Bailout out America, not just GM

As a person interested in urban planning and development issues, I had learned some time ago of General Motors' efforts to deliberately buy municipal street car systems and demolish them. The intent, obviously, was to promote the car.

Few now are aware, but nearly every American city had electric street cars before World War II. Los Angeles even, now famous for crisscrossing ribbons of freeways, was loaded with street cars. This L.A. Times blog includes pictures of L.A. streetcars circa 1911. Check these out:



...or

Washington, DC is right now trying to bring street cars back to Anacostia and possibly the Purple Line through some of DC's suburbs. But here's a look back at what DC used to be like (complements of Wikipedia's Streetcars in Washington article):

Pennsylvania Ave, facing our Capitol

15th St NW (next to the Dept. of the Treasury)

Don't think that the Streetcars were limited to areas outside of "Real America" either. Here's Minneapolis in 1906:


And here's Wichita, Kansas (compliments of the Wichita Photo Archives, which has lots of interesting such photos):


So what happened to all of these streetcars? What happened to their tracks? The tracks were covered over and the streetcars were destroyed save a few for museums and the like. In some places the tracks weren't even completely covered, like in the stretch of Georgetown on the picture on the right.

And GM wants a bailout...

I say give it to them. Give them a really good bailout. But for the bailout, make them build our streetcars back. I don't say this for "revenge" or social justice, not for the environment or for a chance to legislate better cities. I say it for economics.

If we give GM a bailout on their terms, they will still go to bankruptcy, just a few years later. They can't compete on cars. They made critical mistakes in the last decades: they dropped the ball on quality, they dropped the ball on fuel economy, and they dropped the ball on manufacturing effeciency. GM does not have a credible plan for using our tax dollars to get back in the game and become self-sufficient. When Chrysler got a government bailout in the 80's, they had a plan: the minivan. That worked. Right now, there is no credible plan.

So I say we stick one on them. Use American labor to build streetcars for cities and towns across our nation. Tie our cities together again with high-speed passenger rail with trains built by American labor. Let Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Nissan, VW, BMW, and Mercedes expand their American presence. Let them employ Americans from Kentucky to Texas, Virginia to California (Detroit is left out on purpose: it shunned foreign car companies-- another critical mistake for Detroit.) Let them go wild building better cars for us. Let our companies earn their bread and butter on American trucks and trains.

If we allow GM to get a handout to keep building cars the way they have, then we are neglecting our fellow citizens at GM who are hard-working but happen to work for a company without a plan. Lets give them one. And while we're at it, lets improve life for tens of millions of Americans by giving them a real alternative to paying more for gas.

Lets not bailout just the fat cats at the failing banks or the complicit auto-CEOs and union leaders who will drive our companies off a cliff. Lets build our rails with American steel, design our trains with American engineering, create our stations with American architecture. Lets employ tens of thousands of Americans to operate and maintain these systems. Lets breathe new life into old towns. Lets bailout America, not just GM.

EZ-Pass of the Future: SpeedyPass

Across our nation, state and municipal budgets are drying up. Colorado transportation budget is getting slashed thirty percent.

In my area, local newsletters are filling with complaints that police must be on funding drive because they are stepping up speed limit enforcement to a previously-unheard-of level. (Bully the complainers: I'll happily pay my once-every-three-years speeding ticket for all of my time saved: that's just economics for me.)

But maybe there's a real opportunity here. For those not in the know, E-ZPass is a must-have in the DC, NY, Boston corridor, and it goes all the way to Chicago. You get a thingy-bob that pays tolls for you while you're rolling 35 to 55 mph and it recharges itself from your credit card. It's great.

So here's what I propose:

Offer a new system, I'll call it SpeedyPass, that can track you on the highway, and offer 2 lanes of traffic for SpeedyPass holders only. Then, make the speed limits digital to reflect how fast traffic can go (faster on nice days, slower on crappy days or at night) and automatically levy lots of really small speeding fines every five minutes or so and run up a tab for you. If you're really going so fast that you are a public menace, then "the man" can come and get you. Voila! More revenue, and the cop didn't even have to pull anyone over except people are actually putting others in danger.

Little factoids I just recently learned: When speed limits were first created, they were calculated by engineers as the highest speed for which 85% of travelers would remain safe. In other words, they weren't "limits" the way we think of them today, but actually reflected how fast you could safely go in good weather. The other factoid I've known for a while: during the oil crisis in the 70's, our government told all states to set their speed limits no higher than 55mph or the feds would withhold highway money. That went away some years ago, but a lot of speed limits are still set to 55mph on huge freeways. Why?!?!? Cars are safer now and are more fuel effecient now. Shouldn't speed limits reflect this?

So SpeedyPass. That's the un-ticket :-D

Images from:
Creative Commons: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/25/94411850_2ac5e973d8_m_d.jpg
EZ Pass website: http://www.e-zpassiag.com/IAG-E-ZPASS-MAP%20New.jpg

(Not) In the Interest of Shareholders

Law states that corporate executives must act at all times in the interest of their shareholders. Implicit within the law is that shareholders can only have one interest: more $$$. I offer two examples of where that implicit assumption falls apart:

1) Employee-Owners: I have a 401k and my company gives a 50% match in company stock, so I and other employees are shareholders. I do like it when the share price goes up. But beyond a certain price gain, I have other priorities. For instance, I would always like better health care: more coverage, lower co-pays, no networks, etc etc. I also wouldn't mind the company investing money on speculative, long-term R&D. Lastly, I'd like my company to set aside cash to weather the rough patches better and ensure longevity. These actions would suppress profits and therefore share price or dividend yields--but I'm a shareholder too! And this is in my interest!

2) Socially-Conscious Investing: I would fully support profit-reducing initiatives at my company and every company I own stock in to reduce CO2 footprints even when the business case for it is not clear. As an example, a business could buy carbon offsets for their business travel. The CEOs might even want to at a personally level, but they can't without that business case. Doing right for the public is not enough, even if the shareholders "say so".

I'm sure there are more examples. What irks me about this setup is that the concept of ownership interest is reduced to share price. What if the citizens of a city, in order to take back their rivers or communities, banded together to buy a controlling stake in the corporation with that factory up-river? Is the CEO of that corporation, against the will of the shareholders, required to continue maximizing share price even at the expense of that river? That should be changed. I believe that a business does not have to lose its moral sense when it incorporates, yet the law clearly states that it pretty much has to. The only check on this is government regulation that creates a compelling business case (by incorporating likely fines or loss of licenses) to not take the cheapest route at every turn.

So I say it's high time to review this law.

(Update) Consider this:



(link)

Some Insights into Future Defense Spending?

Military.com reprinted an article from the NYT and re-titled it: Wall Street Pain Coming to Military. (That actually sounds better but less accurate than the NYT’s original title: Pentagon Expects Cuts in Military Spending.)

On the other hand, Aviation Week runs with: Obama to Support Defense, Space Technology.

In either case, some excerpts from the NYT article:

• The obvious targets for savings would be expensive new arms programs, which have racked up cost overruns of at least $300 billion for the top 75 weapons systems, according to the Government Accountability Office….
• In all, the Defense Department now accounts for half of the government’s total discretionary spending…
• On the presidential campaign trail, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have pledged to cut fat without carving into the muscle of national security…
• “I think we need a complete review of this whole thing,” said Representative Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat from Hawaii who is chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. “You cannot make a case for undermining the readiness of the Army and the Marines in the circumstances that we face today with a commitment of so much money to weapons systems that are at best abstract and theoretical.”…
• Boeing’s chief executive, W. James McNerney Jr., recently wrote in a note to his employees: “No one really yet knows when or to what extent defense spending could be affected. But it’s unrealistic to think there won’t be some measure of impact.”…
• Other analysts, like Loren B. Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a policy research center, say that weapons spending will be fiercely defended by many in Congress and their allies in the weapons industry as a way to stimulate the economy.

I guess the Pentagon doesn’t read Aviation Week. They’re saying:

• Obama's campaign says he advocates unmanned aircraft, electronic warfare capabilities and cyber security among several other national security efforts. The tech emphasis aligns with Obama's promises to buttress the military's personnel ranks while wrangling control of the DOD's problem-plagued acquisition portfolio…
• Obama during the late summer appeared to shift his support toward the Bush Exploration Vision goal of returning astronauts to the moon by 2020, noting that he "endorses the goal" of a lunar return "as a precursor in an orderly progression to missions to more distant destinations, including Mars."…
• Nevertheless, while the Democrats assert their willingness to develop, buy and equip the U.S. military with the best weapons and technology, the platform of Obama and Vice President-elect Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.) still paints a person-over-program picture.

So where does this all lead? I don’t know, but we’ll get a lot of insight when the future Secretary of Defense is announced.

Conservatives Will Support Obama. Here's Why.

For the last 8 years, I heard that to support the troops I must support the war. I have never agreed more strongly with this view, because it also translates to: it is impossible to support America without supporting the president. Presto! Conservatives support President Obama.

For the record, my position is so nuanced Kerry might get lost in it. There cannot be a position on "the war". We are in TWO wars. I support the war in Afghanistan. I cannot support the war in Iraq. I wanted to. I wanted the war to be about democracy and liberty, about helping people. I wanted it to be about the same reason that we go into Somalia or should act on Darfur. But it was turned into a war about non-existent WMD, a war of choice not based in compassion, a war executed on the cheap. Our troops deserved a better Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense, one who would commit an overwhelming force for the take-down and for the occupation, one who would ask for more from us than to support tax cuts. Our troops put their lives on the line. I would have proudly forgone my tax break but to do better for our troops.

Years late, we committed more troops under General Petraeus and we finally got a SecDef worthy of the troops. I know it's impossible, but I do wish that SecDef Bob Gates could keep his job in an Obama administration.

So for any patriotic American conservatives reading: If you love America, then you support President Obama. If you do not, then welcome to nuance.