Asthma

I boarded the bus the morning (after my walk of shame), and as we're turning southbound on Franklin to the next stop, the bus driver finds an SUV in the bus lane. I'm oblivious at this point, just settling into another ride reading the paper about the credit crisis and market drop. I didn't even notice him get out; I only recall that we've been stopped for longer than normal.

He comes back in and reports that a lady is having a heart attack. He's dialing 911. So I rush out to find a young woman suffering an asthma attack...and she couldn't find her inhaler.

I have never seen anyone in such dire straits before. I knew I had to find her good friend Al...albuterol, or something like it. We had her advair, but that's for bronchitis, not acute asthma. I carry Al along during the winter in my bike bag. We finally found it, but she couldn't even take in a breath. I swear, both she and I thought she was gonna die.

I pulled her keys out to ensure I wasn't going to be accidentally dragged along if the car got in gear, and then managed to get in a few puffs. Before the paramedics came, she was able to tell me she was on her way to school (CSC) and had never had an attack like this before.

Afterwards I damn near threw up I was so shaken up. I broke down describing to my endocrinologist why I was late to my morning appointment.

However! The Franklin Monologues finds a relevant social critique in all this. There is no doubt that asthma is on the rise, but not much is known about the exact triggers. However, isn't is plausible that ground level ozone (which reached an AQI of 71 yesterday here in SACTOWN) or other smog related pollutants are triggers? Indeed. There isn't one 'list' of triggers that doesn't include smog or airborne pollution.

She might have hugged her cat Jinx before leaving this morning and that triggered it. How would I know? And truthfully, she may never know. One of those elusive mysteries -- like global warming. But she was well dressed, driving a newer SUV that I as a college graduate could barely afford. She had another bus rider dial her parents in Rocklin.

So...this is what I see...an above average Rocklin family dependent on perpetual motoring, likely each driving an expensive gas powered vehicle that each gets less than the average MPG (because the affluent couldn't give a damn about the environment), contributing a healthy dose of NOx into the region to mix with sunlight to create ground level ozone to trigger asthma attacks in young victims. Even if the smog/asthma link could be directly related, they'd storm out of their doctor's office right into their SUVs, bitching about the 15% yearly increases in inhaler medications, and an "ah, well...the price we pay for perpetual motoring..." Just one more externalized cost, eh?

Nonetheless, this incident this morning is all the motivation I might ever need to keep riding my little bicycle to work.

Squeezing Oil From a Rock

I found a very interesting correlation this afternoon:


Rock music, to survive, has always needed a fossil-fuel floor from which to play. It requires the use of oil-powered machinery to move musicians and equipment to venues across the country, fossil-fuel powered electricity to drive the Marshall half-stacks and heads, oil to produce vinyl and CDs, and oil-powered cars for people to drive to said venues to see them.

As an avid thrash metalhead, I don't agree with Rolling Stone's list. Where's Nevermore? Testament? Forbidden? Witchery? All my bands fall on a bell curve that peaked in 1988...with a North Slope-like resurgence in 2001-3. Metal (the most extreme form of rock) was on a depletion curve for a while, but after a decade -long lull, now it's on a long plateau...but...rising.

Unlike U.S. oil production.

The U.S shows about a 1.5% per year production decline, and DRILL! BABY! DRILL! will never, never get U.S. production anywhere near the 1971 peak of 3.5 billion barrels/year. DRILL! BABY! DRILL! will, however, possibly keep us on a plateau for quite a while, like thrash metal, but it can never increase.

During the early 70's, Nixon unveiled a plan to become energy independent by 1985. Here we are in 2008 and Obama has unveiled a plan to become energy independent by 2018. What killed Nixon's plan was the re-introduction of cheap oil and Merikan complacency, and wa-hey! What are we seeing now? A re-introduction of cheap oil! Gas is $3.50, falling fast, and our perpetual motoring futures are bright and beautiful...all those idiots who bought hybrids at a premium! All those idiots who sold their Denali's at a loss!

Schadenfreude

I liked the three stooges as a kid. My favorite was Shemp, a stooge in perpetual pain inflicted by Moe and Larry. Shemp is the U.S. financial market today...and I revel in the schadenfreude.

Honestly, a depression in this country would likely do it good. Just as now with this bailout, there would be a few winners and a whole lot of losers. But instead of a bailout intended to directly assist a few winners, a depression would (eventually) assist all the losers.

In this era of globalization, all classes in this nation have been able to enjoy stuffing their over sized homes to the rafters with consumer goods without having to pay what it would cost to hire Merikans to make them. The consequence of this monty is that we no longer have well paying manufacturing jobs. The only jobs available for the bottom two-thirds are strip retail associates, processed food handlers and sheetrockers. We also carry of a mountain of debt, public and private.

I'll argue that this debt will never be paid. We will either default on this debt or we'll hyper-inflate our currency. As we aren't allowing the big banks to fail, we are in essence allowing these banks to default on their debt. We are soon to add another $700,000,000,000 to our debt here in another week or two. Seven hundred thousand million...interest rates are quite low, the equities markets are quite happy...everything is bright and beautiful...until this morning when the bailout wasn't approved. Markets were sharply down on the news that they'd have to wait a little while longer to pop their champagne corks.

So when the U.S. defaults on its debt or hyper-inflates its currency, this will unravel the global marketplace. In my opinion, we have only these two choices to pay off our unpayable debt. The unraveling of our transitory globalization experiment will mean we'll return to an economy where goods and services are produced here...and the rebuilding of our domestic manufacturing will follow. This is why I think a depression would (eventually) assist all the losers.

Main Street

Have you heard? The bailout on Wall St. will affect those on Main St.

Supposedly, I live on Main Street, and you do, too. However, both NBC and CBS (both!) newscasts today displayed images of a tree-lined business district in a small town, with either parallel or slant parking, benches on the sidewalk for people to relax, enjoying ice cream. Main Street USA!

Truthfully, most of us live in suburban slums nowhere close to resembling a main street. You won't be able to find the actual main 'street' because suburban cities don't have a central core and don't have a street labeled 'main.' But look to Southern California (the automobile slum-de-jour) to find the only one around:


This is Main Street! Wa-hey! A pretend version of a living arrangement that might actually work if it weren't the entrance to Fantasyland or Tomorrowland.

People flock to this pretend place even during recessions. They spend seventy bucks just for the privilege of being able to walk through this Main Street. They like it, because it reminds them nothing of the autocentric suburban shitholes they actually live in. They like the idea of engaging other people, even if it's so obviously contrived here, the purpose being to sell large quantities of Chinese made Disney merchandise.

What makes this such a nice place? I could ask a hundred of these patrons (and I will, the next time I'm there), and not one of them will tell me that it's a nice place because there are no fucking cars.

Nope. Not one person. They'll say a hundred other things before they key into the fact that they don't have to dodge traffic. Put a few diesel F250 trucks doing 47mph on this street and it would immediately turn to shit. Put two Honda Civics on this street racing each other.

The truth is, you could actually put a few cars on this street and it would still be an acceptable place for pedestrians on the sides...because it's enclosed, has a vista at the end, the sides engage pedestrians, in and out, in and out, and...almost has a full complement of formally planted trees! A physical buffer between the bipedal apes and their motorized vehicles.

Trees! Something illegal in Elk Grove and nearly everywhere else! City planning departments prostituted themselves decades ago for a standard set of zoning codes that makes Bellingham look just like Omaha, just like Louisville, and in all cases, tree lined roads are outlawed outlawed! because trees are nothing but fixed impediments for vehicular traffic. City planners don't give a damn about what civic benefit trees might provide. Not a damn. They aren't planners, they are only actuaries; measuring this, disallowing that, this ain't wide enough, this is too close, that is too far, that is too tall, not enough outlets here, not enough parking spaces per retail space, too many wires there...they don't plan...they execute, as any rat pressing a lever for a pellet might.

What I will show in a follow-on post, disturbingly, is how inept Elk Grove and Sacramento planners are in approving fake second story windows/shutters and the illusion of 'apartments over retail' on the facades of strip retail and personal storage units. These are so god-damn stupid and completely degrade the public realm, but that's all these fucking morons can approve...because it's all their precious codes allow for!

Unearned Riches

Suppose Las Vegas found itself in a precarious position: one of their largest casinos was about to go bankrupt, and the city, looking out for itself, declared that this casino was too large to fail.

Los Angeles gamblers, shocked by high fuel prices, were electing not to blow their rent money driving to Las Vegas, instead choosing local Indian gambling halls. And as the mortgage meltdown more or less snuffed out Vegas' largest economic engine (i.e., the building and servicing of their 35-mile radius suburban shithole), gambling was all that was left.

Gambling, the only economic activity left and with no out-of-towners, had to be played by locals only. And as their only economy, the casinos had to lend the citizens money to play. But this couldn't be sustained; eventually, the casinos would have to declare bankruptcy, but if they did, the city would implode (gambling is the economy, stoopid!).

So the City of Las Vegas held a vote, and the voters voted to tax themselves to bailout the casinos. Of course, all the two-bit casinos off the strip were allowed to fail, but the MGM...no way. The Bellagio...no way. Their stock rose 42% and 36% respectively following the announcements. Their CEOs were replaced by agents of the city, of course, but not without handsome severances.

Knowing that gambling is the only economy and that (collectively) gamblers always lose, each person then decided that their only way out was to pray they'd hit the big one. A few winners and a whole lotta losers.

Nothing new, just following the standard script, the American ethos of unearned riches. We expected this during the .com boom, the commodities boom, and the housing boom. Perhaps all we have left to look forward to is a gambling boom.

The Office Park

While Palin has her Drill! mantra going, I've got my bad urban planning mantra going. I continue.

Clearly there was a need in the remote past for zoning laws. It made sense that if you owned a home and suddenly a tannery or rolling mill opened up shop next door it would lead to instant slumification. There was also an issue with pollution, as early industrial activities weren't at all concerned with their effluents, emissions, discharges, leakages, off-gassing, or wash-outs.

But what about today? Why the hell do we force office workers to commute from their suburban compounds to an "office park?" What is so obnoxious about this activity? I'd argue that the bulk of Merkian jobs nowadays are performed in cubicles -- almost every industry imaginable sports a cube worker -- hospital administration, financial planners, distribution engineers, IT managers, fire marshalls. Especially in this so-called digital/information/service economy.

Now consider one major consequence of zoning these activities separately...parking. During the workday, all the suburban infrastructure required to maintain motor vehicles (private parking lots, garages, street signage, lane striping, curb cuts) goes unused, while during the evening the acres of parking and/or parking garages around office parks goes unused. We have to build-out redundant vehicle infrastructure and of course freeway and collector road slums to link the two together.

Many of the most desirable places to live (in the world) combine the two activites, and all these were built generations ago. It's only recently, recent in a human civilization timeframe, that we've fuckered up the relationship between man and his environment.

An office park, isolated in its proximity to anything else, setback ninety five feet from the sidewalk, and surrounded on all four sides by pavement, divorces the practice of building from the historical and social meanings of building. These "parks" are nowhere near any of the other activities we use on a daily basis: hardware stores, coffee shops, florists, dry cleaners, restaurants, locksmiths, groceries, pawnshops, titty bars, pornshops, and crackhouses. At lunchtime or break, you either sit in your cube or you climb in your car, you've got no other choices.

Rise and Fall

I like that Sarah Palin is chanting the drill! drill! drill! mantra. However, yesterday having heard an interview, she's just another politician who erroneously believes that the U.S. will somehow gain energy independence through drilling. Especially when we hear such asinine statements as "No, ANWR won't be our panacea, but every little bit helps. Every drop of domestic production gets us a little bit closer to energy independence."

Bullshit. We are no closer now to oil independence than the day we became a net oil importing country in the late 1940s. Oil independence will never happen. If we consumed just what we domestically produced, this NASCAR nation would implode.

My Franklin Blvd. observation/chronology: As gas prices rose in the early spring, I saw many more bikes on Franklin Blvd., but no decrease in vehicular traffic. As gas rose above $3.60, I saw many new faces on public transit, and a noticeable decline in traffic. As gas moved beyond $4.00 this early summer, that's when there was a significant drop. The boulevard was a ghost town on Friday afternoons. But now, late summer, as prices fall back to $3.60, I'm clearly noticing an uptick in traffic and there aren't anywhere near as many bicyclists as there were in the spring.

The dynamics are interesting. The direction of pricing, its movements, are what compels people to either drive more or less. As it now falls to $3.60, people see this as a bargain and drive more, even though as it was rising through $3.60 they saw it as a scalping and they drove less.

Franklin Blvd. is a great indicator of national patterns of fuel consumption. But I-80 is not. I regularly queried co-workers who commute from Benicia and Fairfield, and they reported not a hint of declining or increasing traffic at any time...because everyone on the freeways have no options available to them to reduce their commuting consumption. On Franklin Blvd., many more trips are recreational and it was the drop in recreational oil that led to declining demand and the falling prices.

The first wave of employment casualties have been those dependent on recreational oil users, like the master baiter, RV dealership salesmen, videogame parlors, restaurant owners, car audio installers, Starbucks, Hummer salesmen, and balloon shop proprietors. Not surprisingly, these are the only jobs available in Elk Grove, retail and sprawl servicing. Hundreds of strip retail units lay vacant. These regional job losses combined with the thousands of Elk Grovian foreclosures also contributed to decreased use of the Franklin corridor.

Passive Voice

I told my two co-workers this morning, both of whose first houses were bought a few months ago, that their homes were really bought back in 2006. Effectively. That's the effective price they will have paid once they factor in their 2008 price and their future tax increases to pay the government to bail out all the bad loans of 2001-2007.

Passive voicing? Yes. Lately an awful lot of dialog in the passive voice was heard by me regarding the financial meltdown:

"Mistakes were made."
"We were blindsided by these bank failures."
"It got brung to us."

A taxpayer bailout is not exactly what I envisioned back in 2003 when I expected the housing bubble to pop. It hung on, remarkably, for almost another 4 years, but any damn fool could see this coming a hundred miles down the road. How long could we have expected the median family income unable to purchase even 40% of the median house?

I really have never given much thought to the taxes I pay. I always withhold more by filing single zero so I never even see it. If I really cared, I would have never spent the past eleven years paying off my mortgage early, opting instead to take the interest tax deduction and funneling that cash into other securities. I have twenty six months left. Wa-hey.

While I don't care about how much I pay, taxes would be used in different ways under an Insania administration. NASA -- bump them up about 85%. Federal highway funds -- down 62%. Indigent health care -- up 23%. Wetlands preservation -- up 26%. Tax credits for Transit Oriented Development (TOD), and tax increases if you don't. How about a thirty year renewable energy financial policy, instead of jacking it on and off every coupla years?

No. Instead of NASA, I've resigned my future taxes to fund bad consumers who bought bad loans from bad banks who sold bad collateral debt obligations to bad investment firms and bad insurance agencies who underwrote bad policies to insure them. And I feel so much better!

My Walk Of Shame

I consider myself a sub-optimal Elk Grovian as I do walk around my city from time to time. I don't just do it for recreation, or just to give the dog some recreation -- no, I actually walk to work. There's some utilitarian purpose going on here.

To be honest, I walk to the bus stop a few times a week. It's my Walk Of Shame. I ensure my gaze doesn't exceed the horizon, my shoulders are slumped, back hunched, and I lurch aimlessly with seemingly no purpose. This way, I fit in with all the other chowderheads who can't afford to participate in the Elk Grove Compulsory Motoring Program.

When the bus drops me off in the afternoon, I get to traverse Big Horn Blvd on foot, a four lane collector road with no houses on either side. No, this road houses only motor vehicles. But I cross on foot at the crosswalk, at the intersection of Frye Creek.

Now, any Elk Grovian motorist who comes upon this intersection has all their needs taken care of by the city transportation planning department. All motorists have their needs services in due time, as they have certain expectations about when the light will turn green for them.

However, as a pedestrian...I approach the intersection and I have no idea 1) if the walk signal will be given to me automatically, 2) if I have to push the button, 3) how long I have to wait in either event, and 4) how much time will I be given to navigate the intersection.

With all this uncertainty, how long should I expect to stand there until I just say fuck it and decide to jaywalk? 30 seconds? 45 seconds? Did I push the button hard enough? Is the button even working? What if it ain't working, should I attempt to bolt across the road? If it ain't working and I bolt, will the light stay green long enough so I don't get plowed over? Look -- even apes know when to cross the road...when there's no traffic:

Why not give me a timer, after I push the button, telling me how much time I have to wait until I am allowed to walk? Any problem with that? Use the same damn timer!

But if Elk Grove did that...think about it. Suppose I pushed the button, only to find out I've got 175 seconds until the light will change (there's a lot of cross traffic that day). What then? Should I expect to have to stand there like a damn idiot holding my three cold babies for that much time? No -- I'd say fuck it, I'd jaywalk, I'd get hit, then I'd sue the city for forcing me to stand an unreasonable amount of time and pin the blame on them. I'd likely win, too. A juror might conclude "Hey, that could have been me. That could have been me having to wait that long, and no way could I take it," and sympathize.

A Thousand Per Inch

If you've ever driven Hwy 101 from Marin County to San Jose, attempting to take a freeway south through San Francisco, you'll be forced onto city streets to get through. There was enough resistance in the past not to fillet San Francisco like a salmon with a freeway. This doesn't mean they've stopped traffic. No, far from it. All thru-commuters (and there's thousands of them) get to navigate the stoplight madness of Van Ness in any attempt to get through SF. And thousands of SF residents get to deal with these thru-commuters daily. The same with the 710 through Pasadena...enough resistance (from wealthy landowners, I'll add) to stop any freeway from being built.

Imagine the cost, imagine! of trying to build a freeway through these places today! It would be in the low billions!

And wouldn't you know it...it's gonna cost hundreds of millions, two hundred and seventy million to be exact, to build a 4.3 mile extension of light rail into Elk Grove. Indeed, it doesn't even reach Elk Grove with this new extension, it just gets 4.3 miles closer (set to open by 2012). The costs are astronomic precisely because our city is a fully paved-over automobile slum, and now to shoehorn in a set of train tracks as an afterthought over existing suburban sprawl is ridiculously expensive.

4.3 miles is ~22,000 feet. And at 270e^6 dollars, that's about $12,000 dollars a foot to build, or a thousand dollars per inch.

A thousand dollars per inch! And come on, when was the last time you heard of a major transportation infrastructure project coming in under budget? This thing is going to cost a third of a billion dollars once it's all said and done.

If RT didn't have to screw about with buying rights of way, building sound walls, building parking garages, and building grade separations to manage the traffic fiascos that will ensue with four-lane collector road widenings and crossings, this would be so much cheaper...and would likely have already been built. No. Elk Grove was too myopic to plan for public transit as they built out. Elk Grove was too stupid to understand that they've added nearly a hundred thousand more motor vehicles in the past twenty years (because living here is impossible without one) and to now add a light rail crossing would cause traffic to stack up a quarter mile while waiting for two trains to pass. Elk Grove was too near-sighted and allowed the suburban building of hundreds of homes right up against a proposed transit right of way that now requires noise mitigation (i.e., a big blank wall).

I'll bet light rail never, never! comes to Elk Grove. Just like light rail never came and never will come to Calthorpe's Laguna West. They said it was too expensive. It's too expensive now! Then they'll sell off the rights of way to brownfield developers and build more suburban slums and then light rail, instead of being just too expensive, will be absolutely impossible. So everyone will just have to continue to drive. And when gasoline is a steady 4 bucks a gallon, then 5, and Elk Grove commuters have no other options available to them...well, fuck 'em. They'll get what they deserve.

Shared Realms

Yesterday I walked about a mile and a half to the East Sac Hardware store, plantar fasciitis and all, to buy some lawn mower wheels. My mower is fifteen years old, has no throttle control, a replaced carburetor, a handle held in place by four pipe clamps, and now, I drove it till the wheels fell off...literally. Every one of my neighbors would have ditched it years ago and replaced it with a cheap imported mower. Then 6 years later, they'd be buying another cheap imported mower.

Nice that I have an option, here at work, not to have to drive to the hardware store. I rode the bike into work, walked to get my lunch and wheels, and did it all with virtually no direct energy purchases. That's what pre-WWII communities provide -- and what everything built since has failed to provide.

In Elk Grove, we have no hardware stores. Only 120,000 sq ft depots, all three of which are located miles away from everyone. Your only option is to drive, and they stock them to the rafters with cheap imports. 7" imported Chinese injection molded plastic lawnmower wheels, and if you don't like it, tough shit. That's all they offer, and you're gonna take it, stupid Amelican consumer.

And you know, I was able to buy 8" steel wheels at this local-owned shop yesterday. These will last longer than the rest of my mower, sad to say, but that's the point. Merikan made, and only marginally more expensive. And the profits I paid to the store will stay local, not shipped off to fatten CEO/CFO/CIO salaries, bonuses, compensation packages, stock options, and severances in Atlanta, GA or Morresville, NC.

This is hugely important to your Franklin Monologueonian. I chatted with the owner as he led me in the backroom to hunt down these wheels. I asked how long he'd been there -- twenty seven years himself. The thing is, he takes care of two buildings in East Sacramento -- his own home and his business. What is the probability that an associate manager at Lowe's gives a damn about his business' tilt-up building? He doesn't, and when the next predatory depot-sized store opens up a few miles away offering an additional dollar and a quarter an hour, off he goes.

This hardware storefront abuts the sidewalk, something illegal in Elk Grove and damn near everywhere else in this auto centric nation because of our setback requirements. This makes the sidewalk something people are willing to use, even if they never enter this store, because it contains, it encloses, it makes the street a decent place to walk. Not a fucking no-mans-land some two hundred and eighty seven feet from a depot entrance. Along this street there are sufficiently large tree plantings and parallel parked cars that provide a physical buffer between anyone walking on the sidewalk and fast moving cars on Folsom Blvd. Cars and pedestrians share this realm. Spend a few minutes walking from the sidewalk at a Home Depot to their store entrance and discover how the pedestrian striped markers are never contiguous, and how you get to dodge motor vehicles driven by inattentive consumers if you're stupid enough to be walking in.

Sportsmen for McCain

People whose paycheck depends on the American ethos of perpetual leisure, relaxation and recreation are wont to vote Republican this fall.

The Sacramento Bee reported today how a couple living in their 3,000 sq ft dream home in Yuba can't seem to make it anymore...how their twin commutes cost them $300 a month in gasoline and how this is "horrible."

Bear in mind that Yuba City has no local economy. Sure, there is and there always has been agriculture, but white couples in starter mansions don't grow almonds. No, they pile into their rigs and grind out daily commutes to Woodland, to Roseville, to Beale and McClellan...because wa-hey! That's where the jobs are!

So I'm supposed to feel bad for this couple? Because they made the conscious decision to live miles from everywhere, where to get a key made or to buy a pack of gum requires a nine mile round trip by truck? You know what? Fuck 'em.

Yuba county, behind Riverside and Contra Costa, has the third highest average commute time per resident. And I will prepare and host a chicken dinner for every Monologue reader if any of these three counties doesn't vote red in November.

In the same article, a Marysville bait shop owner was quoted "We want areas to stay beautiful, but if there's oil in Alaska, then you gotta do what you gotta do. It's either that, or don't drive cars." Beautiful? This guy's livelihood is dependent on the perpetual motoring lifestyles of recreational fishermen from afar, and his livelihood is underwritten by cheap, liberal petroleum. If oil sands were discovered tomorrow underneath his precious Feather River he'd have a much different opinion, now wouldn't he?

"Sportsmen for McCain." is his refrain. Not only is salmon fishing banned this year (for any number of reasons -- climate change, over-harvesting, lack-of-water), we're also suffering from a prolonged drought with all signs pointing towards future decades of less water. He's beating the Republican drill! drill! drill! drum hoping that he'll continue to sell his leisure wares to a county whose citizens suffer from some of the worst unemployment rates in the state, and whose external patrons are motoring less often due to high gasoline.

So vote McCain/Palin this November. Master Baiters are depending on you.

Dependently Wealthy

My brother-in-law's answer, when I queried him about his job security in these 'tough economic times', was "nuclear-proof." I think the same of my job, because I actually produce something. Ha! U.S. jobs that produce something! What a novel concept! These sorts of jobs have been in decline since 1958, ever since we decided it was better to exploit cheap foreign labor to save a few dollars on plastic lawnmower wheels and cheap silverware.

During my luncheon today I read about all those teary-eyed just-terminated Lehman Bros. employees...they never expected bankruptcy, they said. No one saw this coming, it was overheard. No...the Fed didn't bail them out. Their $260k/year jobs have vanished overnight...apparently Hurricane Ike made landfall not over Houston but over Nassau St. this weekend.

Making a quarter-mil plus in lower Manhattan is nothing these days. Apparently, these financial sector workaholics are dependently wealthy...dependent on the sweat equity of all our our evaporating manufacturing jobs that actually produce something of value in this nation. And as these jobs evaporate off to Vietnam, off to East Pakistan, these financiers are discovering that this information- and financial- economy they depend on can't function without a productive floor.

The thing is, you often hear someone describe themselves as 'independently wealthy', but you never hear them describe themselves as 'dependently wealthy.' I'm here to tell you, folks, that the U.S. is dependently wealthy. Well, to be honest, what the U.S. has is hallucinated wealth. We hallucinated our productive wealth, then our tech wealth, then our commodities wealth, then our housing wealth, and now our banking wealth. What's next?

This entire nation is dependently wealthy...dependent on cheap Asian imports, dependent on cheap Canadian and Mexican hydrocarbons, dependent on China not purging their dollar reserves, bus mostly, dependent on hallucinations...hallucinations that we are somehow exempt from ecology, that we are entitled to perpetual motoring, that we can continue to pave over our prime farmland with strip-malls and exurban housing developments, that sprawl is our economy.

Speed Sells

I recall having read that one of the design specs of the Chevy Volt, when it arrives, is that its 0-60 acceleration must fall between 7-9 seconds.

Speed sells. They know no one will buy this car unless it's got ummph, regardless of how efficient it might be. And the issue for me, for the Franklin Monologues, is that this damn car would probably already be on the market if they could just relax that design criteria.

But they can't relax it, because this moronic nation has demanded faster and faster acceleration and performance for the past thirty years. Ever since we started making more fuel efficient vehicles 35 years ago, every shred of efficiency was squandered by recycling that efficiency into faster acceleration and 'performance.' This is another example of what I mean when I say that efficiencies have come, but demand has risen apace.

Consider the penultimate classic car -- the 1981 Plymouth Reliant. This thing had a 14 second 0-60 time, and it also got nearly 35 mpg. Thirty five. I can't even get 35 with my 2001 Honda Civic, twenty years later...why? Because we demand acceleration. I can't tell you how many cars excessively accelerate off the stop light. I see it more than most people on my bike because I'm more often right at the intersection to see it. I'll claim that 60-70% of all drivers jump on it when they have the pole position, just because they can. These cretins have no clue how detrimental this is to their fuel efficiency.

This is just one more symptom of our inbred NASCAR populace...the thinking that their suburban collector roads are just like the Texas Motor Speedway, and that every trip to the market is a race against others to the closest parking spot in front of the store.

Osama and GDP

At the expense of the few thousand people who died seven years ago today, I was thinking of how much U.S. GDP Osama generated as a result of terrorism.

Arguably without 9/11 we wouldn't be involved in these two wars. Each war contributes mightily to our economy -- military hardware, uniforms, MRAPS, transportation, small arms, ordinance -- all these are manufactured here in the US and employ thousands of Americans.

Then consider all the jobs he helped create within homeland security. Probably a few thousand, at least. That's just direct jobs -- many more jobs were secured in the building of bomb-sniffing machines, anti-ram pillars around buildings, and guard dog trainers. In fact, every job created for the building of the new Folsom bridge across the American river can be directly attributed to Bin Laden. If he hadn't attacked, the Folsom Dam road would still be open to traffic and the new bridge wouldn't be needed. Folsom Dam road is permanently closed to traffic due to 'fear.'

I will take this a step further. Here at SMUD we are going to build a new energy control center out in the hinterlands along with a new corporate yard that will house our fleets of service vehicles. We are moving our energy operations office because "we cite a safety concern having our building close to light-rail and close to the intersection of S and 59th streets."

Without 9/11, we wouldn't be so fucking fearful. We would never have had to consider that our operations center, located in the same place for the past forty five years, is now, suddenly, unsafe. I attribute every new job created in the building of our new fortified, bunkered, miles-from-anything control center to Bin Laden...and every additional mile driven by employees to get to this new center adds GDP by way of vehicle manufacturers and road builders.

Take away the 25+ remaining years of productivity from the 3,000+ people who died on 9/11, but adding up the thousands and thousands of jobs created since, and all the jobs yet to be created, you'll surely find Bin Laden was a boost to the American economy.

Schizos (Are Never Alone)

There is something peculiar about a residential dwelling unit. It plays a dual role. When we buy it we are buying a home. When we sell it we are selling a house.

Real estate agents are acutely aware of this dual role, this semantic distinction. They know that when we're out looking to buy, the agent is trying to find us a home. Welcome Home! With a home comes all our emotional baggage; the place where Billy first learns to walk. Where Billy is conceived. Where Billy splits open his chin on a pogo stick in the driveway. Where neighbors gather on the Fourth of July with wine, song and fireworks. Where living is celebrated. A place to spend many quality years, wrapped in lush landscaping, private community parks, and quaint, tranquil streets. We buy a home with upgrades and optional amenities that offer palettes of self expression.

Yet agents also know that when a new housing unit is built or when an old unit is being 'unloaded', it is sold as a house. And in labeling it a house we detach any sense of place. All emotional attachments are removed and any thought of what makes it a nice place to live is destroyed. We are looking to extract as much profit from our equity as possible. We sell it as "freeway close," or "Shopping District close." A home doesn't have a "newer" roof, but a house does.

This is the standard Merikan schizophrenic nature of buying and selling.

Developer's Semaphore

Three miles north of my suburban pod they've ceased construction on a new 115-unit enclave called Villa Terrassa. They started in 2006 during the peak-boom and now there's just twenty of them built out, while the remaining 95 are concrete pads overgrown with 4-foot high weeds. Just what any new homeowner wants to live next to for the next four to six years, eh?

This is my view of the Villa everyday as I bike along Franklin and Mack:


This sign once read "...under $300,000" back in 2006. I'm curious what each of those 20 new homeowners paid, and how many of them fell off the foreclosure cliff. If I were upside down a hundred grand I would absolutely walk away.

Absolutely. I was given a property with nothing required from me. I would absolutely walk off and take the credit hit. Come on...I bet I could get a new credit card less than three months later. I bet I could buy a new car less than six months later. I'd simply ride out the foreclosure for a few years until it's a buyer's market again, my credit will be 'restored' to nearly new and I'd have another go at it by 2013.

Pushing aside all this housing crisis horseshit, the worst of it is that I and everyone else who drives/bicycles by this "Villa" has to look at this model home with a banner draped across it. And when the banner gets torn to shreds from this upcoming winter winds, the community will be rewarded with a blank fucking wall for the next seventy seven years. This enclave was never intended to integrate with anything else. The blank walls of its edges means nothing to the developer, it's only supposed to show good from the front. And that's where the sidewalk ends...right into a 4 foot high wooden barricade.

Who is going to walk on that sidewalk, huh? Who? And where would they be going, after negotiating over this wooden fence into that muddy rockway? Only miscreants and rapscallions, that's who, all of whom will be looked down upon by thousands of Elk Grove thru-commuters as less worthy citizens who for one reason or another cannot participate in our society's compulsory automobile ownership program.

And tell me, does the presence of a half a dozen orange and yellow flags do anything redeeming for this "community?" Do these flags make it somehow more livable? Perhaps it's developer's semaphore -- "We fly flags. This is a special place. If you lived here, you'd be special, too."

Drive 'Till I Qualify

Let’s say I’m all for helping the Merikan economy. Forget the “information” or “digital” economy bullshit -- our economy is based on the construction and servicing of suburban sprawl, so I buy a new Elk Grovian house this October for $430,000, little to no down. I can’t see myself occupying 3,684 square feet while riding a bus to work (how degrading) so I buy myself a $22,000 car. In order to afford the house payment the wife has to work, too. She buys herself a $28,000 car. We do this every seven years...because no one should have to drive an old car. No Elk Grovian should and it ought to be outlawed so as to not lower property values from all those jalopies in driveways. What a public nuisance!

At the end of my 30-year mortgage, my home, say, is worth 3 times as much, $1.3 million. However, car prices have also gone up 3 times. I spend $50,000 over the first seven years, then 75k, 100k & 125k over my subsequent visits to the dealership. That’s $350,000, and when I include gasoline, auto insurance premiums, Tom-Tom Go payments, smog checks, interest payments, oil & lube servicing, new MP3 players, On-Star service agreements, DMV registration and vehicle license fees, insurance deductables from the inevitable accidents, Sirius satellite radio charges, AAA fees, and periodic A&B maintenance schedule servicing, it’s far more than the original cost of the house...even when I subtract off the residual values of the used vehicles.

So much for buying a cheap Elk Grove housing unit, eh? It about costs me double once I factor in the vehicles needed to service it. This is what I get for living in a "drive ‘till you qualify" environment. Every Elk Grovian drives south, far enough from the job bases in Sacramento until they can find a house they could afford. Today, if you head south even farther still, there are throngs of new developments that will be tomorrow's new Affordavilles.

Polar Bears and ANWR

Sarah Palin during her acceptance speech said she knew about Alaskan oil as someone who knows the North Slope.

That's fine, but the North Slope is in permanent decline. Permanent. She didn't mention that. ANWR by 2018 will simply offset declines elsewhere, from the North Slope to Bakersfield.

Note one important nearly universal energy observation: Efficiencies have come, but demand has risen apace. Demand has risen apace. No matter how efficiently we build hybrid cars, the more efficient they become, the more of them we will build, and the more we use them, the more oil/gas/electricity we will consume. Even here at work -- no matter how many CFLs, shade trees, or 23 SEER AC units SMUD promotes, SMUD still expects future load growth.

We mandate growth in energy supply to keep things going. In my humble opinion, ANWR won't even come close to doing this. It's insignificant in the long run.

Therefore, I am hoping we drill ANWR, beginning yesterday, and punt this political football off the gridiron. Same with offshore drilling. Get it drilled, and get it out of our discussions. Drilling is orders of magnitude cleaner than it was in 1969, and we are more efficient than ever in depleting fields fast. Get it over with! Environmentalists have to expend their energies on things that don't really matter -- like polar bears and ANWR -- because these are highly emotive topics, instead of other issues that would have far greater environmental returns...like better urban design, maybe?