Welcome to the Midnight Oil. This diary is open for discussion from a few minutes after midnight through a few minute before (consider the lamp off for wick trimming and oil filling for half an hour a day at most, from 11:45 pm to 12:15 am, nightly). The intro remains the same, but the body is always changing.
....................................
Populist movements don't build themselves, they grow from a process of people learning how to support a series of populist campaigns in a populist way, rather than as passive consumers of corporate political marketing campaigns.
It doesn't matter what the "horse race" outcome of the campaign is, if we fight the campaign. Fighting it, we learn how to fight. Learning how to fight political battles, we become citizens again. Becoming citizens again, we reclaim the Republic that lies dormant beneath the bread and circuses of modern American society.
Picture Credit: David Leeson (#8)
House Rules: This is Not Your Everydaily Kos
- Be excellent to each other
- You are allowed ... encouraged ... to say something hours ... days, even ... after the Oil is lit
- Say something, come back eight, twelve hours later to see if there was an answer
- Feel free to use the Rec button to let people know you passed by ... but be careful not to overdo it, we don't want this thing up on the wrecklist!
- Don't worry about "jumping the tip jar" ... We don't need no steenking tip jar!
Backwards : Upwards : Forwards
Daily Diary Roll
Spreading fires
Added to through the day Monday
News and Notes: Ohio Congressional Races Submitted by Jeff (Ohio Daily Blog)
NB. If you want state blog coverage outside Ohio, you gotta start dropping links in comments
Climate Code Red (A Greenleap and CarbonEquity Campaign)
Final Thoughts on the Edwards Campaign by david mizner
Why the US has really gone broke by Chalmers Johnson (Le Monde Diplomatique)
When the Tsunami of Truth Rises out of 'Peak Everything'... by In her own Voice
Staying sane as we warn people that the shit is about to hit the fan
EENR for Progress: Don't Look the Other Way by sarahlane
Race Tracker Wiki OH-07
Click through if you want a picture of a gerrymander
Original Sparks
The Democrats' Class War by David Sirota (Credo Mobile)
Bad Debt: $100 Billion, $400 Billion, Who's Counting? by Dean Baker (Beat the Press)
The dangers of short-termism posted by Phil Hart (The Oil Drum)
written by Ian Dunlop of Australia's CSIRO
Vote Edwards Against NAFTA and For Party Unity by BruceMcF
Top-10 poultry plant hides injuries to workers by Christian Dem in NC
Cause & Effect: The Causes That Won't Go Away and The Edwards' Effect by dcro
Why Isn't Poverty a Story? by Caryl Rivers (Huff&Puff&Post)
Corn ethanol makes climate change worse? by ATL Dem
The ethanol quandry ... done right, it could help, but under business as usual, it probably won't.
Race Tracker Wiki OH-8 Boehner's heavily gerrymandered seat ... if the wave is this big, we want a progressive running here
John Boccieri for Congress (OH-16)
Midnight Thought
Sustainable Energy Independence?
Its such a large topic in a nation deeply addicted to fossil fuels, with more and more of that fuel imported ... where do we start?
Well, I reckon we go back to our technological roots, and get out future back on track. After all, this was a nation built with rail, and therefore, in a real sense, its a nation built for rail.
And, in a deep sense, we don't have any alternative if we are to remain a transcontinental nation ... its only be electrifying our trunk rail lines that we can ensure the ability to move freight from one side of the country to the other, once the impact of Peak Oil begins to hit.
We either electrify our freight rail system, and move our transcontinental freight onto that system, or we start working out how to divvy the nation up into smaller parts. | |
How do we go about this, though? I mean, what about our national devotion to the car and the Interstate Highway?
A point to consider here is ... well, have you asked any of the devotees of the cult of the car how deeply committed they are to the presence of large semi trailers on the Interstate next to them? Even given the numbers entranced by the dystopic nightmare of Auto Uber Alles ... how deeply committed are motorists to the right of truckers to tear up the interstate and, in the approaches to some major cities, convert the Interstate into an asphalt ocean, with waves left as permanent reminders of the passage of trucks? | |
When it comes down to it, when it is an impending choice between the gasoline to burn in the car and the diesel to burn in the truck, why should we presume that the motorists of America cannot find it in their hear to be selfish, and insist on the electrification of the national freight rail network as an alternative?
What we really need to do, however, is to get a jump on it ... we need to get out in front of the issue, so that as the nation is hit by the series of crude oil price spikes, implied by passing over the peak of global oil production, it will drive the nation into greater support for a program that is already underway.
Which brings me to the proposal I set forward a couple of weeks back, where it was presented embedded in a candidate diary ... but was also presented over at Docudharma in terms of the policy itself.
The lever here is the concept of Stranded Wind ... of our substantial Wind Power resources in areas without heavy electrical demand, which leaves us in the absurd position of paying to import energy while leaving massive energy resources untapped. This gives rise to the following basic policy structure:
- The Federal Government invests in publicly owned infrastructure to electrify the main railroad
- In return, the owners of the right of way cede use of the right of way above the part that they need to public use, together with access to the ground level right of way for support structures
- That right of way is used to establish long distance High Voltage DC trunk lines to bring sustainable energy from the places that have it to places the need it
- In areas where there is a commercial wind resource, the usage rights above those trunk lines are available to be leased out for wind farm operators, with the lease payments rolled back into the funding for the program
Here, I would suggest, is a policy that can be explained to the American public to win their support. It is a national defense / civil defense policy, ensuring that the US transport system does not come to a shuddering halt during then next oil crisis (and the other after that, and the one after that, and etcetera). It is a green policy, supporting the more rapid development of sustainable, renewable energy resources. It is a jobs policy, both during the construction of the infrastructure, and after the infrastructure is in place, with money previously flying overseas remaining to circulate within the U.S. economy.
Anyway, that's the idea ... tell me what you think about it. | |
Sugar train stops at the crossing
Cane cockies cursing below
Bad storm coming
Better run to the top of the mountain
Mountain in the shadow of light
Rain in the valley below
Mountain in the shadow of light
Rain in the valley
Well you can say you're Peter, say you're Paul
Don't put me up on your bedroom wall
Call me king of the mountain