It Isn't Just McConnell-- Is McCarthy Also Plotting With China To Become A Colonial Power Over the U.S.?

That's McCarthy with Stella Li and Wang Chuanfu

People who don't follow politics closely still don't know who California Rep. Kevin McCarthy is, even though he's the Republican House Leader and Trump's chief protagonist in Congress. The DCCC never runs a candidate against him-- even though CA-23 is now a minority-majority district-- and has been hostile towards local Democrats who have tried taking him on in the past. Around 38% of the people who live in the district are Hispanic and the DCCC hasn't done a voter registration drive there ever. Cheri Bustos plans to skip CA-23 again this cycle.

Yesterday, Scott Paul, president of the non-partisan Alliance For American Manufacturing, was considerably less complacent about McCarthy than Bustos is. He wrote that it is outrageous that "McCarthy went out of his way to stop a bipartisan effort to prevent China from dominating U.S. transit systems."

There are widespread national security concerns-- shared by bipartisan Members of Congress-- about China’s role in building U.S. rail cars and buses. But McCarthy used his leadership power to strip language from a recent spending bill that would have limited Chinese companies from building transit.

Fortunately, new bipartisan legislation aims to stop companies with ties to China’s government from building U.S. trains and buses.

I recently testified before Congress and exposed China’s government plan to take over the U.S. transit market by any means necessary.

Chinese government-owned companies severely underbid on U.S. transit contracts, like ones to build new subway cars or electric buses. But unlike companies that operate in a free market, these companies aren’t out to make money-- they’re merely the vehicle China is using to take over the system.

One of these companies is Build Your Dreams (BYD), which makes electric buses. But China has even grander ambitions for BYD-- it wants to use it to eventually dominate the global auto market.

Well, BYD contacted McCarthy about blocking language that would have prevented bus or rail manufacturers supported by the Chinese government from winning transit contracts.

And McCarthy complied.

There are 90,000 high-wage jobs up and down the U.S. transit supply chain. If China were to control the U.S. transit market, most of those jobs are likely to disappear-- all at the expense of U.S. taxpayers, who are footing the bill for transit projects.

And if BYD gets its way and does eventually dominate the auto industry, nearly 900,000 well-paying jobs are at risk.

That’s not the only concern, either.

Security experts warn that China could use facial-recognition technology or other means to spy on Americans. Giving China access to building high-tech railcars and buses also opens us up to being hacked, and even threatens the Defense Department, which relies on freight rail to move sensitive equipment.

Kevin McCarthy might not want to put a stop to this threat, but I do-- and I bet you do, too.

What China is attempting to do is a kind of economic colonialism. Michigan Republican Congressman Paul Mitchell told the Washington Post that three of BYD’s five board members are connected to the Chinese government in some form, and that the company has also raked in $338 million in grants from China. Zachary Kahn, BYD Motors lobbyist, lied to Congress on May 16 when he claimed China doesn't control the company.

BYD was savvy enough to start building a factory in Lancaster in McCarthy's district when the GOP still controlled the House. But, even in the minority, he has still been delivering for the Chinese Communist government project. On top of that, the president of BYD Motors, Stella Li, launders Chinese money into McCarthy's accounts (as well into Mike Pence's PAC, the Great America Committee).

McCarthy’s intervention was striking because the close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump sought to protect Chinese interests at a time when Trump and many lawmakers on Capitol Hill are attempting to curb Beijing’s access to US markets, particularly in industries deemed vital to national security.

Last week, Trump put Chinese telecoms giant Huawei on a trade blacklist that severely restricts its access to U.S. technology. The action leaves about 90 days for companies to do some business with Huawei.

McCarthy’s move to protect a Chinese company’s interests frustrated even some fellow Republicans because they have warned repeatedly that allowing Chinese-backed firms access to U.S. infrastructure systems could pose a national security risk.

Lawmakers of both major parties have complained that U.S. tax dollars should not be used to support projects that benefit foreign companies.

...Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, defended the congressman’s actions. He said McCarthy has long advocated for companies in his district and denied any connection between McCarthy’s receipt of campaign contributions from BYD and his actions on Capitol Hill.

“McCarthy is proud to support job creation for his constituents and community,” Sparks said.

McCarthy’s work on the transit issue affecting BYD began last year and continued for several months, culminating in a February spending bill that omitted the ban on Chinese-backed companies getting federal transit contracts.

BYD officials initially contacted McCarthy’s office because the Senate had approved such a prohibition, which would have applied to bus or rail manufacturers supported by the Chinese government and would have prevented them from winning state or local contracts that use Federal Transit Administration dollars, as such contracts often do.

Sparks confirmed McCarthy’s aides listened to the issues BYD raised about the bill.

A House version of the bill, which McCarthy supported, exempted bus manufacturers from this prohibition, according to McCarthy’s office-- a key provision that would have protected BYD.

Senate negotiators wanted their broader, bipartisan restrictions pushed into the final law, but McCarthy objected, according to three officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks.

Ultimately, all of the proposed restrictions were scrapped because the impasse threatened to cause another government shutdown. Supporters of the stricter Senate version said the goal was to protect U.S. national security and domestic manufacturing.

“I think we’re right to try to protect America’s national security interests but also protect our domestic producers against that sort of unfair competition,” said Senator John Cornyn, an author of the Senate provision.

Trump and his top aides have complained that China unfairly subsidises large companies in a way that puts US firms at a disadvantage, but there has never been a full accounting of how much U.S. government business those firms reap.

The enterprises are either partially owned by the Chinese government or receive financial support from it, and critics say those direct or indirect subsidies give them an unfair advantage over U.S. manufacturers.

The Trump administration has engaged in broad trade negotiations with China, which have soured in recent weeks-- in part over the issue of China’s extensive network of government-backed enterprises.

Beyond economic concerns, lawmakers from both parties have said it is dangerous for Chinese-linked firms to have access to U.S.an transit systems because of the potential for espionage or other threats to national security.

Among other things, they have argued that in time, China-backed companies could use facial recognition technology or other means to surveil unsuspecting Americans.

...Business magazine Fast Company last year called BYD “The Biggest Electric Vehicle Company You’ve Never Heard Of.” Forbes in 2017 listed BYD’s billionaire chairman and president, Wang Chuanfu, as one of the richest men in China.

The company has promoted its ties to McCarthy in the past.

At an October 2017 ribbon cutting to expand its Lancaster plant, McCarthy was seated on the stage next to the billionaire, according to a photograph posted on BYD’s website.

“I am proud that BYD has chosen to expand their facility here in Lancaster,” BYD’s website quotes McCarthy as saying.

“As BYD continues to develop cutting edge technology that helps transform the transportation industry here in the Antelope Valley and around the country, this investment will help create jobs in our community, keep Lancaster on the forefront of technological advancement, and put emission-free vehicles on our streets.”

One month before the event, BYD’s Li made several political donations that benefited groups tied to McCarthy, according to the Federal Election Commission. She gave US$1,350 to Kevin McCarthy for Congress, US$2,700 to California Victory 2018 and US$1,350 to the Great America Committee.

Li had never given McCarthy or either of the political action committees money before that time, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Frank Girardot, spokesman for BYD Motors, said the donations were made as part of a political fundraising event but disputed any impropriety.

“If you’re going to characterise this as being some kind of influence type thing, nothing could be further from the truth,” Girardot said.

...BYD has faced scrutiny for years. Some Democrats have accused BYD of manufacturing batteries for its vehicles in China and then shipping the unfinished products to the US, where they are put in a special casing and then labelled in a way that allows them to qualify under “Buy America” restrictions.

The Buy America designation is crucial in order for the company to qualify for certain contracts funded by US taxpayer dollars.

BYD officials have denied accusations that they are not properly adhering to the rules, insisting that the company’s buses meet or exceed Buy America requirements.

Back to Paul Mitchell, who represents blue collar suburbs north of Detroit (Macomb, St. Clair, Lapeer, Sanilac, Tuscola and Huron counties), said that "Whether this is technically state-owned or state-influenced, we have a problem here. What’s been made abundantly clear by the Chinese government is they plan to assume a dominant position in the world by 2025 in all aspects, including economic. This is a threat to the security of this nation, so let’s not dress this up and say that BYD is not state-owned."

Even Stonewall McConnell Thinks There Can Be Bipartisan Headway On Infrastructure-- But Can There Be... With Trump Thowing Bombs On Twitter?

As I mentioned earlier, Oregon Congressman Pete DeFazio will be the next chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. He's about to have a lot on his plate, since infrastructure may be one of the few places Trump will be able to work together with congressional Democrats to accomplish something... anything. Trump's own plan is just an enrichment scam for his Wall Street amigos, so Democrats are going to have to come up with something that will look good for Trump's populist peanut gallery. It's doable, as Leo Hindrey, Jr.-- a highly successful businessman and author of It Takes a CEO: It’s Time to Lead with Integrity and he Biggest Game of All-- wrote in a piece for the Washington Monthly: How Democrats Can Affordably Fix America’s Infrastructure. DeFazio has said that Trump "gets it" because his "is a builder." God only knows what DeFazio was smoking.

Since Inauguration Day, the Trump administration’s infrastructure plan has been a one trillion dollar “public private partnership,” funded with $200 billion from Congress and with $800 billion in loans from Wall Street institutions like Goldman Sachs and Blackstone. The $200 billion paid by Congress would be quickly spent. But Wall Street says it would demand an annual interest rate of 10 to 12 percent on their loans. Getting a return on these large, Wall Street-funded infrastructure projects would be very expensive. It would be so expensive, in fact, that the women and men intended to use these new rail lines, benefit from new broadband networks, cross repaired bridges, or fly out of upgraded airports won’t be able to afford to do so.

Trump’s plan is a slap in the face to the mayors and governors who have been waiting decades for help funding infrastructure projects that their constituents need. Even if it weren’t prohibitively costly for communities, Trump’s plan doesn’t provide the full $1.5 trillion which the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) believes is outside the current capabilities of the states and municipalities. Trump has proposed a half-baked half-measure which won’t affordably solve our current problems, let alone address our future needs.

But while the nation’s infrastructure needs are great, they are not an emergency. Our infrastructure must be fixed in a timely matter, but not necessarily tomorrow. Democrats don’t have to settle with Trump on a bad plan, and they shouldn’t. They can instead push for a lasting solution. And thankfully, the party already has one in mind: an infrastructure bank.

As a term, “infrastructure bank” might sound boring. But the idea can be elegant and ingenious. The federal government first establishes a bank and seeds it with billions of dollars–a lot of money, but still only a small fraction of what Trump is proposing. Next, the bank invites outside investors to add more money–orders of magnitude more than what the government provided. The bank would then finance infrastructure projects across the country, so long as they pay for themselves over time through user fees or associated taxes. States or cities could apply to fund projects ranging from passenger trains and toll roads to electricity grids and sewage pipes. And unlike Trump’s proposal, an infrastructure bank would not be a one-off funding initiative. Rather, once seeded, it would be self-sustaining, as loan repayments from earlier projects allow the bank to lend money for future ones.

Every administration since Ronald Reagan’s has at least talked about a national infrastructure bank, and both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama initially pushed to create one. So why hasn’t it happened? For starters, it’s difficult to establish a bank structure that fully respects Congress’ right to appropriate but doesn’t unduly politicize project selection and project oversight.

Some people believe that Congress would be able to fairly and efficiently manage these decisions, but I’m not one of them. Members of Congress are very able to decide what they want funded. But they would be less focused on selecting good projects and more likely to select ones which favor their own region or political views on infrastructure.

I believe that a proper national infrastructure bank must instead be a wholly owned government corporation with non-partisan directors appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. These directors should be experts when it comes to infrastructure and macroeconomics. They should include women and men with proven expertise in heavy construction, business, labor and government policy. And in order to make the bank as informed as possible about America’s diverse infrastructure needs, the bankshould, like the Federal Reserve, be regionalized into operating districts.

A second challenge for the bank will be melding project selection with current and future national needs. Not every road project should be approved, not every urban project should be favored, and certainly no project should irreparably damage the environment. The bank’s board will need to be Solomon-likein its stewardship. But by having experienced directors and devolving power across the country, the bank I’m proposing will more likely make the right calls than would either Congress or a Washington-centric band of technocrats.

Finally, the bank has to avoid leaving cities and states drowning in high-cost debt. To make sure this doesn’t happen, my proposed bank avoids Wall Street entirely. Instead, complemented by support from the U.S. Treasury, the bank would be primarily capitalized with and find its liquidity from $1.5 trillion in long-term loans from America’s large state and municipal pension plans, as well as by some of the world’s largeoverseas sovereign wealth funds (like Norway’s massive oil-rich permanent fund). The interest rate on these loans would be in the range of 3 to 4 percent. This may appear low, but it is actually consistent with the interest rate these plans and fundsearned over the last decade on their fixed-income assets.

It would, in other words, be a good investment. And to meet these returns, cities and states won’t have to make tolls, tickets, and fees astronomically high. Unlike Trump’s plan, this bank would lead to infrastructure that is affordable for Americans.

...For six consecutive administrations, presidents have had three overriding objectives for funding moneymaking infrastructure. First, finance all of the infrastructure projects that are beyond the capabilities of states and cities–not just some of them. Second, prioritize projects in a fair and efficient manner. Third, minimize the federal government’s contribution. The National Infrastructure Bank I’m proposing, with its specific characteristics, is designed to achieve these objectives. It will fund infrastructure that’s affordable, accessible, and dearly needed. It won’t drain federal coffers. Democrats in Congress should now show their leadership and reach out across the aisle and to President Trump to pass legislation that creates this institution.

At the same time, however, Democrats in Congress need to strongly resist pressure to cut a less than perfect deal. They should oppose infrastructure packages that leave some projects behind or that overburden user communities with exorbitant fees. While our nation’s infrastructure needs are great, they are not dire. We can afford to wait. And if President Trump and Senate Republicans refuse, or if they insist on the President’s unacceptably costly and unfair pro-Wall Street plan, then Democrats should wait until they control both chambers of Congress and until we have a new President. American infrastructure has had too many patchwork fixes. It’s time we get this right.

The 115th Congress' Transportation and Infrastructure Committee consisted of 33 Republicans and 27 Democrats. That number will be at least reversed in the 116th. Several Democrats will therefor be added, not to mention that 3 Democrats from the committee-- Elizabeth Esty (New Dem-CT), Richard Nolan (D-MN) and Mike Capuano (D-MA)-- are leaving Congress, making more room. aside from losing a number of positions on the committee, 10 Republicans were defeated or are retiring, including ex-chairman Bill Shuster. The new ranking member is Sam Graves of Missouri since two of the guys slated to take over after Shuster-- Johnny Duncan (TN) and Frank LoBiondo (NJ) both retired.

When you see those ads from the California tourist bureau touting the state as a vacation getaway, it's all about the beaches and L.A., San Francisco and San Diego, not about the beautiful, if remote northeast part of the state where congressional candidate Audrey Denney grew up on her families farm. Her part of California is a mostly small town and rural, a world apart from Hollywood or Silicon Valley. And infrastructure is one of the issues Denney has been hammering on-- perhaps more so because the GOP incumbent she's running to replace, Doug LaMalfa, is a do-nothing member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. This morning, Denney told me that "The crumbling infrastructure in my vast district puts us at an economic disadvantage and threatens lives. It is one of our most pressing issues. Much of CA-01 is made unnecessarily remote by poorly maintained roads and a lack of highways, which discourage investment, raise costs for businesses, and increase road accidents. Lack of broadband internet and cell service in large areas of the north state inhibit access to public safety resources, education, services, and economic opportunities. Additionally, the Oroville Dam spillway disaster that happened in our district in 2017 showed us all just how critical is the need for maintenance, repair, and improvement to California’s aging water infrastructure system."

Violence and the State: A Prelude

by Gaius Publius

Every national instance of Rule by the Rich is accompanied by a great deal of violence, inflicted on the many by the few.

—Yours truly (paraphrased)

As you ponder the criticism of the Antifa ("anti-fascist") movement for engaging in violent tactics in Berkeley, consider the following.

▪ This is violence.

"The scene in Berkeley on Sunday" (source). Photo: Marcus Yam/LA Times via Getty Images

▪ This is violence.

To justify Bush's numerous rights violations, at home and abroad, James Comey turned Jose Padilla's brain "to jello" (image source).

According to Rick Perlstein:

James Comey, currently sailing smoothly through Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for confirmation as chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was ... in charge, and proudly so, of a “terrorism” case that began with a detention without charges, continued with made-up and spurious charges, and ended with a conviction won against an American [Jose Padilla] whose treatment during confinement (on the American mainland) turned his brain to jello...

▪ This is violence.

"The 350-acre Horse Prairie Fire is burning outside of Olalla [Oregon] on Saturday night and is zero percent contained" (source). Photo courtesy of Kyle Reed

A look at the headlines:

Los Angeles wildfires: City battles 'largest fire in history'

British Columbia is having its worst wildfire season in recorded history.

After burning for months, Montana looks like a fiery apocalypse.

Rain in Seattle is normal. Raining ash, however, is not.

We are in, to quote Randall Amster, a "new normal of destabilization," created by a political world in which both parties, Democrats and Republicans alike, out of service to fossil fuel billionaires and the companies they control, refuse in varying degrees to treat global warming as already a national emergency, one that requires, first and foremost, a transition to zero use of fossil fuels at the fastest possible rate if we hope in any way to alter the deadly and destructive path of what's already started happening to us.

▪ And this is violence.

"An alternate transportation network of private buses—fully equipped with wifi—thus threads daily through San Francisco, picking up workers at unmarked bus stops (though many coexist in digital space), carrying them southward via the commuter lanes of the 101 and 280 freeways, and eventually delivers them to their campuses" (source).

According to the SF Examiner, "Right now the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency charges companies serving multi-billion dollar technology companies $3.67 per stop event, what some critics have called a 'pittance.'"

The city gets a pittance for each "stop event" by these private busses, while the city's non-high-tech-connected citizens get no right at all to ride them. A two-tiered world of transportation, in other words, sanctioned and welcomed by government and financed in large part by tax dollars.

One more wealth transfer among a great many. A gift given to the few (our "future-seeing" high tech billionaires) to sweeten their bottom lines by making their jobs as attractive to their workers as possible. A gift paid from the pockets of the many to whom the service is unavailable.

The Violence of the State

Every national instance of Rule by the Rich is accompanied by a great deal of violence, inflicted on the many by the few.

Consider just the examples above.

The violence of torture and death, inflicted at home and abroad, by the state on the innocent, all so the state can appear to be something it's not, all so its ruling elites can stay in power.

The violence of climate chaos, inflicted by a national government which for decades has refused to act in any real way to lessen the coming costly horrible climate blows. (Of all major candidates, only Sanders was serious about climate mitigation.)

The violence of near-slavish service to increasing income inequality, again by both parties, a service that brought us the failed revolt we now call the 2016 election and its disastrous aftermath — a revolt, by the way, which is not going away no matter which party takes power.

Consider all this as you ponder the critics of the Antifa ("anti-fascist") movement and the call by those same elites (example: Nancy Pelosi in the quote above) for a return to the state-only violence they call "order."

Whose hands are clean? Whose violence does greater harm?

GP
 

All-Electric Air Travel Is Not an Impossible Dream

A brief 2015 video report from the WSJ about the Airbus all-electric airplane, the E-Fan. Airbus is not the only company doing this. Go here for an interesting video about Pipistrel's electric plane.

by Gaius Publius

A brief follow-up to our recent piece on the coming death of Big Oil as a business (see "The Dying Fossil Fuel Industry"). One argument against the demise of Big Oil is that "there will always be a need for oil, somewhere." The most often-used examples for "somewhere" are in the global transportation industries — air travel and international shipping.

We've looked at these industries before and agreed that they do represent a problem. For example, from a 2015 piece: "Independent of the [Paris Agreement] pledges of the various nations — which are proving to be entirely inadequate to meeting even the modest goals of the U.N. — pledges by nations aren't the entire solution. In fact, the pledges by a number of nations would be entirely wiped out by the emissions of two international industries. These are international shipping and international air travel."

Take the Canadian climate pledge, for example. Canada has promised to cut its pollution by 30% below 2005 levels (a peak year) by 2030, and by 16% below the benchmark year of 1990, from 690 MtCO2e to 579 MtCO2e (megatons of CO2-equivalent emissions). Over the same period, 1990 to 2030, international aviation and international maritime emissions are expected to more than triple in a business-as-usual scenario, for a combined increase in emissions that's more than ten times the promised emissions decrease from Canada (pdf, page 42).

When most people think about how to cut global emissions to zero, that's were they get stuck, with an unsolvable problem when it comes to international travel and shipping. Those who don't get stuck there posit a world of less capitalism, less "buying for the sake of buying" — which is needed to feed the capitalists' constant need to "sell for the sake of selling." As admirable as that sounds as a goal, it also sounds impossible to achieve, at least voluntarily. Besides, less capitalism, defined as production of consumer goods, would certainly require less global shipping, but wouldn't solve the problem of global air travel.

Can these two industries, international maritime and international aviation, every be freed from the grip of fossil fuels?

All-Electric Planes Are Here Today

It turns out that all-electric airplanes are not that far from the horizon, and what works for air travel could well be adapted to shipping, given the right advances in energy storage. Consider this, from Scientific American in 2014:

"Impossible" Electric Airplane Takes Flight

The Berlin Air Show witnessed a silent, clean test flight by Airbus's E-Fan two-seater aircraft, which is entirely propelled by electricity

...The fully electric E-Fan aircraft, engineered by Airbus Group, made one of its first public demonstrations here last week following it's first-ever flight in France on March 11.

The novel two-seater aircraft was designed from the outset for electrical propulsion, from its energy management system to safety features. In developing this technology, Airbus aims to one day reduce the aerospace industry's carbon dioxide emissions by an order of magnitude.

"It's a very different way of flying," said Jean Botti, chief technical and innovation officer at Airbus Group, "absolutely no noise, no emissions."

A series of lithium-ion batteries fitted into the wings of the plane are the sole power source for the E-Fan's two 30-kilowatt electric motors. A 6 kW electric motor in the main wheel provides extra power during acceleration and taxiing to reduce electrical power consumption on the ground.

The obvious problem is range. The 2014 version described above had a one-hour range, which means it didn't stray far from the airport. The 2015 version of the same plane (see video above) performed a Channel crossing.

The plan, though, is ambitious: "Airbus will make a next-generation two-seater electric plane, set for launch in 2017, and a four-seater electric plane with a gas-powered range extender, set for launch in 2019."

These advances are steppingstones toward realizing Flight Path 2050, the European Union's aggressive goal to reduce the aviation sector's nitrous oxide emissions by 90 percent, noise pollution by 65 percent and carbon dioxide emissions by 75 percent by 2050.

What's holding these projects back is the current pace of advancement in battery technology. But changes are coming faster and faster, spurred by both economic and environmental motivation. (Imagine the payoff to the inventor who develops a reliable, light-weight, quick-charge, slow-drain battery cell. Imagine how many inventors, investors, and companies are looking for it — the battery and the payoff.)

In the meantime, it's not hard to imagine the day when air travel will be freed from the need to pollute in order to operate. When that day comes, one more barrier to fossil-free living will fall.

GP
 

"Where the Second Avenue subway went wrong" (James Surowiecki)

New Yorkers once had train service all up and down Second Avenue. Here we see the old Second Avenue El (torn down in 1940-42) at 34th Street. [Click to enlarge.]

"The pool of dollars available for something like public transit is limited. The result of extravagant spending on subways and the like is that we end up with fewer of them than other cities. For the price of what New York spent on Calatrava’s PATH station alone, Stockholm is building nineteen kilometres of subway track and a six-kilometre commuter-rail tunnel. Worse, cost overruns fuel public skepticism toward government, making it harder to invest the next time around. It’s good for government to do big things, great things. But it’s better if it can do them under budget."

-- from James Surowiecki's "Where the Second Avenue
subway went wrong" in the Jan. 23 New Yorker

by Ken

Welcome to NYC, Second Avenue subway, and congratulations on sending forth your first expired customer!

If you'll bear with me, there is, I think, a reason why non-New Yorkers might care about the past, present, and future of NYC's Second Avenue subway, of which the mile-and-a-half segment first segment, offering stops at 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets, opened -- finally! -- on New Year's Day, as I noted here the following Sunday.

As to that first expired customer, DNAinfo New York published this account yesterday under the slug "Crime & Mayhem":

Man Found Dead on Second Avenue Subway Car, NYPD Says

By Aidan Gardiner | January 31, 2017, 9:30am

MANHATTAN -- A man died after being found unconscious on a Q train as it pulled into the last stop of the Second Avenue subway Tuesday morning, NYPD officials said.

The man, who is in his 50s but whose name wasn't immediately released, was found on the train at the 96th Street station about 12:30 a.m., police said.

He showed no signs of trauma but was pronounced dead at Metropolitan Hospital, police said. [Note: The NY Post account expands on that "no signs of trauma": "Police said the man did not appear to have any signs of trauma on his body and likely died of natural causes."]

The medical examiner will determine his cause of death, police said.

As far as I could determine, the medical examiner is yet to be heard from.


MEANWHILE, SECOND AVEUNYUE RIDERSHIP
IS LAGGING BEHIND THE MTA'S PROJECTIONS

I don't think the shortfall is critical, and it certainly doesn't prove that the new subway-fragment isn't valuable to Upper East Siders. But it does focus a little more attention on the question of just what New Yorkers have gotten for our humongous investment. You can almost see beads of sweat dripping down the brow of NYS Gov. Andrew "The Second Avenue Subway C'Est Moi" Cuomo.

Second Avenue subway falls short of ridership projection

By Danielle Furfaro | February 1, 2017 | 12:35pm

Ridership on the Second Avenue Subway line has been lower than projected for its first month, officials said on Wednesday.

About 155,000 riders are taking the new line daily, slightly less than the MTA’s projections, Gov. Cuomo’s office said on Wednesday.

Ridership started out at about 130,000 riders per day when it first opened to the public on Jan. 1. The line gained about 8,000 riders a week, hitting 155,000 on Jan. 27.

The agency came to those figures by collecting turnstile numbers in the three new stations and in 63rd Street, as well as hand counting how many people exited via emergency gates at the new stations and analyzing how many people would have transferred from other lines, said MTA spokeswoman Beth DeFalco. Of the new stations, 72nd Street had the highest ridership with 51,450 passengers daily.

The MTA had said it hoped to attract 200,000 riders per weekday, but that likely won’t happen until later in the year, agency officials said on Wednesday.

Cuomo said he believes the number shows the line was desperately needed.

“The Second Avenue Subway has already become an integral part of the Upper East Side and these ridership figures show just how important this expansion project is to the neighborhood and our economy,” Governor Cuomo said.

The new line, in effect a northward extension of the Q line running up and down Broadway and Seventh Avenue before swinging eastward to Second Avenue has also helped to ease overcrowding on the notoriously packed Lexington Avenue line, said officials, who said the morning rush hour on four Upper East Side 4, 5, and 6 stations has now decreased by an average of 46 percent.

Part of the ridership lag, I think it's safe to say, has to do with the limited usefulness of the "Second Avenue subway-fragment" that we've gotten so far, passing itself off as "the Second Avenue subway." What we have is an eastward-and-northward extension of the Q line running up and down Broadway and Seventh Avenue -- first to the expanded Lexington Ave-63rd St stop, then northward under Second Avenue to 72nd, 86th, and 96th Streets. There's still no Second Avenue service above 96th Street or below 72nd Street.

Planning for northward extension to 125th Street is already in progress, and assuming that the funding falls into place, this Phase 2 may actually be built in our lifetimes. Southward extension, however, remains a drawing-board proposition.

For now, riders to and from the up-and-running Second Avenue stations have to either:

• come up above ground and walk four blocks between the Lexington Ave-63rd St station and the 59th St station of the Lexington Avenue line for a free transfer to and from the very Lexington Avenue line whose sardine-can overcrowding and relentless service bottlenecks a Second Avenue has been needed to ease; or

• use Q service up and down Broadway and Seventh Avenue.


IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED THAT WHEN THE OLD
SECOND AVENUE EL WAS CLOSED AND TORN DOWN,

in 1940-42 -- with the Third Avenue El slated to follow -- it was on the promise that a Second Avenue subway would be built to replace them. On the West Wide the demolished Sixth and Ninth Avenue Els were indeed replaced with the building of the new IND Sixth and Eighth Avenue subways in the early 1930s.

On the East Side, however, abandoned el riders have been waiting since the '40s, strung along with empty and repeatedly betrayed promises. Demolition of the Third Avenue El was delayed in good part because of this failure, but it too came down -- most of it closing in 1955, with a portion of its Bronx service lingering into the 1960s and early '70s. The never-replaced loss of that el service in the Bronx had a serious depressive effect on the once-thriving Third Avenue corridor, but then, that's the Bronx, so who cares? Unless you count the people who live and do business there, or might want to -- and not many people at the power levels of NYC planning do count them.


WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO WHAT WE'RE
GETTING FOR OUR 2ND AVENUE SUBWAY $$$

And for this, I direct infrastructure-interested parties to James Surowiecki's New Yorker "Financial Page" from two weeks ago (the Jan. 23 issue), "Where the Second Avenue subway went wrong," which begins:

On New Year’s Eve, at a party to celebrate the opening of the long-awaited Second Avenue subway, Governor Andrew Cuomo said the project showed that government “can still do big things and great things.” What he didn’t say is that the project also shows that government can do really expensive things. The line, which so far consists of just three stations and two miles of track, is, at a cost of roughly $1.7 billion per kilometre of track, the most expensive ever built. And it will keep that record as Phase 2 begins, at a projected cost of $2.2 billion a kilometre.

"Construction projects everywhere are subject to delays and cost overruns," Surowiecki notes. But nowhere, he show, are they anywhere near as delayed or overrunnier than in the U.S.

We used to do better. Hoover Dam was completed under budget, and two years ahead of schedule, and the Golden Gate Bridge, too, was finished early and cost $1.3 million less than expected.

SUROWIECKI ASKS, "SO WHAT'S GOING WRONG?"

"It's complicated," he answers. "One analysis of the problem cited thirty-nine possible causes." There are high land and labor costs, and "a plethora of regulatory hurdles and other veto points" ("a recent paper by Philip Howard, the chairman of Common Good, suggests that a more streamlined regulatory process, like those found in many developed countries, could save hundreds of billions of dollars"). There's our unique division of jurisdiction among local, state, and federal jurisdictions, and increasingly there are political obstructions that often lead to projects' being dramatically upscaled; "long-suffering engineers call this 'scope creep.' "

All of this is vastly better explained in the original than in my bare-bones sketch. At this point, however, I prefer to defer to the author:

A major cause of scope creep is the fact that infrastructure spending is at the mercy of political winds. Planners know that opportunities to build are limited, so when they do get a chance they tend to milk it for all it’s worth. Politicians, meanwhile, like big, splashy projects that will win headlines and capture the public’s attention. This is why we end up putting money into new projects while skimping on maintenance, even though the return on investment from simply keeping roads and bridges in good shape is usually higher.

Politicians are fond of a quote commonly attributed to Daniel Burnham, the father of Chicago’s Exposition of 1893: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood.” It’s an inspiring sentiment, but emblematic of what you might call the Edifice Complex, a habit, among politicians, of imagining that anything big and glitzy must therefore be worth doing. That’s how Detroit ended up with a People Mover monorail that moves very few people, why San Jose is set to spend more than a hundred and fifty million dollars on a transit station intended as “the Grand Central Station of the West,” and how New York managed to spend four billion dollars on a PATH station designed by Santiago Calatrava. On the Second Avenue line, too, the stations, which account for most of the cost, are lavish structures with huge mezzanines. They’re a pleasure to walk through, but more modest stations would have worked just as well.

Conservatives often reflexively dismiss infrastructure spending as a boondoggle, and liberals, perhaps in reaction, often reflexively defend it, no matter how wasteful. But the pool of dollars available for something like public transit is limited. The result of extravagant spending on subways and the like is that we end up with fewer of them than other cities. For the price of what New York spent on Calatrava’s PATH station alone, Stockholm is building nineteen kilometres of subway track and a six-kilometre commuter-rail tunnel. Worse, cost overruns fuel public skepticism toward government, making it harder to invest the next time around. It’s good for government to do big things, great things. But it’s better if it can do them under budget.

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Transit Watch: "The Second Avenue Subway is open for service!" (more or less -- give or take)

In related news: NYS Gov. Andrew M. 
Cuomo eats dirt (pass it on)

By the Numbers

• Workers excavated 583,600 cubic yards of rock & 460,300 cubic yards of soil (more than half the Empire State Building by volume)
• Cubic yards of concrete used in construction: 261,038
• Pounds of rebar used in construction: 48.9 million
• Pounds of structural steel used in construction: 40.7 million
• The new line features 35 new escalators, 12 new elevators, and 22 new stairways
• The new line features 200,000 square feet of floor tiles, 130,000 square feet of ceiling tiles, and 692,000 square feet of wall tiles
• Number of doors: 1,014
• Number of light fixtures: 10,264
• Number of floor drains: 712
• Number of plumbing and bathroom fixtures: 264

-- from "Second Avenue Subway Opens," on the
website of the Metropolitan Transit Authoritay (MTA)

"The Second Avenue Subway is open for service!"

-- the first paragraph of the above-linked MTA Web article

by Ken

The sentence I've quoted above from the official MTA chronicle of the opening of the Second Avenue subway is not only the entire first paragraph from the article, but also answers the question: How far into the official MTA chronicle of the opening of the Second Avenue subway would one have to go before encountering the name of Gov. Andrew M Cuomo, to whom (at present) the MTA -- nominally an "independent" public agency -- ultimately answers?

Because at this point, the article becomes about, well, pretty much about Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who apparently built the Second Avenue subway, very likely on evenings and weekends while he pursued various other day jobs during the period of construction.

Governor Andrew M. Cuomo celebrated the on-time arrival of the Second Avenue Subway – the system’s first major expansion in more than 50 years – with the line’s inaugural ride on New Year's Eve. The new line’s first ride and celebratory party were cohosted by MTA Chairman and CEO Thomas F. Prendergast and attended by Second Avenue Subway and MTA workers, local community members, dignitaries, local elected officials and members of President Obama’s Cabinet. Attendees rode to each of the new stations and will ring in the New Year with a celebratory countdown and toast at the 72nd Street station.

"After nearly a century, the Second Avenue Subway is no longer a dream that only a few still believe is possible. Thanks to the dedication and tireless efforts of thousands of great New Yorkers, the stations are open, the trains are running and it is spectacular," said Governor Andrew M. Cuomo. "With this achievement, we have recaptured the bold ambition that made the Empire State so great, proving that government can still accomplish big things for the people it serves. New Year's Eve is all about starting anew and I am proud to ring in the New Year on the Second Avenue Subway and welcome a new era in New York where there is no challenge too great, no project too grand, and all is possible once again."

And so, if you get your information primarily from official sources, you learn that the real story last Sunday was the assemblage of, um, dignitaries who made themselves available for photo-opping and gladhanding on the opening day of the Second Avenue subway.

By comparison, let's see how far you could go into some other venue's account of the big day. How about, say, CBS News's online piece "NYC welcomes Second Avenue subway" (with a slide show of 36 photos)? Let's try it.

A New York City subway line, first imagined nearly a century ago, is finally rolling. The long-awaited Second Avenue subway opened to the public on Sunday. The multi-billion-dollar project is expected to help hundreds of thousands of daily commuters travel faster across the congested city.

Planning for the Second Avenue subway began back in 1929, but hurdles -- including the Great Depression and the city’s financial crises -- derailed the project.

Now that it’s finally open, 200,000 daily riders are expected to use the new line that the MTA says will cut 10 minutes or more out of people’s travel time.

A stretch of New York’s City’s Second Avenue line opened to the public January 1, exciting not just New Yorkers like Fidel Molina (“After so many years of just closures and delays, we get to finally be here!”), but people from across the country. Raphel Sicinski drove more than nine hours from Virginia for the 10-minute ride.

“I’ve always had a love and passion for trains, and this is something I could not miss,” Sicinski told CBS News.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who pushed for the end-of-the-year deadline, was on hand for the grand opening.

[SOUND OF LOUD BUZZER]

Oh wow! So there was more to the story than the governor being, you know, on hand for the grand opening! Who would have guessed?


CAN NON-NEW YORKERS FEEL HOW DEEP
THE SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY iSSUE CUTS?

Well, of course I rode the newly opened segment of the Q train last Sunday, opening day. There were lots of thrill-seeking subway aficionados in evidence, on the platforms and the trains themselves, and also a goodly number of way-east Upper East Siders simply trying out their new transportation medium. A new subway map featuring the newly expanded-up-Second-Avenue Q line was being handed out. My goodness gracious, it was exciting. (That's what I said to the New York City Transit employee who handed me my copy of the new map. "Exciting!" I exclaimed. I like to think that my excitement was visible, and audible.)

I feel a little remiss in waiting a whole week to share this excitement, except for two things:

(1) Compared with the delays New Yorkers have endured waiting for the Second Avenue subway -- any sort of Second Avenue subway (we'll talk about this more below) -- a week's delay is like the blink of an eye.

(2) Proceeding from the above, I'm not sure that non-New Yorkers can appreciate what a deep-rooted issue the Second Avenue subway has become. As I was riding the new line extension up and down Second Avenue, I couldn't help thinking of my late stepfather, a lifetime NYC resident, who could always be counted on, anytime the subject of the Second Avenue subway was mentioned, to recall the time the plans for it were finalized, the money was actually appropriated, and the net thing New Yorkers noticed as that the money was gone and no subway line had been built. The best information I've heard is that yes indeed, this really happened, but the money got spent on, you know, other stuff.


AMONG THE NY TRANSIT MUSEUM'S BELOVED
COLLECTION OF HISTORIC SUBWAY CARS --

Imagine for a moment that the year is 1948.

In the New York Transit Museum, among the museum's much-loved collection of historic subway cars, there is a car, one of only two surviving ones (at least that's my recollection from a Transit Museum tour; oh sure, I could research it, but wouldn't that take the fun out of it? besides, aren't impressions more important than facts?) from a 10-car subway train built in 1948 that was known at the time as the Million-Dollar Train, because each of those 10 cars cost $100K (in 1948 dollars, of course). It was a prototype train, and incorporated a host of new design features, a number of which found their way, in one form or another, into subsequent new-car designs.

Because, you see, there was, as it turned out, no need to build more of these particular cars, because the use for which they were intended never materialized. If all had gone according to plane, they would have ridden the very stretch of track where the survivor car now resides, the stretch of track now occupied by the Transit Museum itself. It's the long-closed IND Court Street station, one of the NYC subway system's more curious stations. It's just one stop to the west of the six-track Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, which was clearly intended to be a significant subway hub, but never became quite that hub; only four of those six tracks are actually in use.

The other tracks were used for a brief while for a shuttle train that merely traversed the one-station expanse between the two stations. And that was the only train "line" that ever ran in the Court Street station. When the "line" and the station itself were finally shut down, for obvious reasons of uneconomic lack of use, they were hardly missed.

This wasn't, however, what the station and that stretch of track were built for. The original idea was that the track would be extended west toward the East River, and then through a new tunnel under the river to Manhattan, ultimately to connect to . . . the to-be-built Second Avenue subway, which would (finally!) replace the torn-down Second and Third Avenue elevated lines. Oh, the exact route on Second Avenue was a matter of much heated discussion, with various plans being proposed -- and even accepted on the several occasions when actual construction was actually threatened, and even in several segments initiated. But the Million-Dollar Train would never be needed.

Now, one thing that the various earlier versions of the Second Avenue subway had in common was that they actually some version of "the Second Avenue subway," which is to say that they would actually have run up and down Second Avenue -- and not just the small segment from the mid-60s up to 96th Street whose construction has caused such havoc in the lives of local residents and merchants these last however-many years during the actual construction of what so far is merely an extension of the Q train northward, through the rebuilt Lexington Ave-63rd St station on up through the brand-new 72nd, 86th, and 96th St stations. Never mind that the letter "T" has long since been assigned to a Second Avenue subway (and "T"-train-themed merchandise has been available for purchase for years). Someday maybe there will be a T train, but I'm pretty sure I won't be around to see it.


WITH THE BEST WILL IN THE WORLD, HOW CAN
WE CALL THIS "THE SECOND AVENUE SUBWAY"?

This much of the Second Avenue subway has cost, as the CBS News account puts it, "a staggering $4.5 billion." But bear in mind that what's running now, as of last Sunday, isn't "the" Second Avenue subway; it's maybe "a" Second Avenue subway. What has been built is merely "Phase 1" of any sort of, er, actual (for want of a better word) Second Avenue subway.


Yes, here it is -- the Second Avenue subway as it exists in 2017, a northward extension of the Q line from Seventh Ave. and 57th St. up Second Ave. to 96th St.

Sure enough, the MTA version of the story of the route opening concludes -- after sections subheaded "New Q Train Service," "New Stations," "Public Art," and "By the numbers" (reproduced atop this post) -- with a section subheaded "Phase 1."

Phase 1

Phase 1 of the Second Avenue Subway includes the three new ADA-compliant stations at 96th Street, 86th Street and 72nd Street, and new entrances to the existing Lexington Av/63rd Street Station at 63rd Street and Third Avenue. It will provide service from 96th Street to 63rd Street and will serve more than 200,000 people per day, reducing overcrowding on the Lexington Avenue Line and restoring a transit link to a neighborhood that lost the Second Avenue elevated subways in 1940. The existing Q line will continue through 63rd Street all the way to Coney Island. The new stations will provide transfers to other subway and commuter rail lines. Further phases of the project will extend the line to Hanover Square in the Financial District.

As part of the Governor’s efforts to build a 21st century transportation network smarter, faster and more efficient than ever before, the state has launched a “New MTA” webpage. The webpage offers a one-stop guide to the proposals that are part of New York’s unprecedented $100 billion infrastructure plan to build a new New York.

The Second Avenue Subway expansion is part of the Governor’s sweeping statewide initiative to redevelop and rebuild New York’s aging infrastructure from the ground up. The comprehensive plan includes a new LaGuardia Airport, completely redesigned Penn Station, the LIRR 2nd and 3rd Track projects, the New New York Bridge, a major expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Center, as well as a complete overhaul and upgrades to the MTA's seven bridges and two tunnels in the metropolitan region.

I don't know about you, but I am thrilled beyond measure to rub up against the govern's vision of a 21st-century transportation network." Wow! The thing is that -- at least as far as the Second Avenue subway is concerned, which is my concern at this moment -- the governor's "sweeping statewide initiative to redevelop and rebuild New York's aging infrastructure from the ground up" doesn't seem to include Phase 2 of the Second Avenue subway, let alone Phases 3 and 4. Maybe this is because these are "building" rather than "redeveloping" or "rebuilding." But then, I note that the MTA article stops cold after this section on "Phase 1."


SO WHAT COMES AFTER "PHASE 1"? NONE OF THE
SWELLS AT THE GRAND OPENING WERE TALKING

We already know that Phase 2 of the Second Avenue subway is supposed to extend the Phase 1 portion farther north, from 96th to 125th Street. But we also know, at least as of the last I heard, that nobody seems to know where the money is going to come from, or when. Again as of the last I heard, it wasn't included in any MTA capital budget, and without being included there, there's no way it's going to happen. It could be just coincidence, but it occurs to me that as you move north on Second Ave. from 96th Street, even with the considerable amount of gentrification that has occurred in East Harlem, you're moving into conspicuously less affluent terrain, an area where a money-finding and -distributing official like a governor (to pick a random example) might not see either a whole lot of votes to harvest or a whole lot of developers' cash dangling in front of his hypothetical eyes.

Now this means, in economic terms, that the current residents of what we might call the Far Upper East Side are in fact more in need of better public transportation. However, from the standpoint of that hypothetical money-finding and -distributing official we were just talking about, does providing those current residents with better public transportation translate readily into significant infusions of either votes or cash? Call me cynical, but I think if it did, Phase 2 would already be a done deal.

Of course if developers were already salivating over the development possibilities of that Far Upper East Side corridor with a subway extension in place, I'm guessing that that could make the money for Phase 2 much more findable. The only thing is, if and when that happens, the beneficiaries aren't likely to be the current residents so much as the more affluent new residents who will replace (or should I say displace them?

Meanwhile, if the powers that be are currently silent on Phase 2 of the Second Avenue subway, they're beyond silent on Phases 3 and 4, which would extend it south from the mid-60s, in two stages, or maybe more. I suppose Governor Cuomo has at least Phase 2 in his big-picture mixing bowl, and is busily weighing it against all the other money-sucking-up projects transportation project that he has to pick and choose among. Applying all that, you know, vision of his. I'm sure that in picking and choosing, he considers factors other than votes and potential developers' cash. It's just that where there are votes and/or developers' cash to be harvested, the considering process seems to be a whole lot smoother.


This is the 86th Street station on the Second Avenue extension. Of course I haven't looked at all the zillions of Second Avenue subway photos that have already been posted online, but of the many I did scavenge, I couldn't find a single shot that showed just the platform-level view that commuters will actually have on the three uniformly designed new stations, consisting of those infinitely running horizontal band lines. Well, I suppose we'll get used to the look.

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Oil Companies Dealt Blow After Blow on Plans to Ship Crude by Train

Neil Young singing to the junkies for oil. He's seen the needle and the damage done.

by Gaius Publius

The oil train dominoes are falling. Seems no one touched by oil at the transport end wants any part of it. Pipelines leak, 100- and 200-car trains blow up and burn, and fracking destroys health, lives and ground water.

The key in all of these battles is local control, exercised by the very people in place to be the suffering recipients of all the damage done.

Tony Bizjak writing at the Sacramento Bee (my emphasis):

Oil company dealt another blow on plan to ship crude by train

For the second time in a month, a California community has rejected an oil company’s plans to ship crude oil on long trains through Sacramento and other cities to coastal refineries.

The San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission on Wednesday voted to reject a request by Phillips 66 Co. to build a facility at its Nipomo Mesa refinery that would allow it to receive oil shipments via three trains a week, some of which likely would have traveled through Sacramento and other Northern California communities.

The 3-2 vote to deny Phillips can be appealed by the company to the county Board of Supervisors.

Two weeks ago, the City Council in Benicia unanimously rejected a proposal by Valero Refining Co. that would have allowed it to receive oil from two 50-car trains daily on rail lines through downtown Sacramento, Roseville, West Sacramento, Davis, Dixon and other Northern California communities, as well as through the Feather River Canyon watershed.

Both oil companies were seeking local approval to build spur rail lines and oil transfer stations at their refineries to access oil from North American crude-oil fields, which have seen a boom from new hydraulic fracturing – or fracking – technology.

The requests pitted the oil companies against anti-oil activists, environmentalists and leaders of communities along rail lines, including officials in Sacramento and Davis who said they were concerned about the potential for catastrophic derailment and fires involving the volatile liquid.

If you widen out from California to the whole West Coast, it's win after win after win. Todd Paglia from Stand.earth:

Fighting oil companies and the railroads is no easy thing, but in the last few weeks there was a win, then another, and another and the rout of the previously untouchable fossil fuel sector shows no sign of slowing down. From southern California to northern Washington, communities along the West Coast have dealt four massive blows to the fossil fuel industry over the past two months. Taken separately, each of these announcements represents years of work and tens of thousands of people refusing to put the health and safety of their families, communities and our climate at risk. Collectively, these decisions, which came in rapid succession, represent a shift in the acceptability of expanding fossil fuel infrastructure along our coast. Put simply, people are no longer willing to let the oil industry decide their future, to pollute their communities, to poison their bodies, and to irreparably harm our climate, by building new fossil fuel infrastructure.

The details:

What does this mean for the future of the oil industry along the West Coast? Well, if Shell’s announcement yesterday that it would be withdrawing its request to build a new oil train facility in Anacortes, Washington, is any indication, the writing is on the wall.

To fully understand the tectonic shift that has just occurred in the fight to protect communities and our climate against new fossil fuel infrastructure, it helps to have a sense of what exactly has gone down in the past two months;

• On August 9, the Whatcom County Council dealt a stunning blow to big oil by starting the process to suspend all new fossil fuel proposals for two months, an immediate moratorium that was extended for six months on September 27th. Why is this a big deal? Whatcom County has found itself at the center of a national debate around fossil fuel infrastructure since it could become a gateway for exporting everything from coal to gas to oil to the growing Asia Pacific market. The county council members’ August decision is likely a prelude to a permanent moratorium. The impact of this cannot be overstated – it prevents the growth of the coal industry across the west with no new markets to send it to.

• Oil giant Kinder Morgan is working to push through a pipeline full of controversial tar sands oil to the Port of Vancouver, BC, and if that doesn’t work they may to try deliver the toxic oil to a terminal in Whatcom County on the critical waters of the Salish Sea. Like the recently rejected coal export terminal, an oil export facility would bring the risks of spills and climate damage, with just a few jobs – a very bad deal for anyone but Kinder Morgan. Which is another reason the Whatcom County ordinance is such a big deal.

• On September 20, after a 3½  year fight, a city council in the small Bay Area town of Benicia denied a proposal for a new oil train terminal at the Valero refinery. This stunning decision was, according to Benicia Mayor Elizabeth Patterson, the first time the city has voted against the refinery - a business that currently provides 20-25% of the city’s tax base. The city’s decision was made possible by tenacious organizing by local activists who garnered powerful opposition both in Benicia and in communities along the rail route stretching to Davis, Sacramento, and beyond.

• The Benicia City Council’s decision came on the heels of a ruling by the Surface Transportation Board (STB), a little-known federal agency that primarily handles disputes between railroads. The STB settled a dispute over whether or not, as Big Oil argued, federal regulation of railroads extends so far as to deny local governments land use permitting discretion over oil companies’ proposed oil train projects. Ultimately, the decision affirmed Benicia’s right to deny Valero’s project - a ruling that has already reverberated across the country and buttressed the City of Albany, NY’s challenge to an oil train facility there.

• The following week, on October 5, the San Luis Obispo County Planning Commission stunned oil giant Phillips 66 when it denied their permit to build a new oil train facility. The decision came after a nearly three-year review process, with tens of thousands of Californians opposing the project and more than 45 cities, counties, and school boards sending letters urging the planning commission to deny it.

By the way, the magnitude of the disruption is considerable. From Stand.earth's press release about the Anacortes victory: "Combined, the Shell, Benicia and San Luis Obispo decisions represent at least 1,500 tank cars per week of explosive crude oil that were destined to run through our communities, and now will not." These trains, each of them, are almost a mile long.

As Paglia wrote, local resistance shows no sign of stopping. What's important about the West Coast, from California to Canada, is that if the oil giants can't get fracked oil and gas to a Pacific port, they can't get it easily to India and China. In other words, they can't monetize it — which is their whole reason for doing what they do.

Disrupting that industry is a path to winning the climate war, though we have to work even faster at it than we're working. Still, hats off to everyone working this end of the battle. This is what winning looks like!

Disrupting Big Oil

A thought about disrupting Big Oil. Market prices are really low right now, too low in fact to keep many players in business, because supply is so great and oil prices are a very sensitive supply-and-demand pressures. I don't see supply shrinking any time soon, since the race to monetize the last carbon atom is on. And to be frank, the pressure to "keep it in the ground" is an attack on Exxon's stock value, which in large part is based on its monetizable reserves, its "in the ground" assets.

As I write, Exxon's stock price is $88 per share. Could Exxon stay in business if its stock price were suddenly $40? Perhaps not. After all, the mutual funds would shed the stock like water, driving the price even lower. There would be bottom feeders at those low prices, but a new ceiling would have been established. Major stockholders would panic and revolt.

So what would it take to drive Exxon's stock below its ability to stay in business? That's an honest question, and worth exploring.

Now pursue that line of thinking further. I'm a believer in disrupting supply (starving the oil-consuming junkies) as well as, or even instead of, outlawing demand (legislating against using the needle). It just seems more effective. First, any carbon mined will be very likely be burned somewhere in the world. Second, Big Oil has to be driven out of business anyway if we're going to win. The industry has to be bankrupted. So finally, if the disruption is disorderly and chaotic, do we care? Especially if the price of an orderly disruption is so much lost time that we simply lose the whole game we're playing, lose completely what we're trying to preserve?

So again, what would it take to bankrupt Big Oil? In particular, what would it take to drive their stock price below what they can sustain and still stay in business? Transport disruption, as discussed above (and also here), is one method. Other thoughts?

GP
 

Sunday report: Fun with Michael and Gloria Schultz and "Cooley High" -- plus a first ride on the No. 7 to "34 St Hudson Yards"

Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs as Cochise and Glynn Turman as Preacher, the central characters of Cooley High, and two of only three professional actors the budget permitted -- along with Garrett Morris as the teacher Mr. Mason

by Ken

There's a scene in Cooley High where one of the central characters, the Chicago vocational-high-school student Cochise, played by the pre-Kotter Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, comes home and searches for a letter he's expecting -- the verdict on his college basketball scholarship. It's not with the mail on the bureau, so he asks his mother, who asks him if he checked the bureau, where all the mail is. Poor guy! Then he notices his toddler brother standing in front of the toilet bowl, and he goes in the little bathroom and looks in it, and sure enough, there's an envelope with his name and address typed on it.

We learned two lovely things about this scene during the post-screening discussion at the Museum of the Moving Image (which I mentioned earlier today I was attending) with director Michael Schultz and his wife, Gloria, who was up to her eyeballs in the making of the film (immersed in script-writing, casting, coaching the almost all nonprofessional cast, and doing whatever else needed doing. As I noted earlier today, the film is celebrating its 40th anniversary (it was made in 1974 and released in 1975), and as someone who had never seen it, I can testify that even in a less than ideal print it holds up very well indeed, and it was a special treat witnessing the Schultzes relive the making of this extremely low-budget film -- in the heart of Chicago's most dangerous ghetto, Cabrini Green, using lots of locals with no acting experience in the cast -- as if hardly any time had passed.

The two things we learned about that scene:

• After Michael and Gloria had hammered out a script, based on autobiographical stories told by writer Eric Monte, Michael got what he describes as one of the best pieces of professional advice he's ever gotten: to go back and rewrite every scene in a way that he'd never seen on-screen. In the original script, Cochise comes home, looks at the mail on the bureau, and finds the letter. Trying to think of a different way to do the scene, he thought of a habit his and Gloria's then-toddler son Brandon had developed, of grabbing pieces of mail and dropping them in the toilet.

• The on-screen toddler who played Cochise's brother was the self-same Brandon Schultz. (And no, we learned in response to an audience question, Brandon didn't get paid.)

(The film is now out on Blu-ray as well as DVD. Michael recalled the long delay in issuing it on VHS caused by the impossibility of cutting a deal for the rights to the 17 Motown tunes used, which he'd gotten for hardly any money when the film was made, but which were esteemed considerably higher by the time it came to video release. It wasn't until Berry Gordy sold the company that an affordable deal could be struck, Michael said.)

For me it's always a hard-to-match treat to witness creative people who have created something substantial talk about how that something was created. Michael Schultz, who had already garnered major attention as a stage director for his work with the Negro Ensemble Company in New York (he staged the original production of Lorraine Hansberry's To Be Young, Gifted, and Black, and re-created that production for TV), has had a busy 40 years since Cooley High, including Car Wash, Greased Lightning, and Which Way Is Up?, all with Richard Pryor.

Now that I've discovered what engaging raconteurs Michael and Gloria are, I'm that much sorrier that I have schedule conflicts that wil prevent me from catching the three remaining events in the little series of conversations MoMI has arranged, unfolding over the next three Sundays:

Working with Richard Pryor: A conversation with Michael Schultz and Scott Saul
With Michael Schultz in person and Scott Saul via Skype
Sunday, September 20, 2pm

Richard Pryor (1940-2005) was the most extraordinary comedian of his generation, and Michael Schultz made more films with him than any other director. This program will feature selected film clips of their collaborations, including Greased Lightning, Car Wash, Which Way Is Up, Bustin' Loose, and The Bingo Long Traveling All Stars & Motor Kings. Scott Saul [via Skype], author of Becoming Richard Pryor, will interview Michael Schultz about his directorial approach when working with Pryor and other comedians.

The Soundtrack of a Generation: A conversation with Michael Schultz and James Mtume
With Michael Schultz and James Mtume in person
Sunday, September 27, 2pm

Michael Schultz’s films have been accompanied by some of the most popular soundtracks of the era. Grammy Award-winning recording artist, film composer, and talk radio personality James Mtumewill show film clips and engage Schultz in a conversation about his vibrant use of music in movies such as Car Wash, Cooley High, and Which Way Is Up?

Talent Spotting: Michael Shultz on Discovering Exceptional Actors
Sunday, October 4, 2pm

A distinguished list of actors made their feature film debut under Michael Schultz’s direction, including Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Bill Duke, and Blair Underwood, among many others. The program will include clips of those film debuts and a discussion with Michael Schultz about his casting instincts and methods in spotting new talent, moderated by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the award-winning actor of stage and screen.

Gloria and Michael Schultz (seen here at the 41st NAACP Image Awards in 2010): This afternoon, recalling the making of Cooley High 40-plus years ago, they sounded as if it happened last week.


NO. 7 LINE UPDATE

In my earlier post, I wrote at length about today's grand opening of the westward-and-southward extension of the No. 7 Flushing line from Times Square to 34th Street and Eleventh Avenue. No, I didn't try to get to the ribbon-cutting before the MoMI screening, but afterward I did take a No. 7 train to its new westward terminus, at the station officially designated "34 St Hudson Yards." It's fine.

For the record, onsite the new little park is called not "Hudson Park" but "Hudson Boulevard Park," which makes more sense. (Hudson Boulevard, East and West, is a newly created sort-of-street that runs north-south from 33rd to 36th Streets, between 10th and 11th Avenues. The entrance that's been completed is at 34th Street and Hudson Boulevard East. Another entrance is being built at 35th Street.)

For the record, on my first extended-No. 7 trip I notched my first "We are being delayed by train traffic ahead" recorded announcement -- a much-appreciated homey touch. In addition, I should note, relative to my earlier-voiced skepticism about the durability of escalator technology, that in the first bank of escalators I encountered, three of the four were working. That's pretty good for the first day, don't you think? I hadn't in fact realized just how deep the station is. You ascend and descend in three stages, one of them quite long and one extremely long.

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