Making Salem Safer for Children and Other Living Beings

It's time for a total ban on using cell phones of any kind while driving.

Protocol should be that response to any accident involving a motor vehicle should include a check to determine whether the person was using a cell phone while driving (whether hands free or not). If so, that is deemed presumptive evidence of driver fault for insurance purposes and result in the same penalty sequence as we apply to DUI drivers.

A Problem of the Brain, Not the Hands: Group Urges Phone Ban for Drivers
By TARA PARKER-POPE

In half a dozen states and many cities and counties, it is illegal to use a hand-held cellphone while driving — but perfectly all right to talk on a hands-free device.

The theory is that it’s distracting to hold a phone and drive with just one hand. But a large body of research now shows that a hands-free phone poses no less danger than a hand-held one — that the problem is not your hands but your brain.

“It’s not that your hands aren’t on the wheel,” said David Strayer, director of the Applied Cognition Laboratory at the University of Utah and a leading researcher on cellphone safety. “It’s that your mind is not on the road.”

Now Dr. Strayer’s research has gained a potent ally. On Monday, the National Safety Council, the nonprofit advocacy group that has pushed for seat belt laws and drunken driving awareness, called for an all-out ban on using cellphones while driving. . . .

Laboratory experiments using simulators, real-world road studies and accident statistics all tell the same story: drivers talking on a cellphone are four times as likely to have an accident as drivers who are not. That’s the same level of risk posed by a driver who is legally drunk. . . .

A Very Cool Organic Cotton T Shirt

Don't know of anyone in Salem selling these, so I just bought one direct (click on the picture).

A "Real New Deal for Energy, Economic and Environmental Recovery"

Plan Endorsed By Bill McKibben, Michael Moore, Randy Udall, Lester Brown.

SEBASTOPOL, CA, January 13, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- Post Carbon Institute today announced the release of "The Real New Deal: Energy Scarcity and the Path to Energy, Economic, and Environmental Recovery," a proposal to the incoming Obama Administration.  The plan calls for responding to the current economic crisis with a massive policy and investment shift towards a fossil fuel-independent economy. Noting the urgency to address global fossil fuel depletion and climate change, the "Real New Deal" calls for a series of bold measures to electrify the transportation system, rebuild the electricity grid, relocalize the food system, and retrofit the nation's building stock for both energy efficiency and energy production.  The plan's lead author is Post Carbon Institute Senior Fellow Richard Heinberg, author of "The Party's Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies" and an internationally recognized expert on fossil fuel depletion. Heinberg said, "While there are many 'new deal' plans being offered to President-elect Obama, our plan recognizes that declining fossil fuel supplies and rising greenhouse gas emissions put us at tremendous and immediate risk. Building more roads and bridges as a stimulus for jobs is the wrong tactic. We must re-engineer our country now to deal with the end of cheap energy and to stop catastrophic climate change."  Bill McKibben, author of "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future," remarked, ""The world is up against real limits, limits that will define our future. We're running out of oil and we're running out of atmosphere, and those two alone will change the planet. Let's get ahead of the curve for once."  Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore declared, "I strongly endorse 'The Real New Deal.' The Obama administration takes office at one of the most critical moments in our history with a tremendous opportunity and a grave responsibility to take appropriate action."  Debbie Cook, former Mayor of Huntington Beach, California and Post Carbon Institute Board President said, "I endorse 'The Real New Deal' as the only sane way to approach the twin challenges of fossil fuel depletion and climate change. We need a systematic, coordinated effort and we don't have any time to waste."  Other endorsers of "The Real New Deal" include Randy Udall (renowned writer; director of Community Office for Resource Efficiency), Lester Brown (founder of Earth Policy Institute and Worldwatch Institute), David Orr (Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College), and Pat Murphy (founder of The Community Solution and author of Plan C).  To view the full plan, visit http://www.postcarbon.org/real-new-deal.  Post Carbon Institute, based in Sebastopol, California, conducts research, develops technical tools, educates the public, and informs leaders to help communities around the world understand and respond to the challenges of fossil fuel depletion and climate change.  Contact:  Asher Miller,  Executive Director Post Carbon Institute  707-823-8700 x109  asher@postcarbon.org http://www.postcarbon.org

Better Livin' in Salem C.I.T.Y.: Chickens in the Yard

Fresh update on how you can get involved in comments HERE.

What else can you do that's this powerful?

If you are like most people -- 17 or over, over 110 pounds, and basically healthy and without HIV/STD risk factors -- you can and should be giving blood every 56 days.

Yet, only about 1 in 20 of the people just described bother.

What can you do that's as powerful as making it possible for as many as three people to live? Can you do it in an hour? At no cost? Of course not.

Think about it. Then call to set up a blood donation.

To donate blood or platelets, call 1-800-GIVELIFE (1-800-448-3543).

The Real Auto-Bailout: Look at the cash drain of cars

From the WSJ:

A Real Auto Bailout: Escape Your Car

Whether you drive a hybrid or an SUV, your car is a cash-guzzler. Families trying to save real money should consider going without.

. . . . Forget lattes and store-brand cereal. If you really want to see where your money is going, take a closer look at your car. Foreign or domestic, it doesn't matter. It's a cash guzzler, and it is probably costing you more than anything else except your home.

How much? First there's the actual capital cost of buying the vehicle. Obviously people can spend as little as a few thousand dollars buying an old clunker. But most spend a lot more. And that initial cost is just the start. Now add everything from gas and maintenance to insurance, registration, taxes, tolls, parking, tickets and so on.

You'll be lucky if you're spending less than about $4,000 a year. Most people will pay a lot more. If you buy the vehicle with a loan, you'll have to pay interest. If you pay cash, you have to factor in the interest you would have made on that money if you had saved it instead. That's a real cost too, and a substantial one, though most people forget about it.

In 2007, the most recent year that numbers are available, the American Automobile Association figured its members paid about $7,800 a year on average to own and maintain their cars. That figure dropped to about $6,200 for small-car owners.

The AAA's numbers were tabulated before the surge, and recent collapse, of gasoline prices. It's hard to imagine gas prices will to remain at today's panic-level $1.60 per gallon for long. But even if they do, that will only cut the AAA's figures by about $400 annually.

These are not trifling costs. Drivers are hemhorraging money. The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics calculated that in 2006 vehicles sucked down nearly 17 cents of every family dollar.

Maybe it's time for smart families to consider some really tough choices.

Life without a car may seem inconceivable. They are useful and can be fun. In most parts of America, you really can't survive without one. And they've been hammered into the culture and the national psyche.

But a lot of things are happening these days that nobody expected. Rules are changing. People need to make every dollar count.

Trading down to the cheapest car possible is one move. Dumping one vehicle from a two-car household is tougher to do, but offers real savings. Moving into a city with a downtown, and getting rid of your cars completely, can save you even more. When you factor in the savings, city real estate might actually work out in your favor. . . .

A most important insight

Building new roads as economic stimulus is like burning the siding and insulation in your house as a way to keep warm.

New Roads = New Pollution

President-elect Obama and Congress are working to pass a green-jobs economic stimulus package—but it is in danger of being hijacked by the road-building lobby, which wants billions of dollars for unnecessary new roads that would increase global warming pollution. Just 10 miles of a new four-lane highway lead to emissions that are equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 46,700 new Hummers.

Really, really good short slideshow explaining a very simple idea

A brilliant, concise, entertaining animated lecture about single payer can be found at: http://www.grahamazon.com/sp/whatissinglepayer.php

Genetically tampered food & Salem

If you were one of the huge throng at the Salem Progressive Film Series event "The World According to Monsanto," then you know what powerful emotions that tainted, untrustworthy food evoke, and you know how sophisticated the pro-gene tampering forces are, with their plans to basically wipe out all competing models of agriculture (especially organic -- hence, gene tampering to cause crops like corn and cotton to express BT, which will soon create a huge host of pests with full resistance to BT, one of the key tools for organics today).

Well, hold onto those emotions, because there are a couple of places you can channel that energy into useful work:

1) rBGH Free Salem
[rGBH = recombinant bovine growth hormone; "posilac(R)" in the movie.]

Meet with other folks like yourself who are concerned about the outrageous violation of a corporation like Monsanto not only tampering with the basic code for cows in order to more fully industrialize dairying in America (and eliminate as many dairy farmers as possible) but also lying, cheating, and lobbying (or is that redundant) to prevent consumers from having the ability to know when their food contains milk from cows doped-up with this insidious product.

Rick North of Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility will be among those attending.
MORE INFO: Lori Beamer, loribeamer@comcast.net

WHEN: Wednesday, January 29, 20209, 6:30-8:00 p.m.
WHERE: 2nd floor, Crystal Garden Bldg, 210 Liberty St. SE (above Tea Party Bookstore, corner of Liberty and Ferry -- and thanks to Tea Party for the great book table tonight!)

2) Friends of Straub Environmental Learning Center host a discussion by four experts (including Rick North and Lisa Weasel, one of the speakers at the movie tonight).

Genetic Engineering [sic*] in Agriculture: Four Perspectives on Benefits and Hazards

WHEN: Thursday, February 5, 2009, 7:00-8:30 p.m.
WHERE: Salem Public Library (Anderson Room?) 585 Liberty St. SE
MORE INFO: Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility weblink

(* The "sic" is warranted because calling genetic tampering "engineering" implies a degree of control, predictability, and knowledge of consequences that is totally absent from the genetic tampering that corporations like Monsanto do. For these companies, the world is their laboratory -- literally, and damn the costs to everyone else.)

UPDATE: Nice post on Monsanto's subversion of the academic research agenda.

UPDATE II: A nice post on the inconvenient fact (for Monsanto) that gene-tampered foods won't help us deal with the climate crisis.

Gas Tax vs. Mileage Tax?

An Oregon enviro poohbah sent out this query:

http://www.blueoregon.com/2009/01/of-mileage-and.html

Of Mileage and Gas Taxes

Jeff Alworth

I was pondering the question of the Governor's proposed mileage tax yesterday while listening to the rebroadcast of Think Out Loud. Because they are both related, the mileage and gas taxes are often discussed together. But, based on my pidgin economics, learned mostly on blogs, this seemed backward. Shouldn't you first ask what you're paying for and what behavior you want to promote? So I went to a econ blog and lo, the blogger was asking the same thing:

If you are proposing Pigovian taxes, then both make sense but address very different things. Driving a car imposes external costs through the impact on the environment, through the wear and tear on the roads and through the time cost of congestion.

A mileage tax addresses the wear and tear issue. People who drive will be assessed a tax that is equivalent to the cost of the road wear they are responsible for.... The gas tax is Pigovian in addressing the environmental impact of the amount of carbon emitted which is exactly related to the gas used.

It is clear that each tax is also a poor way to address the other issue, to wit: a gas tax is not a good way to address wear and tear because a Prius could do a lot of wear and tear with little gas and a Mustang could do little wear and tear with a lot of gas; and a mileage tax doesn't work, for the very same reason, as a way to address environmental impact.

But even if you're clear which about objective you're targeting, there are other ramifications. Take the mileage tax. People are innately queasy about having a government agency tracking their car--and reasonably so. What happens to this info? Who controls it and who can access it? Another feature of this proposal involves taxing you more for driving during rush hours or in congested traffic. Is this a reasonable penalty for people who already feel penalized by being stuck in traffic in the first place? Presumably, they'd avoid the congestion if it was avoidable. What behavior do you hope to incentivize here?

The gas tax, which is less complex, nevertheless has complications. On the green side of the ledger, it's a no-brainer. It acts as an incentive for people to drive more fuel-efficient cars or drive less. It penalizes those who use gas-guzzlers proportionately. But on other sides of the ledger, it's not so great. As lower-income people are forced further outside of the city core, transportation costs are borne disproportionatley by them. And it effectively amounts to a tax on rural residents who have no access to public transporation. It's true that the correlation between carbon production and taxes are directly relational, but again, are you penalizing people who can't change their behavior?

Hmmm. Your thoughts?

I've started several times to respond with cogent analysis and keen insights about the pros and cons of gas tax vs. mileage taxes ...

But I end up stopping because this whole discussion ignores the elephant -- heck, the blue whale -- in the driveway.

Somehow we've gotten snookered into having a discussion about how to get drivers to pump more money into pavement (or maintain the amount that they are pumping into pavement) without discussing the fact that the impetus for the whole thing --- the fact that fuel taxes only pay a small (and declining) share of what we're spending on roads --- means that we're sitting around spending all this energy discussing the smallest portion of the problem, rather than the largest part (the general funds and property tax millages spent on roads).

Before we discuss fuel taxes vs. mileage taxes vs. congestion pricing or whatever, we FIRST must resolve to do what so many Oregonians mistakenly think we already do: pay for roads with gas taxes (or their user-fee equivalents, mileage taxes/congestion pricing, vehicle excise taxes, etc.).

In other words, FIRST we must take general fund and property tax millages out of the equation -- eliminate these taxes. THEN we can have the good discussion about how best to allocate the cost of roads across the fees and taxes that come from road users (gas tax, mileage tax, congestion pricing, registration fees, vehicle excise tax and weight taxes). We can talk about adding fees for non-motorized vehicles (bicyclists) as well, such as the clever idea that all vehicles should be registered annually, with the fee based on weight.

Instead, somehow, Oregon environmental groups have decided to help preserve and extend the auto-dominated system by helping finagle more money for roads, instead of fighting to shift road funding onto road users.

And it's not true that people who don't drive should pay property taxes for roads or else they get an unearned benefit ("free rider"). People who don't themselves drive on roads pay their share of roadway fees/taxes through the prices of the goods and services they use. As we shift the costs of roads ONTO the roads -- rather than onto houses, farms, nursing homes, apartment complexes, and other property tax sources -- then we'll see shifts in the costs of goods and services that reflect the amount of transport that they require ... which should be the goal of any environmentalist (get the prices right) as well as any politician (cut general property taxes).

So while the ins and outs of gas taxes vs. mileage taxes can be fascinating sociologically and politically, the real answer is "Sorry, wrong question."

The right question is how fast we can cut taxes and millages that DON'T derive from road uses and how soon we can get to zero; on the way, we can have lots of good discussions about how to make up that revenue with the various use-based fees ...