The Icepick Cometh

Perhaps it was a speech that was more policy-oriented and political than broad and overtly hopeful, but Mrs. Icepick said that's what she wanted to hear, so who am I to argue?

Let there be no doubt: This was a passionate address, and there were touches of inspiration in between the specifics and firey rhetoric that put to rest questions of whether Obama can go on the offensive when needed — a Jedi-like approach of using force when diplomacy and reason have failed.

In many ways, it was a cumulation and conclusion to the major speeches we've heard this week — Hillary's inspiration, Bill's reminder of our own potential, Kerry's preemptive attacks, and Biden's foreign policy focus.

There was the forward-looking call to serve the next generation and the Kennedy-like call to service, something I particularly liked:

And we will keep our promise to every young American - if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

But in between the policy talk, and right before invoking the legendary speech delivered 45 years earlier, Obama did not forget to focus on the theme that brought him so far: Hope.

Instead, it is that American spirit — that American promise — that pushes us forward even when the path is uncertain; that binds us together in spite of our differences; that makes us fix our eye not on what is seen, but what is unseen, that better place around the bend.

That promise is our greatest inheritance.

He distanced himself from the old (and inaccurate) criticism of liberalism of the ’70s — that government owes you something, but you owe nothing. Instead, Obama focused on the hard work we all must do and offered a call for personal responsibility.

Yet, in many ways, in many of the approaches he offered, there was a welcome return to the progressive themes that he seemed to abandon since the end of the primary season. While acknowledging the country's differences on Choice, guns and same-sex marriage, he sounded very much like a progressive in calling for an ambitious end to our dependence on foreign oil within 10 years — though 2018 sounds like a long time away, it's not. He also endorsed progressive ideas like eliminating tax breaks to corporations that don't need them and ending crippling capital gains taxes for small businesses, ensuring a "world-class" education to every child, fulfilling the promise of affordable health care, and, especially as the father of two young daughters, addressing major concerns of Hillary's supporters, most notably equal pay for all women.

Far be it from this cynic to agree with a sentiment like "We are a better country than this," but let's see where we can take this.

Change happens because the American people demand it - because they rise up and insist on new ideas and new leadership, a new politics for a new time.

Strong and forceful, specific yet still broad, practical yet still full of Hope.
 

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Sixteen Tons. What do you get? Another day older, and deeper in debt.

Big to-do in the New York Capital on Thursday with truckers clogging the streets with a rally to protest taxes and tolls and the high price of diesel.

Before you shout irony at the idea of protesting gas prices by driving and idling, you need to remember one thing: You might argue with their methods, but we're talking blue collar families. We're talking workers that were sold the American Dream, and of course I am paraphrasing David Simon here, that if you worked hard and did your job, then America has a place at the table for you, that you can make a proud living wage. And, again paraphrasing David Simon, that's not so true; your life is actually worth less every day, as Simon has frequently said.

You might argue that $5 per gallon gas (and $6 per gallon diesel) can help wean the country off environment-killing and unsustainable oil (foreign and domestic), much the same way that $8 per pack cigarettes can help wean smokers off of their own killing habit. And I would agree with you.

At some level, it's a good thing, especially if it forces people to give up their showboaty and unnecessary SUVs and sprawling McMansion existence (though I disagree with the biofuels bandwagon).

And as this AP article points out, drivers can recoup some of their fuel costs through adjustable surcharges — but there's apparently a lag, which creates a cash-flow problem that many of them cannot ride out (excuse the pun) until the money comes in.

However, kicking the oil habit will be fruitless if government does not strongly step in to increase mass transit and to increase the use of rail in hauling goods, which is vastly more energy efficient, emits less greenhouse gas (PDF) and is generally safer than trucking. Trucks would still be needed, but for shorter trips — hauling from rail sidings to the goods' destinations. By far, trucking consumes the most fuel out of any other form of transportation.

But what of those driving the trucks?
 
In many ways, America (and that means you and me as much as the government) has sold them a bill of goods that trucking was a viable way to earn a living. And for years perhaps it was viable, if not overly lucrative.

Now what? Those that can get out, are leaving (AP article again).

But how many more American workers is our Economy going to simply cut loose in (paraphasing Simon again) the Triumph of Capitalism over the Individual?

The truckers' case is somewhat difficult, in that their industry was based on a large dose of destroying the environment, through emissions, through oil consumption and through both reaction to and encouragement of sprawl. That said, you can't begrudge a person making a living — man gotta eat.

And you and I, friend, share some blame, too. American's recent conspicuous over-consumption largely helped fuel the boom in the shipping business. Up until a year or two ago, the economy (and the purchasing of goods hauled by truckers) was booming despite mounting credit use among consumers — it was unsustainable growth, a bubble as ripe for popping as the housing bubble has been.

Though reflexively, the truckers' approach may seem like bullying tactics — we don't get our way, so we're going to make life miserable for everyone else, block traffic, stop the flow of goods, blockade Manhattan, etc. And some protesters' choice in language attacking the very people who buy the goods who keep them in business seems, at best, counterproductive.

You need only check out the protests in Spain and France to see how ugly it could get, to say nothing of the conflicting emotions produced — sympathy for the truckers' plight and ire drawn from their bullying approach.

Despite that, once you get past the emotions on both sides, our question today is what do you do with the truckers?

Far be it from pointing out my own hypocrisy, but I've whined about the loss of newspaper jobs since I began this blog (and long before that). That industry is as much a dinosaur-in-the-making as the fossil-fuel-using trucking industry.

Perhaps the news industry is too big, and too obsolete (in the era of online information). I tend to feel the same way about gas-guzzling delivery systems in the face of cleaner technologies such as existing systems (rail) and yet-to-be-developed models (green trucks? less consumption (gasp!) by consumers?).

I don't have the answer to this. Worker re-training? Seems like small consolation. And with powerful political forces involved and invested in the status quo, both in the halls of our legislatures and in certain still-powerful unions, you're not going to see trucks disappear entirely anytime soon.

You will probably see more protests about high-priced diesel, and perhaps some pandering by re-election-minded pols with the adoption of gas tax relief "holidays" (which will cause a need to compensate with taxes elsewhere and encourage oil companies to step in and profiteer, to say nothing of consumers getting a shock with the sudden spike in price when the tax holiday expires).

Perhaps all that can be done is to discourage the next generation from getting into that industry, as harsh as that may sound. And I mean that about both trucking and about newspapering.

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Quick quote: "A single intermodal freight train can remove as many as 280 trucks from the highway system while using significantly less energy than highway travel in the process." (PDF)

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Random thoughts this evening while the coffee buzz again wears off:

And I thought we had it bad when we had a landlord that controlled the "free" heat (he kept it below, like, 60 degrees during the daytime, back when I was working nights — we tricked the box-locked thermostat by laying icepacks on top of it). Story from Daily News, via Gawker.

Best way to drink up this weekend.

I like this guy. Newsflash for Gannett: local people like local news. Second newsflash: People don't like stuff that sucks.

I also love this follow-up criticism surely from a Gannett zombie ("one of us, one of us, one of us"). Complainer's Alec-Baldwin-in-Glengarry-Glen-Ross-like comment: If you don't like it, leave. That's priceless! "All for company!"

Wonder if this fascist judge knows that at the rate he plans to impose these fines, he should hit this journo's annual salary in about 18 days (via Romenesko, who also turned us onto the Gannett blog, and the blog after the jump).

More coffee, more coffee (thanks again, Romenseko for turning me on to this blog.

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Don't say I didn't tell you so, but I ain't the only one who thinks Congress is taking the cynically easy answer with this corn-for-fuel bullshit. Check out this story from NPR's All Things Considered. Frankly, I always thought that the answer to the fuel problem and the garbage/landfill problem could be one and the same — and if you were watching closely to the end of Back to the Future you'd have known if for, like, 23 years! Right at the end of the movie, Doc returns in the flying DeLorean and fuels up by dumping household garbage into the "Mr. Fusion" at the back of the time machine. Hmmm, let's see, NPR article, can you help me out?...

But Alex Farrell at Berkeley sees a way out of this. He says the focus of the biofuels industry needs a rapid change of direction, away from using cropland — which is where most U.S. biofuels come from today — and toward other sources of starting material.

"We could replace all of the ethanol that we consume in California just using waste that goes to the landfill today, and turning that into ethanol," Farrell says.

Environmentally friendly biofuels could also be made from agricultural waste or grasses grown on land that's not suitable for crops. The biofuels industry is heading in that direction, but the technology to make use of fuels other than corn and soy is still in its infancy.

Earlier, I was talking about Congress winning easy votes from both the Green types (and sort-of Green types, like me) and from Middle America with this ethanol ploy; instead of doing the hard thing and funding more research into better sources of alternative fuels to wean us off gasoline, Congress grabbed onto the first thing that sounded kind of eco-friendly and then put a bright green sticker on it. But, I didn't know then that ethanol can, in fact, come from sources other than corn — like from trash, as this Berkeley guy said. I also only pointed out the Mississippi-bound sludge and rising farm feed costs (and no change in trucking pollution) angles from the corn-fuel scam. But NPR's story also notes that negative global impacts of clear-cutting land to grow corn to take advantage of Congressional incentives, and the attendant costs of that.

Still waiting on my Mr. Fusion. Keep waiting, and keep waiting for that flying DeLorean, too. According to Back to the Future, we're due for flying cars in 2015, just seven years away, when Congress will likely still be giving us and the environment the ol' spitting corn-cob treatment.

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I consider myself environmentally conscious, if not true 100% green, but I'm trying, and I want to do my part. I drive a car with pretty good mileage (stick shift, 33 mpg). I recycle, my newspapers especially, obsessively (when I get to them, that's when; so stop asking me about my newspaper stack/end-table).

I guess that makes me Bourgeois Green. But my environmental awareness doesn't include these stupid swirly Compact Fluorescent light bulbs. I cannot stand the light that emits from them — it unmazes me. They are the very definition of "not soft."

I had worries about the mercury in them, but this Slate article puts some of those fears to rest. There's really little mercury in them, so don't worry about it (as the article essentially says). Of course, eating a little asbestos with mustard on it prolly won't kill you, either. Still, I'm convinced the mercury hazard is more or less minimal (but please don't eat them).

No, for me, the CFL light is simply too harshly white (take that whiteys!). It resembles nothing of the softness of a regular light bulb. You say, so what? Deal with it. Or as one obstinate Slate commenter put it (in response to a kind of overwrought defense of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs that I'd like to distance myself from): So, your personal aesthetics will take a back seat to environmental responsibility. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Decider. It is that kind of "I'm-right-you're wrong" attitude that gives us liberals a bad name. Um, that is not to be confused with my "I'm-right-you're-wrong-attitude." Not in the least. Please move on. Nothing to see here, my fine fellow American human friend.

Make these bulbs emit softer light and make 'em capable of dimming (I can't find any that work on a dimmer, other than dimming directly from "full blast" to "off") and we'll talk. Otherwise, I'm a gonna have to find another way to offset my old-fashioned incandescent carbon emissions. Of course, Congress spent its time dealing with these bulbs rather than, um, the economy, our inner cities, and, like, The War (sort of like the case stated in that previously mentioned overwrought article that I thought I was distancing myself from). Whatevs. Next thing you'll tell me Congress is pushing for a move to corn-based fuel that will inadvertently raise food prices by raising cattle feed prices and produce a sludge that will further muck up the Mississippi and continue to send smog-spewing trucks (ethanol-running or otherwise) out on the road to deliver said fuel, rather than work a little harder and fund research for a better alternative and shun the easy skin-deep popular and politically expedient thing to do in a cynical and transparent attempt to appear "green" and win some alterna-votes and appeal to middle America, to boot. But Congress would never do that.

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