Miles Per Hour

This is an old concept, first proposed by a writer named Ivan Illich in his book Energy and Equity.

The model American male devotes more than 1600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it stands idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for gasoline, tolls, insurance, taxes, and tickets. He spends four of his sixteen waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1600 hours to get 7500 miles: less than five miles per hour.

The numbers are a bit out of date, so I thought I’d look up some contemporary figures. The results I found varied depending on the source, but generally clustered around the numbers I’ll use here.

Your average American drives about 13,500 miles annually and earns $31,250.

The average speed for a car in an urban area is between 20 and 25 miles per hour. It’s hard to find numbers for rural areas. In one sense they should be higher due to fewer stops and less congestion, as well as more time spent on highways. Then again, here in Vermont we spend a lot of time on unpaved back roads and in town centers where 35 mph is the limit. Most people are commuting less than 10 miles to work, most of which is on class 2 roads, not interstates.

The average cost of owning and operating a car these days, according to the Automobile Association of America, is $8,766. (That’s for a sedan. An SUV cost $11,239)I looked up a number of studies, and they all gave costs in the $7,500 to $9,500 range. This is, of course, the direct costs to the owner; purchase, maintenance, gasoline, taxes and fees. The fact that we drive polluting vehicles on subsidized roads with subsidized fuel and regularly smash into each other adds hidden costs spread across society. (More on that later) One problem: AAA used $2.88/gallon for fuel cost. The national average is around $3.27 (again AAA numbers) as I write, 13.5% higher. That increases the annual cost of driving for an average sedan by around $234, bringing the AAA annual cost right up to $9,000.

If our average American is driving 13,500 miles annually at, let’s be generous, 30 mph, that’s 450 hours per year in the driver’s seat. That same person is earning $15.62 hourly, so that $9000 cost is sucking up 576 hours at work. It is interesting to think that most Americans spend much more time earning money to drive than actually driving. There is other time associated with driving, including waiting around at the repair shop reading a 2002 issue of Bass Fishing Magazine, but I’ll be optimistic and add only 24 hours a year of general screwing around time. The grand total is 1050 hours, which works out to 12.86 miles per hour. That’s twice Illich’s estimate, but still not particularly impressive.

Your mileage may vary. A person with a high hourly wage and a small cheap used car driving a lot of highway miles will do better.

Then again, the hidden costs do change the picture dramatically. Various studies have pointed out that we do not directly pay the true cost of driving. Our taxes (property, state, and federal) subsidize road construction and maintenance, subsidize oil companies, and pay for the treatment of people with lung disease. We also pay for an aircraft carrier battle group cruising around in the oil shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean and generally mess about with oil producing countries around the globe. I have found numbers for the hidden costs of driving, if paid as a gasoline tax, from three to thirteen dollars per gallon.

Running the numbers again using the $3/gal hidden cost figure, the annual cost of driving jumps to $10,800, or 691 hours at median income. This brings our true miles per hour down to 11.6. Driving an SUV would bring it solidly under 10. You could do that on a bicycle.

To go back to Illich and complete his thought:

In countries deprived of a transportation industry, people manage to do the same, walking wherever they want to go, and they allocate only 3 to 8 percent of their society's time budget to traffic instead of 28 percent. What distinguishes the traffic in rich countries from the traffic in poor countries is not more mileage per hour of lifetime for the majority, but more hours of compulsory consumption of high doses of energy, packaged and unequally distributed by the transportation industry.

576 hours is 28.8% of a 2,000 hour work year. 691 hours is 34.4%. Think about that – working over a quarter of your time for your car, mostly to get to work.

It makes me think of the Librarian, who doesn’t own a car and walks or bicycles a few minutes to work. She has a really beautiful bicycle, but it cost her perhaps one tenth of what a decent used car would cost. The maintenance costs are almost nil, and she’d have to spend money on fuel anyway. She is effectively saving herself about $10,000 a year.

Well, you say, all right for her, but there is 20 miles of car-clogged highway between my home and place of work, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate. True, but back to the Librarian. She lives in an apartment building that was built to house people who worked at a small factory (now housing) just around the corner. We used to do that in this country. Our urban geography was designed for people without cars. That was a policy of necessity. Later our legislators made the decision to zone workplaces separately from residences and to subsidize the infrastructure that supported automobile-centric policy. This was a decision, not inevitability. Such decisions can be reversed.

Such decisions will be reversed. The geology of oil will require this. It is inevitable. Given the amount of our lives we presently dedicate to supporting our automotive habits, it might not be so bad.

Negative Interest

For those of you who may have been losing sleep about the U.S. government deficit, I have a glass of warm milk for you. The esteemed Nobel laureate Paul Krugman has pointed out that we are now living in a financial bizarro world.

How would you like to take out a 5-year loan and have the bank pay you interest? Read that again. Sounds like insanity, doesn’t it? Well, things in Europe and elsewhere have gotten so shaky that this is exactly the situation in which the U.S. Treasury finds itself. Investors all over the world are looking for a safe haven, and America’s credit rating is so good that they are willing to pay for the privilege of storing their money here.

Treasury Real Yield Curve Rates, which translates as actual inflation adjusted interest when our government borrows money, have gone negative. Five-year Treasury Notes are paying something around -0.75 percent as of December 9^th. Seven year T-Notes are around -0.4% and ten year T-Bonds are hovering around zero. Free money, in other words. Beyond ten years the interest rates are soaring as high as 0.92%. That’s right, stop gloating about your 4% mortgage. Uncle Sam is borrowing at less than a quarter of that on a 30-year loan and making more money than your savings account on short term loans.

Interest rates aside, our debt to GDP ratio is 90%. That’s like someone with a $100,000 annual income having a $90,000 mortgage. It’s not an emergency, and the financial world recognizes this. We can tell that from the negative interest rates.

We are like a fisherman, in debt, with a leaky boat. Do we borrow more money and fix the boat so we can earn our way back into the black? Or do we stand on principle, refuse to borrow, and let our livelihood sink? When our fisherman can make money by borrowing money the answer is obvious.

Update on Monday, December 12, 2011 at 9:38PM by Minor Heretic

I received a correction from my friend The Broker, to wit: "Minutiae from the Peanut Gallery: Treasury Bills are obligations less than one year, Treasury Notes are one year to ten years, and Treasury Bonds are ten years and up (to thirty at present), although all of these are generically bonds."

Noted and corrected, with thanks.

Bernie Has Started It

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill to amend the Constitution in order to reverse the Citizens United decision and end corporate personhood. I recently posted a version of such an amendment as hashed out on an online forum, but I am perfectly happy with this one. It gets most of the job done. There would be some legislative battles even with the amendment in place, but this would be a death blow to corporate control of our government.

Here’s the link to Senator Sander’s website.

Here’s the relevant text, below. Enjoy. And get behind this. If you live in Vermont, send a letter of support to Bernie and a “Get with the program” message to Senator Leahy and Representative Welch. If you live elsewhere, send the link to your elected representatives and tell them to get with the program. I declare this a litmus test for all politicians – 99% versus 1%, democracy versus plutocracy, however you want to phrase it.

Send word of this bill to your friends and family all over the country. This is the deciding issue of our times: Who will govern, corporations or people? Either we win this battle or we lose all the rest with it.

3          ‘‘ARTICLE—

4          ‘‘SECTION 1. The rights protected by the Constitution

5          of the United States are the rights of natural persons and

6          do not extend to for-profit corporations, limited liability

7          companies, or other private entities established for busi

8          ness purposes or to promote business interests under the

9           laws of any state, the United States, or any foreign state.

10        ‘‘SECTION 2. Such corporate and other private enti

11        ties established under law are subject to regulation by the

12        people through the legislative process so long as such regu

13        lations are consistent with the powers of Congress and the

14        States and do not limit the freedom of the press.

15        ‘‘SECTION 3. Such corporate and other private enti

16        ties shall be prohibited from making contributions or ex

17        penditures in any election of any candidate for public of

18        fice or the vote upon any ballot measure submitted to the

19        people.

20        ‘‘SECTION 4. Congress and the States shall have the

21        power to regulate and set limits on all election contribu

22        tions and expenditures, including a candidate’s own spend

23        ing, and to authorize the establishment of political com

24        mittees to receive, spend, and publicly disclose the sources

25        of those contributions and expenditures.’’.

Rule of Law

A couple of legal issues are on my mind right now, one at the law enforcement level, and one at the legislative level.

I have been seeing a series of photos and videos from around the country of unprovoked assaults by police against unarmed and entirely peaceful demonstrators. An 84 year old woman got maced out in Oakland and students at U.C. Davis, seated and passive, were maced in a calculating, unhurried manner by a campus police officer. Unresisting protesters have been beaten with clubs and teargassed. An officer in Oakland fired a tear gas canister into the head of a man at point blank range, fracturing his skull. When other people clustered around the fallen man to administer first aid, an officer tossed a tear gas grenade into the center of the group, scattering them.

This bothers me, of course, because of the unnecessary violence and sheer sadism of it. It also bothers me because of the damage it does to the idea of rule of law.

We should expect laws to be enforced fairly, evenly, and with techniques proportional to the seriousness of the crime. We should expect law enforcement personnel to do their jobs with the minimum force required for their own safety and the safety of those around them. But we can’t. It seems that peaceably assembling in order to petition the government for redress of grievances, while admittedly becoming a public nuisance, is grounds for violent assault.

What the police themselves fail to realize is the two types of power they wield, and the relationship between the two. Their most obvious type of power is that of the gun, the mace, and the club. This is their small power. With all that weaponry and armor, an individual police officer is no more powerful than any other person so armed and armored. A police officer’s great power is the power of respect, both for the rule of law and for the officer as a just enforcer of that law. When the general populace has that respect for law enforcement, a single officer can walk safely among a thousand people. The people will assist that officer, obey all reasonable commands, warn of danger, and offer useful information. When the police arbitrarily use violence, they lose that respect. Without that respect, the officer is merely the member of a uniformed gang.

As a positive example, consider the Vermont State Police. They are one of the best trained and most thoroughly professional police forces in the country. They patrol the highways and back roads of Vermont alone. They rely on respect. They have a solid reputation. In my few interactions with them they have been uniformly polite, helpful, and professional, even when my personal appearance was not such as inspires the affection of a police officer. They are not perfect as individuals or professionals, but I can easily see 98% of Vermonters on their side. Can the police officers of New York City or Oakland expect the same from their citizens?

The police forces that are using violence against peaceful protesters are weakening themselves. And yet, this is a common theme in history. As a government loses legitimacy in the minds of its people it resorts to force, which hastens the decline. The relative immunity of millionaire bankers to arrest and prosecution is an aggravating factor. Apparently trespassing on Wall Street is a more pressing concern to the authorities than defrauding investors of billions of dollars on Wall Street.

As if the militarization of the police wasn’t bad enough, now Congress is turning the military into the police, prosecutor, judge, jury, and jail. The Senate just passed the National Defense Authorization Act, S.1867. Stuck in there is a nightmare provision, Subtitle D – Detainee Matters. It authorizes the U.S. military to detain any terrorism suspect indefinitely, without trial. That includes U.S. citizens detained on U.S. soil, as in you, on your street. A false accusation or a case of mistaken identity is as good as a life sentence. There is a feeble and vague insertion about not affecting existing law or authorities. That means that after the military whisks you away into secret indefinite detention you can hope that the courts work it out before something even more unpleasant happens to you.

Specifically (as highlighted below):

Under Section 1031 c (1), you can be detained until the end of the “War on Terror,” whenever that might be.

Under Section 1031 c (2), you can be tried in a military tribunal, lacking basic rights or rules of evidence, and including the use of confessions obtained under torture.

Under Section 1031 c (4), you can be shipped off to a foreign country of the government’s choice.

Well, there go all the good parts of the Constitution.

President Obama says he wants to veto it, albeit for all the wrong reasons. The House of Representatives still has to work it over. Apparently even the top military brass and the various branches of the intelligence services don’t want it to pass. It’s time to write the White House and your members of Congress. And call them. And raise hell in general.

Subtitle D—Detainee Matters

SEC. 1031. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED

FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

 (a) IN GENERAL.—Congress affirms that the authority of the President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military

Force (Public Law 107–40) includes the authority for the Armed Forces of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition

under the law of war.

 (b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section is any person as follows:

 (1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

 (2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly

supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.

 (c) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—The disposition of a person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may include the following:

 (1) Detention under the law of war without trial until the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

 (2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009 (title XVIII of Public Law 111–25 84)).

 (3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.

 (4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.

 (d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section is intended to limit or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

 (e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities, relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.

 (f) REQUIREMENT FOR BRIEFINGS OF CONGRESS.—

The Secretary of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be ‘‘covered persons’’ for purposes of subsection (b)(2).

Amendments

As I reported last time, I am working with a group of people online, trying to formulate a couple of Amendments to the Constitution. The purpose of the amendments would be to get corporate influence out of government and to reform campaign finance laws so that the 99% of us who earn ordinary incomes have a voice equal to the 1% who can pour tens of thousands of dollars into the political process.

The origin of this particular online effort comes from a political commentator named Cenk Uygur, who has a show called The Young Turks. He created an organization called the WolfPAC, which is aligned with Occupy Wall Street. The goal is to organize a state by state campaign for these constitutional amendments. I’ll sum up his original, somewhat colloquial proposal this way:

Corporations are not persons.

Campaign contributions are not protected by the Constitution

Only citizens can contribute

Contributions are limited in size

I added this concept:

Contributions are restricted to constituents

The online discussions continue, but I have formulated a working proposal. Some of this is my wording, some is others. A college student named Lam Nguyen has organized the online forum and has had a lot of influence. I’ll lay it out for you in full, and then go through it with some explanation. Believe me, every word of this has been hashed and rehashed.

28^th Amendment

Section 1: Only natural persons shall have the rights protected under the U.S. Constitution.

Section 2: Incorporated for-profit entities are forbidden to interfere with elections, legislation, or the conduct of government.

Section 3: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

29^th Amendment

Section 1: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, contributions of money or gifts in kind to candidates for public office, or to organizations engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, are not protected acts under the U.S. Constitution.

Section 2: Only U.S. Citizens shall be allowed to contribute money or gifts in kind to a candidate for public office, or to an organization engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative.

Section 3: No candidate for any elected office, or organization engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, shall be permitted to receive more than a sum equal to sixteen times the federal hourly minimum wage, in contributions of any form, excluding volunteer labor, for any purpose, from any individual during an election cycle. All contributions must be fully disclosed in amount and source.

Section 4: All campaign expenditures shall be comprised entirely of campaign contributions. Candidates as private citizens may contribute to their campaigns within the limits and restrictions of this amendment.

Section 5: All contributions to candidates for public office, or to organizations engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, must be raised from the constituents of the elected office in question or legal residents of the jurisdiction affected.

Section 6: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Perhaps you are saying to yourselves, “I knew James Madison, and you, sir, are no James Madison.” In this case I want to know the secret of your longevity, but it is true that I am not a writer in the 18^th century style. I have tried to pare away the unnecessary and to achieve the fine balance between specificity and generality. The result is not always graceful. Let me explain.

28^th Amendment

Section 1: Only natural persons shall have the rights protected under the U.S. Constitution.

This reverses the near-universally misinterpreted Supreme Court decision of 1886, Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad. Read Unequal Protection by Thom Hartmann for details, but the court clerk, a former railroad lawyer, added his own spin to the decision by declaring that corporations were protected as persons under the 14^th Amendment. This contradicted common sense, legal precedent, and the explicit commentary of those who wrote the 14^th Amendment, as well as the Santa Clara decision itself, but no matter.

It was, and is, ridiculous to consider an artificial, unconscious, immortal, amoral legal entity in the same legal light as a human being, but that’s the way we have been operating for the past century. Corporations have accumulated both power over government and immunity from government in ways that have distorted our legislative process and made the government act against the general public interest. This amendment restricts the protections of the Constitution to human beings (“natural persons” being the legal term of art) and renders any protections to corporations mere privileges, which may be revoked.

Section 2: Incorporated for-profit entities are forbidden to interfere with elections, legislation, or the conduct of government.

This is reasonably self explanatory. These amoral legal fictions we call corporations are rendered politically impotent.

Section 3: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

A must have for implementation.

29^th Amendment

Section 1: Notwithstanding any other provision of law, contributions of money or gifts in kind to candidates for public office, or to organizations engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, are not protected acts under the U.S. Constitution.

The Supreme Court made the absurd decision in Buckley v Valeo that donating money to a campaign constituted protected political speech. The Court neglected to explain how we would all somehow manage to obtain equal amounts of money so that millionaires wouldn’t have greater rights than those of modest income. As it stands, money is so effective at determining the outcome of elections that it is more analogous to voting than speech. It is not democracy when wealthy people and corporations have more votes than everyone else. This section places financial contributions in the realm of legislation.

Section 2: Only U.S. Citizens shall be allowed to contribute money or gifts in kind to a candidate for public office, or to an organization engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative.

Again, this is reasonably self explanatory. No foreigners or corporations are allowed to finance lobbying, campaigns, or ballot measures.

Section 3: No candidate for any elected office, or organization engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, shall be permitted to receive more than a sum equal to sixteen times the federal hourly minimum wage, in contributions of any form, excluding volunteer labor, for any purpose, from any individual during an election cycle. All contributions must be fully disclosed in amount and source.

This one levels the playing field. I have written before about the 90% success rate of high spenders in primary campaigns and our millionaire-friendly donation limits. This amendment pegs the maximum donation to the income of the least well paid among us. It will increase or decrease in value along with their fortunes. Warren Buffet and the guy who mows Warren Buffet’s lawn will have equal political clout.

Section 4: All campaign expenditures shall be comprised entirely of campaign contributions. Candidates as private citizens may contribute to their campaigns within the limits and restrictions of this amendment.

What will prevent candidates from borrowing money from wealthy donors or millionaires buying their way in? This amendment.

Section 5: All contributions to candidates for public office, or to organizations engaged in influencing legislation, the outcome of an election, or a ballot initiative, must be raised from the constituents of the elected office in question or legal residents of the jurisdiction affected.

Why should I be able to influence an election in California, or a Californian influence an election in Vermont? I shouldn’t and he or she shouldn’t. Neither of us has legal standing in the other’s political process. I can’t vote in California, for obvious reasons, but I can presently donate to Californian candidates, lobbying firms, political action committees, and the like. It’s just not right.

Section 6: Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

As is necessary.

I don’t expect this particular wording to survive a trip through the Constitutional Convention process, or even the online process. However, it does contain the basic principles needed to place political power in the hands of ordinary citizens. Even passing just the proposed Section 1 of the 28^th Amendment would get us a long way towards some version of a functional democracy.

Whether or not you find this particular wording satisfying, I hope you will promote the concepts involved. Talk to your friends, do the Facebook thing, and maybe even get involved with WolfPAC and its forum, the 99 Declaration, or Occupy Wall Street. Creating democracy is a democratic process.