The news tonight reported that the city of Norco, CA, has spent millions to keep their two Chrysler dealerships in service.
Norco -- a southern California city south of San Bernadino -- a hub of suburban sprawl, car dealerships, and big box stores carved out of the desert. As complete a wasteland and noplace as any other noplace in America.
I admit I like Norco; vicodin really works good for me following a couple of hard days on the commuter bike. But I digress. The city of Norco receives 40% of their tax revenue from car sales from their car dealerships, and are so beholden to autocentricity that they were forced to bail out their dealerships lest the city fiscally implode into a black hole.
You know, while my Elk Grove isn't quite so dependent on any one sector for their revenues, the Auto Mall provides such a substantial portion that we are likely just as dependent...car sales down, city bad. Car sales up, city good. Car sales really down, city really bad.
There were so many shitheads out driving Franklin Blvd. this afternoon and evening I question why we should even try saving ourselves. Once our economy is "saved" we'll only return to seventeen million new cars sold here each year with seventeen million new "commuter-consumer" assholes, each thinking Franklin Blvd. is Taladega, Alabama while motoring from the Target in the south to the Big Lots to the north.
This is our culture, and it's repulsive. Norco, CA will soon be the recipient of new car sales revenue from our any-day-now-recovery, along with a few more hours of the I-15 at failure levels of service. Elk Grovians, now accustomed to eased congestion, will soon discover failure levels of service on their six freeway interchanges and collector roads. This is our culture.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Others
So, I lost my bet with my co-worker today. I thought that our government would do everything in their power to prevent an auto bankruptcy.
Negotiations are over. Troops are marching to their doom. Chrysler failed to reach agreements with others to stave off bankruptcy today. I now owe my Bangladeshi co-worker lunch; not a happy meal, mind you, but something good.
First of all, I know why people aren't buying new cars. All you fucking Americans have decided to steal other people's cars...as my truck was stolen yesterday morning. Yep...you can count on others to help you out of your predicaments...other people's cars...other people's money (i.e., the taxpayers), bombing brown others to keep defense jobs, or borrowing from future others (i.e., future American debtors). Do everything you can to shift the financial responsibility to The Other.
That's the exact position that landed us in this mild economic slowdown to begin with...cheap credit that bought houses on margin that were ultimately Welshed upon because that's the way things are done in America nowadays...call it the Something For Nothing culture, or the Ethos of Unearned Riches.
Negotiations are over. Troops are marching to their doom. Chrysler failed to reach agreements with others to stave off bankruptcy today. I now owe my Bangladeshi co-worker lunch; not a happy meal, mind you, but something good.
First of all, I know why people aren't buying new cars. All you fucking Americans have decided to steal other people's cars...as my truck was stolen yesterday morning. Yep...you can count on others to help you out of your predicaments...other people's cars...other people's money (i.e., the taxpayers), bombing brown others to keep defense jobs, or borrowing from future others (i.e., future American debtors). Do everything you can to shift the financial responsibility to The Other.
That's the exact position that landed us in this mild economic slowdown to begin with...cheap credit that bought houses on margin that were ultimately Welshed upon because that's the way things are done in America nowadays...call it the Something For Nothing culture, or the Ethos of Unearned Riches.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Less Smarter
This stimulus money to be spent on Elk Grove to help build out its Intelligent Transportation System, as I just pointed out, is just as wasteful as monies to be spent creating a smart grid.
I say this with some jest...obviously. But I'm serious about one very important and distinct point: any intelligent transportation system (ITS) requires intelligent people being transported, while any smart grid requires smart energy consumers. Neither of these exist in my America.
It has been said that American consumers everyday weight the costs vs. time, vs. other costs and do a good job about it...but I wholeheartedly disagree. Americans are about as fucking stupid a people as there are regarding energy.
Not two percent are aware of the sources for their electricity. Not three percent are even faintly aware of their sources for gasoline. Not four percent are even faintly aware of the economic, social, and environmental damage their perpetual driving inflicts.
Now we come along with twenty-first century buzzwords like "smart grid" and "ITS," and somehow we're supposed to assume that connecting some fiber-optics with some computer hardware is going to completely transform the traffic patterns of car-dependent Elk Grove...that smart meters and a smart grid are somehow going to completely transform how Elk Grovians use their electricity...
...that somehow, once we connect up all this shit, the typical Elk Grove thru-commuter will be able to drive her minivan from Wilton to Locke without having to stop at a red light, that technology will wirelessly communicate with her batterized minivan to correct any velocity and direction problems, ensuring she can pass comfortably through roadways now capable of handling three times the traffic we do today without any of those bothersome discomforts of idling, waiting, accelerating, or braking...
...that somehow, once we connect up all this shit, her solar panels will charge her battery powered minivan and if some disruption to her local solar insolation occurs the "grid" will automatically switch to her wind turbine in the backyard and if the wind ain't blowing will pull from other PHEVs in other regions where solar intensity is higher than demand...
Really? In our nation without a shred of concern or knowledge about how idiotic we've built out our living arrangements? We're supposed to expect that artificial intelligence will supplant human ignorance? Please.
I am the ultimate skeptic of our Smart Grid, Intelligent Grid, Smart Highways, Intelligent Highways, what have you.
I say this with some jest...obviously. But I'm serious about one very important and distinct point: any intelligent transportation system (ITS) requires intelligent people being transported, while any smart grid requires smart energy consumers. Neither of these exist in my America.
It has been said that American consumers everyday weight the costs vs. time, vs. other costs and do a good job about it...but I wholeheartedly disagree. Americans are about as fucking stupid a people as there are regarding energy.
Not two percent are aware of the sources for their electricity. Not three percent are even faintly aware of their sources for gasoline. Not four percent are even faintly aware of the economic, social, and environmental damage their perpetual driving inflicts.
Now we come along with twenty-first century buzzwords like "smart grid" and "ITS," and somehow we're supposed to assume that connecting some fiber-optics with some computer hardware is going to completely transform the traffic patterns of car-dependent Elk Grove...that smart meters and a smart grid are somehow going to completely transform how Elk Grovians use their electricity...
...that somehow, once we connect up all this shit, the typical Elk Grove thru-commuter will be able to drive her minivan from Wilton to Locke without having to stop at a red light, that technology will wirelessly communicate with her batterized minivan to correct any velocity and direction problems, ensuring she can pass comfortably through roadways now capable of handling three times the traffic we do today without any of those bothersome discomforts of idling, waiting, accelerating, or braking...
...that somehow, once we connect up all this shit, her solar panels will charge her battery powered minivan and if some disruption to her local solar insolation occurs the "grid" will automatically switch to her wind turbine in the backyard and if the wind ain't blowing will pull from other PHEVs in other regions where solar intensity is higher than demand...
Really? In our nation without a shred of concern or knowledge about how idiotic we've built out our living arrangements? We're supposed to expect that artificial intelligence will supplant human ignorance? Please.
I am the ultimate skeptic of our Smart Grid, Intelligent Grid, Smart Highways, Intelligent Highways, what have you.
Intelligent Transportation System
A coworker mentioned how there are no HOV lanes on I-5 in California. Is that true? It certainly is in Sacramento. He mentioned how Caltrans and the Federal government are at odds with one another and thus the Feds don't match funds, so California forgoes building.
An I-5 HOV lane would work great for me as a SACTOWN bus commuter, I'd arrive downtown often times much earlier. But on a bus I really don't care too much, I always bring something to think about...I can afford some congestion.
Our American Recovery and Investment Act (wa-hey!), I sarcastically chided earlier, is code-speak for "build new roads." And wouldn't you know it, Elk Grove is primed to spend $7.6 million of that to...build new roads! Well, let me clarify.
The lion's share of that will be to buy eight new e-tran buses. Awesome. It's too bad that they are mostly under utilized, due to our city's low density layout, but the commuter buses into Sacramento are quite full, and they've remained full since the Spike of Ought Eight. That's pretty nice in my opinion, lots of fresh faces on the buses. People who discovered this last summer are regulars now, so my level of service might remain steady, contrary to my prediction for Ought Nine.
Now for the road building. $500,000 to move the Elk Grove on-ramp HOV lane to the leftmost lane from the rightmost. $1,000,000 to link fiber optic networks with traffic comm equipment with computers to try to better control traffic through signals. And $2,483,000 to rehab roads (asphalt concrete overlays and slurry seals).
So let's spend stimulus money to build an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) overlaid on top of a Fucked Up Urban Layout System. That's quite intelligent. Find ways to ensure present and future car dependency for each one of our city's inhabitants. Find ways to efficiently move volume while shuttering alternative ways to move people. Find ways to make Laguna Blvd. a more efficient conduit for motorized vehicles while ensuring no pedestrian in their right mind would ever want to be crossing that intersection.
Not a single dollar will be spent to build a better city.
An I-5 HOV lane would work great for me as a SACTOWN bus commuter, I'd arrive downtown often times much earlier. But on a bus I really don't care too much, I always bring something to think about...I can afford some congestion.
Our American Recovery and Investment Act (wa-hey!), I sarcastically chided earlier, is code-speak for "build new roads." And wouldn't you know it, Elk Grove is primed to spend $7.6 million of that to...build new roads! Well, let me clarify.
The lion's share of that will be to buy eight new e-tran buses. Awesome. It's too bad that they are mostly under utilized, due to our city's low density layout, but the commuter buses into Sacramento are quite full, and they've remained full since the Spike of Ought Eight. That's pretty nice in my opinion, lots of fresh faces on the buses. People who discovered this last summer are regulars now, so my level of service might remain steady, contrary to my prediction for Ought Nine.
Now for the road building. $500,000 to move the Elk Grove on-ramp HOV lane to the leftmost lane from the rightmost. $1,000,000 to link fiber optic networks with traffic comm equipment with computers to try to better control traffic through signals. And $2,483,000 to rehab roads (asphalt concrete overlays and slurry seals).
So let's spend stimulus money to build an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) overlaid on top of a Fucked Up Urban Layout System. That's quite intelligent. Find ways to ensure present and future car dependency for each one of our city's inhabitants. Find ways to efficiently move volume while shuttering alternative ways to move people. Find ways to make Laguna Blvd. a more efficient conduit for motorized vehicles while ensuring no pedestrian in their right mind would ever want to be crossing that intersection.
Not a single dollar will be spent to build a better city.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Earth Daze
I spent the better part of Earth Day solo-motoring around Sacramento in my private automobile...leaving several hundred pounds of carbon in my wake.
It just so happened that on Earth Day I had shit to do that could more reasonably be accommodated by vehicle.
Earth Day is commendable, but falls kilometers short. Guilty white Americans band together for one day out of three hundred and fifty odd days and declare their support for the environment...by buying supposedly eco-friendly shit they don't need with money they don't have. Then they return to their normal private motoring lives for the remaining 99.726% of the year.
I noticed that traffic on Earth Day Wednesday was just as bad as any other Wednesday, with just as many cars. The air quality on Earth Day was just as bad as any other Wednesday, and with an early heat wave the air took on a ochre tint, not normally available until summer. The next Thursday was even worse it seemed, although I observed all that from my bike seat. There are options.
And indeed, there are other options for nearly everyone nearly every day of the year, but they are often hard to find and exploit...but if you so much as ask an American to take a few extra minutes to take the bus, pedal to the store, or hint that they ought to walk from shopping at one end of the plaza to a store at the other end, they'll throw a fit. Earth Day is largely a mindless, consumer engagement by throwing this celebration on only one day a year.
I drive to work about 3 days a month. It has never, never! been about eliminating the car, it's only that it shouldn't dominate our daily activities. It is too bad that all we've done for the last four decades, since the first Earth Day, is destroy any relationship between us and our environment through suburban sprawl and auto dependence and then try to assuage our sins by repenting on some nice April day by sticking a solar cell on our foreheads or watching a PHEV demonstration.
Not gonna be enough, folks. Not gonna be enough.
It just so happened that on Earth Day I had shit to do that could more reasonably be accommodated by vehicle.
Earth Day is commendable, but falls kilometers short. Guilty white Americans band together for one day out of three hundred and fifty odd days and declare their support for the environment...by buying supposedly eco-friendly shit they don't need with money they don't have. Then they return to their normal private motoring lives for the remaining 99.726% of the year.
I noticed that traffic on Earth Day Wednesday was just as bad as any other Wednesday, with just as many cars. The air quality on Earth Day was just as bad as any other Wednesday, and with an early heat wave the air took on a ochre tint, not normally available until summer. The next Thursday was even worse it seemed, although I observed all that from my bike seat. There are options.
And indeed, there are other options for nearly everyone nearly every day of the year, but they are often hard to find and exploit...but if you so much as ask an American to take a few extra minutes to take the bus, pedal to the store, or hint that they ought to walk from shopping at one end of the plaza to a store at the other end, they'll throw a fit. Earth Day is largely a mindless, consumer engagement by throwing this celebration on only one day a year.
I drive to work about 3 days a month. It has never, never! been about eliminating the car, it's only that it shouldn't dominate our daily activities. It is too bad that all we've done for the last four decades, since the first Earth Day, is destroy any relationship between us and our environment through suburban sprawl and auto dependence and then try to assuage our sins by repenting on some nice April day by sticking a solar cell on our foreheads or watching a PHEV demonstration.
Not gonna be enough, folks. Not gonna be enough.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Blackening
There is a tremendous volume of chatter about how our recession's over. My favorite analogy is that green shoots of new growth are emerging from the blackened financial landscape. The firestorm has come and gone, the smoldering ashed-over coals have cooled, and wouldn't you know it, life has returned. We can return back to normal.
I keep thinking of back to normal. First of all, this Great Recession, if it ever really was one, if it's over, if it really even begun, didn't even last eighteen months. From a perspective of time, that falls in line with any other ho-hum recession. Even if the globe stopped spinning for eighteen months we'd be fine immediately following such a short reprieve from "growth."
For someone who cheered on our recession, for someone hoping for a catalyst for true change, for someone who wrote monologues on how to survive a depression...I got robbed. But that's sorta what I've come to expect. A blip in expensive gasoline didn't do shit for any of us to even consider, to even question, our lifestyles. We got back to normal prices. Now we'll just get back to normal growth again.
I list what normal means. Read it, then truthfully tell me that you think these are the actions of a sane society:
I keep thinking of back to normal. First of all, this Great Recession, if it ever really was one, if it's over, if it really even begun, didn't even last eighteen months. From a perspective of time, that falls in line with any other ho-hum recession. Even if the globe stopped spinning for eighteen months we'd be fine immediately following such a short reprieve from "growth."
For someone who cheered on our recession, for someone hoping for a catalyst for true change, for someone who wrote monologues on how to survive a depression...I got robbed. But that's sorta what I've come to expect. A blip in expensive gasoline didn't do shit for any of us to even consider, to even question, our lifestyles. We got back to normal prices. Now we'll just get back to normal growth again.
I list what normal means. Read it, then truthfully tell me that you think these are the actions of a sane society:
- 16.5 million annual vehicle sales in the U.S., 96% financed on expensive credit, on top of two hundred million other vehicles we already have.
- Each one driven home, each awaiting service as personal chariots for cheap imported shit.
- Cheap Target and WalMart shit, displacing good paying manufacturing jobs.
- Jobs that used to count, that used to feed families and importantly, provided a dignified living.
- A dignified living that's been displaced by perpetual motoring and perpetual fast food consumption.
- Fast food consumption that leads to poor employment, poor waistlines, and poor health.
- Healthy living practices displaced by mandatory motoring, a complete divorce from our environments.
- Our environment that clearly shows signs of manmade stresses, such as no more salmon in the Sacramento river, no more bluefin tuna in the Sea of Japan, hundreds of square miles of pine beetle infestations, terrible air quality in hundreds of cities.
- Cities who's growth model is solely single use low density sprawl, each one destroying the connection between the city and the country, to which now there is no distinction between either. You drive to the country to escape the city and all you get is more city.
- A countryside mauled by hilltop properties each on their own 7/8th acre, land now unfit for anything...anything!
- Land paved over by endless successions of strip malls, fast food shops, tire and wheel emporiums, and cell phone stores.
- Stores that are decidedly non-local, who's "owners" whose only motivations are decidedly not those that create civilized communities.
- Communities who's health is only gauged by commute times, auto daily traffic volumes, and housal starts.
- Housal starts that have no character, lack distinction, lack coherence, all of which don't relate whatsoever to each other, to human scaled activities, to the environment. Any individual housal unit here could be substituted by any other housal unit there and no one would know the difference.
- Houses that weigh mightily on the backs of 'consumers' who commute to jobs they despise while producing nothing, all to service crushing debt loads in a pointless attempt to keep up with insurance, taxes, interest, and other debt servicing.
This is your normal. Intermission is over, please return to your seat. Growth will return momentarily.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Jewel O' The Valley
It didn't take very long for General Growth to declare bankruptcy...the owners owers of our proud, unfinished Jewel O' The Central Valley -- the Elk Grove Promenade Mall.
So our hulking half-done mall collects rats while the city and the defunct owners decide on what to do about it. I will await better reporting from the Elk Grove Citizen newspaper to clue me in to what our elected officials have to say about these developments.
Let me guess...I can think of a dozen ways our leaders will respond:
1) "While we're obviously disappointed,..."
2) "Elk Grove will prevail even under these tough..."
3) "Elk Grove will emerge a stronger and..."
4) "Revenue growth remains uncertain..."
5) "While this is a blow to our 'community'..."
6) "Our projections for tax growth remains..."
7) "While not our preferred course of action, today's filing..."
8) "We can find a silver lining from today's..."
9) "We anticipate no significant consequences from GGP's announcement that..."
10) "We're resolved to grow our city now more than...:
11) "While our community mourns, let's focus on the long term prospects for..."
12) "Our citizens will emerge more resilient and prosperous as a result of..."
If I had the personal capability to utter this shit on command I know I would be quite a bit more successful in life...successful in that the best orators and bullshitters are seemingly always elevated. These lines sound like they'd come from an Elk Grovian city council member, don't they? You can't raise enough cash to become elected without having some innate ability to goad others to give you that cash. This is how it works, how it has always worked, and I can accept this. It would not be too difficult, I'm sure, to follow Elk Grove city council election funding right back to GGP.
So a handful of white, middle aged, overweight board members in Chicago get to decide the economic fate of a hundred thousand residents in a "community" twenty five hundred miles away. I will wager my yearly salary and say that the "new" owners of the Elk Grove Promenade will most decidedly be non-local. Perhaps it will be taken over by a group of Bangladeshi investors. Perhaps some sort of consortium of Houston-area investors. Maybe an out of state bank, assigned as the guarantor. Maybe another, bigger mall operator (decidedly non-local). The thing is, it could never, never! be owned by the city, or people of the city. We decreed that local ownership is verboten.
So our hulking half-done mall collects rats while the city and the defunct owners decide on what to do about it. I will await better reporting from the Elk Grove Citizen newspaper to clue me in to what our elected officials have to say about these developments.
Let me guess...I can think of a dozen ways our leaders will respond:
1) "While we're obviously disappointed,..."
2) "Elk Grove will prevail even under these tough..."
3) "Elk Grove will emerge a stronger and..."
4) "Revenue growth remains uncertain..."
5) "While this is a blow to our 'community'..."
6) "Our projections for tax growth remains..."
7) "While not our preferred course of action, today's filing..."
8) "We can find a silver lining from today's..."
9) "We anticipate no significant consequences from GGP's announcement that..."
10) "We're resolved to grow our city now more than...:
11) "While our community mourns, let's focus on the long term prospects for..."
12) "Our citizens will emerge more resilient and prosperous as a result of..."
If I had the personal capability to utter this shit on command I know I would be quite a bit more successful in life...successful in that the best orators and bullshitters are seemingly always elevated. These lines sound like they'd come from an Elk Grovian city council member, don't they? You can't raise enough cash to become elected without having some innate ability to goad others to give you that cash. This is how it works, how it has always worked, and I can accept this. It would not be too difficult, I'm sure, to follow Elk Grove city council election funding right back to GGP.
So a handful of white, middle aged, overweight board members in Chicago get to decide the economic fate of a hundred thousand residents in a "community" twenty five hundred miles away. I will wager my yearly salary and say that the "new" owners of the Elk Grove Promenade will most decidedly be non-local. Perhaps it will be taken over by a group of Bangladeshi investors. Perhaps some sort of consortium of Houston-area investors. Maybe an out of state bank, assigned as the guarantor. Maybe another, bigger mall operator (decidedly non-local). The thing is, it could never, never! be owned by the city, or people of the city. We decreed that local ownership is verboten.
SMUDs Rate Increase(s)
The rate hike proposed by SMUD must be considered in the context of a region smitten by 20% housal growth on an ad infinitum basis. SMUD responds to residential housal pod applications and installs infrastructure to deliver that power.
In some cases, that infrastructure is on the high voltage transmission side, where I work. Load growth is the primary reason for having to buy new bulk transformers, new substations, and in some cases new transmission lines.
In all cases, that infrastructure is also on the low voltage side...SMUD spent an enormous amount to install connections to residential housal pods that don't have any residents, based on our uncontrolled orgy of growth when homes were going up 20% per annum. Now all that infrastructure is sitting there in exurban brownfields waiting for customers to connect and pay for all that infrastructure. They aren't paying because no one is there, so rates have to go up for all the other customers.
I suggest that the timing of our 13% rate increase isn't so extraordinary. Yeah, sure, there's thousands of customers bitching about why now, now! during a recession we have to raise rates. I personally argue that a rate increase in 2004, while home prices were spiraling up at 20% per year, would have been worse. If you could have bought an over-valued housal unit you then couldn't have afforded to power the fucking thing.
I argue that it's much easier to absorb a rate increase today, now that home values are down, now that interest rates are low, now that you'll get your precious tax credits for buying a house. Of course...you gotta have a job...but who's quibbling?
Nonetheless, even the unemployed consume electricity. In fact, they stay home and consume more than they would otherwise. Now do you see why power is among the most recession-proof industries there are? The truth is, if wages have really been stagnant for the past two or three decades, then at least now electricity bills are paid with real wealth, with real productivity, instead of hallucinated wealth, cash-out re-fi's, investment proceeds from Ponzi schemes, or money from nothing.
In some cases, that infrastructure is on the high voltage transmission side, where I work. Load growth is the primary reason for having to buy new bulk transformers, new substations, and in some cases new transmission lines.
In all cases, that infrastructure is also on the low voltage side...SMUD spent an enormous amount to install connections to residential housal pods that don't have any residents, based on our uncontrolled orgy of growth when homes were going up 20% per annum. Now all that infrastructure is sitting there in exurban brownfields waiting for customers to connect and pay for all that infrastructure. They aren't paying because no one is there, so rates have to go up for all the other customers.
I suggest that the timing of our 13% rate increase isn't so extraordinary. Yeah, sure, there's thousands of customers bitching about why now, now! during a recession we have to raise rates. I personally argue that a rate increase in 2004, while home prices were spiraling up at 20% per year, would have been worse. If you could have bought an over-valued housal unit you then couldn't have afforded to power the fucking thing.
I argue that it's much easier to absorb a rate increase today, now that home values are down, now that interest rates are low, now that you'll get your precious tax credits for buying a house. Of course...you gotta have a job...but who's quibbling?
Nonetheless, even the unemployed consume electricity. In fact, they stay home and consume more than they would otherwise. Now do you see why power is among the most recession-proof industries there are? The truth is, if wages have really been stagnant for the past two or three decades, then at least now electricity bills are paid with real wealth, with real productivity, instead of hallucinated wealth, cash-out re-fi's, investment proceeds from Ponzi schemes, or money from nothing.
Unconnected
I want to point out that all of my utilitie's new AMI metering units will all come with remote disconnecting means.
This means a utility worker won't have to risk his/her life pulling the meter and shutting down some user's house. Won't have to interface directly with a shotgun wielding irate non-paying "customer," or his loose pit bulls. Our new meters will be installed with a remote 200A breaker that can cut power directly if/when a customer doesn't pay the bill.
I know, from personal experience, that the second a meter is pulled a check is magically produced by the non-paying customer to pay the bill and get the lights back on. I know, because my meter was pulled at my very first apartment in 1991. It took me less than a day to pay my arrears and get on with consuming power. It was a strange case in that I never got a bill to begin with, but the power was pulled nonetheless.
It's going to take all of about two minutes for non-paying customers to understand what remote disconnecting entails. Fast. Silent. Immediate. Little to no warning. They will drive, in droves, to the utility campus (funny that they can pay for gas) to pay their past due bills. And let me say that you the diligent customer are paying a good premium to keep thousands of other non-paying customers connected...utility's past due accounts are rising. This is money not in use by your utility, and it is substantial. You don't have to wonder why rates are increasing.
This means a utility worker won't have to risk his/her life pulling the meter and shutting down some user's house. Won't have to interface directly with a shotgun wielding irate non-paying "customer," or his loose pit bulls. Our new meters will be installed with a remote 200A breaker that can cut power directly if/when a customer doesn't pay the bill.
I know, from personal experience, that the second a meter is pulled a check is magically produced by the non-paying customer to pay the bill and get the lights back on. I know, because my meter was pulled at my very first apartment in 1991. It took me less than a day to pay my arrears and get on with consuming power. It was a strange case in that I never got a bill to begin with, but the power was pulled nonetheless.
It's going to take all of about two minutes for non-paying customers to understand what remote disconnecting entails. Fast. Silent. Immediate. Little to no warning. They will drive, in droves, to the utility campus (funny that they can pay for gas) to pay their past due bills. And let me say that you the diligent customer are paying a good premium to keep thousands of other non-paying customers connected...utility's past due accounts are rising. This is money not in use by your utility, and it is substantial. You don't have to wonder why rates are increasing.
More Smart Grid
Our electrical grid is primed to become more smarter. Yep:
Being more smarter is a good thing.
Edit 4/16/09: I add another section to the original post regarding my contemplation of the smart grid:
Trying to promote sustainable energy practices is going to be an uphill battle, because America doesn't care about where their power comes from nor do they care to engage it. I can fully understand the latter, but not so much the former. That said, I was privy to a presentation today on how my utility will follow through with smart grid ideas. You should know by now that I am extremely skeptical regarding smart grid and I really haven't changed my opinion after everything I've heard and studied. So take the following while acknowledging my bias.
I will say again, and I will continue to repeat, that Smart Grid is Synonymous with Smart Consumers. Smart Grid = Smart Americans. You cannot have a smart grid without having smart Americans.
This may be, of course, a fully irrational idea...knowing how ignorant most Americans are regarding their energy use and supply.
The lion's share of Smart Grid is how to educate the customer to his/her own use, and to allow the customer to modify their usage/energy behavior based on more information. Today, most utilities, SMUD included, only send one piece of data per month (total usage and the cost) to the customer. Indeed, with traditional metering and the once-a-month read, even the utility only has one piece of information regarding that customer's usage. If, somehow, their usage during the month could be provided back to the customer combined with an idea on time of use, then the customer has more information with which to modify their behaviors.
Now...if the customer chooses not to change their consumption habits, then a smart grid, in essence, is almost a complete waste of effort.
The means to create this additional information for the user is to install a smart meter, capable of archiving their usage data. This is the core of any smart grid -- replace every meter on the grid with another meter -- one that is IP addressable, capable of being remotely accessed, either through IP or a wireless connection, one that has the capability for remote disconnect, and one that ultimately provides the customer with more information regarding their usage than today's meters.
This is the basis for AMI, advanced metering infrastructure. The whole point is to force consumer change by giving them information which which to modify their energy use behaviors. If they don't, then what use is all this? There isn't one, and I'm cynical enough to assume that most Americans don't give a shit about their electricity unless they are in the dark.
Along with smart metering comes this awful, horrible level of complexity that's going to be needed to manage all this.
Consider, for a start, just the eight thousand percent increase in data that either SMUD or the customer will have to manage. We will post a collector on a transmission tower, wirelessly gather up 5,750 customer's data into our billing systems from each aggregator (thereby eliminating meter readers). OK, so data storage is much easier than it used to be. Nonetheless, the critical question is how are utilities going to disseminate all this information? How is the customer going to interpret all this? Will there really be substantial changes in their usage patterns, changes that could have been accomplished by simply changing billing practices? Oddly, that might turn out to be the easiest piece going forward, because we haven't even yet considered that this smart grid (supposedly) will reach into each household and business, communicate wirelessly with millions of smart-enable appliances and gadgets, turning them off, turning them on, changing the pitch of an owner's wind turbine, changing the PV array's output, drawing power from the million's of PHEVs or charging them, communicating to their customer's iPhone or Treo or cell phone what they're doing and what they're going to do...
You can see my utter contempt for such a system. This whole smart grid will get to be so expensive to manage, and will result in, perhaps, an 3% increase in efficiency (which is a high end guess), that I can't possibly envision a case where this will result in 1) less energy production, 2) more efficient use, or 3) cheaper power for consumers.
First off, consider the 15,000 IT/Smart Team jobs that will be need to be created solely to prevent hackers from fucking with the power network, once we "remote access this" and "remote access that." That has a cost.
Second off, consider that there are going to be a good third of Americans who will think "you can't tell me what to do in my house," so good luck creating a wireless HAN (Home Area Network) that allows the utility to dig into their washing and espresso machines and turn them off when demand is high. Many will never bother to allow the utility to "address" their so-called smart dishwashers.
Third off, another third of Americans just simply won't give a shit about any new information the utility provides about their usage. Rates are cheap enough. It's cost and time effective to simply defer thinking about the power bill and just pay the damn thing...and get back to watching the NASCAR race.
Fourth off, metering change outs are expensive. A few thousand million of them are needed. And if the technology migrates to something those meters aren't capable of, then a few thousand million more change outs will be done. You have to consider, you have to, that in twenty years' time these new meters today will be obsolete. Indeed, every twenty years for the past century, meters have been replaced with new meters, it's nothing new, except that as the complexity increases, the overall cost will increase.
Remember -- look to the California ISO and tell me that that duplicate institution has managed to decrease electric costs to consumers by extracting market efficiencies, and then tell me that even more complexity will result in a decrease of electric costs to consumers by extracting grid efficiencies.
I find this a terrible thing. Technology <> Energy. It never has. Spending billions for technology to save millions in energy is total madness, yet this is where I see us going.
Original post: And here's a nice little smart action I took to save 'lectricity.
In my zeal for saving electricity at home, I went out and bought 45 compact florescent lamps in lieu of all those energy squandering incandescent bulbs. I determined that I would be saving about $6 a month in reduced energy costs, which is substantial, really. I was initially stoked.
Now a dose of reality; I had no option but to buy CFLs made in...you guessed it, China. Just like every vitamin C tablet currently made, all CFL manufacturing occurs in China. Xiamen. Zhejiang Shendu. Weihai. Leedarsen. Zongqshan Jinneng. Hangzhou Sky-Lighting. Ningbo Qiyuan. And of course, ignore the costs and energy associated with shipping them 6,500 miles to the depot store where I collected them. Those costs don't count.
But you can count on good old Chinese manufacturing quality, producing bulbs with an expected 6,000 - 10,000 hour life -- much better than any American made incandescent.
So, after less than one year, I've had six CFL failures. Six of forty five, for ~5% of their stated life. It turns out that the US Energy Star program doesn't recommend CFL installations in locations where the light isn't going to be on longer than 15 minutes. And wouldn't you know it...my six bulbs were installed in locations that were cycled frequently and remained on for only a few minutes at a time...can you imagine where these locations might be in my house? I happen to have 2.5 of them.
I am also aware that another branch of the Federal government passed legislation that will effectively ban the incandescent by law by 2017. Remember the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007? Apparently our energy security and independence will be predicated on the purchase of all our nation's lighting from foreign slave workers. That certainly sounds secure and independent, doesn't it?
I will be forced into a position of having to constantly replace cheap Chinese CFLs in my bathroom because they are the only lamps available by law and they aren't supposed to be left on for less than 15 minutes.
Hooray for the 130 year old incandescent lamp!
Being more smarter is a good thing.
Edit 4/16/09: I add another section to the original post regarding my contemplation of the smart grid:
Trying to promote sustainable energy practices is going to be an uphill battle, because America doesn't care about where their power comes from nor do they care to engage it. I can fully understand the latter, but not so much the former. That said, I was privy to a presentation today on how my utility will follow through with smart grid ideas. You should know by now that I am extremely skeptical regarding smart grid and I really haven't changed my opinion after everything I've heard and studied. So take the following while acknowledging my bias.
I will say again, and I will continue to repeat, that Smart Grid is Synonymous with Smart Consumers. Smart Grid = Smart Americans. You cannot have a smart grid without having smart Americans.
This may be, of course, a fully irrational idea...knowing how ignorant most Americans are regarding their energy use and supply.
The lion's share of Smart Grid is how to educate the customer to his/her own use, and to allow the customer to modify their usage/energy behavior based on more information. Today, most utilities, SMUD included, only send one piece of data per month (total usage and the cost) to the customer. Indeed, with traditional metering and the once-a-month read, even the utility only has one piece of information regarding that customer's usage. If, somehow, their usage during the month could be provided back to the customer combined with an idea on time of use, then the customer has more information with which to modify their behaviors.
Now...if the customer chooses not to change their consumption habits, then a smart grid, in essence, is almost a complete waste of effort.
The means to create this additional information for the user is to install a smart meter, capable of archiving their usage data. This is the core of any smart grid -- replace every meter on the grid with another meter -- one that is IP addressable, capable of being remotely accessed, either through IP or a wireless connection, one that has the capability for remote disconnect, and one that ultimately provides the customer with more information regarding their usage than today's meters.
This is the basis for AMI, advanced metering infrastructure. The whole point is to force consumer change by giving them information which which to modify their energy use behaviors. If they don't, then what use is all this? There isn't one, and I'm cynical enough to assume that most Americans don't give a shit about their electricity unless they are in the dark.
Along with smart metering comes this awful, horrible level of complexity that's going to be needed to manage all this.
Consider, for a start, just the eight thousand percent increase in data that either SMUD or the customer will have to manage. We will post a collector on a transmission tower, wirelessly gather up 5,750 customer's data into our billing systems from each aggregator (thereby eliminating meter readers). OK, so data storage is much easier than it used to be. Nonetheless, the critical question is how are utilities going to disseminate all this information? How is the customer going to interpret all this? Will there really be substantial changes in their usage patterns, changes that could have been accomplished by simply changing billing practices? Oddly, that might turn out to be the easiest piece going forward, because we haven't even yet considered that this smart grid (supposedly) will reach into each household and business, communicate wirelessly with millions of smart-enable appliances and gadgets, turning them off, turning them on, changing the pitch of an owner's wind turbine, changing the PV array's output, drawing power from the million's of PHEVs or charging them, communicating to their customer's iPhone or Treo or cell phone what they're doing and what they're going to do...
You can see my utter contempt for such a system. This whole smart grid will get to be so expensive to manage, and will result in, perhaps, an 3% increase in efficiency (which is a high end guess), that I can't possibly envision a case where this will result in 1) less energy production, 2) more efficient use, or 3) cheaper power for consumers.
First off, consider the 15,000 IT/Smart Team jobs that will be need to be created solely to prevent hackers from fucking with the power network, once we "remote access this" and "remote access that." That has a cost.
Second off, consider that there are going to be a good third of Americans who will think "you can't tell me what to do in my house," so good luck creating a wireless HAN (Home Area Network) that allows the utility to dig into their washing and espresso machines and turn them off when demand is high. Many will never bother to allow the utility to "address" their so-called smart dishwashers.
Third off, another third of Americans just simply won't give a shit about any new information the utility provides about their usage. Rates are cheap enough. It's cost and time effective to simply defer thinking about the power bill and just pay the damn thing...and get back to watching the NASCAR race.
Fourth off, metering change outs are expensive. A few thousand million of them are needed. And if the technology migrates to something those meters aren't capable of, then a few thousand million more change outs will be done. You have to consider, you have to, that in twenty years' time these new meters today will be obsolete. Indeed, every twenty years for the past century, meters have been replaced with new meters, it's nothing new, except that as the complexity increases, the overall cost will increase.
Remember -- look to the California ISO and tell me that that duplicate institution has managed to decrease electric costs to consumers by extracting market efficiencies, and then tell me that even more complexity will result in a decrease of electric costs to consumers by extracting grid efficiencies.
I find this a terrible thing. Technology <> Energy. It never has. Spending billions for technology to save millions in energy is total madness, yet this is where I see us going.
Original post: And here's a nice little smart action I took to save 'lectricity.
In my zeal for saving electricity at home, I went out and bought 45 compact florescent lamps in lieu of all those energy squandering incandescent bulbs. I determined that I would be saving about $6 a month in reduced energy costs, which is substantial, really. I was initially stoked.
Now a dose of reality; I had no option but to buy CFLs made in...you guessed it, China. Just like every vitamin C tablet currently made, all CFL manufacturing occurs in China. Xiamen. Zhejiang Shendu. Weihai. Leedarsen. Zongqshan Jinneng. Hangzhou Sky-Lighting. Ningbo Qiyuan. And of course, ignore the costs and energy associated with shipping them 6,500 miles to the depot store where I collected them. Those costs don't count.
But you can count on good old Chinese manufacturing quality, producing bulbs with an expected 6,000 - 10,000 hour life -- much better than any American made incandescent.
So, after less than one year, I've had six CFL failures. Six of forty five, for ~5% of their stated life. It turns out that the US Energy Star program doesn't recommend CFL installations in locations where the light isn't going to be on longer than 15 minutes. And wouldn't you know it...my six bulbs were installed in locations that were cycled frequently and remained on for only a few minutes at a time...can you imagine where these locations might be in my house? I happen to have 2.5 of them.
I am also aware that another branch of the Federal government passed legislation that will effectively ban the incandescent by law by 2017. Remember the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007? Apparently our energy security and independence will be predicated on the purchase of all our nation's lighting from foreign slave workers. That certainly sounds secure and independent, doesn't it?
I will be forced into a position of having to constantly replace cheap Chinese CFLs in my bathroom because they are the only lamps available by law and they aren't supposed to be left on for less than 15 minutes.
Hooray for the 130 year old incandescent lamp!
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Alone In The Wilderness
Three years ago I watched an unbelievable account on PBS from Dick Proenneke about his 30 years in Alaska. I have remained in awe ever since I saw that show. That single show was worth all my last three years support for KVIE.
This man found the wherewithal, after retiring from other life, to find the energy and passion to forge a living from the land. He required little to thrive. This, I think, is the true message he gives to everyone else. You don't need a lot to thrive. You might have to work at it, but that is a small price to pay to thrive.
I had the privilege to spend a week on Shuyak Island in 2005, during the fall. I can barely imagine how I'd make it during winter there, yet Dick was able to carve out a substantial living in an even more inhospitable realm.
I admire his perseverance in his endeavors, knowing full well as a type I diabetic that sort of lifestyle is completely forbidden for me. I feel a little trapped in that knowledge, but nonetheless, I can learn and emulate the best I can from such a person. I should realize that I also need very little to thrive; I don't need an Escalade, a 65" HDTV, a starter mansion, an iPhone...I only need basic things and I've somewhat learned the true value of austerity.
I have a lot farther to go...
This man found the wherewithal, after retiring from other life, to find the energy and passion to forge a living from the land. He required little to thrive. This, I think, is the true message he gives to everyone else. You don't need a lot to thrive. You might have to work at it, but that is a small price to pay to thrive.
I had the privilege to spend a week on Shuyak Island in 2005, during the fall. I can barely imagine how I'd make it during winter there, yet Dick was able to carve out a substantial living in an even more inhospitable realm.
I admire his perseverance in his endeavors, knowing full well as a type I diabetic that sort of lifestyle is completely forbidden for me. I feel a little trapped in that knowledge, but nonetheless, I can learn and emulate the best I can from such a person. I should realize that I also need very little to thrive; I don't need an Escalade, a 65" HDTV, a starter mansion, an iPhone...I only need basic things and I've somewhat learned the true value of austerity.
I have a lot farther to go...
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Yoga II
Following my return from Colorado (in discussion with Patty Block) I decided that I needed to practice yoga more than just one day a week.
I often feel terrible after a bike ride into work. Sitting there in my cube -- stiff, unyielding. But I've noticed that if I take the time, about fifteen minutes, of correct yoga stretching as I arrive at work, I am never, never! stiff during the day.
Patty mentioned how yoga has helped her with the chores in her barnyard, and how as she migrated from one to two or more days a week she has really noticed a difference. So I've taken an interest in SMUDs Monday afternoon yoga along with my usual Wednesday evening class. And I'll tell you, that extra session is remarkable...I feel substantially better than before. I only wish I had the mental desire and fortitude to practice it five to six days a week.
I cannot stress enough how awesome this "sport" is. There are four tenants to physical fitness: strength, flexibility, balance, and cardiovascular, and yoga is the only thing I know that addresses each. You can make each yoga practice the equivalent of Armageddon if you so choose or as light as a simple stretching to awaken some sore muscles. And it requires nothing more than your own self. The simplicity of yoga meshes perfectly with a life goal of living with less...you can take perfect care of yourself using nothing more than yourself.
I often feel terrible after a bike ride into work. Sitting there in my cube -- stiff, unyielding. But I've noticed that if I take the time, about fifteen minutes, of correct yoga stretching as I arrive at work, I am never, never! stiff during the day.
Patty mentioned how yoga has helped her with the chores in her barnyard, and how as she migrated from one to two or more days a week she has really noticed a difference. So I've taken an interest in SMUDs Monday afternoon yoga along with my usual Wednesday evening class. And I'll tell you, that extra session is remarkable...I feel substantially better than before. I only wish I had the mental desire and fortitude to practice it five to six days a week.
I cannot stress enough how awesome this "sport" is. There are four tenants to physical fitness: strength, flexibility, balance, and cardiovascular, and yoga is the only thing I know that addresses each. You can make each yoga practice the equivalent of Armageddon if you so choose or as light as a simple stretching to awaken some sore muscles. And it requires nothing more than your own self. The simplicity of yoga meshes perfectly with a life goal of living with less...you can take perfect care of yourself using nothing more than yourself.
Parvo
I mentioned that I am one of perhaps twenty Elk Grovians who ride their bikes to work. I met one of those twenty this morning...on Franklin Blvd.
He said this was his third ride in five days, and the only riding he's done in the last three years. He contracted Parvo three years back and only began riding again five days ago. I didn't ask why specifically he couldn't ride. Apparently, autoimmune deficiencies are common with us Elk Grovian bike commuters. Maybe that's the only reason we ride.
Nonetheless, that fucker could belt out the speed. He was on my wheel for a good three minutes before I knew he was there, and after chatting for a mile he bolted on forward. He boards Franklin about a half mile south of me and rides to CSUS...very close to SMUD.
A good fifteen minutes after he took off, I was grinding into a 20-mph headwind on the 99 overpass when I noticed a mitten rolling downwind.......right on by......and then I saw him backtracking, chasing it down. Today was one of those typical spring NW winds that really test your will to ride. I arrived at work swollen from tree pollen and blind from windswept debris. It took a good three hours to stop coughing, wheezing, blinking, and sneezing at work.
He said this was his third ride in five days, and the only riding he's done in the last three years. He contracted Parvo three years back and only began riding again five days ago. I didn't ask why specifically he couldn't ride. Apparently, autoimmune deficiencies are common with us Elk Grovian bike commuters. Maybe that's the only reason we ride.
Nonetheless, that fucker could belt out the speed. He was on my wheel for a good three minutes before I knew he was there, and after chatting for a mile he bolted on forward. He boards Franklin about a half mile south of me and rides to CSUS...very close to SMUD.
A good fifteen minutes after he took off, I was grinding into a 20-mph headwind on the 99 overpass when I noticed a mitten rolling downwind.......right on by......and then I saw him backtracking, chasing it down. Today was one of those typical spring NW winds that really test your will to ride. I arrived at work swollen from tree pollen and blind from windswept debris. It took a good three hours to stop coughing, wheezing, blinking, and sneezing at work.
2018
I will post a yearly reminder that last summer, the summer of ought eight, our spirited presidential debates provoked waves of outcry for ANWR drilling. We heard that, if we got started then, ANWR would be on-line and producing oil in ten years. 2018.
Today, ten years is still ten years away, but we are one year farther along without a single wellhead, access road, exploration rig, or anything else working to coax our domestic oil from the frozen tundra. 2019 if we started today, and we're not starting. So 2020 at the earliest.
This is a direct consequence of cheap oil today. We don't bother to spend any on future infrastructure because (god forbid) what would happen if future oil is also cheap? We wouldn't recoup our investment.
Do you think that the price spikes of 2007 had anything to do with our current economic malaise? Or was it the economic conditions that led to the price spikes? I don't think for a minute that we've seen the last of increasing energy costs. We burn less oil now, for sure, due to our stagnant growth, but we still burn an awful lot, and all we've done is decreased the marginal cost of that last barrel of oil. If we resume our 3.5% growth (as everyone predicts by this summer, ha!) then we'll resume our 3.5% oil demand growth too....all while Mexico will produce less this year than last...all while the US will produce less this year than last.
Today, ten years is still ten years away, but we are one year farther along without a single wellhead, access road, exploration rig, or anything else working to coax our domestic oil from the frozen tundra. 2019 if we started today, and we're not starting. So 2020 at the earliest.
This is a direct consequence of cheap oil today. We don't bother to spend any on future infrastructure because (god forbid) what would happen if future oil is also cheap? We wouldn't recoup our investment.
Do you think that the price spikes of 2007 had anything to do with our current economic malaise? Or was it the economic conditions that led to the price spikes? I don't think for a minute that we've seen the last of increasing energy costs. We burn less oil now, for sure, due to our stagnant growth, but we still burn an awful lot, and all we've done is decreased the marginal cost of that last barrel of oil. If we resume our 3.5% growth (as everyone predicts by this summer, ha!) then we'll resume our 3.5% oil demand growth too....all while Mexico will produce less this year than last...all while the US will produce less this year than last.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Black Knights
I met another Black Knight on the Hudson today, he works at SMUD.
He's 25 years older than me, having graduated USMA in 1967, but there were some stunning commonalities, and I say stunning as we both turned out wholly different than what might be expected from a graduate of a conservative military academy...he presented today a discussion on peak oil, something I have followed for years.
He's a supervisor over in SMUDs energy efficiency group, and particularly, in new technologies....funny, he is a vocal advocate for passive solar, a technology in use for the past five thousand years...but nonetheless, you'd expect most West Point graduates to wave the flag high high! for threefold national security spending, F-22's by the score, and to hell with the environment. The military has a proud history of fucking things up and they don't want that to change.
But it is changing! Get this -- as a Second Lieutenant in Camp Parks in 1997 I was verbally reprimanded for allowing my soldiers to dig a position around their MSE shelter...the area was considered environmentally sensitive. I didn't know, and most certainly I didn't give a shit. Things are quite different today, both for me and the military. Drip pans are installed under parked HMMWVs nowadays. Pretty soon, smog equipment will be required.
I am honored to know that there are other former military officers who have turned to the Dark Side, who see and acknowledge the obvious connection between our over consumptive lifestyles and national security interests. No one, no one in this fading Republic, realizes that Energy Independence Is National Security. The bulk of America is totally oblivious to any connection between energy and war and will continue to remain ignorant for a very, very long time. So long as the MRAP factory employs any of any town's residents that town will be complicit for war. They fail to make the most basic of connections.
But this is to be expected in my America.
He's 25 years older than me, having graduated USMA in 1967, but there were some stunning commonalities, and I say stunning as we both turned out wholly different than what might be expected from a graduate of a conservative military academy...he presented today a discussion on peak oil, something I have followed for years.
He's a supervisor over in SMUDs energy efficiency group, and particularly, in new technologies....funny, he is a vocal advocate for passive solar, a technology in use for the past five thousand years...but nonetheless, you'd expect most West Point graduates to wave the flag high high! for threefold national security spending, F-22's by the score, and to hell with the environment. The military has a proud history of fucking things up and they don't want that to change.
But it is changing! Get this -- as a Second Lieutenant in Camp Parks in 1997 I was verbally reprimanded for allowing my soldiers to dig a position around their MSE shelter...the area was considered environmentally sensitive. I didn't know, and most certainly I didn't give a shit. Things are quite different today, both for me and the military. Drip pans are installed under parked HMMWVs nowadays. Pretty soon, smog equipment will be required.
I am honored to know that there are other former military officers who have turned to the Dark Side, who see and acknowledge the obvious connection between our over consumptive lifestyles and national security interests. No one, no one in this fading Republic, realizes that Energy Independence Is National Security. The bulk of America is totally oblivious to any connection between energy and war and will continue to remain ignorant for a very, very long time. So long as the MRAP factory employs any of any town's residents that town will be complicit for war. They fail to make the most basic of connections.
But this is to be expected in my America.
Thursday, April 9, 2009
10,000
With the rains of a warm front approaching quickly from the southwest, under overcast skies, and with a slight hangover from my homebrewed barleywine, I surpassed the 10,000 mile mark on my bicycle this morning. Ten thousand commuting miles by bicycle.
Of Elk Grove's 130 thousand residents, I am one of perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty, who ride their bikes to work....and the reason so few? Well, perhaps it's because we are a bike hostile city, perhaps it's because our residential housal pods are no fewer than fifteen miles from our employment centers, or perhaps it's because of the stigma of being a third class citizen...apparently one too poor to own a motor vehicle.
I am something of an accidental environmentalist. I thought that riding would stabilize my type I diabetes (which it does). It took this dumb engineer quite a while to figure out that I could commute by bike, improve my health, save a little money, keep my car in service many years longer, pollute less -- killing a knob of birds with one stone. Today I ride Franklin Blvd. to SMUD in Sacramento -- Franklin giving rise to my blog's title -- and I will hopefully ride it for years to come...even if it is wholly threatening to bicyclists. I do not fly the "global warming" flag, I wave the flag for my local environment and I do more than enough to take care of it. If we lived correctly to begin with we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with white bears seven thousand miles away. But we don't...and I'm smart enough to know we won't.
A consequence of my desire to bike commute immediately revealed the complete and utter lack of bicycle venues for Elk Grovians. This whole damn city is predicated on everyone perpetually motoring about, from commuting to work, buying a jug of milk, or getting a spare key made. Automobiling is the central facet to any Elk Grovian's life, due to its low density single use zoning mandates, miles from everywhere layout and a complete lack of any local economy. Environmentalism for most Elk Grovians means separating their recyclables from their trash -- that's the full extent of what most will do. The only thing "green" about Elk Grove is the shade of some of its residents' automobiles.
If we had built this city, from the beginning, with bicycle options in mind, we would have a dedicated north-south trail or other such facility that separates motor vehicles from bikers and pedestrians and that trail, today, would be a jewel to a couple thousand more accidental environmentalists. If we had built this city, from the beginning, with light rail service in mind, we, today, would already have a line, perhaps two lines, servicing several thousand Elk Grovians. Instead, bicyclists get to run the gauntlet of speeders on Franklin, Freeport, Bruceville, Elk Grove-Florin. Instead, we have no light rail at all.
Knowing that a safe bicycle commute to jobs in the region is a total fantasy has led to my disdain for this city, yet it gives rise to my inspiration for blogging about all the bad things our social arrangements give us, such as perpetual motoring and the one fifth of our lives spent working to support it, teenagers and adults who can't socialize, crushing consumer debt to live lifestyles that we don't want to pay for, rampant consumerism and globalized waste, poor land use decisions, and a total lack of community. We bring this upon ourselves. I revel in our collective frustration and pain with the consequences of our own actions, and in providing commentary on it. Remember, never confuse me with someone who gives a shit.
I am presently at mile number three on my second ten thousand mile segment. I am hopeful the next ten thousand are as injury free and as rewarding to me as a commentator as the first.
Of Elk Grove's 130 thousand residents, I am one of perhaps eighteen, maybe twenty, who ride their bikes to work....and the reason so few? Well, perhaps it's because we are a bike hostile city, perhaps it's because our residential housal pods are no fewer than fifteen miles from our employment centers, or perhaps it's because of the stigma of being a third class citizen...apparently one too poor to own a motor vehicle.
I am something of an accidental environmentalist. I thought that riding would stabilize my type I diabetes (which it does). It took this dumb engineer quite a while to figure out that I could commute by bike, improve my health, save a little money, keep my car in service many years longer, pollute less -- killing a knob of birds with one stone. Today I ride Franklin Blvd. to SMUD in Sacramento -- Franklin giving rise to my blog's title -- and I will hopefully ride it for years to come...even if it is wholly threatening to bicyclists. I do not fly the "global warming" flag, I wave the flag for my local environment and I do more than enough to take care of it. If we lived correctly to begin with we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with white bears seven thousand miles away. But we don't...and I'm smart enough to know we won't.
A consequence of my desire to bike commute immediately revealed the complete and utter lack of bicycle venues for Elk Grovians. This whole damn city is predicated on everyone perpetually motoring about, from commuting to work, buying a jug of milk, or getting a spare key made. Automobiling is the central facet to any Elk Grovian's life, due to its low density single use zoning mandates, miles from everywhere layout and a complete lack of any local economy. Environmentalism for most Elk Grovians means separating their recyclables from their trash -- that's the full extent of what most will do. The only thing "green" about Elk Grove is the shade of some of its residents' automobiles.
If we had built this city, from the beginning, with bicycle options in mind, we would have a dedicated north-south trail or other such facility that separates motor vehicles from bikers and pedestrians and that trail, today, would be a jewel to a couple thousand more accidental environmentalists. If we had built this city, from the beginning, with light rail service in mind, we, today, would already have a line, perhaps two lines, servicing several thousand Elk Grovians. Instead, bicyclists get to run the gauntlet of speeders on Franklin, Freeport, Bruceville, Elk Grove-Florin. Instead, we have no light rail at all.
Knowing that a safe bicycle commute to jobs in the region is a total fantasy has led to my disdain for this city, yet it gives rise to my inspiration for blogging about all the bad things our social arrangements give us, such as perpetual motoring and the one fifth of our lives spent working to support it, teenagers and adults who can't socialize, crushing consumer debt to live lifestyles that we don't want to pay for, rampant consumerism and globalized waste, poor land use decisions, and a total lack of community. We bring this upon ourselves. I revel in our collective frustration and pain with the consequences of our own actions, and in providing commentary on it. Remember, never confuse me with someone who gives a shit.
I am presently at mile number three on my second ten thousand mile segment. I am hopeful the next ten thousand are as injury free and as rewarding to me as a commentator as the first.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
And Then There Were One
I hear today that Pulte is going to buy Centex, the result of which will create the single largest home builder on the planet.
Is this good news? It appears this industry, alongside countless others, is migrating towards unity. Pretty soon there will only be one discount retailer, one automobile manufacturer, and one home builder.
So someday in the near future a young woman in Ridgeview, PA (where there's no ridge and no longer any view) buys a tract home in the new Wyld Wynd subdivision from her choice of 7 models offered by the only developer in the nation. There is no option for an 8th model -- the company has decreed you don't need that level of choice. She motors to her new housal unit in one of the diminishing brands of vehicle that survived the boardroom vote at the sole automobile manufacturer in the nation. She purchases all her durable and some non-durable consumer cyclicals at the 3,765,000 sq. ft. drive-thru repository 6.3 miles away, the only one in the town operated by the sole retailer in the nation. She's a little miffed that she couldn't purchase a quarter pound of Roquefort cheese or that she could only choose one variety, but she needs cheese so into her minivan goes the 84-oz wheel of cheddar, mild. She was able to arrange her purchases ahead of time through her new wireless Boysenberry, the only wireless provider in the nation. Her choice of ring tones are from the same collection of songs her radio station airs; you know, the same twenty three songs cycled throughout the day. But that's OK she thinks, she really enjoys artist number seventeen.
While her vehicle is paraded through the repository on the slow moving conveyor belt, she's able to hit the DVD kiosk, pick up her prescription meds, go potty, feed her toddlers a Chicken Chunks meal deal, and get her new eyeglasses ground and fitted before she exits the cavern. Life is a dream, she thinks, as the repository fades away in her rear-view mirror...
Is this good news? It appears this industry, alongside countless others, is migrating towards unity. Pretty soon there will only be one discount retailer, one automobile manufacturer, and one home builder.
So someday in the near future a young woman in Ridgeview, PA (where there's no ridge and no longer any view) buys a tract home in the new Wyld Wynd subdivision from her choice of 7 models offered by the only developer in the nation. There is no option for an 8th model -- the company has decreed you don't need that level of choice. She motors to her new housal unit in one of the diminishing brands of vehicle that survived the boardroom vote at the sole automobile manufacturer in the nation. She purchases all her durable and some non-durable consumer cyclicals at the 3,765,000 sq. ft. drive-thru repository 6.3 miles away, the only one in the town operated by the sole retailer in the nation. She's a little miffed that she couldn't purchase a quarter pound of Roquefort cheese or that she could only choose one variety, but she needs cheese so into her minivan goes the 84-oz wheel of cheddar, mild. She was able to arrange her purchases ahead of time through her new wireless Boysenberry, the only wireless provider in the nation. Her choice of ring tones are from the same collection of songs her radio station airs; you know, the same twenty three songs cycled throughout the day. But that's OK she thinks, she really enjoys artist number seventeen.
While her vehicle is paraded through the repository on the slow moving conveyor belt, she's able to hit the DVD kiosk, pick up her prescription meds, go potty, feed her toddlers a Chicken Chunks meal deal, and get her new eyeglasses ground and fitted before she exits the cavern. Life is a dream, she thinks, as the repository fades away in her rear-view mirror...
The Owers
The unfinished Elk Grove Promenade outdoor mall is now permanently on hold. The project has been cancelled due to lack of interest. There it sadly waits, longingly looking out towards all those Highway 99 commuter-consumers, listlessly awaiting the economic rebound that's shedjooled to return at the end of 2009.
Concurrent with this "rebound," Elk Grove will also need General Growth Properties to get their heads out of their asses and somehow turn up solvent again. They are the owners of the Promenade...well, owner is probably a misnomer, considering they don't really own anything, they owe everything. They are the owers of the mall.
As owers, they've got north of three billion in debt that has to be extended or refinanced this year, lest they go belly up. Actually, I might expect a larger competitor like Westfield to snatch them from the jaws of insolvency, which will, of course, lead to only one ower in the country, towards only one mega-mall-mega-ower. We'll see.
The city of Elk Grove is sitting around, waiting...waiting...waiting for all those millions in tax revenues to suddenly appear, blowing the city out of their economic doldrum. It's too bad, isn't it, that our city is utterly and wholly fiscally dependent on what a half dozen majority shareholders outside Chicago at General Growth do and think. We pin our economic hopes and aspirations on a single 1,100,000 sq. ft. 102-store mall owned by outsiders. No, we don't bother to build jobs into our "community" aside from the $8 retail, service, maintenance, and security jobs the mall will graciously provide. We take in these fake jobs (jobs that do nothing to grow our city, jobs whose taxes don't come close to servicing their living arrangements in suburbia), and neglect jobs that provide meaningful careers to people...doctoring, engineering, custom furniture building, agriculture, mechanics and masons.
No, instead of good jobs we're going to get a big plastic hot dog kiosk in the shape of a hot dog manned by minimum wage workers uniformed in hot dog outfits on the edge of the mall's food court, next to the obligatory China Express, Steak Escape, Burger King, Wetzels Pretzels, Mrs. Fields cookies, and Cinnabon cinnamon roll stores manned by their own casts of underpaid underbenefitted clowns. I will guarantee every one of these listed franchises will be in that food court even though the mall has never announced their food court tenants. You're not gonna find Elk Grove residents Tina and Cam Nguyen opening their own restaurant in the mall's food court...that would be illegal. They are not a chain, and are not franchisees. Locals are barred from such opportunities at the "local" mall. Think what they could provide for the community -- tailored food for targeted residents, business taxes that stay in Elk Grove, local ownership responsive to local needs, and a reason for a couple to work hard and evolve their business instead of simply shuffling between "employment opportunites" with out of state franchises. These benefits are exactly why it is illegal, why it is barred, why it will never happen. General Growth can't provide for shareholder growth with local involvement.
General Growth says in their public relations materials that their malls are more than just places to shop -- they are places to experience. I can see why. Here in Elk Grove we are all uninspired by our own neighborhoods with shitty car dependent layouts and even shittier architecture, we won't allow our children play outside due to our 31,477 registered sex offenders although we live in 'safe' suburbia, while our elderly parents are effectively trapped without a car of their own. Every one of us are looking for something more from our vast collections of noplaces...so into our vehicles we'll climb, and motor to the Promenade to have someplace to experience.
Concurrent with this "rebound," Elk Grove will also need General Growth Properties to get their heads out of their asses and somehow turn up solvent again. They are the owners of the Promenade...well, owner is probably a misnomer, considering they don't really own anything, they owe everything. They are the owers of the mall.
As owers, they've got north of three billion in debt that has to be extended or refinanced this year, lest they go belly up. Actually, I might expect a larger competitor like Westfield to snatch them from the jaws of insolvency, which will, of course, lead to only one ower in the country, towards only one mega-mall-mega-ower. We'll see.
The city of Elk Grove is sitting around, waiting...waiting...waiting for all those millions in tax revenues to suddenly appear, blowing the city out of their economic doldrum. It's too bad, isn't it, that our city is utterly and wholly fiscally dependent on what a half dozen majority shareholders outside Chicago at General Growth do and think. We pin our economic hopes and aspirations on a single 1,100,000 sq. ft. 102-store mall owned by outsiders. No, we don't bother to build jobs into our "community" aside from the $8 retail, service, maintenance, and security jobs the mall will graciously provide. We take in these fake jobs (jobs that do nothing to grow our city, jobs whose taxes don't come close to servicing their living arrangements in suburbia), and neglect jobs that provide meaningful careers to people...doctoring, engineering, custom furniture building, agriculture, mechanics and masons.
No, instead of good jobs we're going to get a big plastic hot dog kiosk in the shape of a hot dog manned by minimum wage workers uniformed in hot dog outfits on the edge of the mall's food court, next to the obligatory China Express, Steak Escape, Burger King, Wetzels Pretzels, Mrs. Fields cookies, and Cinnabon cinnamon roll stores manned by their own casts of underpaid underbenefitted clowns. I will guarantee every one of these listed franchises will be in that food court even though the mall has never announced their food court tenants. You're not gonna find Elk Grove residents Tina and Cam Nguyen opening their own restaurant in the mall's food court...that would be illegal. They are not a chain, and are not franchisees. Locals are barred from such opportunities at the "local" mall. Think what they could provide for the community -- tailored food for targeted residents, business taxes that stay in Elk Grove, local ownership responsive to local needs, and a reason for a couple to work hard and evolve their business instead of simply shuffling between "employment opportunites" with out of state franchises. These benefits are exactly why it is illegal, why it is barred, why it will never happen. General Growth can't provide for shareholder growth with local involvement.
General Growth says in their public relations materials that their malls are more than just places to shop -- they are places to experience. I can see why. Here in Elk Grove we are all uninspired by our own neighborhoods with shitty car dependent layouts and even shittier architecture, we won't allow our children play outside due to our 31,477 registered sex offenders although we live in 'safe' suburbia, while our elderly parents are effectively trapped without a car of their own. Every one of us are looking for something more from our vast collections of noplaces...so into our vehicles we'll climb, and motor to the Promenade to have someplace to experience.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
This Is Community
You probably know that I'm not at all a fan of this $18,000 credit offered to new home buyers of a new never-lived in housal unit. $8k comes from the Fed, whilst $10k from the state of California. A taxpayer gift for new people who have yet to experience the thrill of going into thirty year debt.
Not a fan. Don't really know why...I wonder if it's because I didn't get any credit having bought twelve years ago instead of twelve days ago. Perhaps I'm just bitter 'cause I got to pay for it instead of receiving it. That might be all that's needed for me to rail against new construction amidst 30,000 other foreclosed homes here in the Sacramento area. Maybe it's misguided. The intention is to keep construction workers constructing and banks lending, the hyperactivity of which led to our current state of affairs.
In North Carolina a developer is going a step further and offering to pay for 6-months if, after you buy, you lose your job due to layoff. The only condition of this offer from Brookside is that you must purchase a home in their Ashton Place community.
Let me tell you what's wrong with this, let me tell you. First of all, the fact that you can have a "community" pre-installed with a new home is pure horseshit. A community isn't something you can have, like upgraded carpet. It's something that develops, that is more than the collection of housal units in some goddamn exurban tract home/strip mall development. Their website makes great claims that Ashton Place is 3/10s of a mile from a targeted commercial intersection and five minutes from Walmart. Five driving minutes, of course. This, this! is what a community passes for in America -- a five minute drive to a strip mall.
To really piss me off, they suggest that simply by being minutes away from historic Wilmington (supposedly a small southern community), nothing else is needed for this community to be called a community. Hop in your car inside your two-car garage, engage no one while driving out, engage no one on during your commute into Wilmington, engage no on while parking there, and enjoy the conveniences and entertainment venues of Wilmington while believing the whole time that you never left any community.
Most of us, apparently, aren't willing to tolerate any diminishment in our overinvested road infrastructure while we accept that our kids are crammed into school trailers (they're taught in trailer parks...), that our town halls and libraries and park facilities and all other civic buildings are pre-fab'ed hulking pieces of shit built with what's left of our public monies after the roads are built and maintained. Indeed, there is no longer any need for civic gathering places, we decreed, after realizing that community is nothing more than motoring between WalMart and our own housal unit. This is community.
It's three thousand miles away, yet I can be sure, almost 100% sure, that Wilmington thinks that luring suburbanites into the city core is a worthwhile goal, and to ensure commuters can get there more quickly they widened streets in low income neighborhoods, eliminated on-street parking to facilitate through traffic, and did every damn thing they could to fuck up their own town to support automotive transport into their town. This is community.
Not a fan. Don't really know why...I wonder if it's because I didn't get any credit having bought twelve years ago instead of twelve days ago. Perhaps I'm just bitter 'cause I got to pay for it instead of receiving it. That might be all that's needed for me to rail against new construction amidst 30,000 other foreclosed homes here in the Sacramento area. Maybe it's misguided. The intention is to keep construction workers constructing and banks lending, the hyperactivity of which led to our current state of affairs.
In North Carolina a developer is going a step further and offering to pay for 6-months if, after you buy, you lose your job due to layoff. The only condition of this offer from Brookside is that you must purchase a home in their Ashton Place community.
Let me tell you what's wrong with this, let me tell you. First of all, the fact that you can have a "community" pre-installed with a new home is pure horseshit. A community isn't something you can have, like upgraded carpet. It's something that develops, that is more than the collection of housal units in some goddamn exurban tract home/strip mall development. Their website makes great claims that Ashton Place is 3/10s of a mile from a targeted commercial intersection and five minutes from Walmart. Five driving minutes, of course. This, this! is what a community passes for in America -- a five minute drive to a strip mall.
To really piss me off, they suggest that simply by being minutes away from historic Wilmington (supposedly a small southern community), nothing else is needed for this community to be called a community. Hop in your car inside your two-car garage, engage no one while driving out, engage no one on during your commute into Wilmington, engage no on while parking there, and enjoy the conveniences and entertainment venues of Wilmington while believing the whole time that you never left any community.
Most of us, apparently, aren't willing to tolerate any diminishment in our overinvested road infrastructure while we accept that our kids are crammed into school trailers (they're taught in trailer parks...), that our town halls and libraries and park facilities and all other civic buildings are pre-fab'ed hulking pieces of shit built with what's left of our public monies after the roads are built and maintained. Indeed, there is no longer any need for civic gathering places, we decreed, after realizing that community is nothing more than motoring between WalMart and our own housal unit. This is community.
It's three thousand miles away, yet I can be sure, almost 100% sure, that Wilmington thinks that luring suburbanites into the city core is a worthwhile goal, and to ensure commuters can get there more quickly they widened streets in low income neighborhoods, eliminated on-street parking to facilitate through traffic, and did every damn thing they could to fuck up their own town to support automotive transport into their town. This is community.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Debt Is Our Lifeblood
Member hearing "Credit is our economy's lifeblood?" You remember, member? That the credit crisis is to blame for all our current woes?
Seems to me that debt is American lifeblood. Seems to me that the more debt we accumulate, the better off we are.
Think about it. Debt-based consumer spending kept us humming back in 2005. Think of all those cash out refi's...every one of them...take on a thirty year loan to buy that 1080i hi def, then when it all came crashing down, put the house keys in the mailbox and take that hi def with you to your new rental home.
What is called credit by the bank is called debt by the creditor, so if credit is our lifeblood, then debt is too. So if the government is trying to stimulate credit again, all they are encouraging is that Americans go further in debt. Apparently we are reluctant to do so...oh my. I read somewhere that Merika has a positive savings rate again. Savings ought to be outlawed, because of its deleterious economic effects. Confiscate the savers savings, throw her in jail, and use the proceeds to find a way to further indebt others.
But they've found a way! Wa-hey! How about forcing taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich white guy losses! A wholly American enterprise, eh? If not that, then at least force taxpayers to subsidize new homeowners so that worthless older homes around these new homes are worth something again. You've heard that familiar argument that if your neighbor forecloses your own home value drops.
Well, fuck my neighbor! If that prick can't or won't make his payment then someone else will, and our homes will find economic parity at some point. If it ain't at the 2006 highs, well, so be it -- those values were nothing but hallucinated to begin with.
Seems to me that debt is American lifeblood. Seems to me that the more debt we accumulate, the better off we are.
Think about it. Debt-based consumer spending kept us humming back in 2005. Think of all those cash out refi's...every one of them...take on a thirty year loan to buy that 1080i hi def, then when it all came crashing down, put the house keys in the mailbox and take that hi def with you to your new rental home.
What is called credit by the bank is called debt by the creditor, so if credit is our lifeblood, then debt is too. So if the government is trying to stimulate credit again, all they are encouraging is that Americans go further in debt. Apparently we are reluctant to do so...oh my. I read somewhere that Merika has a positive savings rate again. Savings ought to be outlawed, because of its deleterious economic effects. Confiscate the savers savings, throw her in jail, and use the proceeds to find a way to further indebt others.
But they've found a way! Wa-hey! How about forcing taxpayers to buy worthless assets at high prices to absorb rich white guy losses! A wholly American enterprise, eh? If not that, then at least force taxpayers to subsidize new homeowners so that worthless older homes around these new homes are worth something again. You've heard that familiar argument that if your neighbor forecloses your own home value drops.
Well, fuck my neighbor! If that prick can't or won't make his payment then someone else will, and our homes will find economic parity at some point. If it ain't at the 2006 highs, well, so be it -- those values were nothing but hallucinated to begin with.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
The Elsewho
In 2007, there were more financial engineers in the US (creating Credit Default Swaps, Collateralized Debt Obligations, and Over The Counter derivatives) than there were physical engineers, like me, who actually create all these things worth swapping, obligating, or deriving.
That is a stunning metric. All it shows is how useless such a large swath of American workers actually are. And we're getting worse.
Think...how many of those now-unemployed financial sector pricks are now involved in the actual production of useful things? How many are now carrying trades in agriculture, horticulture, blacksmithing, engineering, milling, or welding?
None.
And you know, when I worked for the California ISO, I was also engaged in the business of trading energy produced elsewhere for consumption by the elsewho. And deep down, while I knew I was fundamentally opposed to that concept, the whole time I didn't truly question the worth of such an enterprise, nor did I posses any vocabulary for defining exactly how/why I didn't value it. But I do now.
I remember traveling in 2004 to Deutsche Bank in lower Manhattan to train new energy traders how to engage the CAISO day ahead market. Their trading floor was similar to many others I've seen over my years at ISO -- rows of monitors manned by well dressed monkeys keying in entries, evaluating bids, offering contracts, etc., etc. I remember thinking, how can it be that a handful of hotshit traders three thousand miles away can legally bilk money from California electricity ratepayers by buying a schedule of energy from a power plant in Arizona, shipping it into a congested path into southern California, and receiving payments for never delivering the energy based on their decremental bids?
But I never questioned what I was engaged in. Indeed, that's the American way these days. In 2004 we were collectively a group of over indulged, over entitled, over compensated sheep who happily perpetually motored about in new vehicles, purchasing items with our 20% annual home equity increases...and man, how we long for those days back. This has led to our current laissez-faire approach to everything...we just mindlessly accept that the government, or our city councils, or retirement fund managers, or bank executives or road construction crews have our interests in mind and that everything is going to be OK. We don't question anything anymore. Wanna wage simultaneous wars? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna spend two thousand billion to bail out Wall Street? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna stimulate our economy through more tunnel boring and more highway building? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna destroy a region's agricultural base and install new residential tracts subsidized by tax credits? Ok...that's Ok.
That is a stunning metric. All it shows is how useless such a large swath of American workers actually are. And we're getting worse.
Think...how many of those now-unemployed financial sector pricks are now involved in the actual production of useful things? How many are now carrying trades in agriculture, horticulture, blacksmithing, engineering, milling, or welding?
None.
And you know, when I worked for the California ISO, I was also engaged in the business of trading energy produced elsewhere for consumption by the elsewho. And deep down, while I knew I was fundamentally opposed to that concept, the whole time I didn't truly question the worth of such an enterprise, nor did I posses any vocabulary for defining exactly how/why I didn't value it. But I do now.
I remember traveling in 2004 to Deutsche Bank in lower Manhattan to train new energy traders how to engage the CAISO day ahead market. Their trading floor was similar to many others I've seen over my years at ISO -- rows of monitors manned by well dressed monkeys keying in entries, evaluating bids, offering contracts, etc., etc. I remember thinking, how can it be that a handful of hotshit traders three thousand miles away can legally bilk money from California electricity ratepayers by buying a schedule of energy from a power plant in Arizona, shipping it into a congested path into southern California, and receiving payments for never delivering the energy based on their decremental bids?
But I never questioned what I was engaged in. Indeed, that's the American way these days. In 2004 we were collectively a group of over indulged, over entitled, over compensated sheep who happily perpetually motored about in new vehicles, purchasing items with our 20% annual home equity increases...and man, how we long for those days back. This has led to our current laissez-faire approach to everything...we just mindlessly accept that the government, or our city councils, or retirement fund managers, or bank executives or road construction crews have our interests in mind and that everything is going to be OK. We don't question anything anymore. Wanna wage simultaneous wars? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna spend two thousand billion to bail out Wall Street? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna stimulate our economy through more tunnel boring and more highway building? Ok...that's Ok. Wanna destroy a region's agricultural base and install new residential tracts subsidized by tax credits? Ok...that's Ok.
The 2012 Plan
There is all this new S360 new construction going on on my Franklin Blvd. $18,000 in free money for every new home buyer in any new home awaits them, and they are lining up.
On one hand, you've got a Federal government ready to spend billions they don't have to keep hundreds of thousands of people in their underwater mortgages. On the other hand, you've got a Federal government ready to spend more billions they don't have to marry new owners to new homes that might, just might, also become underwater mortgages.
What happens if, by 2010, these new homes all drop in price by...say...$18,000?
Well, that's not going to happen, says our government. It won't happen, because these policies are intended, are supposed, to keep an artificially high floor on home prices. The expectation is that these actions will contain the "awful, awful" consequences of a further 10%, 15%, or 20% reduction in home values.
My two co-workers, both having bough homes in April '08, got an $8,000 federal tax credit payable back over a 15 year term. That is, they got an interest free $8,000 loan for buying a house. Any co-worker who buys a house this April, April '09, would get $18,000 without having to pay it back, ever. I'm wondering...if this also fails to spur new home buying, let's imagine what the April's of the future would bring:
April 2010: In addition to the eighteen grand, buy a new house, and the federal government will include an extra added free complimentary bonus gift at no cost to the buyer: a classic deluxe custom designer luxury prestige high-quality premium select gourmet combination key ring, magnifying glass, and garden hose, in a genuine imitation leather style carrying case with authentic vinyl trim.
April 2011: Still having failed, the federal government will now directly tax home buyers who bought before 9/11/01 to finance a special fund to help high income borrowers with stellar credit (you know, those cash-hoarding bastards) buy used homes for investment.
April 2012: Still having failed, now if you buy a new house, the federal government will spring for a blow job for the husband and an electrical gadget for his spouse.
April 2013: Homebuyer programs are no longer necessary, following the phenomenal success of the 2012 plan.
On one hand, you've got a Federal government ready to spend billions they don't have to keep hundreds of thousands of people in their underwater mortgages. On the other hand, you've got a Federal government ready to spend more billions they don't have to marry new owners to new homes that might, just might, also become underwater mortgages.
What happens if, by 2010, these new homes all drop in price by...say...$18,000?
Well, that's not going to happen, says our government. It won't happen, because these policies are intended, are supposed, to keep an artificially high floor on home prices. The expectation is that these actions will contain the "awful, awful" consequences of a further 10%, 15%, or 20% reduction in home values.
My two co-workers, both having bough homes in April '08, got an $8,000 federal tax credit payable back over a 15 year term. That is, they got an interest free $8,000 loan for buying a house. Any co-worker who buys a house this April, April '09, would get $18,000 without having to pay it back, ever. I'm wondering...if this also fails to spur new home buying, let's imagine what the April's of the future would bring:
April 2010: In addition to the eighteen grand, buy a new house, and the federal government will include an extra added free complimentary bonus gift at no cost to the buyer: a classic deluxe custom designer luxury prestige high-quality premium select gourmet combination key ring, magnifying glass, and garden hose, in a genuine imitation leather style carrying case with authentic vinyl trim.
April 2011: Still having failed, the federal government will now directly tax home buyers who bought before 9/11/01 to finance a special fund to help high income borrowers with stellar credit (you know, those cash-hoarding bastards) buy used homes for investment.
April 2012: Still having failed, now if you buy a new house, the federal government will spring for a blow job for the husband and an electrical gadget for his spouse.
April 2013: Homebuyer programs are no longer necessary, following the phenomenal success of the 2012 plan.
SMUD Solar Shares
I provide an update to the SMUD solar shares program, which I bought into last summer. I bought a 2kW share for $53 a month.
I will be suggesting here that SMUDs solar shares are a boon for high energy users and an economic loss for energy-wise customers. The reasoning is basic: solar share returns are a function of your usage, not a function of how the utility values your PV output.
What you are paid for your solar share energy is not necessarily dependent on the value of fossil fuel energy you are displacing. It is not, entirely, a function of the cost SMUD would pay to other energy providers if you didn't generate. It is variable based on your own consumption. If you use more electricity, you get paid more for your generation. In my opinion, this concept is flawed.
To be fair, SMUD has attempted to mitigate this inequity by charging low energy users less for their PV shares, but I maintain that this isn't a sufficient enough incentive for low energy user participation...and this ought to be the target demographic. It makes as much sense for SMUD to incentivize large energy users to buy into PV as the government allowing tax rebates on Hybrid Escalades. Good intentions, bad policy.
Here's a section of the solar shares agreement, which provides the cost/kW breakdown for each class of user:
RESIDENTIAL TIERED RATE
Small Energy Use Customer (less than 6,000 kWh/year)
0.5 kW System $10.75/month
1.0 kW System $21.50/month
Medium Energy Use Customer (6,000-14,000 kWh/year)
1.0 kW System $26.50/month
1.5 kW System $39.75/month
2.0 kW System $53.00/month
Large Energy Use Customer (more than 14,000 kWh/year)
2.0 kW System $66.00/month
3.0 kW System $99.00/month
4.0 kW System $132.00/month
My family and I use ~10,000 kWh/year, I bought the 2.0 kW system, and I fall into the medium energy class. Now, my annual kWh usage is heavily skewed towards summer cooling loads, as would likely be for most medium and large energy users in Sacramento. A small energy user either has a house on a shady tree-lined street (read: pre-WWII development), a mid-town condo or apartment, or can simply tolerate triple digits better than most. The following is strongly suggesting that if you are classified as a small energy user, SMUD solar shares is not for you.
I haven't yet upgraded my AC system, but I've completed other energy efficiency projects to reduce non-cooling and non-heating months to tier I rates. Because I'm skewed towards summer loads, my winter and shoulder month usages are on the low end. As a consequence, during those months I only get paid Tier I rates for my excess PV generation from my own solar panels and Tier I rates for all my solar share energy. Indeed, as I might someday opt for that SEER 17 AC unit (with an expected 1,975 kWh/year energy reduction), my usage in the summer will drop and so will my solar share credit rate.
My solar share credit rates ($/kWh) are shown below. They are calculated based on my usage...if I only use tier I energy, I will be credited at a tier I rate for my solar shares. If I reach into tier II, I will be credited at a calculated rate between I and II. The rates will differ for every solar share owner, based on their usage. I also show the kWh monthly production breakdown per my bill -- the annual kWh/kW is the same for everyone, 1,738kWh...my share is 2kW, so 3,476 kWh total, broken down per month:
Aug 08: 0.1562 384 kWh = $59.98
Sep 08: 0.1608 342 kWh = $54.99
Oct 08: 0.0929 296 kWh = $27.50
Nov 08: 0.0934 188 kWh = $17.56
Dec 08: 0.1478 142 kWh = $20.98
Jan 09: 0.1075 156 kWh = $16.77
Feb 09: 0.0861 204 kWh = $17.56
Mar 09: 0.0861 284 kWh =$24.45
Apr 09: 0.0861 333 kWh = $28.67
May 09: 0.1038 376 kWh = $39.02
Jun 09: 0.0965 373 kWh = $36.00
Jul 09: 0.1664 396 kWh = $65.91
Aug 09: 0.0929 383 kWh = $35.58
Sep 09: 0.1711 342 kWh = $58.51
Oct 09: 0.0957 297 kWh = $28.42
Nov 09: 0.0906 189 kWh = $17.12
Dec 09: 0.1294 141 kWh = $18.25
I multiply the credit by the kWh, and subtract $53 to determine my net cost. Some months I'm ahead, most months I'm behind. I am a Tier II/III energy user, mostly, but not in the shoulder months. The solar share cost far exceeds the return for these months...but, this is as it should be. Solar is annual, and time of use/time of production matters. The question becomes "will the cumulative return exceed my cumulative cost?"
I demonstrate through the following graph that the long term answer is "yes." Substituting in last year's credit rates, and forecasting them twenty years hence (assuming an average 3.5% SMUD rate increase), you'll see that in 2017 the system starts paying for itself, but at this point has incurred a -$785 deficit, which will be paid back to $0 by the year 2024.
So. The very worst thing I could do would be to pay into SMUDs solar shares from now until 2017 and then move out of SMUD territory or otherwise end participation at that point. If this is at all possible (and in our mobile society, it likely is), then it ought to be a strong consideration before participation. Remember, solar shares are just as much a long term proposition as it is for anyone considering installing their own PV system.
The second worse thing I could do is employ energy efficiency practices in my home, reducing my total demand by ~40% to just 6,001 kWh per year. This would effectively reduce my credit rates down to [primarily] tier I levels. I would get paid less for my shares, but wouldn't have any recourse to change, or to lower, my $53/month payment.
The third worse thing I could do is employ energy efficiency practices in my home reducing my yearly energy draw to 5,999 kWh per year. While I would then be able to reduce my payment to $21.50 per kW, I could then only buy at most 1kW. All monies previously spent for that second kW would [presumably] disappear. The SMUD solar share agreement doesn't comment on the cost implications for changing between user use states, only that SMUD has the right to modify your participation based on your annual usage.
SMUD recognizes these exact implications to their Solar Share customers in the following graph that SMUD presented at the Solar American Cities meeting in San Antonio this month:
Very clearly my analysis matches theirs, in that participants who consume the maximum amount of electricity in their use class see the biggest benefit. Ask yourself -- does it make any sense that the more you consume, the more you get paid for your solar energy? What's the point of subscribing to solar shares to "save the world," to "reduce dependency on foreign energy," to "be green," and all that other horseshit if you're incentivized to consume more natural gas fired SMUD generation? But I digress...
This first graph is only useful for me -- these are the rates only I am paid for my energy. All other solar share participants would have a different rate payment based on their usage. So I did the following...I assumed a target participant who never uses more than tier I energy during any month and who's usage is just shy of 6,000 kWh/year. She buys a 1kW share for $21.50 per month. Knowing her solar share production (1/2 of my 2kW system), and knowing she will be paid Tier I prices for her energy:
This is a losing proposition. There will never be parity for a low energy user -- it bottoms out at almost -$917 and never recovers to $0: solar shares is a financial failure for tier I energy users; they shouldn't participate. And if they decide to participate anyway to 'save the planet,' then they can do so with the knowledge that they are subsidizing large electriccustomers consumers, helping them pay less for consuming more.
I don't have to show it, but I could easily demonstrate that Tier III energy hogs in a Folsom starter mansion using 23,000kWh/year would reach payback in under 15 years and would never have more than a -$500 outlay (per kW) at any point. This family would be ideal candidates for SMUD solar shares. I can see the advertisement now --- Martha and William laying on their 7/8 acre lawn outside their 3,950 sq ft home with little Bill, Jackie and Martina, all enjoying the sunshine, enjoying the fact that 16% of their electricity comes from the Sun. Ten Thumbs Up for Solar Shares!
PV is expensive energy. It only makes financial sense if it displaces other expensive energy. There aren't sufficient incentives, anywhere in the US, that promote energy efficiency along with renewable energy. These two must go hand in hand but we refuse to acknowlege the link. Solar shares based on consumption is just one piece of that failed equation, as are excess PV generation payments that are also paid out on a user-consumption-basis. As I work to further reduce my demand, through a higher SEER unit, through better insulation, whatever...and assuming I'm still using over 6,000kWh/year -- I unwittingly erode the value of my excess PV generation and my solar share generation. Such a fantastic incentive, isn't it?
Also consider that SMUD charges .2 mills for every non-PV kWh consumed. By doing so, SMUD realizes the need for direct subsidies for PV. How is this any different from simply paying a common rate for PV energy from PV generators? Instead, everyone is paid differently depending on their usage; and the more you use, the more you're paid. This is a minor point, I know, but I am passionate about it because it's absurd. It isn't lost on a low energy using solar share owner who will never recoup her investment (and in my opinion, should not be a SMUD solar share subscriber) -- because if subsidies are to exist, they should exist for exactly her -- not high energy users. Establish a feed-in tariff -- oblige SMUD to purchase PV energy at a tariff determined by public authorities, and keep it in place for a specific time period.
Nonetheless -- I am still a solar share participant and will remain so. It isn't only about finding economic parity...for me it's also about engaging alternative solutions to sourcing my electricity. The above work is just telling me that we (collectively) aren't going about it correctly. Then again, we do live in America -- we don't go about building places correctly or building transportation systems correctly either. That's why I'm here; that's why I blog.
Edit 30 Dec 09: SMUD has established a feed-in tariff; not for small residential roof top installations such as mine, but for larger commercial installations. This should go a long way towards more installations as now investors can better project future revenues with which to evaluate the economic breakpoints.
Secondly, SMUD recently raised rates (the first of three rate increases over an 18-month period) but importantly reduced the residential tiered rate structure from three tiers to two. This will impact my analysis on the viability of solar shares along with my own installation. I actually expect that I will benefit more from the new rate schedule as, based on my usage, I would never expect to get paid tier I energy for my solar share/excess PV generation like I did in the past. More to come...
I will be suggesting here that SMUDs solar shares are a boon for high energy users and an economic loss for energy-wise customers. The reasoning is basic: solar share returns are a function of your usage, not a function of how the utility values your PV output.
What you are paid for your solar share energy is not necessarily dependent on the value of fossil fuel energy you are displacing. It is not, entirely, a function of the cost SMUD would pay to other energy providers if you didn't generate. It is variable based on your own consumption. If you use more electricity, you get paid more for your generation. In my opinion, this concept is flawed.
To be fair, SMUD has attempted to mitigate this inequity by charging low energy users less for their PV shares, but I maintain that this isn't a sufficient enough incentive for low energy user participation...and this ought to be the target demographic. It makes as much sense for SMUD to incentivize large energy users to buy into PV as the government allowing tax rebates on Hybrid Escalades. Good intentions, bad policy.
Here's a section of the solar shares agreement, which provides the cost/kW breakdown for each class of user:
RESIDENTIAL TIERED RATE
Small Energy Use Customer (less than 6,000 kWh/year)
0.5 kW System $10.75/month
1.0 kW System $21.50/month
Medium Energy Use Customer (6,000-14,000 kWh/year)
1.0 kW System $26.50/month
1.5 kW System $39.75/month
2.0 kW System $53.00/month
Large Energy Use Customer (more than 14,000 kWh/year)
2.0 kW System $66.00/month
3.0 kW System $99.00/month
4.0 kW System $132.00/month
My family and I use ~10,000 kWh/year, I bought the 2.0 kW system, and I fall into the medium energy class. Now, my annual kWh usage is heavily skewed towards summer cooling loads, as would likely be for most medium and large energy users in Sacramento. A small energy user either has a house on a shady tree-lined street (read: pre-WWII development), a mid-town condo or apartment, or can simply tolerate triple digits better than most. The following is strongly suggesting that if you are classified as a small energy user, SMUD solar shares is not for you.
I haven't yet upgraded my AC system, but I've completed other energy efficiency projects to reduce non-cooling and non-heating months to tier I rates. Because I'm skewed towards summer loads, my winter and shoulder month usages are on the low end. As a consequence, during those months I only get paid Tier I rates for my excess PV generation from my own solar panels and Tier I rates for all my solar share energy. Indeed, as I might someday opt for that SEER 17 AC unit (with an expected 1,975 kWh/year energy reduction), my usage in the summer will drop and so will my solar share credit rate.
My solar share credit rates ($/kWh) are shown below. They are calculated based on my usage...if I only use tier I energy, I will be credited at a tier I rate for my solar shares. If I reach into tier II, I will be credited at a calculated rate between I and II. The rates will differ for every solar share owner, based on their usage. I also show the kWh monthly production breakdown per my bill -- the annual kWh/kW is the same for everyone, 1,738kWh...my share is 2kW, so 3,476 kWh total, broken down per month:
Aug 08: 0.1562 384 kWh = $59.98
Sep 08: 0.1608 342 kWh = $54.99
Oct 08: 0.0929 296 kWh = $27.50
Nov 08: 0.0934 188 kWh = $17.56
Dec 08: 0.1478 142 kWh = $20.98
Jan 09: 0.1075 156 kWh = $16.77
Feb 09: 0.0861 204 kWh = $17.56
Mar 09: 0.0861 284 kWh =$24.45
Apr 09: 0.0861 333 kWh = $28.67
May 09: 0.1038 376 kWh = $39.02
Jun 09: 0.0965 373 kWh = $36.00
Jul 09: 0.1664 396 kWh = $65.91
Aug 09: 0.0929 383 kWh = $35.58
Sep 09: 0.1711 342 kWh = $58.51
Oct 09: 0.0957 297 kWh = $28.42
Nov 09: 0.0906 189 kWh = $17.12
Dec 09: 0.1294 141 kWh = $18.25
I multiply the credit by the kWh, and subtract $53 to determine my net cost. Some months I'm ahead, most months I'm behind. I am a Tier II/III energy user, mostly, but not in the shoulder months. The solar share cost far exceeds the return for these months...but, this is as it should be. Solar is annual, and time of use/time of production matters. The question becomes "will the cumulative return exceed my cumulative cost?"
I demonstrate through the following graph that the long term answer is "yes." Substituting in last year's credit rates, and forecasting them twenty years hence (assuming an average 3.5% SMUD rate increase), you'll see that in 2017 the system starts paying for itself, but at this point has incurred a -$785 deficit, which will be paid back to $0 by the year 2024.
So. The very worst thing I could do would be to pay into SMUDs solar shares from now until 2017 and then move out of SMUD territory or otherwise end participation at that point. If this is at all possible (and in our mobile society, it likely is), then it ought to be a strong consideration before participation. Remember, solar shares are just as much a long term proposition as it is for anyone considering installing their own PV system.
The second worse thing I could do is employ energy efficiency practices in my home, reducing my total demand by ~40% to just 6,001 kWh per year. This would effectively reduce my credit rates down to [primarily] tier I levels. I would get paid less for my shares, but wouldn't have any recourse to change, or to lower, my $53/month payment.
The third worse thing I could do is employ energy efficiency practices in my home reducing my yearly energy draw to 5,999 kWh per year. While I would then be able to reduce my payment to $21.50 per kW, I could then only buy at most 1kW. All monies previously spent for that second kW would [presumably] disappear. The SMUD solar share agreement doesn't comment on the cost implications for changing between user use states, only that SMUD has the right to modify your participation based on your annual usage.
SMUD recognizes these exact implications to their Solar Share customers in the following graph that SMUD presented at the Solar American Cities meeting in San Antonio this month:
Very clearly my analysis matches theirs, in that participants who consume the maximum amount of electricity in their use class see the biggest benefit. Ask yourself -- does it make any sense that the more you consume, the more you get paid for your solar energy? What's the point of subscribing to solar shares to "save the world," to "reduce dependency on foreign energy," to "be green," and all that other horseshit if you're incentivized to consume more natural gas fired SMUD generation? But I digress...
This first graph is only useful for me -- these are the rates only I am paid for my energy. All other solar share participants would have a different rate payment based on their usage. So I did the following...I assumed a target participant who never uses more than tier I energy during any month and who's usage is just shy of 6,000 kWh/year. She buys a 1kW share for $21.50 per month. Knowing her solar share production (1/2 of my 2kW system), and knowing she will be paid Tier I prices for her energy:
This is a losing proposition. There will never be parity for a low energy user -- it bottoms out at almost -$917 and never recovers to $0: solar shares is a financial failure for tier I energy users; they shouldn't participate. And if they decide to participate anyway to 'save the planet,' then they can do so with the knowledge that they are subsidizing large electric
I don't have to show it, but I could easily demonstrate that Tier III energy hogs in a Folsom starter mansion using 23,000kWh/year would reach payback in under 15 years and would never have more than a -$500 outlay (per kW) at any point. This family would be ideal candidates for SMUD solar shares. I can see the advertisement now --- Martha and William laying on their 7/8 acre lawn outside their 3,950 sq ft home with little Bill, Jackie and Martina, all enjoying the sunshine, enjoying the fact that 16% of their electricity comes from the Sun. Ten Thumbs Up for Solar Shares!
PV is expensive energy. It only makes financial sense if it displaces other expensive energy. There aren't sufficient incentives, anywhere in the US, that promote energy efficiency along with renewable energy. These two must go hand in hand but we refuse to acknowlege the link. Solar shares based on consumption is just one piece of that failed equation, as are excess PV generation payments that are also paid out on a user-consumption-basis. As I work to further reduce my demand, through a higher SEER unit, through better insulation, whatever...and assuming I'm still using over 6,000kWh/year -- I unwittingly erode the value of my excess PV generation and my solar share generation. Such a fantastic incentive, isn't it?
Also consider that SMUD charges .2 mills for every non-PV kWh consumed. By doing so, SMUD realizes the need for direct subsidies for PV. How is this any different from simply paying a common rate for PV energy from PV generators? Instead, everyone is paid differently depending on their usage; and the more you use, the more you're paid. This is a minor point, I know, but I am passionate about it because it's absurd. It isn't lost on a low energy using solar share owner who will never recoup her investment (and in my opinion, should not be a SMUD solar share subscriber) -- because if subsidies are to exist, they should exist for exactly her -- not high energy users. Establish a feed-in tariff -- oblige SMUD to purchase PV energy at a tariff determined by public authorities, and keep it in place for a specific time period.
Nonetheless -- I am still a solar share participant and will remain so. It isn't only about finding economic parity...for me it's also about engaging alternative solutions to sourcing my electricity. The above work is just telling me that we (collectively) aren't going about it correctly. Then again, we do live in America -- we don't go about building places correctly or building transportation systems correctly either. That's why I'm here; that's why I blog.
Edit 30 Dec 09: SMUD has established a feed-in tariff; not for small residential roof top installations such as mine, but for larger commercial installations. This should go a long way towards more installations as now investors can better project future revenues with which to evaluate the economic breakpoints.
Secondly, SMUD recently raised rates (the first of three rate increases over an 18-month period) but importantly reduced the residential tiered rate structure from three tiers to two. This will impact my analysis on the viability of solar shares along with my own installation. I actually expect that I will benefit more from the new rate schedule as, based on my usage, I would never expect to get paid tier I energy for my solar share/excess PV generation like I did in the past. More to come...
Random Hits
I am fascinated by the random hits I get on this blog.
The day after posting my small outburst at Cargill and ADM, I noticed two hits from each entity the following day. They probably have automatic search combs weaving through the web, hunting...searching...looking for statistically significant bad publicity. I find this an intriguing concept. When you've got vast resources at your disposal, hire a group of guys (they're probably men) to comb over the million or so "Cargill" meta-tag hits daily and report to management regarding sites whose content doesn't tow the line and that have significant web traffic. Management can then tailor their public relations responses as appropriate. Fascinating!
Then, I've got a growing number of hits from people entering "Recession's over" into their search engines. They are taken to my sarcastic blog suggesting that March 12th was the day the Great Recession ended. But what this shows me is that there's this great sense of calmness rolling across this land, people are waking out of our recessionary hibernation and peeking outside, wondering if the sun is warm or if more cold winter weather awaits. Isn't that what you're thinking as well? I mean, come on, the recession is over...right? We are 20% off our market lows, haven't heard of any other chain store failures, stimulus is stimulating, new homes are being built and offered on subsidized tax incentives, banks are, ahem, lending again...the recession is over, right? Isn't it? It's gotta be...right?
Lastly, I get some interest on my SMUD solar shares post. Indeed, that's the only reason this blog ever got started, to try to provide others information on PV projects.
Blog on.
The day after posting my small outburst at Cargill and ADM, I noticed two hits from each entity the following day. They probably have automatic search combs weaving through the web, hunting...searching...looking for statistically significant bad publicity. I find this an intriguing concept. When you've got vast resources at your disposal, hire a group of guys (they're probably men) to comb over the million or so "Cargill" meta-tag hits daily and report to management regarding sites whose content doesn't tow the line and that have significant web traffic. Management can then tailor their public relations responses as appropriate. Fascinating!
Then, I've got a growing number of hits from people entering "Recession's over" into their search engines. They are taken to my sarcastic blog suggesting that March 12th was the day the Great Recession ended. But what this shows me is that there's this great sense of calmness rolling across this land, people are waking out of our recessionary hibernation and peeking outside, wondering if the sun is warm or if more cold winter weather awaits. Isn't that what you're thinking as well? I mean, come on, the recession is over...right? We are 20% off our market lows, haven't heard of any other chain store failures, stimulus is stimulating, new homes are being built and offered on subsidized tax incentives, banks are, ahem, lending again...the recession is over, right? Isn't it? It's gotta be...right?
Lastly, I get some interest on my SMUD solar shares post. Indeed, that's the only reason this blog ever got started, to try to provide others information on PV projects.
Blog on.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Peak Of Bling
Another beautiful building gracing my bicycle ride on Franklin Blvd. This shop's on the corner of 47th:
This whole corner exudes to the pedestrian or bicyclist, "Back Off." On each of the four corners at this intersection there's this tire shop, a gas station, an auto parts store, and the Campbell Soup plant. Autopia and processed foods...can't get more American than that. Even still, there are usually a surprising number of pedestrians here, but only because the gas station corner all the way to Martin Luther King Jr. has become the premier marketplace for scores of Mexican day laborers looking for jobs. At the height of the housing boom there used to be, easily, two hundred men lined up waiting for employment. Nowadays there are twenty. But I digress.
There's not much I really have to say about this building; shops are shops and we all need them so it's not the building that bugs the shit out of me. Nor is it the Hummer getting new tires (although I find it interesting that on the day I brought the camera there would be two SUVs to hammer home all my former talking points). Nor is it the lady in the Tahoe who easily spent $3500 for her rims and tires (probably back in '06 at the peak of bling) and who's likely a few months behind on her SMUD bill or personalized CitiBank card...you know, the card you can customize to showcase to merchants what you stand for. The customized card that's as unique as you are, with pictures of balloons, butterflies, shih tzus, chartreux cats or other such bullshit. But I digress.
No. What bugs me is that Good Year banner -- "Welcome Race Fans."
Why would that be there? On that corner? It's seventy three and a half miles from the nearest NASCAR track in Sonoma. What does being a race fan have to do with low profile tires and pimped out rims?
I'll tell you what it means. It has everything to do with how these assholes drive on Franklin Blvd., thinking this four lane road is Martinsville Speedway. Yeah. That's it. Black guys in Escalades pull out of USA Wheel & Tire and suddenly think they're the fourth African American NASCAR driver. I mean, what better way can there possibly be to tell the world (actually, to tell South Sacramento) that you got rims than a high speed acceleration through the Florin intersection? It's also not lost on white guys speeding out in their jacked-up F350's with mudders, like there are bogs out there on Franklin Blvd. Shut it down, Bruno.
Think that lady is a "race fan?" She must be if she's buying Good Year tires, no?
This whole corner exudes to the pedestrian or bicyclist, "Back Off." On each of the four corners at this intersection there's this tire shop, a gas station, an auto parts store, and the Campbell Soup plant. Autopia and processed foods...can't get more American than that. Even still, there are usually a surprising number of pedestrians here, but only because the gas station corner all the way to Martin Luther King Jr. has become the premier marketplace for scores of Mexican day laborers looking for jobs. At the height of the housing boom there used to be, easily, two hundred men lined up waiting for employment. Nowadays there are twenty. But I digress.
There's not much I really have to say about this building; shops are shops and we all need them so it's not the building that bugs the shit out of me. Nor is it the Hummer getting new tires (although I find it interesting that on the day I brought the camera there would be two SUVs to hammer home all my former talking points). Nor is it the lady in the Tahoe who easily spent $3500 for her rims and tires (probably back in '06 at the peak of bling) and who's likely a few months behind on her SMUD bill or personalized CitiBank card...you know, the card you can customize to showcase to merchants what you stand for. The customized card that's as unique as you are, with pictures of balloons, butterflies, shih tzus, chartreux cats or other such bullshit. But I digress.
No. What bugs me is that Good Year banner -- "Welcome Race Fans."
Why would that be there? On that corner? It's seventy three and a half miles from the nearest NASCAR track in Sonoma. What does being a race fan have to do with low profile tires and pimped out rims?
I'll tell you what it means. It has everything to do with how these assholes drive on Franklin Blvd., thinking this four lane road is Martinsville Speedway. Yeah. That's it. Black guys in Escalades pull out of USA Wheel & Tire and suddenly think they're the fourth African American NASCAR driver. I mean, what better way can there possibly be to tell the world (actually, to tell South Sacramento) that you got rims than a high speed acceleration through the Florin intersection? It's also not lost on white guys speeding out in their jacked-up F350's with mudders, like there are bogs out there on Franklin Blvd. Shut it down, Bruno.
Think that lady is a "race fan?" She must be if she's buying Good Year tires, no?
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Everything In My Power
I have to find the wherewithal, the courage, the passion -- somehow, to avoid ending up like this guy:
This photo represents almost everything wrong with my America. Overweight, out of shape, pasty skinned, overfed white guy driving an over sized vehicle because his girth and his ego demand a large rig. That it gets only 15 mpg in the city, well, that's the price to be paid for luxury and comfort, the air and environment be damned. Besides, with his shallow, labored breathing, why should he give a shit about bad air? Not like he's out exercising or anything. The last time he took a full breath? 1994.
Think this guy works in manufacturing? Think he actually produces anything of value by himself? With his hands? His clothes imply that his career revolves around the sales and/or marketing of products produced elsewhere by elsewho...increasingly the American way.
He's contemplating the free quart of soda he'll get with a fill-up. But he first has to wait for his Treo/iPhone to report back his account balance before he slides his credit card through...you know, when you have to keep up with the rest of the crowd, debt-based consumer spending has pretty much maxed out all seven of his credit cards...and his wife's exorbitant spending doesn't help things, either. But he's gotta make the payments on that Envoy and the service contract for his electronic tether regardless. He must stay "connected" at all times.
The magnetic yellow ribbon sure adds a nice touch to the back of his rig, doesn't it? Buying and putting on that ribbon was the full extent of his "sacrifice" to support our troops. Yep. Perhaps he did a little more shopping after 9/11/01 to also help out. Of course, he and the other three hundred million 15mpg/55 mile per day drivers didn't have a thing to do with why we decided to establish a police station in the Middle East. He better remember to rotate that ribbon from side to side each week, lest he ruin his resale value due to uneven paint fade.
Everything in my power to not turn into this guy.
This photo represents almost everything wrong with my America. Overweight, out of shape, pasty skinned, overfed white guy driving an over sized vehicle because his girth and his ego demand a large rig. That it gets only 15 mpg in the city, well, that's the price to be paid for luxury and comfort, the air and environment be damned. Besides, with his shallow, labored breathing, why should he give a shit about bad air? Not like he's out exercising or anything. The last time he took a full breath? 1994.
Think this guy works in manufacturing? Think he actually produces anything of value by himself? With his hands? His clothes imply that his career revolves around the sales and/or marketing of products produced elsewhere by elsewho...increasingly the American way.
He's contemplating the free quart of soda he'll get with a fill-up. But he first has to wait for his Treo/iPhone to report back his account balance before he slides his credit card through...you know, when you have to keep up with the rest of the crowd, debt-based consumer spending has pretty much maxed out all seven of his credit cards...and his wife's exorbitant spending doesn't help things, either. But he's gotta make the payments on that Envoy and the service contract for his electronic tether regardless. He must stay "connected" at all times.
The magnetic yellow ribbon sure adds a nice touch to the back of his rig, doesn't it? Buying and putting on that ribbon was the full extent of his "sacrifice" to support our troops. Yep. Perhaps he did a little more shopping after 9/11/01 to also help out. Of course, he and the other three hundred million 15mpg/55 mile per day drivers didn't have a thing to do with why we decided to establish a police station in the Middle East. He better remember to rotate that ribbon from side to side each week, lest he ruin his resale value due to uneven paint fade.
Everything in my power to not turn into this guy.
A Stimulating Rate Hike
Now may be the best time to buy that new GM vehicle, what with the Total Confidence program available and of course Hyundai's Assurance Plan. Ford has apparently also followed suit.
The only American enterprise we can even consider, even consider, for stimulating our way out of perpetual debt based consumption is more consumption...and new car consumption specifically. Build more roads, create more jobs building roads, give the road workers tax breaks (subsidized by all of you) for buying new cars so they can drive on those roads on their days off.
On a tangent, let me first say that I find South Korean products substantially better than all other Asian made products. I don't have such an unfavorable regard for Hyundai cars, apparel or the few Korean made things I do own as I do with Chinese made shit.
That said, Hyundai heavy industries has bid, won, and manufactured six of SMUDs last seven bulk transformers. The seventh and only US-made transformer from Delta Star out of Chicago was about 8 months behind schedule and suffered from such poor tank fabrication that we repeatedly rejected it until they corrected its deficiencies. Perhaps that was just a one-off problem, but my point is, we can barely domestically compete with Asians on heavy machine fabrication, even after figuring the cost to ship a forty five ton piece of equipment 6,000 miles and a US engineer back and forth to witness the testing. Someday soon, we'll all be traveling to Asia to sign off on factory acceptance tests because that'll be the only place where any transformers (or anything else) will be built.
That further said, consider that SMUD didn't get any "tax incentive" for buying any Hyundai transformer. Didn't get any "Assurance Plan" that if SMUD went belly up Hyundai would pay for 9 months of transformer payments until SMUD got "back on their feet."
Nope.
So, to offset the fact that we can't buy with "Total Confidence," SMUD went to the board yesterday calling for a 9.5% rate increase by September 1, and and additional 3.5% rate increase by December 31.
You get to pay higher rates so that I, the frugal over-paid electrical engineer, will be able to save more (instead of spend more), causing a further drain on our economy. How's that for "stimulating our economy," huh?
The only American enterprise we can even consider, even consider, for stimulating our way out of perpetual debt based consumption is more consumption...and new car consumption specifically. Build more roads, create more jobs building roads, give the road workers tax breaks (subsidized by all of you) for buying new cars so they can drive on those roads on their days off.
On a tangent, let me first say that I find South Korean products substantially better than all other Asian made products. I don't have such an unfavorable regard for Hyundai cars, apparel or the few Korean made things I do own as I do with Chinese made shit.
That said, Hyundai heavy industries has bid, won, and manufactured six of SMUDs last seven bulk transformers. The seventh and only US-made transformer from Delta Star out of Chicago was about 8 months behind schedule and suffered from such poor tank fabrication that we repeatedly rejected it until they corrected its deficiencies. Perhaps that was just a one-off problem, but my point is, we can barely domestically compete with Asians on heavy machine fabrication, even after figuring the cost to ship a forty five ton piece of equipment 6,000 miles and a US engineer back and forth to witness the testing. Someday soon, we'll all be traveling to Asia to sign off on factory acceptance tests because that'll be the only place where any transformers (or anything else) will be built.
That further said, consider that SMUD didn't get any "tax incentive" for buying any Hyundai transformer. Didn't get any "Assurance Plan" that if SMUD went belly up Hyundai would pay for 9 months of transformer payments until SMUD got "back on their feet."
Nope.
So, to offset the fact that we can't buy with "Total Confidence," SMUD went to the board yesterday calling for a 9.5% rate increase by September 1, and and additional 3.5% rate increase by December 31.
You get to pay higher rates so that I, the frugal over-paid electrical engineer, will be able to save more (instead of spend more), causing a further drain on our economy. How's that for "stimulating our economy," huh?
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