Memnison Journal

At various times, I get into research projects; some simmer on for decades in various forms, and some break off and pick up speed because I happen to run into something that really fuels the fire, so to speak.

My library here is largely one that I use for reference. I have a huge amount of material that isn’t in book form, and I’m going through that all the time and hacking away at it to be able to organize and marshal the stuff. At present, the idea is to digitize everything, and use various management utilities to be able to find and figure out what’s what.

Here’s a *short* list of the topics I’m still digging for:

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Sounds like our house.  Hey, it IS our house….

Mem’ries,
Light the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures….

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

In Berea, Kentucky, about ten years ago.   You’ll believe a man can run for office….

Taken by me a few years ago while driving…click on the picture for a larger version.

The Department of Defense has always been a big EPA ‘client’ over a long stretch of time; basically, sloppy disposal procedures that amounted to ‘throw that stuff out in the south forty’ caught up with it eventually.   What happens usually is that someone figures out that ‘throwing it in the south forty’ becomes ‘huge area of groundwater pollution leaks all over the place including off the base’ or something akin to that.   Very (sadly) common sort of thing.

Problem is that the DOD is now dealing with an insistent EPA, and telling it that ‘we don’t care what the law is, we’ll clean this up when we feel like it, now git!’ Commonly, what the reason I’ve heard for many, many years is that the people responsible for the mess have no desire to spend the money on a cleanup.  My guess is that the DOD money for anything outside of basic operations and shipping money and men to Iraq has become secondary - more like 99th in line.

Under executive branch policy, the EPA will not sue the Pentagon, as it would a private polluter. Although the law gives final say to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in cleanup disputes with other federal agencies, the Pentagon refuses to recognize that provision. Military officials wrote to the Justice Department last month to challenge EPA’s authority to issue the orders and asked the Office of Management and Budget to intervene.

Experts in environmental law said the Pentagon’s stand is unprecedented.

“This is stunning,” said Rena Steinzor, who helped write the Superfund laws as a congressional staffer and now teaches at the University of Maryland Law School and is president of the nonprofit Center for Progressive Reform. “The idea that they would refuse to sign a final order — that is the height of amazing nerve.”

Good article in the NYT on food scarcity problems, including the efforts of many countries to close off exports of food to ensure stuff for their own people.

Food protests in places like Haiti and Indonesia that rely heavily on imported food have convinced many nations that it is more important than ever that they grow, and keep, the food their citizens need.

In some of the nations concerned about shortages now, past policies have discouraged farming. From Indonesia to West Africa to the Caribbean and Central America, poor countries have frequently cut farm assistance programs and lowered tariffs to balance budgets and avoid charging high prices to urban consumers. But they have found that their farmers cannot compete with imports from rich countries — imports that are heavily subsidized.

As a result, steps that could have taken place decades ago, resulting in more food for the world today, were abandoned. These included changes like irrigation schemes and new crop varieties.

The current export restrictions, which mainly help urban consumers in poor countries, are the latest blow to farmers in the developing world.

Rainfall and other limits make it prohibitively difficult for some countries to grow all their own food. “If Egypt had to be self-sufficient in food, there would be no water left in the Nile,”

at 65 miles an hour, as Detroit is finally waking up to the fact that SUVs and light trucks aren’t selling at all, and gas-sippers are:

“We need to get in front of it,” Mike DiGiovanni, GM’s executive director of global market and industry analysis, recalls saying. “If you wait too long on it, the pain would get a lot worse.”

While both companies say they took quick action, critics wonder why they didn’t make more fuel-efficient vehicles sooner. After all, there were many signs that gas prices would do nothing but rise.

“Obviously they were making just too much money off their SUVs and pickups,” said Roland Hwang, vehicle policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. “They couldn’t really fully conceive of a world where they would have to rapidly extricate themselves from those markets and those profits.”

At GM and Ford, the pain came quickly. Ford was first, announcing on May 22 that it would dramatically cut truck and SUV production and slash its salaried work force. Factory closures are possible when the company announces specifics next month. A week later, Ford announced accelerated plans for a super-compact car to be built in Mexico and sold in the U.S.

GM followed with larger, more specific cuts, announcing at its annual shareholders meeting June 3 that it would close four truck and SUV factories, cutting more than 8,000 jobs. The company, which is clinging to its title as world’s biggest automaker, also announced it would build a new small car in the U.S., powered by a 1.4-liter four-cylinder engine capable of getting up to 45 miles per gallon of gas.

But neither company’s new compacts will reach showrooms for two years, and when they do, their profit margins will be far smaller than those from trucks and SUVs. Both automakers know they’ll have to make it in the meantime with models already on the market or ones that are planned for the next year.

Industry analysts now are starting to question whether both companies, as well as Chrysler LLC, will have to borrow billions more to cover losses until sales recover.

Whether Ford, GM and Chrysler LLC can go forward fast enough remains to be seen. But even Hwang of the Natural Resources Defense Council says he thinks the companies will have a brighter future because they are more focused on fuel economy.

“There’s no reason why Detroit can’t emerge leaner, stronger, more fuel efficient and more sustainable from a business and environmental perspective,” he said. “Fuel efficiency is not just because you want to help save the world. It’s because you need to save your company.”

What you need is a government that subsidizes cheap gas for you, like Mexico, India or China!

El Pasoan desperation shows in the leathery face of Jimmy Gann, 57. Mr. Gann’s employer, a family trucking business, is on the verge of bankruptcy, he said, and to help the owners stay afloat, he makes three 32-mile round-trip sprints across the border each day. Once here, he fills a 100-gallon tank with diesel — which is going for $2.20 a gallon on this side, compared with $4.55 on the other — then returns north, unloads the tank at his employer’s business and does it all over again.

One Texan in the trucking industry, who declined to give his name for fear of being prosecuted for tax evasion, said he saved $12,000 a month by fueling his four-truck fleet in Mexico.

Is there a real difference you can see between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair as Prime Minister?  Just got done watching The Deal (which was very good) and was wondering…

There’s a new report out that is predicting $7 a gallon gas by 2010 and a serious collapse of the gasoline car market by that time as people start to seriously give up having a car around.

This would force the working poor off the roads, but having them use public transport only works in places where such things are available.  In most of the USA, this isn’t possible outside BIG cities.  I remember when I was in Kentucky this spring camping that the local kids were talking about ride-sharing as the only way to get around the rising costs.

See also Rapid Transit.net and TheThirdRail.net for historical background, and The Great American Streeetcar Scandal for an idea of how we got here.

As a kid in Dayton, Ohio, I was used to the electric trolley system to et around town, but it didn’t cover anything outside the city limits then.  It’s a good deal broader in coverage now, but most of that is due to the addition of buses.  Light rail stuff was proposed way back, but is still dead in the water.

And here’s the Ohio Hub idea of improving mass transit with more between-cities lines and trains.   Possibly pie in the sky, but…

There’s all sorts of allied things to this - here’s a guy in NYC who had lined up a Toyota Prius and wasn’t getting it delivered:

He told me quite a tale. His dealership used to get, from Toyota Corporate, about 30 Priuses a month to sell. But starting in May, his allocations inexplicably dropped to about four cars—and base-model cars, at that. He said he’s actually calling people on the waiting list to offer them these stripped-down models, since the better equipped cars they wanted aren’t available—and they’re taking them!

So when might I get the new Prius? “We’ve got 50 people ahead of you on the waiting list,” he said. “And we’re getting about three or four cars a month. You do the math.” (As for the call I’d gotten that said they’d found the car I was looking for: the manager had no explanation. He said he’d look into it.)

But then came the punch line. “You’re not the only customer accusing us of selling your car out from under you,” the manager told me. “But you know what? I think Toyota’s selling our cars out from under us! They’re manufacturing the same number of cars, but we’re just not seeing ‘em. So I figure they’re selling them in Europe, where they can get much more money for them.”

It’s no surprise that every car model with good gas mileage is white-hot at the dealerships these days. But it had never occurred to me that we, the local customers, aren’t the only ones jockeying for them. It’s an international game now, folks, and the car companies are making hay while the sun shines.

Nelson Mandela just got off the terrorist watch list.  Personally, I dunno.  He can still cause trouble at 90…

From Open Left, their latest look at the 2008 polls and their projections:

(Dark Blue (194): Obama +9.5% or more
Lean Blue (99): Obama +3.5%-+9.4%
White / Toss-up (77): Obama +3.4% to McCain +3.4%
Lean Red (84): McCain +3.5%-+9.4%
Dark Red (84): McCain +9.5% or more)

They say: After that, the fifteen states listed in the “toss-up” or lean” categories are icing on the cake. While they are all winnable, none quite compare to the blue states and to the four states listed above. Picking up as many of these states will turn an Obam victory into an Obama blowout and mandate. And just how big can the blowout be? Collectively, the states where McCain’s lead is either non-existent or under 10% are worth an astonishing 454 electoral votes. Now that would be pretty sweet.

Other sites to keep tabs on this: Electoral-Vote.com (Obama 317, McCain 194, Ties 27), 270towin.com (Obama 330, McCain 208), fivethirtyeight.com (Obama 321, McCain 217), and so on. I said 401/ 137. So we’ll see what comes out of it.

No, I don’t pay any attention to those Gallup polls. My understanding is that the weighing of GOP versus Democrats is off. Comments?

Mercedes-Benz says that sometime in the next seven years, they will stop producing gasoline cars.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, a car parts exec is given a $8.5 million bonus for securing a wage cut from the employees.  That’s three times his annual salary…

Obama and Hillary have come to a partial agreement on her back bills; he’s suggesting to his supporters and money-men that they contribute to her now-dead campaign to help pay off her bills - NOT the money owed to her personally, but to the vendors who she owes for signs, etc. This, unfortunately, includes millions to Mark Penn and his polling firm, who probably did the most to sink her campaign. It also means that Hillary and Bill personally take about a $12 million hit.

On the other hand, reports are surfacing that Bill has not gotten with the ‘unity’ message, and basically bought into the worst of Mark Penn’s Obama-is-a-loser-who-dissed-Bill stuff. I’m not sure how well to credit this one, but it fits what I’ve heard elsewhere enough that I’d not be surprised at all. The Obama camp’s approach is that they hope Bill will come around, and they’ll do what they can to improve relations, starting with Hillary. So We’ll See.