From Streetcars To Spaceships

Bush is out. Fascism is more of a risk than ever.

Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.
- Benito Mussolini

Personally, I have found the overuse of the term "fascism" in my lifetime reprehensible. It is not "fascism" when your teacher won't let you get out early to see your friends. It isn't fascism when Walmart stops carrying some music label. Not every act of potentially capricious authority is fascism.

But some things are. And, as folks tend to forget, fascism has always been built from the ground up as partnerships between public idealogues, authoritarian movements, and corporations who have used those movements to protect and maximize their profits in return for funding and legitimizing the otherwise very unestablishment face of the movement.

In other words, whether we're talking Germany, Italy, Ethiopia, or the Klan, frankly, fascism has always had roots in the kind of people we these days call trailer trash. This has made for a very useful dynamic in the eyes of the monsters who have served as fascism's architects. The low-class, usually unemployed thugs of bottom-of-society movements have made very useful shock troops to undermine groups like farm worker unions that threaten the profits of corporations. And the quiet but increasingly public support of those corporations has provided material resources and a much-needed veneer of respectability to the otherwise socially rejected masses of those authoritarian movements. All while the least honorable among the media take their funding from the corporations while inflaming the conflict and then reaping the increased revenues from getting to feature the very violence and hatred that they helped build in the first place.

Any of this sound like what we're seeing now with the "birthers", the "teabaggers", the health insurance industry/Big Pharma, and FOX?

If you still have any doubts, I suggest that you read this piece on the recent appearance of activities in America, like the disruption of our ongoing town halls, that have always in the past been leading and reliable indicators that a country would soon be suffering a fascist regime.

I thnk that the article actually, in some ways, understates the problem. I have said from 2002 on that the TSA was designed from the get-go as a training ground and then reserve of brownshirts. Minimally-screened, recruited largely from the unemployed and underemployed, given arbitrary and intrusive powers "justified" by a fear-based logic that was made both sacrilege and dangerous to question, they have continued, with an expanding mandate, almost no supervision, and minimal training in jobs that get them used to treating the public as hostile adversaries to be controlled, questioned, and kept within ill-defined and non-negotiable limits.

Every day that somebody holds a TSA job they are further conditioned to make a trustworthy goon who will follow the unexplained and possibly counterintuitive orders of The People In Charge. They are already building adversarial dynamics with, well, real cops. The cops find them contemptable. Undertrained, puffed up, poor, and posturing. The TSA employees find the cops arrogant, uncooperative, questioning of the limits of their mandate and jurisdiction. If push comes to shove, TSA staffers will have been hardened by years of public displeasure and frustration. Trained to demand unquestioning obedience from the public, where even a joke about their techniques or concerns are considered grounds for arrest and detention.

Make no mistake. The "birthers" and their ilk are dangerous. A clear and present danger to our democracy and basic rights and principles. But if we're to look at this honestly, we need to stay vigilant about the armed, staffed, equipped army of fascism-ready bully-boys who walk our streets and control our rights of way right this very minute.

This is NOT a drill.

Shame about all those highway deaths.

Funny, we've got all these studies about our dangerous roads, especially crowded highways, because of texting, alcohol and drugs, fatigue, and so on. I read the articles and they suggest remedies. More laws. More cops. More signage. More checkpoints. Wider highways. Cutting down all the trees to clear the sightlines. Driver training. Sorry, but I look at those and think "what the hell are they doing in cars in the first place?" Mass transit addresses all of these, ya know.

I've taken plenty of forms of mass transit so f*cked up that I could barely see. Tired, drunk, distracted. Never seen any of that affect the safety of the vehicle yet.

All of this, I might add, applies just fine to cabs and jitneys. How many cabs could we subsidize to what degree to keep drunk drivers off the roads and have it cut net costs for a given city?

Do I sound snotty? Yeah, I guess that I do. But as far as I can see, this is yet another case of "normal" Americans who live in a way that results in vast processions of deaths, cripplings, torturous pain, and billions upon billions of dollars of costs but even when confronted with all of this they can talk about it for years and shake their heads disapprovingly and suggest yet more spending and never once even consider that maybe instead of more subsidies and more police state tactics, maybe the rational answer is TO STOP DOING THIS THING THAT KEEPS KILLING PEOPLE.

Why is this so hard to understand?

Old 1920's shorts used to treat it as a given that the drunk guy in the Betty Boop or Keystone Kops or whatever film would then shamble off and get on a trolley. A simple, safe (compared to cars) trolley that would then deliver said drunk person to a location a few blocks from their door. This was just obvious common sense with technology we had by 1915. If you think that we can't cost-effectively do it now well, I don't even know what to say.

Oh, right. Yes, I do.

Go play in traffic.

-Rustin

Antitrust enforcement may finally return from the dead.

There is an article in the New York Times that says that the new antitrust enforcement director at the Justice Department wants to do something new, enforce laws against trusts. This would be amazing if she can pull it off and, frankly, just by trying she is making public the resistance to real reform of far too many people in and around the Obama administration.

I'm not going to reiterate the article. It's quite a good piece. But I do wish that it had handled one crucial point differently. Over and over again it brings up the most common argument that people like General Motors and ConAgra and Microsoft use to justify their positions, that these corporations are "more efficient" at providing good products for good prices than smaller operations.

Oh, you mean like the Hummer? Like Windows Vista? Like an economy where everything but dish towels is made with high fructose corn syrup?

Yeah, sure. Looks really efficient to me.

It would have been nice if just once the article had thought to mention that this "efficiency" argument may be wrong.

Don't believe the hype.

-Rustin

More thoughts on rail rights of way

A while back I wrote a post on how the federal government should buy up the rights of way used by Amtrak and expand them. My feelings about that goal haven't changed. But I thought that a specific point merits qualification. As one of my fellow travelers reminded me when I took Amtrak from New York to Portland last month, this isn't just a matter of money. Companies like Burlington Northern are understandingly unwilling to hand over their rights of way for the simple and understandable reason that they don't trust Amtrak to maintain them. And if they're not maintained, all that revenue from freight transit goes away. This isn't just about the goverment ponying up cash. It's not even about eminent domain issues, though, admittedly, those both merit discussion another time.

Fundamentally, this is about the condition of those rights of way. The condition of the trackbed. The capacity of the switches. The standards that can be counted on in keeping those lines clear and functional.

So let me clarify a bit. I still feel that the federal government should take this time of flux to take over the rights of way used by or suited to use by passenger rail. But I think that it's crucial to point out that any such deal would have to include detailed provisions by the government, with penalty provisions for non-compliance and institution of transparent management procedures, that commit the resulting authority to expand the capacity of the lines and then maintain them at that expanded capacity.

In fact, I increasingly wonder if the smart thing to do might be to contract with the current owners to handle making most of those necessary upgrades before the handoff takes place. And with those terms tied to compliance. We know that, in theory, the freight rail companies want the resulting lines upgraded; we just need to get them to do the work done soon, in ways that suit expanded capacity and passenger rail as well.

And, crucially, the freight rail companies have the typical culture of oligopolists. As I've documented in my Flickr sets, these are not firms that judge success by normal standards of efficiency. So writing the contracts and managing the resulting situation would be, admittedly, seriously non-trival.

To put it another way, this isn't a job for a Robert Moses. It's a job for a Lyndon Johnson. For a savvy and cynical master of back room negotiation with a deep understanding of whose interests are best served how and what will motivate whom to make things better and the brass to get the contracts signed.

Of course, in theory, the above description just about perfectly matches the stereotype of a Chicago politician. Haven't we got one of those as President at the moment?

Which takes us back to what more and more of us are saying more and more frequently. If he's going to get the right things done, Barack Obama needs to spend less time trying to be an elegant statesman and more time channelling some ethical combination of Huey Long and Joe Kennedy.

Maybe we can get him to start drinking with Charlie Rangel.

I don't want to live in a society run by a bunch of Generals

Anybody who's paying attention is bound to see that every year our world is controlled by a smaller group of companies and their friends. The current crisis is just accelerating that. Twenty banks become five. Ten insurance companies become three. And it's nothing new. Since Enron we supposedly understand the importance of objective and external accounting measures. So it confuses me that nobody much seems to be upset that the once Big Eight accounting firms are now the Big Three. Big Two? Big ONE?

Well, let's step back a bit and remember that in much of America, not only is this round two or three of this kind of corporate domination (anybody remember Standard Oil? U.S. Steel?) but that many of our largest corporations were founded, not by inventors or marketers or people who cared about some particular kind of product at all. They were founded by financiers who set out from the get go to win not, fundamentally, by making better products but by owning as much of the market as they could and through techniques that are mostly illegal or should be. By beating up and marginalizing those who tried to succeed through the "naive" approach of making things that people wanted and selling them under good terms at a good price. They intended to win through sheer power and monopoly and to large extent they've succeeded.

I sound kinda vague, don't I?

Well, many of these companies have a tell. You see, they were quite open about their intent at the time, so you will find that these companies aren't named after founders or their products, or the places where they were. Nor after mythical figures or their products or any of the other types of names that show some kind of love  by those in charge for what they have wrought. Instead the names are as arrogant and dismissive of particulars as their strategies.

They're all Generals.

General Motors.

Founded in 1908 by as a holding company by William Durant, who owned two car companies by the time he had been in business a year and owned two more by a year after that.

General Dynamics.

Rebuilt by financier Isaac Rice, who, starting as the Electric Boat Company, making submarines for the Japanese, Russian, British, and Dutch militaries in the early 1900s, and then renamed and reorganized the company under the current name in 1952 when their takeovers of Canadair and Convair, paid for with the company's large post-war cash reserves, caused then to reorg and become a "modern" conglomerate.

General Foods.

Renamed General Foods in 1929 when Postum, personally being run E.F. Hutton (the guy, not the company), used money from stock sales to buy up, in quick succession, the makers of Jello, Minute Tapioca (owners of the process later used to make Minute Rice), Log Cabin Syrup, Maxwell House Company, and others.

General Electric.

Created in a merger by J.P. Morgan of the pre-existing Edison Electric Company and Thomson-Houston Electric Company (itself a result of several mergers), in effect creating a monopoly on many patents and processes for all electric devices.

If a company has a name that starts with General, they are bad people. And do I even need to get into Union? Union Carbide, perhaps?

One day soon I'll get back to this in more detail but for now remember two things:

1.) Any company named General anything can be assumed to be scum.

2.) They were founded to be scum and those scum behaviors were woven into the DNA of the firm by the day the name was first announced.

Happy Holidays.

Rustin

Consequences in Fiction, Part Two

So I see that yesterday's post has already drawn traffic searching on the phrase "burn notice". Good. Especially since the last straw for me had been having Sam, one of the lead characters, getting beaten and interrogated for three days (unless I'm misunderstanding the timeline in the episode) and, as soon as he's untied, standing up (after three days tied to a chair?!), running into combat, and, as soon as it's over, being casually dropped off at his place looking no more than a bit tired, with just a manly "thank you, brother".

Okay, now I've never been tortured, but I've gotta say that I think that almost three weeks tied to a bed in a burn ward gives me a little to say about this, especially since I kept flashing back to those weeks while I watched the torture scenes. And I can tell you now that after three days tied to a chair, frequently with his mouth duct-taped shut (which, by the way, in a hot, enclosed space like that would have almost certainly killed him right there), being beaten, interrogated, screamed at, and spending most of the rest of the time alone in that dark metal room, he wouldn't even be able to lift his arms or walk, let alone jump into manly action. And when they go out? I'm sorry, but just about anybody would have fucking well fallen over sobbing. Would he, maybe, in theory, wait for his buddy to drive away? Possibly. But one way or another he would be very, very fucked up indeed and a couple of smart guys like those, old pros as they're supposed to be, would have acknowledged that in no uncertain way.

So, just to let y'all know, that was the thing that inspired my previous post.

And, as it happens, my timing was good. Looks like Slashdot has a thread going right now about torture in fiction based on an expansion pack for WoW, and the article they link to turns out to be about just the same point as my previous post, about the stories that fiction tells about actions having consequences. Or not.

And you know what? I think that the article says these things damned well. So I'm done. Go read it. You'll be glad that you did.

Commercial to residential. Or mixed. It's the smart move.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. America is flooded with surplus commercial real estate. Rental demand is climbing and the available rental unit supply is not up to the job. Thus rental prices stay high (relative to the economy) while hundreds of millions of square feet of real estate sits vacant, not generating income and in some cases, so empty of people as to be at increasing risk of vandalism and theft. And real estate companies are in serious financial trouble. We also need to face that as people get poorer, they'll become more prone to exactly the kind of destructive behavior that any owner of an empty building should fear.

The obvious consequence will be more people living illegally in commercial spaces. Done illegally, landlords will look the other way because they're hungry for the revenue, but the conversions, such as will be done, will be rushed and unsafe and will cause problems ranging from fires to floods caused by amateur plumbing.

This being the case, smart municipalities should be exploring passing temporary variances to allow, and perhaps even assist the use of some commercial spaces as residential. Maybe even allow or even encourage the conversion of zoning with an option for those conversions to be permanent. Or, even better, allow more spaces to be zoned more flexibly, allowing mixed use to be not just within complexes but in side by side units.

Commercial space, in normal times, rents for more per square foot than residential. Many landlords also consider it far less of a headache. 

But these are not normal times.

It's time that we started doing a better job of thinking through how or society can best adapt to that.

An antidote to the common bitch.

In a time of change like this people reach ever more for the comforting habit of complaining. Comforting, that is, for the person doing the complaining. And isn't it a shame how many people can't even articulate what they're upset about, let alone then work to fix those problems?

So, for years now I've had a consistent response to such bitching.

"So, let's say you're given twenty million dollars, two assistants, and two years to spend the money.

You can't spend the money to raise more money.

You can't just say 'I give the money to somebody who knows what to do.'

What do you do to address the problem you just talked about?"

Then you talk them through their response. If they say "I give money to candidates" then ask which ones. Early in the campaign or late? To the PAC or to the candidate directly? If they say they'll give it to (schools/police/whatever) ask which ones, to be used by whom, to be administered how? Just keep drilling down. Be helpful but don't give leading responses. If they stop and change their minds about something, be graceful, and acknowledge their right to do that. In fact, give them the respect they will then deserve for admitting in public that they were wrong. Just take them down the path from the general to the specific, from the universal to the local. Ask how their plans would cause their intended result. Help make it real to them. But never, ever loosen your vigilance and allow them to slip by a "and then a miracle occurs" step. Just calmly work to interweave the story you're expecting them to tell with consequences, telling details, clarifications. Be friendly, interested, attentive. But utterly unforgiving. If you haven't done this before you will find that this, too is a useful exercise.

I have found it amazing how well this focuses people's thinking. It weeds out the twits who just want to complain and leave all accountability and responsibility to others. Sometimes it actually does help people realize that there is something that they can do to improve things. And it generally clears the air. I have also found that the people I least want to deal with, the anti-intellectuals, the liars, the permanent children, the beery frat boy blowhards, are driven off by a calm, implacable application of this technique like vampires running from sunlight. Once I've pointed this approach at such people a few times, they never engage in their habitual dittohead tirades in my presence again. Makes going to parties much easier.

The key is that the question replaces the vague with the specific. It forces them to calculate costs. It (especially if there's an audience) put the onus on them to define the problem and take responsibility. It makes them reiterate what they've just said in a way that lays wonderfully effective traps for people who hide racism and such behind coded language. And, when asked of decent people, can even reduce the sense of helplessness that an inchoate problem of unknown scope creates in anybody. It teaches people to think like problem solvers rather than like passive observers. It helps people seize a sense of agency for the things around them. It penalizes and punishes the blowhards and rewards and aids the honorable.

In short, it makes all participants, including the person asking the question, into better citizens.

So the next time you hear somebody start to talk about "those people shouldn't be allowed to . . ." or "the (schools/buses/military/etc.) sucks" or whatever, smile politely, prepare for opposition, and simply pose for them that simple hypothetical. Just be sure to cut them no logical slack whatsoever, to never raise your voice or lower yourself to ad hominem attacks, and to keep them from changing the subject.

You may find that it will not only free you from idiocy, it can even be quite a lot of fun.

Re, the terrorist disaster in Mumbai

Okay, so what's our excuse for STILL not having started a crash program in mass education in foreign languages in this country? 

If we had anything resembling the kind of intelligence services this country should have, we would have had at least one person on the inside who could have, at the least, ameliorated this.

And that's what our main response to this should be. Yes, I'm aware of the impact these events will have on all sorts of things but first and foremost, we need more instruction in foreign languages and cultures. Everything from French to Mongolian. Now. The longer we wait, the more people will die. It really is just that predictable and simple.

$150,000 streetcars.

As I read about Obama's choices and look at all of the public debate about his options (it was nice to see that even Washington Week in Review found his old guard, quintessential establishment choices notable) I just keep thinking the same three things over again. The things that I keep saying here.

1.) We should be buying all of our rail rights of way, widening them, and adding more tracks.

2.) Aid to auto companies should be designed to encourage and aid the spinoff of divisions, manufacturing plants, and other subsets as employee-owned companies.

and 3.) Every possible dollar, EVERY possible dollar should be routed to funding a fast track plan to specify, legally enable, and fund the massive purchase of small, light-duty streetcars with modular components, open source specs to ease repair and aftermarket modification, and a purchase price of $150,000.

If we do these things we will route around much of our current economic disaster, spur amazing and eventually very lucrative invention and development, and become a better country. It really is that simple.

I swear by the blood of Thomas Jefferson that part of me just wants to print up one page explanations of this and spend the next few years doing nothing but traveling America wheatpasting hundreds of thousands of these summaries on every lamppost, bulletin board, and transit shelter in America.

-Rustin