Eclectic Writer

Back in the day that would be the late 1940’s, there was a strong belief in the US that if the working poor were given any extra money they would run out and spend it getting drunk and not return to work. In order to keep society moving and grease the wheels Capitalism the working poor needed to remain the working poor. Then after the last “Great Depression” they, that would be the Capitalists like Henry Ford, discovered consumerism. Give the working poor more money, convince them that they had to spend that money on countless items they don’t need, and the economy would take off. Whole new classes of companies would explode onto the scene that that wealthy 10% would get wealthier, though never grow beyond the 10%. You would build a middle class willing to hock their pajamas for the next new thing. Cars, televisions, fashions changing with the season, lawn gnomes, Captain Midnight Decoder Rings, and a gazillion other wonderful things that we consumers just got to have put a bullet through the forehead of Capitalism and left all those rich Capitalists with their capital behind. The US embraced Consumerism, and became the first real Consumer society and enjoyed the endless benefits, not to mention the bills, of Consumerism. Somewhere along the line, they introduced unlimited credit making all of us Consumers slaves who, paraphrasing Tennessee Ernie Ford, “…Owe our soul to Master Card.”

By the early 70’s we were a vibrant Consumer nation, though our politicians still lied to our faces and told us we were Capitalists of the Adam Smith Wealth of Nations variety, and damned proud of it, thank you very much, and curse those commie-pinko-Ruskies. Even then, the wheels were threatening to come off the rolling economy of the most vibrant of consumerist nations. Consumerism required relatively high wages, relative in terms of the pre WWII days. Relatively higher wages required relatively lower profits. The enormously wealthy 10% shook there heads and look for an answer to the critical burning question, “How do we take more money out of their pockets (their=consumer) and put it in our pockets (our-capitalist/controllers of capital)?

Japan offered a nice model for that. After WWII, Japan rebuilt their industry and created a plague of cheap, consumer goods with a reputation for shoddy workmanship. (I know most of you don’t remember when made-in-Japan = Crap.) As Japan became successful, they created products that were reputed to be the best in the world, and their own low wage populations demanding to be consumers, were given raises, and the fabled Samurai economy began to service the American consumer. But the idea of taking an item with a perceived high net worth (even it if costs only pennies for the pound) and making it in low wage countries in order to maximize profits was born. They named it globalism.

In all of these countries with extreme low wages, a small middle class like group (call the globalists) emerged as economic prostitutes servicing the Globalist 10%. They have now grown to the point where this globalists out number the US Consumerists, though there may be relatively few of them in any given country. The wealthy 10% controlling capital have switched marketing strategies. Market their just got to have goods and services to globalists and put a bullet through the head of the middle class US cash cow. They are now free to strip the manufacturing industries, the source of the money for the American middle class, and send them to China and other countries with an emerging low wage economy. Continue with an historic trend to destroy unions, whose demands kept wages artificially high (from the capitalist perspective), and add that to the use of bubble economies (dot.com and housing bubbles now burst) used to strip the last of the money/capital from the middle class and you reach today. The US is now well into a trend of wage adjustment as people answer the call of their stomach and work at ever lower and lower wage jobs. In not to long, relatively speaking, the majority of US consumers will become a low wage resource and the cream of consumers will go to work for globalized capital holders (that wealthy 10%) and join the globalist in the new distributed global economy.

In a world where Corporations are international in scope and activities, no single nation, no matter how powerful, can control them. Their economic output dwarfs that of any nation and thereby controls all nations by speaking the language of money. All our closely held freedoms and ideologies become a commodity with no value and zero worth. We have now entered the age of, to quote Janis Joplin, “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

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It is time for Americans to realize that we are never going back to the days of cheap oil and cheaper gas. Our individually based transportation system, otherwise known as the automobile, may not be history but will change dramatically in a world where gas is $6.00 or more a gallon. It is time for the second most efficient transportation system in the world to reemerge.

Rail is beat only by big transport ships for efficiency, but isn’t limited to ports or deep river traffic. It can be used as light rail for local commuter traffic, long distance high speed passenger rail, or heavy cargo.  Rebuilding the system will not be cheap, but it is critical for America that we find new Rail Barons.

The US Government must encourage the expansion of rail, either though AMTRAK style subsidies, or tax incentives to encourage private companies to enter the field.  Yes, its not the same experience as a car.  You can’t carry your private chunk of personal space.  Rail is a more community based experience.  But we are not going back to the days of cheap gas and the sooner we start building for the future the easier our transition to a different civilization will be.

Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises
WASHINGTON — Record prices for gasoline and jet fuel should be good news for Amtrak, as travelers look for alternatives to cut the cost of driving and flying.

And they are good news, up to a point.

Amtrak set records in May, both for the number of passengers it carried and for ticket revenues — all the more remarkable because May is not usually a strong travel month.

But the railroad, and its suppliers, have shrunk so much, largely because of financial constraints, that they would have difficulty growing quickly to meet the demand.

Is this the great die off?

This morning in Asia Times Online I read “Are we all North Koreans now?” which though descriptive is a piss poor title to a good article.  This article draws parallels to the famine and die off of North Koreans in the 90’s after Russia and China withdrew subsidized oil and emergency measures to strip marginal land of timber and plant it led to a famine that “as much as 10% of the North Korean population.”

Here in the west, we like to blame the whole thing on the inherent failures of the communist system, and say that if just those people had the good sense to be Capitalists and have elected a real leader and not some fruitcake they would have been happy and healthy. The article shows the errors of that belief system. North Korea’s heavily mechanized agricultural system that relied on petroleum based fertilizers and heavy equipment could not resist ” triple whammy from energy, agriculture and climate-change.” The devistating North Korean famine brought on by exploding fuel prices, crops that relied on massive use of petroleum based fertilizer, and catastrophic climate change may be a precursor of what the rest of us are facing now, on a world wide scale. Those massive midwestern floods that have devistated crops from Canada to the gulf are a foretaste of the problem. With worldwide food prices having surged by “39%” over the last year, this will be a new shock to the system that is already stretched thin by exploding transportation costs. At this point, we should ask ourselves what do we need to do to avert a world wide famine? What would happen if if 10% of the world’s poulation died off due to famine? Are we ready to tighten our belts and do what’s necessary as a species to survive.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into science class, creationist sharks are once again cruising in Texas to devour and defecate away any ounce of scientific inquiry into evolution.  Armed with the Bible and a copy of Archbishop James Ussher’s chronology dating the world’s creation to 4004 BC, they have taken a new approach to remove any and all consideration that the process of evolution might have a part to play in the development of species.

They started with “Creation Science” that was every bit as scientific as flogging your back with spiked Rosary while screaming, forgive me God for I have sinned.  When that didn’t work, they evolved debunked “Creation Science” in to “Intelligent Design,” which was Genesis carefully rewritten with all mention of “God” removed.  Intelligent designed was debunked and finally banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.   That did not stop them, of course.  Persistence is an important quality in the faith based community.

Their new tactic in the war to shove their very narrow view of religion down the throats of anyone who might want to have their own ideas is a small phrase “strengths and weaknesses.” To quote Laura Beil in The New York Times, “The “strengths and weaknesses” language was slipped into the curriculum standards in Texas to appease creationists when the State Board of Education first mandated the teaching of evolution in the late 1980s.”  For a scientist, the concept of “strengths and weaknesses” is natural, benign, and normal.  Everything in the universe, be it the atomic bond between atoms, design of a bridge, explanation of Super String Theory, economic analysis, or a particular type of colorectal exam have natural “strengths and weaknesses.”  To Creationist Sharks, which I can now rename Strength/Weakness Sharks, just the word weakness provides an opening, a weakness you might say, that they can use to remove knowledge from the act of education.

For me, it is difficult to understand the level of intolerance necessary to drive one group of people to remove the very idea of evolution from the memory of mankind.  I recognize such intolerance’s existence, of course.  I see the evidence of such intolerance again and again through history, and not simply with the Theory of Evolution.  That intolerance is as easily linked to the shape of the eyes, the color of the skin, the nation of birth, or the ideology of a government.  It is something that lurks deep inside all of us, I suppose.   Something we each bring out and use against the thing that we don’t like.  But that doesn’t make what they are doing in Texas acceptable.  It doesn’t make it right.  It is something we have to guard against.

Van Dam Peak rises outside my tiny office window across the tops of houses removed from this picture as unnecessary.  Though I like to hike, camp, swim, and take very amateur photos of the natural world, I have never visited this particular neighbor.  I’ve thought about it, many times.  But there was always somewhere else to go and something else to go locally, such as Iron Mountain, or better places to see, Mt. Palomar. Van Dam Peak has one real advantage that those other relatively close locations do not have, no driving time.  With cheap local gasoline running $4.50 a gallon, a hiking place I can walk to in 7 minutes has very real advantages.

The Facts

Located at latitude – longitude coordinates of N 32.954212 and W -117.079199, with a maximum altitude of 1,010 feet (307.85 meters) above sea level and, it rises just two miles west of the heart of Poway. Van Dam peak carries an honorific name for Edward Van Dam, county superintendent of roads form 1933 to 1961. The U.S. Board on Geographic Names officially named the mountain in 1984. It is a known source of clinozoisite.

The Hike

I walked for just 30 minutes, intending no more than a minor exploration of the area. There are no “official” trails that I have been able to find, though a number of access paths and winding footpaths exist and can even be seen on photographs.  I followed a foot path running up a landscaped hill in the neighborhood immediately south of the peak.  The grade is steep and rough with a large, graffiti covered boulder at about the halfway point.  Where the path intersected one of the access trails, I turned down hill and walked for some distance.  When my limited time ran out, I returned the along the route I took to get there. I suspect it will take some time to explore the area in detail and I look forward to hiking as much of Van Dam Peak as possible.

“Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war. … I was shot down over Vietnam and spent five years as a POW. … I hate war. And I know how terrible its costs are. I’m running for president to keep the country I love safe. I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.”
–John McCain

“It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You’re really making history, and thanks,”
–George W. Bush