Cross posted at Sustainable Walworth

Last Saturday, my wife had an epiphany. She has discovered the fact that I have been railing about (pun intended) that economies that do not adapt to peak oil by adopting sustainable transportation in the form of trains are losers. Up to yesterday, my daughters and her laughed at my obsession with rail transport and the history of our once strong southeast Wisconsin rail transportation network that has disappeared or fallen into branch line freight rail only decrepitude. My family’s first ride to downtown Chicago on Metra commuter rail changed that quickly.

Daughter and Friend at Harvard Illinois Metra Station.

A scene you won't see in Wisconsin, the state of Automobiles uber Alles.

More below the fold to see how trains can help our local economies in an age of expensive oil.

Cross posted at Sustainable Walworth

As we all know, GM has announced that Janesville's manufacturing plant will be closed in 2010, thanks to the runup in fuel prices and demand destruction for the guzzling SUVs made by it. Before we gloat and say "I told you so, you should have known it was coming" about GM's short sighted business decisions, we should look at the implications of this closing and an alternative approach below the fold.

Cross posted at Sustainable   Walworth

On this Earth Day, it's time to take another look at how our landscape choices are impacting the planet. Last year I posted a diary here  taking our default landscape choice, the lawn, to task over its extreme dependency on petroleum, and accompanying waste of this dwindling resource.  It is not only oil, however, that our landscapes waste. They waste productive human labor, money (over 45 billion dollars per year in the United States), fertilizers that could be better directed to crop production, but most of all, they waste and abuse water. Water is the basic resource upon which life depends, but our current landscape choices behave as if it were limitless.  The current turf-dominated landscape both attempts to get rid of water, and to introduce it at the same time, thus contributing even further to squandering of water resources.   Below the fold, we talk about how landscaping affects our water resources and explore sustainable, water conserving alternatives to the wasteful dominant landscape paradigm.

As tax time approaches, it is time to take a progressive whack at the tax code. It seems like us liberals and progressives treat taxes like some sort of third rail, ceding debate to the cheap labor conservative greed heads. There is no reason do this when progressive tax reform can level the playing field, balance the budget, provide economic disincentives for unsustainable activities, and help Middle America. In short, government expenditures that enhance and protect our natural and man-made infrastructure, provide social services such as retirement, disability protection and health care, and build the economy, benefit everyone. It is only fitting that we paraphrase one of our favorite cheap labor conservatives that we love to hate, Phil Gramm, that there are those who are pulling the wagon, and those riding in it. Of late, it appears that the wealthy, by benefit of the regressive tax code, are the ones riding in the wagon by not paying their fair share. It is way past time to change this situation, and we will look at an alternative tax code below the fold:

cross posted at Conceptual Guerilla

Now that I have your attention, suffice it to say that our default landscape choices, turf grass and non-native trees and shrubs, increase our dependency on Middle Eastern oil, increase our patronage of Big Oil,  and by extension indirectly supply Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, including Al
Quaeda with petrodollars. Not only that, but they contribute millions of pounds of greenhouse gases, promote weeds and undesirable invasive plants, contribute to the destruction of the protective wetlands along the Gulf Coast, and other natural areas, contaminate ground and surface water with pesticides and excess nutrients, waste scarce groundwater resources, waste money, and contribute to increased surface water runoff and flooding. With spring just around the corner and people thinking green, we will touch on the costs of our current landscape paradigm and discuss an alternative sustainable landscape model that heals the land, conserves scarce resources, and is arguably more attractive.

In my  previous diary I outlined the reasons why Bush’s budget is a weapon of mass destruction for Middle America, the American environment, and ultimately, the planet. At the end of that diary, I touched upon five major budget solution items that counter the premises of the Bush regime’s warped priorities. With that, I will discuss the first solution item, the Sustainable Infrastructure Act, and how it fulfills five essential elements of spending priorities that benefit all Americans, below the fold.

Breaking the Box of the Bush Budget: Why we should not Compromise with a Weapon of Mass(es) Destruction.

Cross-posted at Conceptual Guerilla

What the corporate media have failed to acknowledge, and yet we all know, the 2008 Bush budget is more of the same, failed over-expenditures on the national security state and wars, and on favorable treatments of his cronies. The budget does not get serious about critical issues of the day, notwithstanding the platitudes Bush has mouthed about "compromise", "energy independence", "health care reform", and others. Actions and numbers speak louder than words, and it is evident in Bush’s budget proposals. We must stop and reverse this budget dead in its tracks, for myriad reasons below the fold.

How the Reactionaries have replaced the "Nanny State" with the Nanny Corporation

Cross posted at Conceptual
Guerilla

On this Friday before labor day, supposedly a day honoring working people, it is instructive to look at exactly who and what we are working for. In an age when wages are taxed at a higher rate than investment income, and falling income and wealth for the bottom 90 percent of Americans is a matter of fact, it is time to take aim at the so-called American Dream and how it has been perverted by the "less government" crowd of reactionaries  currently running the U.S. A one-sided class war is being waged, with monopoly crony capitalism simultaneously winning and making us more dependent on it. Below the fold, we puncture the myth that every American can get ahead, as reality proves otherwise.

Cross posted at Conceptual Guerilla

Did you know, that right here, right now, without inventing anything new, we have a proven, off the shelf technology and transportation mode that is up to ten times more fuel efficient than the average car and up to 4 times as efficient as the latest hybrids. Additionally, that technology consumes less land than air and car travel, travels on a bed that does not include asphalt and other impervious materials, and is significantly safer. It is time to ride the rails to sustainability, and I will tell you why below the fold.

Cross posted at Conceptual Guerilla

One of the greatest myths perpetrated by the Reactionary Ripoff Republicans, a.k.a Cheap Labor Conservatives, is that of the "free market" in America. There are numerous examples to disprove this "flat earth theory" of the reactionary ripoff boys, but few are more glaringly obvious than the sordid history of the US petroleum based economy, beginning as early as the 1920s. Tacit, or even overt government enabling of this industry has been the name of the game since then, with the result that this industry virtually runs the country, reaching its apex in the Bush II regime, where at least 3 of the top 5 in that "administration" are former oil men or women.