Tuesday: 6 Iraquis Killed, 22 Wounded...

To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire;
and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.

Tacitus

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The stuff you hear on Sunday morning yap shows...

Jim Kunstler puts Krugman on the spot....

Paul Krugman says that we'll soon realize that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is growing. He actually said that on the Sunday TV chat circuit. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I would really like to know what you mean by that Paul....

Do you mean that the Atlanta homebuilders are going to open up a new suburban frontier down in Twiggs County so that commuters can enjoy driving Chrysler Crossfires a hundred and sixty miles a day to new jobs as flash traders in the Peachtree Plaza?Do you mean that the Home Equity Fairy is going to wade into the sea of foreclosure and save twenty million mortgage holders currently sojourning in the fathomless depths with the anglerfish?Do you mean that all the bales of deliquescing, toxic "assets" hidden in the vaults of Citibank, JP Morgan, Bank of America, et al, (not to mention on the books of every pension fund in the USA, and not a few elsewhere) will magically turn into Little Debbie Snack Cakes on Labor Day weekend? Do you mean that American Express and Master Card are about to declare a Jubilee on accounts in default everywhere? Do you mean that General Motors will produce a car that a.) anyone really wants to buy and b.) that the company can sell at a profit?

What's growing in this country besides unemployment, bankruptcy, repossession, liquidation, gun ownership, and suicidal despair? In short, are you out of your mind, Paul Krugman?

Monday: at least 15 Iraqis were killed and 21 were wounded in bus bombings in southern Iraq.

Also, a U.S. family has learned that their soldier son’s death in Iraq may have been triggered by abuse from fellow soldiers.


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Sunday: 1 US Soldier, 8 Iraqis Killed; 17 Iraqis Wounded -- Antiwar.com

Summer interns at the NYT Editorial Pages

How does The New York Times manage to deliver a headline at the top of the op-ed page in 30 pt. Italic that makes a hash of the name of the President of the United States?


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Rethinking my trip to the west of Ireland...

In the past, late August was preparation time for a trip to the ancestral home and relatives in the west of Ireland: County Mayo--Westport and a nearby glaciated drumlin in Clew Bay. The entire 46 acres of Inishgowla, where my grandmother lived until age 16, was once too poor to support four families. Look at it now. This cottage is presently the only structure on the island. For sale at a mere 365,000 Euros, roughly half a million USD.

Who knows the current details of ownership? It certainly isn't anyone in our family.

If there's a mortgage on it, it might be wise for the debtor lay low and work on getting current. It's hard to believe that mortgage payments are up to date on this improbable "luxury" dwelling. Ireland, you see, is in deeper financial/real estate travail than many places closer to home--places like Las Vegas and the California Inland Empire.

(Quick change of venue to the west coast of USA.)

My son lives in half of a nice-enough duplex in Los Angeles--Redondo/Manhattan/Hermosa Beach area--right on the PCH, four blocks from the surf. His landlord is a Dubliner who came to California to make money in the real estate. Currently he is renting the duplex to three recent grads of Univ. Wisconsin--well below his costs. He'd bought the place with flipping in mind. He's an engaging fellow; I hope he gets out of it without getting too badly skinned. I met him last month and he told me this story.

(Back to Ireland and its real estate travail.)

Developers/builders/contractors in Ireland had special challenges in the real estate boom. The Irish typically didn't go in droves into the fields of masonry, carpentry, roofing and plumbing. Those that could went to the University, yearned for intellectual pursuits--teaching and, in the days of the Celtic Tiger, high tech and computer systems design (not to mention mortgage banking). Those inclined to workaday labor had traditionally emigrated to the States or Australia, where good union jobs eventually got them to the 'burbs.

So, the Irish had a building boom and too few craftsmen. Enter: the Czechs and Poles. Free movement within the EU permitted a steady and growing population of skilled craftsmen from eastern Europe to craft the fine real estate that became the standard for newly prosperous Irish.

Then, the crash. Immigrant laborers out of work, subsisting on the dole or headed back to Katowice or Ostrava. In either case, it was doubly difficult because they were typically owed thousands of Euros when the developer went bust.

Enter: friendly debt collection services offered by helpful people they met when they arrived back home without a zloty to their names. These skilled collectors would "buy the paper" from the guy who got stiffed, typically paying one third of the face value. Then they'd go to Ireland and track down the developer who had stiffed their "client".

Then, they'd shoot him in the foot; next guy in the knee, the third one in the shoulder. Can't go much higher without moving from mayhem to homicide. Those first few didn't even get a chance to pay up. Since nobody wanted to be next, the rest found a way to pay up.

The Russian Mafia.

"Saints preserve us," as mom might have put it.


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The failures of Children's Service Society are the responsibility of Children's Hospital of Wisconsin

Any in-depth reporting would, of necessity, require revealing who really runs this outfit.

Children's Hospital of Wisconsin is prestigious, hugely-funded, much-given-to-self-promotion/

congratulation. It has always been the untouchable part of the health care arrangements in this community.

Nevertheless, when an agency is harpooned, and seems to be quite deserving of that harpooning by outside, objective reviewers, the daily newspaper reporting on the chronic failures ought to be thorough in identifying just exactly who sets the standards for policy, budget, leadership, priorities and accountability.

Children's Service Society is the name of an old line Milwaukee agency that was taken over by Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, though you wouldn't know that from reading what the scribblers of the Journal Sentinel investigative team have to say.


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Vaya con dios...

Les Paul, the Wizard of Waukesha 1915-2009

He's gone, but the sound is still with us.

Two cents....

I work at suppressing schadenfreude. It's not healthy; it's undignified; it leads to all kinds of bilious eruptions.

And, just this once, McBride gave me a reason to keep stuffing my instinctive reaction, a reason to think at least neutral thoughts.

Three weeks ago, on the fetid opinion pages of the Waukesha Freeman, Jessica McBride wrote a long opinion titled "Where's the harm in gay marriage?". It was--for her--an uncommonly thoughtful and persuasive piece, certainly not what I would expect on that page, nor from that columnist. From a fire-breathing right winger it made for a mild challenge to the thinking of her claque.

And, it definitely tended to humanize someone whose profile has been decidedly one-dimensional.

Now, back to work. Nobody ever said that resisting schadenfreude is easy.

Time for Open Government in Waukesha...

Filed Thursday, noon, at the Circuit Court of Waukesha County: A complaint and Summons alleging that the Water Utility Commission of Waukesha--naming six individuals--have repeatedly violated the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

SUBCHAPTER V
OPEN MEETINGS OF GOVERNMENTAL BODIES

19.81 Declaration of policy.

(1) In recognition of the fact that a representative government of the American type is dependent upon an informed electorate, it is declared to be the policy of this state that the public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government as is compatible with the conduct of governmental business.

This citizen has twice taken this concern about a series of apparent egregious and long-standing violations of the public's right to the "fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government..." to the District Attorney of Waukesha. That official has declined--in both instances--to pursue an investigation.

In such cases, The Open Meetings Law provides for citizens to pursue the matter in Circuit Court EX REL the State of Wisconsin.

Read the Complaint:

STATE OF WISCONSIN CIRCUIT COURT WAUKESHA COUNTY

STATE EX REL. JAMES BOUMAN,

1909 Easy Street, Waukesha, WI 53188

Plaintiff,

Case No.____________________

v. Case Code: CV 30703 Unclassified CV 30607 Administrative Review

WAUKESHA WATER UTILITY COMMISSION,115 Delafield Street, Waukesha, WI 53188

PEGGY BULL,

223 Debbie Dr., Waukesha, WI 53189

JERRY COURI,

1215 Seitz Drive, Waukesha, WI 53186

LARRY NELSON,

201 N. Prairie Avenue, Waukesha, WI 53186

City Hall - Room 208, 201 Delafield Street, Waukesha, WI 53188

RICK TORTOMASI,

2827 Minot Lane, Waukesha, WI 53188

DANIEL WARREN,

1259 Lambeth Road, Waukesha, WI 53189

GREG ZINDA

206 Mandan Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188

Defendants,

Wisconsin oPEN mEETINGS cOMPLAINT

JURISDICTION

This Wisconsin Open Meetings complaint, taken on behalf of the State of Wisconsin, is in regard to the closed meetings held by the members of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission and actions taken in those meetings dealing with the City of Waukesha's water supply and affecting the citizens of the City, as well as the State of Wisconsin.

Furthermore, the Waukesha County Circuit Court has jurisdiction over this complaint under Wisconsin Open Meetings Law. According to Wis. Stat. § 19.97(4), a private action can be filed in court after a complaint is first filed with the District Attorney's Office and 20 days has passed. This complaint was previously filed with the Waukesha District Attorney's Office on May 15, 2009. The District Attorney?s Office has yet to respond to the previous complaint.

FACT ALLEGATIONS

1. On June 21, 2007, Jerry Couri, Commission Secretary (1215 Seitz Drive, Waukesha, WI 53186); Peggy Bull, Commissioner (223 Debbie Dr., Waukesha, WI 53189); and Greg Zinda, Commissioner (206 Mandan Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188) were members of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission.

2. Likewise, on November 14, 2007, Daniel Warren, Commission President (1259 Lambeth Road, Waukesha, WI 53188); Greg Zinda, Commissioner (206 Mandan Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188); Larry Nelson, Mayor (201 N. Prairie Avenue, Waukesha, WI 53186); and Peggy Bull, Commissioner (223 Debbie Dr., Waukesha, WI 53189) were members of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission.

3. Furthermore, on June 18, 2008, Daniel Warren, Commission President (1259 Lambeth Road, Waukesha, WI 53188); Greg Zinda, Commissioner (206 Mandan Drive, Waukesha, WI 53188); Larry Nelson, Mayor (201 N. Prairie Avenue, Waukesha, WI 53186); and Rick Tortomasi, Commissioner (2827 Minot Lane, Waukesha, WI 53188) were members of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission.

4. On these dates, the Commission was a governmental body within the meaning of

Wis. Stat. § 19.82(1). Likewise, on these dates, there was a majority of the Commission members present at the June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 meetings with the purpose of conducting governmental business. Therefore, the members of the Commission were in a meeting within the meaning of Wis. Stat. § 19.82(2).

5. On June 21, 2007 and November 14, 2007, the members of the Commission held closed meetings. For each of these closed meetings, the Commission cited that they were closed pursuant to § 19.85(1)(e) & (g), "to discuss strategy relative to our long term water options, as well as radium compliance, with legal counsel." Waukesha Water Utility Commission Meeting Minutes, 1-2 (June 21, 2007), available at http://www.ci.waukesha.wi.us/alfresco/service/api/node/content/workspace/SpacesStore/836a7e8e-c576-11dd-bf3d-b52a1b1f1ae9/SCSTEMP_162190.pdf?guest=true; Waukesha Water Utility Commission Meeting Minutes, 2 (Nov. 14, 2007), available at http://www.ci.waukesha.wi.us/alfresco/service/api/node/content/workspace/SpacesStore/9126c4a7-c7c3-11dd-a4ee-79531abc49a6/SCSTEMP_164800.pdf?guest=true.

6. Additionally, at the November 14, 2007 meeting, the Commission approved the 2008 Budget. The 2008 Budget contained a $300,000 expenditure for consulting services to assist in achieving a Great Lakes diversion. This expenditure was not discussed in public by the Commission.

7. The members of the Commission held another closed meeting on June 18, 2008 stating it was pursuant to § 19.85(1)(e), [for a] discussion of several potential municipal sources of Great Lakes water supplies, along with return flow options, and the potential costs associated with the supply and return flow options.? Waukesha Water Utility Commission Meeting Minutes, 1-2 (June 18, 2008), available at http://www.ci.waukesha.wi.us/alfresco/service/api/node/content/workspace/SpacesStore/7485b0cb-cb00-11dd-a0e9-ab2aa0157d05/SCSTEMP_187198.pdf?guest=true.

CLAIMS

The members of the Waukesha Water Utility Commission have consistently acted in violation of Wis. Stats. § 19.96, § 19.85(1)(e), and § 19.84(2) of the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law and their responsibilities to the public by frequently holding close meetings where they have discussed and made decisions on water supply policy, particularly regarding a potential Great Lakes diversion. The closed meetings on June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 were held with the purpose to prevent public debate and knowledge regarding the Commission's water supply discussions despite the tremendous public interest in the environmental, public health, and fiscal aspects of these water supply issues. Under Wis. Stat. § 19.81(1), the public would be entitled to the " fullest and most complete information" regarding these water supply concerns.

The Commission and its members violated Wisconsin Open Meetings Law in the following ways:

COUNT I ? Misuse of Wis. Stat. §19.85(1)(e) Open Meetings Exception

The Commission members have repeatedly misused the limited Open Meetings exemption Wis. Stat. § 19.85(1)(e) to justify their closed meetings. For the June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 closed meetings, the Commission members used broad language that does not cite, as required by § 19.85(1)(e) and case law, how "competitive or bargaining" interests are implicated and therefore give the Commission no other option than to move to a closed session. See State ex rel. Citizens for Responsible Development v. City of Milton, 731 N.W. 2d 640, 644 (Wis. App. 2007) and Wisconsin Department of Justice Wisconsin Open Meetings Law: A Compliance Guide 18 (2007).

COUNT II Insufficient Public Notice

The members of the Commission violated Wis. Stat. § 19.84(2) by giving insufficient notice to the public regarding the Commission's closed meetings. In particular, the notices for the June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 closed meetings fail to reasonably apprise the public on the subject matter of the closed session. § 19.84(2). These notices do not meet the reasonableness standard as set forth in Wisconsin Supreme Court decision, Buswell v. Tomah Area School District, 2007 WI 71, 732 N.W.2d 804 (2007). To determine whether a notice was reasonable, there must be a "balancing of factors that consider the burden of providing more detailed notice, whether the subject is of particular public interest, and whether it involves non-routine action that the public would be unlikely to anticipate." Id. at 814.

In the facts and circumstances of this case, the Commission's notices to the public did not meet this reasonableness standard because it would have only been a negligible burden on the Commission to give more specific notice detailing the matters that were to be discussed in the closed meetings. Additionally, there is strong public interest in water supply policy and its environmental, health, and fiscal ramifications. Furthermore, these long term water policy decisions are novel issues of which the public would be unaware.

DEMAND FOR RELIEF

Plaintiff demands the following relief:

1. Declaratory Relief Stating that Commission Violated Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

Plaintiff requests that the Court enters a declaratory judgment, in accordance with Wis. Stat. § 19.97(2), stating that the Commission and its members violated the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

2. Public Disclosure of Discussions and Decisions Made in Closed Meetings.

Plaintiff also requests that the Court awards equitable relief, pursuant to Wis. Stat. §19.97(2), by ordering that the discussions and decisions made in June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 closed meetings that violated the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law be disclosed to the public. Such a disclosure would best fulfill the Open Meetings Law's purpose of fostering an "informed electorate" where the "public is entitled to the fullest and most complete information regarding the affairs of government." Wis. Stat. § 19.81(1). In the present case, the public should have access to the Commission's discussions and decisions made in these meetings since it would have otherwise been entitled to hear them if the Commission properly followed Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

3. Void Any Actions Taken by the Commission in the Closed Meetings.

Furthermore, any action taken by the Commission made in the closed meetings held on June 21, 2007, November 14, 2007, and June 18, 2008 should be void. Under Wis. Stat.

§ 19.97(3), the actions of the Commission can be voided by the Court if it finds that the public interest in voiding the actions taken in an improper closed meeting outweighs the public interest in sustaining the actions. Here, there is significant public interest regarding the environmental, health, and cost consequences that relate to Waukesha's long term water supply issues. This public interest regarding these important issues outweighs the interest in sustaining the Commission's actions that were made on behalf of the public in improper closed meetings.

4. Forfeitures from each Commission Member to be paid to the State.

Also pursuit to Wis. Stat. § 19.96, the plaintiff is seeking a forfeiture of $300 from each member for each violation to be paid to the state under Wis. Stat. § 19.97(4). This amount of forfeiture is justified due to the Commission's repeated misuse of closed meetings and the sensitive nature of these closed meetings given the environmental, health, and fiscal implications of the Commission's water supply discussions which the public should have been part of under the Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

5. Award Actual and Necessary Costs of Prosecution.

Plaintiff requests that the Court reimburses him for the "actual and necessary costs of prosecution," including "reasonable attorney fees." Wis. Stat. § 19.97(4).

Dated: June 19 , 2009

______________________________

Andrew R. Garman

Attorney for Plaintiff, James Bouman

State Bar No. 1070840

2914 Cone View Lane

Waukesha, WI 53188

608-358-9897

Chronically neglected red, red rose makes spectacular display

This grandiflora rose* has always been well-behaved. The ones on either side get leggy every year. But this is a first: nine perfect blooms on one day in the middle of June.

If only it were a happier day.

We have to put the pup down this week. The rose and the furball (coincidentally, named Rose--Pixie Rose, named by a girl who got the puppy for her 11th birthday) shared our yard for the past 13 years.

I think we'll keep the two together, side-by-side, in the garden.


Update: Hey, wait a minute! That was yesterday; things are different today.

The rose got clobbered by the thunderstorms.

But, The pup's pain and travail has shown a surprising, nay, amazing remission. Her problem is a bunch of metastatic tumors that have been blocking all the gastric and other plumbing for days.

While mostly ignoring food and straining a bit (some results), she was uncommonly frisky today--even chased a rabbit out of the yard and worried a chipmunk hiding under the steps. Tail wags almost full time.

If the weather is OK, we'll walk the long trail with her at Lapham Peak tomorrow. She's not likely to recover; but, for now, she looks to be enjoying a dog's life w/o discomfort.

This is a dog who has never shown a lazy, cantankerous, obstinate, aggressive, challenging, supercilious. smelly, growling, smart-ass or bored attitude since day one. Anybody in this family who ever felt funky, depressed, alienated, really down, excessively up, high/low, bored/wired, defeated, fired, under-appreciated, overly-confident, etc., has been on the receiving end of a firm tongue-lashing administered by the Pixie critter. This dog has a Class A licker-license and has never hesitated to use it.

Easy Street fishing trip to Woodfield Pond

The guy with the Zebco nabbed the biggest--a fat Punkinseed. The short guy with the long bamboo pole (fifty years old, never needs oiling or a tune-up) got seven of the nine total.

Still in the pond at 7:00 am. In the frying pan by 9:00 am. All in all, a very satisfying day.

Perps

One of the six victims

Happy Birthday, Pete Seeger.

Ninety years old today.



Always kept a U.S. Budget pie-chart in his banjo case, up-dated as needed, hauled out for a community-organizing moment in so many of his concerts. The slice of the budget that went for war today, war yesterday and more war tomorrow, like Topsy, "... just growed and growed".

Henry Kissinger has the Nobel Peace Prize. Pete has a pie chart.

Two old men, with their respective places on the world stage.

I don't know whether there's an afterlife. I'm not counting on it, but open to being surprised.

If there is, I'd hope I could be on the sidelines to see the encounters with the gatekeeper when these two present their credentials.

o A guy with a grin and a banjo case.

o A guy with a proclamation and a medal and evidence of a cash award plus a wee bit of other baggage*.

* From the Nixon tapes, five days after thug/murderer Pinochet took over in Chile:

Nixon: Nothing new of any importance or is there?

Kissinger: Nothing of very great consequence. The Chilean thing is getting consolidated and of course the newspapers are bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown.

Nixon: Isn't that something. Isn't that something.

Kissinger: I mean instead of celebrating – in the Eisenhower period we would be heroes.

Nixon: Well we didn't – as you know – our hand doesn't show on this one though.

Kissinger: We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [garbled] created the conditions as great as possible.

Nixon: That is right. And that is the way it is going to be played

^ The Kissinger Telcons: Kissinger Telcons on Chile, National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 123, edited by Peter Kornbluh, posted May 26, 2004. This particular dialogue can be found at TELCON: September 16, 1973, 11:50 a.m. Kissinger Talking to Nixon. Accessed online November 26, 2006.

h/t Ed Werstein

David Broder. Who will rid us of this unprincipled minion of the beltway elites?

Glen Greenwald in Salon today. (G.G., perhaps the only reason to look at Salon)

"...To justify the absolute immunity he wants for government lawbreakers, Broder describes the Bush era as

One of the darkest chapters of American history, when certain terrorist suspects were whisked off to secret prisons and subjected to waterboarding and other forms of painful coercion in hopes of extracting information about threats to the United States."

"But that's easy to say now that the Bush presidency is over and the evidence of its criminality so undeniable. But Broder never said any such thing while it was all taking place, when it mattered. In fact, he did the opposite: he mocked those who tried to sound the alarm about how radical and "dark" the Bush presidency was and repeatedly defended what Bush officials were doing as perfectly normal, unalarming and well within the bounds of mainstream and legitimate policy.

(snip)

"More than anything else, Broder's column illustrates the Central Creed of Beltway Culture, which should be memorialized on plaques throughout that city:

When poor and ordinary Americans who commit crimes are prosecuted and imprisoned, that is Justice.

When the same thing is done to Washington elites, that is Ugly Retribution."

Sweet....Sooooo sweet.

Go Tribe!

It is hard to shake off something as deeply ingrained as a HATRED baked into one's marrow at an early age. Even the nuns at St Colman's Parish school taught us that a healthy Yankee hatred was good for the soul.

I think I've given up pretty much all those old hatreds as I age. Except this one essential hatred. I have maintained, even deepened, my abiding hatred for the Yankees. They deserve nothing less and nothing more.

So, today's 14-run top-of-the-2nd-inning performance by the Tribe, in Yankee Stadium--the new in-your-face Yankee Stadium, that has them so deep in hock they'll never get out of the hole--is too sweet for words.

Go Tribe.

Sheesh. Front Page of NYT

Disney Expert Uses Science to Draw Boy Viewers
by Brooks Barnes

Kelly Peña, “the kid whisperer,” is helping the Walt Disney Company to reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.

ENCINO, Calif. — Kelly Peña, or “the kid whisperer,” as some Hollywood producers call her, was digging through a 12-year-old boy’s dresser drawer here on a recent afternoon. Her undercover mission: to unearth what makes him tick and use the findings to help the Walt Disney Company reassert itself as a cultural force among boys.

Ms. Peña, a Disney researcher with a background in the casino industry, zeroed in on a ratty rock ’n’ roll T-shirt. Black Sabbath?

“Wearing it makes me feel like I’m going to an R-rated movie,” said Dean, a shy redhead whose parents asked that he be identified only by first name.

Jackpot.

Ms. Peña and her team of anthropologists have spent 18 months peering inside the heads of incommunicative boys in search of just that kind of psychological nugget. Disney is relying on her insights to create new entertainment for boys 6 to 14, a group that Disney used to own way back in the days of “Davy Crockett” but that has wandered in the age of more girl-friendly Disney fare like “Hannah Montana.”

Click the link to read the rest of this report on anthropology...if you have the stomach for it.

This subdivision is toast...

Nice sunny Spring day in Pabst Farms...

...a place that advertised itself early on with the arrogantly dismissive boast:
Everything else is just a subdivision

Something new: two houses, side-by-side, sporting "for sale" signs. And there are at least six others among the few that have been built and occupied, in the past three years that are being offered for sale. One of them is a F.S.B.O.

This one is "For Sale"...
...Or, you could rent it, if you like.
Agents always tell those who come to look at a vacant property that the previous owner was transferred suddenly to a new job in Charleston or some other unlikely place.
But this is a story I heard first-hand last fall. A guy in a white pickup came to install my new DSL service, here in Waukesha. He said that he was losing his P.F. house to foreclosure, that he and his wife had moved to Pabst Farms in 2006, thinking that they could make out pretty well--as flippers--in the hot market. He went on that his business had gone flat, and that his wife's income had been likewise halved.

They were in default, trying to sell, looking at the inevitability of foreclosure. Now, it is probably bank-owned and "for rent"--that's what it says on the little white part of the sign.
(click tho photo to enlarge)

I don't think high speed intercity rail makes sense at this moment in time....

...Not that it never did make sense. And not that it never will...

Listen to Jim Kunstler make a strong case in a conversation with Jebediah Reed of The Infrastructurist, for the need to start with the abandoned/deteriorated rail roadbeds we have, and add to them, to create a great deal more stimulus bang for the stimulus buck.... And for building new rolling stock that isn't necessarily the state-of-the-art level of high tech. Just good intercity rail that will move both people and goods....

JR: So we’re starting a major new round of investment in our national infrastructure. Can we agree that’s a good thing?
JHK: Well, for instance, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to devote a trillion dollars to fixing up the highways. I mean the days of “happy motoring” in this country truly are behind us. We should be planning for a period when energy resources are much more scarce. Throwing that kind of money at roads is not the way to go about doing this.

How would you be doing it?
I don’t know that I would undertake a spending program like this at all. That said, I’m a pretty strong advocate of repairing the national rail system. It’s obviously not the answer to everything. But it would certainly put a lot of people to work doing something that’s meaningful for society. The infrastructure is out there, waiting to be fixed. I’m pretty adamant that we shouldn’t be going the path of high-tech, maglev, high speed rail at this moment, because we need to prove that we can do this at the Hungarian level before we try to proceed past that.

That doesn’t sound very ambitious.
I perceive one our biggest problems being techno-grandiosity. We are so full of ourselves and so sure that technology is going to rescue us and that we’re so good at it that we can defeat every problem that faces us. It’s a fatal hubris, and it’s subscribed to by an awful lot people who have something to say about the course we take in this country.

In the past, you’ve been critical of Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute on similar grounds.
Don’t get me started on Amory Lovins. His basic program for hypercars promotes car dependency. Why do that unless you think we’re going to continue as a car dependent society? That’s why the highway infrastructure thing is so bad, because we’re not going to be able to continue the way we’ve been going. The car is not going to vanish overnight, of course. But it’s certainly going to become a problem as people develop resentments because they can no longer afford to participate in it [as oil prices rise over time].

But you think the answer with rail is to keep it very simple.
Absolutely. The infrastructure is already out there! The track beds are there! And you need an entirely new track corridor for high speed rail, because the high speed trains can’t deal with the curves in the existing tracks. The idea that we would have to create a whole new set of right-of-ways is nuts when we’re not even utilizing what we have. Another thing to keep in mind is that we’re going to be facing a lot of adversity in the years ahead, and we are a culture that will require psychological reassurance. We should have a project that’s achievable. We need to demonstrate to ourselves that we’re still competent.

And the simple version of the national rail buildout would do that.
This rail project is ideal for that purpose. As I’ve said, we’ve got the tracks, and the rolling stock is pretty easy to get. You could argue that GM should be making this stuff. But it’s terribly important that we fortify ourselves psychologically so we have some faith in our ability to face all the other really important challenges that lie in front of us.

A lot of smart people are warning that if we’re going make this kind of enormous national investment, it would be a political disaster for Obama not to have some very tangible things to show for it.
Well, 2009 could turn out to be a politically rocky year. It’s really not clear how things are going play out in terms of the energy picture, the oil picture, and the picture for finance and capital. I’m afraid what’s really going on here is that a huge amount of capital is gone and is never, ever coming back again in any form.

If that’s true it would have been nice to have converted more of it into real and useful things while it was around — like, say, a good national rail network and a better electrical grid.