Business and industry – Page 91

Checking the barn door

I actually received this e-mail on Thursday, but the National Taxpayers Union insists that we have “No More Bailouts!”

Are you tired of hearing about how your tax dollars are going to bail out government-sponsored enterprises and private institutions? We are.

Did you send your hard-earned money to the IRS to cover the fiscal mismanagement at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Bear Stearns, and AIG? We didn’t.

Do you like the sound of a new $25 billion bailout for big auto companies? We don’t.

It’s time to say “enough is enough!” Sign our “No More Bailouts” petition to Congress and the President today.

Unless people like you speak out, there’s no end in sight to this abuse of taxpayer dollars. Act today!

The sentiment was originally written by Kristina Rasmussen at the Government Bytes blog I link to. But she’s right, we have to be ever-vigilant about OUR money, particularly in this time of economic slowdown.

This is what the petition reads; it’s sent to the White House, your state’s Senators, and your Representative (in my case Cardin, Mikulski, and Gilchrest respectively. Actual results may vary.)

As a taxpaying American, I demand an end to the public bailouts of government-sponsored enterprises and private institutions.

America’s economic success is largely due to our free-market system, in which risk is a fundamental element. Some businesses succeed tremendously, some fail spectacularly. But they should do so on their own, not with the backing of millions of reluctant citizens’ paychecks.

If troubled institutions seek relief, they should restructure their businesses the way millions of families have had to restructure their budgets, rather than bellying up to Congress’ trough.

Bailouts that keep mismanaged organizations afloat delay natural corrections to unsound business practices. In the long run, bailouts do not “rescue” anyone because they stall the adoption of necessary reforms that would prevent future repeats of bad choices.

Enough is enough. No more bailouts. Not with my tax dollars.

So I signed the petition, but I was only signer number 3,492 which tells me that there are too many people who just nod their head in agreement when it’s said that this is necessary to save the financial markets. More alarming to me are those who say, “yeah, the government needs to step in – but this has to be the last time!” There is no last time if we do it this time, because something like this will happen again. When unscrupulous people get to play with other peoples’ money and they find out they can get wealthy beyond their dreams, they’ll continue to game the system regardless of whatever laws are passed. Thus, I’m not sure regulations are the answer and the argument has been posed in many quarters that regulations have led to this mess in the first place. In fact, regulations are the reason the automakers want their bailout, to comply with more stringent CAFE standards.

While we may be well beyond a tipping point in both this situation and regarding government in general, the fight needs to be continued – even if it is a rear-guard action – against adopting more and more red tape which both strangles initiative and keeps millions of paper-pushers doing busy work. The way I look at this situation, it’s not lack of regulation which led to this crisis but the collision of the lack of ethics in some and the lack of common sense in others. We’re just left to clean up the mess.

On a completely different note…

Overnight on Friday night I will be one of the hundreds of participants in Wicomico County’s annual Relay For Life. It’s the first time I’ve done this, but last year at this time I had no inkling that a family member of mine would be afflicted with cancer so that makes it personal for me.

One thing that I like about how this works is that I don’t need to get pledges or even collect money (although I can and will with a select group of people) – instead it’s as simple as visiting this webpage and making a donation. I just set it up the other day with my own money to get the ball rolling, but you can help the effort too if you have a few dollars to spare. I know we’re all not living in Fat City here, but you probably have a similar story someplace in your family too. I’m just going to spend part of my Friday night at Perdue Stadium as I’ve done many times before, just without a ballgame to watch.

If you’re there Friday night, I’ll be the guy with the purple #18 Shorebirds jersey on – the Relay for Life 2007 jersey I purchased. Little did I know that months later their cause would hit home.

12 Visions for One Maryland

After going through the Smart Growth Listening Session we had locally last night, tonight I turn my attention to what all the hubbub was about. Let me begin as they did with their description of Smart Growth:

“Growth is smart when it gives us great communities, with more choices and personal freedom, good return on public investment, greater opportunity across the community, a thriving natural environment, and a legacy we can be proud to leave our children and grandchildren.” (Emphasis mine.)

This passage comes from a pamphlet called “This Is Smart Growth” which can be downloaded here. Unfortunately, knowing that it’s the state of Maryland who is planning this I doubt we’ll actually get the more choices or personal freedom. And it’s worth pointing out that the Smart Growth folks talk about a good return on public investment, but no mention is made of whether they’ll encourage private investment. It goes without saying that too much restriction on land use will naturally discourage innovation and capital investment. While the perception in these parts is that things are too developer-friendly my fear is that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction with this new statewide plan. It might just take the “One Maryland” concept espoused by Annapolis liberals too far. (I despise it because there’s at least three Marylands insofar as I can tell, split by Chesapeake Bay and that very thin strip where Virginia and Pennsylvania nearly touch.)

However, here are the 12 Visions that the Task Force on the Future for Growth and Development has drafted up thus far:

Quality of Life and Sustainability – A high quality of life is achieved through universal stewardship of the land, water, and air resulting in sustainable communities and protection of the environment.
Public Participation – Citizens are active partners in the planning and implementation of community initiatives and are sensitive to their responsibilities in achieving community goals.
Growth Areas – Growth is concentrated in existing population and business centers, growth areas adjacent to those centers, or strategically selected new centers.
Community Design – Compact, mixed-use, walkable design consistent with existing community character and located near transit options is encouraged to ensure efficient use of land and transportation resources and preservation and enhancement of natural systems, open spaces, recreational areas, and historical, cultural, and archeological resources.
Infrastructure – Growth areas have the water resources and infrastructure to accommodate population and business expansion in an orderly, efficient, and environmentally sound manner.
Transportation – A well-maintained, multimodal transportation system facilitates the safe, convenient, affordable, and efficient movement of people, goods and services within and between population and business centers.
Housing – A range of housing densities, types, and sizes provide residential options for citizens of all ages and incomes.
Economic Development – Economic development that promotes employment opportunities for all income levels within the capacity of the State’s natural resources, public services, and public facilities is encouraged.
Environmental Protection – Land and water resources are carefully managed to restore and maintain healthy air and water, natural systems and living resources.
Resource Conservation – Waterways, open space, natural systems, scenic areas, forests, and agricultural areas are conserved.
Stewardship – Government, business entities, and residents are responsible for the creation of sustainable communities by collaborating to balance efficient growth with resource protection.
Implementation – Strategies, policies, programs and funding for growth and development, resource conservation, infrastructure, and transportation are integrated across the local, regional, State, and interstate levels to achieve these visions.

Oh my gosh, this is wrong on so many levels it’s not even funny. But I’m going to go through these one at a time anyway.

The very first point describes “universal stewardship.” The way I read this fits right in with the topdown concern I had about the whole state planning process. In other words, you’re just an individual who may think he or she can be the steward of one’s own property but in reality you must do what we determine is for the common good. Maryland has had sustainable communities for over 300 years, but apparently these bright folks think they can handle them better by placing themselves in charge of all – they know what’s good for you.

The next topic of public participation is nice, but the trick in that is having a well-informed, well-educated public and I’m not so sure that we have that at the moment. Sure, there are a few but the majority of people have no desire to be leaders or to make many of their own decisions – a sad commentary, but true. Besides, my responsibility should be to my own self and my family first, well before the responsibility in achieving community goals. That’s not to say I should shirk my tasks there, but the order this places responsibility is out of whack.

Number three is lofty in principle, but restricting growth to certain areas makes both the land outside those areas less valuable and the land inside those areas too pricey. This is why California, one of the largest states in the country, has the highest home prices – they restrict land usage to a great degree. I believe in the concept of highest and best use, which is inverse to restricting growth.

Let me define the terms in number four:

Compact – multifamily dwellings where you share walls, or homes with little to no private yard space. Playtime activities are limited to what you can do in a small area or using community parkland.

Mixed-use – essentially what it says, but limiting in terms of retail.

Walkable – discouraging the use of personal transport in favor of public modes of transportation (hence “located near transit options”). Certainly there’s benefits to walkable neighborhoods, but the option of having a car should be encouraged too.

“preservation and enhancement” – see number one under “universal stewardship.”

I guess the other question is whether all historical, cultural, and archeological resources are worth preserving, and who decides?

Regarding infrastructure (#5), the way I saw this was that if growth areas had these attributes, to heck with the rest of you who choose to live outside of them. Eventually it could lead to the whittling away of that population outside growth areas and the radical environmentalists’ dreams of large green corridors for wildlife restored and safe from nasty human interaction.

Sixth, we have a long way to go to achieve a well-maintained transportation system, particularly in some of those multi modes. Personally I’d like U.S. 13 to be upgraded to an interstate highway from Wilmington to Norfolk and another bay crossing closer to home, but I suspect these planners are thinking more along the lines of public transportation (the term “affordable” gives that away).

As for the seventh point, housing, don’t we already have this range in the market as it is? I can buy a 3,000 square foot house with a large yard, a 700 square foot house in town, a condominium, and so on and so forth. Or I could live cheek-by-jowl next to someone in an apartment. Something tells me that these folks with the bright ideas in Annapolis all live in the former situation but want the rest of us commoners to live in the latter. The market has shown people want bigger and better but that contributes to sprawl and sprawl must be banned, according to the Smart Growth folks.

Number 8 is economic development. (I’d place it number one myself, but that’s just me.) The key phrases in this passage are “public” services and “public” facilities. One can certainly read that to mean that private enterprise in those areas is discouraged. Also troubling is the concept of employment opportunities for all income levels. Is this to say that there’s going to be a quota of lower-skilled jobs which has to be met? Maybe they need to clarify that one some more.

Number nine needs no more explanation than to say that things will be regulated to the nth degree. Hell, Maryland’s almost there now when they already dictate the new cars which can be sold and the soap your dishwasher uses, among many other things.

To me, resource conservation (number 10) means no growth. One can maximize efficiency of resources to a degree and achieve a little bit of growth, but real growth by necessity means using more resources. I could use 10% less steel in a car and increase production from 1 million cars to 1.1 million, but I couldn’t ramp up to 2 million if the market dictated it without needing more steel.

Number 11 offends me because the order is exactly backwards. It should be up to residents to take the lead, not be led by the nose by a power-hungry government. And it’s more evidence of a topdown process.

As far as the final point, implementation, goes they actually have the order of items correct in some cases; however, the rest of these points belie the listing of the local level first. But as I noted in number 10 above the concepts of “growth and development” and “resource conservation” are pretty much mutually exclusive.

There’s no doubt that I can hear the wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who will react to my piece. And I know I have a LOT of education to do when they polled the opinion on these twelve visions at the Listening Session. I wrote down the results on the question of whether you strongly agreed, agreed, were unsure, disagreed, or strongly disagreed with the 12 Visions.

Strongly agree – 35%
Agree – 23%
Not sure – 13%
Disagree – 7%
Strongly disagree – 1%

It doesn’t add up to 100% because not everyone clicked in, so I gather that 21% had no opinion or were afraid to be politically incorrect like I am. But I doubt there were more than 100 people in the room so that would mean exactly ONE person strongly disagreed. Any guesses as to who that was?

The educated one, apparently.

We’ll see how much listening they do!

If you have the chance to make it to Wicomico High School this evening, you can share your opinions on growth in Maryland. (I’m all for it; however, we could use friendlier policies in order to make it happen.) This is how the Maryland Department of Planning put it:

The Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) and the Task Force on the Future for Growth and Development in Maryland are hosting a series of public forums across the State for residents to share their thoughts and ideas on future growth in the state.

Six Smart Growth Listening Sessions, planned for September, will take place in Maryland’s regions (Baltimore Metropolitan, Washington Suburban, Southern Maryland, Lower Eastern Shore, Upper Eastern Shore and Western Maryland) and are open to all citizens.

The Listening Sessions will begin at 6:30 p.m. to accommodate diverse public input on a variety of growth-related topics including, smart sustainable growth; growth and a healthy environment; regional development; historic preservation; transportation and growth; and growth and schools. Moderated by community leaders, these sessions are designed like town hall meetings with open discussion on these important matters.

It just so happens that we on the Lower Shore bat leadoff in the lineup, so we can set the tone for future events. (Or be the guinea pig, as is sometimes the case.) What wasn’t revealed in the notice that I received was who our local host(s) would be, but I have a sneaking hunch it may be many of the same people who are on the Wicomico Neighborhood Congress and/or Wicomico Environmental Trust. Seeing that it’s a town hall meeting on “Smart Growth” sort of clues me in on the agenda, so naturally I’m going to be there to represent sanity. I have my own agenda for “smart growth”:

Respecting private property rights over government regulation and intrusion
Having the state sell off their surplus land in order to make it taxpaying and productive once again
Favoring job creation over radical environmentalism
Reestablishing local control over Coastal Bay areas
Allowing Transferable Development Rights to have a sunset date rather than be permanent, much like an option on purchasing land. I’d suggest a 10 to 20 year term, that way each generation of landowners can decide if they’d like to open their properties up for development.

We’ll see if the fur goes flying tonight. I’ll allow them to say their piece, but I’m going to attempt to get my two cents in as well. It should be fun.

Abating the ‘mommyocracy’

You would think that I’d have a day off from political discussion when I decided to stop by WinterPlace Park just down the road from me and scope out that portion of the Delmarva Bike Week proceedings – neither major-party Congressional candidate had planned to do any campaigning there. In truth, my two-wheel riding consists of my time on the manually-pedaled variety so I went when I did to check out the tunage of Crossroads. (Later tonight I’ll put some pics and thoughts over on my Myspace blog regarding that part of the day. Look for Weekend of local rock number 17 there.) But I did ride my two wheels over there since it was a nice easy two-mile ride.

Well, I thought it would be a day off of sorts until I saw this trailer.

I always wondered what the acronym stood for, now I know.

I saw the trailer and immediately thought of yesterday’s post. I believe I am exactly right when I say that there’s a political advocacy group for every single person in the country, and ABATE is the one for motorcycle riders. And when I spoke to their workers briefly, one of them used the term ‘mommyocracy’ and a post was born, along with the promise to allocate the word and make them slightly more famous. They had several people working the event today.

A number of people were working at the ABATE trailer today. I'm all for letting those who ride decide as well.

The group is probably most famous for its stance against helmets being required when riding motorcycles. And while I don’t ride a motorcycle, I can understand their desire to make their own decisions when it comes to that aspect of riding; to me these laws fall right in the category with seat belt laws in cars. (For the record, I do wear my seat belt and I ride my bicycle with a helmet. On a bicycle, a helmet is much more protective of a collision at 15 MPH than a motorcycle helmet would be with a collision at 55 MPH – unless you’re wearing a lot of shock-absorbing body armor the internal injuries which would result probably just mean you die with a pretty face.)

While they didn’t change any of the helmet laws in Maryland in the last General Assembly term, ABATE was pleased about helping to get three bills through and signed into law:

SB712 establishes a fine and licensing suspension for failure to yield the right-of-way if it contributes to an accident which kills or seriously injures another motorist.
SB713 allows specified auxiliary lighting on a motorcycle to improve nighttime visibility.
HB844 changes the size of Maryland’s motorcycle license plate to the standard 7″ x 4″ adopted by most other states. That’s going to allow situations like the one on this bike to be rectified:

After October 1st, cyclists will no longer need to place their Maryland motorcycle plates in sideways like this one has.

There were also two other bills signed into law that they were watching, one which altered the definition of a motorcycle (HB221) and the other for an ATV Safety Task Force (HB114/SB28). While the three bills I pointed out above sailed through with little to no opposition, the final three were opposed by a few GOP Delegates and Senators, including Senator Andy Harris who voted against HB221, HB114, and SB28 at each opportunity. Delegate Rick Impallaria also was steadfast against the three bills when the House voted on them. It’s also interesting to note on HB114/SB28 that as originally introduced it was a helmet law for ATV’s, but the General Assembly watered it down via amendment to simply be a task force to study the issue. ABATE wasn’t originally part of the task force; Senator Larry Haines sponsored the amendment to add them.

ABATE also has a political action committee called the Motorcycle Riders PAC, and while they’re not a big-money PAC they did chip in $4,700 during the 2006 cycle, according to the National Institute for Money in State Politics and their Follow the Money website. It’s a bit surprising that they weighed donations in favor of Democrats when the GOP pushed harder for their interests based on bill sponsorship and voting patterns. (Never mind that the Republicans tend to be against a ‘mommyocracy’ as a matter of principle too.) They should really reconsider the largest contribution, which went to District 38B Delegate Norm Conway – he did nothing to advance their interests and not much for the rest of us either.

This is just more proof that everyone has their own advocacy group, but for the most part ABATE seems to be one of the good guys. They didn’t set out to grow government or shift tax dollars their way, but instead advocated for what’s seemingly common-sense legislation.

Contributing to the problem

While doing my Friday afternoon road work I thought about more I wanted to say on the subject, so if you’ve already read this it may bear re-reading.

In Washington today it seems there’s an advocacy group to represent each and every voter in America personally. Because I’m a registered architect, I receive items pushing the agenda of the American Institute of Architects; needless to say there’s not much I agree with when they have a stated agenda of making buildings “carbon-neutral” by 2030 to combat “climate change.”

Today I received their wish list for the final four-week Congressional term before the election and naturally much of it was focused on the supposed need for “green” buildings. But they shrewdly couched it as “members of Congress will consider a number of proposals that could potentially result in more work for you and your firm.” Perhaps that’s true, but as I’ll explain later this shouldn’t be the aim of government.

For the record, here’s the two main items the AIA is pushing Congress to adopt.

Incentives for “green” commercial construction
Funding for school construction and renovation

The incentive for climate-friendly construction the AIA advocates is yet more tinkering with the tax code, a tinkering that would extend the Energy Efficient Commercial Buildings tax incentive beyond the end of the year. (As it stands, developers can qualify for a $1.80 per square foot tax deduction if they build in a certain manner.) And while the organization argues that this would appease developers who worry about the expiration of the tax provision and create more work for the architectural industry, my contention is that eliminating the complexity of the tax code would create a far better economic climate than yet another comparatively minor tax change. Besides, energy efficiency should be a goal which pays for itself and thus needs no other incentive. It’s yet another carrot placed in the tax code to regulate behavior and extending it for whatever amount of time Congress eventually would pick out will just assure that the lobbyists who favor this will have something to keep them busy for years to come.

On the second point, it goes without saying that I’m dead-set against federal regulations on school building in construction, simply because I don’t recall seeing anything about a federal role in education in my copy of the Constitution. Yet again Beltway bureaucrats would be telling local schools how to do their work if they accept the Faustian bargain of federal assistance for constructing or renovating schools.

I’ll concede right here that for the most part the American Institute of Architects is pushing for this legislation as a way of making more work for architects, and that’s fine – they have every right to do so. They operate under the mistaken belief that the money being placed into these programs and tax changes doesn’t cost the economy anything, but reality is that both provisions make more permanent work for the lobbyists and special interests who swarm like locusts inside the Beltway and throughout each state capital. Sure, a local school district may receive federal funds or some developer gets a tax credit as a temporary boost to their coffers but I believe neither truly advance the interests of the architectural profession in the long run as much as streamlining the maze of federal bureaucracy and simplifying the tax codes would by putting more money in the hands of those who would be much better clients than Fedzilla would be.

The most recent tagline from the AIA regarding green construction is that they “walk the walk.” Unfortunately, they’re leading those of us in the profession down a primrose path to ever-expanding government influence where soon we’ll be told where and how to practice our craft to an even greater degree than that which we already labor. By giving in to the consensus of scientists more interested in bringing an end to capitalist society and punishing the one nation which has led the world in building innovation over the last century and a half, the organization which purportedly has our interests at heart is instead letting our collective selves down.

I’ve singled out the American Institute of Architects for two reasons – one is that it does affect my profession (the real one which actually brings me a paycheck) in advocating particular policy, and secondly because it’s one where I can understand their political aims in real terms. I’m familiar with the jargon and can break it down for those outside the profession to understand. Now imagine this group multiplied by the thousands who work in and around Washington and you understand why our nation is in the shape it’s in. It would not surprise me in the least if there were 200 lobbyists inside the Beltway for each member of Congress; in fact, I’m not certain that I’m not underestimating the figure. Each lobbyist has his or her agenda and, while I’m sure I agree with some of their aims, there are few who want to eventually put themselves out of a job by getting rid of the agency or department which they deal with the most.

Without reading a history of lobbying, I imagine it went something like this. A group of like-minded people decided it was time to hire someone to speak with members of Congress to address their concerns because they were too busy or too numerous to do it themselves. Naturally, once this happened a group who held the opposite viewpoint became alarmed and decided it was time to hire their own person, then others who had diverse aims saw the successes the first groups were having and decided to jump in. Each of them also came with big-money donors who could establish the offices and staffing required to buttonhole those in Congress full-time. It follows that the members of Congress, who only have so many hours in a day to deal with the issues on the table, began hiring their own staffers to meet with the increasing number of lobbyists and eventually the whole ball of wax has evolved to the situation we have now, despite numerous attempts at “reform” in Washington.

It has continually been my contention that true reform doesn’t occur unless two things take place: taking the money away from the black hole that exists along the Potomac and not allowing those who are elected to serve there to get too comfortable in the lifestyle by routinely sending them back every two to six years. Twelve years in each body seems to me a good lifetime limit for anyone. If it’s good enough to limit our Chief Executive to two four-year terms, then term limits are good enough for Congress too.

Instead of tying the hands of those who want to contribute to politicians with so-called campaign finance reform, let’s attack the root of the problem and starve the big-government beast. Then the AIA can go back to doing what it does best, providing sound contractual documents which are fair to owner and contractor interests alike.

Labor Day leftover

It’s going to be a busy day for the purveyor of monoblogue (not to mention the question of how much online access I’ll have with Tropical Storm Hanna working this way), so this video will hopefully suffice for today. This “undercover” video of a Service Employees International Union rally came to me from the Waterman (Aquaman: Questing For Atlantis) who also asked me to crosspost it over on Red Maryland. It’s definitely worth 4 1/2 minutes of your time to watch and learn a little bit more about unions.

In case you didn’t catch the portion at the end where the primary interviewee reveals her name and secondary job, she’s Delegate Veronica Turner of the 26th District. Out of 141 Delegates who served in 2008, she ranks 110th in the monoblogue Accountability Project with a term score of 3.22. Wonder if she reports her income from her other job on her ethics paperwork? We know that her fellow PG County member of the General Assembly, State Senator Ulysses Currie, has a few issues there.

So I appreciate the heads-up from my young friend and will happily share the news before I head out to help open a campaign headquarters, camera in tow for both monoblogue and the Wicomico County GOP website.

Crossposted on Red Maryland.

Enjoy your Labor Day!

After writing, blockquoting, or otherwise placing about 10,000 words over the weekend on next week’s Delaware state elections, I’m taking a little bit of a break today. And since it is Labor Day, what better group to point out on this day of celebrating American workers than one of my favorites, the Center for Union Facts.

The video I’ll leave you with is a couple years old, but Congress will certainly be debating the so-called Employee Free Choice Act in their next session. (It passed the House this time, but failed to achieve cloture in the Senate.) This Big Labor-backed provision, commonly referred to as a “card check“, eliminates the secret ballot in union organization elections and allows the union to be installed if 50% plus one of the affected workers signs a card which states they wish to join. Obviously the prospect of intimidation exists with such a scenario – imagine if you went to your polling place and people were looking over your shoulder to see which candidate you voted for.

One piece of good news regarding card check is that the Bush Administration is reportedly issuing an Executive Order prohibiting the practice for certain government contractors.

So hopefully you are enjoying (or have enjoyed) what is turning out to be a pleasant and warm Labor Day here on the Eastern Shore. Just don’t forget about those who aren’t fortunate enough to have this weather as Hurricane Gustav bears down on Louisiana today.

Rage? Not so much anymore I guess

Subtitled, the tangled webs we weave (with props to my friends in Semiblind)…

A few weeks ago I introduced my readers to a website called nozzlerage.com. Their hook was the humorous video which was created by the Zucker brothers of Naked Gun fame.

While Nozzlerage hasn’t debuted a new video recently, their aim became more apparent with another group’s announcement of an upcoming conference on energy security. This is because Nozzlerage is backed by another organization called the Center for Security Policy, which is headed by columnist, author, and onetime Reagan Administration official Frank Gaffney, Jr. It’s the CSP who sent me an announcement about an upcoming conference to create yet a third group called Citizens for Energy Freedom.

But I’m not sure I like the sound of what they’re proposing:

We need your help to push the US Congress to pass a law requiring that new cars sold in the United States will be flex-fuel vehicles. The technology is readily available and costs about $100 per vehicle. This law, the Open Fuel Standard Act, has already been introduced in the U.S. Senate (S.3303) and the U.S. House (H.6559). By making flex fuel the American standard, we can open the fuel market worldwide, as all foreign car makers would be impelled to convert their lines over as well. Around the globe, gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against alcohol fuels made from any number of sources, including not only corn and sugar, but cellulosic ethanol made from crop residues and weeds, as well as methanol, which can be made from any kind of biomass, as well as coal, natural gas, and recycled urban trash.

(snip)

By creating an open-source fuel market, we’ll make it possible for every nation to contribute to the world’s fuel supply, breaking the power of the oil cartel – everywhere and forever. But we can’t win this fight without your help. Join us – ordinary folks, industry experts, citizens from across America and friends of liberty from every part of the political spectrum – in Des Moines September 13-14 to form an organization dedicated to using fuel competition to gain energy independence.

Regardless of how little it supposedly costs to convert cars to flexfuel, the truth is that the option has been available for some time and the market has proven it to be a slow seller. Thus, the soon-to-be-created CSP subgroup is looking to lobby for the bill’s passage and force automakers into another mandate, just like CAFE standards, air bags, catalytic converters, and many other features that were foisted upon automakers by big government. Certainly the idea has some merit but by placing the initial meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, it’s a safe bet that ethanol created from corn will take center stage and we’ve already seen the impact ethanol mandates and subsidies have had on our food prices. It’s great for farmers but not so good for consumers who pay more for everything as transportation costs go up. Meanwhile, while Brazil has accomplished much more by making ethanol from sugar cane, we can’t easily purchase any excess of theirs because the agricultural interests here have slapped large tariffs on that particular import. The other technologies are somewhat farther down the road so it’s doubtful that any such motor fuel will be competitively priced with oil in the immediate future, especially as crude’s per-barrel price edges back toward $100 from its peak near $150.

With other possible sources like oil shale and more areas being opened up to drilling for both oil and natural gas (part of T. Boone Pickens’ idea for powering America’s transportation), I’m not sure that the idea to mandate technology that’s been shown to provide less bang for the buck is the way to go. And with just a few short weeks remaining for this edition of Congress to complete its work, a bill that is sitting in committee probably doesn’t have that much of an opportunity for passage.

I’ll continue to keep tabs on the CSP and their offspring, but their initial idea seems to be a nonstarter with me.

Not just a wall, but a weapon

As one of the recent newsletters I received from my affiliation with the American Institute of Architects has shown, we in the field have our deep, dark satrical fantasies too. The one in question here is a new idea for a border fence that puts the hawks to shame.

Oddly enough, the man who came up with it is, to put it charitably, pro-amnesty. “Toxicwall” was intended, as Boston architect Henry Louis Miller notes, to “respon(d) to the bullying, isolationist tone creeping into the national debate on immigration.” But good humor has an element of truth in it and there are a lot of people who would say about such a wall, bring it on! (I don’t think we need to go to quite that extreme. Just finishing the border fence we’re planning now would be a big help, but the problem also lies partly in the employers who hire illegals and a wall doesn’t stop much on that count.)

This also serves as fodder to introduce another group I’ve become aware of which I’ll be tracking as things go forward. Because I was a contributor to onetime Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter’s campaign, I also get e-mail from his son’s. USMC Capt. Duncan D. Hunter is running to succeed his father and has the backing of the pro-border security Minuteman PAC (as do several Congressional incumbents, including Eastern Shore of Virginia Rep. Thelma Drake.) In their view:

These United States are at war, and under siege by forces and interests that have the capacity, over time, to destroy our great experiment of responsible self-government.

So perhaps a wall like Miller describes would suit the Minuteman group just fine. And having the two items come almost simultaneously from such varied sources seems to indicate that border security and immigration aren’t going away as issues, despite the best efforts of both Presidential candidates to sidestep about their pro-amnesty positions.

Time for refutations

It took him awhile, but ShoreIndie decided to take issue with my argument about oil supplies and needing more exploration to both help reduce the per-barrel price and potentially create thousands of energy-related jobs.

The straw man argument that is provided to prove that there’s a “lack of reason” among conservative bloggers relates in part to two posts I recently did, Overtime inside the Beltway and Response to comment #94462. Well, ShoreIndie wanted a source to confirm that the oil leases which are off-limits have more oil than the areas currently leased by oil companies. The Democrats who sponsored H.R. 6251 claimed that areas leased but not currently explored could produce 4.8 million barrels a day but there’s no total provided. Meanwhile, spokespeople for the oil companies claim that much of the leased area is already “tapped out.”

Even if I were to take the Democrats at their word, figures from the federal government’s Mineral Management Service show that there’s 18.9 billion recoverable barrels unavailable to extraction on just the Outer Continental Shelf alone. According to my public school math, areas unavailable would provide that 4.8 million barrels a day the Democrats claim would result from recovering oil on already-leased land for 3,938 days (or 10.7 years). This doesn’t count the billions of barrels available in ANWR or the 1.8 trillion barrels of oil shale on land which is 73% under the control of the federal government but barely leased under research and development leases.

Even worse, in telling me that I “can’t have it both ways” in talking about my post hoc argument regarding the do-nothing Democratic Congress (when it comes to productive energy legislation), he cites a bill which was signed by President Bush on December 20, 2006 – the problem there is that Congress was still in GOP hands at that point. Pelosi and company didn’t start ruining the country until January of 2007. Additionally, even if you take the 30 million or so acres that ShoreIndie cites as recently opened for oil development in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, it’s a small fraction of the 611 million acres off-limits based on the report I cited above. Granted, it’s progress but scant progress compared to the favoritism granted to a number of “alternative” energy sources and regulation overkill in just this bill (all 310 pages of it.)

It’s unfortunate that ShoreIndie doesn’t get the point that it’s not just about oil, it’s about more and better jobs for Americans and maintaining both our high standard of living and our security should there be another energy crisis. And the argument that we’re years away from extracting all of this new oil can be answered by noting that we’re also years away from, as a local example, the Bluewater Wind offshore wind farm (scheduled to go online in 2012) or most other examples of renewable energy. Neither solution is immediate, but already having the economy that’s oil-driven means that we should strive to eventually change over with as little impact on the market and as little government interference as possible.

Coming forward with info

Over the last few days, I’ve had a thread going in my noontime posts about bloggers and their influence on national issues. On Tuesday I alluded to one particular person who sent me an e-mail unsolicited and represents an organization which has goals that are reflected closely by what I write. At the time, I decided not to reveal her name or organization but then I saw another post where she was referred to by name. That made it obvious that she wouldn’t mind too much if I did the same.

The “she” in question is Jane Van Ryan and she works for the American Petroleum Institute. In this video, she asks a number of people their opinions on additional drilling for oil:

Admittedly, I’m sure that’s not all of the responses they received and some weren’t camera-suitable, but the polls do suggest that opinion is on the side of her organization.

Since I had her ear (or in this case eye since I e-mailed her), I also asked her about the impact bloggers have had on her organization:

To answer your question, API has had 327 blog hits since we started corresponding with bloggers about a year ago, and my name has been mentioned on blogs about 160 times. There is an important reason for our outreach: We believe the US will never have a sound energy policy until the American public understands energy – what it is, where it comes from, and why it’s essential to our way of life and standard of living. Our online efforts are aimed at providing facts, not rhetoric, about energy so people can make their own decisions about what makes sense for America.

Since her group represents the people of the American oil and gas industry and one reason I’ve harped on the subject of exploring for domestic resources is the true economic stimulus that would be triggered if oil and gas companies would be allowed to use their profits to create thousands of good-paying jobs in both extraction and refining of crude oil and natural gas, the two of us would have a mutually beneficial relationship if she alerts me to content I find interesting and worthwhile to share and in turn that content brings my readers a better understanding of their point of view.

It’s why I have a number of e-mail sources that I go through. Most of the time there’s something I can use; in fact, if I didn’t already have a full-time gig that pays me pretty well I certainly could find the time to post several times a day just sharing and commenting on those items I do get. In the last month I’ve used material from a number of advocacy groups besides API, such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty, Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions, the Center for Immigration Studies, Vets for Freedom, and Nozzlerage.com. For the most part, I agree with what these groups seek in terms of policy and in turn they’re seeking exposure. (Of course, if they wanted more constant exposure I also accept advertising!) And this didn’t count the overtly political items I also get from the Maryland GOP and Andy Harris’s Congressional campaign.

So perhaps I’ve let out the dirty little secret of blogging – it’s really hard to find original thought. Most of what we do is reaction to either events performed by or opinions of others. I’m probably more adept at adding my opinion to a given piece of information than most (and not just simply reprinting a press release), but the information still has to come to my attention for me to comment on it. It’s sort of like the old parable about a tree falling in the woods – if I don’t see it I’m not going to write about it. And considering that my website is my hobby/obsession, having nothing to write about would be like a chain smoker trying to quit cold turkey. It was a nice little vacation I had recently, but I was ready to get back in more ways than one. Lucky for me nice folks like Jane Van Ryan give me more than enough to comment about.

In the preview, the video wasn’t working properly, so here’s a link just in case. ~~I think there’s an embed issue again.~~ The embed issue is fixed as you can tell, I had to trick WordPress into taking the HTML text properly.

Two views on disability

Having worked in the architectural field for almost 22 years, I’ve gone from doing ink-on-mylar drawings hunched over a drafting table to spending my days on a computer putting together project drawings and specifications, all while having much of the information I need at my fingertips thanks to the internet. All but gone are the days of drawing up plans and running them through an old-fashioned blueprint machine with the special yellow printing paper, sucking in all those nice ammonia fumes.

Besides its computerization and the design flavor du jour, two other changes have radically affected my chosen profession over the last two decades. While I’ve regularly been critical of the movement toward sustainable architecture as an expensive mandate of dubious benefit (readers can browse the “Radical Green” category for some examples), another expensive mandate of dubious benefit came into being in the early 1990’s and is on the verge of being updated in the next few months. In 1990 President George H.W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act and changed the way our profession looked at the design of spaces.

I bring this up as an introduction to two recent articles by writer Hans Bader, who toils for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Both of these look at disabilities in light of the legislation I referred to earlier. The more tongue-in-cheek article was written last week and asks whether we’re all disabled now. In Bader’s case, he points out a recent court decision made insomnia a disability, and since he only gets a few hours of sleep a night that makes him “disabled”, even though he’s otherwise healthy. I probably qualify as “disabled” myself once or twice a month on that count alone. Even moreso, I qualify in that category due to my sleep apnea – I must be in like flint on that disabled classification. Actually I would be, because that particular condition prevents me from doing an activity like camping where there’s no electrical outlets to plug my CPAP machine into. (Never mind I really have no desire to sleep outdoors on the hard ground anyway.)

The more recent and meatier Bader piece talks about the impact of the ADA on building design. He cites a New York Times story which claims 100,000 apartments in New York City alone may have to be renovated because the Justice Department says so. This is in spite of a local ordinance which is stricter than the federal one in many cases.

By hook or by crook, I’m sort of the go-to person in my firm when it comes to the ADA and similar code compliance issues. It’s probably because I’ve been in the architectural field long enough to have these things become second nature in design, but I’ve also sat through a couple seminars on the subject in my time as well. (The most recent one fulfilled a good chunk of my continuing education requirements for maintaining my registration in the state of Maryland; however, that sore subject is a post for another day.) But the problem with making more and more conditions legally considered disabilities is that more and more provisions have to be made architecturally for the new disabilities.

Let’s take my condition to the extreme. I’ve only run into one place where plugging in my CPAP was an issue, and the solution was unplugging the alarm clock in my motel room and asking the front desk for a wake-up call at a certain time. But wouldn’t I have a case that my disability required not just an outlet dedicated for the machine close by the bed, but one which is connected to a backup power supply because I need the machine to overcome my medical condition and get the proper amount of sleep, even if the power failed for some reason? Imagine the cost of retrofitting millions of domiciles around America if that were placed into federal regulations. And having done an architectural job renovating parts of a well-known area nightclub in response to legal action brought against the owner of that particular property, I’m well aware that with the right circumstances there are trial lawyers more than happy to take any case I could come up with if I believed my rights had been violated. It’s small wonder that one joke in my profession is that ADA truly stands for “Attorney’s Dreams Answered.”

In most respects, accessibility for the vast majority of the disabled has been addressed with the original ADA regulations. As I said earlier, those have pretty much become second nature for design and with Baby Boomers getting older and taking advantage of Medicare benefits to snatch up accessibility aids like power scooters, it’s likely that some provisions will need to be numerically increased to account for the larger population who depend on these devices, such as the number of accessible stalls in a toilet room or van-accessible parking spaces. But there needs to be a limit placed on just how far the regulations go, as it’s almost impossible to design a public space that truly accommodates all people regardless of disability in a cost-effective manner.

Regardless of the new regulations, the provisions which exist in current law that need to be retained are ones where spending to comply with accessibility regulations is prioritized in favor of accomplishing certain common accessibility goals first, then less important ones completed if funds remain available to do so. This also establishes a budgetary cap which dictates that only a certain percentage of the price needs to go to accessibility renovations and allows for exempting items which would exceed that percentage. Similar exemptions are also in place for changes which would disrupt the building structurally or damage the historic character of a building undergoing renovation.

I think both Bader and I agree that these regulations need to be reined in rather than expanded; unfortunately the trend with almost anything that comes out of Washington in this day and age is to go the opposite way. Having glanced through the 300-plus pages of the revised ADA regulations, I can vouch for the fact that there’s no exception in this case either.