Bacon's Rebellion

  • The Tax-free Corporation

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    James A. Bacon

    Here’s a news item you aren’t likely to see in “Boomergeddon:” U.S. industrial behemoth General Electric paid no taxes in 2010. That’s right: zippo, nada, nichevo.

    How can it be? As the Boomergeddons and Baconauts complain, we’re heading towards financial meltdown in terms of deficits and debt. Their culprits are entitlement programs, the Washington establishment, poor people demanding aid, free-spending middle class types, and (did I mention this yet?), the government, government, government.

    But GE? The famed and successful maker of lightbulbs, refrigerators, diesel locomotives, high tech medical gear and nuclear reactors (of the type used at Fukushima)? Last year, according to the New York Times, GE had worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, with $5.1 billion coming from outside the U.S.

    Incredibly, it paid no taxes in the U.S. and, in fact, insisted on a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

    How can that be? The Boomergeddons claim that America’s tax rate of 35 percent is a major impediment to the prosperity of U.S. corporations whose good performance (not to mentioned outsized CEO salaries) trickle down to us lower in the food chain through taxes, jobs, etc.

    So how did GE do it? It has a first rate tax department, obviously, including lots of ex-Treasury Department types. It puts ins creativity to work at finding tax breaks, in fact, that’s part of the corporate “mission” statement. One rich seam to mine was GE Capital, with ties to Richmond, which found interesting tax dodges as a lender.

    Is this good for the U.S. economy? Ask yourself but the answer should be very simple.

    Peter Galuszka

  • Sandy Alberta, the Saudi Arabia Next Door

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    James A. Bacon

    (Let me introduce my latest op-ed piece in the Washington Times with the observation that the preferred U.S. path to “energy independence” is conservation — not just higher mileage standards or electric vehicles but “deep” conservation enabled by the reform of human settlement patterns. But that’s not something that can be explained in a 750-word op-ed piece, so I didn’t get into it.)

    The Middle East is experiencing one of its periodic convulsions and, as day follows night, tsunamis follow earthquakes and trouble follows Lindsay Lohan, America’s chattering classes have renewed talk about “energy independence.” America’s reliance upon “foreign” oil is said to be undesirable. Why? Because it makes us vulnerable to Arab oil embargoes, anti-American crackpots like Moammar Gadhafi and Hugo Chavez, and madmen bent upon acquiring nuclear weapons and dominating the Persian Gulf oil fields.

    There are very good reasons for wanting to extract ourselves from the chaos of the Middle East. But does that really mean we should forsake all “foreign” oil? To the extent that we can avoid buying our petroleum from people who either (a) hate us, or (b) could be taken over next week by people who hate us, energy independence is a good idea. But to the extent that it becomes a justification to squander tens of billions of dollars on white elephants ranging from synfuel facilities (Carter administration) to solar-energy fabrication plants (Obama administration), it’s a bad idea.

    Permit me to suggest an alternate definition of “energy independence”: The United States ceases to purchase oil from parts of the world where supplies can be disrupted by wars, civil strife, regime change or capricious government edict and instead buys it from democratic, peace-loving countries that appreciate the benefits of free markets and abide by the rule of law – in other words, countries like Canada.

    Many Americans think most of our foreign oil comes from Saudi Arabia. In fact, more than half comes from the Western Hemisphere: Venezuela, Mexico and Canada. Oil production in the two Latin countries has declined in recent years, but oil output is booming in Canada. Indeed, our friends the Canucks export 2.7 million barrels of petroleum per day, accounting for roughly 30 percent of total U.S. imports.

    Yes, our courteous, self-effacing friend to the north has quietly emerged as the No. 1 foreign supplier of oil to the United States. Development of new extractive technologies and $50-plus-per-barrel oil prices have made the vast Athabascan oil sands, located primarily in Alberta, economical to mine. Between conventional oil sources and the oil sands, Canada sits atop 175 billion barrels of oil, the third-largest proven reserves in the world. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers forecasts that production will increase to 4.3 million barrels per day by 2025.

    As Brian Crowley, managing director of the Ottawa-based MacDonald-Laurier Institute puts it, “Alberta’s oil sands constitute a geopolitical fact of global significance.” Current reserve estimates are based on the assumption that 10 percent of the oil sands are recoverable, he says. If new technology boosts recovery to 20 percent, he says, that would put “a second Saudi Arabia” on America’s doorstep – a Saudi Arabia that doesn’t commit human rights abuses, fund radicalizing madrassas or send the United States into a blind panic when a neighboring power threatens to invade.

    The Canadians speak of a strategic U.S.-Canadian energy relationship that would foster development of Canadian oil resources for shipment to U.S. markets. The only trouble is, few Americans are listening. The U.S. commentariat discusses non sequiturs like fostering a strategic U.S.-Russian energy partnership, creating “green” wind and solar-energy farms that require massive subsidies or building electric cars that, if the early sales of General Motors’ Volt are any indication, nobody wants to buy.

    The Canadians are willing to ship us all the oil we want, subject to their ability to expand capacity. There’s just one catch: They need a way to get it to us. That means building pipelines such as TransCanada’s proposed multibillion-dollar pipeline, which would link Canada to the vast petrochemical refining complex in Houston. What Canadians want is regulatory approval for construction of the pipelines – approval that, given the opposition of the environmental lobby, is far from guaranteed.

    As Americans, we need to ask ourselves: Where would we prefer to get our oil? From Saudi Arabia, which manipulates oil prices to extract maximum wealth from American consumers? From Russia, where Vladimir “turn off the tap” Putin uses his control over oil and natural-gas supplies as a strategic political weapon? From Iran, which uses oil revenue to fund development of an atomic bomb? Or from Canada, a country with a democratic market economy, which recycles some of its oil revenues by purchasing American goods and where an influential environmental movement lobbies for appropriate environmental safeguards?

    Only in the bizarro world of Washington could the answer fail to be blindingly obvious.

  • The Song of the Uninsured Musician

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    James A. Bacon

    Today is the first anniversary of Obamacare, otherwise known as the Affordable Health Care for America Act. And despite the Sound and the Fury, basic problems still remain unsolved.

    Over the past year, there’s been plenty of gnashing of teeth, mostly from the GOP, well-funded by the managed care industry, which wants Obamacare repealed or killed by a lack of funds.

    Hot shot Attorneys General, such as our own Kenneth Cuccinelli, are challenging the constitutionality of the law, claiming its mandate to have all Americans buy health plans goes contrary to the foundation of America. Henrico County’s Eric Cantor, House Majority Leader, is working in tandem with the “Cooch” on Capitol Hill, leading his “Young Guns” against health care reform, which he claims in unaffordable.

    Let’s take a look at things a little closer to home.

    On March 15, Page Wilson, a singer-songwriter from Hanover County who was well-known in Central Virginia. died of natural causes. In his 57 years, Wilson had worked the circuits with his own version of Roots music, Rockabily, zydeco, country and folk. He has helped numerous local musicians make it in a tough market and shunned selling out to the big money music interests in Nashville, Los Angeles or other cultural centers.

    Wilson, whose band “Reckless Abandon” played many down-home sites, such as the Pocahontas State Park, also hosted a Saturday night public radio show out of Richmond called the “Out of the Blue Radio Revenue.” Wilson’s extremely broad playlist entertained and eduated listeners like me when at home on a Saturday night. It was one of the nice things of living in the Richmond area, even though his show was available anywhere throughthe Web.

    Living the musician’s lifestyle took its toll on Wilson. He had money issues and his health deterioriated. Back in 2008, some of the muisicians he had backed hosted a concert for him called “Party for Page,” to raise money to help. “I’m on the verge of losing my house to foreclosure,” he was quoted as saying. “If the dog is hurt, the sled don’t run. And this dog is hurting right now.”

    The much-maligned Obamacare does one thing — it is the only serious plan around that would provide health coverage for everyone, including self-employed types such as Page Wilson and myself. That’s why we need to have everyone buy plans — so those that do don’t end up paying for those that don’t. It’s a hard fact of life and the Obama plan has a way to help people of little means do so.

    The only alternative would be universal, government health care — not a bad idea in my book, or that of many doctors I know. But the monied interests, and those beholden to the managed care firms who got their tremedous power with the last major health insurance shift in the late 1970s and 80s, are ready to defend their strong positions with lobbying bucks, with their Cantors and Cuccinelli’s in support. Neither has proposed a serious alternate plan.

    It’s too late to help Page WIllson, however. He was one of 46 million Amerians who did not have health insurance and it was a factor in his death. Oh, I forgot, the right-wing loudly disputes that 46 million number, if we are to believe the American Spectator.

    Funny but I don’t see any other ideas — just nit picking. As the arguments drone on, we’re losing more talented, uninsured Americans, just like Page Wilson.

    Peter Galuszka

  • A WRAP — THE NEXT STEP

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    James A. Bacon

    NOTE ON JIM BACON’S COMMENT

    Jim Bacon made and important comment on the 18 March A WRAP post.

    That post now has a number of comments and has slipped into history status. This response would require at least five comments due to the limit on comment length of Blogger so it is a new posted. This comment repeats all of Mr. Bacon’s original comment.

    We hope this post clarifies EMR’s view:

    PART ONE

    Jim Bacon said:

    “EMR and Observer appear to be disappointed that I returned from my vacation with the same insistence that the impending collapse of federal and state agency finances is the most urgent and massive problem facing the United States.”

    EMR cannot speak for Observer but as to EMR, that is a correct characterization. One of the great benefits of travel is to come back with a new perspective. That has been the case every time EMR has returned from Hawaii.

    EMR’s disappointment is NOT because EMR thinks Agency debt / deficits are NOT important. (Yes, a double negative.)

    EMR KNOWS Agency debt / deficits are important. However, Agency debt / deficits are a symptom of a much larger problem – Agency structure dysfunction.

    More important, the Agency debt / deficit CANNOT be solved without broad citizen understandings of and willingness to act on at least three Fundamental Transformations.

    To solve the Agency debt / deficit problem – and all the other problems, including the many upon which EMR and Mr. Bacon agree – there must be a coalition of interests, not a “this is the most important one and the rest of you need to get on my bandwagon.”

    That is especially true if the Agency debt / deficit problem is blamed on ‘others’ who occupy empty pigeon holes and who are just too stubborn or stupid to understand why THEY must change.

    When MGM says that going after one or another problem as ‘the most important’ is a ‘waste of time,’ EMR suspects he means that ‘times is a wasting.’ There is not time to get it right on issue A and then move to issue B, then C, then D,…

    In a democracy there must be agreement on the need for action and the only way to get a critical mass of support is to address A, B, C … Z.

    Citizen will not yet support solutions to this or that problem because they do not yet see breadth of the systemic dysfunctions – economic, social and physical. In EMR’s view, they will never get there picking on one problem at a time.

    “Frankly, I cannot see how it can be argued otherwise.”

    Hopefully, we can come to a consensus on why this it not a wise course – especially for those like Jim Bacon who see much more of the full spectrum of reality than the average single issue advocate.

    ……………….

    PART TWO

    “Of course, I agree that dysfunctional human settlement patterns create a massive drain on economic efficiency and productivity and a detriment to the quality of life.”

    Mr. Bacon and EMR have long agreed on this point.

    “Of course, I agree that our society is draining down natural capital, and we will pay the price for atrocities committed upon the environment.”

    That is good but these are TWO different topics.

    An intelligent harvest / use / plan for replacement (substitution) of Natural Capital is possible without committing ‘atrocities.’ The fact that atrocities have been committed, and are continuing to be committed, is topic one.

    Far more important is the fact that the ‘more developed’ Regions and nation-states living on Natural Capital made accessible by technological ‘advances’ has distorted ALL the parameters of a sustainable civilization.

    It is as if every Household, every Enterprise, every Institution and YES, every Agency has had a no-limits checking account ECONOMIC context AND a no need to be civil or cooperative SOCIAL context AS WELL AS a ‘there is no tomorrow’ perspective on the physical environment.

    Yes, part of this Mass OverConsumption has ‘helped’ Regions outside the US. However, many did not want that help, much of the help was really ‘help’ for US Enterprises (The Banana Republics) and to further US interests (cheap oil to support dysfunctional settlement patterns). Fighting World War I and II, the Marshall Plan, etc. were great but there are many more examples of wasting resources – including Natural Capital – to meet questionable objectives.

    EMR wishes he knew of a way to better express the huge gulf between

    1) Citizen, Enterprise, Institution and Agency expectations, and

    2) Finite reality

    That has resulted over the past 200 years from living off of Natural Capital – life on blueberry hill / big rock candy mountain.

    As Mr. Bacon knows from having reviewed an early draft of ENOUGH?, that EMR perspective is that the turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East will bring the fact that there is NOT ENOUGH into focus, sooner rather than later.

    “(I don’t share the alarmism about global warming, but there are plenty of other environmental problems that I find very worrisome).”

    On this issue a compromise is to agree to call it ‘climate change’ and wait until the flock of Black Swans is so large that they CANNOT be ignored, regardless of what they are called.

    “Where I part company is over the idea that DHSP (dysfunctional human settlement patterns) and EC (environmental collapse) take precedence over all other problems, and that all other problems can largely be seen as sub-sets of DHSP and EC.”

    If this is ‘where we part company,’ we have NOT parted company.

    THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE documents that human settlement patterns have controlling impact on the economic, social and physical well being of humans and their Organizations (Agencies, Enterprises, Institutions and Households)

    However, TRILO-G makes it clear that a Fundamental Transformation of human settlement patterns will NOT be possible without a Fundamental Transformation of governance structure …

    (AS NOTED BELOW THE DEBT / DEFICIT ISSUE IS A RESULT OF FAILURE TO EVOLVE A GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE THAT REFLECTS THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL REALITY IN 2011.)

    … and Fundamental Transformation of the economic system from one based on competition and consumption to one that gives equal weight to cooperation, resiliency and rational regulation to serve the interest of all citizens.

    (More on that below with respect to Vocabulary and conceptual framework.)

    To summerize: Functional human settlement patterns are NOT more important than a debt / deficit solution, they are both – along with other problems facing civilization – dependent on comprehensive solutions – the Three Fundamental Transformations noted above for starters.

    Synergy’s current work on CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP, on PRIMER and on ENOUGH?, is driven by the realization that the other projects (THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY and ALPHA VIL 21 as well as WHAT COMES AFTER THE CAR) which ARE related to the human settlement patterns (The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis, The Mobility and Access Crisis and The Helter Skelter Crisis) will go no where without:

    1) A source of information that citizens can rely on to make intelligent decisions in the voting booth and in the marketplace (CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP)

    2) A Vocabulary with which to reach consensus on comprehensive Conceptual Frameworks, (PRIMER) and

    3) Enough economic, social and physical resources to create a sustainable trajectory for civilization (ENOUGH?)

    These are the VERY SAME things that are required to achieve solve the Agency debt / deficit Crisis.

    ………………

    PART III

    Jim Bac
    on further stated:

    “The federal budget deficit may be related tangentially [to DHSP and EC], but for the most part it is an independent phenomenon.”

    Not really.

    Beyond the John Muir’s “everything tied to everything else”paradigm for both causes and solutions, there is this reality:

    The Agency debt / deficit problem is a result of the structure of governance. Until the structure is changed – move the level of decision to the levels (yes, levelS) of impact, there will continue to be an Agency debt / deficit problem. The Agency debt / deficit problem is the logical course of action for those at the state and federal level who are elected by uninformed citizens and must serve the interests of those who pay for their elections. All those problems are Agency structure problems.

    “If we fixed DHSP and EC tomorrow, the national government still would be only a decade or two away from insolvency.”

    Not necessarily.

    If citizens understood the need to address DHSP and EC they would ALSO understand the need to eliminate the Agency debt / deficit problem.

    Fairly allocating location-variable costs in a first step to cure DHSP and EC AND an important part of solving the Agency debt / deficit problem.

    Also note that the final beneficiaries of the Agency debt / deficit problem is the top 5 percent of the Ziggurat. All the welfare queens in the country have not taken home as much as the TARP (and non TARP) executives. But it is those at the top of the Ziggurat who make the political Clan contributions. See AFTERSHOCK. (More on this when to get to Vocabulary.)

    “The reason I believe that fiscal solvency is the most urgent issue is that it is only a decade or two away. (Some people think it is only three or four *years* away.) Environmental collapse is down the road.”

    Again, not necessarily.

    It depends on how one defines ‘environmental collapse.’ In a sense, Peak Oil IS an environmental collapse.

    The rising price of food and energy may be seen as a collapse. The economic incentive to shift grain production from food for poor Regions to fuel for rich Regions may be seen as a trigger to collapse.

    Food prices were a trigger for the North Africa / Middle East Arab Spring. As you know we explore this in ENOUGH? (“If money to buy food and iPhones does not flow TO the Arab Street, blood will flow IN the Arab Street.)

    “There will be no hope of solving our environmental issues if the federal government is functionally bankrupt. Cleaning up the environment will take a massive expenditure of capital, which simply will not be available.”

    EMR is not sure this is the case.

    Most of the ‘clean up’ will be paid for by the revenue stream created by ongoing programs. For example new sewerage plants to clean up surface water will be paid for from increased sewerage fees. Better agricultural practices will be paid for with higher food prices (AND NON INDUSTRIAL AG).

    The REAL KEY will be if those in the bottom 90 percent of the Ziggurat have money to pay their bills.

    (THEY WILL IF THEY GET A FAIR WAGE AND DO NOT HAVE TO PAY FOR DYSFUNCTIONAL MOBILITY AND ACCESS AND HOUSING SCATTERATION – just had to toss that in. This supports Observers comment on the recent post concerning progressive tax rates. )

    “We can talk about achieving fundamental change in governance structures. I share that goal.”

    That is great because the Agency debt / deficit problem is a RESULT of Agency (governance) structure as noted above.

    “However, I am under no illusions that creating alpha region governments, alpha community governments and on down the line will solve the problems created by a federal government in which expenditures exceed revenues by roughly $1 trillion a year over the course of the economic cycle and in which interest payments on the debt will increasingly crowd out all expenditures of any kind.”

    There must be Fundamental Transformation of governance structure (Agencies) up and down the scale. If there were functional governance structures at and below the Regional scale, the problems caused by kicking issues up to the federal level.

    Pork fat is easier to trim, one pig at a time.

    “To put this in terms that Observer might find familiar, we cannot put human settlement patterns and agencies on a sustainable trajectory without putting agency finances on a sustainable trajectory.”

    That is very true.

    However, the obverse is also true:

    We cannot put Agency finances on a sustainable trajectory without citizen support for a range of Fundamental Transformations.

    “But we have to be realistic. It is the work of a generation or longer (perhaps akin to the task of abolishing slavery) to bring about fundamental change in governance structures…”

    The issue is NOT how fast we can COMPLETE Fundamental Transformations, the key is how fast majority of citizens understand the NEED to make those Transformations. See Chapter 29 of THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE concerning the 10 year process to transform governance structure. Once started, not completed, citizens can support other meaningful steps for all three Fundamental Transformations.

    For example many would agree to a change in Social Security benefits if at the same time there was a change to allow interest rates to go up to 5 or 6 percent so all the money the oldsters saved could revive the cash flow they expected when they put the money away. The current fiscal policy of cheap interest so the big boys will ‘invest’ and ‘grow the economy’ must be seen for what it is – a short term strategy for those at the top of the Ziggurat to make even more than they are now… Professor Bartlett is a big help here. Thank you again Groveton.

    “… and human settlement patterns….”

    As EMR has noted repeatedly, the biggest change required to transform the pattern of human activity and land use is INSIDE CITIZENS HEADS. That is being proven out in the steps needed to achieve a sustainable trajectory in ALPHA VIL 21.

    “assuming we can even persuade our fellow countrymen that fundamental change of the type we seek is even desirable.”

    Recall what the five of us agreed in 2004 in Charlottesville that resulted in PROPERTY DYNAMICS.

    Think where we would be if Friends of Virginia’s Future had the education program outlined in PART ELEVEN of TRILO-G when everyone’s property values went down 20 to 40 percent due to Enterprise, Agent and misinformed citizen greed! Outside R=30 it is still going down. See THE CURRENT TRAJECTORY.

    “The collapse of the federal government will occur long before fundamental change takes place.”

    But to prevent collapse in the economic, social and physical Spheres – including Agency collapse – there must have broad citizen agreement on the course of action not just convince ‘liberals’ or ‘conservatives’ to abandon their positions and jump on a single issue band wagon, no matter how important some think that is.

    “Let’s see how many people care about protecting the environment and investing in shared vehicle systems when unemployment hits 20%, Social Security/Medicare payments are being cut and the American empire (upon which the global trading system depends) is collapsing around us.”

    That is EXACTLY why citizens must come to support solution of all the problems or humans (there will be few CITIZENS left) will not solve any of them.

    See THE BOTTOM LINE which ACSGP posted as a comment following the 18 March A WRAP post. (EMR will copy and reorder those two posts. Thanks to AZA for at least getting the first one up second.)

    ……………….

    PART FOUR

    As promised above here is the note on Vocabulary and Conceptual Framework.

    As
    EMR has stressed to Groveton in their exchanges:

    While it may seem like a pain, citizens must come to grips with the use of a robust Vocabulary and comprehensive Conceptual Frameworks. (One will note that Groveton and Larry are still pounding away at one another about social security without regard to the fact that Social Security is an Agency program and insurance is an Enterprise program as noted in the 18 March A WRAP post.)

    Mr. Bacon may recall that in his comments on the draft of THE LITMUS TEST in CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP he addressed the Fundamental Theses Three (“Competition is in the drivers seat of contemporary civilization”) by saying “I partially agree. But competition has been partially supplanted by rent seeking (at all levels of government) as an organizing principle for the economy.”)

    ‘RENT SEEKING’ and MONOPOLY behaviors ARE COMPETITIVE behaviors. They are not Cooperative behaviors.

    Recall above the need to:

    Balance competitive and consumptive activities with cooperative and conservative behaviors to achieve a sustainable trajectory.

    On a finite planet with limited resources, there is NO alternative.

    Markets only work:

    If all citizen have resources to participate in the market AND

    There are effective and fair regulation by Agencies to protect citizens from unsustainable competitive behaviors – that includes monopoly and rent seeking behaviors among others. See again THE BOTTOM LINE.

    Agencies will only develop rational regulations and sustainable budget / debt / deficit strategies if Agencies at all scales of governance evolve to reflect economic, social and physical reality.

    That will only happen when there is wide-spread agreement on Vocabulary and Conceptual Frameworks – such as THE ESTATES MATRIX.

    That is a wrap.

    EMR

  • Class Warfare Update: Do the Rich Pay their “Fair” Share of Taxes?

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    James A. Bacon

    The United States has the most progressive tax system among the Organization for Economic Collaboration and Development states. Says who? Says OECD, which, the last time I checked, was not a mouthpiece for the Koch brothers.

    The top richest decile earns 33.5% of the national income and pays 45.1% of personal income taxes, for a ratio of 1.35. That compares to 28.4% share of income for all OECD nations and 31.6% share of all income taxes paid, for a ratio of 1.11.

    It is not clear from this Tax Foundation blog post whether income taxes paid by U.S. citizens include state income taxes or not. If it does, Virginia’s income taxes are way more progressive than in other OECD countries.

  • Let’s Take a Closer Look at Student Permits

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    James A. Bacon

    The University of Northern Virginia (UNVA) does business in Annandale, but you won’t find it listed on the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia’s list of accredited private colleges and universities. It’s one of an increasing number of unaccredited institutions that cater to foreign students, mostly Indian, who want to gain admittance to the United States on student visas.

    These institutions are virtually unknown to Americans but they market widely to young people in India. When they reach the U.S., many students take full-time work and pursue only nominal studies. According to this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Virginia and California are hotbeds of activity that is now drawing the scrutiny of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

    UNVA is “certified” by SCHEV, which presumably means that it is legally recognized, though not accredited. SCHEV designates the following institutions as certified but not accredited:

    American College of Commerce and Technology (Falls Church)
    American Digital University (Sterling)
    Bethel College (Hampton)
    HyperLearning Technologies (Virginia Beach)
    iGlobal University (Annandale)
    International College of Washington (Annandale)
    Kings Park University of Accupuncture and Oriental Medicine (Alexandria)
    Saint Michael College of Allied Health (Alexandria)
    University of North America (Vienna)
    University of Northern Virginia (Annandale)
    Virginia School of Nursing & Medical Institute (Springfield)
    Virginia Tech Carilion School of Medicine (Roanoke)
    Virginia University of Oriental Medicine (Fairfax)

    If these institutions have arisen to meet the legitimate educational needs of people, whether American or foreign-born, then good for them. If they exist mainly to allow foreigners to circumvent immigration quotas in order to take American jobs, then they need to be examined closely. An argument can be made that immigration quotas need to be loosened up to allow more foreigners legal admittance to the U.S. I’m all in favor of having that conversation. I am not in favor of allowing student-visa mills to operate with impunity.

  • A WRAP

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    James A. Bacon

    EMR agrees with Observer’s comment on the “Batten Down the Hatches” (16 March) post:

    Disappointed that Mr. Bacon did not come back refreshed and with a clear perspective on the world and what will put humans on the sustainable trajectory. More on that in a copy of a note EMR received from MGM included below.

    SOCIAL SECURITY AND AGENCY SAFETY NETS

    A note for Groveton and Larry concerning Social Security:

    Your two perspectives could be reconciled if you each had a better understanding of Vocabulary and of the Four Estates that citizens have evolved to manage civilization. See THE ESTATES MATRIX.

    Social Security is an Agency (New First Estate) program. It is intended to make the lives of all citizens better – health, safety, welfare and all that jazz.

    Groveton is justifiably upset because the federal Agencies have not had the backbone to change the mathematics of Social Security to reflect the realities of 2011. The realities of the 30s, 40s and 50s are NOT the same as the realities of the 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. Groveton is right that some changes since 1970 have made matters worse.

    Larry is justifiably upset because the federal Agencies have not had the backbone to change many programs, policies and controls that may have reflected reality at various times from 1790 through 2011. Instead of changing the governance structure and its policies, programs and controls – and in shameless acts of cowardice – Elephant and Donkey Clan politicians have been raiding the money put aside by older workers in the Social Security System.

    The “insurance” Larry and Groveton are talking about is an Enterprise (New Second Estate) product. It is intended to make money for the Enterprise AND spread future risk among those who can afford to pay the premiums.

    (NB. There is also ‘mutual insurance’ which is an Institution (New Third Estate) program. Mutual Insurance is a revered American tradition (from Waterford Mutual Insurance to the USAA, etc.) that spreads the risk among a community of ‘members.’)

    Enterprise insurance is a Trickle Down safety net system.

    Trickle Down Safety Nets do not work for all the citizens.

    TRICKLE DOWN IN GENERAL

    Tickle Down of Agency responsibilities does not work for all citizens, it now does not even work for most citizens. In fact it only works for those at the very top of the Ziggurat – those who contribute the most to the political Clans – Enterprises, Institutions and very wealthy Institutions.

    Trickle Down Housing does not work for all the citizens. (The Affordable and Accessible Housing Crisis – after the bubble burst it ‘works’ for less than 20% of the Households. The majority of the Households are not able to afford a dwelling with an acceptable range of the Services, Recreation and Amenity close to where they work.)

    Trickle Down Mobility and Access does not work for all the citizens. (The Mobility and Access Crisis – even at the current low energy and material prices 50% of the population cannot afford to buy and maintain a Large Private Vehicle that is fuel efficient and safe to drive on the Interstate Highway system.)

    Trickle down human settlement patterns do not work for all citizens. (The Helter Skelter Crisis – the sum of Spacial Dysfunctions affecting human settlements.)

    And that is just the parameters of human existence upon which SYNERGY focuses.

    It is also clear that:

    Trickle Down Health systems do not work for all the citizens. That is painfully evident for mental health now and for all health systems when true costs are fairly allocated so that rich medical Enterprises cannot afford to toss crumbs to those at the bottom of the Ziggurat. Regions and nation-states with universal health care (an Agency safety net) have better outcomes in terms of health, cost and longevity.

    In fact Trickle Down does not work for ANY of the functions for which citizens establish Agencies.

    Agencies must provide the services or they must establish projects, programs and controls to insure that ‘public utility functions’ work to the benefit of all citizens.

    This is not a Elephant / Donkey issue or a ‘liberal’ / ‘conservative’ issue and suggesting it is only clogs the road to functional and effective alternatives. Time is running out to make Fundamental Transformations.

    As EMR will document in the Perspective ENOUGH? (Forthcoming):

    Across North Africa and the Middle East 600-Million humans are saying they want a more fair share. If one adds in India where there are riots over Agency corruption and China where there are riots over democracy, and Brazil where the new president pledges to improve the lot of 14 million at the bottom of the Ziggurat, over half the world’s population is now in some form of revolt / promised Fundamental Transformation over the allocation of resources.

    Those who have been living off of more than their fair share – the US consumes 20 percent of the planet’s resources each year to support 5 percent of the planets population – have to make Fundamental Transformations to consume less or face dire consequences. See THE BOTTOM LINE.

    The days of living off Natural Capital and tossing down crumbs via Trickle Down is coming to an end.

    NORTH AFRICA

    Speaking of North Africa: Groveton should be fully on board with the need for the UN now that just passing a resolution causes Gaddafi to call for a cease fire – and then keep killing his countries citizens . With instantaneous communications that ploy will not last long. See THE BOTTOM LINE

    The excuse was raised again: Caving in to citizen demands, will ‘split the country’… So?

    In almost all cases, the only ones who benefit from NOT splitting the nation-states are those in control of divided nation-states.

    The US is currently fighting in two nation-states that are the product of imperialist edicts, not enlightened citizen interests.

    PROFESSOR BARTLETT

    Groveton:

    Thank you for posting the videos from Professor Bartlett. EMR has read of his work and had viewing his lecture on the “to do” list for years…

    ASAP in Cville has been trying to get him to come to Cville but his health has caused the scheduled presentations to be canceled. The ASAP leadership likes him because he has a simple message and sticks to population and resources topics and does not get into the more complex field of human settlement patterns.

    Bartlett’s basic point concerning human’s inability to understand the exponential function is irrefutable. The first Natural Law of Human Settlement Pattern is A = pie R sq. The root of Geographic Illiteracy is failure to understand that this exponential function applies to land consumption for Urban land uses.

    Groveton, You will find, if you look, a lot of folks that agree with much of what EMR says even if they are not ‘brothers.’

    AND FROM MGM

    Here is the note from MGM that was noted at the outset. Jim Bacon, Peter Galuszka, Groveton, Larry and TMT might find the observations of someone up to his armpits in Hydrofracking of interest:

    …………………..

    All this talk of federal debt is a waste of time.

    Humans must focus on the big picture.

    NO ONE – no Agency, no Enterprise, no Institution and no Household – to use Professor Risse’s useful Vocabulary – is paying their fair share of the total cost of contemporary, technology driven civilization.

    The public debt – federal, state and municipal – is important only as an example of this larger reality. You can solve the ‘federal debt crisis’ and not change the unsustainable trajectory of society.

    What about the private debt?

    What about the capita
    l stolen from future generations by burning through natural capital – not just petroleum and gas resources but top soil, fresh water (water to irrigate my farm), marine animals, rare earths…

    NO ONE wants to talk about total debt because NO ONE – Bottom, Middle or Top – knows how those debts could be paid.

    [See Professor Bartlett on continued ‘growth’ as a ‘solution.’]

    Bottom: Those at the bottom of the food chain cannot pay their fair share because the bottom 70 percent have been losing ground for three decades – they have no assets with which to pay for anything approaching the cost of their consumption AND they are consuming far less than they would like to. [See Note of North Africa and the Middle East.]

    Middle: The next 25 percent in the middle of the Ziggurat could not afford to pay their full costs if the costs were fairly allocated. They are running as fast as they can [RATZIES] to cover payment for just a few of the true costs.

    Top: Those in the top 5 percent have gamed the economic and governance systems so they do not have to pay anything.

    There are many ‘solutions’ but even if the elected ‘representatives’ and appointed staff [Governance Practitioners] knew exactly what to do they would be voted out of office by citizens who have no idea that they have to get off of big rock candy mountain.

    In the rest of the ‘developed’ world many of the nation-states are in better shape – until a tsusmai hits.

    Those Dr. Pangloss types who think things will get better as soon as ‘the recovery’ kicks in – they count on the stock market going up and the unemployment rolls go down – may be in for a shock when their words are used as evidence that they have committed Intentional Information Sabotage.

    ………………..

    COMMENTS WELCOME

    As always, constructive and informed comments are welcome. EMR has a number of dead lines and will not have time to respond. As is the current practice intentionally disruptive and unfounded comments will be deleted upon the unanimous recommendation of a volunteer review committee.

    AND A NOTE FOR LARRY

    Larry, you need to understand THE ESTATES MATRIX. EMR is NOT an Agency. What he thinks and writes is not an Agency policy or position. When someone repeatedly and intentionally misinterprets and intentionally sabotages posts or comments by those in search of alternatives to Business-As-Usual, they will be deleted. See CITIZEN MEDIA, THE NEXT STEP (Forthcoming)

    If that bothers you. just do not submit comments that you know will be deleted. You always have the option to start your own Blog.

    EMR

  • Open Thread

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    At the suggestion of Groovey G. Groveton, I am creating an open thread. For those of you (I have Larry G. and Ray Hyde in mind) who like to carry on conversations that often range off topic from the original post, feel free to blast away.

  • Batten Down the Hatches

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The following essay was published in the Winter 2011 edition of Virginia Capital Connections. It serves as a useful reminder of the fact that the looming insolvency of the federal government, and of state governments dependent upon federal largesse, is not some fable foisted upon the American public by shadowy, union-busting billionaires as some commentators fantasize.

    Please note: The numbers employed here do not come from “right wing” or “libertarian” think tanks. They come from that hotbed of reactionary conservatism known as The Office of Management and Budget, whose director reports to President Obama. Here in Virginia, we can live in la-la land making up stories of conservative boogie men whose demented goal is to expedite the transfer of wealth from the middle class to the Koch brothers… or we can recognize reality in order to better adapt.

    One unalterable fact will shape the debate over the size and scope of federal, state and municipal government over the next decade: Interest payments on the national debt will become overwhelmingly, mind numbingly large. It is impossible to hold meaningful discussions about taxes and spending priorities without fathoming this harsh reality.

    According to projections made by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in its fiscal 2011 mid-year review, net interest paid on the federal national debt will metastasize from about $220 billion this year to more than $900 billion by 2020.
    That’s an increase of nearly $680 billion, and it compares to the $754 billion in increased spending planned for national security… plus discretionary domestic programs… plus Medicare… plus Medicaid. In other words, the national debt is getting so big, and growing so fast, that servicing the national debt will, at a minimum, start crowding out all other types of federal spending, including aid to states and municipalities, by the end of the decade. And that’s the optimistic view.

    The Obama administration has every interest in putting the best possible gloss on the budget forecast. Last summer’s estimate (there should be an update in February) was based on two critical assumptions: that economic growth would rebound strongly and that interest rates would remain tame throughout the decade. And, oh, by the way, the projections did not include the parting gifts from the last Congress, which extended the Bush tax cuts, temporarily reduced the payroll tax for Social Security and goosed unemployment benefits, all of which should add more than $800 billion to the national debt over the next two years.

    While the Obama administration projected the economy to come rip-roaring out of the Global Financial Crisis in an expansion rivaling the Clinton-era Internet boom, at least in the early stages, it seems increasingly apparent that the rebound will be tepid. The economy is
    improving, but it is not beating expectations. Tax revenues are likely to come in below forecast.

    As for interest rates, the U.S. Treasury has been the beneficiary of the lowest borrowing costs in decades, resulting in interest payments that are considerably below forecast. But the rock-bottom interest rates will not last long. As the economy picks up speed, private borrowing will push interest rates higher. If Europe resolves its sovereign debt crisis, hot money will flow from the safe haven of U.S. Treasuries back to Europe, pushing interest rates higher. If Europe does not solve its debt crisis, it will be because Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Hungary and perhaps even Spain have defaulted on their bonds, which will mean terrified investors will demand a risk premium for sovereign debt everywhere, including the U.S. … which will push rates higher.

    Finally, as older Boomers retire this decade, moving from the wealth accumulation phase of their lives to the wealth-drawdown phase of their lives, they will exert downward pressure on the U.S. saving rate, which will… push interest rates higher.

    What few Americans appreciate is how extraordinarily sensitive the U.S. budget is to interest rates when the national debt is $14 trillion While the Obama team assumes interest rates on 10-year Treasuries will never exceed 5.3% in the 2010s, some analysts say that rates could reach 10%. Nobody knows for sure what interest rates will do that far ahead. But it is indisputable that, if 10% interest rates transpire, they would be disastrous for the federal fisc.

    When writing my book “Boomergeddon,” I asked Chmura Economics & Analytics, a Richmond-based economic consulting firm, to run some alternate budget scenarios for me. We assumed that interest rates would stay low for three years, as the U.S. benefited from European debt woes, then started an upward march to 10% by 2020 for the reasons described above. Under that scenario, the “miracle of compound interest”—a miracle for savers—would become the “horror of compound interest” for the world’s largest borrower, the United States. Propelled by swelling interest payments, deficits and the debt would mount higher with alarming speed. According to Chmura’s projections, deficits by the end of the decade under that scenario would be running between $2.5 trillion to $2.8 trillion a year, and the national debt could reach as high as $36 trillion!

    Of course, we will never actually experience numbers like those. Financial markets would panic long before the national debt passed $30 trillion. The combination of escalating retirement benefits for the wave of aging Boomers and runaway interest payments would plunge
    the U.S. into default—an event I call Boomergeddon. Investors would stop lending money, and federal spending then would be limited to what the government brought in from taxes, perhaps 60% of what it had been spending. The other 40%, equivalent to about one tenth of the entire economy, would go poof! The economic downturn would be two or three times as intense as the recent recession, as painful as that was.

    Averting this scenario should be the No. 1 preoccupation of President Obama and the Congress. And preparing the Old Dominion to survive this trauma should be the No. 1 preoccupation of Virginia lawmakers. Our economy is more dependent than almost any other state economy upon federal spending. When Uncle Sam goes into default, the impact will be felt here first. Our AAA bond rating will not long survive a collapse in federal spending.

    Even though Boomergeddon may be 10 or 15 years off, we need to start preparing now. We cannot conduct business as usual on the assumption that the dysfunctional political system in Washington, D.C., will fix the problem. We must avoid taking on new long-term debt, fully fund our public employee obligations — trust me, it will not get any easier to do it 10 years from now—enact productivity and quality reforms in our health care system, and otherwise batten down the hatches. Boomergeddon will be quite a storm.

  • Why All the Union-Bashing?

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    A nice person wouldn’t kick a man when he’s out of town. Not me.

    The argument about teachers’ unions and collective bargaining is too intriguing and too important especially since the right-wing crowd of Libertarians and standard Republicans have suddenly made public school teachers and other public workers the sudden targets of their drive-by shootings.

    This, of course, is driven by the rising conservative tide that washes in on cue. The GOP and Tea Party types did well in midterm elections. Swept in with the tide was Scott Walker who is making Wisconsin’s legislature a major focal point of the union-bashing movement. None other than out own esteemed Jim Bacon, feet in the Hawaiian surf and sipping a Mai Tai as we speak, predictably piled on and blamed public unions for bad teachers — which is a stretch in any human mind.

    So, I was interested in a piece by Yale’s Jacon S. Hacker and University of California at Bekerely’s Paul Pierson’s reasoned analysis in this Sunday’s Washington Post.

    They review the union movement and note that not that long ago, it was considered a useful and positive contributor to the Ameican way of life. “Unions have a secure place in our industrial life,” Dwight Eisenhower declared in 1954.

    Since then, unions have declined dramatically to about 7 percent of the general working population, the authors note. Even in the public sector the ratio is 1 in 10. In Virginia, it is zero, since Virginia has banned collective bargaining for public employees after a 1977 copurt ruling. Only two other states do the same — North Carolina and Texas. Like Virginia, they are Southern union head-busters who strove to keep unions out so they could steal industries like textiles from other areas and to hell with the average worker.

    So why the big public union bashing? No matter what the Bacons of the world would have you sizzle, public unions are not a major cause of states’ financial woes. Nor are public service workers overpaid relative to private workers, the authors say.

    What has happened is that somewhere between 1954 and today, unions shrunk while the paychecks of CEOs grew exponentially and Wall Street cheered. Somewhere, somehow, someone (The Koch brothers?) wants to put an end to unions once and for all. They’re using the midterm election upswell and the budget deficit hysteria to do so.

    Is this healthy? No, it isn’t. The authors write: “Decades of research have shown that the economic pyramid is flatter in countries where unions are stronger. In economies as different as Canada and Germany, a sturdy union presence has helped reduce income inequality. The reason isn’t just that unions defend their members. They create changes in social norms, such as pressures for nonunion employers to match union gains.”

    In America, unfortunately, we’d rather see someone like Angelo Mozilo, former head of defunct subprime lender Countrywide Financial, rake in millions than help the common man and woman.

    Globalization as trend of the last three decades is also rsponsible. Supposedly savvy thinkers moralized that layoffs and salary cuts for U.S. workers were just fine because it was just natural that those jobs went to cheaper workers in poorer countries. Funny, the people who cite this tend drive periwinkle blue Mercedes convertibles.

    Maybe this helps explain the union bashing. It sure isn’t because that powerful unions cover for lousy teachers. The issue is much, much bigger than that lame red hering.

    Peter Galuszka

  • The Tea Party: Dumb vs. Smart Growth

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    The Tea Party movement in Virginia has a new whipping boy: smart growth.

    One focus is Chesterfield County, the largest suburban area in the state capital region which has been beset with the woes of overbuilding and lax oversight for decades.

    That doesn’t faze a Tea Party offspring that calls itself the Virginia Campaign for Liberty. Chesterfield County is going through the process of reconsidering its comprehensive plan, perhaps to avoid past mistakes. In response, a woman named Donna Holt, who lives in the county and is executive director of the “liberty” group, says the plan could be an avenue to massive government intrusion in the form of “some very nefarious ordinances and regulations.”

    Never mind that the county, which hasn’t reviewed its plan in some years, is nowhere close to passing any regulations, the point is clear. The Tea Party types, that eclectic bunch of gun nuts, Patrick Henry impersonators, no tax mavens and Obama birthers, are piling on to make sure that their individual and property rights are not violated.

    Holt’s attacks show a basic lack of understanding of what’s been happening in Chesterfield, as well as other suburban and exurban counties such as Loudoun, Prince William and Stafford. The problem is not too many regulations, but too few. For years, laissez-faire mentalities took hold among planning commissions and boards of supervisors. Developers of gigantic, car-centric subdivisions got whatever they wanted. Strip mall builders likewise built at will.

    Needed infrastructure and services were put in a perpetual catch-up mode. The explosive suburban growth from the 1970s until the 2007-08 financial crisis severely tested schools, classrooms, health, police and fire services. Fueled by cheap money and gravity-defying real estate assessments, huge suburban clusters sprang out of cow pastures with little rhyme or reason, other than a developer wanted something and supervisors had “growth” on their brains.

    That’s what happened in Chesterfield. A Republican-controlled board allowed developers anything they wanted. They never met a subdivision plan or a mall they didn’t like. Never mind that Chesterfield is seriously imbalanced in that it doesn’t have a healthy mix of industries or commercial office space to help pay the tax bills, as Henrico County, a sister area, does.

    As homes flew up, kids went to school in mobile homes until new schools could be thrown up as fast as possible. Police were underfunded, so you may have had one or two officers on duty on night shifts patrolling vast areas of the county.

    It all came to a screeching halt when the subprime crisis brought the growth engine to a halt. Since then, Chesterfield has been laying off teachers and other workers as it struggled to deal with real estate assessments that have been dropping for three years.

    Holt, apparently, doesn’t get it. She was quoted as saying that the comprehensive plan could be some kind of pro-government regulation trojan horse. As she points out, somewhere in Alabama, some homeowner was told he or she couldn’t grow a tomato garden because of government land use rules (The horror!)

    The relevancy and veracity of that statement are hard to check. But you can check the “Virginia Campaign for Liberty” website. It is filled with low-brow pieces titled “Global Totalitarian Dictatorship Invading a Town near You with Your Permission (sic).” This rather impenetrable analysis by a man named James Simpson (credentials unlisted) rants on about the United Nations, condoms, Dr. Paul Ehrlich (“Obama’s lunatic Science Czar”) and a host of other issues. I had trouble connecting the dots.

    It is too bad that the Tea Partiers have to go after smarter growth just after the financial meltdown has given us some breathing room to get things right.

    Peter Galuszka

  • I’d Rather Be Snorkling…

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    You guys won’t have Bacon to kick around anymore… at least for a while. The Bacon family is off to Hawaii. So long, suckers!
    Update: I know you all were worried… But Bacon & family did survive the tsunami. We were sleeping on a cruise liner on the southeast coast of Kaua’i, opposite from the coast where the tsunami hit. The ship went to sea, sailed around until the tsunami passed, and then re-docked. I slept through the whole thing.
    By the way, Hawai’i (notice how I have adopted the indigenous spelling) has some of the most spectacular vistas on the planet. Just breathtaking. Main drawback: Honolulu is really traffic congested. They could use some serious shared-vehicle mobility systems!

  • The Bigger Issue at Stake in Wisconsin — and Virginia

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    From my op-ed today in the Washington Times:

    There is much more at stake in the showdown between Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and the public-employee unions than negotiations over pay scales or even the extravagant pension costs that threaten to drive the state into insolvency. The sleeper issue, the one that could have the biggest impact over the long run, is the move to curtail public employees’ collective-bargaining rights. Why? Because that could overturn the ossified practice of rewarding schoolteachers on the basis of seniority and credentials rather than performance.

    Holding Wisconsin teachers accountable for performance isn’t what all the street protests, the sit-ins and the vein-popping hollering are about. To Republicans, the conflict is about tearing down a corrupt system in which Democratic Party officials and public-employee unions feather each others’ nests at taxpayers’ expense. To Democrats, it’s about shadowy billionaires underwriting GOP efforts to crush the union movement.

    Ignore all that for a moment and follow my logic here. If there is one thing upon which liberals and conservatives who study educational reform agree, it’s that the single most important thing schools can do to improve the quality of public education is to hire good teachers. The academic research all agrees on that point. The big question among the wonky intellects who debate public policy issues is how to staff schools with good teachers.

    One way to upgrade the overall caliber of the teaching profession is to weed out the bad teachers, but that is nearly impossible when public-employee unions negotiate contracts that eliminate the ability of school management to fire.

    Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobold of the Urban Institute analyzed how Washington state school districts handled the layoff of 2,000 schoolteachers at the beginning of the 2010-11 school year. A teacher’s seniority was the greatest predictor of whether he received a reduction-in-force (RIF) notice, they found, but teachers with master’s degrees or those who were credentialed in “high-need” fields such as math, science and special education also were less likely to be furloughed. Teacher effectiveness was not a factor in determining who got axed.

    Because teachers who keep their jobs are more senior and thus earn more money than those who are laid off, Mr. Goldhaber and Mr. Theobold observed, more teachers had to be furloughed. “We conservatively calculate that districts would only have to lay off 132 teachers under an effectiveness-based system in order to achieve the same budgetary savings they achieved with 145 RIF notices under today’s seniority-driven system,” Mr. Goldhaber and Mr. Theobold wrote.

    But that’s chump change compared to the impact good teachers have on the lifetime earning potential of their students. As Eric A. Hanushek wrote in a recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Some teachers year after year produce bigger gains in student learning than other teachers. The magnitude of the differences is truly large, with some teachers producing 1 1/2 years of gain in achievement in an academic year while others with equivalent students produce only 1/2 year of gain. Students starting at the same level of achievement can know vastly different amounts at the end of a single academic year due solely to the teacher to which they are assigned.”

    On the assumption that there should be some connection between a teacher’s performance and his compensation, Mr. Hanushek asks, what is the economic value of superior student achievement? He calculates that in a classroom of 20 students, a superior teacher generates an additional $400,000 in present value of students’ future earnings.

    Put another way, Mr. Hanushek estimates that dumping the worst 5 percent to 8 percent of all teachers and replacing them with average teachers “could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings.” The present value of student earnings would be roughly $100 trillion.”

    Who are the primary victims of a system geared to protect the rights of the worst teachers? Typically, they are minority students. And that brings us back to Wisconsin. The free-market-oriented MacIver Institute observes that in 2009, 18.9 percent of all Wisconsin students failed to qualify for service in the U.S. Army based on their results in the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. The figure for black students was 46.9 percent.

    By protecting the rights of bad teachers, public-employee unions are costing Wisconsin students hundreds of billions of dollars of future lifetime earnings – and blacks lose the most of all. To borrow from the lexicon of the progressives demonstrating in Madison, one might say public-employee unions are a form of “institutional racism.” If Wisconsin’s Democrats were genuinely worried about the future of America’s minorities or its middle class, they would come out from hiding, join Republicans in revoking the unions’ collective-bargaining rights and campaign to put better teachers in Wisconsin schools.

    Bacon’s Rebellion addendum: The issue is bigger than what we pay teachers. It’s bigger than how we finance their retirement benefits. The issue is how well we educate our children.

    Virginia’s school teacher union, the Virginia Education Association, does not enjoy collective bargaining rights. But it still exercises tremendous clout with school boards and in state policy. From what I’ve been told, it’s not much easier getting rid of bad teachers in the Old Dominion than it is in Wisconsin. We can no long afford to blindly pump billions of dollars into Virginia schools. We need to enact deep-rooted reform. And that may mean taking on the VEA here so we can develop effective performance measures, replace weak teachers with better ones and replace average teachers with excellent ones.

  • AZA’s ANTIPARTISAN AGENDA

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    Since the fifth post on INFRASTRUCTURE that was just put up is intended primarily for Groveton and Larry G., EMR took the opportunity to post AZA’s revision of his AntiPartisan comment on the Virginia “Official” Saltwater Fish” post by Peter Galuszka on 23 February. For the background on AZA’s AntiPartisan agenda see the comments by Groveton and others in the Saltwater Fish string.

    ……………..

    Professor Risse asked me to update and revise my comment on Mr. Gooze’s Saltwater Fish post:

    As of this morning, Dr. Risse’s Perspective “ENOUGH?” indicates that 17 nation-states with over 410, 000,000 citizens in North Africa and the Middle East are in some form of revolt / unrest about the distribution of resources, economic equity and governance structure. (Mauritania and Oman joined the party in the last 24 hours.)

    That is more citizens / subjects than the expanded EU and nearly 100,000,000 more than are in the US.

    The eventually outcome of these revolts and unrest is, of course, not clear but it is a new day on the planet. An example of what Dr. Risse calls Punctuated Equilibrium as I recall. Now we hear the Beijing riot police are on alert for a demonstration… That DAMNED INTERNET.

    If Tunisians, Egyptians and even Libyans can do it, so can Virginians.

    Now that the General Catastrophe is over, it is the season for those holding seats in the VA senate and house to declare if they will run again. Mary Margaret W. says she will not…

    We suggest everyone within the sound of this Blog calls or emails their favorite two or three MainStream Media contacts and states “I am CONSIDERING running as an AntiPartisan candidate.”

    The platform / agenda of AntiPartisanism? Here are some talking points:

    Call a constitutional convention in order to redraft the VA constitution in order to:

    1. Take Agency control out of the hands of the two currently dominate political Clans and their major campaign contributors.

    2. Transform governance structure so that the primary level of decision is at the primary level of impact.

    3. Set the terms of the state executive and all regional executives to two four year terms.

    4. Insure that state, Regional and Community legislative bodies meet at on a regular basis and never take long ‘recesses’ as the judicial and executive branches do now. Governance is a full time job.

    5. Set up a procedure to insure that all legislative districts are drawn by a NonPartisan body elected at the Community level to perform this task every ten years.

    6. Expand Freedom of Information and governance transparency.

    7. Make other changes to reflect economic, social and physical reality in the 21st century replacing the 18th century ‘traditional’ perspectives as appropriate.

    AntiPartisan candidates might also want to pledge to limit their time in state and regional legislatures to 8 years (e. g. two senate terms, four house terms).

    For more on the AntiPartisan Agenda and for data on the level of support for Fundamental Transformation of governance structure at the time of the Fall 2010 federal election, check out the posts by Prof. Risse on 1 November and on 8 November in the archives of this Blog.

    AZA

  • INFRASTRUCTURE PART FIVE

    Posted on

    by

    James A. Bacon

    WRAP UP OF RESPONSES TO COMMENTS ON FOUR INFRASTRUCTURE POSTS

    Keeping up with serious comments on the INFRASTRUCTURE posts has been difficult given other commitments. Included below are notes on the remaining comments that merit consideration and response from the four prior INFRASTRUCTURE posts.

    Most of the comments, including those that had to be deleted, on the prior INFRASTRUCTURE postings document beyond a shadow of a doubt that an open-ended Blog is not an environment conducive to serious or fruitful discussion of issues that have a clear context, especially when this context is intentionally ignored by those who comment.

    The Blog format / forum also does not work for topics where the logical conclusion from informed discussion will run counter to the preconceived short-term self-interest of some of the commentors. This is especially true for those who do not understand the context and therefore do not understand what they are talking about.

    The following three comments present useful amplification opportunities:

    I. GROVETON ON URBAN SETTLEMENT PATTERN MODELING

    On 21 Feb 11 and 22 Feb 11 Groveton made comments on the fourth INFRASTRUCTURE post LANDSCAPE URBANISM, NEW URBANISM OR A THIRD WAY.

    These comments related to Urban settlement pattern modeling are very constructive. EMR largely agrees with these observations based on his experience with Urban simulation models dating from his work with the first of these models in 1965.

    However, the context provided by the New Urban Region Conceptual Framework makes beneficial use of modeling far EASIER. It is not an example of the difficulty of creating useful models.

    As noted in THE SHAPE OF THE FUTURE, there have been two kinds of models used to simulate Urban system and Urban sub-systems such as Mobility and Access.

    First there are the complex models that approximate the modeled reality but for which there is no data.

    Second there are simplistic models for which there is data but they do not approximate reality.

    The overarching, comprehensive New Urban Region Conceptual Framework allows one to model the activities of smaller scale systems (at the Unit, Dooryard and Cluster scale) and then incorporate the confirmed outcomes in the next higher component model. That is the basis for the “Next Higher Component Impact Analysis” which is a valuable tool in land use controls.

    Portions of the original comment by Groveton are followed by EMR notes in ALL CAPS.

    ………….

    “Landscape urbanism seems unreal to me. More like religion than science. Lots of theory. Limited practicality.”

    WELL PUT.

    “New urbanism is great – if you have enough money to live in a new urban locale. Seaside? Beautiful. Bring a bag with $1M in it if you want to buy a place there. I know a few people who live in Seaside. They all trade commodities. Great place to live as long as you don’t have to physically show up for work. Kentlands? Great. However, be very careful about where Gaithersburg ends and where Kentlands begins before declaring that there is much in the way of affordable housing there.”

    SAME FOR CELEBRATION, AND MANY OTHERS.

    “Your “third way” holds some hope. I just wonder whether any model would be good enough to plan it. the interactions among dooryard, cluster, neighborhood, village, community and NUR are very complicated. Kind of like a human body with cells, organs, skeleton, etc.

    EXACTLY.

    Thousands of years of medicine, trillions of dollars of research and no computer can really model any person’s actual body. Is it possible to model the human settlement pattern for a whole nation-state?”

    IN A SINGLE MODEL? IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT BUT THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF HAVING A OVERARCHING, COMPREHENSIVE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AS NOTED ABOVE.

    ALSO, SINCE THE NUR IS THE FUNDAMENTAL BUILDING BLOCK OF HUMAN ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL ACTIVITY, THE NATION-STATE SCALE MODEL IS A MELDING OF NUR AND MEGAREGIONAL SCALE MODELS.

    ANOTHER FACTOR IS THAT:

    HUMANS ARE NOW URBANIZING AND IN THE DEVELOPED NATION-STATES BETWEEN 90 AND 95 PERCENT OF THE HOUSEHOLDS ARE URBAN, AND

    THE MOST FUNCTIONAL URBAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS FROM ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL PERSPECTIVES – AS DEMONSTRATED BY THE MARKET AND CAREFULLY DESIGNED PREFERENCE SURVEYS – ARE THE VERY SAME PATTERNS AND DENSITIES THAT HAVE EVOLVED BY TRIAL AND ERROR OVER AT LEAST 13,000 YEARS

    THERE IS ‘HARD’ EVIDENCE OF WHAT WORKS AND WHAT DOES NOT.

    SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND IS THAT MODELING THE CHESAPEAKE BAY IS HARD BECAUSE FISH, CRABS, OYSTERS AND SAV’s CANNOT READ.

    HUMANS CAN READ AND THEY CAN CHANGE THEIR BEHAVIOR IF THEY UNDERSTAND THAT SUCH A CHANGE IS IN THEIR OWN BEST INTEREST.

    “And don’t you have to model it before you can build it?”

    YES, BUT…

    TRIAL AND ERROR FOR 13,000 YEARS ALLOWS FOR MAKING A LOT OF GOOD ASSUMPTIONS. See Chris Alexander’s “TIMELESS WAY OF BUILDING.”

    FURTHER, THERE ARE MANY ‘RIGHT’ WAYS AND CHOICE, DIVERSITY AND COMPLEXITY ARE POSITIVE FACTORS IN FUNCTIONAL URBAN FABRIC. THAT IS CLEAR FROM VISUAL PREFERENCE SURVEYS AND MARKET DATA.

    “Isn’t this why the new urbanists are obsessed with neighborhoods?

    VERY PERCEPTIVE.

    It’s the biggest unit of organic settlement that can be modeled and planned with today’s methods, practices and technology.”

    ACTUALLY MUCH OF THE PROBLEM WITH A NEW URBANISTS PLANS IS THAT THEY DO NOT YET UNDERSTAND SMALLER SCALES DOORYARD, CLUSTER.

    GROVETON IS RIGHT THAT NEW URBANISTS ARE STUCK ON “NEIGHBORHOODS” BECAUSE THEY THINK THEY UNDERSTAND THAT SCALE.

    “Isn’t that why they love grids? If you get the model wrong, you can expand or contract the neighborhood just by adding or removing a few nodes from the grid.”

    GOOD POINT.

    Your “Third Way” would require an hour by hour model of every person in a nation state over a period of many years.

    NOT REALLY FOR THE REASONS NOTED ABOVE.

    “Even then, you’d have to consider outside factors like world industrial competition. For example, who (in 1950) could have foreseen Detroit losing one half of its population as the American car industry lost out to foreign manufacturers. Japan and Germany were in ruins and Korea had as much money as Ghana.”

    ACTUALLY, THERE WERE THOSE IN THE 20s, NOT EVEN THE 50s, WHO WERE SAYING RELIANCE OF CARS IS NOT THE WAY TO GO. BY THE 50s YOU HAD MANY – MUMFORD, OWEN AND OTHERS – WHO UNDERSTOOD THE OVERARCHING DYNAMICS, IF NOT THE SPECIFIC DETAILS OF KOREA’S GNP.

    AND ABOUT DETROIT, THE SHRINKING OF DETROIT IS ALSO AN ORGANIC PROCESS THAT FOLLOWS THE NUR CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK.

    “What model would have predicted the 2011 jobs imbalance in Detroit back in 1950? From German, Japanese and Korean competition.”

    WITH RESPECT TO CORPORATE STRUCTURE, EMR HAS NO POINT OF REFERENCE BUT WITH RESPECT TO SETTLEMENT PATTERNS, NOT A STRETCH.

    “I think you have a great conceptual overview. I just wonder if it can ever be reduced to mathematical practice.”

    “An IBM computer may beat the best human Jeopardy players but people still die of cancer every day. Some problems are just too complex for quantification. When that happens, usually the “invisible hand” of economics comes the closest to a solution.”

    WELL, FROM 2007 TO 2011, THE INVISIBLE HAND HAS TREATED HOUSE PRICES OUTSIDE R=30 ABOUT THE WAY IT WAS SKETCHED OUT (A ‘DRAFT’ MODEL) IN 1998 BY SYNERGY.

    “Any chance of that happening with human settlement patterns? Let me guess … only when all the location variable costs are properly allocated.”

    SMART FELLOW, THAT GROVETON

    “But that, in itself, is a model too.< br />
    “When I was in college I took linear programming. The basic idea was to find maximum and minimum points from a series of lines in space. Only, sometimes, the lines were skew. They didn’t come to a maximum or minimum point.

    “Maybe that’s what we have here. The complexity of doing it right is beyond the possibility of doing it at all.”

    SEE PRIOR NOTE ON THE 13,000 YEARS OF TRIAL AND ERROR TO BUILD ON.

    [In a later comment Groveton said:}

    “I’ve got nothing against models. I use them all the time. And I certainly have nothing against linear programming. There were times when I felt like calling my college girlfriend IDA because I spent more time with UVA’s Interactive Data Array than I did with her.

    “I just wonder about the limits of model building. I am unconvinced that anybody can effectively model interest rates over a five year period.”

    THAT WOULD BE FAR MORE COMPLEX THAN ESTABLISHING A INTEGRATED SET OF MODELS SCALED TO THE COMPONENTS OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT THAT HELPED GUIDE THE EVOLUTION OF FUNCTIONALITY OF HUMAN SETTLEMENT PATTERNS.

    “Ed’s ideas about a Third Way at scale seems like a massive modeling exercise. And without very sophisticated models I wonder how you could design functional human settlement patterns up to (and including) the Super Regional level.

    “I’ve seen a lot of models of the Chesapeake Bay. They are all very interesting and educational. They are also consistently wrong. A predicted good year for blue crabs turns into a bad year for blue crabs and visa versa. The interplay of thousands (millions?) of variables just seems to be beyond the state of the art in model building. Is human settlement beyond the neighborhood level in the same category? I don’t know.”

    SEE EARLIER NOTES – IF WE COULD JUST GET OYSTERS TO READ…

    ……………

    “In fact, I see parallels between the videoconferencing / collaboration kit now available and human settlement patterns.

    “Changing jobs and two income households always seemed like an Achilles Heel in the theory of functional human settlement patterns. Let’s say you are working in the same neighborhood where you live. Then, you get a better job in a different neighborhood 20 miles away. Do you move or do you commute? Most people would commute. But that could take a long time in shared vehicle systems.”

    DEPENDS ON THE STATION AREA SETTLEMENT PATTERNS. THE TIME FOR A 20 MILE COMMUTE IS MUCH LESS FOR ALMOST ALL TRIPS IN THE CORE OF REGIONS SUCH AS WIEN, STOCKHOLM, ETC.

    BACK TO HUMANS BEING ABLE TO READ BUT FISH AND CRABS NOT SO WELL. YOU CHOOSE A PLACE TO LIVE SO THAT YOU MAXIMIZE FLEXIBILITY IF THAT IS WHAT CONCERNS YOU.

    “So, people figure they’ll just drive their car 40 miles a day.”

    NOT IF THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO OR IT TAKES THREE HOURS IN A CAR AND ONE HOUR ON A SHARED VEHICLE SYSTEM.

    “What if you could just log in? Sit right in your home office with the video on and work away. Somebody wants to ask you a question – they just click on your video box on their unit and speak. At 1080i or 1080p levels, it’s like walking up to someone in their office or cube.”

    FOR THOSE WHO HAVE THE TRAINING, THE PROPER JOB AND THE RIGHT EQUIPMENT, THAT IS AN ANSWER.

    “Maybe there’s a Fourth Way. A technology turbo-charged Third Way.”

    FOR SOME. BUT FOR MOST IN A SERVICE BASED ECONOMY, THAT DOES NOT WORK, BUT FUNCTIONAL SETTLEMENT PATTERNS DO.

    ……………..

    II. GROVETON ON CHICKEN WASTE

    As Mr. Bacon suggested, Groveton’s comment on chicken waste on the post INFRASTRUCTURE PART TWO POINT ONE at 9:18 AM on 5 Feb 11was not up to his usual standards.

    What is most FRIGHTENING is that the comment documents that after all this time, Groveton STILL has no idea TO what the phrase “a fair allocation of location variable costs” refers. He provides a fantasy riff completely unrelated to the context of the post.

    Ninety five percent of the Households in the US are Urban Households – they receive the majority of their economic support, social interactions and physical actions from Urban contexts.

    “A fair allocation of location-variable costs” refers to the equitable allocation of the total location -variable costs of the 40 +/- Services (capital “S”) that make Urban life possible and enjoyable.

    Disposal of chicken waste is NOT one of those 40 +/- services.

    Disposal of chicken waste IS one of the costs of doing business for those who raise chickens.

    There is a very clear Common Law of Nuisance Principle that applies to this case:

    A land owner cannot do ANYTHING on their property that substantially damages others use of their land – including the use of common land. In the case of impact on water resources the impact is, of course, downstream.

    In the year 1521 one could be beheaded for blatant acts of water pollution in violation of this principle.

    As civilization ‘progressed’ the number of things that a land owner could do that negatively impacted those downstream owners multiplied AND the cumulative impact became less and less apparent.

    In the US for 330 years it was assumed that the land resource was unlimited and a blind eye was turned toward land abuse. More recently, in an attempt to keep food prices low and to “protect” the mythical ‘small farmer’ more and more land abuse – erosion from clear cutting and bad agricultural practices, excessive runoff from hard surfaces, pollution from over fertilization, pollution from on-site waste disposal including animal waste – have been overlooked.

    There is no fancy cost allocation problem here. It is just a case of “Cease and Desist” and “Pay the Damages.” This logical Agency position has been neglected for so long it is now the belief of some that they have acquired a ‘right’ to pollute in order to make a bigger profit..

    ………….

    In his comment Groveton says:

    “Just estimating these costs would require a massive government bureaucracy.”

    NOT SO.

    “Which, in itself, would be another location variable cost of the chicken farming industry.”

    IF THERE ARE COSTS, THOSE WHO PROFIT FROM THE ACTIVITY REGULATED SHOULD PAY THEM ON AN EQUITABLE BASIS.

    AS MR. BACON POINTS OUT THE REFERENCE TO “conservative elites” APPEARS TO HAVE NO BASIS OR AT THE LEAST REQUIRES A DEFINITION OF THE COMPOSITION OF THESE ‘ELITES’ – VIRGINIA FIRST FAMILIES? DECEDENTS OF POKAHANTAS?

    …………….

    There are two important contextual points raised by Groveton’s comments:

    First the meaning of the phrase “A fair allocation of location-variable costs.” As noted above, this phrase applies to the Services that support Urban activities, PERIOD

    Second SYNERGY’S work focuses on evolving functional and sustainable Urban settlement to serve the needs of the 95 percent of the Households. These Households cannot occupy more than 5 percent of the land for daily activities if they are to achieve functional economic, social and physical relationships for the vast majority of those daily activities.

    In this context, the determination of the appropriate use of land or the value of land for NonUrban land uses is not even an issue.

    If society takes care of the Urban settlement patterns INSIDE The Clear Edges, then the NonUrban settlement patterns OUTSIDE The Clear Edges will take care of themselves so long as there is a well-informed market, a fair allocation of the costs of the NonUrban use and appropriate use of both private land and common land.

    There exists a vast speculative bubble concerning NonUrban land value that has been building since before the Revolutionary War. This bubble is rooted in unfounded speculation as to the amount of land that ca
    n be devoted to Urban land uses. This bubble was first inflated by post roads, toll turnpikes and canals serving proto-Industrial Revolution uses. The bubble was inflated by the spread of railroads. It was hyped into the stratosphere by Federal Aid Highway program in the 20s and pushed even higher by the Interstate Highway program in the 50s.

    To this day the speculative land value bubble is maintained at stupendous levels by the false assumption that any place to which one can drive Large, Private Vehicle is a suitable location for Urban land uses.

    The bubble has been so big for so long it is now considered a “Right” to cash in on the unsupportable speculative value. See THE PROBLEM WITH CARS

    III. A NOTE ON LARRY GROSS’s SECOND COMMENT ON INFRASTRUCTURE MANIA

    [In the comments section following the 30 January Post INFRASTRUCTURE MANIA Larry Gross posted two substantive comments on the topic of the post. The first one was addressed at 9:27 AM on 31 January in that comment string. The second one posted at 4:18 PM on 31 January is addressed below.]

    Larry:

    You continue to fabricate disturbing and unfounded strawpersons in an apparent attempt to trivialize the need to understand human settlement patterns. Most of the assumptions you make in constructing your strawpersons were not true 20 years ago based on the data on the actions and desires of those who chose to live at the OLD minimum sustainable density of 10 persons per acre at the Alpha Community Scale.

    Your strawpersons represent conventional wisdom concerning ‘traditional values’ 40 years ago. These views have never been the majority position and have been declining as a percentage of Regional wide market preferences since that time. See note on the market preference for New Urbanism at the Dooryard, Cluster and Neighborhood scale in LANDSCAPE URBANISM, NEW URBANISM OR A THIRD WAY and in the note by Groveton on the values in Seaside and Kentlands (Kentlands proper) included above.

    It is important to note that with the end of Autonomobile domination, the MINIMUM density at the Alpha Community scale within Clear Edges will move from 10 persons per acre to between 15 and 25 persons per acre.

    This is a change in MINIMUM density at the Alpha Community scale WITHIN The Clear Edge but it is NOT Manhattan (250 persons per acre at the Neighborhood scale).

    Just so everyone will know EXACTLY what the above references to strawpersons mean, here is Mr. Gross’s comment from INFRASTRUCTURE MANIA of 30 January 2011 with EMR notes in ALL CAPS:

    …………….

    “I’d tend to agree with the view of the Volt in terms of economics if it were not for the fact that the Telsa that preceded it was about 100K and the price has now dropped by ½ and in general, technology advances by dropping by about ½ per decade.”

    TESLA IS STILL “PRECEDING” AT $120,000 PLUS. THE GM VOLT DOES NOT HAVE PERFORMANCE CRITERIA THAT COMPARE TO THOSE OF THE TESLA VEHICLE.

    “What happens when the Volt and it’s competitors get 50+ mpg and cost 15K?”

    WHAT HAPPENS” IS THAT:

    ● ALL CITIZENS WILL STILL HAVE THE PROBLEM OF SPACE TO DRIVE AND PARK LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES IN FUNCTIONAL SETTLEMENT PATTERNS THAT MEET THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND PHYSICAL NEEDS OF THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE 95 PERCENT OF ALL HOUSEHOLDS THAT ARE URBAN.

    ● MOST CITIZENS WILL BE DRIVING A VEHICLE THAT IS EITHER UNSAFE TO DRIVE ON THE INTERSTATE HIGHWAY SYSTEM OR ONE WHICH COSTS MORE THAN THEY CAN AFFORD TO BUY AND MAINTAIN.

    ● A GROWING NUMBER OF CITIZENS WILL STILL HAVE THE PROBLEM THAT BUYING AND MAINTAINING PRIVATE VEHICLE IS OUT OF REACH (EVEN AT $15K). THESE ARE CITIZENS WHO PERFORM JOBS THAT ARE NEEDED TO SUPPLY GOODS AND SERVICES IN A BALANCED, RESILIENT, ALPHA COMMUNITY.

    AS THE COST OF ENERGY AND RESOURCES – INCLUDING FOOD THAT IS SAFE TO EAT – CONTINUE TO RISE, FEWER AND FEWER WILL BE ABLE TO AFFORD LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES AND THUS WILL BE ISOLATED (LOST) IN THE SETTLEMENT PATTERN REQUIRED TO EFFICIENTLY USE LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES TO ACHIEVE MOBILITY AND ACCESS.

    “For daily home-to-work-to-home commutes – I agree with EMR – that mass transit is the way to go and I see that becoming the defacto standard just about anywhere there are HOT Lanes.”

    NOT ‘mass transit,’ THE REFERENCE IS ALWAYS TO ‘SHARED VEHICLE SYSTEMS.’

    THE VAST MAJORITY WILL NOT BE ABLE TO AFFORD ‘COMMUTES’ IN LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLES, PERIOD.

    MOST WILL NOT FIND LONG DISTANCE COMMUTING TO BE THEIR BEST OPTION ONCE LOCATION-VARIABLE COSTS ARE FAIRLY ALLOCATED.

    “But Mom is not going to take the kids to Soccer in a bus…” [NO10AC]

    HERE YOU GO WITH STRAWPERSONS.

    [To save space EMR has appended the notation ‘NO10AC’ which means that the prior statement was NOT CORRECT for the majority of citizens living at 10 Persons per acre at Alpha Community Scale in 1980. This indicates that this is a strawperson and not a characteristic of the majority of the Households living at minimum sustainable density LONG BEFORE THE GREAT RECESSION.]

    THE VAST MAJORITY OF MOMS HAVE HAD TO GO TO WORK. THEY DO NOT CHAUFFEUR CHILDREN. THE KIDS WALK TO SOCCER PRACTICE AND MOST GAMES EVEN IN 10 Pn Ac PNCs.

    THE LARGER ISSUE IS THIS:

    ONLY ONE HOUSEHOLD IN 4 HAS CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF 18. WHOLE COMMUNITIES, SUBREGIONS AND REGIONS CANNOT BE LAID OUT TO SUPPORT 25 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION, EVEN IF THAT IS WHAT THEY WOULD WANT TO DO.

    MORE IMPORTANT, AS A FATHER OF THREE ONCE SAID:

    “A PRIVATE YARD IS A TERRIBLE PLACE TO TRAP A CHILD BETWEEN THE AGES OF 3 AND 18. TO RAISE A CHILD IT TAKES A VILLAGE NOT A YARD. A FUNCTIONAL VILLAGE HAS SOME DWELLINGS WITH PRIVATE YARDS AND A LOT OF COMMON LAND. THE CUMULATIVE IMPACT OF EVERY DWELLING HAVING A YARD – ESPECIALLY A BIG YARD – IS TO ISOLATE CHILDREN FROM THE ENVIRONMENTS THAT HELP THEM GROW UP.”

    IF THE LOCATION VARIABLE COSTS ARE ALLOCATED FAIRLY, PARENTS COULD NOT AFFORD TO HARBOR THE BIG YARD / PLACE TO RAISE THE KIDS ILLUSION UNLESS THEY WERE IN THE TOP 5 PERCENT OF THE FOOD CHAIN AND COULD AFFORD TO LIVE IN A PLACE LIKE THE WOODLANDS.

    “…and Dad is not going camping dragging his boat behind a Greyhound.” [NO10AC]

    DAD WILL RENT OR BARROW AN SUV TO TOW THE BOAT, OR BETTER, HE WILL SHARE OWNERSHIP OF A BOAT THAT STAYS AT THE LAKE.

    UNTIL DAD FINDS SIX FRIENDS TO SHARE THE BOAT, HE RENTS A BOAT WHEN HE GOES TO THE LAKE.

    STORING A BOAT AND TWO CARS AT THE DWELLING AND USING THE BOAT TEN WEEKENDS A YEAR IS IDIOCY THAT FEW CAN AFFORD NOW AND EVEN FEWER WILL IN THE FUTURE.

    “Mom, Dad and the kids are not going to visit Grandma by riding Amtrak hauling all the presents and dog buffy.” [NO10AC]

    ACTUALLY THEY WILL IF THEY CAN GET THERE IN LESS TIME AND / OR AT LOWER COST.

    IF A SHARED VEHICLE SYSTEM IS NOT AVAILABLE, THEN FOR 1/50 THE COST OF OWNING A VEHICLE THAT IS NEEDED THREE TIMES A YEAR, THE HOUSEHOLD WILL RENT A VEHICLE FOR SPECIAL NEEDS TRIPS.

    THE LARGER POINT IS THAT GRANDMA NO LONGER LIVES OVER THE RIVER AND THROUGH THE WOODS AT SUNNY VIEW FARM.

    GRANDMA SHARES A COHOSING LOFT WITH HER PARTNER NEAR A PRT STATION. SHE USES THE PRT TO ACCESS THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE WHERE SHE TEACHES RESTORATIVE YOGA AND CREATIVE VOLUNTEERISM.

    “EMR must think the average person is going to hold up 364 days a year in his apt in a 32 or 64 du condo or whatever and never aspire to head out to Taco World and then Best Buy before returning home to enjoy the food and Home Theater.”

    SARCASM DOES NOT BECOME YOU. THERE IS NO REASON THAT ONE HAS TO DRIVE A LARGE, PRIVATE VEHICLE TO GET TACOS – OR ANYTHING ELSE.

    BOTH THE 32 AND THE 64 DWELLING UNIT SCALES ARE RATIONAL SCALES FOR A CLUSTER
    OF DWELLINGS WITH SOME PRIVATE ELEMENTS AND SOME SHARED ELEMENTS – AKA ‘CONDOS,’ ‘CO-OPs’ OR RENTALS IN LOFT, FLAT OR DUPLEX FLOOR PLANS.

    “That may happen the day we are out of oil and out of coal and out of options but that day must be 100, 200 years from now and must presume that we’ll also be out of natural gas and solar/wind never panned out.”

    “RUN OUT IN 100 YEARS” – PERHAPS. BUT WHEN WILL THE COST WILL BE TOO HIGH FOR THE MAJORITY? THAT IS NOT 100 YEARS FROM NOW, THAT IS NOW.

    “My premise is that as long as we have energy – people will want to be mobile and will ….”

    THEY MAY ‘WANT IT’ BUT CAN THEY AFFORD IT? WHAT WILL THEY GIVE UP TO GET IT? THE MARKET SAYS THAT MOST HOUSEHOLDS HAVE ALREADY MAKE A CHOICE. THAT IS WHY MODE OF THE MARKET DWELLINGS BEYOND R = 30 STARTED DOWN IN 2006 AND ARE STILL GOING DOWN.

    “It’s an inherent aspect of the human condition and.. yes… civilization.”

    NOT ACCORDING TO THE CURRENT MARKET SURVEYS WHEN COST IS A CONSIDERATION.

    “Even in the Jetson Comic Book World – there is uber PERSONAL mobility – even more/better than we have now.”

    JETSON MOBILITY IS ‘REAL’ ONLY IN COMIC BOOKS AND / OR FOR AT MOST 5 PERCENT OF THE POPULATION. See “The Sky Car Myth.”

    LOOK NO FARTHER THAN TUNIS OR CAIRO TO SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THOSE WITH EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION DO NOT GET A FAIR SHARE. GOOGLE “WHY EGYPT ERUPTED” OR SEE “ENOUGH?” (FORTHCOMING).

    “Many other aspects of settlement patterns, I buy.

    “but if we have large mass transit commuter buses or high speed monorails – we are also going to have exurbs…. and people will use personal mobility vehicles to get from the station to home.”

    AS Mr. BACON POINT OUT REPEATEDLY, NO ONE CAN AFFORD TO PROVIDE “mass transit commuter buses or high speed monorails” TO SERVE SCATTERED URBAN LAND USES.

    End of Larry Gross Quote

    …………..

    OK.

    THAT IS THE LAST TIME EMR WILL REPEAT THE OBVIOUS:

    EMR will no longer comment on unrealistic strawpersons as an excuse to justify continuation of Business-As-Usual.

    If one REALLY does not understand after all this time, further discussion is of little value. It makes no sense to continue the discussion.

    NB:

    The three core posts on INFRASTRUCTURE will be revised to reflect input – most of the constructive input came from direct comments to EMR, not from Blog comments – and be available as an INFRASTRUCTURE Perspective.

    Also please be advised that it has been requested that all comments that do not pertain to the subject of INFRASTRUCTURE – e.g. FICA, diesel electric mechanics, legislative process, etc – will be removed from all five posts. EMR has been told by the group that has volunteered to do this work that removal will include disingenuous spam that starts out “this is what I have been saying for years” that is driven by the ‘any critic of my enemy is a friend of mine’ strategy.

    EMR

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