'A pen warmed up in hell' | Reality-based commentary about Phoenix, Arizona, and the nation.
143On May 1, 1971, the private railroads ceased passenger service and it was taken over by Amtrak, the government-owned National Railroad Passenger Corporation. Dozens of trains that ran on April 30th ceased to exist. Hundreds of cities lost their trains. What remained is largely the bare-bones operation, outside of the Northeast Corridor, that still exists today. This even though the nation has added 100 million people, become much more densely populated, and oil prices will make the car- and airline-based future seen as inevitable in 1971 increasingly difficult to sustain.
Amtrak was created because of a massive grassroots campaign. It was also an effort to help save the bankrupt Penn-Central and the freight railroads in general. But it was also born in sin as a deeply flawed political compromise, dependent on a federal subsidy that few lawmakers would or will admit is necessary, and a political plaything depending on who controls Congress and the White House. Something had to be done. Whether Amtrak was the answer is open to debate. America once enjoyed the best and fastest passenger rail system in the world. It was killed by automobiles and airlines that were heavily subsidized by the federal government (and continue to be), even as the private railroads were taxed and regulated heavily. Nor were the externalities priced in: Pollution, energy consumption and the resulting geopolitical instability, sprawl and its environmental consequences, etc. After spending heavily on new streamliners after World War II, railroads saw passenger business steadily fall off to this subsidized competition. Some fought on with top-notch service, notable the Santa Fe. Others couldn't wait to kill their trains, notoriously the Southern Pacific.
Both served Phoenix in the 1960s. The Santa Fe ran a classy little train from Union Station to Williams Junction, where it connected with the road's premier transcontinental streamliners, including the Super Chief, El Capitan, Chief, San Francisco Chief and Grand Canyon Limited. The SP operated three trains in each direction until the mid-1960s: the crack Sunset Limited, the Golden State and the remnant of the once grand Imperial. By 1970, only the Sunset survived, a raggedy thing that usually had a couple of coaches and a vending-machine car (a decade before, the Sunset routinely had 14 cars, including sleepers and full-service diner). Cities such as Cincinnati and St. Louis had dozens of trains, right up to the eve of Amtrak. After Amtrak, cities usually had one train, often at inconvenient hours (Phoenix had service until the mid-1990s, when the state government refused to help upgrade the northern main line of the SP).
23
21
11
31
1Having business in Phoenix that I was in no hurry to begin, we took the back roads from Seattle. My preference is to take the train, but a funding-starved Amtrak doesn't even go to the nation's fifth most populous city (and Amtrak will probably be killed by the Republicans, should they gain control of Congress). The drive might recall the days when motoring was pleasant, synonymous with freedom in a big country. It might reveal the West as it was when I was younger, before the millions of newcomers, exurban sprawl and Interstate sameness.
Considering timing and the route I wanted, the Interstate couldn't be avoided from Seattle to the Oregon border. Even so, it was showcased the variety of Washington state, particularly the bountiful farmland east of the Cascades and running down to Yakima and Walla Walla. The contrast with Arizona, which is all about attracting new house buyers, could not have been more striking. But the true drive began where U.S. 395 hits Pendleton, Oregon, just below the storied Columbia River.
Pendleton is the kind of real small town that has been largely lost in America, leaving either wealthy yupped-up towns that are imitations of small towns, or, more frequently, places hollowed out by Wal-Mart and de-industrialization, leaving ghost Main Streets and grotesque boxes of fast food and Wally hulking out "by the highway." Downtown Pendleton is blessed with real local shops such as an office supply store (!) that actually serve local customers, as well as a mission for the needy, government buildings, offices, churches, restaurants. They occupy a century's worth of architure, but most of it pleasingly historic and densely close together. Real neighborhoods are nearby. The Union Pacific main line to Portland goes through the heart of town — it serves the agricultural economy, and once had passenger trains before one of many Amtrak cutbacks. Taken together, the downtown is a delight of scale, walkability and beauty.
18A new poll on Talking Points Memo finds that 55 percent of likely voters believe President Obama is a "socialist." That's rich on a couple of levels. First, if Mr. Obama were a real social democrat we'd have universal, single-payer health care, a major program to rebuild our nationwide rail system, superior public schools and affordable or free (real) universities, a comprehensive social-safety net and an appropriate tax on the rich and corporations. That we don't says the president is a Clintonian corporatist at best, and millions who voted for change are disappointed and not likely voters. The second laff riot is that these morons polled don't even know what socialism is — and yet, as Arizona can teach the nation — morons vote, feverishly.
"Economic freedom" is code for…what exactly? A selfish nation of dolts that thinks roads and sewage plants are made by elves in the middle of the night, and thus the dolts shouldn't have to pay taxes? Never mind that America pays some of the lowest tax rates in the industrialized world, most major corporations pay none, and we suffer infrastructure, competitive, social and state budget crises as a result. Does it mean you should be allowed to build a toxic waste dump in your backyard — even though you would be the first to report your neighbor's unauthorized paint scheme to the homeowners' association? Economic freedom is the gibberish of the uneducated, the selfish, and aggrieved, all indoctrinated by the ubiquitous Fox "News" and white-right talk radio. Yet it is the phrase of the moment and people mouth it, along with their gun lust, theocracy and hatred of "the other" like 1930s Germans saying "Kinder, Kuche und Kirche!" or "Drang nach Osten!"
As a "socialist," taking away our "economic freedom," Mr. Obama shows his hatred for that sacred American concept, "the Free Market." What does that mean? In the elegant world of theory, it implies that given maximum freedom, human action in the marketplace will produce superior results to any kind of command economy or "industrial policy." Price signals tell producers what customers want and employees where the jobs are. Competition keeps new ideas, products and services coming. The "invisible hand" — Adam Smith uses the phrase only once, and narrowly, in The Wealth of Nations — presides over this mysteriously and effectively but…well, you don't mess with the hand. The theory has been relentlessly pushed down and dumbed down over 30 years so that perhaps a majority believe it as an article of faith. Or better. C.S. Lewis wrote of Christianity something to the effect that "it's just screwy sounding enough to be true." Free market church-goers have a completely closed-loop "proven reality."
10UC Berkeley economist Brad DeLong has a running feature on his blog called, "Why, oh why, can't we have a better press corps?" Amen, brother. But even the best newspapers have blind spots, and that has especially unfortunate consequences when those dark zones concern some of the biggest issues of the day. The New York Times is already terrified of climate-change stories and won't plumb seriously into the soft empire we've created and its crushing costs. One of its biggest deficiencies is coverage of energy, especially the oil industry. Hence, we were served a story on Sunday about peak oil that failed to define the term and consigned the people in the story to the survivalist fringe. This from a newspaper that also publishes a deferential story about the retrograde nihilist Rand Paul and shrinks from nailing the tea party for its racist supporters, incoherent positions and — especially — shadow control by big corporate money.
Peak oil doesn't mean "we're about to run out of oil." Even defining it as "demand outstripping supply" is incomplete. Peak oil means the world has reached a point where half of the planet's oil has been burned up (see, "climate change"). The remainder will be increasingly hard to reach and more expensive to refine. America hit its national peak in the early 1970s. The North Sea has passed peak. Several of the world's giant "elephant fields" are near or past peak. This is a simple fact of geology about which there's no disagreement among most experts (the outlier: the oft-quoted and highly-paid-by-industry Daniel Yergin). Peak oil was being used in ads by major oil companies and speeches by their CEOs in the mid-2000s. As with climate change, the debate is over details; in this case, when will peak hit and what will be its effects?
Not for nothing did America fare well in World War II because it was a petro superpower and the world's leading oil exporter. Neither Hitler nor the Japanese Empire had much in the way of oil resources. Hitler failed to make the Caucasus oilfields an immediate priority in his attack on the Soviet Union, a geopolitical example of when cops say, "Thank god for stupid criminals." Now, more than three decades after hitting peak, America still produces oil, especially in Texas, Alaska, California and Louisiana. We're even still one of the world's larger oil producers, but that is way outstripped by our appetite.
22
24As regular newspaper readers have waned, more people are confused about what I do, both in my day job and on this blog. Clark Hoyt, public editor of The New York Times talks to the newspapers' op-ed editor to offer this a useful primer:
The license and responsibilities of an Op-Ed columnist…are similar in some fundamental ways to those of a news
reporter but profoundly different in other ways.First, the similarities. A columnist is subject to the same
standards of factual accuracy as any writer in The Times, on any page.
If a columnist writes that something happened on a certain date, or
that the government spent a certain amount of money on something, or
that a specific number of people have died in the war in Iraq, to pick
a few examples, it is his or her responsibility to make certain that
information is correct. Columnists must make sure that when they
describe an event they are being accurate in their description. When
they quote someone, they are required to do so accurately. Errors that
are made must be corrected openly and quickly.
1When you think about the prison-like atmosphere in which we're forced to travel — lacking the high-speed rail transforming the advanced nations of the world — and the five-mile-high coffins in which we're locked for a cramped, nasty trip, who can argue with the punishments already meted out and yet to come for two Northwest Airlines pilots? They flew 150 miles past Minneapolis while distracted by their laptop computers. On second and third glance, they represent much more than two jokers in the cockpit.
Am I the only one who thinks America is much like these pilots? Off-course, befuddled by the latest merger and its consequences, living in a world where your pay has been cut in half already, enchanted by technology and believing it can save you (those laptops — or the electric car), while the airship cruises along, on autopilot, past its destination. The difference is that America is not going to get a call from the flight attendant asking "what the hell is happening?" We're so adept at ignoring such questions even if they were to arise.
Delta and Northwest is a merger that never should have happened. It hasn't lessened the airlines' financial troubles — for no transportation system really "pays for itself" (so why the hell do we expect that from Amtrak?). It has taken away one more competitor, consolidated an industry even further — which means not only fewer choices and jobs, but fewer competitive ideas. Consider, for example that we are some 40 years into the era of widespread use of "jetways" to board aircraft — and yet there's still only one way on or off, adding much time to boarding. That's what happens with groupthink. These cartelized airlines send much of the maintenance work to Third World countries, where managers order the cheapest fixes to airplanes, whether they are safe or not. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been eliminated. All to appease the free-market gods. And the wayward pilots will be appropriately punished, banged down so hard they will have a hard time getting a minimum-wage job at the local Lowe's. And its two more jobs that Delta can check off its list, throwing the two into the worst labor market since the Great Depression. Christian America loves Old Testament retribution.
3What does Goldman Sachs do, exactly? How does it make its money?
You can and should read Matt Taibbi's take on the investment bank, but let me simplify. These days, Goldman Sachs makes money by moving money from Spot A to Spot B to Spot C, all across the securities world, and at every point skimming something off the top. It creates and trades securities so complex that they are incomprehensible to the leading minds on Wall Street; these derivatives are ultimately worth no more than Confederate money and pose continuing systemic risk to the economy. But while the band plays on, Goldman makes its fees. With the general economy still deeply wounded, the firm made $12 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter for a profit of $3 billion. Goldman has so far set aside $16 billion — that's with a B — for executive bonuses. Of course all this has been made possible by the massive taxpayer rescue of a financial system whose collapse Goldman helped create, along with the Fed's zero interest rates and opaque lending "facilities" that have been a gift to Wall Street.
Something is so sick in America. The "healthy" sector of the economy makes nothing at all. Gone are the days when the capital markets were primarily concerned with marshaling capital to fund productive work. They now make money off of money in a colossal Ponzi scheme that cannot have a good ending. Take the case of Simmons Bedding, being forced into bankruptcy after being flipped seven times by private equity hucksters. Each deal was done with borrowed money. Each new owner would try to squeeze more out of the company. The long-term health of the company was sacrificed for short-term profits that went to a few. Top executives were lavishly compensated while average worker wages stagnated. Now a thousand Simmons workers and counting have lost their jobs. This has been happened at thousands of companies across the economy for years. And the cause was not merely private equity or neo-Michael Milkens — it is the way the markets work now.
8"Cincinnati USA" is the cloying marketing term one sees around the airport. It also recognizes not only that the Cincinnati metro area stretches into northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana, but that sprawl has taken its toll on the famous city in Ohio. This is a slow-growing metro in slow-growing states, but the city gained 0.3 percent population from 2000 to 2006, while suburban Butler County grew 8.4 percent and northern Kentucky's Boone County added 34 percent (through 2008). In 1900, Cincinnati was the 10th largest city in America and it topped out at 502,000 in 1960, dropping to around 332,000 now. In so many ways it is sui generis, but in other critical areas it is indeed the USA. Unfortunately, those areas are gloomy.
Winston Churchill called Cincinnati America's most beautiful inland city, and it's an observation that's hard to argue with even now. The city sits on wooded hills along gentle, wide bends of the storied Ohio River. The skyline pops up like a jewel box when you come down "death hill" on the freeway from the airport. Cincinnati is an architectural feast, filled with enchanting neighborhoods, lovely parks and deep history. This was the Miami country before the arrival of the whites, the richest hunting ground of the Iroquois Confederacy. Cincinnati was settled by Revolutionary War veterans, many members of the Society of the Cincinnati, and named after the self-denying Roman general who Americans likened to George Washington. Founded in 1788, it was the Queen City of the West, the gateway for generations of migrants and the haven for Germans who fled the crushing of the liberal revolutions of 1848 in Europe.
This city was so good to me when I was business editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer in the 1990s. Armed with one of the best staffs of financial writers I was ever honored to lead, we shook up the old-guard companies that weren't used to the prying eyes of journalists or transparency. Now I am using it as the setting for a new mystery series, The Cincinnati Casebooks, of which The Pain Nurse is the first. Seeing it again this month, after being away for 13 years, I was reminded of Mark Twain's witticism about wanting to be in Cincinnati when the world ends, because it's always behind the times. On the surface, the city seemed little changed. And thank God, for that slow pace has preserved so much good architecture. But beneath that veneer, the story was, as is always the case here, much more complicated.
10
8