In Indiana, 15 I-69 protesters were arrested this morning and are being held in Gibson County Jail indefinitely. The protesters effectively stopped work at a Gohmann Asphalt site, blocking the gate so that equipment could not leave the facility. The protesters represent the last means of a democratic outcome to this project, which has been soundly denounced by the vast majority of Hoosiers. Unfortunately, Indiana is suffering from the same stagnation of political choice as the rest of the nation: You can choose to have this highway in Red, or in Blue. That is, both major parties support the construction of a $3 billion, new terrain highway (dubbed the “NAFTA Highway”), in spite of the opposition of more than 70% of the Hoosier population.

At present, there are not funds to build the highway, but Governor Mitch Daniels and his crack staff at INDOT have decided to start destroying Hoosier homes, farms and forests anyway. They have cleared the first 1.77 miles and plan to start construction this week, paying Gohmann Asphalt more than $20 million to create a “road to nowhere.” Mr. Daniels, who has cut budgets across the state, from Child Protective Services to education, claims to be a fiscal conservative, concerned with limiting the spending of the Hoosier State. But how can a “fiscal conservative” justify spending millions of dollars on less than 2 miles of useless highway with nothing more than a prayer that the additional billions of dollars will fall into the Hoosier coffers?

The I-69 highway is a pet project that has tainted Democrat and Republican administrations, thwarting the voices of the citizens for decades. Effectively nullifying the process of voting by having both major candidates support the unwanted project, Hoosier politicians have left their constituents to try other means. After years of letter writing, yard signs, bumper stickers, lobbying and building of grass roots resistance, Hoosiers took the matter to court. Still unable to get the State to respond to the democratic will, the protesters arrested today represent the last chance for citizens to win out over the corporate purchase of the political process.

I called the Gibson County Sheriff’s office this afternoon to express my wish that the protesters, as my only representatives in the I-69 debate, be allowed to go free. After asking for information about the arrest and when the protesters would be released (”never”), I was told that trespassing was a crime. I said that stealing tax payer money ought to be a crime as well, to which the person to whom I spoke said, “Bite me!” and hung up. Strangely, this seems to be a talking point for Hoosier democracy. A pervasive attitude toward the citizens of the state. I called back and was hung up on a second time. I cannot stress enough the politeness with which I spoke to the person in the sheriff’s office, but this is the attitude toward citizen interest. It is why, for democracy to function, we are forced to have people willing to go to jail.

If you would like to call the Gibson County Sheriff’s office and let them know that courtesy and kindness are things you expect from government employees, their phone number is 812-385-3496. I am sure they would NOT like to hear from you. Maybe if they receive a few hundred polite phone calls, they will learn, by example, to be polite.

In a rare moment of a Republican hitting the nail on the head, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm said that the United States was in a “mental recession.” Truer words, Mr. Gramm. Unfortunately, Mr. Gramm was referring to the state of the economy while assessing the state of education. Mr. Gramm, known for his mean-spirited, pre-Christmas-ghost-revelation Scrooge-like manner has looked upon the suffering of the country and said I’m not feeling it. Mr. Gramm, being grandly wealthy after years of walking the streets of Washington D.C., is in an ideal position to judge the unemployed and underemployed of the United States: Distant.

But his remarks go to prove his point: The United States is in a Mental Recession. How else could one explain George W. Bush getting into the White House for TWO TERMS? One fixed election, I can understand. But to let it happen twice and not notice a trend…well, it can only happen in a nation suffering a mental recession. What else could possibly explain a nation going to war to destroy weapons of Mass Destruction when the evidence was that there were no weapons at all? Worse, what could allow a nation to follow the same President as he tries to start a war with Iran using the same tactics? As we feel the impact of Global Warming in floods, hurricanes, tornadoes and ever-increasing temperatures, we continue to discuss the need for cheap oil! If that isn’t evidence of a severe mental recession, I don’t know what is.

And what a blessing it is, too, this Mental Recession. John McCain, speaking on the current energy crisis, recently said:

I don’t see an immediate relief, but I do see that exploitation of existing reserves that may exist — and in view of many experts that do exist off our coasts — is also a way that we need to provide relief. Even though it may take some years, the fact that we are exploiting those reserves would have psychological impact that I think is beneficial.

What better cure for a “Mental Recession” (and I here use Mr. Gramm’s intended callous meaning that our economic plight is all in our heads) than something that will carry only a “psychological impact”. Were it not for our serious mental recession, we would doubtless remind the senator from Arizona that the Supreme recently slashed damages from the Exxon Valdez spill down to insignificance. A decision that is unlikely to make oil companies less cavalier with our environment, as it is cheaper for them to lay waste to the ecosphere and pay Supreme Court discount damages than to exhibit actual care and concern in the performance of extracting and transporting oil. Were it not for our mental recession, many of us would probably be up in arms at the proposition of risking our coastlands and coastal waters for an energy fix that will have only “psychological impact.” When Mr. McCain thinks back on the things he says to the public and the press, he must find himself thanking God for that mental recession that allows his ludicrous remarks to fly by without question. When he failed to take an easy out from an embarrassing situation by refusing the endorsement of John Hagee, he was wiser than all the world, because he had already recognized the mental recession afflicting the United States and knew it would carry him past the same scrutiny faced by Barack Obama over his religious affiliations.

Mr. McCain recently told an audience in Detroit, “The person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn’t suffering a mental recession.” But then he banked on that same mental recession when he told his audience the jobs we would be replaced, certain they would not realize he meant they would be replaced by jobs at Taco Bell, or as Wal-Mart greeters. Mr. McCain went on:

I have to tell you that the innovation and the technology and the entrepreneurship of the world still lies in the United States of America. Every technological advance we’ve made in the 21st century and throughout the 20th has come from the United States of America.

Surely only a mental recession could keep the people in his audience, including investigative journalists, from realizing that these technologies included the magnetic levitation train, which the United States let fall by the wayside, leaving it for Germany and Japan to develop into a lucrative, potentially green alternative to our own transportation woes. He did not mention that Detroit workers, had industry and government shown more foresight, could have been working at Magnetic Levitation Train factories instead of listening to his speech, full of empty, meaningless optimism.

Those who heard derision in the voice of Phil Gramm when he referred to “Mental Recession” were grossly mistaken. It was the sound of rapturous joy. Were it not for that mental recession, readers of the New York Times might notice that the same newspaper that failed to bring non-automobile transportation alternatives into the national debate had their website smeared with advertising banners from Exxon Mobil. Were we not so mentally deficient, we might wonder why Indiana wants to spend BILLIONS on a useless, redundant highway when it can’t even afford to educate Hoosier children (because no one benefits more (or operates more heavily) from mental recession than Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniels. Were we not in this mental recession, it might occur to us that the $12 billion per month spent on war with Iraq might just be enough to lift us out of the housing crisis and stimulate the economy at home. It might even sneak into our consciousness that adding an additional $12 billion per month for an equally deadly, costly quagmire in Iran is asking a bit much of a nation with spiraling debt.

But, while we enjoy our mental recess, numbed by American Idol, hypnotized by CNN and Fox News, all things greedy and negligent are possible. Maybe even another stolen election for the Republicans in the fall. That’s why the conservatives all say, Long Live the Mental Recession.

In a comment to the previous article, Mr. Houston Smith believes that I implied he thought cars were intrinsically bad. I did not mean to associate this conclusion with Mr. Smith and, for that, I would like to apologize. I did not mean to imply that cars are intrinsically bad at all. I meant to state it.

NOx, for example, gets inside our lungs and destroys the tissue inside. It is most dangerous for children, old folks, people with respiratory issues and those who are exercising in the presence of these fumes. So, for automobiles to be safe, we need to keep our young, old and infirm indoors, and refrain from outdoor exercise! What healthy little boxes these are! For years, they have been dumping finely ground asbestos all over the roadways of the United States with the change in brake construction coming only recently. The tires break down with driving, leaving toxic chemicals pervasive in the world in which we live. But if that’s not enough, we have the way people drive these automobiles. When behind the wheel, drivers often transport themselves into the minds of their muscle cars, driving recklessly and getting angry at pedestrians who get in their way. How many times have I seen a car driving at a pedestrian, or swerving at one, in anger. How strange it is that they do not feel they are on the verge of committing murder. How strange that these cars nose their way through pedestrians with impatience to make a turn through the pedestrian cross walk.

In his novel, The Third Policemen, Flann O’Brien brought forth the theory that bicycles were dangerous beings. That, on the rough roads of Ireland, bicyclists were bounced and jarred against their bicycles with considerable force, doubtless exchanging a few molecules here and there until, eventually, the bicycle would take on the personality traits of the rider and the rider becomes more like the bicycle. A cute theory, but consider it in the case of automobiles. Road rage, where drivers chase one another through highway traffic because of some deep offense taken. Think of the drivers in LA who thought it sensible to shoot one another. I’ve seen an SUV driver turn a corner blindly, nearly missing a child in a stroller. When the parent yelled in anger, the SUV driver pulled over and lectured about his right of way when he had none. I’ve been hit while riding on a bicycle (hit from behind as a car tried to brush past me on a four lane road with a lane open!), only to have the driver lean and out and start swearing that I shouldn’t have been on the road! The arrogance of cars: There is no room for the rest of us. People who walk or bike have no place in the world of cars. No right to impede.

People believe of cars, on the other hand, that they have the right to drive them when drunk, or under the influence of other drugs. That they should be free to drive while talking on the phone. That speed laws are not in force when drivers are in a hurry. They believe, rightly, that cross walks are nothing more than paint and intrude as if their vehicles were not deadly, powerful machines that have no business edging up to unprotected human beings.

Cars pollute. Because we must all have one, the sheer mass of cars makes it nearly impossible to get from one place to another. Cars are harmful to human health. Cars are harmful to the health of our planet. Cars cause us to consume such incredible amounts of oil each day that we have to spend billions upon billions of dollars to fight wars for access to oil. That is, cars require the sacrifice in bloody conflict of our fellow human beings, both of our own nation, and of the nations who have the oil we seek. Cars separate us from our neighbors. They put us in lonely little boxes, far too large for single human beings, but frequently occupied by only one human being. Cars make us believe that our forests and wetlands, our farms and small businesses, our very communities, should be paved over for their convenience. Increasingly, civil engineers suggest running super highways through our towns to accommodate increasing traffic. Cars make it unsafe for our children to cross streets and rid bicycles, because modern car drivers think of human life with concern only after they’ve taken it. Cars cause us to pave under precious farmland. They allow us the illusion that we can sprawl our cities out for miles, tearing up green space, farmland, and animal habitat as we go. Cars make us think that we can be a nation of commuters, because we are free to drive as long as we want to get to work. To take our children to school.

Cars are harmful because they are toxic, chemically and socially. Cars are harmful because when we are behind the wheel, the trump our sense of humanity and elevate our sense of entitlement. They allow us to see children as nuisances to traffic. Things to threaten with our great, over-grown vehicles. Cars are inherently harmful, dangerous, destructive machines, and it is time, for the sake of the air we breathe (that our children, 1 in 4 of whom suffer from asthma, breathe), the water we drink, the fiascos of global warming and urban sprawl, that we look to a new means of transportation.

I apologize to Mr. Smith if he feels that I was putting my sentiment to his words. I did not mean to imply that my thoughts were his.

In response to a recent article on this blog, Transportation Change Cracks the Mainstream Media, we received a comment from a reader that we found very useful. Mr. H. Smith wrote:

Since the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is STRONGLY arguing against higher CAFE let’s compare the fuel economy of the AAM membership (BMW Group, Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Mazda, Mercedes-Benz USA, Mitsubishi Motors, Porsche, Toyota, Volkswagen) in the US to that in the UK.

In the US, the 10 members of the Alliance have only 13 vehicles for MY 2008 & 2009, achieving 30 mpg(US) combined average or greater. Only one of their US offerings, the Prius, is rated above 42 mpg, at 46 mpg(US) combined average.
http://www.autoalliance.org/index.cfm?objectid=2F8FEC8C-1D09-317F-BB0A2E89FBF385CA
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/byMPG.htm

Meanwhile, in the UK the Alliance membership have about 188 machines in the UK rated between 42 and 62 mpg(US) combined cycle, with up to 73.6 mpg(US) highway, according to VCA.
http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/search
http://www.autocar.co.uk/SpecsPrices/SpecsAndPrices.aspx

Maybe about 10% of those high mpg UK vehicles are gasoline powered (I didn’t do a full count, just an estimate).

HAPPY MOTORING

A search for Detroit cars in Europe finds that the same model cars achieve significant improvements in fuel efficiency in the European Market. It is difficult to grasp how it is that Detroit has the technology to improve fuel efficiency in one market, but cries foul when asked to show similar improvements in the US market. Is it possible that, in the drive to create a market for gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (with a greater profit margin than smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles), Detroit limited the fuel efficiency of smaller cars in order to minimize the opportunity costs of choosing a larger, more powerful vehicle (savings at the gas tank, less harmful impact on the environment, etc.) ?

The point is that, while crying foul over new CAFE standards, Detroit has had the ability to meet these standards all along without need for hybrids, or GM’s EV1 all electric automobile.

Mr. Smith warns that, when comparing mileage between Europe and the US, decreased CO2 can (especially in the case of diesel automobiles) mean an increase in other harmful pollutants, such as NOx. Mr. Smith suggests to readers,”You might want to compare emissions parameters and tax rates at http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/search/”

At root, automobiles are bad for our health and that of our planet and making them better is not really a long-term solution to the problems they have created. Whether it is the asthma inducing ozone, the planet heating CO2 from the exhaust, or the heavy metals in the tires, cars are not compatible with human health, which bring us by a commodius vicus of recirculation, back to: to Hell with Cars in our Environs.

Does anyone remember the elections of 2006? We were angry about the war in Iraq, about the illegal spying on US citizens, about the telecommunication companies that invaded our privacy without court orders, so we went to the polls and voted in a new Congress. A Democrat controlled Congress. A Congress that would take the massive backlash against the Bush Administration and codify it in law.

The Senate has just passed a piece of legislation that will soon be signed into law, allowing the government broader powers of surveillance and granting immunity to the telecommunications companies that illegally invaded, or aided in the invasion of, our privacy at the behest of Mr. Bush and Company. It is difficult to imagine who we will vote into office this time to express our displeasure with the performance of our government. With no more pretensions to a two party system, we have the choice of voting in the Republicans, who will sneer at us while they destroy every good thing about the nation we live in, or voting in the Democrats, who will give us sad, we-couldn’t-help-it shrugs of their shoulders as they fail to realize that they are the majority party and are in charge of the Federal government. A grim choice, and neither will do us any good. Perhaps a vote for the Democrats will slow the demolition of public education, or land us in fewer military ventures, limiting our involvement to the amount of troops we can amass.

At least we have the promise of Missouri Senator Christopher Bond that we need have no fear of Big Brother “unless you have Al Qaeda on your speed dial.” Or the Green Party. Or have ever contributed to EarthFirst! Or are involved in whatever organization we deem to be “subversive” tomorrow…perhaps the Democratic Party?

We put laws limiting surveillance of the US population into effect after Nixon grossly abused these powers to spy on war protesters. Nixon was hardly the first, or even the worst, to abuse the spy networks of our government for political purposes. It is difficult to argue that the FBI under Hoover was designed for any other purpose. Hoover was a major force in the Palmer Raids, was involved in the assassination of members of the Black Panther Party, had Martin Luther King Jr., and Albert Einstein under surveillance. The removal of these barriers in the name of terrorism is nothing more than a ruse. We are returning to a dark period in our own history where democracy is only for those who agree with the party line.

It has been interesting (in a wish-this-wasn’t-real kind of way) watching the Democratic primaries. The front runners from the beginning have been those candidates who promised to do the least to bring corporate dominance to heel (Edwards, Clinton and Obama). The Clintons have pretended to be underdogs, treated unfairly by the media while the only candidate with any concern for the long-term future of the United States, Dennis Kucinich, was treated as if he were a joke that no one took seriously. No one, perhaps, with the cash to bankroll a presidential campaign, but those of us who pay the bills and reap the ills that Washington sows were very interested. The abused, neglected Mrs. Clinton was caught suggesting to John Edwards that the collude to limit the debate to only “serious” candidates. In a democracy, this would seem to be an act earning a politician an unceremonious exit from the process. She had, after all, suggested cheating the democratic process by making a back room deal to limit the choices of American voters. Mrs. Clinton survived this moment and continued on, unimpeded by the mainstream media, who let the story die a peaceful death.

Mrs. Clinton continually lied about arriving in Bosnia amid sniper fire to show that she was ready to lead the country in a time of war (because being shot at is something that happens to our presidents in time of war? Thank God candidates don’t have to face any kind of logic based scrutiny!). When the video footage countering Mrs. Clinton’s telling of events arrived on the scene, Mrs. Clinton still got a free pass. She was kept alive by a media interested in keeping it a horse race for the White House. Mrs. Clinton suggested that Obama might get Kenney’d before the election and that she would like to be there to pick up the pieces and that earned her very little scrutiny. She suggested that hope was a cynical lie that the Obama campaign was using to manipulate the voting public while pedaling a world without hope (okay, that one was pretty honest) and still the media kept her in every story as if she were a viable candidate. As the primary looked more and more like a dead issue, the Clinton campaign stepped up the venom of their attacks on Obama and acquired massive debt to stay in the race when abandoned by major donors (the only American voice that truly counts is the voice counting out cash).

Now, she’s in a considerable amount of debt and, unless Obama is assassinated before the Democratic Convention, has lost out on the Democratic nomination. Her campaign made voices of Democratic unity, but, now, they are telling the world that they have been abused by the Obama campaign which has not taken responsibility for the debts the Clinton campaign accrued in trying smear Mr. Obama. Truly, the logic boggles the mind.

It is true that Obama said that he would support a publicly financed campaign…until he had the largest war chest for the campaign of any candidate by far. It would be a nice gesture for Mr. Obama to have all further donations go to Mrs. Clinton (or, hey, to a real charity instead of a wealthy, well-connected senator who can always fall back on a job as a corporate lawyer) and agree to help us make elections means something other than whoever can land the most money. Maybe an election based on ideas and substance. Quit laughing. Seriously, elections could be relevant to the political process.

But, the fact is, Mrs. Clinton has operated a Republican agenda in the Senate. She believes it is too late to stop the damage of globalization. She supports the use of coal, nuclear and recommended a tax holiday on gasoline as a form of dealing with our current energy crisis. She is the new Joseph Lieberman. I have never heard of a candidate assuming responsibility for the debts of an opponent in an election. I have never heard another Democrat ever suggest that support for the party’s candidate would be contingent on payments made to said Democrat. Mrs. Clinton is bringing the dirty, sleazy, ridiculous nature of our electoral politics to the fore and we should all take note. If you pay her, she will support you.

According to the New York Times article, Obama Supporters Aren’t Rushing to Aid Clinton,:

Some of them griped that major Clinton donors were not being invited to crucial fund-raising meetings; were not being made to feel that they would receive credit for helping Mr. Obama win in November; and were not being given titles within the Obama campaign. An Obama aide said it was still early in the integration process of the two campaigns; he also added that the Obama operation was not as title-driven as the Clinton operation, which had various donors serving as “chairs,” “co-chairs” and “Hillraisers.”

Think about that: donors concerned that they will not get credit for helping to elect Obama. The veil is falling quickly. Our elections are dirty and exclude the voices of the American people. But, I suppose, this judgement depends on how one defines people. It is an issue that has dogged us from the inception of the United States, and that we pretend we have put behind us with the Civil War. But campaign finance recently came before the Supreme Court, which struck down a law that would limit wealthy candidates for political office in the use of their own money. The idea was to limit the power of wealth in determining who could hold political office (an idea counter to the very designs of James Madison and the Constitution, it is worth noting). In striking down the law, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said, “Different candidates have different strengths. Some are wealthy; others have wealthy supporters who are willing to make large contributions. Some are celebrities.” So, there you have it from the pen of the Supreme Court: Americans are people who are wealthy, have a lot of wealthy (and generous) friends, or are celebrities (who, strangely, tend to be on the wealthy side). It is no wonder that we have people clambering to appear on reality shows that destroy their dignity. It is no wonder that parents turn their children over to exploitative reality shows when all evidence points to celebrities and the wealthy being the only real Americans. The ones entitled to a voice in politics and the shaping of our nation.

So, what Mrs. Clinton’s campaign is concerned about is that Mrs. Clinton’s wealthy friends get credit for being Mr. Obama’s wealthy friends, too! Unity, indeed! Mrs. Clinton would like to make good with her wealthy friends for failing to get them access to the highest political office by assuring them that Mr. Obama will honor her debts. Debts of access and influence.

I seem to have lost control of this post, so let me try to tie it back together. In a recent article on this site, Fox Swerves Left? I wrote about a high ranking Clinton advisor accepting a job at Fox News. The Clinton campaign wen on at length about how “fair and balanced” Fox News coverage had been during the campaign. Perhaps one should watch this video on Fox’s treatment of the Obama’s and then consider the calls from Clinton for debt relief to be delivered by Barack Obama.

It is difficult to pin down what is going on with Mrs. Clinton. Supporting, publicly, a network that has called a “fist bump” a secret terrorist signal, that plays upon racial prejudice as a matter of daily fare, that attacks the Democratic Party as un-American, makes it seem that Mrs. Clinton’s goal all along was to sabotage any move the country might make to the Left. But her campaign claims that money will cure her of this behavior and she will come out in support of Obama. But, let me ask, what does the support of a person who asks $23 million for her services really mean? Can we, as a public, be so ignorant as to take her support as in any way meaningful when it comes not from conviction, but from an open exchange of vast sums of money? The arrogance and ignorance of our politicians has become such that they are no longer shy about selling themselves to the highest bidder. They are exposing the machinations of our political system for all to see. Will we open our eyes?

Within two days of writing that the energy debate had cracked the mainstream media, a sharp backlash is returning the debate to one of “how do we get the oil we need at prices that will pacify the electorate?” The Democrats have come out, through the voice of Senator Harry Reid, and said that they support domestic production, something that they previously dismissed as ineffective. Nancy Pelosi is pushing for a release of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserves in order to bring down prices. This reserve was created not as a means of Keynesian market control, but to ensure that our military and key industries would not collapse in the event of an oil crisis. The oil in the reserve is insignificant for this, or any other, purpose and has become nothing more than a political tool for politicians to appear to be doing something when there is nothing (useful) they can do. But, at this moment, there is something very useful they can do. They can take advantage of this crisis to spark the necessary change in our nation’s energy policy.

Recently, we learned that the EPA, charged by the Supreme Court, studied the issue of global warming as it impacted human health. The findings of this study were sent in an email to George Bush, and Mr. Bush refused to open said email, proving just how far out of touch with reality our President (and our entire government) actually are. Mr. Bush is under the impression that, if he does not open and read the information contained in the EPA report, he will not have to deal with the stark realities of global warming. No one can be terribly surprised to see an intellect like that of Mr. Bush resorting to ‘whistling past the graveyard’, but the Congress now seems prepared to go along with Mr. Bush (as we all gasp in surprise that, yet again, the Congress falls before the “logic” of the man we elected them to oppose). Members of Congress are not looking for long term solutions, but for methods to mollify the electorate before November. But there is real, lasting danger in this approach. Congress, concerned for their jobs (and the wishes of those who pay for their election campaigns) is searching for a means to mask the symptoms of this very real crisis, thus giving the patient (that being the collective body of the United States) the sense that nothing is wrong. It is a fine thing to alleviate the symptoms of an illness, as long as it is recognized that the illness will still progress and destroy the body if the causes (rather than the symptoms) are not ultimately addressed. But the political reality is that if the public is not angry, the Congress will not have the will to act to make real change.

Lyndon Johnson passed Civil Rights legislation not because he knew it was a situation that needed to be rectified. Not because he knew we had a moral ill in this country that had to be addressed. He got on board because there were people marching in the streets, and the numbers were growing rapidly. He saw that he needed to act before the people themselves acted for him. The Vietnam War did not end because the immorality of it came home to the hearts of politicians. Again, there were people in the street. Parents who not want to see their children die. Young people who did not want to see their friends, or themselves, die, for a war that had nothing to do with the safety and well-being of the United States.

The fact is, we saw this crisis more than 30 years ago. It came on the nation suddenly and shocked people into changing their transportation habits and expectations. I remember vividly the change of the automobile landscape, as small, fuel efficient cars came to dominate the roads with surprising speed. And I remember, too, the arguments to “buy American” to preserve jobs at home. Then, as now, the US automakers did not respond to the realities of the energy market. They stuck their collective head in the sand and let foreign car makers take a large share of the market because US automakers refused to respond to consumer demands.

It is possible that the crisis would have killed the US auto industry, had it been left to its own devices. It is possible that we would now have cars that matched the Europeans for fuel efficiency. But the US auto industry was not left to its own devices. President Carter bailed out Chrysler, and Ronald Reagan made arms for oil deals with the Saudi Arabians that effectively buried the symptoms of the reality lurking in the oil trade. US automakers, far from looking to the future, reached for the higher profits of gas guzzling behemoths and trucks and SUVs flooded the market. Now, the symptoms have returned, but the US has done nothing to prepare the country for the reality we glimpsed in the 1970’s. We have invested nothing in alternative energies. Reagan demolished the incentives created by the Carter Administration so that we would have no alternative but oil and gas powered automobiles using the same logic as the auto industry used some 40 years before Reagan to create a vast market for itself by purchasing, and destroying, rail transportation. It is fascinating that an industry so able to sacrifice money in the short term to create a monopoly market for itself in the long term was unable to see this day of reckoning. One wonders at the survival instinct of the industry when they have the technology for fuel efficient vehicles in production for the European market, but claim not to be able to adapt to the demands for the same efficiency in the US market. But, in the US market, they don’t have to face reality. Reality is altered to meet the needs of the automotive and oil industries rather than the industries adapting to reality. Again, with a debate over long term energy policy swelling in this country, with consumers lamenting the glut of gas guzzlers and lack of fuel efficient cars, Congress has taken a sudden turn for the short term fix. The debate, again, has gone to how to artificially lower gas prices for the “good” of the US consumer. But the US consumer, and the United States as a whole, will not benefit from this policy.

We are at war in the Middle East because we recognize the need to protect access to oil. No one can look at Iraq, or Afghanistan, and claim that the US went in with the intentions of bettering the lot of either people. No one can look to the history of the US in the Middle East and believe that we have ever had humanitarian goals in our dealings, there. We can hear the words from our leaders, but we cannot find the evidence of the reality in the pages of history, or in the modern lives of the Iraqis and Afghanis. It isn’t sufficient to say that we aren’t operating in the interests of the people of the Middle East. Our government, in spite of all the rhetoric about freedom and democracy, is creating enemies that our children will have to face. With whom our children will have to make peace, as they struggle to understand the legacy we have left them. A legacy of hate.

At present, we are looking at a cost of $12 billion a month to prosecute the war in Iraq. While we are paying, through our taxes, this enormous price tag to protect access to oil, we are watching the prices we pay at the pump sky rocket. In addition, states across the country are increasingly looking to foreign owned toll roads to replace our current highways. If we look at the logic in our transportation system, we will see there is no logic at all. We are paying $12 billion a month to have access to gas that we can’t afford so that we can pay tolls to drive across our own country. To pay for a war that our children’s children will have to pay off without even the benefit of cheaper fuel or free roads defies reason. But when you add in the impact of global warming…we are spending the lives of our citizens, the taxes of the working class, so that we can give our children a work on the brink of environmental collapse because of the very fossil fuel for which we are fighting and sacrificing. If your head is not spinning, I am truly afraid for the future.

On the other hand, if we took a month’s bill from the Iraq War and offered it as a bounty for clean transportation technology, it seems very likely we would garner better results. In fact, if we dedicated our war expenses to implementing clean transportation technology, it is conceivable that these crises would be over in a decade. Instead, we watch as governors from Indiana to Texas fight to spend billions of our tax dollars on highways, a further tax on the people of the United States to supplement our addiction for a harmful technology.

There are articles across the mainstream media today about how Vice President Cheney and his office sought to delete evidence of the harm caused by global warming from the EPA draft testimony. Mr. Cheney, like the tobacco companies before him, knows that fossil fuels are harmful. He knows that global warming is real and a threat to the human race. Mr. Cheney is either indifferent to the lives of his children and his children’s children, or suffers from that strange arrogance of the super wealthy that their money will keep them safe from a GLOBAL disaster. The sheer greed and stupidity that bounce around in that man’s head aside, he is showing that he puts his accumulation of wealth and luxury above the health of the entire planet. That being too grand an idea for most to grasp, perhaps simpler terms are in order. Mr. Cheney is willing to sacrifice your life, your children’s lives, to prop up his corporate cronies for as long as the oil wells hold up. He is willing to lie and coerce the people paid with your tax dollars in order to make astronomical profits for his friends. These are people who own yachts, private jets and suckle their children on trust funds that are larger than the life earnings of the majority of Americans. It is hard to fathom sacrificing us all to squeeze out a few billion dollars more for people already wealthy beyond most of our imaginations.

Surely it is time for the oil companies to take their marbles and exit the scene. It is time for them to quit commanding our children to fight and die to protect their access to Middle Eastern oil. It is time for them to relinquish control over our national transportation policy and let us move on to a sustainable future. Don’t let Congress lose their grip on reality. Transportation is the single most important issue facing the United States, right now. It leads us to war and it is destroying the planet on which we depend (seriously, where do we go when we’ve spent the Earth? Grasp this fact: There is nowhere to hide from the impact of global climate change!) Don’t be fooled by false measures to keep down energy prices. Don’t be sold on anything short of a real change of policy toward a sustainable future.

An article in the Ottawa Citizen reports that, for the first time, a Canadian court has sided with a US military deserter seeking refuge in Canada. According to the Judge, the soldier had seen enough human rights abuses during his time in Iraq and Afghanistan to qualify for refugee status. Canadian Federal Court Justice Richard Barnes also acknowledged that the US had violated the 1949 Geneva Convention in Iraq. The refugee, Joshua Key, as apparently written a book about his experiences, entitled, The Deserter’s Tale.

While I am pleased to note that Canada is standing up for refugees from the United States, I am also excited that their judicial system seems to be acquainted with the rule of law. That Judge Barnes has openly acknowledged illegal behavior on the part of our military makes me wonder if we could not, as a nation, flee to Canada and have other actions put on trial in a fair court of law. Perhaps, in Canada, we could manage to overturn our wiretapping laws, the Patriot Act, get a reasonable ruling on Executive Privilege and rescue the United States from itself.

On the front page, complete with photograph, of the New York Times web page this morning, you will find a significant piece of advertising. The Times has written an article on the CW network’s show, Gossip Girl, explaining that it is more than just bad television, it is a vehicle for marketing clothes to its teenage audience. That is, if you were too thick to realize that, to be hip, you should be following the fashions flaunted before you in Gossip Girls, the Times is here to make it perfectly clear that it is what all the hip kids are doing.

It is pathetic that this advertisement is presented as news in the New York Times. More pathetic that it appears as a lead story on the front page of the Times. Has the Times taken a page from CNN, king of the marketing as news game? Good to see the Times setting the standard for US journalists.

The New York Times reported in its Political Blog that a top Clinton campaign strategist, Howard Wolfson, would be heading to Fox News as a party time pundit. The Times says that this is a place where, recently, Democrats feared to tread, but notes that, during the campaign, Clinton came to view the network as an ally. According to the Times:

Mr. Wolfson is joining a network that Democrats shunned for a time, complaining that its coverage was unfair. But aides to Mrs. Clinton came to view Fox News as distinctly fair to her in a news media climate that they believed favored Senator Barack Obama.

“I thought that Fox’s coverage during the primary was comprehensive and fair and evenhanded,” Mr. Wolfson said Monday in a telephone interview from Liverpool, England, where he was vacationing. “It’s a huge audience, and it is important to have a strong, progressive voice on the network.”

Which is why it is unfortunate that Fox hired someone from the Mr. Wolfson of the Clinton campaign.

Apparently, the Times views the Fox Network’s take on Mrs. Clinton as a sign that the network is becoming less hardline conservative mouthpiece and opening itself the broad spectrum of American politics. While Mrs. Clinton has shown herself to be a member in good standing of the Republican Party since her entry into the Senate, the news media has chosen to accept her label of “Democrat” while ignoring the fact that her actions match the Republican side of the aisle. Or, at least, they did until she started her presidential campaign. Mrs. Clinton, while still supporting outsourcing of US jobs, the nuclear industry, the coal industry, and frightening foreign policy, has verbally separated herself from President Bush. The bulk of her voting record, however, contradicts these words. Mrs. Clinton is no longer a healthcare reformer, but a healthcare insider. She has aligned herself with critics of negotiations and diplomacy in foreign policy.

In spite of the record of Mrs. Clinton and her campaign, the New York Times chooses to look at the hiring of Howard Wolfson by Fox as evidence that Fox is open to the Left rather than another scrap on the heap that is Mrs. Clinton’s Democratic record. The simple truth is that Fox has hired another right wing pundit. They’ve known all along where Mrs. Clinton stood, and it is on the right side of the lunatic asylum, right along with Fox. For Mr. Wolfson to say that he saw Fox coverage as “even handed” is to admit that he is legally blind and politically Right.

The Clinton family legacy is the move from a two party system to a single party on the Right. Mr. Clinton worked very hard to appeal to that oxymoron knows as “Reagan Democrats” and destroyed whatever vestiges of popular democracy still resided in the Democratic Party. Mrs. Clinton carries on this “pragmatic” approach to politics, trying to bid just under the her Right wing opponents, but staying miles away from the Left. Until she was ready to put her hat in the presidential ring, Mrs. Clinton voted for the war in Iraq and has been supportive of the military policies of Mr. Bush, even as the country as cried out against them.

It is important, at the Times, to ignore the evidence and keep the illusion that there is a two party system firmly in place providing voices for both sides of the country. And I thought it was fiction enough to believe that two points of view covered the political spectrum sufficiently to satisfy the requirements for representative democracy, but now it appears to be enough to pretend that the one pro-corporate view is really two.

In four years (or five months), it would not surprise me to see Obama advisors (as long as they are White) spinning off into careers at Fox. He is also a supporter of the status quo when it comes to corporateering and the environment. To his credit, he stood to the Left of Hillary Clinton, but, these days, it is difficult to see who doesn’t.