This last weekend I wrote up a small diary, cross-posted to various places ... which even stumbled into being wrecklisted at Agent Orange ... about the High Speed Rail plan released by the Obama administration.
That diary focused on laying out the three "tiers" of HSR in the announced plan. "Express HSR" is one of the bullet train systems, like they are planning for California. But between that tier and conventional rail, are two more tiers, "Regional HSR" and "Emerging HSR".
The bullet trains are the show ponies ... but for small town and rural America, the genuine seat at the table for Emerging and Regional HSR is the real good news from the announcement.
Among the most important of the rules Rosie laid down, in my opinion, is #12: Get the US consumer right and everything else will take care of itself. The reason is fairly simple: The U.S. consumer has the biggest balance sheet on the planet. The U.S. consumer represents 70 percent of our GDP and about 18 percent of global GDP.
This is, however, following the entrenched habits of thought that got us into this mess in the first place. My reply, below the fold.
Betwixt and Between, I find myself. I observe the validity of D00m.P0rn shrill warnings about the future ... when seen as possible outcomes rather than when seen as certainties. Yet I also see the potential for better outcomes.
And with respect to the strategy of sitting on the sidelines, weighing the likelihood of one versus the other ... I'm against it. Simply the decision to sit on the sidelines makes the calamity more likely as a result. So I am for getting into the fray and trying to make the calamity less likely and the hopeful outcome more likely.
The Calamity Cavalcade
As far as potential calamities, we do not have to look far for those.
We are on track to have a higher concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere than at any other time in the Holocene. We are engaged in this experiments with absolutely no serious evidence to suggest that it is known to be safe. Indeed, those benefiting in the short term from the reckless experiment will even try to reverse the sane burden of proof and place it on those who do not approve of undertaking the reckless experiment.
The argument being, in essence, that if you are driving through a thick fog, then as long as you don't see any cars coming, its OK to speed.
And of course, before the peril of climate chaos came to our attention, there was already the risk of ecosystem collapse hanging over our head, as more and more populations on the planet rely on an industrial technology that is quite clearly ecologically unsustainable and therefore certain to collapse sooner or later, unless we restructure our technological base to approach sustainability faster than we approach ecosystem collapse.
And then of course, even before the risk of ecosystem collapse was widely understood, the threat of nuclear holocaust.
Flood, Nuclear fire followed by Nuclear Winter, Famine and Plague ... and all three involved in or certainly leading to War ... surely rather than Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there is a whole Cavalry Unit.
Against that backdrop, it may seem provincial to worry about a mere collapse of a single national economy from first world to banana republic status, but that is the specific calamity that I am focusing on here.
(the bad news on the economy... - promoted by poligirl)
The April employment numbers are out. The Broad Based (U6) unemployment figures ... the best measure of the "total people available to take on more work" ... give, on the one hand, bad news, and on the other hand, worse news. This is, of course, treated as "good news", because the expectation was that it would be on the one hand worse news and on the other hand catastrophic news.
.
..
...
..
.
U6 seasonally adjusted
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
2008
9.0%
8.9%
9.1%
9.2%
9.7%
9.9%
10.3%
10.9%
11.2%
12.0%
12.6%
13.5%
2009
13.9%
14.8%
15.6%
15.8%
This is not the "headline" rate, or U3, which takes everyone working any hours at all as "employed", even if they want more work, and anyone who has not actively sought work in the last four weeks is dropped out altogether.
Instead, its the "broad" or "U6" rate, where those who express an interest in working who have looked for work in the past year are included, as well as those who are "involuntary part-time" employees. So the U6 series is the best measure of the "total people available to take on more work".
Also note that BLS unemployment statistics are not determined by the numbers of people drawing unemployment ... it includes a broad range of data sources, including an ongoing telephone survey.
... or in terms of changes in the unemployment rate.
Change in U6
JAN
FEB
MAR
APR
MAY
JUN
JUL
AUG
SEP
OCT
NOV
DEC
2008
-0.1%
+0.2%
+0.1%
+0.5%
+0.2%
+0.4%
+0.6%
+0.3%
+0.8%
+0.6%
+0.9%
2009
+0.4%
+0.9%
+0.8%
+0.2%
The bad news is, of course broad based unemployment is still rising. The worse news is that it is more than halfway to the "depths of the Great Depression" benchmark of around 1 in 4 out of work.
Even more, the populace has been trained to accept as "normal" unemployment rates what would have been considered an economic emergency back in the 1960's.
Everyone's heard the expression "whitewashing" -- it's defined as "a coordinated attempt to hide unpleasant facts, especially in a political context."
"Greenwashing" is the same premise, but in an environmental context.
It's greenwashing when a company or organization spends more time and money claiming to be "green" through advertising and marketing than actually implementing business practices that minimize environmental impact. It's whitewashing, but with a green brush.
A classic example might be an energy company that runs an advertising campaign touting a "green" technology they're working on -- but that "green" technology represents only a sliver of the company's otherwise not-so-green business, or may be marketed on the heels of an oil spill or plant explosion.
This last weekend I wrote up a small diary, cross-posted to various places ... which even stumbled into being wrecklisted at Agent Orange ... about the High Speed Rail plan released by the Obama administration.
That diary focused on laying out the three "tiers" of HSR in the announced plan. "Express HSR" is one of the bullet train systems, like they are planning for California. But between that tier and conventional rail, are two more tiers:
"Regional HSR", with a top speed of around 125mph, able to provide trips at average speeds in the range of 100mph, operating in existing rail rights of way, but mostly on its own track, with upgraded signaling and substantial investment in grade separation and/or the top level of "hardened" level crossings, normally with electrified lines; and
"Emerging HSR", with a top speed of 110mph, able provide trips at average speed in excess of 80mph, operating on existing rail right of way with improved capacity, but sometimes sharing track with freight rail, the 110mph standard of quad gate, speed sensitive level crossings, and provided by either electric or diesel 110mph tilt-trains
The bullet trains are the show ponies ... but for small town and rural America, the genuine seat at the table for Emerging and Regional HSR is the real good news from the announcement.
(the dirty little secret we all knew... - promoted by poligirl)
As astounding as it is, that "torture interrogators" were demanding the link between Saddam and bin Laden -- the question still remains: WHY???
It's still about oil in Iraq A centerpiece of the Iraq Study Group's report is its advocacy for securing foreign companies' long-term access to Iraqi oil fields. By Antonia Juhasz - LATimes - Dec 8, 2006
The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the U.S. government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.
The U.S. State Department's Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq "should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war." Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement.
Michele Bachmann, a Republican Congresswoman from Minnesota, has some fighting words for President Obama's energy plans.
I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. ...
Yes, someone is sounding "dangerous" alright ... And the "perpetual windbag" himself, Rush Limbaugh, is calling for civil consumer disobedience, against those "evil smart meters" -- the rant began after hearing about the "Earth Hour" event:
According to Rush, this is all part of the "emotional chaos" gripping the country, exemplified by "the election of [an] extremist, tyrannical president." As a countermeasure, Rush encouraged his listeners to crank up their lights: "I urge all of you, especially those of you who are stealing your electricity by short-changing the meter, fire 'em up.
I wonder if they make "smart meters" for bankrupt Obstructionist Ideas?
One piece of information is that in California, when one public authority has the funding for sufficient staff and another doesn't, and it comes to a fight, it is considered fair game for the staffed up authority to toss up spin and red herrings and biased analyses, confident that the other authority does not have the capacity to answer promptly.
CNN reported recently that some Rust Belt Manufacturers have seen the Green Light -- Or more accurately the Green Money options in supplying the Wind Industry, instead of the Auto Industry. Instead of shutting those Factory doors forever, many shop-owners have decided to turn over a new leaf ....
Wind Turbines are replacing Auto Parts, as the Product to build in Ohio:
Forecast for future: windy & oh-so green Dec 15, 2008
Strickland said 50 Ohio manufacturers now serve the wind industry - and three times that many want to get into it. Ohio has aggressive plans that will require at least 25 percent of the state's electric power to come from alternate sources - half of that from renewable energy like wind and solar.
At the conference, Strickland said wind industry can create 30,000 "energy jobs" in Ohio.
Burning the Midnight Oil is a place for me to compose diaries that normally end up crossposted hither and yon, normally including ProgressiveBlue. It also has an eclectic RSS sidebar of some interesting blogs, but there are more interesting examples elsewhere on the Intertubes.
It also has a regular series of "New Oil" posts of links encountered on my way around the blogosphere, which then becomes "Burning Fires" as the next lantern is opened up to get its New Oil.
Since there's only been one visitor to the Midnight Oil that I am aware of, I thought as a Christmas pressie, I'd share the New Oil for the last two months.
This last weekend I wrote up a 
On Agent Orange, 
Betwixt and Between, I find myself. I observe the validity of D00m.P0rn shrill warnings about the future ... when seen as possible outcomes rather than when seen as certainties. Yet I also see the potential for better outcomes.
The 
