Friday, May 30, 2008

$4 Gas

Unlike other Americans, Texans are accustomed to seeing high oil prices as a good thing. Historically, enough of us have had oil under our land, worked in the oil business, or sold things to people who worked in the oil business, that we tended to see to see every uptick in the price of a barrel of West Texas crude as another dollar in our pocket. During the oil bust of the early 80s, bumper stickers on Texans' pick-ups prayed plaintively, "Lord, please bring back $30 oil. I promise I won't piss it away this time." Back in 1990, when Poppy Bush was getting ready to go to war against Saddam Hussein the first time, a number of us were heard to mutter under our breaths that we weren't sure why it was in Texas's interest to fight a war to lower the price of oil.

However, the current surge in oil prices has been a little different. In the decades since the last oil boom, Texas oil fields have played out, the Texas economy has diversified, and Texas suburbs have sprawled further and further. As a result, more Texans see the current run-up in petroleum prices through the lens of the higher gas prices they pay at the pump, the same way their fellow Americans do. I, however, think that $4 gas is a good thing.

Americans have been exhorted to conserve oil since the OPEC oil boycott of the 70s, to no avail. We've continued to commute from more distant subdivisions in more gigantic vehicles. But this price surge seems to be getting folks' attention. The buses are more crowded. More bikes are on the streets. The state agency I work for is allowing more of us to work from home. People seem to actually be changing the way they live. A change this big will be difficult, but I think that $4 gas is starting to make it happen.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Two-Wheeled Politics III

One of the common complaints that car drivers have about bike riders is that cyclists "disobey traffic rules". This is true, of course. It is also true that drivers and pedestrians violate traffic laws, but nobody seems to write letters to the editor waxing indignant about speeders on Interstate 35 or jaywalkers on 4th Street. So why does the issue of cyclists compliance with traffic regulations loom so large in motorists' responses to bicycle riders?

One reason that cyclists violate traffic laws is that the rules of the road are basically designed for motor vehicles and therefore make much less sense when applied to bicycles. A cyclist approaching a 4-way stop sign at 10 miles an hour has much more time to make sure that the way is clear than does a car that's going 40 mph. In my experience, some maneuvers are safer for all concerned when carried out "illegally." For example, at some intersections on my commuting route, it is clearly safer for me to go through an intersection against a red light when there is no traffic in the cross street and I have a lane all to myself (because the car next to me is stopped for the red light) than it is to start off from a stop while sharing a lane with a car to my left. Indeed, at least one state has modified its traffic regulations (pdf) to take into account the intrinsic differences between motorized and pedal-powered vehicles. In any event, a 200-lb. cyclist, even one who runs stop signs, represents much less of a danger to others than a two-ton sedan, no matter how carefully the car is operated.

But what really bugs me about the constant refrain about bikes and traffic laws is that it is typically trotted out in reponse to arguments to which it is absolutely irrelevant:

"Bikes are non-polluting."
"Yeah, but I saw a bike run a stop sign on my way to work this morning."

"Riding a bike is good exercise."
"But why do you always see them riding the wrong way on one-way streets?"

"We really need to take some serious measures to encourage people to ride bikes."
"You know those crazy cyclists are just a bunch of scoff-laws!"

Cut it out! If you want to make a serious argument against bikes as transportation, make it! If you just think riding a bike sounds too much like work, say so. If you think that riding a bike is just not cool enough for you, ok. But stop claiming to be shocked by traffic violations!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Hard Working White Americans

Hillary Clinton's recent remark that she has the support of "hard working Americans, white Americans," is probably the first time since May 15, 1972 that a candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination explicitly claimed to be running on behalf of white people.

Of course, Clinton would deny that her campaign has any similarity to George Wallace's. Her remark, she claims, was simply an attempt to point out to her fellow Democrats (and more particularly the party's "super delegates") a gap in Barack Obama's electoral coalition and to argue that she is more "electable."

Whatever her reasons, I can't help but see Clinton's remark as a step backward for the party and the country. After all, Lyndon Johnson, the most accomplished political realist ever to hold the office of president, willingly gave up the Southern white vote that had long been part of the Democrats' coalition in order to pass the civil rights acts of the 1960s. He did it because it was the right thing to do. To raise the flag of white resentment in 2008 in a mainstream political campaign only points out how much our political discourse has deteriorated in recent decades.

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Apostasy

On Monday the New York Times published a really slimy op-ed by Edward Luttwak, a military historian, in which he argues that, under Islamic law, Barack Obama, as the son of a father who left Islam, is himself regarded as an apostate and is, therefore, a pariah in the Muslim world. His ostensible purpose in discussing this matter is to counter the argument made by many Obama supporters (including the TBC) that Obama's status as the son of a Kenyan immigrant would help him repair the Bush-inflicted damage on the United States' reputation in the Islamic world and the Third World generally. Its real purpose is to reinforce, under a legitimate guise, the whispering campaign that Obama is a Muslim.

Luttwak's argument reminded me of the arguments made against a Catholic president back when Kennedy was running: "The papal bull of 1876 says that Catholics must do whatever the pope says, therefore Senator Kennedy as President would transfer the gold in Fort Knox to the Vatican," ignoring the fact that Kennedy was a pragmatic American politician who simply did not take his religion all that seriously. Similarly, Luttwak seems to assume that, because some Muslim religious text urges the punishment of apostates unto the last generation, the world's Muslims, faced with President Obama, will, instead of thanking Allah that the Americans have come their senses and elected a president who is not a trigger-happy fool, launch a fatwa against him because his grandfather, whom he never met, may have practiced Islam. Does that make any sense in the real world?

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Two-Wheeled Politics II

Saturday, May 10, was Election Day for the Austin City Council. I voted for the three candidates endorsed by the League of Bicycle Voters. They all lost--even the incumbent, Jennifer Kim! I guess bicycle politics has a way to go here!

Monday, May 12, 2008

True Love

Much has been made recently of Barack Obama's patriotism or lack thereof. The flag pin issue is the one most obviously about patriotism, but many of the other "electability" attacks are, at bottom, a suggestion that Obama doesn't really love America. After all, he's got a funny name, his preacher asks God to "damn America," he went to school at a "madrassa" in Indonesia, and he doesn't put his hand over his heart during the national anthem. Seems to be a common thread here!

At first glance, it takes a lot of gall for anyone who has ever supported George W. Bush or Bill Clinton to attack anyones patriotism. After all, by the classical measure of patriotism--the willingness to die in battle for ones country--our last 2 presidents, who actively avoided combat while young, are certifiably unpatriotic. However, the folks worrying about Obama's patriotism seem oblivious to this irony.

So is the Obama patriotism issue just a cynical maneuver by opposing political campaigns? While it's certainly true that the political operatives are using this issue, in order to work, the issue has to resonate with real voters. So why is Obama vulnerable to this attack?

At the risk of being accused of "playing the race card," I'd say that the basic source of concerns about Obama's patriotism is white guilt. White people know, whether they acknowledge it or not, that African Americans have a long list of legitimate historical grievances against white America. They find it hard to believe, therefore, that blacks can love America in the same sense that whites do, notwithstanding the fact that blacks have lived in this land for 400 years and died in her service since before the United States was born. In other words, some whites feel like, "if somebody had treated me like we've treated them, I wouldn't love them."

I suspect that the patriotism issue will not go away during the general election campaign. The Obama campaign is addressing it by, essentially, affirming his patriotism, which is probably the only way to go in that context. But individual Obama supporters can and should, I think, confront friends and family members with the source of this concern in America's racial history.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Ruffian

I'm not an animal lover, at least not in the sense that the term is used among the American middle class these days. I'm not an animal hater either--I've had pets and I love them, but I don't feel about animals the way many of my fellow citizens seem to these days. I've never paid a thousand-dollar vet bill. I've never stayed awake at night because my brother, the dairy farmer, sends his dry cows and bull calves to the slaughterhouse. Indeed, I've never been a vegetarian, even for a day. As I write this post, I am simmering a stew composed primarily of the cubed leg muscle of an adolescent sheep who met its untimely end just a few miles from where I live.

So I'm not an animal lover. But this morning, when I opened the Sunday paper and saw that Eight Belles, the filly who placed in these year's Kentucky Derby, had broken down at the finish line and been put down right there on the track, I teared up. I cried partly because thoroughbreds are beautiful animals who deserve better than to die for our amusement, but mostly I cried because I remembered the day, more than 30 years ago, when I mourned the death of a thoroughbred filly whom I had never even seen.

In 1975, Ruffian was the outstanding 3-year-old female race horse in the United States. She had won the Triple Crown for fillies and, in the era of second-wave feminism and Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis matches, it was inevitable that somebody would decide that a buck was to me made by racing her against the year's outstanding colt, Foolish Pleasure, the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

The match race was held at Belmont Park on July 6, 1975. That summer, I was a 25-year-old law student doing a summer internship in Chicago and living near the lake. I remember driving through the green, elm-lined streets of Evanston, listening to the race on the radio. When Ruffian broke her leg a half mile into the race, I broke down bawling. I was crying so hard that I had to pull over to the side of Dempster Avenue, so that I didn't run my car into one of the beautiful old trees that were dying of Dutch Elm disease.

A few weeks later, I left my internship early to drive to California where my father was waiting for my arrival so that he could die. Maybe that's why I cried for Ruffian and maybe that's why I cried this morning for another horse whom I had never met.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

College Education

Since we didn't have a popular uprising after the judicial coup of 2000, the least we could have done would have been to abolish the electoral college, that bizarre remnant of the 18th century which gave Florida's hanging chads their determinative power in the first place and ultimately allowed the Gang of Five to award the White House to the guy who lost the election to Al Gore.

The framers of the Constitution believed that the best protection against tyranny was the separation of powers, the division of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of the government. However, the executives with whom the framers were familiar were hereditary monarchs, chosen by their pedigree; the problem of selecting an executive by non-genetic mechanisms was a perplexing one. The suggestion that the President be chosen by national popular vote was rejected. In a society in which the vote in local elections was restricted to white men of property, this was deemed way too democratic. Instead, they invented the electoral college.

The formal structure of the EC is impressively complex. Each state legislature selects a slate of electors in a number equal to the total number of representatives and senators that the state sends to the U.S. Congress. The college elects the president and vice president, with a majority vote required for election. As originally designed, the person who came in second in the electoral college vote became vice-president. Although these days the college is described as giving an advantage to small states (because of the additional 2 votes that each state gets regardless of population), the important (and intended) consequence of the system in 1787 was that it gave disproportionate power to slave states because it incorporated into the presidential election the three-fifths rule which counted 60% of non-voting slaves in calculating the number of representives in Congress each state was entitled to. Similarly, it protected those states in which white men's right to vote was more restricted by property qualifications.

Apparently, the members of the Constitutional Convention imagined that the EC would be a quadrennial convocation of the country's natural aristocracy (i.e., rich white guys like them) who would choose one of their number to serve as a temporary king, with their second favorite to become the vice-president, the heir apparent. They did not contemplate political parties, presidential campaigns, multi-million-dollar campaign chests, primary elections, or poll-guided pandering, all the hallmarks of our modern presidential selection "system." The framers' fantasy lasted for the two presidential elections in which George Washington was elected unanimously. By 1796, when it was time to select Washington's successor, there were two political parties and the dream of the college as a republican version of the Privy Council was over.

For most of the last 200 years, the EC has functioned like it does now. Two major parties compete for popular votes in the states, each of whose electors are awarded, winner-take-all, to the candidate who wins the popular vote of the state. It is the winner-take-all aspect of this system which creates the biggest possibility for electing a president who loses the popular vote, a situation which has actually occurred at least 4 times in American history, most recently in 2000.

In the 21st century, when the democratic principle of popular sovereignty is universally accepted as the fundamental basis for political legitimacy, it is hard to imagine how anyone can defend an election system that allows the loser of the national popular vote to take office as president. After all, when every other office in the country is filled by the candidate who gets the most votes, why should the highest office in the land be subject to a system which sometimes allows the person with the smaller number of votes to win? The usual defense of the college is that it protects small states from being trampled by their bigger sisters, (This argument is made in particularly impenetrable fashion in this 2000 N.Y. Times editorial. The Times has since changed its mind.), but this argument is idiotic. It may be consistent with democratic principles to protect minorities by allowing them to block small majorities from taking certain actions, i.e., amending the constitution or overriding a presidential veto, but it how in hell can anyone justify "protecting" the minority by allowing it to elect the president? What about the majority's rights?

Anyway, small states do not really receive much benefit from the EC as currently constituted. The states that benefit from the system these days are the swing states. Small states like Idaho and Vermont, adjudged safely in the camp of one party, are ignored, while large swing states like Pennsylvania are courted assiduously and pandered to shamelessly. In a national popular election, without the distorting of the effect of the electoral college, every vote would be equally valuable and equally sought after by a rational candidate, no matter how deeply embedded it was among "red" or "blue" neighbors.

Of course, the problems with our presidential election system are recognized whenever it manages to defeat the popular will or comes close to doing so. It hasn't been changed because amending the constitution is extremely difficult; there are enough players who are advantaged by the current system to block an amendment. Recently, however, some smart folks have figured out a way to effectively abolish the EC by individual state legislative action. It's called "National Popular Vote" and it will go into effect once its been enacted by states having a majority of the electoral votes (270). So far 4 states (with 50 electoral votes) have enacted the law. (Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed it in California.) So, tell your state representatives to support the National Popular Vote in your state. Tell them its time that the United States caught up with democratic countries like South Africa when it comes to "One (Hu)man, One Vote!"

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Two-Wheeled Politics

I was only 9 years old when I was introduced to the idea of bicycling as liberation. My family moved to a new house about 4 miles from the house I had grown up in. Playmates were scarce in the new neighborhood, so I began riding my bike back to the old neighborhood to hang out on weekends and during the summer. Quickly, I understood the fact that my bike gave me the freedom to escape from my parents' supervision years before I was old enough to drive. By the time I was in my early teens, my friends and I were taking long "bike hikes" to local points of interest, delighting in the fact that we were able to escape the parental sphere of influence merely by pedaling the 13 miles to Valley Forge Park.

The summer before my sophomore year in high school, we moved to a refinery town in Texas. The terrain was absolutely flat, favoring bike travel, but, in August, at least, the Turkish bath-like climate deterred it. Nonetheless, when school opened in September I jumped on my bike to ride to school, only to discover that all of my classmates had obtained their driver's licenses the previous summer and would rather be dead than be seen riding a bicycle! Despite the fact that I was the one of only two people riding to school in a student body of almost 3000, I persisted in my two-wheeled commute the entire school year--my first experience with bicycling as rebellion! However, my non-conformity had limits; at the beginning of junior year I got my own driver's license and put the bike back in the garage.

In the years that followed, my biking was sporadic. Most notably, my student years in Austin began during the first OPEC oil boycott--I saved gas and avoided the on-campus parking problem by bike commuting. On leaving Austin for Houston, however, my biking fell to near zero. While Houston's topography favors pedal power, its traffic patterns are wholly auto-centric.

In the early part of this decade, my daughter, then a college student in New York, told me that some of her friends were engaging in mass bike rides in which they would take over the city streets, ignoring traffic signals and flowing through Manhattan like a force of nature. She seemed to view these rides as being, somehow, political, but I confess that I couldn't really understand the content of the politics.

Last year, a few months after moving to Austin, I bought a bicycle and began bike commuting. My motive for doing so was vaguely green, but, mostly, I was looking for a way to force myself to exercise. However, once I hit the streets on my bike, I soon realized that there is a war going on between drivers and bikers, a war that is simultaneously ideological, territorial, and cultural. In the decades since I had last biked, the motor vehicles, like the American empire, had grown larger and more hegemonic. At the same time, the downside of America's auto culture had become more obvious; global warming and a failed war for Iraqi oil were merely two sides of the coin first minted in Detroit. Given, this state of conflict, everyday encounters on the streets of Austin took on new significance--that guy in the Escalade who pulled out in front of me like I wasn't even there wasn't just a dangerous driver, he was trying to stop me from saving the planet!

Last October, I decided to ride with Critical Mass, a worldwide movement of anarcho-cyclists that stage monthly mass rides. (My daughter's friends in New York were part of CM). I loved it! After only a few months of bike commuting, I understood intuitively that the act of bikes taking over the streets was political, and so did the drivers whose commutes we disrupted. It was the most organic demonstration I had ever been a part of--the medium was the message!

This spring, I participated in a more conventional sort of bike politics when I attended a candidate forum sponsored by the Austin League of Bicycle Voters. More than 100 Austinites showed up to grill candidates for city council about how they planned to incorporate the bicycle as serious transportation into the city's plans for the 21st century. Some of the candidates seemed to actually get it, and I could see that the politicians were impressed by the turn-out.

So, I guess I'm a born-again bicyclist. Better that than other conversion experiences. At least, it doesn't require me to give up my vices or talk to imaginary beings.