The House has passed a tax bill that is disproportionately kind to the wealthy; the Senate is about to do the same and then Donald Trump can flash that Cheshire grin again as he signs a document that may sound good to his base, but in reality will not be.

Besides stacking the deck in favor of the likes of himself, the bill also gives him and other Republicans a long-awaited victory in dissembling the Affordable Care Act. The individual mandate for health care coverage will essentially be gutted because penalties for non-compliance are eliminated. This means that thirteen million fewer individuals will have health care coverage and premiums will go up for those who still have coverage.

Regrettably, the underlying theme to Republican policies is meanness. Parenthetically, it might be noted that a recent CNN poll shows that Republican Senator is 20% more popular among Democrats than members of his own party (68% – 48%). If only McCain would show the party the same respect that they show to him.

The recent literal train wreck in Washington State gave Trump another opportunity to call next for a robust infrastructure bill. Of course, this comes as his budget cuts infrastructure spending by $55 billion, including a considerable amount for Amtrak. None of this stops Trump from calling for massive upgrades to our roads, bridges, airports, rail system – just about everything except cyber security. Democrats have talked about a real infrastructure bill that would cost on the order of a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money, but it be fresh money going into circulation and the multiplier effect of contractors and workers receiving it would mean that each dollar would turn over in the economy up to four times in a year. Much of that would come back in the way of tax revenue.

Trump has also spoken about a trillion dollars for infrastructure, but up to eighty percent of it would be smoke and mirrors. That’s because it would not be actual federal spending. Instead, it would be up to $800 billion in tax breaks to contractors and real estate owners such as himself to “stimulate” infrastructure growth.

This one has difficulty passing the giggle test, because tax breaks for the wealthy do what they are called, they give more money to the wealthy. Without macro plans from the government to fund necessary projects, there will be negligible improvement to the infrastructure. What should be a major public program to improve the lives of the American people is just a further transference of public money into the coffers of the wealthy.

The mysteries of the Republican brain continue to be at the center of dysfunctional policies. There seems to be a lack of empathy, and policy-makers do not mind constructing programs that harm the most vulnerable (one of the seven forbidden words) among us. But even more odd is how the economically deprived in the Republican base have difficulty seeing who is oppressing them. They may scapegoat that it is “liberal values” and a lack of respect for their hard work (not everyone in any “class” is really a hard worker). It’s true that liberal programs have not always been a panacea for those who are designed to help, but the progressive perspective is to try to help and learn from mistakes. Many Republicans are happy to oppress their base if it means more money for the wealthy. That’s the tax bill and a likely infrastructure bill to come.

Democrats must put all the pressure they can on Trump so he seriously negotiates with “Chuck and Nancy” so that something can be salvaged. But that might be expecting too much of a man constructed like Trump.

The post Next: Republican Meanness in an Infrastructure Bill appeared first on Occasional Planet.

This week, NIMBY [“not in my back yard”] became LIMBY [“literally in my back yard”] when bucket trucks, backhoes, stump grinders, wood chippers and men in hard hats wielding chainsaws converged on the utility easement behind my house in suburban St. Louis. All week, I’ve been watching them clear-cut what has been, for nearly 40 years, the natural buffer that screened my house from my neighbors—and them from me. The work starts at 8 am, and the noise, accompanied by an intermittent snowfall of sawdust, continues until 4 pm. They’re turning the eastern boundary of my once park-like yard into a bare-earth wasteland.

So, why am I smiling?

What they’re doing is one small part of a giant [$1 billion, I’m told] stormwater/sanitary sewer remediation project. All of the cutting and clearing is prep work for replacing the sanitary sewer line that runs through a creek just inside my property line. Over the years, upstream development and its accompanying impermeable surfaces have sent an increasing volume of water rushing through the creek, transforming the flow from a trickle to a tsunami. The stream bed has transformed from something my kids could jump over on their walk to school into a dangerous, 20-foot-wide gulley.

So—full disclosure—I have a selfish motive to like this project. I’ve hoped for—and lobbied for—enclosing the stormwater creek for years, mostly as a way of correcting the growing safety hazard that the creek has become. But there’s more to my tolerance of the noise, the mess, and the destruction of greenery.

It’s infrastructure.

The project in my back yard is just one small example of a priority that is too often ignored. It’s a lot more fun to use tax money to fund a new sports stadium, while ignoring the hundred-year-old power grid that keeps the lights on during football games. We’d rather give tax credits to a Wal-Mart than fix the aging sewer pipes and water mains running under it. We blithely drive huge, expensive SUV’s over bridges awaiting funding for repairs that never come.

Okay, I admit it: I’m a nerd for infrastructure. As a kid, I didn’t play with trucks or obsess over construction projects. But as an adult, I’ve learned that what lies beneath is just as important as the superficial, cosmetic projects that dominate the physical and political landscape of 21st Century America.

Some people contend that America’s “job creators” are the corporate executives who sit behind desks monitoring the value of their stock options. I disagree. There are thousands of jobs waiting to be created—not in corporate boardrooms, but under our streets, on our bridges and in places like my back yard.

The post Infrastructure: They’re clear-cutting my back yard, and why I’m okay with that appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Six years after the 2008 economic meltdown, the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. and the E.U are still struggling. Most people know the system is rigged against them, and there’s no relief on the horizon. Disenchantment with “free-market” capitalism—and the global corporate/banking model that caused the Western economies to tank—is growing. The anti-globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street are the most well known expressions of resistance to the economic status quo. But disenchantment has filtered down to the person chatting in the barber’s chair or beauty shop.

Everybody knows somebody who is unemployed or underemployed or loaded with student debt. Devastated communities, like Jackson, Mississippi, realize that waiting passively for “jobs to come back”—to be granted at the whim of a corporation that extracts tax incentives from their community, pays low wages, and rewards it’s CEOs with obscene compensation packages—is no longer a viable option.

For things to really change, the extraction of wealth from our pockets and our communities has to stop. If we are to survive and support our families, we need humane and better paying jobs that provide a living wage. If the Earth is to survive, we have to move from an oligarch run, environment-destroying, war-centered economy to one that is life sustaining and wealth creating for everyone. But how can any of this happen when our elected officials are joined at the hip with those who have created this sick economy?

Waiting for austerity-addicted Washington, D.C. to create jobs isn’t the answer. Creating economic democracy, at the local level, is. Jackson, Mississippi, one of the poorest cities in the nation, is looking to older, successful, democratically run local cooperatives in Mondragon, Spain as a model for building wealth in their community.

What are the Mondragon cooperatives?

Michael Siegel writing at Truthdig gives a brief explanation of the Mondragon movement:

A leading international example of the cooperative movement is the Mondragon cooperative from the Basque region of Spain. Founded by a young Catholic priest and students of a technical school in 1956, Mondragon is now a cooperative of cooperatives, encompassing nearly 300 distinct businesses and employing over 80,000 people. Mondragon cooperative enterprises include banks, manufacturing, skilled and unskilled labor, public schools and a university. Consistent with a broader international movement to define and promote ethical cooperative enterprise, the pay differential between the highest and lowest paid workers at Mondragon is generally between 3-to-1 and 5-to-1, and the CEO of the entire Mondragon Corporation earns only nine times as much as the lowest-paid worker (this compares with an average ratio of 600-to-1 at large U.S. corporations).

Addressing Jackson, Mississippi’s wealth drain by creating local cooperatives

Siegel writes that although Jackson, Mississippi is 85 percent black, the student body of its public schools is 98 percent black, and the surrounding Hinds County is 75 percent black, out of the total of approximately $1 billion of annual public expenditures in the region, only 5 percent goes to black employees and black-owned businesses. The vast majority of government contracts are awarded to businesses outside of Jackson and even outside the state.

The late mayor Chokwe Lumumba secured a billion-dollar bond measure to rebuild Jackson’s infrastructure, including repairs to roads, water lines and sewage facilities. The funds will partly be used to incubate local worker cooperatives that could win contracts to rebuild the city. To address the draining of local resources out of the community, Lumumba put together a coalition of local and national groups including the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), the Jackson’s Peoples Assembly, and his office. “Jackson Rising” was born. Sadly, Chokwe Lumumba died of a heart attack in February of this year. The Jackson Rising conference was held in May. From the Jackson Rising website:

The primary objectives of the Conference were to stimulate and facilitate the creation of cooperative enterprises in Jackson to meet the unmet economic and social needs of the community. It also served as a space to launch Cooperation Jackson. Cooperation Jackson is an emerging cooperative network based in Jackson that is building four-interdependent and interconnected institutions: a federation of emerging worker cooperatives, a cooperative incubator, a cooperative education and training center, and a cooperative bank or financial institution.

The post Jackson, Mississippi rising appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Global warming and its effect on climate change is real, and it’s frightening. While our political and corporate classes are joined at the hip and still pushing carbon fuels—and even more stupidly, fomenting coups and threatening wars over access to gas and oil—it’s time to look for real solutions. If we don’t find a way to change things fast, the powers-that-be—with their greed, fantasies of exceptionalism, dreams of world hegemony, addiction to fracking and drilling, bullying of countries that don’t submit to U.S. domination, and determination to build toxic sludge-filled pipelines—will push the Earth to her limits. If that happens, and it already is, She will fry all of us—or if we live near a coastline—drown all of us. That’s hardly a world we want to leave to our children and grandchildren.

In answer to this ongoing insanity, Scott and Julie Brusaw have come up with a brilliant idea that could not only save us all from extinction, but solve many other pressing problems in the process. Some have described their invention as world-changing. I second the hyperbole, because, among many other amazing benefits, their invention could end wars for access to oil and gas. Have a look at the following short video and see if you don’t agree.

The Brusaws are crowd funding for Phase II of their project. They have provided the following info at www.indiegogo.com:

• Solar Roadways has received two phases of funding from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration for research and development of a paving system that will pay for itself over its lifespan. We are about to wrap up our Phase II contract (to build a prototype parking lot) and now need to raise funding for production.
• Our glass surface has been tested for traction, load testing, and impact resistance testing in civil engineering laboratories around the country, and exceeded all requirements.
• Solar Roadways is a modular system that will modernize our aging infrastructure with an intelligent system that can become the new Smart Grid. We won the Community Award of $50,000 by getting the most votes in GE’s Ecomagination Challenge for “Powering the Grid” in 2010. We had the most votes again in their 2011 Ecomagination Challenge for “Powering the Home”.
• On August 21, 2013, Solar Roadways was selected by their peers as a Finalist in the World Technology Award For Energy, presented in association with TIME, Fortune, CNN, and Science.
• Solar Roadways was chosen by Google to be one of their Moonshots in May of 2013.
• Solar Roadways was chosen as a finalist in the IEEE Ace Awards in 2009 and 2010.
• Solar Roadways has given presentations around the country including: TEDx Sacramento, Google’s Solve for X at Google’s NYC Headquarters, NASA, Keynote Speaker for the International Parking Institute’s Conference and much more…
• Solar Roadways is tackling more than solar energy: The FHWA tasked us with addressing  the problem of stormwater. Currently, over 50% of the pollution in U.S. waterways comes from stormwater. We have created a section in our Cable Corridors for storing, treating, and moving stormwater.
• The implementation of our concept on a grand scale could  create thousands of jobs in the U.S. and around the world. It could allow us all the ability to manufacture our way out of our current economic crisis.

If you want a more expanded FAQ page, go here. If you are scientifically inclined, and want to know how much electricity solar roadways can really produce, go here.

The post Solar (Freakin’) Roadways! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

America’s failure to invest in its infrastructure is a national disgrace. I think most of us can agree on that. But it’s very hard to get people riled up enough about it to demand a change.

Recently, I was in New York City for a few days. Being there made me think about the issue in a more personal way.  While there, I took a new look at the city’s subway system, a massive piece of infrastructure that was an essential part of my daily routine for more than thirty years.

New York City. Not everyone loves it as much as I do. But can we agree that New York is one of the world’s greatest cities and that it exerts more influence on American business, culture, media, literature, and art than any other place on the continent?  Can we acknowledge that the city’s outsized influence extends far beyond our national borders?

New York City is home to more than 8 million pushy, hyperactive, trend-obsessed individuals. Of those 8 million, over 5.3 million ride the subway every day. New York’s system, with its 468 stations, is the most extensive in the world and the most cost efficient in the country.  And it’s hard to find many other mass-transit systems that beat its efficiency as a people mover twenty-four-seven.

The statistics for New York’s subway system are off the charts.  One in every three American users of mass transit rides on one of New York’s twenty-four subway lines.  Those high rates of use make New York one of the most energy efficient cities in America. In 2008 (the last year for which stats are available), because New Yorkers chose to ride collectively on subway cars rather than driving solo on the highway, 1.8 billion gallons of oil were saved, and 11.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide did not get spewed into the atmosphere.

What this means in the big picture is that the massive ridership of New York’s subway system helps ameliorate America’s overall contribution to some of the primary causes of climate change. (Read that again, California!)

So why is that it that despite incremental investment over the years into one of America’s premier infrastructure assets, its stations are still filthy, poorly lit, and poorly maintained? Tiles still fall off walls. Pockmarked ceilings go unrepaired.  Mothers with babies strapped into strollers have no alternative but to lug their precious cargo dangerously up and down multiple flights of stairs. When you see that bit of craziness, you’ve got to shake your head and ask: What century is this?

And those inconveniences aren’t the worst of it.

America’s first-class city with its third-class infrastructure is on track for one hundred subway deaths in 2013.   Over the last decade, subway riders have witnessed an average of thirty to forty track suicides per year.  What a shame.  Those tragedies were and are preventable—if only.

If only we’d invest in technology already in use throughout Europe and Asia, like the systems in London, Paris, Barcelona, Saint Petersburg, Singapore, Taipei, and Toronto, where platform screens or edge doors have been installed for the protection of riders in mass-transit stations.

If only we’d recognize the value of public transportation. If only we’d have a national commitment and political will to invest in our own country’s infrastructure. If only our politicians would fight for investing in safer public spaces and services and the well-paying, non–outsourceable jobs that would surely follow from that commitment.

The point is that our inability to adequately maintain and improve a public-transportation system located in the world’s most influential city is indicative of the broader failure to commit the resources to maintain and improve infrastructure in communities of all sizes across the country.

And if you dismiss this argument because you think this is just a New York problem, think again.  Even if you’ve never taken a ride on the subway or never will, similar neglect of infrastructure where you live is costing you dearly. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, in 2010 the national price tag for infrastructure neglect was $130 billion. For a family of four, the share of that price tag would be the equivalent of purchasing groceries for five months.

So look around your community. It’s your mass-transit systems, bridges, tunnels, roadways, water and wastewater systems, railroad tracks, airports, electric grids, dams, levies, canals, and ports that are falling apart. You name it.  We’re neglecting it. And, according to the engineers, “it’s only projected to get worse.”

This lack of investment affects so much: our safety, our jobs and productivity, our economy, the future of how our children and grandchildren will flourish or not, and our economic competiveness in the global economy.  So, back to my original question: What are we going to do about it?

The post NYC: 1st-class city, 3rd-class infrastructure, and what it means for the rest of us appeared first on Occasional Planet.

It must be difficult to hold a significant (or perhaps even an insignificant) position of power and conduct oneself with modesty. A lack of humility may not prohibit acts of social conscience and generosity, but it frequently results in boorishness.

Self-aggrandizement does not necessarily prohibit someone from having sound judgment. Autobiographies by two recently retired governors of industrial states illustrate the point. Jennifer Granholm was governor of Michigan from 2003 – 2011 and apparently did a remarkable job against significant odds in rejuvenating the automobile industry in what was once the world’s capital of car manufacturing. She was not hurt that, in the final years of her administration, she had significant support from President Barack Obama. He was intent on seeing one of America’s largest industries recover from the economic hardship that had been inflicted upon the country during the George W. Bush years.

While Granholm acknowledges that that she did not handle every obstacle with aplomb and made her share of mistakes, she was somewhat self-indulgent about the successes of her staff and herself. Perhaps as the governor of a large state that was suffering from economic hardships best depicted by filmmaker Michael Moore, she was entitled to be self-congratulatory.

Since she received considerable assistance from President Obama and Vice-President Biden,  she had very little reason to criticize them.

Somewhat more acerbic is the recently released autobiography by Ed Rendell, former Governor of Pennsylvania.  It’s called, A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great. Like Granholm, Rendell was in office from 2003-2011. He clearly accomplished a great deal for his state, and in particular the city of Philadelphia, where he was mayor prior to becoming governor.  Much of his focus wason  rejuvenating decaying infrastructure and building new bridges, roads, airport, rail lines, to put his state at or near the top of functioning regions in the northeast.

But he begins his book with a metaphor for what he sees as America’s biggest problem. He relates how,Philadelphia, weather forecasters predicted a blizzard that was going to dump 12-18 inches of snow.  The home-town Eagles decided to postpone their football game, because the team felt that there would be too much congestion and not enough parking. As it turned out, there were only six inches of snow, a rather normal amount for the area at that time of year. Rendell and his son were furious about the game being postponed; they would have trudged through anything to see a “snow bowl.” Rendell argues that in the early days of football (think “Leatherheads”), nothing could have caused a game to be postponed. He called the executives of the hometown Eagles a bunch of “wusses.”

That is the term that he uses for a number of individuals in politics. He directs a great deal of his attention at Republicans, particularly in the Pennsylvania state legislature. He saw them as easily sacrificing the well-being of the commonwealth for their own political gain. He saw them as seeking and accepting political favors in return for obstinance and gridlock. The same was true for some Democrats who seemed to be lacking backbones and would not stand up for the greater good against the GOP.

Most particularly, Rendell strays off the Jennifer Granholm reservation by not hesitating to criticize President Obama and even refers to him as a wuss. Part of his frequent but not exclusive criticism of Obama is that he frequently talks of his “love” for Hillary Clinton and his belief that she would have been a strong candidate in both Pennsylvania and the country at large. He believes that the core of her character is her backbone, and that she is not afraid to stand up to anyone or anything. While he acknowledges that President Obama has been known to stand the line, particularly in foreign affairs and most specifically in the attack on Osama bin Laden, Rendell has significant areas of doubt about the president’s willingness to take on the opposition.

His two areas of disappointment and frustration are ones that are familiar with many progressives. While Rendell prefers the Affordable Health Act to what previously existed, he is most disappointed in the president for backing away from both a single-payer system and if not that, the public option component. Rendell is convinced that Obama was unwilling to take on Republicans and caved in on two policies that would have strengthened health care in the U.S. and enhance his chances of passing more meaningful legislation.

Second is Rendell’s disappointment in Obama’s plan economic stimulus plan. Rendell is fixated on rehabbing the country’s infrastructure. He felt that Obama’s plan was far too limited and focused too much on tax breaks, particularly the for the wealthy, rather than developing projects that would put America’s unemployed, underemployed, and those who had left the work force back to work. This would directly help millions and produce more income for the governmen,t because the newly working would be paying taxes.

It may be too strong and even flamboyant to accuse the president of the United States of acting like a wuss. But Rendell brings up a point that may have characterized the first two years of the Obama Administration. Had the president taken firmer positions in 2009 and 2010, it’s possible that there would have been more clarity to his values and positions, and he could have avoided the electoral debacle of 2010. Had that happened, we might be living in a country characterized more by progressive policies.

The post Humility and Power appeared first on Occasional Planet.

America could put hundreds of thousands of people back to work by implementing a proposed stimulus program called F.A.S.T. The acronym stands for “Fix America’s Schools Today,” and it’s a plan that even the most hard-line budget hawk should have a tough time saying no to.

Released in August 2011 by the 21st Century School Fund and the Economic Policy Institute [EPI], FAST could immediately allocate $50 billion to repair and retrofit America’s schools, putting carpenters, electricians, construction workers, building technicians, boiler repairmen, electrical workers, roofers, plumbers, glaziers, painters, plasterers, laborers, and tile setters back to work.

Do we need it? See for yourself. Drive around any American city, eyeball some schools, go inside, and look at the floors, ceilings, walls, windows and lights. Or just ask your kids: Is their school cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter? What’s the quality of life in their school: Are there safety gaps? Do the bathrooms function? What’s broken, but never seems to get fixed?

Infrastructure problems in America’s schools are well documented, and repairs are long overdue. [A report card issued in 2010 by the American Society of Structural Engineers gave America’s school infrastructure a D.] The average age of America’s 100,000 schools is 40. School districts under financial pressure—and who isn’t?—often look to maintenance as a place to cut. The result of “chronic deferred maintenance,” according to to the General Accounting Office [GAO] and the American Society of Civil Engineers, can be  “energy inefficiencies, unsafe drinking water, water damage and moldy environments, poor air quality, inadequate fire alarms and fire safety, compromised building security, and structural dangers.”

Estimates of the cost of repairing the wide range of infrastructure problems in America’s schools range from $270 billion to $500 billion. EPI asserts that:

…construction and building repair generally create 9,000‒10,000 jobs per billion dollars spent. Eliminating even half of the entire backlog and improvements could eventually create more than two million jobs, over a period of years. Addressing even one-tenth of the needed improvements could immediately create half a million jobs.

Given the grim outlook for residential construction and the fact that 1.5 million construction workers are unemployed, a project of this magnitude would put hundreds of thousands of them back to work, which would have a large positive effect on the economy.

Specifically, FAST funds would be used for:

• improving air quality and thermal comfort with improvements to heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems;

•  stopping interior damage, including mold, and reducing energy costs with roof replacement and repair;

• supporting technology, mechanical systems, and modern use of electricity with an electrical system modernization;

• reducing water consumption, eliminating lead in water, meeting ADA requirements with bathroom and plumbing upgrades;

• eliminating allergy and asthma triggers, making sure asbestos is contained or eliminated, and creating inviting classroom and school environments with plaster repair and painting;

• saving energy and increasing daylight with window replacement;

• improving the school grounds with improvements to outdoor learning and play areas, storm water management, landscaping, and environmental cleanup, when necessary;

• reducing ongoing heating costs with energy-efficient boiler replacement;

• installing solar panels, wind generators, and geothermal or other comparable clean energy generators; and

• planning the work outlined above and any similar modifications necessary to reduce the consumption of electricity and energy, especially fossil fuels, including natural gas, oil, water, or coal.

Any other uses of the funds would be prohibited.

How F.A.S.T. would be funded

Watching budget hawks weasel out of this plan will be interesting. Its proponents have worked out a funding strategy that makes a great deal of sense—plus, it conforms to the prevailing [and often heartless] dogma of “PAYGO,” which requires any new spending to be offset elsewhere in the Federal budget.

This part’s a bit wonky, but it’s a key component that helps makes this plan battle ready. According to EPI:

The fastest way to launch the program would be to add money to existing funding formulas, such as Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. All 16,000 public school districts, including public charter schools, receive funds under Title I. For example, $50 billion could be allocated among them.

The nitty gritty of implementation—such as how to prioritize which districts get money—is spelled out in much more detail in the full FAST proposal.

With regard to PAYGO, initial funds allocated for FAST could be offset by “eliminating fossil fuel preferences, as in President Obama’s FY2012 budget,” says EPI, clearly referring to tax breaks for already rich oil, gas and coal producers.  “Closing these loopholes raises $46 billion over 10 years.”

Jared Bernstein—a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, and one of the masterminds behind FAST, puts it this way:

“It’s a smart way to get a lot of people who really need jobs back to work, fix a critical part of our institutional infrastructure, save energy costs, provide kids with a better, healthier learning environment, and do so in way that everyone can see and feel good about each morning when they drop their kids at school.”

F.A.S.T. is logical, and it has a lot of hard-to-oppose, Mom-and-apple-pie appeal. The question is: Are those two attributes enough? Anyone who’s serious about a jobs program would be wise to get on board. [F.A.S.T. appears to dovetail nicely, by the way, with a jobs plan recently proposed by Illinois Congresswoman Jan Schakowski.] We await words and actions  from President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and enlightened lawmakers in support of this common-sense idea.

The post F.A.S.T. stimulus plan: Fix schools, put people back to work appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In August 2010, gaping holes opened up in 14 bridges along 4.5 miles of I-93 in Medford, Massachusetts, a crucial commuter corridor for the Boston area. There was no alternative but to replace them—all of them. Normally, tearing down and replacing that many structures could take as long as four years and would certainly cause horrendous traffic tie-ups for the 200,000 drivers who traverse that stretch of I-93 every day.

So, Massachusetts’ Department of Transportation [MassDOT] decided to try something new. The result is “Fast 14,” an innovative and aggressive project that is replacing all 14 bridges, not in four years, but in a single summer, at a cost of $98.1 million [80 percent of which is federal money, of course.]. And they’re doing the whole job on a weekends-only schedule.

How can they do that? Basically, they’re re-inventing bridge reconstruction. Rather than building and pouring concrete for the bridge supports and decks on site, MassDOT is having everything pre-fabricated and then assembling the bridges like giant Lego projects. Once the infrastructure is in place, they surface the decks with a quick-drying substance, paint the lane stripes, and voila. [Right. It’s undoubtedly not that simple.]

All of the demolition work and necessary lane closings take place on weekends, using a precisely choreographed procedure that creates the work space between 10 pm on Fridays and 5 am on Mondays. The work focuses on a different bridge each weekend. To get a better idea of the process, watch this video about Fast 14. [Full disclosure: It’s got a somewhat promotional tone, because MassDOT and USDOT are very proud of this project. But it gives a good explanation of how the work is being done, and how the scheduling works.] The project began in June 2011 and, as of mid-July, it was on schedule, with half of the bridges already replaced.

Not being a Boston commuter, I can’t comment on how this whole thing is going over among the locals, who are being warned, every week, to plan ahead, if they’re going to a Red Sox game or another downtown event.  I do know that, when my summer-travel itinerary required my family to drive from Boston’s Logan Airport to points north—on a Saturday afternoon in July—we got stuck in a very long jam. With two I-93 lanes closed, we inched along about 6 miles in an hour. We weren’t happy, but we weren’t in a commuter hurry, either. And when I got home and learned about Fast 14, I felt better about the whole thing: It’s infrastructure; it’s jobs; it’s good old-fashioned ingenuity at work; and it’s for the common good [if you believe that safe bridges and smarter highway construction—or highways in general—are about the common good. Some of which may be debatable.]

Anticipating a similar snail’s pace for our return trip on the next Saturday, we factored in an extra hour. But we didn’t need it: At 2 pm, Northbound I-93 traffic still looked terrible, but our two southbound lanes flowed freely. I can tell you one thing: I wouldn’t want to be a Boston driver on that stretch if they were doing this work in the conventional way. All hail MassDot and radical thinking [said the outsider].

[Image credit: MassDOT]

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You’ve heard about the chaos in Egypt. Ordinary citizens got tired of their oppressive ruler and took to the streets. There are tanks in Cairo, riots, mandatory curfews, and most surprisingly, no internet. It’s a terrifying thought; the idea that with a handful of phone calls the government is able to shut off internet and cell phone services for a country with 80 million people. (In Egypt only 20% of people have access to the internet through a home computer but 75% have cell phones.) The question isn’t why Egypt halted the internet, but why the United States is considering legislation to allow for the same thing to happen here.

For the second time a bill is being brought before Congress that gives the President power over privately owned computer systems during a “national cyberemergency” and prohibiting any review by the court system.

According to CNET:

“The revised Lieberman-Collins bill, dubbed the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, works this way: Homeland Security will “establish and maintain a list of systems or assets that constitute covered critical infrastructure” and that will be subject to emergency decrees.

Under the revised legislation, the definition of critical infrastructure has been tightened. DHS is only supposed to place a computer system (including a server, Web site, router, and so on) on the list if it meets three requirements. First, the disruption of the system could cause “severe economic consequences” or worse. Second, that the system “is a component of the national information infrastructure.” Third, that the “national information infrastructure is essential to the reliable operation of the system.”

President Obama would then have the power to “issue a declaration of a national cyberemergency.” What that entails is a little unclear, including whether DHS could pry user information out of Internet companies that it would not normally be entitled to obtain without a court order. One section says they can disclose certain types of noncommunications data if “specifically authorized by law,” but a presidential decree may suffice.

Senator Susan Collins, the author of the bill, claims that it isn’t “kill switch” legislation like what happened in Egypt. But with the vague definition of “cyberemergency” and “critical infrastructure” it can be justification for anything. All the president has to do is declare cyberemergency and he could shut down Google, Yahoo, and Hotmail, effectively halting all email. For however long he wanted.

The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Center for Democracy and Technology, and numerous other groups think that it will be a tool for censorship. (The bill is co-sponsored by Sen. Joe Lieberman. He’s said before that it’s okay to pressure companies about internet content.) Once the bill gets revised and resubmitted it should be interesting to see where public supports lies.

The idea behind the bill is nothing new. Internet censorship/restriction is a hallmark of non-freedom loving countries. China blocks Google, Iran has censored social media sites in times of unrest, and all websites are under government control in North Korea. Are those really countries we want to use as role models for our internet policies?

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Nobel Prize winning economist and Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz has some good ideas about what we should do to get out of the financial and economic mess we find ourselves in. In a July 8^th article at Project Syndicate , he prefaced his advice with his understanding of what brought us to this point.

“The “innovations” unleashed by modern finance did not lead to higher long-term efficiency, faster growth, or more prosperity for all. Instead, they were designed to circumvent accounting standards and to evade and avoid taxes that are required to finance the public investments in infrastructure and technology – like the Internet – that underlie real growth, not the phantom growth promoted by the financial sector.”

Then he lists his recipe for recovery:

• Shift spending away from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and unconditional bank bailouts that do not revive lending toward high-return investments.
• Raise taxes on corporations that don’t reinvest, and lower them on those that do.
• Raise taxes on speculative capital gains and on carbon and pollution intensive energy, and cut taxes for lower income payers.
• Help banks that lend to small- and medium-size enterprises, which are the main source of job creation – or establish new financial institutions that would do so – rather than supporting big banks that make their money from derivatives and abusive credit card practices.

And then he reminds:

“Finance is a means to an end, not an end in itself. It is supposed to serve the interests of the rest of society, not the other way around. Taming financial markets will not be easy, but it can and must be done, through a combination of taxation and regulation – and, if necessary, government stepping in to fill some of the breaches (as it already does in the case of lending to small- and medium-size enterprises.)”

Joseph Stiglitz is also author of Freefall: Free Markets and the Sinking of the Global Economy, an excellent extended explanation of how we arrived at the perilous economic situation we find ourselves in today and how we might find our balance once again.

Photo by: Justin Thomas

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