Democratic Party infighting, Primaries, etc.

I'll be honest, I'm a registered Independent, but, due to lack of options, have voted Democratic all my adult life. While I AM an independent, my state, Missouri, has an "open primary" which allows me to participate in primary voting for the party of my choice, even though I'm not officially registered with them. You can guess which party I vote within during the primary.

However, on this blog, I'm going to say that I like most of the Democratic candidates, its a pretty strong lineup, however, I'm not going to officially endorse any of them. All have strengths and weaknesses, that's a given, however, they all DO contribute something constructive to the debate. That's the whole point of politics in the first place, to bring ideas to the table and for others to decide if those ideas, and the people who have them, are worth supporting.

Of course, this is how things are SUPPOSED to happen, unfortunately, in both parties, this isn't completely the case, things like personal charisma, history, and perceptions matter just as much if not more than the ideas of the candidates themselves. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but, to be honest, its not all positive.

I'm not going to participate in the infighting, I already mentioned one Primary candidate's ideas on health care, Dennis Kucinich, and if others come up with ideas I like, I'll mention them, eventually. This is NOT a sign of endorsement of any of these candidates, so I just wanted to clear that up. I'm more interested in ideas that will help the people of this country, rather than just the people who declare such ideas.

Issues #1: Energy Reform, Solutions

As stated in my previous post, we would need to cut oil consumption to about one quarter what it is today. So, what are the solutions?

What we need is a comprehensive approach to the problem, and recognize that there is no single solution that will solve the problem for us. I don't care who is an advocate for Hydrogen cars, biofuels, electric, etc. All those are solutions that will have only a limited impact over the total consumption of oil in this country. They involve tradeoffs, such as having less arable land in the nation, due to using some for making fuel, or they have low energy density, and therefore limited range, or are expensive to mass produce, or involves toxic, difficult to recycle materials, etc.

The most obvious way to create oil independence in this country is to actually free us from the need for automobiles for most of our transportation needs. This will involve something akin to a whole new reindustrialization of the nation. In some cases it will require slight modifications of existing systems, in many other cases, it will require a total revamp of the design and layout of cities and towns.

One of the first things we could do is restore and expand our current railroad system, and limit diesel locomotives for freight, and have separate, expanded, electric high speed rail for long distance passenger travel. This would cut down on "gas guzzling" air travel, which has its own problems, like long waits, low turnover, and if you don't live near a major hub, quite a few switchovers. We need to divide the nation up into railroad regions, with some crossover for cross country travel, and quite a few regional, high speed, rail systems, that could cut down on travel times by an order of magnitude compared to car travel.

In addition to this, our cities and towns will need to be remade with an emphasis on pedestrian traffic and public transportation. Cities with existing light rail systems could greatly expand these systems, and use them to service as many areas as possible. Bus systems could be expanded, and the buses themselves converted to some renewable source of energy, whatever is economical for the particular city or town they service.

These types of reforms wouldn't eliminate automobiles entirely, however they would greatly limit the need to even have an automobile just to get to work or to the local grocery store. What could next be done is to expand tax credits for those who buy hybrids and, eventually, renewable or electric vehicles. This can include public financing for lower income working families, and also do the same for more energy efficient homes.

When I refer to reforming the cities and towns of this country, basically I'm talking about the death of suburbia. Unfortunately, suburbia is car centric, and has been marketed as such for years. The problem is that its simply unsustainable, if we wish to attain energy independence in any lasting form, we will need to rid ourselves of suburbs and exurbs.

There are many ways in which to accomplish this, and one of the ways to do this is through, oddly enough, marketing. What we need is a "new urbanization" where we revitalize existing neighborhoods, and build new neighborhoods. Include public financing for new and existing neighborhoods, tax credits, etc. to encourage middle class and working families to move into these neighborhoods. Just because we may have to sacrifice a little convenience just to make ourselves energy independent doesn't mean we have to make it entirely unpleasant.

This would create a building boom that would be unprecedented since the 1950s, and we can also plan ahead for future challenges as well. This building boom will help many cities rebuild their economies, open up new businesses and new investments, and put a lot of people to work. The cost can be great, but also manageable, and we shouldn't think of it as a burden, but rather an investment in the future, and we should tie in renewable ways to produce electricity, making "greener" neighborhoods and cities, and also help spread and eliminate some of the costs associated with pollution now.

Diversification of our energy sources is key to this, I believe, some areas of the country would be able to utilize the power of the Earth, through geothermic plants, others can utilize wind power, solar power, hydroelectric, whatever is practical for an area. I think this will go a long way towards complete independence from oil, even domestic oil.

Issues #1: Energy Reform, Oil problems

This is the first of my Issue series, these are issues of either domestic or international interest that I will tackle, stating both current problems, challenges, and then solutions. This may be divided into several different parts, depending on length of each post.

This first issue is a doozy, to put it mildly, Energy Reform is a term I sort of came up with to encompass energy independence challenges, new technologies in renewable energy, and the needed economic or structural reforms that need to take place for these issues to work as policy. This isn't a simple issue, and there are so many different approaches to take, it may seem overwhelming to the average person.

My focus on this issue will not be limited to just transportation energy, though that is a large part of the problem, but also "fixed" energy sources, in power plants, etc. In addition, the economy will need to transition from our current "fossil fuel" phase to a sustainable economy using renewable sources for energy.

The first source I'm going to talk about is Petroleum, and the current realities related to oil production and consumption. The United States, today, consumes about 20 million barrels of oil a day. Unlike many other natural resources, we don't hoard oil, not a lot of it, at least, so the product supplied, as shown in the table in the link, is product consumed. Contrast this with with the total amount of proved reserves within the United States, which is a little over 20 billion barrels of oil. Sounds like a lot of oil, doesn't it? However, do the math, 20 billion divided by 20 million equals 1000, which means a total of 1000 days worth of oil is present within the nation. That's a little under 3 years worth of oil, at current consumption rates. Now it doesn't seem like a lot, doesn't it?

Of course, this is assuming that all that oil can be extracted immediately after discovery, which isn't the case. Pipes can only be so large, and the oil is deep underground, so you have to drill. The total domestic production of oil is about 5 million barrels per day, so we have to make up the shortfall with imports. Now, before you ask, yes ANWR does exist, and production estimates say that it will be able to produce anywhere from .6 to 1.6 million barrels of oil a day, so it wouldn't be able to reduce imports by no more than a few percentage points. It should be noted that access to this oil isn't guaranteed until 2013 at the earliest, and given current trends, oil consumption is on the increase. Even worse, the total proven reserves in the United States peaked in the 1970 at 39 billion barrels and has been decreasing ever since.

Given these facts, in order to attain energy independence in this country we will have to reduce oil consumption by 15 million barrels a day, only using a quarter of the oil that we use now. Imagine the highway only have one quarter of the cars it has now, or just simply reducing our commutes to only one quarter what we use now. To be honest, this is possible for some people, however, for the large majority of us, this is impossible.

The problem is that this nation is car centric, and to be blunt about it, this leads to a large amount of wasted energy. No one can claim that traveling in a 2000 pound vehicle is the most efficient way to travel. Our towns and cities are designed around the automobile, and regardless of how many new technologies allow us to replace oil as the primary fuel in cars, none have as much energy per gallon as gasoline. This means some tradeoffs are in order.

Socialism for the 21st century.

One of the biggest misconceptions about socialism, especially in the United States, is that we want the State to control ALL aspects of the market, abolish all private property, and/or recreate the Soviet system in the United States or elsewhere. To be honest, this couldn't be further from the truth, most Socialists are realistic in our goals, and we really don't want a widget factory to be owned and run by some centralized government. To be blunt, that would be inefficient and a waste of government resources.

What we DO care about, however, is that the workers at the widget factory earn a living wage, work under safe conditions, and has strong representation, either through a Union, or the factory itself can be owned by them, as a Co-op. We also want to minimize the damage that such a factory would cause to the community it resides in, and make sure the factory owners PAY for any problems that the factory causes, such as environmental damage, and are properly taxed.

Most Socialists can actually be quite conservative, at least in a traditional way, we generally oppose privatization of public utilities, which seems to be a great experiment for local governments lately. Most people in the United States has at least 2 utilities that are publicly owned, and are therefore "Socialist". Most likely these are your gas and water utilities, the reason why they are public is because they are "natural" monopolies, in other words, competition cannot take place in the same community they serve due to safety and physical constraints.

Deregulation of these utilities and privatization, contracting out the utility to some private entity, usually ends up backfiring on the community. Rates go up, because this is a for-profit enterprise, all of the sudden, and service decreases, because public oversight is diminished. Its odd, but in a case like this, Socialists are among the most "conservative" people to oppose such measures.

Many Socialists believe the Energy infrastructure should be under national control, the reason seems obvious, its an interconnected grid, most of it crisscrossing state and national borders, and is vital to the national economic system. It should be regulated and run similarly to the National Highway System. In addition, we are advocates for a Universal Health care system as well, we consider both to be necessary for the citizenry to function.

As Socialists facing the challenges of the 21st century, we need to try to find the optimum balance between the needs of the citizenry and the existence of a private run market. We need to preserve the commons, the open spaces, public utilities, and open government for the people, and also allow for some flexibility to allow for innovation and to reward that innovation properly.

John Conyers and Dennis Kucinich has the right idea!

Thanks to this post over at Democratic Underground, this bill(H.R. 676) has been brought to my attention. Dennis Kucinich has a web page right here summarizing the bill. John Conyers also has a web page about this bill as well. This bill seems like a really good idea, I've reviewed it, and it pretty much is Medicare for all, allowing for physician choice and the transition of for-profit insurance companies to non-profit medical financial institutions.

I think the greatest strengths of the bill is the power to negotiate prices for prescription drugs and full coverage of primary, dental, and vision care. I believe this bill is an actual solution to one of the biggest problems facing the nation today, exploding health care costs. Health care should be considered a necessary public service, like police or fire protection, and should be able to take care of everyone in the country.

Thanks to Flabbergasted at DU for bringing this important bill to light. :)

On the Iraq War...

This will be my ONLY post on the Iraq war, not because I don't think it is important, but I'm NOT going to be a news site. I will not post everything that happens around the world unless it is related to a post topic I'm ranting about. Besides that, I think many other blogs and websites will cover the Iraq war much better than I.

Let me just say that I opposed the war since before it started, basically I'm apparently psychic because I knew that the claims of the Bush Administration about WMDs and Chemical/Biological Weapons in Saddam's possession was a bunch of Bullshit. This is basically the latest in a long line of wars of dominance that the United States participate in on some pretense that isn't related to reality, but rather is a lie.

I could give at least two examples of this, the Maine incident, which, thanks to Randolph Hearst, lead to the Spanish-American war, and the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which precipitated the Vietnam war. One war was quick and lead to the United States attaining a further expansion as a global empire, the other was an attempt at the same thing, but it failed.

The United States thought it learned from the mistakes of Britain and previous empires, the fact is, maintaining an overseas empire is expensive. We spun off some of our colonial territories when it was obvious that keeping a proxy government was cheaper than leaving it as a territory. Iraq, I believe, is yet another attempt at this, for, to be honest, we have a terrible time controlling proxies through subterfuge, and a war in Iraq would at least allow us a pretense to maintain a permanent military presence in that country.

The problem, of course, are the Iraqis, who don't want to be a proxy of the United States, an extension of American power in the region. We started a war of aggression, and that lead to an occupation of the nation of Iraq. We may hear that Iraq has a government that is independent of the United States, but let's not kid ourselves, they do not hold power in that nation, no more than a hostage has power even if he's allowed to go to the bathroom anytime he wants.

The question, of course, is whether the war is partisan, I would say it is, simply because the Republicans did dominate all 3 branches of government at the time the war started. Bush appointed or chose key members of PNAC to be members of his administration. This is fact, and can't be disputed, and PNAC themselves has been lobbying for an Iraq invasion since the late 1990s. Would a Democrat have done the same thing? I strongly doubt it, for Clinton didn't, and while I have my criticisms of Clinton, this isn't one of them.

Simply put, this is a Republican war, a Bush war, and blame should be put squarely on his and their shoulders. I don't dismiss those Democrats in Congress who voted for the IWR, however, we must heed the words of Harry S Truman and say: "The buck stops here."

As far as solutions to the quagmire that is costing us Billions of dollars a year and the lives of thousands of troops and Iraqis, in addition to the amount of ruin that has occurred. I propose a solution that is rather simple, if hard to swallow. What America must do is own up to its mistake, and cede control of the area to a truly international force, and pay any reparations for rebuilding a country we destroyed, and to pay the U.N. or NATO for keeping troops in the region for stability purposes.

This would cost us a shitload of money, but not that much more than what we already paid, in blood and cash, and we can at least remove the blood from the equation. A truly international peacekeeping force should be there for the sole purpose of allowing a stable, truly independent government to form in Iraq, regardless of the form that government takes.

What's in a label? Why I call myself a Socialist.

Probably the simplest reason why is because I agree with the Party platform of Socialist Party of the United States, not all of it, but the large majority of it. I could point out disagreements here and there, but largely, I'm a Democratic Socialist at heart, of the party of Eugene V. Debs.

However, I'm also a realistic political animal in this country, and realize that to most folks in this country, with the possible exception of Vermont, an openly Socialist candidate would never get elected to a federal office, Bernie Sanders being the sole exception of course. As such, with the field of candidates being so limited in my area and the nation at large, I vote for Democratic Party candidates more than any other party.

Being pragmatic isn't easy, I can never claim to absolutely agree with any Democratic candidate, however, I do believe that leftists such as myself need to influence the party both in and out of the party itself. Others have taken up the call to influence the Party from within, I choose to try to do it from the outside. I would never advocate for third parties to act as spoilers only, but rather they should give the larger two parties something to think about, and influence them that way. Basically this is a general position I hold that is similar to the Democratic Socialist of America, the link is at the right.

An Introduction is in order I think...

Well, what can I say that adds to my what I already stated so far? I figured I just start out by saying I don't intend for this blog to be anything other than my way to vent about what's wrong with the world, the U.S. and pResident Bush. Though I'm NOT going to just "bash Bush" or "Bash America", though many of my posts may reflect my frustration with both, rather, I'm interested in solutions that face us as Americans and Humanity in general.

Not only is this a blog for frustrations, but for ideas, mine, yours, whatever, if you want to have a constructive debate, go ahead and post, I may post back. I've opened this blog so anyone can comment, though you will have to go through what I call the "numbers" game to post, hopefully, this will cut out the spam. Its also, at the moment, unmoderated, however, this may change if things get out of hand.