JPBlog

Author Greg Palast has posted an interesting column on peak oil. His thesis, half tongue-in-cheek and half deadly serious: whether peak oil has arrived depends upon its price. Oil at $10/bbl peaked years ago, but at $80/bbl oil hasn't come close to peaking.

Palast is, of course, correct. Oil hasn't peaked when it is priced at $80/bbl because it is profitable to spend more money getting it out of the ground and transporting it to customers

He failed to mention, however, that, although the demand for oil is highly inelastic in the short run, $80/bbl for oil will reduce demand in the long run. People will gradually acquire the habits appropriate to a civilization based on expensive, as opposed to cheap, energy. Worn-out automobiles will be replaced with high-mileage models. New houses will be smaller and use less oil and gas for cooling and heating. If we are wise, we will build mass-transit systems and adopt policies to discourage low-density housing and long commutes. All these developments will reduce the demand for oil.

All this takes time. The American dream will die hard and therein lies the possibility of disaster. The vast, energy-wasting economy that we have come to love took over a century to build and it will not be rebuilt in a year or two. While people are adjusting to the new reality, wealth will flow in a huge torrent from users to producers, even more than in the past. It will be a sellers' market .

Our nation, as well as the rest of the world, will probably be politically unstable and more dangerous for many years. The Bush administration, under the control of the extraction industry, has already wasted six years in which we could have taken remedial actions to lessen the pain of transition. The task will therefore be far more difficult for its successor and for us. Let us pray.

Postscript: There will be a peak and decline in oil production eventually, no matter the price, when the energy to extract the oil approaches and then exceeds the energy the oil can yield. That's the problem with ethanol; the energy used in production of corn plus the energy to distill the fermented grain exceeds the energy yielded by the end product. For that reason, gasahol must be subsidized.

A couple of thoughts on the nomination of Henry M. Paulson, Jr. for the office of Secretary of the Treasury:

1. Secretaries of the treasury have zero influence in the Bush administration. The current secretary, John W. Snow, has been frozen out of the administration and left dangling for almost a year before being cut down and told to leave. His predecessor, Paul O'Neill, was fired when he opposed the administration's reckless fiscal policy. Incidentally, Bush himself couldn't bring himself to personally fire O'Neill and had Cheney call him with the news.

2. Since the rentier class already controls the government, a financier as treasury secretary won't be noticed unless he unexpectedly acquires a concern for the common good. The Treasury Department has some very fine economists on its staff with hundreds of years of combined experience. The new secretary, a very able person by all accounts, will almost certainly be alarmed by what they tell him. If he is a man of integrity, he will find himself in conflict with the administration over economic policy and suffer the same fate as his predecessors.

3. In other words, don't look for any changes as a result of this appointment. The ship of state will still be sailing towards a financial iceberg with Mr. Paulson limited to scraping barnacles off the hull.

One of the less attractive characteristics of our capitalistic system is the modern corporation's obsession with capturing every niche it can without regard for the folks occupying the niche and irrespective of whether it makes much of a difference to the bottom line. I've watched it over and over again with a number of friends being nudged out of a business when a large corporation took an interest.

The Clarion-Ledger is now trying to run free publications in Jackson out of business by offering merchants a stand holding a number of free publications, most of them published by the Clarion-Ledger. The catch: the merchant has to sign a contract not to allow any other magazine stands on his premises for the duration of the contract (1 year) and anyone wanting permission to put their magazine in the rack has to pay the Clarion-Ledger $8.00 per location, either per issue or per month, a prohibitive sum.

It's unethical and probably illegal, but the small publishers could be out of business before the matter could be resolved in the courts.

Here's an article in the Jackson Free Press on what's happening.

Mississippi families making $18,000 or less pay 12.1% of their income in state and local sales, property and income taxes, while those making more than $224,000 pay only 5.4%. The two main factors responsible for the inequity in tax burden are the sales tax and the federal deduction offset, which allows taxpayers to deduct state income tax on their federal income tax returns. While the Mississippi income tax is somewhat progressive, that progressivity is more than made up for by the other taxes.

The legislature attempted to remedy the gross disparity this year by reducing sales tax on groceries and raising them on tobacco, but the governor, steadfast in his loyalty towards his former lobbying clients in the tobacco industry, vetoed the bill. This is consistent with the Republican philosophy that the wealthy should pay as few taxes as possible, and preferably no taxes. It also fits with Mississippi's resort to regressive taxes since the 1930s.

So for the flat taxers in the audience: What would we have to change in order to have a reasonably flat tax? Keep in mind that the state is already reducing public services, including Medicaid, because of shortfalls in tax revenue, and we probably have all the casinos that we we should have. How about a lottery?

A Lottery is a Taxation,

Upon all the Fools in Creation;

And Heav’n be prais’d,

It is easily rais’d,

Credulity’s always in Fashion;

For, Folly’s a Fund,

Will never lose Ground;

While Fools are so rife in the Nation.

Henry Fielding (1732)

Here's a radical idea: how about making the tax system fair? Every dollar paid in taxes by a family making $18,000 a year is a gouge out of their ability to lead a decent life. Every dollar of taxes paid by a family making more than $224,000 a year is no more significant than a flyspeck on the hood of their Mercedes. Maybe they will have to buy Dewar's instead of Balvaney. A truly flat tax would improve the finances of the state tremendously, but any tax system that forces a family at the bottom of the economic ladder to pay 12.1% of their income is a moral outrage. Under the current system, those unfortunate families making less than $18,000 may have to choose, not between two brands of scotch whiskey, but between food and medicine.


Mississippi State & Local Taxes in 1995: Shares of family income for non-elderly married couples. (.pdf)
Note: the latest version of Safari will not display the pdf file in the browser. Download it first and then open it if you experience difficulty. Firefox and Opera for the Mac work fine.

Compare different states' taxation burdens

Citizens for Tax Justice

Highly recommended: Are Housing Prices, Household Debt and Growth Sustainable?, by Dimitri B. Papadimitriou, Edward Chilcote, Gennaro Zezza of the Levy Institute at Bard College.

The JP has been writing about the economy ever since the beginning. of the publication, and much of the inspiration for the columns has come from the bright economists at Levy, who have been consistently posting first-class material on the Levy web site. One of our strongest interests is the interplay of debt, oil, currency and international cash flows, hence the January 21, 2000 article Debt and Oil: Two Ominous Clouds on the Economic Horizon, a topic that is finally forcing itself into public consciousness.

I recently listened to the unabridged audiobook version of Kevin Phillips's American Theocracy, which I can recommend without reservation. Phillips, who worked for the Nixon administration and wrote The Emerging Republican Majority had an integrity attack some years ago when he began to comprehend the results of so-called free market economics imposed by the Reagan and Bush administrations and wrote the Politics of Rich and Poor. In his latest book Phillips singles out oil, debt and Christian fundamentalism as the three factors driving our national politics and culture, discusses their history, and explains how each of these factors threatens not only American hegemony but the American nation. This is "must" reading for any concerned American. Phillips has done the nation a great service in all of his recent books.

Here's a good explanation of net neutrality from Maxspeak.

George Lakoff and Sam Ferguson analyze the immigration controversy as a framing problem. As long as the problem is framed as an "immigration problem," any proposed solutions to the problem as framed will be unsuccessful. My last post touched upon some of these unacknowledged dimensions. The paper by Lakoff and Ferguson, however, tackles the problem in considerable depth. Another good resource is the NAFTA section on the Public Citizen web site.

Yesterday it was terrorism, the Taliban and Saddam, but that unholy trinity is losing its ability to scare people into dangerous and stupid undertakings and, worse, people are becoming pissed off at being duped into supporting a costly and ill-advised war halfway around the world that seems to have no end.

Before Al Qaida it was the Serbs, who turned out in the end to be a pitiful target, and the "victimized" Kosivars a gang of racist, drug-dealing bandits.

Before the Serbs it was Saddam (a former client strongman) and the first Gulf War, followed by murderous sanctions that were responsible for the deaths of over half a million children. Madeline Allbright, our secretary of state at the time, felt that their deaths were "worth it."

Before Saddam it was Noriega, another former ally who became inconvenient.

Before 1992 it was the evil empire. Included along with the Soviet Union was Nicaragua, ruled by the Sandinistas, and the vicious and dangerous island dictatorship of Grenada, ready to pounce upon an unprotected and helpless U.S.

There is also the war against drugs, begun during the Reagan presidency, a continuing assault upon the treasury and our civil liberties with virtually no prospect of victory before the 22nd century.

Fear and greed are the tools used to manipulate the chumps.

What chumps?

Us chumps.

And manipulation it is. The Jackson Progressive web site is getting hit daily with dozens of messages coming from fake grassroots organizations predicting the imminent demise of the country if something isn't done to stop the influx of illegal aliens. A month ago I would receive 1 or 2 such messages a week. An examination of the message headers reveal that they originate from relatively few IP addresses.

Many years ago, I was required to read William Golding's Lord of the Flies as an assignment before starting my freshman year of college. It's the story of how a group of perfectly normal, middle-class boys stranded on a tropical island were turned into murderous savages by fear of an imaginary beast invented almost out of whole cloth by a couple of the boys. I'm beginning to appreciate William Golding more and more.

The country has gone through waves of xenophobia with past migration waves and the republic was never in danger of being overwhelmed by foreigners. In fact every new wave of immigrants brought us priceless gifts, every one of them: the Scots, Irish, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Romanians, Bohemians, Dutch, Germans, Cubans, Japanese, Chinese, Vietnamese, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Ukrainians, Russians, Indians, Thai, Indonesians, and last but not least, black Africans. (There are many others that do not come to mind immediatly. My apologies.) For most of the life of this nation, there were virtually no restrictions on immigration. We have done pretty well as a nation, I think, not in spite of immigrants but because of them.

My female barber, born in Korea and and adopted as a baby by an American couple, speaks with a pronounced Mississippi drawl, creating a most amusing cognitive dissonance. The Mississippi Delta is full of Italians and Chinese who have been there for generations. Today, the state is home to illegal aliens who work in the big chicken plants and other agricultural industries. For the most part they work hard, take care of their families and don't make trouble. The police and immigration authorities leave them alone as long as they don't commit crimes. Their children will grow up speaking English and live their lives as ordinary American citizens.

Our Mississippi social and economic model has not stood the test of time very well. All the talk of our "southern heritage" pales in the light of the reality. We're the poorest, unhealthiest and most ignorant state in the union. In the unlikely event that Hispanics become so numerous that they control the state it would probably be an improvement.

Historically, Republicans advocated loose immigration laws in order to keep down wages. Now that a substantial percentage of the Republican fundamentalist base is in the lower income brackets, the Republican Party has a big problem, which is why Bush's speech the other night was almost unintelligible. It was unintelligible because it was meant to be unintelligible. He is attempting to sail between Scylla and Charybdis.

Would anyone want to give odds on whether immigration will be an issue after the November election?

Or whether Halliburton will get the contract to build the Rio Grande Wall?

Today the same bucket of bolts ran the #11 morning route. Only 2 passengers. I sat behind the driver to feel what it is like at the front. It's a little better but not much.

Since I couldn't read or listen to the iPod, I watched the scenery and brainstormed some ideas to implement if I ran the bus system:

1. Feature a large, high resolution map of Jackson on the web site with the routes and each bus stop marked. Click on a bus stop and the schedule for that bus stop pops up. There's a city map on the web site now, but it's low resolution and virtually useless. This would be simple and inexpensive.

2. Set up an interactive voice response system that allows customers to call in, key in the bus route, and get the location of buses and whether they are late or broken down. This would be simple and inexpensive. I've programmed systems like that and it's not very difficult at all.

3. Make it possible for customers to register for special bulletins to be sent via text messages to their cellphones. They could restrict it to certain routes and times. That way, the customer will get a message only if the bus is late or if there is something else the customers needs to know. This would be simple and inexpensive.

4. Put wireless Internet access on buses. Combined with buses that are reasonably stable, quiet and comfortable, this would be a huge draw for the downtown commuter crowd. Ideally it would be free, paid for by an ad that would come up on the initial splash screen when the user logged on. This seems simple enough and should pay for itself, but if it doesn't there could always be a small monthly fee. One other caveat: the seats would have to be far enough apart to allow a laptop to be opened. It's hard to use a laptop in tourist class on some airlines because the seats are jammed too closely together to open the screen all the way. Some travelers I know always request an exit aisle seat for that very reason.

5. Thinking very expansively: A web-based ride request system that would allow customers to enter in advance—say 12 hours— where they live, and where they want to go and when they have to be there. The computer thereupon creates routes and schedules to minimize distance and fuel expenditure as well as the walk from the house to the bus stop and then either emails the customer or calls him on the phone with a recorded message, telling him when and where the bus will stop nearest him. Customers who take the bus every day could put in a standing order. To do it right, each bus would be equipped with a GPS device that would direct the driver along the calculated route, which could change each day depending upon demand. The GPS information and the routes could be displayed on the web site to create a dynamic snapshot of the entire transportation system.

An automated dispatching system such as the one I have imagined might make it possible for buses to handle special events, like concerts and entertainments downtown in the evenings, provided that sufficient personnel were available to drive.

The afternoon trip: Instead of the bus we got a City of Jackson minivan with the #11 sign in the window. Hallelujah!! 6 passengers. Smooth and quiet. I could get real used to this.

The trial week is over and according to my intentions I am now to decide whether to ride the bus almost every morning. It's a hard choice. If the buses were smooth and quiet it would be a no-brainer because, setting aside any cost savings, I love not having to drive to work. There is no enjoyment negotiating I-55 between Meadowbrook Road and Pearl Street at 7:45 AM or shortly after 5 PM. My wife tells me that I am in a far better mood when I arrive home by bus rather than automobile. The city is replacing the old buses, so the ride should become a lot more comfortable in a few months, although I suspect that this route will be one of the last to get the new buses, since so few persons ride.

My inclination is to ride the bus, rattles and all. I'll have to drive the car one day a week on the average, especially when I have an appointment during the day or after work. If anyone reading this lives in north Jackson and works downtown, consider taking the bus. With more demand for bus service, the city will be more inclined to upgrade the buses and the frequency of runs.

And for each rider that leaves the car at home, that's one less car polluting the atmosphere, burning up gasoline, and clogging the streets. And you can't even park for ten dollars a week.

Haley Barbour has declared that he doesn't believe in pardons. I haven't heard his reasons, but whatever they may be they can't possibly be morally squared with some incontrovertible facts:

1. Sometimes innocent persons are convicted and sent to prison or execution. No system of justice is perfect. Even a fair system makes mistakes. That's what pardons are intended for. If Barbour truly believes this doesn't happen he is a fool and shouldn't be governor. Apparently he does believe this happens because he joined in the petition to set aside Clyde Kenner's conviction. If he believes that the innocent should rot in prison, then he is morally blind and shouldn't be governor.

2. The strict application of the criminal law often leads to a sentence grossly disproportionate to the seriousness of the crime or the injury. Recidivist sentencing often puts a person in prison for many years for relatively minor crimes, all on the basis of crimes committed many years before. The pardon power was created to correct these mistakes in the interest of justice.

3. Some prisoners deserve mercy, either because of ill health or some extraordinary service rendered either before or during imprisonment.

There are other grounds for pardon, but the point is that the power to pardon was established for the purpose of remedying these injustices. To refuse to pardon for any reason at all is inexcusable. The Good Book has much to say about mercy and how only the merciful are fit to receive mercy. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. " Matt. 5:7 In fact, the Good Book has very little good to say about imprisonment: "... he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;" Isa. 61:1. For such a Christian state, we sure seem to be stingy with mercy and generous with the prison industry.

One last possibility: Barbour himself strongly supports private, for-profit prisons in the state. Pardoning is obviously bad for the prison business.

The Jackson Progressive regularly receives email from the Christian Coalition, that, while we disagree with almost everything the CC advocates, is useful in tracking the latest hot issues among right-wing fundamentalists.

This morning, however, it looks as though the CC suddenly realized what could happen to the Internet if the major telecom corporations got their way with the new telecommunications bill now in Congress. Here's the gist of the message:

Major telecom companies are laying plans to create tiered access to the Internet – and to charge extra fees to consumers and content providers in order to offer select web sites for "fast access" by consumers. Without "Net Neutrality", American consumers who want to pay for fast broadband access to the Internet will find out they don't actually have what they thought they were paying for. They won't have high-speed broadband access to the entire Internet; just the part that the phone and cable companies allow them to see.

The Internet is what it is today because every site, no matter how obscure, is just as accessible to every individual as any name brand site with a multi-million dollar budget. Every American has the opportunity to create their own site and say what they want to the entire world and have the same access to the world as anyone else. And consumers have the ability to connect with them.

Since the inception of the Internet, it has existed on phone lines, which were covered under what are known as "common carrier" regulations, which prevented discrimination, based on content. This principle helped make the Internet what it is today -- a dynamic engine for free expression and economic growth.

Mrs. Combs [CC president] said, "Under the new rules, there is nothing to stop the cable and phone companies from not allowing consumers to have access to speech that they don't support. What if a cable company with a pro-choice Board of Directors decides that it doesn't like a pro-life organization using its high-speed network to encourage pro-life activities? Under the new rules, they could slow down the pro-life web site, harming their ability to communicate with other pro-lifers - and it would be legal. We urge Congress to move aggressively to save the Internet -- and allow ideas rather than money to control what Americans can access on the World Wide Web. We urge all Americans to contact their Congressmen and Senators and tell them to save the Internet and to support 'Net Neutrality'."

Smart folks. They figured out that no one will win but the telecoms if the bill goes through in its current form.

The Internet today is the only mass information-dissiminating medium that is not owned and controlled by a small handful of giant corporations. No one today, no matter how visionary, can predict the changes it will bring about as the entire world plugs into a single knowledge network. It all depends, however, on the Internet remaining open and accessible to everyone at a decent price, which is what net neutrality preserves.

Postscript: Reps. Sensenbrenner and Conyers have introduced a net neutrality bill in Congress. Looks like the mobilization of the netroots is having its effect.

Caught the bus today. The morning bus was the same bag of loose bolts I rode Monday and Tuesday. No change there. The trash bucket and box were still there. Six passengers.

The city in the morning hours actually looks beautiful. Even the plain office buildings downtown take on an attractive hue at eight A.M. One sees a great deal more than when one drives directly from the freeway into a parking garage. The few people on the street are much friendlier than they are at quitting time, too.

The evening bus, about 15 minutes late, was the two-year old bus that was on the afternoon route Tuesday. I was able to read a couple of pages of the Jackson Free Press before succumbing to motion sickness. There were four passengers.

Tomorrow is the last day of the trial.

I arrived at the bus stop too late, so I had to walk home and take the car. Ultimately, it was a good thing, because I had forgotten that I had made an appointment on Lakeland near Airport Road at 5:30 and the bus doesn't go there. The bad thing was that it took thirty minutes in standstill traffic to get from Ridgewood Road to Airport Road, about 3 miles. The entire time I was sitting there, waiting for the traffic to move, I kept asking myself "are we fighting in Iraq for the privilege of doing this?"

Surely the Flowood city fathers don't like a four-mile traffic jam the length of their city. Nobody's buying anything and it pollutes the air. The timing of the traffic lights is abominable. Don't they ever drive on their own streets?

Read an inspiring story in Orion Magazine of how North Dakota farmers succeeded in banning genetically-modified wheat from their state and in doing so visited a humiliating defeat upon a powerful and politically well-connected corporation bent on controlling the world supply of seed. Factoid: John Ashcroft, senator from Missouri before being defeated for reelection by a dead man and elevated to the exalted rank of lord high attorney general, was once known as the senator from Monsanto.

Same bus as yesterday morning, different driver. There were four passengers today. The floor was clean but there was a cardboard box and a plastic bucket behind the passenger seats in the handicapped area, both full of trash.

I had not fully appreciated the dilapidated state of the bus yesterday morning. The aisle seat I first sat on sagged sideways and I had to relocate. The windows clattered as before and the two-way radio seemed to be turned up twice as loud. If I continue having to ride this bus, I'll have to use earplugs or sound-cancelling earbuds.

The afternoon bus was the same type as the morning bus but only two years old according to the driver. The air conditioning was almost too cold, but otherwise the bus was up to snuff. Some of the equipment in the rear for the handicapped was loose and rattled, but overall the noise level was acceptable. It 's hard to understand why they can't fix the noise when all they have to do is tie up some loose belts and fasteners.

The ride was tolerable but not smooth by any measure, especially when we drove over the potholes in front of UMC. A chiropractor's delight.

Impression for day II: It is simply incredible that bus manufacturers have not been able or willing to make urban buses with decent suspension systems. Or is it just that the City of Jackson is too cheap to buy them? A technology that can land a spaceship on Mars and broadcast high-quality pictures back to Earth for months can, if it wishes to, build a comfortable public minibus. If not, it's a great opening for somebody, because the demand for public transit will mushroom in a few years.

The folks in Curitiba, Brazil have done some great things with far less than what we have here in Jackson (.pdf).

I rode the bus to work and back today, the first time in 25 years, partly to see what it was like and partly to see if it was a viable alternative to driving. There is something to be said for public transportation: it's a lot safer and less stressful than negotiating the I-55 grand prix each morning and afternoon. It also gives one time to read, meditate or even socialize with one's fellow passengers, all for a senior fare of fifty cents one-way. At least, that's how I remembered it from the early '80s, when I practiced law downtown. There were usually three or four young lawyers on the bus, along with several clerks from the bankruptcy court and a scattering of office workers from the banks and insurance companies. It made a pleasant crowd. You could talk or you could read, or both. I read The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the way to work and back.

Eventually the law practice required more mobility during the day than public transit offered, so I reluctantly began driving to work and paying for parking (and parking tickets). At one time the city provided a free downtown connector bus with a circular route around the center of town, which I occasionally took if I had the time. On a particularly hot summer day, I remember boarding the bus to find that it had no air conditioning and must have been 105°. How the driver lived through the day is still a mystery.

Today's bus ride would be an exercise in nostalgia. I walked to Ridgewood Road and hailed the Number 11 bus just south of Northside Drive. It was a small bus, the kind one sees carrying seniors around with a lift in the rear for wheelchairs. There were 16 regular seats and 4 more that were folded down but looked as though they could be used. The passenger seats had safety belts. There were only two passengers the whole trip, one of which was myself.

The bus itself had seen better days. It was acceptably clean, however, but the windows needed washing on the outside. A front panel over the window containing a two-way radio and electrical switches was hanging loose and looked as though it might fall off anytime. The fasteners for the windows were broken and the windows rattled whenever the road was bumpy, which, thanks to our shifting soil and the ravages of the climate, was nearly continuous. The shock absorbers had obviously worn out years ago, and the bus pitched and rolled whenever the driver took it over twenty-five. He was a pleasant soul, by the way.

Reading was out of the question because of the pitching and rolling and conversation was impossible because of the noise. I found that I could listen to an audio book on my iPod by turning up the volume.

The bus arrived at the corner of Amite and Lamar at the scheduled time, 7:45, time to walk to the office and make a pot of coffee before anyone else made it in.

Promptly at 5:15, the Number 11 bus crossed Lamar Street going east on Capitol. I had to wave it down; apparently the driver didn't expect many passengers.

It was a larger bus, with about 25 seats. I sat just behind the side door over one of the rear wheels, mainly to inspect the bus and its passengers during the trip. Normally, the closer to the front, the smoother and quieter the ride, since the diesel engine that powers the bus is under the rear seat. This bus was not as clean and spiffy as the morning bus, but I attribute that to the time of day, since this was the last outward run for this route. The floors had accumulated quite a bit of litter and, like the morning bus, the windows needed washing. The air conditioning was on and the bus was comfortably cool, but I could smell the familiar faint odor of diesel exhaust where I was sitting.

The ride was smoother than the morning ride, probably because it was a larger bus. There were five passengers, including me. One of them boarded at UMC.

In spite of the smoother ride the afternoon bus was far worse than the morning ride because of the noise. The roar of the motor was bad enough, but the really obnoxious sounds were coming from the two-way radio in the front that the bus system uses for communications. It screeched incessantly and unintelligibly the entire trip. The iPod was useless, because it hurt my ears if I turned it up enough to hear over the ambient noise.

My initial impression of the JATRAN is not favorable, as you can see, but many of the unpleasantries I encountered could be solved by adequate maintenance. I suspect that the city has been reluctant to properly fund a bus system with as little passenger traffic as I saw today. Without more comfortable buses, however, it will be hard to attract passengers even if gas sells for $10.00 a gallon. I live about six miles from work, so walking to work every day is out of the question, but the commute would take less than half an hour by bicycle.

What to do? The first step would be for the mayor and members of the city council to ride the buses themselves to see just what a sorry system we now have. Of course, the ideal measure would be to require council members to ride the bus from their homes to all city council meetings and the mayor to ride the bus every day to his office. That would lead to immediate action. We know that won't happen, though, since the city counsel would have to enact such a ordinance. But it's fun to imagine.

Planning, establishing and maintaining a decent public transportation system in these times is a visionary undertaking, and it is unrealistic to expect vision out of our city government. Not only is the municipal form of government structured to defeat visionary undertakings but the persons we have elected to positions of responsibility are outstanding only in their lack of imagination in anticipating and meeting long-range problems. This is not to say these are bad or unintelligent people; the system doesn't reward this kind of thinking, so it is unrealistic to expect especially creative and imaginative persons to seek political office.

Jackson, as much as any city its size, depends almost completely on the motorcar to make it work. In the near future, the rise in gas prices will harm this city and its citizens in ways that we can only begin to imagine. It is not alarmist to predict than there will shortly come a time when many working people will be forced to choose between gas for their car and food for their children, because they can't get to work any other way. The inevitability of a peak and decline in world oil production takes little imagination, however, but solving the problems that will result from that decline will take a great deal of imagination. An efficient public transit system is only a tiny but essential part of the solution.

If reality of the coming energy crisis has not penetrated city hall's consciousness it is up to the rest of us to administer reality therapy and to use our collective abilities to imagine an energy-scarce but livable world. If enough of us demand change, then there will be change. It will not come easily because all change, no matter how beneficial, generally costs someone who profits from the status quo. Political beliefs tend to follow the wallet.

The accumulating evidence this time is compelling, though; if we do not immediately begin reducing our dependence on cheap energy, everyone will lose. The free market be damned. This crisis will not automatically adjust itself unless we are prepared to see mass suffering and even mass starvation as the four horsemen balance supply and demand using their own grisly methods.

The good news is that there is still time to avert the ride of the four horsemen. We simply must decide to do it.

The Nation recently ran an article about the notorious killing of four mercenaries and the mistreatment of their bodies in Falluja on March 31, 2004 and provides an ugly insight into the workings of Blackwater USA, a North Carolina private security company that managed to land some lucrative contracts with the occupation authorities in Iraq. The article also provides a handy primer on how each level of subcontractor manages to skim money from the system by inflating prices and skimping on essentials. In the case of the four mercenaries, the contract to provide security for the shipment of kitchen equipment to occupation forces was altered by Blackwater management to eliminate the requirement that the vehicles used in the operation be armored. As a result, the local sunni guerrillas were able to walk up to the Blackwater vehicle and dispatch its occupants with small firearms. The family of Scott Helvenston, one of the four, has filed a lawsuit against Blackwater and I would hope that the discovery process will give us a better view into the unholy business of war profiteering.

Read the article: Blood is Thicker than Blackwater

In going through some of the JP Yugoslavia archives this evening, I came across a speech by Svend Robinson made on June 13, 2000 before the Canadian Parliament regarding the NATO bombing of Serbia and Kosovo. Since Clark is a possible candidate for the presidency in 2008, Robinson's speech is relevant in evaluating his qualifications and character.

When I joined the Air Force in the spring of 1968 and reported for OTS, I was a bitter young man, forced to withdraw from graduate school in the middle of a semester by the certainty of being drafted in the summer and to abandon my aspirations to an academic career in mathematics. That was before the draft was abolished and even before the lottery, which introduced an element of evenhandedness into what seemed before to be a purely arbitrary selection process.

To the jaundiced eye of this middle-aged veteran it now looks as though the lottery itself forced the end of the draft, as the sons of the influential and well-connected found it more difficult to avoid conscription. (This, of course, did not apply to certain Texan well-connected families). Once in the military and having survived the ordeal of Officers Training School, the debate over the draft became more and more personally irrelevant, so when the draft was finally ended, I thought little of the long-range effects that an all-volunteer force might have on our future.

It was a mistake, I now believe, to end the draft. In military matters there is a fine line between "professional" and "mercenary." The former is a highly trained citizen-soldier, loyal to the Constitution and devoted to protecting the republic. The latter is a hired killer, loyal only to his paymaster and devoted only to protecting the interests of his employer. A professional army of citizen-soldiers constitutes a powerful defense for a democratic republic. It is mostly a shield, although at times it can be an awesome sword. A mercenary army, having no connectedness to the people and beholden only to a king, dictator, or party that writes their paychecks, is usually the instrument of tyranny. It is a shield for rulers and a sword to everyone else. History is full of Praetorian Guards and private armies, who, identifying only with their rulers, ultimately became a law unto themselves.

Implicit in a citizen-army, especially one in which most of the officers come from the ranks of the commoners, is the threat that it will refuse to obey a tyrant; that it will refuse to acquiesce in the dismantling of the republic or allow itself to be used against its fellow-citizens. Most importantly for us is the possibility that it will refuse to engage in an unprovoked war of aggression.

Vietnam was the tipping point. It then became obvious to the power elites that the great game could not be played with an army conscripted from educated, well-informed citizens with decent employment prospects. The elite solution was to end conscription and raise military pay. The buzzphrase was "professonal military." The problem with such a solution was that the average educated, well-informed citizen with decent employment prospects was still a difficult, it not impossible, sell for a military intended to be used in imperialistic pursuits.

The solution? Reduce the number of educated, well-informed citizens with decent employment prospects. This program began in earnest when Reagan became president. Is it necessary to point out all the seemingly insignificant measures the Reagan administration took to implement this program? Let me point out just a few.

Educated: Higher education began to grow far more expensive as federal aid to colleges and universities waned, especially in the liberal arts. The educational economy moved from grants to government-guaranteed loans, thus saddling students with crushing debt burdens upon graduation. When I graduated from law school in 1978, my entire educational debt amounted to $2,000 in deferred undergraduate loans. Today, it is not unusual for law students to owe $125,000 in variable interest rate student loans when they graduate, a powerful deterrent to public-interest careers, where modest salaries are inadequate to repay the debt and live a decent life.

Well-informed: Prior to the Reagan administration, the FCC required broadcasters, in return for the privilege of using the public airwaves, to give equivalent time to opposing viewpoints. The "Fairness Doctrine" was abolished by the Republican-controlled FCC in 1987, and ushered in the era of right-wing talk shows that were able to spew their venom far and wide without being challenged. Limbaugh and Savage are two particularly vicious examples that would not have lasted a day had they been exposed to intelligent opposition on their shows, or even on adjacent timeslots.

Decent employment prospects: The Reagan administration's relentless war against labor unions, together with its successors' encouragement of labor outsourcing under the guise of free trade has destroyed job security for all but the very rich, who don't need a job, anyway. Even highly-educated and skilled workers cannot compete with foreign workers brought to this country under special work programs.

The result: more recruits, desperate for a job, hoping to get an education from the G.I. Bill.

Another result: the increasing use of mercenaries instead of our armed forces. Iraq is swarming with heavily-armed mercenaries with little or no oversight, and paid exorbitantly by the American taxpayer.

More ominous: New Orleans after Katrina is swarming with heavily-armed men, apparently deputized to keep order, but who do pretty much what they want to with no accountability whatever. The National Guard couldn't do the job because a great part of it was in Iraq. I personally think that using soldiers of fortune to keep order in an American city is an outrage and a prelude to a police state.

What can be done? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this one out. The processes outlined above are reversible, given the political will.