200,000 Trees for Tacoma?

When I was in New York City I was impressed by the effort they were putting out to plant more trees--1 million trees to be precise. Their goal is 1,000,000 trees in the next 10 years.

I mentioned the program in a comment thread over at Exit133 about a big tree that fell down over the weekend in the Stadium District and suggested that Tacoma should consider something similar. We've lost a lot of trees to age and development and storms and I think that we should have a systematic effort to replant.

Turns out, it's being looked in to. Fellow blogger Tacoma Chickadee let me know that Tacoma's Green Ribbon Committee has as a draft recommendation that the City plant 200,000 trees, among some other ideas.

According to the time line on the website, the final recommendations should be put in front of the City Council in June.

I'm on board. Go trees!

High Gas Prices

There's an article in the New York Times about how high gas prices have pushed many from cars to mass transit. I know I should be all "rah rah, go mass transit" but I'm not exactly feeling it.

The high fuel prices might directly hurt our pocketbooks with gas prices, but it's also nickel and diming us, too, as pretty much every product we use now costs more to manufacture and ship. So while I like that more people are using mass transit, the high gas prices right now are not to be applauded.

Instead of getting us into a fix, I wish that we'd been able to make this work on our terms--I wish that on September 12, 2001, George W. Bush had called for a $1.00/gallon gas tax (phased in over at least 5 years). Now that I could have gotten behind. Slowly increasing the cost of gas before the market forced the increase on its own would have helped us out a lot.

First, oil-rich despots would not be flexing their muscles right now, they'd be hurting, because they wouldn't be getting the money off high gas prices, we--the US--would. That gas tax could have been a national security measure and I would bet that Americans had the political will to go for it after September 11. The easiest way to send a message to states we don't like is to weaken their biggest source of revenue.

Second, with a 5 year steady increase in gas prices, car manufacturers and consumers can plan ahead a little bit more. Knowing gas is going to be expensive in advance means that people start making decisions based on that knowledge, and they buy homes closer to bus lines, buy hybrids, etc. Those are decisions some will start making now, but more slowly.

It's those big choices that will actually influence how much gas an individual family uses--the location of the house, the car they will have at least 5 years. Switching to mass transit is all well and good, but it's small potatoes compared to these other choices.

Third, the price of gas would probably not be $1.00/gallon more than it is right now, despite the tax. I'm not an economist, but I'd wager that the slow shift in 7 years would mean that gas would be perhaps only $0.50/gallon than it is now, which means that $0.50 stays with the US instead of going to the countries and companies who own the fields.

... I think high gas prices will be with us for awhile. And it's going to hurt us all, which makes it hard to be excited about ridership gains on mass transit, even though that's something I really want. I just wish we had chosen the path rather than been forced in to it.

Sunday Update: Paul Krugman, not a man I normally agree with, makes the point that as of 2005 only 4.7% of Americans get to work using public transit. Figure then that if mass transit ridership went up across the board 10%, you're still only pulling about half a percent of drivers off the road.

He concludes: "The point isn’t that nothing can be done — it’s just that serious reductions in driving would require a lot of long-term rearrangement of the way we live. It will come — but not quickly."

Exactly.

More on the gas tax summer hiatus

Ezra Klein:

"Unanimity is rare. Except on this gas tax holiday. Just about no one thinks it a good idea. Conservative economists loathe it, liberal economists loathe it, energy experts loathe it...it's shameless pandering of the worst sort."

Thanks to Don in the comments of the Friedman article for the suggestion. I don't know of any conservative economists to read to see if Ezra Klein is right on this. Anyone know a conservative economist blogger or writer on this one? And then ...

From the NYT editorial board:

"Leave aside that suspending the 18.4-cent-a-gallon excise tax would cost the deficit-burdened federal government $9 billion and that turning a tax off in May and on in September would be an administrative nightmare.

Even leave aside that nixing the gas tax would increase demand for gasoline — exactly the wrong response to global warming and rising energy prices. So wrong, in fact, that both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain support policies that would cut carbon emissions and increase the price of energy. (Talk about voting for something before they voted against it.)

The fact is that drivers would, at best, see only the briefest reduction in prices at the pump. Gas prices rise during the summer season of heavy driving as rising demand pushes refiners to produce virtually at full capacity. If a suspension in the excise tax reduced the price at the pump, it would encourage even more driving. This would simply push prices back up. Oil companies would be grateful, drivers less so."

James Fallows is even offering a one year subscription to the Atlantic if someone can come up with an example of a more "foolishly destructive" bipartisan pandering. Man this one brought a lot of people out ...

Friedman's Back!

After getting a pie in the face, Thomas Friedman is back to writing regularly for the New York Times. I'm glad to see him back, especially since he's backing up a post I made yesterday:

"Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country."

This was disheartening, however:

" ... when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December."

Dang.

Yeah for the LID!

Very good news from Exit133 -- the Broadway LID just passed. That's good stuff for fans of the Theater District and Broadway. My window used to be on Broadway ... I sat in it and watched the tree lighting parade (I believe it was the last, actually).

I wonder how the view will change from there ...

Kunstler's First Chapter

I started The Long Emergency last night and made it through the first chapter. He's frustrating because he has some good points, but also has a few passages that are so outlandish they are scoffable.

On the first page, he writes, "It is my view, for instance, that in the decades to come the national government wil prove to be so impotent and ineffective in managing the enormous
vicissitudes we face that the United States may not survive as a nation in any meaningful sense but rather will devolve into a set of autonomous regions."

Uh huh.

Then there is this great bit on page 8: "How long might the Long Emergency last? A generation? Ten generations? A millennium? Ten millennia? Take your choice. Of course, after awhile, an emergency becomes the norm and is no longer an emergency."

SayWA? Ten millennia? So we'll still be wrestling with all this in 12008? We only have 5,000 years or so of recorded history, so suggesting we know anything about what we might face twice that length into the future is pretty funny. Even the single millennium guess is funny when you think about it.

As I said there are some good parts in here, but his more fanciful passages make it hard to take.

Howard James Kunstler in Tacoma

I struggle mightily with the central precept of Kunstler's The Long Emergency. I thought--before tonight, at least--that Kunstler really wants the Long Emergency to happen, that he wants to oil cripple the world economy, shrink the cities, transform agriculture, etc etc. I also seriously question the idea that the invisible hand of the market is incapable of handling the problem.

But the argument tonight had some interesting information--enough that I bought The Long Emergency as I left the event at the Theatre on the Square. I'm approaching it from a seriously skeptical perspective, so maybe that's the best way to go. I'll blog as I go through it.

That said, I greatly enjoyed Kunstler's presentation, even though I found much to disagree with. That the crowd at the Theatre on the Square was near capacity, if not sold out, was incredible. I saw so many recognizable faces--the most interesting would have to be Chip Vincent, manager of Advance Planning at Pierce County, and Professor Brian Coffey, Chair of the Urban Studies Department at UWT. There were lots of "regulars," as I might call them, in attendance but these two stood out.

I had Chip Vincent for a course at UWT a couple years ago--he toured the class around to cities and towns all over the Puget Sound and had us meet with planners in each of them. Very interesting stuff.

After the Kunstler event I went to Quiz Night at Doyle's, where my team won. I walked home wearing my prize: a Stella Artois bathrobe. I love bathrobes and I love Stella Artois. I was danged excited for this prize. Thanks, Russ!

George Will on the Fed

My second favorite conservative (after Andrew Sullivan) is George Will. Here he seems right on to me:

The Fed has no mandate to be the dealmaker for Wall Street socialism. The Fed's mission is to preserve the currency as a store of value by preventing inflation. Its duty is not to avoid a recession at all costs; the way to get a big recession is to engage in frenzied improvisations because a small recession, a.k.a. a correction, is deemed intolerable. The Fed should not try to produce this or that rate of economic growth or unemployment.

And then:

Republicans and Democrats promise cooperation, compromise and general niceness using other people's money. If Congress cannot suppress its itch to "do something" while markets are correcting the prices of housing and money, Congress could pass a law saying: No company benefiting from a substantial federal subvention (which would now include Morgan) may pay any executive more than the highest pay of a federal civil servant ($124,010). That would dampen Wall Street's enthusiasm for measures that socialize losses while keeping profits private.

I recommend the whole article.

Dust it off

As I said in the comments to the last post, I'm not really that upset about the ABC interview because Obama's so danged good at turning the tables, and this played right into his hand in many ways.

Witness. About 2 minutes into the video he makes his supporters go wild.

How is rail like a freeway system?

RBD over at 5views has an argument against rail as a way to save greenhouse gases. There are sound parts to the argument that are worth investigating like whether it's better to get 1% of commuters onto rail or into hybrid cars (assuming you get to choose) and the benefits of congestion pricing (probably not RBD's favorite part of the report). That said, I do want to make one point here that I made on his blog as well. Please allow me to cut and paste ...

I feel like a lot of anti-mass transit arguments are almost predicated on the belief that there is something natural about the freeway and getting people off the freeway is unnatural.

But the freeways were built for moving troops across the country, not for moving people between Tacoma and Seattle, or other shorter distances. (In fact, the official title of the Interstate system is the "Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.") It just happened to have that effect.

In total, if you adjust for inflation the cost of the Interstate and Defense Highways system is about $425 billion dollars. That is a crazy crazy amount of money. The only reason anyone was willing to pay for it was because it was considered necessary to national security.

In many ways, I believe the success of the highway system speaks to what could become of a well-developed and well-funded rail system. We pushed billions and billions of dollars of public money into an infrastructure that then spurred even more billions of dollars in private growth (would the automobile industry be what it is without the freeways? Of course not).

What I wouldn't give if last year's TGV rail speed record was broken in the US instead of France ... think of the products we could create and then sell ...

So how is rail different? Why not spend billions of dollars on a transportation infrastructure that will most likely eventually create more innovative technologies that will then end up generating more money back then we spent in the first place (not to mention providing better transit options in and between major cities? It's what happened with highways. Why shouldn't we expect the same thing with rail system too?

New York vs. New York

The congestion pricing plan for New York City that would have helped reform the City's and the region's transportation is basically dead now that the New York State legislature has said there's no way they will do it. Apparently one of the state senators even said it was "morally unconscionable."

Congestion pricing has worked well in London and other cities that have implemented it. Over at The Atlantic, Reihan Salam argues that this battle is grounds to once again start fighting for New York to consider secession from the state. Apparently, secession from the state has been considered for years, dating back to the civil war.

Maybe when DC becomes a state New York City will too ...

In Tacoma Today

I'd like to second Paul Schrag's props to the Broadway Center for hosting a dialog about hip hop. I think it's a good step after the flap they were just in.

RR Anderson has some pictures of people at yesterday's City Council meeting with his own dialog and commentary. Much fun ensues.

It rained, hailed, and snowed today.

We have 98 days until Tall Ships. More at Exit133 about volunteering and such.

And David Dicks, Executive Director of the Puget Sound Partnership, sends a good message: keeping the Sound healthy and clean will rely primarily on good growth management. You go, David. That was at the South Sound Science Symposium, something that was in Tacoma today that--hearing about it 6 hours too late--sounds kind of interesting.

More on the Internet

I should make things clearer, having gotten that last post out of my system.

Free speech means a lot of things, but a lot of people automatically cry "Free Speech" when it is absolutely irrelevant. I can delete your obnoxious comments from my blog if I so choose. So can the Tribune. I can choose not to run your offensive ad in my paper. I can choose not to give a loony a platform in my paper by not publishing his letter to the editor.

Especially in the age of blogs, there is no reason why I can't be a dictator about the content that goes on my own site. This is true for a couple reasons--I'm libel for content on ErikEmery.com, for example. And because it's my voice here and I don't have to give you the right to voice yours here too. But you can just as easy go get your own Blogger account and set up a blog with an opposing view.

Google is not liable for anything we say when we use its blogging platform. And they shouldn't be. Network Solutions, Comcast (or some other provider who allows you to view my site) and any other company is not liable either. It would be like holding Gutenberg accountable because I say malicious things using a printing press (or at least, close enough).

But if they're not liable, they shouldn't be censoring either. I'm looking at you right now, Network Solutions, but Comcast is also on my list after trying to inhibit downloads from users using .torrent files (frequently used to exchange illegal copies of movies, which also happens to compete with Comcast's OnDemand offerings. Funny that).

And Google does have the right to clean up spam-filled blogs. With blogs as easy to create as they are, Blogger and other free and easy blogging platforms should be monitoring spam blogs built to give you a virus, steal your credit card information, or just get you to buy Viagra.

But these companies should not get a say in the content posted to their sites or using the fiber-optic cables that connect the Internet (AKA, a series of tubes).

Internet Censorship Commencing?

This weekend, Network Solutions pre-emptively shut down a website because they were worried that the content may violate their acceptable use policy.

Geert Wilders, a Dutch politician, wants to put up a short video criticizing Islam and the Koran. He believes the Koran is a "fascist book," that it goes against Dutch law and he wants it banned (irony watch: he wants the Koran banned, but his website to promote the view is getting censored). He's quoted on Wikipedia thusly:

Later, Wilders suggested that Muslims should "tear out half of the Koran if they wished to stay in the Netherlands" because it contained 'terrible things' and that Muhammad would "in these days be hunted down as a terrorist."

I'm not as worried about a jingoist and isolationist politician in the Netherlands. I'm far more worried about Network Solutions. In February of 2006 I railed--railed--in multiple posts against Viacom, for not letting South Park show Muhammad, and against those who tried to censor the cartoons. Free speech means pissing people off. It means ignorance, bigotry, intolerance, and even blasphemy can not be silenced.

Network Solutions should not be able to cut off a website because it doesn't like the content. Even if they are afraid of a violent reaction, they should not be able to cut it off. In fact, the telecommunication and domain registrars should be pushing the US the hardest in favor of the Net Neutrality Act that would prevent them from doing crap like this. Why? Because then they are legally obligated not to interfere with a website. If they really are concerned about employee's safety, then passing the buck to the American voters (through Congress) is the best way to go.

Registrars should not have this kind of power. It rewards violence, because it cowers in fear of it. They claim that they want to quell violence, but it only makes it worse. It emboldens other groups to start trying to get websites they don't like shut down.

Stop it now, Network Solutions. You're making everything a lot worse.

The Paparazzi

The cover of the Atlantic this month had Britney Spears on the cover, something that surprised me. But the article is finally online and it's a really interesting look at the paparazzi and how they actually operate--how they make their money, how they work on a day-to-day basis, and how 30+ photographers follow Britney Spears ... every day. Here's something that is crazy:

History’s best-publicized celebrity meltdown has helped fuel dozens of television shows, magazines, and Internet sites, the combined value of whose Britney-related product easily exceeds $100 million a year, and helped make Britney Spears the most popular search term on Yahoo once again in 2007, as it has been for six of the past seven years.

After seeing this week's South Park episode with Britney Spears and the paparazzi, it makes me wonder if they'd read the same article. (I'd also like to say that the episode was incredibly depressing--sometimes satire is just too dead-on to be funny.)

But definitely check out the article.

"Op Ed" over at Living & Working Virtually

Earlier this week I floated the idea of an "op-ed" style guest post to Andrew Fry, the blogger at "Living and Working in a Virtual World." The topic: When Bloggers Are Neighbors. Check it out.

I had a lot of fun writing it, and it was a cool opportunity to do something different with a post. I'm going to play around with some longer pieces of writing as opposed to the shorter bursts I usually post here.

A good day in Washington

Thanks, Guv:

“This bill is about protecting and helping Washington families,” Gregoire said before signing the bill. “It simply gives these families the same rights as everybody else. It’s the right thing to do.”

Yes it was.

Here's the Tribune's story on the domestic partnership bill Gregoire just signed.

Obama in Mississippi

So Obam won Mississippi today. That's all good, and it gives him another boost in delegates, just like the Texas caucus, which released another round of results today that puts Obama up in delegates over Clinton for the state.

Here's what's interesting. Look at the map and you realize how far we've come since Iowa. The Democrats have only 11 contests left, and that counts Guam and Puerto Rico. 9 states, 2 territories ... after Ohio and Texas, Clinton had to take more than 63% of all the remaining delegates to tie. It's just looking very unlikely that that's going to happen.

On the other hand, Pennsylvania is six weeks away ... we've got a lifetime of stuff that could happen before then. Good luck, Obama! Keep it up!

Way to go WA!

Congrats to the Washington Senate for passing the 2008 Domestic Partnership Bill. Makes me proud. It will help us avoid horrific, awful, anti-family situations like this one in Florida.

Thanks, Washington legislators! My hat is off to you and the House, and to the Governor who will sign the bill.

Obama's 2 Minute Argument

Clinton's been doing better recently. She's had a habit of making game-changing moves at the last minute that worries me going into Tuesday's election. Of course, if you visit the poll pages at Pollster you'll see how quickly Obama has closed the gap.

I find the idea that the press has been hard on her a little difficult to swallow. If Obama had lost 11 primaries or caucuses in a row, do you think the press would you treating tomorrow's primaries the same way? Of course not. The truth is, Huckabee has done better since Super Tuesday than Clinton has. But the "media" hasn't really touched that one.

Marc Ambinder over at the Atlantic has a very good look at Hillary's numbers. His conclusion is that the only way she could become the nominee to close the delegate gap with Obama is to seat Michigan and Florida delegates. Which would, of course, tear the Democratic party apart.

Anyway, here's Obama's closing video. God speed, sir.