" America is over."

[donsu]

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-29/cols_ventura.html

$4 a gallon

America is over. America is like Wile E. Coyote after he's run out a few paces past the edge of the cliff – he'll take a few more steps in midair before he looks down. Then, when he sees that there's nothing under him, he'll fall. Many Americans suspect that they're running on thin air, but they haven't looked down yet. When they do ...

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote recently: "Circumstances seem to me as dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about it" (quoted in The Economist, April 16, p.12). Volcker chooses words carefully: "dangerous and intractable," "willingness or capacity." He's saying: The situation is probably beyond our powers to remedy.

Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising – $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.

-snip-

One key to America's future will be: How quickly can we build or rebuild heavy and light rail? And where will we get the money to do it? Railroads are the cheapest transport, the easiest to sustain, and the only solution to a post-automobile America. (For reasons I haven't space to detail, hybrid cars and alternative energy won't cut it, if by "cut it" one means retaining anything like the present standard of living. See James Howard Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" on Rolling Stone's Web site. Also check Mike Ruppert's site www.fromthewilderness.com and the documentary The End of Suburbia.) A massive investment in railroad infrastructure could offer jobs to the unskilled and skilled alike, absorb much of the inevitable population displacement, and create a new social equilibrium 10 or 15 years down the line. Old RR cities like Grand Junction, Colo.; Amarillo, Texas; and Albuquerque, N.M., could become vital centers, offering new lives for the displaced. Railroads are key, but the question is: how to finance them?

-snip- (forget railroads. a recent report said they would soon be bankrupt without more gov. money)
--------------------------------------

[lonestarnot]

1. Doomed I say, Doomed!

[Deja Q]

6. Doooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooomed!

We won't be. Unless * declares China a threat and nukes them. (I'm more likely to get a date. And I've whined on DU several times about not getting any. Dates.)

[lonestarnot]

9. Love your pic... with that you should have all kinds of dates!

[dogday]

2. I think we are all getting the Acme Rocket up the ass

beep beep

[gordianot]

3. Excellent article. Thanks, lot to consider.

[spooked911]

4. Thankfully we invaded Iraq, right?

Now we control all that sweet sweet crude underground.

[sui generis]

5. that's what happens when you put a lousy c grade MBA into office

Most MBA's aren't worth half a wet crap to begin with, and then you put a FOCKING STOEPID one in there trying to figure out economic policy when he doesn't know the difference between Albania and Alabama - this is what we get.

Add to that the real power brokers with their arms up that sock puppet's ass are Big Oil and they are posting record profits while everyone else suffers. Wonder how that happened.

[Patiod]

7. Rebuild rail & light rail? Please - they're trying to gut Amtrak

as we speak.

The 'murcan people don't want no commie public transportation!

Cheap gas! Big guzzlers ("I'm not risking my family's safety in a little Prius!!!") Big highways!!!

If I work in a city with a rail system, and I want to leave work at 5:10 and the next train isn't until 5:30, I want my God-given independence and total flexibility, even if I have to sit in a one-hour traffic jam to get it!!!

[AndyTiedye]

11. More Like, They Moved Your Job Out into some Suburban Industrial "Park"

so you'd have to take four buses to get within two miles of the place.

Cheap gas!

Of course. Everyone wants cheap gas. Don't know why anyone thought
electing the robber barons would make gas cheaper though. Those guys
play Monopoly, and we all know what that means.

Big guzzlers

aren't exactly selling like hotcakes these days. GM moans and blames
their pension plans but the real problem is that nobody wants to buy
what they are selling.

If I work in a city with a rail system, and I want to leave work at 5:10 and the next train isn't until 5:30, I want my God-given independence and total flexibility, even if I have to sit in a one-hour traffic jam to get it!!!

There is no reason you should have to wait 20 minutes for a train at rush hour.
Rail systems that recognize this attract riders. Even in the USA.
A lot of us LIKE trains.

The problem is that most of the jobs aren't downtown where the trains
go. Many are in areas that are served poorly or not at all by transit.
It should be relatively easy to provide good transit to these office
and industrial parks, but the efforts to do so so far have been minimal.
That is even more important than transit at the home end, because
one may be willing to replace a long drive to work with a short drive
to the train station, IF there is transit between some other train
station and the office. The short drive to the train station is a
natural for a short-range electric vehicle.

[Patiod]

12. A well thought-out reply to a rant

Actually, I'm incredibly blessed by having one car in a two-job family. I can walk to the train, and take it to within blocks of my work, reading the whole way into town. I LOVE trains. I love that I can take Amtrak to NY or DC with very little difficulty for some of my projects.

I HATE hearing people who could take mass transit (conveniently) whine that they wouldn't want to wait for a train, or plan their schedule around a train (like you don't have to plan your schedule around a commute that's 14 minutes at night and 60 minutes at rush hour?)

This is only the second job I've had in 24 years where I've been ABLE to take a train. Even buses wouldn't have helped with many of them.

One other thing that irritates me is when I drive by major office parks, malls, etc., and see tiny little wimpy shelters servicing large numbers of cold, wet, shivering (or baking) bus commuters. Mass transit around here treats them like 2nd-class citizens. No wonder they start driving to work the moment they can afford a car.

[Guaranteed]

8. True or not, alternative energy should be the centerpiece

of the Democratic platform. Its implications are huge.

It's the equivalent of the way FDR "saved" the country.

[mahina]

10. Exactly!

Kerry was so much better on energy, but MSM gave it zero play.
Some concerted pressure on them is going to be necessary.

[kenny blankenship]

13. "do anything" -LOL- they (we) don't even ACKNOWLEDGE the dangers

much less pursue openly discussed policy to "do anything" about our impending energy and debt crises.

Except tax cuts. Create more debt and give money away to the richest Americans--yep that'll dig us out of this hole.

[Karenina]

14. One of my biggest disappointments on this planet

is that WED's monorail didn't make it through the "STUPID PEOPLE" as I described them to my 5th grade teacher. Somewhere in a box is a 4-color prospective I sent away for, FREE. It was my personal "test-case" as a kid.

[jazzjunkysue]

15. Another sissy gurly man pessimist. Just because you just lost your job

in the military, and have no insurance, and welfare is gone, and the jobs are all overseas, and you can't declare bankruptcy, and your pension was just cancelled, and social security won't kick in until you're 70, and medicaid is gone, and you're paying most of the country's taxes from a poverty line income at wall mart, doesn't mean we have to blame the republicans.

After all, what really matters is those queers can't get married, unwed girls are carrying their unwanted babies to term, and we've got a school prayer right after the pledge of alleigance. Oh, yeah, and we've still got our guns and can torture those pagan muslims.

I don't mind giving up my sons to die in Iraq: They deserved it for blowing up our towers. Defend freedom! What's on TV tonight? Go yankees.