving to one car. Until the last three months, Mr. Gluckman said, that car tended to be a midsize S.U.V. or crossovers. He said AutoTrader.com’s more recent data showed buyers shifting toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

U.S. transit demand grows

A loss of driving affordability tends to turn up as increased transit use whenever the transit is useful and available.

Transit Ridership Up Due to Rising Gas Prices
by Joseph Cutrufo on Thursday, May 5, 2011

It was only a matter of time: Transit agencies are reporting increased ridership due to higher gas prices. With the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded now at $3.98, motorists across the nation are switching to public transportation. We saw it in 2008, when the national average reached $4, and we’re seeing it all over again. According to the American Public Transportation Association, $4 per gallon is the tipping point where people begin to drive less and use transit more — a lot more. If gas prices stay this high, we can expect an additional 670 billion transit trips made this year nationwide.

When fuel prices get high enough, many are willing to shift to transit since they must get to work somehow.

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans are most likely to say they would seek vehicles that get better gas mileage if gas prices keep rising but don’t go above the $5-per-gallon range. Americans are second most likely to say they would use mass transit. Seven in 10 Americans would not move and about the same number of workers would not change jobs or quit working, no matter how high prices rise.

Higher gas prices driving motorists to mass transit

“When gas prices hit $3, we see serious interest,” Williams said. “Some people come and leave (when gas prices recede). Others come and stay. “The link between higher gas prices and increased use of mass transit is a significant one. It could get even more pronounced. According to a study by the American Public Transportation Association, the U.S. will see an additional 1.5 billion mass transit boardings per year if gas reaches $5 per gallon.

A recent Brookings study has thoroughly documented the fact that, in the U.S., transit tends not to go where it is most needed to help low income workers get to work.

These trends have three broad implications for leaders at the local, regional, state, and national levels. Transportation leaders should make access to jobs an explicit priority in their spending and service decisions, especially given the budget pressures they face. Metro leaders should coordinate strategies regarding land use, economic development, and housing with transit decisions in order to ensure that transit reaches more people and more jobs efficiently. And federal officials should collect and disseminate standardized transit data to enable public, private, and non-profit actors to make more informed decisions and ultimately maximize the benefits of transit for labor markets.

Why rising fuel prices are likely to prevent a driving recovery

There has been some backsliding on new vehicle mileage since 2008, but recently higher fuel prices will likely help turn this gas mileage trend around again.

Hybrid sales rose quickly in 2007 as gas prices climbed, then dropped noticeably in the second half of 2008 as gas prices plummeted from over $4 to $1.60. This time around, despite gas prices climbing steadily over the past year, hybrid cars shrunk from 2.9% of new vehicle sales in 2009 to 2.4% in 2010, according to Ward’s Auto. Meanwhile, sales of trucks, SUVs, crossovers and minivans rose from 48% of the market to 51% from 2009 to 2010. In addition, the average fuel economy rating of new vehicles sold in 2010 was 22.2 mpg, down from 22.3 mpg in 2009.

Little prospect for a U.S. driving recovery as seen by the global economists

Oil prices have moved to center stage as a primary factor governing the recovery of the global economy.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said that the current price of $120 per barrel could be the catalyst for a global economic crisis on the scale of the one experienced in 2008. “If you don’t see any softening of the prices, there is a risk of derailing the economy, of a double-dip,” Dr Birol told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Change Summit. “We all know what happened in 2008. Are we going to see the same movie?”

Oil prices fell nearly $3 in London to $117.30 and more than $5 in New York to $94.84 on worries about the faltering global economy. However, economists believe the price is still at a level near to tipping the global economy back into a downturn. To combat sky-high oil prices, the U.S. is reported to have attempted an ambitious swap with Saudi Arabia in the past month.

The IEA is now warning that a fuel supply bottleneck has emerged in the face of growing demand because the loss of Libyan sweet crude is hard to make up with increasingly low grade Saudi oil.

Last week saw the publication of the IEA’s monthly Oil Market Report (OMR) and its Medium Term Oil and Gas Markets outlook which projects the Agency’s assessment of global supply and demand for the next five years. In recent weeks the IEA has been sounding nearly non-stop warnings that ever since the Libyan and Yemen uprisings took some 1.5 million b/d off the oil markets there was a real danger of higher oil prices and shortages this summer.

The current publications are no exception. The Agency is still expecting global oil demand to increase this year by 1.3 million b/d to 89.3 million b/d with OECD demand down a bit due to high prices and the economic slowdown, and Chinese and Indian demand up a bit. The IEA says that global oil supply for May rose by 270,000 b/d from 87.41 billion b/d in April with 210,000 b/d coming from OPEC. The cartel is reported as supplying an average of 29.18 million b/d in May which is close to the Platts survey which put OPEC production for the month at 29.04 million b/d. The IEA, however, points out that the OPEC’s May production was still 1.25 million b/d below the pre-Libyan uprising level.

Fuel demand in North America will decline this year by 190,000 barrels to 23.7 million a day, the Paris-based IEA said. The agency lowered its forecast for the region by 220,000 barrels a day from last month’s report, citing lower growth projections from the International Monetary Fund… “High gasoline prices are scaring off some incremental demand,” said Rick Mueller, a principal with ESAI Energy, LLC in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “We’re going to see people conserve more and cut down on trips.”

The economists at Levy Institute don’t talk about oil much, but they do have excellent economic models that arrive at a gloomy outcome if U.S. trade cannot be brought back into better global balance. Their recent analysis, “Jobless Recovery Is No Recovery: Prospects for the US Economy,” is pessimistic enough, even without mentioning peak oil. The best economic prescription the Levy economists offer is in part based on dollar devaluation. This, of course, would increase the cost of imported oil priced in dollars, reducing U.S. driving further.

It is not just driving that is in trouble because of fuel cost. This is arguably part of the bigger problem of global industrial production no longer being able to outrun global energy costs.

While it’s a positive that the U.S. is reducing its demand for oil, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are becoming more efficient. More to the point, the U.S. is no longer able to reduce its overall energy expenditures as an input to its GDP. Post 2008, some of the “gains” enjoyed by lower energy expenditures were simply made possible by a lower GDP.

When the U.S. reduces its use of oil, and switches over more to coal and natural gas, its GDP tends to fall. For an economy that structured itself towards oil-dependency the past 70 years, that should be expected. The U.S. therefore can have a higher GDP or a lower GDP, but the Energy Limit model reveals that energy costs are becoming more stubborn on the upside. This is a structural change, that will not revert.

Industrialism in the U.S., and elsewhere in the OECD, is therefore no longer able to outrun energy costs. This means that in order to maintain production, prices for assets like housing, and input costs we can produce less or measure “production” in non-industrial terms.

Either way, this megatrend is simply the reverse of the dynamic which began 250 years ago when humanity moved from wood to coal, and the impact on wages and asset prices was revolutionary. The same model which explains that ascent, now explains our descent.

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American Society, Economic Crisis, Peak Driving, Peak Oil, Roger Baker, Transportation | Leave a comment

VIDEO / Jeff Zavala and Thorne Dreyer : ‘Eco Outlaw’ Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Environmental activist Diane Wilson on Rag Radio
[Video by Jeff Zavala / Interview by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / July 7, 2011]

Thorne Dreyer’s guest this Friday on Rag Radio will be University of Texas journalism professor, widely-published author, and Austin-based political activist and leading radical thinker Robert Jensen. Jensen, who is also a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, will discuss his recent essay, “The Anguish in the American Dream,” posted on The Rag Blog, as well as the current ecological crisis and the key role he believes it must play in our political thinking. Jeff Zavala will also be taping this show, and we will post the video on The Rag Blog next week.

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Diane Wilson, Environmental Activists, Jeff Zavala, Rag Radio, Thorne Dreyer, Video | Leave a comment

David P. Hamilton : Nationalization and French Socialism

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Socialist Francois Mitterrand was the fourth President of France, elected under the Fifth Republic, serving from 1981 until 1995. Image from agen-demain.fr.
Letters from France V:
Nationalization and French socialism

It is in Western Europe where we see the most successful efforts to protect the commons while simultaneously nurturing a vibrant private sector in the context of political democracy.

By David P. Hamilton / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2011

[This is the fifth in a series of dispatches from France by The Rag Blog‘s David P. Hamilton.]

PARIS — Nationalization is the process of a government taking a private property into public ownership. The motives for nationalization may be both political and economic. It is a central socialist principle that the state should control the principal means of production and distribution so that they operate for the general welfare.

This allows for democratic control over the means whereby people earn their living, a fair allocation of output, consolidation of resources, rational planning of the economy, and potentially the enhancement of public finance.

Everyone from Alan Greenspan to Fidel Castro believes in a mixed economy with both a public and private sector. More than any other advanced industrialized country, the U.S. has historically favored the greatest degree of private ownership and the most meager public sector outside the military.

Practically nothing in the U.S. is nationalized. Everything possible, now including much of the military, is privatized.

At the other end of the spectrum, until recently Cuba nationalized almost everything. At the beginning of this year, 85% of the labor force worked for the government. Now belatedly Cuba has decided it needs a private sector and is in the process of dropping over half a million underutilized employees from the government payroll, encouraging them to start small businesses.

Like most European countries with a historically strong socialist movement, France is somewhere in the middle. Essential services are nationalized and the government owns significant if not controlling shares in otherwise private institutions in the commanding sectors of the economy.

The question is where to draw the line between public and private. What does government need to control in order to protect the interests of its citizens as a community? What should be the exclusive preserve of private enterprise and, recognizing capitalism’s imperative to grow and its inherently exploitive nature, to what level should that growth be allowed and how should it be regulated? What is the proper balance?

It is in Western Europe where we see the most successful efforts to protect the commons while simultaneously nurturing a vibrant private sector in the context of political democracy. Typically, this achievement is the result of many generations of socialist struggle. The economies that most characterize this achievement are the nucleus of the European Union, an economic unit equal in size to that of the U.S.

The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in the U.S. during the Great Depression. Image from National Archives, Southeast Region.
Nationalizations have been very uncommon in the U.S. During WWI, the nation’s railroads were temporarily nationalized. The Tennessee Valley Authority was created in the depths of the Great Depression in the most impoverished part of the country because the existing private electric utilities were doing little to promote electrification and development.

In 1971, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation was nationalized and became Amtrak to relieve the existing companies of their legal responsibility to provide inter-city passenger service, which they maintained could not be done profitably. Hampered by politicians who fear the success of public enterprises, it has languished in mediocrity ever since.

For the same reason, in 1973, six bankrupt railroads were nationalized to become Conrail in order to preserve freight rail service throughout the Northeast. Once reorganized and modernized, they were reprivatized in 1987. In the late 1980’s, hundreds of failed savings and loan associations were taken over, but quickly reprivatized.

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, the airport security industry was nationalized to become the Transportation Security Administration. In 2009, the government bought most of the stock in the bankrupt General Motors, but President Obama assured us it was only a temporary measure and new private stock in the company has since been put on the market.

It is clear that the U.S. government has been extremely reluctant to nationalize anything. It has only done so during wartime or when the private corporations providing essential public services were bankrupt, inept, or both.

France has experienced two great periods of nationalization. The first was immediately after World War II and initially took place under a government led by the conservative Charles de Gaulle.

These postwar nationalizations resulted from two principal factors. First, the need to rebuild basic infrastructure severely damaged during the war in the most expeditious and focused manner in a country long used to centralized decision making. Second, the relatively high degree of collaboration with Nazi occupation on the part of the capitalist class on the one hand, and relatively high degree of participation in the Resistance by communist and socialist elements on the other, gave the latter a dominant voice.

Renault was specifically nationalized because of its owner’s collaboration with the Nazis. The pre-war French public health care system that covered only workers, was expanded to cover everyone, essentially the nationalization of the health insurance industry. Also in 1945-46, many important banks, the Electricité de France, Gaz de France and Charbonnages de France (coal production) were nationalized.

Renault was specifically nationalized because of its owner’s collaboration with the Nazis.
These were added to the railroads, the Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Francais (SNCF), which had been nationalized in 1938 in preparation for war. In 1948, these were joined by the Règie Autonome des Transports Parisien (RATP), the public transportation network covering Paris and the surrounding area, now including regional trains, the metro, trolleys, buses, boat-buses and bicycles.

The second great wave of nationalizations in France took place with the election of the Socialist government of Francois Mitterrand in 1981, the first and only socialist-lead government during the Fifth Republic. Thirty-six banks and two finance companies, plus industries of strategic importance to the state were nationalized. These included seven of the largest 20 industrial companies in France.

Even without the Parti Socialiste’s nationalization program the French State held a substantial share of industry. Besides Renault, the public utilities, the postal service, the telecommunications service and public transportation, the state owned Air France and commanding interests in several other companies that would be entirely private in the U.S. The companies nationalized in 1981-2 were involved in iron and steel, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, fertilizers, computers, electric power construction, shipbuilding, telecommunications, mining and building materials.

In France, the public sector accounts for about 25% of industrial production and 30% of industrial exports. However, many of these companies nationalized in 1981-2 were wholly or partially reprivatized in 1986-87 during a period when Socialist president Mitterand “cohabitated” with a right wing majority in the National Assembly.

But in August 2009, the French government owned or held major interest in some 2,000 enterprises (if enterprises directly under state control and their subsidiaries or sub-subsidiaries are counted separately), employing close to 1.5 million employees.

Besides enterprises wholly owned by the government, there are many others in which it invests to a degree that gives it a powerful voice in their operations. Some prominent examples include:

The European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company N.V. (EADS), a pan-European aerospace and defense corporation and a leading military contractor worldwide. It includes Airbus as the leading manufacturer of commercial aircraft and Airbus Military. As of July 2007, 27.38% of EADS was owned by SOGEADE (Société de gestion de l’aéronautique, de la defense et de l’espace), a holding company wholly owned by the French state.

AREVA, a French public multinational industrial conglomerate mainly known for nuclear power generation that supplies nearly 80% of France’s electricity. Its main shareholder is the French public-sector holding company, the CEA, which owns 78.9%.

BNP Paribas S.A., ranked in October 2010 by Bloomberg and Forbes as the largest bank and largest company in the world with assets of over $3.1 trillion. The French government is a 17% shareholder.

Suez S.A., a leading French-based multinational corporation with operations primarily in water, electricity and natural gas supply and waste management. The French state holds more than 35% of shares.

DCNS, a naval defense company based in France, one of Europe’s leading shipbuilders. The group designs, builds and supports surface combatants, submarines, systems, and equipment. The French government owns 75%.

Arianespace SA, the world’s first commercial space transportation company. It undertakes the production, operation, and marketing of the Ariane 5 rocket launcher. As of 2004, Arianespace held more than 50% of the world market for boosting satellites to geostationary orbit. Thirty four percent is owned by the French government space agency and 30% by the French government dominated EADS, described above.

Sub-orbital hybrid spacejet developed by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS), itself something of a hybrid with substantial investment from the French government.
This participation of the government in the private sector short of full nationalization is a feature of French and European socialism that is seldom discussed in the U.S., as if nationalization were an all or nothing affair. When the subject of socialism comes up in the U.S., the capitalist class wants only the image of the Soviet Union to be considered.

In 2012, there will be another presidential election in France. In 2007, the current president, Nicolas Sarkozy, representing the center-right UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) ran on a platform that implied the Americanization of the French economy. He defeated the nominee of the Socialist Party, Sègoline Royal, who was increasingly seen as a caviar-socialist and lightweight.

Public opinion has largely thwarted Sarkozy’s efforts and his popularity has plummeted in the process. He currently has the lowest public approval ratings of any French president since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958. These low ratings have remained constant for many months despite an eventful year in which Sarkozy took the lead in the NATO invasion of Libya and attempts to resolve the Greek debt crisis, and the leading Socialist Party candidate, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was being arrested on rape charges in New York City.

Opinion polls in late April prior to his arrest showed Strauss-Kahn defeating Sarkozy by the widest margin — 61 to 39 in a head to head match up. But they also showed Sarkozy losing to either of the two other Socialist Party frontrunners, Martine Aubry and Francois Hollande, by 10 to 12% margins.

Despite the fact that charges against Strauss-Kahn will almost certainly be dropped, he is unlikely to return as a candidate. Still, it is likely we are on the cusp of another era of Socialist Party control of the French government, the first since Mitterand, the only Socialist president during the Fifth Republic, left office in 1995.

It will be interesting to see if a Socialist victory results in another trend toward further nationalizations in France as it did in 1981.

Meanwhile, nationalizations within the U.S. remain anathema. Early in his administration, Barack Obama could have bought the bankrupt General Motors for less than $10 billion. Once government-owned, he could have converted it to the production of high speed trains and their components, something the country needs much more than another brand of mediocre, fossil fuel burning cars.

Instead, he provided roughly a hundred billion in government guaranteed loans to resurrect this corporate corpse. A slimmed down GM has at least momentarily returned to profitability. That’s all that matters in the capitalist hegemony controlling the U.S.

Obama touts this as a great accomplishment. In reality, it is a symbol of his lack of vision or leadership and his commitment to the dominion of finance capital.

[David P. Hamilton has been a political activist in Austin since the late 1960s when he worked with SDS and wrote for The Rag, Austin’s underground newspaper. Read more articles by David P. Hamilton on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged David P. Hamilton, European History, France, Political Philosophy, Socialism | Leave a comment

TRAVEL / Olga Bonfiglio : How the Empire Builder Made Me a Rail Fan

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Riding the Empire Builder. Photo from sjb4photos / Flickr.
How the Empire Builder
made me a fan of the rails

By Olga Bonfiglio / OpEd News / July 5, 2011

The first time I ever took a train was with the girl scouts when our leaders, Mrs. Belko and Mrs. Rieburger, planned a Saturday day trip to the Holland Tulip Festival. About 15 young girls with a couple mother-sponsors rode the rails from Detroit to Grand Rapids and then took a bus to Holland.

This was a memorable trip for me, mostly for its long distance from home, the back and forth swaying of the train that made walking difficult, the toilets that emptied their contents onto the track, and the conical paper cups that held water from the push-button dispenser.

Today, trains have more significance for me than did the curiosities of my youth. They are a “green” way to travel and a key component of our public transportation system. They avoid the hassles of freeway driving and the expense of auto parking or the long waits and delays of the airport. And, they are just plain fun to ride.

After discovering the Empire Builder, the long-haul line from Chicago to Seattle/Portland, I decided the adventure of “eating up” all those miles was just too good to miss. Fortunately, a friend of mine who lives in western Montana provided me with the perfect excuse to go cross-country by train. And, after spending 31 hours and one night, I quickly realized I had a lot more reasons to enjoy this wonderful form of travel.

As a writer, I need time and space to allow ideas to flow more easily through me. Staring out the window of a train that rocks back and forth as it moves forward provides both the rhythm and the environment for solitude. The low-toned rumble of metal on metal is more soothing than the high-pitched muscle of jet engines or the droning of an auto motor.

I can scribble down notes for an article I’m working on, read, reflect on my encounters with fellow passengers, or just be alone in my thoughts. I can also be inspired by the passing landscape, small towns, big cities, and the diversity of people that trains seem to attract, like the 90-year-old woman traveling alone to see her sister; the legions of Amish who picked up the train at different stops to attend a family funeral; the young man with no legs who ordered lunch in the snack car; the cowboy with his hat, jeans, and boots who sat by himself all the way from Montana to Milwaukee; and the big, hulking Native American who kissed his wife for 30 to 40 minutes before he boarded.

In truth, trains are one of the last public spaces left in our society and they also demand a different kind of behavior than we are accustomed to in today’s fast-paced, impersonal, high-security, privatized society. You can interact with other passengers you don’t know, feel safe with them, and be with people who are largely respectful toward their fellow travelers.

On a long haul train people seem to want — and conductors seem to care about ensuring — an environment that is quiet and absent the omnipresent cacophony of electronic devices, boisterous talking, and rowdiness. Of course, the Lounge Car is available for those who prefer more spirited interaction.

As with any public space, trains beckon you to explore them in a number of ways. You can walk around to stretch your legs or use the restroom. You can go to the Lounge Car to play cards, read, observe the scenery or get a snack. You can also go to the Dining Car for a delicious meal at a table complete with a tablecloth, cloth napkins, real silverware, and friendly servers.

Because space is limited, the maitre d’ uses every seat, so if you are traveling alone or in a group with less than four, you will sit with other travelers.

Wearing some kind of identifying mark like a Chicago Cubs cap, a Lady Gaga t-shirt, or a place-oriented jacket as I did, provides you with a handy conversation starter. Several young people stopped me to ask if I knew their friends when they saw my Kalamazoo College jacket.

Train personnel are generally more interactive than those you find on airplanes. And on a long haul line, they’re with you for the entire trip, so you get to know them because you both are on train time where the time boundaries are much broader and the pace more leisurely. Isn’t that what life should be about anyway?

All of these opportunities for encounters enhance your travel experience because they are energizing and engaging compared to other more hurried, confined, and oppressive forms of travel where you want to get out of the vehicle as soon as you can.

Traveling in a long haul train also allows you to feel the expanse of the country. An overnight ride is exciting to fathom when you realize that you go to sleep in one place and wake up hundreds of miles away in another. Air travel, of course, provides a similar experience except that your focus is on the hours you must sit in your cramped little seat. Flying, though fast, is more surreal because you cannot see the space you traverse since you are at least a mile high over the ground with much of it blocked by cloud cover.

Car travel allows you to traverse the miles at your own pace and convenience, but you must be vigilant to the road and, like air travel, you are confined to a small space. And although you travel on public roads, you tend to treat your car more like private space.

My ride to Whitefish, Montana (what a funky name for a town!) covered 1620 miles of the northern-most parts of the United States. I crossed the mighty Mississippi River and saw the “spacious skies” and “amber waves of grain” gradually give way to the “purple mountain majesties.”

I felt both pride and blessedness in my country as we passed by industrious large cities, quaint small towns, colorful farms, and magnificent landscapes of forests, rivers, and plains that have each created unique cultures and lifestyles sensitive to place. One surprising effect of this long ride was that I came out of it feeling as though I had just witnessed Walt Whitman’s America.

Sleeping comfortably on a train can be a challenge but it’s certainly not as bad as trying to sleep in an airplane. If you travel by coach, you might be lucky enough to have two seats to yourself, which then provides you with a couple of options: you can curl up across the seats or you can sit up and use the foot rest or leg rest. I found it comfortable to stretch my small body diagonally across two seats with my head wedged in my traveler’s pillow at the window and my feet on the leg rest of the other seat.

Since you are primarily traveling through the countryside, there is virtually no light coming in from outside. Meanwhile, the low blue ceiling lights in the aisle help guide your way should you need to get up during the night. People seem to quiet down around 10 and the motion of the train soon rocks you to sleep. I got eight hours each night while on the train, more than I usually get at home, and felt refreshed in the morning as the sun rose on the Dakota prairie.

If you want to sleep on a bed or have more privacy, you can purchase a roomette or a first class cabin. This more costly option also includes your dining car meals, a wine tasting party at 3 p.m., and certain privileges at train stations. It is a means of travel reminiscent of the days when only the wealthy could afford such luxury on trains.

The summer-long Rails to Trails Program, a special collaboration between Amtrak and the National Park Service, also offers travelers the opportunity to learn more about the countryside and its historical and geographical significance from volunteers who enthusiastically research and prepare scripts of useful information about the places you are seeing out your window. You will find them in the Lounge Car.

As a result of my trip on the Empire Builder, I have come to believe that trains facilitate your ability to be a “real traveler” because you can meet a variety of people, learn about their lives, discuss their ideas, and really see the country. This trip has inspired me to take more long haul train journeys with the goal of seeing the entire country by rail as long as I have the time and money to do so.

Trains take a little longer than other modes of transportation but the experience they provide enriches you even before you arrive at your destination and savor each passing mile. Go Amtrak!

[Olga Bonfiglio is a freelance writer and author of Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to the War in Iraq. The former professor and nun has written for several magazines and newspapers on the subjects of food, social justice, and religion. She currently volunteers as a gardener and lamancha goat handler on a small dairy farm in southwest Michigan. This article was published at and distributed by OpEd News.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in RagBlog | Tagged Amtrak, Rail, Trains, Transportation, Travel | Leave a comment

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

U.S. driving hits the wall

Peak driving has many causes

In my last post, we saw that total US driving hit a peak back in 2007. This time we will take a closer look at the situation to examine the reasons, the implications, and the prospects for the future of driving in the United States.

There are a number of contributing factors behind the 2007 peak. High unemployment simultaneously reduces the need to commute as well as the ability to afford to do so. There is the deteriorating condition of US roads amidst increasing congestion. US government grants to the states for highways is anticipated to drop further from the current level of $41 billion a year to about $32b next year.

The reduction in driving is not only due to high fuel prices as various observers have noted. It seems to be part of a global trend that predates the big runup in fuel prices.

A fairly recent study by economists Kenneth Small and Kurt van Dender found that a 10 percent increase in gas prices leads to a 0.2. to 0.3 percent reduction in driving in the short run, and an eventual reduction of 1.1 to 1.5 percent. But does this explain the driving slowdown? Maybe partially, but not entirely. The growth of driving began to abate around 2000, and driving flattened out around 2004; the big gas price hikes didn’t come until late in the decade. Besides, though the graph I showed you last time has a couple of kinks in the 1970s, the relentless rise in driving basically shrugged off a comparable (in real terms) runup in oil prices during that decade.

Another factor is that an aging US population tends to drive less. A recent AARP report, “How the Travel Patterns of Older Adults Are Changing,” predicts that older travelers will change the landscape of transportation in coming years, and concludes that transportation planners and policy makers must adapt to this shift. The number of Americans 65 and older is projected to rise by 60 percent in the next 15 years.

“Seniors are piling onto public transportation”
This analysis of the 2009 National Household Travel Survey by Jana Lynott and Carlos Figueiredo found that:

Older adults comprise an increasing share of the nation’s travel.

Although individuals are traveling less, particularly in private vehicles, public transportation use is up.

Older men are more mobile than older women; however, the gap has been narrowing.

The number of older non-drivers has grown by more than 1.1 million.

Driving less is mostly due to the economy

The closer we look, the more evidence we find that the single biggest factor behind both the driving and car ownership decrease is the economy. The cost of driving has been going up a lot faster than average income. A new poll that helps to reveal the degree to which high fuel prices are impacting average folks. It concludes that about 40% are already stressed by steadily rising driving costs. If we look at driving trends among young people we see that driving as a favorite teenage pastime is in decline. It is hard not to attribute a lot of this decline with the fact that the unemployment rate among youth is at a depression level of about 24%.

Thanks to a Brookings Institution report on US metropolitan areas released last year, we can easily see the strong link between household income and car ownership.

If we go to the Brookings site, we find all kinds of interesting demographic data on an interactive US map, and sometimes yearly data series, for most major US metropolitan areas. In this case, we can choose a city, go to “explore the data”, then “commuting”, and then “Vehicles availability by median household income”. The income cutoff points used are: 80% of average is Low; 81-150% is Medium; and 150% of median or above is the High income category.

The report shows that most of the bottom third or so of US households in US metropolitan areas are unable to afford family cars. These households typically only have a 30-40% vehicle ownership rate. Of the roughly third in household income above that, comprising what we might often call the middle class, roughly 80% own cars. In the top third, typically about 90% of households own cars. Following are NO-CAR family percentages for Texas and other big US cities in 2008.

San Antonio Austin Houston Dallas Los Angeles Atlanta Philadelphia

Low 68.8% 62.5% 73.2 73.7 68.2 62.6 68.2

Medium 21.5% 21.5% 15.7 18.3 19.9 24.6 22.1

High 9.8% 16% 11.1 8.1 11.9 12.8 9.7

In each case, we see dramatic differences in household car ownership by income level, usually differing by a factor of four or more between the high and the low income levels. It is apparent that perhaps a quarter of US households can’t afford to own cars now. It is apparent that any continuation of the current hard times combined with higher driving costs will decrease car ownership and driving even more. Since the data above is for 2008 car ownership, car ownership at the bottom end must have declined further, since the cost of driving has now risen above the previous 2008 peak. It appears likely that high imported oil prices are now killing the current recovery.

PRINCETON, NJ — The slight majority of Americans, 53%, say they have responded to today’s steep gas prices by making major changes in their personal lives, while 46% say they have not. Sizable proportions of adults of all major income levels have made such changes, including
68% of low-income Americans, 54% of middle-income Americans, and 44% of upper-income Americans…”

What about the family budget available for driving? We can use the interactive map at the same Brookings link to see a series of yearly metropolitan income trends ending in 2009. Here we see that most metro areas show a striking decrease in median family income over the past decade, commonly 10% or more.

Economists often say that the core rate of US inflation is just a few percent, since this core rate calculates inflation to exclude food and energy and focuses more on labor costs. However, at the low end of the car driver income scale, necessities like food and fuel and housing make up a comparatively larger portion of the family income. For low income drivers, inflation is effectively higher.

Another way to track the economic stress level for low income families is food stamps, where we see a large increase in food stamp use since 2008. Those who can afford to to buy new cars are switching to smaller, more fuel efficient cars. Those who can’t are trying to keep their current
cars running longer.

People aren’t buying expensive items like cars and durable goods as much as they used to. Not even gas-saving hybrid cars are exempt from this downward trend. Interestingly, spikes in searches for maintenance related issues like “new tires” and “oil change” suggest people are
looking for ways to keep their old cars running longer…A record number of Americans — around 45 million — now rely on food stamps. That means nearly 1 in 7 people, or 14%, are living on food
stamps. The number of food stamp recipients increased 16% in 2010.

There is a lot of other evidence of a strong shift underway from two car families to one car families. A number of reasons for the decline in car ownership in recent years are reviewed here.

Ten Reasons for drop in Car Ownership

In the United States, we embarrassingly have more vehicles than people with driver’s licenses. We have 246 million vehicles. AAA estimates that it costs $8,000 per year for each car owned, which creates a financial burden on cash-strapped Americans…
One Car Households. The average suburban U.S. household has two vehicles. Some more. The average urban U.S. household has one vehicle. More American families and roommates are going from three cars to two cars to one car

The latest polls show that about 40% of the US population is being squeezed hard by the rising cost of driving which now consumes about 20% of the typical family budget, even while total household income remains flat and families struggle to cope with a backlog of credit card debt and increasingly burdensome mortgage payments. There can be little doubt that American family budgets are now being severely stressed by the rising costs of driving their cars.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wal-Mart’s core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said Wednesday. “We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure,” Duke said at an event in New York. “There’s no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact.” Wal-Mart shoppers, many of whom live paycheck to paycheck, typically shop in bulk at the beginning of the month when their paychecks come in. Lately, they’re “running out of money” at a faster clip, he said. “Purchases are really dropping off by the end of the month even more than last year,” Duke said. “This end-of-month [purchases] cycle is growing to be a concern…

In Texas, we can see that the big box retailers are quite concerned that their customers are running out of money because of the cost of driving, causing them to shop less, especially toward the end of the month.

High gas costs are changing consumers’ shopping habits, and that’s hurting national retail chains like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. In fact, one in five Walmart moms list gasoline costs as their top expense behind housing and car payments, Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said. Wal-Mart recently reported its eighth consecutive quarter of sales declines at U.S. stores open at least one year.“You know, it’s just a ripple effect,” Rossiter said. “These concerns aren’t geographic — they aren’t limited to any part of the country.”

Further evidence for a big shift in US driving behavior; Elasticity of demand with driving cost

It used to be thought that the amount of driving in the US was relatively blind to fuel cost. As economists would say, driving demand is an inelastic function of the cost of driving. In the past, most Americans would tend to spend less elsewhere in order to keep driving about as much. The need for US drivers to keep driving at all costs in order to get to work and do other vital errands meant that they willing to pay a high price at the pump to keep driving.

In economic terms this is called a low elasticity of demand with fuel price. Over the longer run, people can move closer to work, or buy a smaller car, but over the short run they are stuck with paying, no matter what their fuel costs. However, this assumption has its limits when we reach the point that growing numbers simply can’t afford to drive. The decrease in car driving and ownership due to a higher driving cost is resulting in a growing increase in the elasticity of oil demand with higher fuel price.

This snip from an insightful analysis by Tom Whipple reviews the conventional wisdom on the elasticity of driving with fuel prices. The conclusion is that these elasticity numbers may have reflected driving behavior in response to fuel price increases in the past, but not necessarily currently when many drivers are being forced to give up driving, to support other equally important survival costs like food and housing.

“…In the very short run, motorists have no choice but to spend whatever it costs to keep their automobiles and trucks running for their livelihoods depend on it. Over the course of a year or so, some can move to substitute forms of transport, cut back on discretionary travel, and, if they have a choice, use more fuel efficient vehicles. Within a year, all this should add up to an elasticity of demand of roughly -0.26 suggesting that for every 10 percent increase in gasoline prices, gasoline demand should fall by 2.6 percent. If prices remain high for several years, then the elasticity number goes to -.58 suggesting that the demand will fall by 5.8 percent for every 10 percent increase in prices. These numbers of course were derived from past experience in a simpler time before global oil production had peaked and price run-ups were mostly short-lived…”

This diversion of spending toward fuel for cars automatically subtracts consumer spending, the bulk of the US economy, from other areas. If the food and fuel and commodity sector of the economy is seeing inflation, this subtracts spending from other discretionary spending areas of the economy. Inflation in the relatively necessity energy sector subtracts spending and generates deflation in the other sectors, hurting consumer wages of those drivers in the service sector of the economy. With US income stagnant, a combination of inflation for non-discretionary expenses like driving and a simultaneous cutback in discretionary consumer spending in other areas adds up to stagflation. This is bad news to economists, since there is no good economic remedy.

The British Economist has noticed a fundamental shift in US driving behavior.

…Yet, here’s the conundrum. Following all previous recessions, petrol consumption has been a leading indicator of recovery, bouncing back sharply as people started using their vehicles more to shop, to dine out, to seek the curious and the entertaining, and, above all, to take vacations. Despite the American economy’s belated and still timid recovery—seen in increasing sales of cars, clothing, hospitality, entertainment, and consumer goods generally (though still not
housing)—the amount of petrol being consumed across the country has tumbled to 2001 levels, and shows every sign of falling further.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis, the federal agency that churns out monthly reports on how the economy is faring, believes the 2008 spike in petrol prices and the subsequent recession have changed the consumption patterns of American motorists irreversibly. How so? The short answer is that technology and marketing have altered the type of vehicles Americans are now buying…

Driving behavior and public opinion toward driving are both changing in the world’s more affluent countries.

Until now, most projections for future energy use and transportation needs have taken for granted that there will always be more people owning more cars, driving farther and using more oil. But those assumptions are being put to the test by a profound change under way in the countries that have long been the world’s biggest fuel consumers. And it goes beyond the payoff that is already being realized from government fuel economy efforts, like the U.S. government’s announcement today of enhanced consumer labeling to promote efficient vehicles.

We could already see a big change in 2008 when rising fuel price spiked driving costs. “From 1970 to 2008, total highway fuel consumption increased from 92 billion gallons to nearly 181 billion gallons in 2007. The vehicle fuel consumption decreased to 175 billion gallons in 2008.” The fact that we are driving less and using less fuel for years suggests that all the easy changes have already been made.

Driving costs are even higher now, while incomes are relatively lower, leading to a trend toward single car families.

Many Families Limiting Themselves to a Single Car

Motivated by the declining economy, rising gas prices and a concern for the environment, families like the Rogerses say they are starting to rethink the need to have more than one car.Make no mistake, however: America’s love affair with the automobile is still strong. According to a February study by Experian Automotive, which specializes in collecting and analyzing automotive data, Americans own an average of 2.28 vehicles per household, and more than 35 percent of households own three or more cars.But there are signs of change. Brian Gluckman, a spokesman for AutoTrader.com, a leading automotive Web site, said more buyers were moving to one car. Until the last three months, Mr. Gluckman said, that car tended to be a midsize S.U.V. or crossovers. He said AutoTrader.com’s more recent data showed buyers shifting toward smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

US transit demand grows

As both driving and cars on the road peak while the need for transportation remains relatively constant, it is apparent that the public will tend to seek out alternatives to cars. The rapid increase in bikes being used for commuting is one sign of this trend. See Fig. 3; “Trend in Share of Workers Commuting by Bike in Large North American Cities, 1990-2009” Another indication is car sharing, which is also growing rapidly.

A loss of driving affordability tends to turn up as increased transit use whenever the transit is useful and available.

Transit Ridership Up Due to Rising Gas Prices
by Joseph Cutrufo on Thursday, May 5, 2011 at 1:50 PM
It was only a matter of time: Transit agencies are reporting increased ridership due to higher gas prices.
With the national average for a gallon of regular unleaded now at $3.98, motorists across the nation are switching to public transportation. We saw it in 2008, when the national average reached $4, and we’re seeing it all over again.
According to the American Public Transportation Association, $4 per gallon is the tipping point where people begin to drive less and use transit more – a lot more. If gas prices stay this high, we can expect an additional 670 billion transit trips made this year nationwide.

When fuel prices get high enough, many are willing to shift to transit since they must get to work somehow.

PRINCETON, NJ — Americans are most likely to say they would seek vehicles that get better gas mileage if gas prices keep rising but don’t go above the $5-per-gallon range. Americans are second most likely to say they would use mass transit. Seven in 10 Americans would not move and about the same number of workers would not change jobs or quit working, no matter how high prices rise.

Nothing could be more positive for increasing transit use than for the cost of car driving and car ownership to go high enough so that broad new sectors of the population seek to use it. The current stress of rising fuel prices on the family budget is indeed causing a national increase in transit ridership.

“Higher gas prices driving motorists to mass transit”
“When gas prices hit $3, we see serious interest,” Williams said. “Some people come and leave (when gas prices recede). Others come and stay.”The link between higher gas prices and increased use of mass transit is a significant one. It could get even more pronounced.According to a study by the American Public Transportation Association, the U.S. will see an additional 1.5 billion mass transit boardings per year if gas reaches $5 per gallon…”

A lot of the new potential users are senior citizens. In particular, the aging baby boomer population is increasing their use of transit as this sector of the total population grows. However poor public transit is a threat, especially to older Americans.

A recent Brookings study has thoroughly documented the fact that, in the US, transit tends not to go where it is most needed to help low income workers get to work.

These trends have three broad implications for leaders at the local, regional, state, and national levels. Transportation leaders should make access to jobs an explicit priority in their spending and service decisions, especially given the budget pressures they face. Metro leaders should coordinate strategies regarding land use, economic development, and housing with transit decisions in order to ensure that transit reaches more people and more jobs efficientlyx has documented that the transit service in most US metropolitan areas does not go where people most need it to go for their work trips, which is its most important use.

Public support for transit will no doubt continue to increase along with decreasing driving, stagnating income and higher driving cost, whenever the transit can be easily used. The problem is that a lot of the US transit, when it is available, does not go where it could be most useful. The private business sector is not much interested in helping out, so even jitneys are being suggested. Meanwhile, the expansion of transit service is becoming harder for local government to afford, just when it is most needed as an alternative to private cars.

Transit typically has high up-front capital costs, especially rail, despite the overall cost and energy savings of rail when it has a high ridership; “Electric traction offers a lower cost per mile of train operation but at a higher initial cost, which can only be justified on high traffic lines.” One problem lies in trying to explain to the public that saving money on the initial cost is not always a smart long range policy. For now, we should expect less federal help in spending for transit, and most other public infrastructure, as the result of the Congressional gridlock over the US budget deficit.

Widespread support for better public transportation awaits a more widespread turnaround in public opinion led by peak oil, higher fuel prices, and less affordable driving. As a nation, the US is still in denial about the unsustainability of its car habit. The economic reality is stubborn, telling us that our transportation habits will soon have to change more than most American are willing to admit.

Why rising fuel prices are likely to prevent a driving recovery

Could ever recover either our previous driving or our car ownership levels? The slow replacement rate of the vehicles now on the road strongly suggests that the current level of total US driving cannot increase by very much, nor for very long.

Since the 2007 driving peak followed by the 2008 economic crisis, there has been a partial recovery in vehicle sales, but they have never approached the previous peak. US family budgets for car replacement are shrinking as driving costs rise. People are hanging on to their old cars longer than ever, and a lot of SUV owners are financially unable to easily downsize to more fuel efficient cars. Currently, there is a shortage of small used cars reflected in their relatively higher price.

This is not to say that those who can afford to replace them are not already chosing smaller cars. Robert Sinclair Jr., a spokesman for the New York regional chapter of AAA, agrees that “we are witnessing a major sea change in both the types and number of vehicles on the road.

There has been some backsliding on new vehicle mileage since 2008, but recently higher fuel prices will likely help turn this gas mileage trend around again.

“…Hybrid sales rose quickly in 2007 as gas prices climbed, then dropped noticeably in the second half of 2008 as gas prices plummeted from over $4 to $1.60. This time around, despite gas prices climbing steadily over the past year, hybrid cars shrunk from 2.9% of new vehicle sales in 2009 to 2.4% in 2010, according to Ward’s Auto. Meanwhile, sales of trucks, SUVs, crossovers and minivans rose from 48% of the market to 51% from 2009 to 2010. In addition, the average fuel economy rating of new vehicles sold in 2010 was 22.2 mpg, down from 22.3 mpg in 2009…”

Some imagine that electric cars or smaller more fuel-efficient cars could make a big difference. They will make a difference, but probably only a small difference overall. For an economy structurally geared over decades to run cheap on oil to serve low density sprawl development, historic energy transitions like reducing dependence on oil for commuting turn out to be unexpectedly slow and expensive. Electric cars are not well suited for long suburban commutes, and are typically a lot more expensive when new than the current US fleet of gas guzzlers.

Little prospect for a US driving recovery as seen by the global economists

Oil prices have moved to center stage as a primary factor governing the recovery of the global economy.

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency, said that the current price of $120 per barrel could be the catalyst for a global economic crisis on the scale of the one experienced in 2008.”If you don’t see any softening of the prices, there is a risk of derailing the economy, of a double-dip,” Dr Birol told the Reuters Global Energy and Climate Change Summit. “We all know what happened in 2008. Are we going to see the same movie?” Oil prices fell nearly $3 in London to $117.30 and more than $5 in New York to $94.84 on worries about the faltering global economy.However, economists believe the price is still at a level near to tipping the global economy back into a downturn. To combat sky-high oil prices, the US is reported to have attempted an ambitious swap with Saudi Arabia in the past month.

The IEA is now warning that a fuel supply bottleneck has emerged in the face of growing demand because the loss of Libyan sweet crude is hard to make up with increasingly low grade Saudi oil.

Last week saw the publication of the IEA’s monthly Oil Market Report (OMR) and its Medium Term Oil and Gas Markets outlook which projects Agency’s assessment of global supply and demand for the next five years. In recent weeks the IEA has been sounding nearly non-stop warnings that ever since the Libyan and Yemen uprisings took some 1.5 million b/d off the oil markets there was a real danger of higher oil prices and shortages this summer. The current publications are no exception. The Agency is still expecting global oil demand to increase this year by 1.3 million b/d to 89.3 million b/d with OECD demand down a bit due to high prices and the economic slowdown, and Chinese and Indian demand up a bit. The IEA says that global oil supply for May rose by 270,000 b/d from 87.41 billion b/d in April with 210,000 b/d coming from OPEC. The cartel is reported as supplying an average of 29.18 million b/d in May which is close to the Platts survey which put OPEC production for the month at 29.04 million b/d. The IEA, however, points out that the OPEC’s May production was still 1.25 million b/d below the pre-Libyan uprising level.

Here are the most recent two years of gasoline and diesel price trends which show a slight increase in 2009-2010 and then a big jump in the past year. The recent slight decline in gasoline price at the pump is tied to the poor economy and slack US demand.

Fuel demand in North America will decline this year by 190,000 barrels to 23.7 million a day, the Paris-based IEA said. The agency lowered its forecast for the region by 220,000 barrels a day from last month’s report, citing lower growth projections from the International Monetary Fund…“High gasoline prices are scaring off some incremental demand,” said Rick Mueller, a principal with ESAI Energy, LLC in Wakefield, Massachusetts. “We’re going to see people conserve more and cut down on trips.”

If we look at the next few years, according to this analysis by Chris Martenson (and others equally savvy), we see that, even if nothing unexpected goes wrong, we can expect another serious oil price spike by about 2013, due to declining global supply and inflexible demand. Assuming fuel price trouble over the short term and trouble over the long term, how can US driving recover?

The economists at Levy Institute don’t talk about oil much, but they do have excellent economic models that arrive at a gloomy outcome if US trade cannot be brought back into better global balance. Their recent analysis “Jobless Recovery Is No Recovery: Prospects for the US Economy” is pessimistic enough, even without mentioning peak oil. The best economic prescription the Levy economists offer is in part based on dollar devaluation. This, of course, would increase the cost of imported oil priced in dollars, = reducing US driving further.

It is not just driving that is in trouble because of fuel cost. This is arguably part of the bigger problem of global industrial production no longer being able to outrun global energy costs.

While it’s a positive that the US is reducing its demand for oil, it doesn’t necessarily mean we are becoming more efficient. More to the point, the US is no longer able to reduce its overall energy
expenditures as an input to its GDP. Post 2008, some of the “gains” enjoyed by lower energy expenditures were simply made possible by a lower GDP. When the US reduces its use of oil, and switches over more to coal and natural gas, its GDP tends to fall. For an economy that
structured itself towards oil-dependency the past 70 years, that should be expected. The US therefore can have a higher GDP or a lower GDP, but the Energy Limit model reveals that energy costs are becoming more stubborn on the upside. This is a structural change, that will not revert.

Industrialism in the US, and elsewhere in the OECD, is therefore no longer able to outrun energy costs. This means that in order to maintain production, prices for assets like housing, and input costs we can produce less or measure “production” in non-industrial terms.

Either way, this megatrend is simply the reverse of the dynamic which began 250 years ago when humanity moved from wood to coal, and the impact on wages and asset prices was revolutionary. The same model which explains that ascent, now explains our descent.

[Roger Baker is a long time transportation-oriented environmental activist, an amateur energy-oriented economist, an amateur scientist and science writer, and a founding member of and an advisor to the Association for the Study of Peak Oil-USA. He is active in the Green Party and the ACLU, and is a director of the Save Our Springs Association and the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin. Mostly he enjoys being an irreverent policy wonk and writing irreverent wonkish articles for The Rag Blog. Read more articles by Roger Baker on The Rag Blog.]

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VIDEO / Jeff Zavala and Thorne Dreyer : Environmental Activist Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Environmental activist Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Video by Jeff Zavala, Interview by Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / July 6, 2011

Diane Wilson — a mother of five — has earned the wrath of industrial polluters everywhere. She has been arrested 50 times, has held numerous hunger strikes, and has participated in disruptions of U.S. Senate hearings and corporate shareholder gatherings in Houston, Taipei, and London. She was Mother Jones magazine’s “Hell-Raiser of the Month,” and was one of Grist’s “13 Badass Greens.” She was a founder of CodePink, the Texas Jail Project, and Injured Workers United. She is the author of several critically-acclaimed books, and was featured in the award-winning PBS documentary, Texas Gold, and received a Dobie Paisano Writing Fellowship for 2010.

Jeff Zavala is a native Austin documentarian and activist whose work covers immigrant rights, native peoples’ rights, anti-war protests, and the Palestinian liberation struggle. He created ZGraphix Productions and is also the founder of the Austin Activist Archives, a virtual collective dedicated to broadcasting citizen journalism, direct action, civil disobedience, social activism, community organizing, lectures, and music in and around Austin, Texas. Jeff also works as a volunteer for Austin Indymedia, the Workers Defense Project, and the Austin Immigrant Rights Coalition.

Rag Radio – hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor Thorne Dreyer — is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live on the web. The show, which has been aired since September 2009, features hour-long in-depth interviews and discussion about issues of progressive politics, culture, and history. It is produced in association with The Rag Blog and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that publishes The Rag Blog. After broadcast, all episodes are posted as podcasts and can be downloaded at the Internet Archive. Tracey Schulz is co-producer of Rag Radio, and the show’s engineer.

Host Dreyer is an Austin writer, editor, broadcaster, and activist who for years ran a prominent Houston public relations firm. An influential underground journalist in the Sixties, Dreyer was the original editor of The Rag, Austin’s legendary underground newspaper, was a founding editor of Space City! in Houston, and was an editor at Liberation News Service (LNS) in New York. Dreyer was also general manager of KPFT-FM, the Pacifica radio station in Houston.

Thorne Dreyer’s guest this Friday on Rag Radio will be University of Texas journalism professor, widely-published author, and Austin-based political activist and leading radical thinker Robert Jensen. Jensen, who is also a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austi,n will discuss his recent essay, “The Anguish in the American Dream,” posted on The Rag Blog, as well as the current ecological crisis and the key role he believes it must play in our political thinking. Jeff Zavala will also be taping this show, and we will post the video on The Rag Blog next week.

Source /

The Rag Blog

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Harry Targ : Lessons from the Underground Railroad

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Hariett Tubman leads group to freedom. Art from catsdogs.glogster.
Follow the drinking gourd:
Lessons from the Underground Railroad

By Harry Targ / The Rag Blog / July 5, 2011

When the sun comes back,
and the first Quail calls,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is a-waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.

Chorus:

Follow the drinking gourd,
Follow the drinking gourd,
For the old man is a-waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.

The riverbank will make a very good road,
The dead trees show you the way.
Left foot, peg foot traveling on,
Following the drinking gourd.

The river ends between two hills,
Follow the drinking gourd,
There’s another river on the other side,
Follow the drinking gourd.

When the great big river meets the little river,
Follow the drinking gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting
for to carry you to freedom
If you follow the drinking gourd.

(Old song directing slaves on their escape, in modern times popularized by Pete Seeger and the Weavers)

“Dad, didn’t you ever go to elementary school?”

(My daughter responding to my enthusiastic report on a two-day trip along the Underground Railroad)

I just returned from an inspiring two-day trip to southern Indiana and Ohio, visiting three sites along the Underground Railroad. I was familiar with the history of African Americans’ active resistance to slavery, such as armed revolts, and forms of passive resistance, including purposive manipulations of master/slave relationships.

However, my knowledge of the underground flights to freedom was limited.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, as many school kids know, slaves fled the plantation dictatorships to travel north to so-called “free states.” They continued their journey to Canada where slavery was outlawed. In 1850, the controversial Fugitive Slave Law passed Congress which strengthened the hand of slaveholders in their efforts to stop the Underground Railroad. It declared that although slavery was prohibited outside the South, slaveholders and bounty hunters could travel north to retrieve their human “property.”

Escaping slaves, therefore, could not regard themselves as secure until they reached Canada.

While the flight of slaves was largely unplanned, African American slave society was replete with secret directions for escape transmitted through songs such as “Follow the Drinking Gourd” and “Go Down Moses.” Even the quoting of certain scripture in Black churches was designed to give information on routes to the North and possible safe houses to seek. The courage, creativity, and will to freedom of the slaves were extraordinary.

A trail of safe houses in the “free” state of Ohio was created to give runaway slaves sanctuary, food, and directions for moving further north, ultimately to Canada. Ohio was north of the Ohio River, and Kentucky on the river’s southern banks was still a slave state.

Safe houses existed in Indiana, Michigan, and elsewhere in the Midwest and the East. Those providing sanctuary were both white and Black abolitionists. In Ripley, Ohio, John Rankin, a white Presbyterian Minister and long-time abolitionist, and John Parker, a former slave and local entrepreneur, risked their livelihoods and their physical security to provide safe havens to fleeing slaves.

In the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law it became a crime for northern abolitionists to provide such sanctuary. Northerners were obliged by law to cooperate with slaveholders, blood thirsty bounty hunters, and local law enforcement officials in the brutal kidnapping of those who sought their freedom.

In my travel along the Underground Railroad, a trip that ended at the exciting new museum in Cincinnati, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, I learned about the ingenuity of the runaway slaves and the abolitionists in their construction of this long road to freedom.

Much of the story of the Underground Railroad has only been reconstructed in the last 30 years or so. The paths to freedom embarked upon by the slaves, their level of organization, and the numbers of those who tried to escape and who succeeded remain unclear as do the names and activities of abolitionists.

Information at the time about the Underground Railroad, of necessity, was shrouded in secrecy for reasons of security and for the most part narratives of the trials and tribulations of slaves and abolitionists come from memoirs of abolitionists written after the Civil War.

Historians debate any number of elements of the story of the Underground Railroad. But the historical narrative that I experienced on a simple guided tour left a deep impression on me, particularly on what seems to me to bear relevance to our continuing work today.

Contrary to paternalistic accounts of the slave system that many of us were exposed to as children, the slaves, against all odds, were courageous and possessed an extraordinary ingenuity. Slave society was built on a profound level of human solidarity such that the successful flight to freedom of each and every slave was built on the common struggles of entire communities.

Language, songs, community leaders such as “the old man waiting for to carry you to freedom,” and the sacrifices of men and women to get some of their kin “over Jordan” were the collective responsibility of every family and community.

Abolitionists, white and Black, refused to accept the slave system. They were willing to put their lives on the line to oppose an oppressive and immoral system.

The abolitionists were the first revolutionaries in U.S. history after the formation of the new nation. Some were motivated by a conception of the slave system as a system of super-exploitation of the labor of the slaves by the ruling class of cotton producing slave owners. Others were motivated by religious passion.

Quakers, Presbyterians, and people of other faiths deemed slavery an immoral system that contradicted God’s law. For them, the laws of society, such as the Fugitive Slave Law, were superseded by God’s law. And still others, mostly the Black abolitionists, combated the slave system because they experienced it directly and because it was their brothers and sisters who suffered under its yoke.

Examining the slave system and the laws that gave it sustenance suggests a perverse feature of the U.S. constitutional system. Throughout U.S. history, and particularly during the period of slavery, the Constitution and the political system have, on the one hand, opposed immoral laws such as the Fugitive Slave Law, and, on the other hand, accepted them because of the necessity of political “compromise.”

The Fugitive Slave Law was the result of compromise dictated by demands from pro-slavery advocates in contention with anti-slavery advocates. California would be admitted into the federal union as a free state at the same time that southern bounty hunters would be allowed to enter “free” states and kidnap runaway slaves. Ohio was a free state but slave owners, or their henchmen, could lawfully enter the state to retrieve their “property.”

The United States political system has been based on this system of “compromise.” Abolitionists said “no” to what was seen as compromise. They viewed the Fugitive Slave Law as hypocrisy.

The lessons of the Underground Railroad parallel our politics today. First, the story of the Underground Railroad and the slave question is one instance among many in which what is called “compromise” is in fact hypocrisy. Lofty principles continue to be endorsed which are defied in common practice.

The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade in 1973 declared that women have the right to control their own bodies, but health care services are denied to them if they make certain choices. Moreover, health care workers risk death if they provide services that are guaranteed by the Constitution as interpreted by the Supreme Court.

In the 19th century slavery was outlawed in Northern states but slave holders and bounty hunters could kidnap former slaves to be brought back to their owners.

Second, there is a continuity in the flight to freedom from slavery to the present. In the 1980s, during the Reagan wars on Central America, refugees came north to avoid death squads or because of desperate economic circumstance. Central American activists in the United States risked arrest providing sanctuary for those fleeing repression.

Today, modern day bounty hunters, federal agents, and local police pursue immigrants, defined as illegal, who were driven from their homes by global economic policies. They are often kidnapped, detained, and deposited in their home countries irrespective of the local circumstances. The anti-immigration movement and draconian state laws such as those in Arizona are contemporary variants of the story of the Fugitive Slave Law.

On the other hand, resistance, in the best of the tradition of the Underground Railroad, continues as those most victimized rise up to seek their freedom. They work in solidarity with political progressives in common struggle to create a better world for economic and social justice, and for freedom.

It is an old story: “Follow the drinking gourd.”

[Harry Targ is a professor of political science at Purdue University who lives in West Lafayette, Indiana. He blogs at Diary of a Heartland Radical — and that’s also the name of his new book which can be found at Lulu.com. Read more of Harry Targ’s articles on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American History, Harry Targ, Racism, Slavery, Underground Railroad | 1 Comment

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Many gay leftists, including many who worked on Boston’s Gay Community News, were not pleased with the way I became a vocal critic of Cuba. However, I want to stress that my admiration for the Cuban Revolution ended not only because of the gay issue but because of my perception and understanding of other failures of the Castro regime, which became dogmatic and tyrannical within a few years of taking power. Freedom for the Cuban people has not been possible under the Castros, as they established a police state with no civil liberties, the death penalty, and jail for dissenters.

The million-plus Cuban exiles are not all “bourgeois right wingers,” though certainly some are, but include many liberals and ordinary people just seeking a better way of life. Anti-gay policies have been softened in Cuba, which is a good thing, but certainly not due to the kind of grass roots organizing that has taken place in other Latin American countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica. The Cuban regime does not allow this.

I also believe, based on my conversation with many different Cuban exiles, that the Cuban health care and education system (often cited by leftists) are over-rated. I am not well informed about the situation in the countries mentioned by David Morris in his comment, so I have no opinion about events there. However, I think anyone who admires Fidel Castro as a historic figure is as misled and misinformed as the people who admired Joseph Stalin when he was ruling the U.S.S.R.

Allen Young

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Jim Rigby : Nero’s Fire

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Thorne Dreyer

Great Fire of Rome. Image from HubPages.
Nero’s fire

By Jim Rigby / The Rag Blog / July 4, 2011

At a gathering on World Refugee Day, we remembered the 1,900 people deported or detained last year from Austin. Friends and family gathered to weep for their missing loved ones. We spoke about the private prisons springing like toadstools to profit from the misery. What follows is a reconstruction of the speech I gave.

A United States senator claimed recently that the wildfires in Arizona were possibly started by immigrants. When asked to produce his evidence, he backed off a bit, but the damage was done.

Another layer of mythological sediment had settled over the unexamined lives of the American people. Some had come to believe the fires destroying much of Arizona are not the result of climate change, nor poor water management, but, instead, are a curse brought about by strangers in our midst.

The technique has a classic lineage. A leader redirects the attention of the people away from the powerful guilty and upon the weakest and most vulnerable innocents in the population.

For Nero it was the Christians, but it could have been any marginal group of outsiders. Immigrants have always made perfect scapegoats. The problem is that blaming our problems on scapegoats also means not confronting the actual roots of our suffering.

To be sure, some fires are probably started by immigrants trying to make do in dried out areas, but there is a larger fire smoldering that threatens to take down our entire nation. Our nation’s infrastructure shimmers and crackles with heat. The rich are getting richer and poor are getting poorer.

The poor did not start that fire, but, like Nero, our rich elite assure us that America’s problems come from the weakest among us.

A moment of thought would be sufficient to realize that whoever robbed America, would still have the booty. The poor are innocent by definition. The rich are suspects by definition. The real fire was not and could not be set by the powerless. It could only be set by the mindlessly rich and the heartlessly powerful.

America’s immigration problem does not begin when someone crosses U.S. borders in search of a better life. America’s immigration problem begins when our corporations cross over into other parts of the hemisphere and destabilize the economies of other nations.

Our immigration problem begins when our military is used to destabilize entire nations in the name of “American” interests. America’s immigration problem begins when we in the United States forget that the word “America” refers to an entire hemisphere and not to ourselves alone.

Centuries of exploitation have produced masses of rootless sojourners who wander our hemisphere without a real home. The walls we are building to keep them out are becoming our own prison.

Privately run prisons intended to exploit immigrants will easily and unavoidably come to house dissident citizens as well. As the saying goes, “None of us is free while one of us is in chains.”

We U.S. citizens who are not rich have two options as I see it. We can wait until we also become pawns in some rich person’s game, or we can declare our solidarity with humanity now while we still have the power to do something. Perhaps if we stopped selling out the weak, we could find critical mass to stand up to the strong.

Liberation movements have a chant, “The people united cannot be defeated.” Alone we are helpless, together we can take back our world. It comes down to a choice of whether we will speak up for the universal human rights of all people, or will go on following Nero until Rome completely burns.

[Rev. Jim Rigby, a human rights activist, is pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas. He can be reached at jrigby0000@aol.com., and videos of his sermons are available online here. Read more articles by Jim Rigby on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Posted in Rag Bloggers | Tagged American Society, Immigration, Jim Rigby | Leave a comment

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VIDEO / Jeff Zavala and Thorne Dreyer : Environmental Activist Diane Wilson on Rag Radio

Harry Targ : Lessons from the Underground Railroad

Jim Rigby : Nero’s Fire

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