Neighborhood Resiliency - An Introduction

You tell me there's an angel in your tree.

Did he say he'd come to call on me?

'Cause things are getting desperate in our home,

living in the parish of the restless folk I've known.

“Burn Down The Mission,” lyrics by Bernie Taupin

As I have become more aware of Peak Oil, resource depletion and environmental destruction, I have also become more aware of the probable effects these crises will have on the communities in which we live. While the biggest part of those effects is economic, there are and will be many other effects. The result of all these effects is likely to be hugely negative unless a neighborhood has existing neighbor-initiated, community-based systems, relationships and connections which are resilient in the face of stress. “A neighborhood's resiliency depends on the stability of its initial equilibrium state. A neighborhood that possesses a large stock of social and physical capital is not easily dislodged from its beneficial equilibrium, but if dislodged by adverse shocks, its reservoir of capital enables it to return to its initial equilibrium.” – Margot Breton, “Neighborhood Resiliency,” Journal of Community Practice, June 2001.

The problem is that many (perhaps most) of the neighborhoods, communities and cities in America are now very fragile. They do not possess large stocks of social and physical capital; instead, no one knows his or her neighbors and almost everyone is dangerously in debt. The present economic crisis is unraveling a great many of the people in these neighborhoods, and the government on all levels is doing very little to fix this.

When I think of neighborhood resiliency, I do not look to the government to provide answers or help, although sometimes I am pleasantly (even delightedly!) surprised by some of the things my particular city is doing. Yet I have decided not to waste my breath/writing paper/Internet time trying to tell Washington my idea of a policy solution. I don't think even now that they're really interested in helping us. Instead, I believe that building up resilient neighborhoods is up to the neighbors who live in them. We will have to be the fix for the problems we face.

Nor have I decided to abandon cities and neighborhoods altogether in favor of holing up on a spread of several wilderness acres with a stash of five tons of baked beans and 5,000 rounds of ammunition. Some may elect to do this, but it's very clear that we can't have 300 million Americans all trying to do this, and it seems to me to be a rather short-sighted and selfish approach to our present times. Instead, I see myself as being somewhat like Billy Joel in the 1970's, who was living in Los Angeles and heard that New York City was going bankrupt, as well as hearing the smug sneers of Angelinos gloating over New York's potential demise. The sneers made him so angry that he said, in effect, “Hey! I'm a New Yorker! If that city's going down, I'm going down with it; we stand together!” As a result, he returned to New York, and wrote, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.”

I live in a city. Yes, the city has problems and challenges, and the stress of our present emergencies may very well make those problems worse. But I'm getting a little tired of people (even though these people are very smart and far-sighted) who only have time to talk about the likely negative effects of Peak Oil and economic collapse, who have no solutions other than to “bug out and head for the hills,” nor any predictions other than rapidly spreading crime and chaos, who seem to relish the potential onset of “Mad Max – the 3D, Real-Life Version.”

For me, it seems a nobler challenge and a fight worth fighting to try to improve the place where I live, trying to make it a decent place in which decency is honored. (“So why didn't you stay in Southern California?” some may ask. Sometimes I wonder if I should have – but when I left I was trying to pick my battles wisely, and I had a mortgage on which I still had 25 years of payments to go.) So here I am, kicking off an on-again, off-again series of posts on building a resilient neighborhood. I'll be writing about some of the efforts I will undertake here in my own neighborhood. One thing: I have decided I'm going to have a bunch of my neighbors over for coffee some time in the next three weeks. So I have to get the house ready for company. And now that I've said it over the Internet, I guess I have to go through with it.

But I will also write more analytical posts dealing with building neighborhood resiliency, starting with an exploration of the factors which have contributed to making our neighborhoods brittle. This applies particularly to minority neighborhoods, though the factors are now present in almost all American neighborhoods. I will focus especially on the role governments and big businesses have had in undermining neighborhood stability. An understanding of how things got to be so broken and messed up is crucial if we're going to have any chance of fixing things.

One last thing: Both Jeff Vail (http://jeffvail.net/) and John Robb (http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/) have written about resilient communities in the context of adapting to Peak Oil. You may want to check out their articles. I will take a slightly different approach in my analysis, however.

The War On Frugality

The present energy and economic crises in the world have caused the return of a long-forgotten culture of frugality in the United States and other First World nations. The return of this culture is due to a grassroots movement among ordinary, everyday citizens who don't have many resources and who are tired of being taken for everything they've got by large corporate masters. This culture of frugality is gaining such strength and spreading so rapidly that voices in the mainstream media are now starting to comment on it, as seen in the following articles:

• “In Recession, Frugality Makes A Comeback,” Los Angeles Times, 13 January 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/valley/la-fi-pennywise13-2009jan13,0,4887711.story

• “Making Frugality A Habit,” New York Times, 9 January 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/your-money/household-budgeting/10cost.html

• “Ladera Couple Prospers By Living Below Means,” Orange County Register, 16 January 2009, http://economy.freedomblogging.com/2009/01/16/ladera-couple-prospers-by-living-below-means/

• “Frugal Is Cool In Cash-Strapped US,” The Guardian, 4 January 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jan/04/us-economy-thrift-barack-obama

It might seem to be a good sign that a movement toward sensibility and living within one's means is getting the attention of national media. Yet we must remember that the national media are owned, by and large, by powerful, rich corporatist masters with a vested interest in reviving and growing the “official” economy, which is first and foremost a consumer economy run by big business. Living within one's means, getting out of debt and turning one's back on consumerism is not good for business or for the official economy.

It is therefore no surprise that the masters of our economy have begun to attack this movement toward frugality and simple living. The attack has come in various forms, including media articles which talk about the damage done to the economy by people who refuse to rush out and buy things. Here are some samples:

• “Return to D.I.Y Ethic Erodes Service Businesses,” New York Times, 16 January 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/business/17services.html?ref=business. The Times article contains this amazing quote: “All of these consumers could praise themselves for their newfound frugality in the midst of an economic downturn. But ever step they take toward self-reliance – each shrub they prune themselves, each cupcake they bake from scratch – hurts the people and small businesses that have long provided these services professionally.”

• “Hard-Hit Families Finally Start Saving, Aggravating Nation's Economic Woes,” Wall Street Journal, 6 January 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120525879656021.html. Again, here's an amazing quote: “Americans, fresh off a decadeslong (sic) buying spree, are finally saving more and spending less – just as the economy needs their dollars the most.”

• For those who live in the United Kingdom, there's this: “This Recession Demands That We Employ Logic And Spend Our Way Out Of It,” UK Telegraph, 13 January 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/rogerbootle/4218744/This-recession-demands-that-we-employ-logic-and-spend-our-way-out-of-it.html

• “Don't Be Frugal To Follow Recession Chic,” Marketplace, 17 December 2008, http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/12/17/wilkinson/. This is an archived radio show featuring Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank. One more amazing quote, from the show's introduction: “It's natural to want to penny-pinch when in a recession, but if you're not at risk of financial struggle, you may not need to cut back. Commentator Will Wilkinson says if you can, you should keep on spending.”

Here is rich irony! We are suffering an ecological and economic disaster caused by the decision by the masters of the global economy to hoodwink ordinary citizens and their governments to live beyond their means for as long as possible. These masters created an economy that is built on debt and that runs on credit and that devours anyone who can't make his payments on time. That economy has begun to crash, leaving millions of bloodied victims in the aftermath of its fall. These victims have been turned into the prey of the rich masters of this economy. Now that we ordinary people are seeing all of these things come to pass, we are trying to protect ourselves from being jacked any further by getting out of debt, living within our means and learning to be self-reliant. And you mean to tell me that the spokesmen for the rich are trying to make us feel guilty for this?!

But it gets even better. Not only are the masters of our official economy trying to talk us common people out of frugality, but they are even enlisting the help of the government to punish and frustrate frugal living. Cases in point:

• The Times of England recently published an editorial titled, “Punish Savers And Make Them Spend Money (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/anatole_kaletsky/article5469589.ece),” full of policy recommendations for the governments of the United States and Great Britain. One such suggestion is as follows: “Instead of reducing taxes on interest payments, the Government could tax all bank deposits and other risk-free savings. This would create a negative risk-free interest rate, encouraging savers either to invest in property, shares and other productive assets – or simply to save less and consume more.”

• The United States Government has passed a law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, that will require all thrift stores to test all toys and clothes sold for children for contamination by lead or lead-based paint, starting in February 2009. (Source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-thrift2-2009jan02,0,2083247.story) The testing is designed to be so expensive that thrift stores – thrift stores! – will be forced to stop selling secondhand children's clothes and toys because they will not be able to afford the tests. This law will also drive the makers of handcrafted toys and handmade clothes out of business, as well as shutting down other cottage industries. You'll just have to go to Mervyn's or Wal-Mart or Toys 'R' Us instead. After many people protested, the Consumer Product Safety Commission modified its proposed enforcement of the law to grant thrift stores a temporary reprieve, but the law is still on the books.

Note: This law is typical of recent legislation and executive orders passed or enacted by the Federal Government. Other examples include the National Animal Identification System, proposed ostensibly to “keep the nation's food supply safe from terrorists,” whose real effect is to drive small livestock farmers out of business. There are also the cumbersome FDA regulations recently enacted for small slaughterhouses, regulations that are so expensive to obey that only big agribusinesses can comply. The funny thing about these laws is that they don't protect us from contamination via products sold by big businesses with lots of money.

Make no mistake. Frugality is one tool by which ordinary, rank-and-file people can become self-reliant and can free themselves from exploitation by a corporatist system controlled by the rich. The rich masters of our present system understand this, and will do everything they can to wage war against the frugal and the self-reliant. But we're on to them. Do these things make you mad? Then let your congressman know that you've got his number.

I leave you with the following quote from the novel The Likeness, by Tana French. I read the quote for the first time on the Schneier on Security website. Here it is:

“Part of the debtor mentality is a constant, frantically suppressed undercurrent of terror. We have one of the highest debt-to-income ratios in the world, and apparently most of us are two paychecks from the street. Those in power -- governments, employers -- exploit this, to great effect. Frightened people are obedient -- not just physically, but intellectually and emotionally. If your employer tells you to work overtime, and you know that refusing could jeopardize everything you have, then not only do you work the overtime, but you convince yourself that you're doing it voluntarily, out of loyalty to the company; because the alternative is to acknowledge that you are living in terror. Before you know it, you've persuaded yourself that you have a profound emotional attachment to some vast multinational corporation: you've indentured not just your working hours, but your entire thought process. The only people who are capable of either unfettered action or unfettered thought are those who -- either because they're heroically brave, or because they're insane, or because they know themselves to be safe -- are free from fear.”

War Against Safety Nets - A Few Skirmishes

Many thanks to Ahavah Gayle, author of the blog Shalom Bayit (http://shalomhabayit.blogspot.com/) for the following news items:

First, General Motors, the automotive corporation whose existence is so vital to America's prosperity that we must bail them out, has been caught in the act of instigating an ad campaign to portray users of public transit as “creeps and weirdos.” They did this in order to sell more of their Chevy Cavalier sedans. This is even though the system of relying on private automobiles for transportation is clearly breaking, as seen in the recent spike in the price of oil and gasoline, and the fact that increasing numbers of people can't afford to drive in the United States. I must confess that I'm one of those creeps and weirdos that rides public transit, and that I do such weird things as trying to save the planet by reducing my carbon footprint, resisting the temptation to become a consumatron, trying to stay out of debt, and treating my fellow humans with respect and dignity. On the other hand, I have run into such fine normal car-driving citizens as the selfish, fat driver of a red brand-new Chevy Suburban I saw last week, who blocked a bike lane with his vehicle and refused to move.

If you want to see the evidence of GM's foot-in-mouth disease, you can look here: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsCxwsb4xODeKkZYFz1GADhvXyepSnRQ6jl7_arzYrfpuupRzJGdApj8iYao2bV6s06wPm_AyD4s35y-3shzT0dgSrZroOFjjzvUFERtWV3jWcrQg2HxUNOBxJCXozLOVww2tyhQI4h9A/s1600-h/Bad+Transit+Ad.jpg and here: http://www.southphillyreview.com/view_article.php?id=284. Nice one, GM. And you deserve a bailout?

Then, there's the very recent arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich by the FBI on corruption charges. The arrest and corruption investigation seem to have been spearheaded by Patrick Fitzgerald, United States Attorney General for the Northern District of Illinois, and by Robert Grant, FBI special agent in charge. Among the evidence against the governor are several recordings of allegedly wiretapped conversations between the governor and his aides.

The funny thing is, though...that this arrest took place one day after the governor announced that he was ordering the Illinois state government to suspend all dealings with Bank of America, due to that bank's alleged involvement in prohibiting the issuance of severance and vacation back pay to workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago. Richard Gillman, owner of the company, had recently bought a plant in Iowa that also manufactures windows and doors, and had abruptly told his Chicago workers that he was closing the Chicago plant immediately, and that they were all terminated. This is a violation of Federal law that requires that employers give their workers 60 days' notice before a plant shutdown. Mr. Gillman also alleged that it was Bank of America's refusal to extend credit for the Chicago plant that forced him to shut that plant down, and that Bank of America had required him to fire his workers without giving them legally-owed severance pay as a condition for obtaining further loans.

If these things are true, then both what Mr. Gillman and Bank of America did are immoral, unethical, and illegal. Yet Bloomberg News, the source for those with money, wrote an article highly critical of the Illinois government's “interference in private commercial affairs.” And one day after telling B of A that the Illinois state government was going to punish the bank by no longer doing business with them, Governor Blagojevich got arrested. Could it be that the governor was “Elliot Spitzer'ed”? “What does it mean to 'Elliot Spitzer' someone?” you ask. Ah, that's a story for another time...

Further sources:

• “Republic Windows owner linked to Iowa plant purchase,” Chi-Town Daily News, http://www.chitowndailynews.org/Chicago_news/Republic_Windows_owner_linked_to_Iowa_plant_purchase,19712

• “Bank Says It Will Consider Loan to Pay Workers in Factory Sit-In,” New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/us/10factory.html?ref=us

• “Illinois Threat to Bank of America Is Dangerous, Critics Say,” Bloomberg.com, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=agOFtufX.FXQ&refer=home

Of Thieves and Elections

Over the last few weeks, there have been alarming reports of voter registration “irregularities” taking place in swing states in the days leading up to November 4^th. Most of these irregularities involve the questionable purging of hundreds of thousands of registered voters from official records in several states, including many voters whose home mortgages were foreclosed. It appears that the Republican party has been behind the push for these voter purges. Here's a short list of purges and of secretaries of state responsible for maintaining voter rolls:

Colorado: Secretary of State – Mike Coffman, Republican. Number of voters purged from Colorado registration rolls within the last six months: 37,000 according to the New York Times. There is also word that state election officials told some college students that they could not vote if their parents claimed them as dependents (Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/25/uselections2008.democrats)

Michigan: Secretary of State – Terri Lynn Land, Republican. Number of voters purged from Michigan state rolls in August: 33,000. (In all, over 200,000 names have been removed since January 1. Source: http://www.freep.com/article/20081013/NEWS15/81013077) Michigan also purged voters who lost their homes to foreclosure, and voters who had drivers' licenses from other states. By contrast, only 7,100 people died in Michigan in August, and only 4,400 moved out of state. For additional information, see http://www.usnews.com/articles/news/national/2008/09/18/aclu-sues-michigan-over-voter-purge-program-saying-it-hurts-college-students.html

Louisiana: Secretary of State - John Leigh Dardenne, Jr., Republican. During the five weeks after July 23, at least 18,000 people were dropped from voting rolls. On June 15, 53,000 voters who had been displaced by Hurricane Katrina were threatened with removal from voting rolls unless they could prove that they were not registered in another state. The voters were mostly from poor black parishes. For more information, see http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-08-31-naacp-louisiana_N.htm and http://www.alternet.org/democracy/92695/?page=entire.

Indiana: Secretary of State – Todd Rokita, Republican. According to a recent Guardian article, up to 100,000 people are potentially at risk of losing their opportunity to vote (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/20/republicans-voting).

It would be instructive to do a bit of digging to see what states have conducted massive voter purges within the last several months, and especially since August 4. Those states which conducted purges after August 4 are guilty of violating Federal election law. It would also be interesting to see how many of these states have Republican secretaries of state. I'd do the research myself, but I have to get to bed early because I have an early meeting tomorrow at work. One thing I'll say: watch the exit polls – especially from foreign media sources – on Election Day, and see how much of a discrepancy there is between them and the “official” tally.

And for a bit of very ironic news on a completely different subject, Bloomberg ran a story this week with a headline that reads, “Turmoil May Make Americans Savers, Worsening `Nasty' Recession.” It appears that the rich masters of our present economy are worried that Americans might start living within their means, thus gravely endangering the profits of the rich.

We're Not In A Democracy Anymore, Toto

...Or are we?

Tonight, the United States Senate voted 74-25 to authorize the $700 billion Wall Street bailout requested by President Bush. In the time leading up to the vote, at least one senator was quoted by Bloomberg News as saying that after the Dow's 700-point drop in response to the House rejection of the bill, this senator's office started receiving hundreds of calls in support of the Bush administration's bailout request.

That seems odd, given that most online polls still show that a solid majority of Americans opposes this bailout. Most of the people I know still oppose this bailout. I still oppose this bailout. It appears that perhaps the quoted senator (and Bloomberg News) was stretching the truth. At any rate, it should be abundantly clear that the opinions of the majority of Americans no longer matters to the cronies and kleptocrats now running our country. (By the way, for those who read my post titled, "Pavlov's Politics," I want you to know that both Obama and McCain voted for the bailout, as well as Joe Biden.)

These people are set to try to ram the bailout package through the House, perhaps as early as this Friday. The urgency of this legislative push is what strikes me. It's a play right out of Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. Only the House of Representatives stands between the American people and the greedy mouths of the rich. Do what you can to oppose this bailout, including e-mails and phone calls, not only to your congressional representatives, but to local media as well. But make backup plans to deal with life in a country whose leaders have become poison.

The Dry Hole of American Finance

Got a call from an old friend, we used to be real close

Said he couldn't go on the American way

Closed the shop, sold the house, bought a ticket to the West Coast

Now he gives them a stand-up routine in L.A.

– Billy Joel, My Life

I fully intended this week to continue what has become a mini-series on the aspects of a safety net of alternative systems for ordinary people to build in preparing for the effects of Peak Oil and climate change. But my plans were “overcome by events,” as they say in the military. The big events over the last two weeks have been the failure of at least two more large investment houses and the Federal “bailout plan” being proposed by President Bush and his economic advisors as a means to stabilize the markets. One major aspect of the impacts of Peak Oil and resource scarcity is the financial aspect, and the present responses of our society to the financial instabilities occurring now will in turn generate their own financial effects, which may hinder the ability of common people to prepare for a post-Peak world.

I will begin with a caveat. First, while there are many things about engineering that I understand, there are many things about finance as it is played at present in the U.S. that I don't understand, since American finance is a shady Las Vegas-style game in which the major players keep changing the rules to keep the rest of us off balance. Secondly, I am a bit late in addressing the financial situation, and other voices have already provided words of great insight and wisdom in explaining what is going on now. (See http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2008/09/adieu-stage-1-collapse.html; http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2008/09/rx-depression.html; and http://sharonastyk.com/2008/09/25/peeling-the-onion-whats-behind-the-financial-mess/ for examples. Warning: some of these posts contain some strong language.)

For the last few decades it seems that the American way has been to pump crony capitalism as much as possible by keeping wages stagnant, deregulating financial markets, outsourcing the manufacture of essential goods to low-wage countries, stimulating economic activity by easy credit, and lowering taxes while borrowing to finance national boondoggles such as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now many Americans have no savings or are upside down on the loans they have taken out to purchase their “stuff” - houses and cars now worth less than what is owed. And the National debt – the amount of money which the Federal Government has borrowed and which it owes to its creditors – is approximately nine trillion, eight hundred sixty billion dollars (Source: U.S. National Debt Clock, http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/).

To put this into perspective, the total U.S. population is 303,824,640 as of July 2008. (Source: CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html) 67 percent of this population is between the ages of 15 and 64 years old. Assuming that this is the age of employable people, that means that there are 203,562,509 potential members of the workforce. If we further assume that ten percent of these are too poor to be taxed heavily and that another ten percent are so rich that they can escape taxes through legal maneuvering, the total taxable workforce is now 162,850,007. Assume further that 6.5 percent of them are out of work at present due to the present economic crisis and we have a taxable workforce of 152,365,757 people. If we divide the national debt by this number of working people, each wage-earner owes $64,700 on the National debt.

That debt grows every day, thanks to President Bush's war boondoggles and refusal to bring Government spending in line with tax receipts. But over the last eight or nine months a new source of debt has emerged, namely the Government's repeated moves to bail out large, high-flying investment banks who are unable to pay their debts and whose assets are now becoming worthless because of the subprime mortgage crisis. Every bailout has been accompanied by pronouncements from the Republicans that “this bailout is necessary in order to prevent the economy from crashing,” yet after every bailout, the crash has progressed a little more.

What is being protected by these bailouts is the notional “assets” of a number of rich investment bankers. These assets were based on the notional value of I.O.U.'s such as mortgages, which were used as collateral by investment houses to borrow money equal to many times the value of the original I.O.U.'s. Thus the investment banks, whose assets consisted of I.O.U.'s, used these “assets” to write much bigger I.O.U.'s. Now it is being seen that the original assets are rapidly becoming worthless, because the little people whose mortgage I.O.U.'s were counted as certificates of worth are unable to pay their debts. The whole debt structure is therefore in danger of falling apart.

A crash of financial markets is therefore a real possibility, and would be a painful thing to experience, since our society is largely credit-driven, and since most Americans don't produce tangible goods of real value anymore. Such a crash would force us to face the fact that the American economy is worth much less than its worth on paper, and would drive down our standard of living, as well as knocking a few rich people off their pedestals. But things get much worse if the Government becomes the guarantor of this structure of private I.O.U.'s. The Federal government already owes $9.86 trillion.

The significance of that fact becomes apparent when one realizes that that money is owed to someone. Who holds American debt? Right now, at least 25 percent of that debt is held by foreign governments. At the end of 2006, foreigners held 44 percent of federal debt held by the public. China in particular holds over $1 trillion in dollar-denominated assets. (Source: “United States Public Debt,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt#Foreign_ownership)

That debt exerts pressure on all of us, even though this nation has delayed facing the prospect of paying off the debt. And because this nation is past its peak in the production of many natural resources, and has largely outsourced its manufacturing base to other countries, we have increasingly less collateral with which to obtain new credit for the Federal government. To choose at this time to add to the National debt by nationalizing the results of the bad choices of the rich is an incredibly stupid move.

And such a move might soon lead to a time when all Americans - including those who are not in debt and who own their own property - may be required to forfeit all their possessions to service the national debt. This could be via a number of foreign governments demanding repayment of debt certificates issued by the U.S. government, to which the Feds might respond by raising the tax rate on anyone with assessable hard assets (including real estate) to such an extent that no one would be able to afford the tax. Then the Government could foreclose on the personal properties of people who could not afford the tax, and turn those properties over to foreign creditors in an attempt to repay some of the national debt. Is this a farfetched scenario? I'd like to think so, because the present governmental shenanigans are rather spooky.

But there are people who have seen the societal trends now building in the United States and who have tried to act wisely in disconnecting themselves from the present breaking system. Now the preparations of these people may be imperiled – especially if those preparations involved saving money or buying land or reducing debt – due to the real threat of having a crushing tax burden imposed on them, just so that irresponsible rich bankers might continue their high-flying financial games. What then happens to the safety net of the wise?

I will close by mentioning a post by Stormchild on the blog, Gale Warnings, titled “Responsibility and Authority.” According to that post, one characteristic of an abusive leader or abusive organization is the desire for absolute authority coupled with the total evasion of responsibility. This seems to be a characteristic of President Bush, his “bailout plan” and the rich investment houses he is trying to help with his plan. He and the Congress are determined to enact this plan even though a solid majority of Americans opposes it, seeing it for the shock doctrine tactic that it actually is.

Money and Filthy Hands

In my last post, “Uncle Sam's Vital Signs,” I wrote that Southern California is a ruined place, ruined by the land use, economic and development policies of an elite whose sole aim is to make money without regard for the effects of the means used to make that money. I also wrote that this elite is trying to make money from the rest of the country by making the rest of the country like Southern California. But some of the ruinous policies enacted by the members of this elite extend throughout California as a whole.

One particular example is the steady push by conservative politicians and political groups to criminalize ever-larger areas of public behavior, and to mandate ever-harsher sentences and penalties for behavior deemed to be criminal. This has led to explosive growth in the number of prison inmates in California, as well as explosive growth in the number of California prisons. And last year, California began signing contracts with private prison corporations to house inmates – something that has not happened since the mid-1800's. (Source: “Increase In Inmates Opens Door To Private Prisons,” Los Angeles Times, 24 August 2007, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/24/business/fi-prisons24)

The huge cost of enforcing the many “get tough on crime” initiatives passed in California is a well-known drain on the state budget ($10.4 billion in Gov. Schwarzenegger's most recent proposed budget, or 7.6% of the total). It is also well-known that the fastest-growing segment of the California prison population consists of non-violent offenders. California's correctional system is groaning under the weight of its large number of inmates, and even prison guard and correctional officer unions are now agreeing with critics of the system that it is time to reduce the prison population by implementing rehabilitative alternatives such as drug treatment and counseling for non-violent offenders.

These issues, as well as mistreatment of prisoners in private prisons and the use of prisoners as low-wage “slave labor” were covered in a recent Mother Jones Magazine article, as well as two previous posts in this blog, The Well Run Dry, titled, “Pages Of Your Book On Fire” and “The Replacement Of Petroleum Slaves.” The Times article cited above states that private prisons are now being used by over thirty states, and are extensively used by the Federal government. Other sources note that prison guard unions and private prison corporations are sponsors, lobbyists or donors to campaigns for stiffening penalties for criminal behavior, and for expanding the definition of what constitutes criminal behavior. After all, if it's easy to lock people up, that's good for business! (Sources: “Families To Amend California's Three Strikes, http://www.facts1.com/reasons/money.htm#Prison; “Slavery and Involuntary Servitude,” Don Bacon, Lew Rockwell, http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/bacon1.html; “10 Reasons to Oppose Plans for More Prisons,” New American Media, 11 August 2006, http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=fa9cfec4e8d2984c1776d6ee4d3700c9; “Privatizing Prisons,” Center for Policy Alternatives, http://www.cfpa.org/issues/issue.cfm/issue/PrivatizingPrisons.xml)

It may be that the madness which infected California over the last two decades is playing itself out. But if one moves north just one state, one can find people trying the same tricks in order to make a profit for themselves. Two such people are Kevin Mannix and Loren Parks, who have introduced Measure 61(previously Measure 40 according to one source), a “Get Tough On Crime” measure on the November 2008 Oregon ballot. Measure 61 would significantly increase mandatory sentences for those convicted of “major crimes” as defined in the initiative. Some of the crimes on this list are definitely major. But some are nonviolent, and it is the nonviolent portion – especially the drug crimes and crimes against property – which would likely swell Oregon's prison roster. Those who oppose Measure 61 point out that Oregon already has stiff minimum sentencing guidelines for violent crimes, and that Measure 61 would add nothing new except to increase the severity of punishment of nonviolent criminals.

Measure 61 also enhances penalties prescribed under Measure 11, another measure sponsored by Kevin Mannix, which established mandatory minimum sentences for various violent crimes, and which was ratified in 1994. However, Measure 11 was made to apply to every defendant from the age of fifteen years and older, and does not allow reduction of prison time for good behavior. Thus a high school kid who got into a fight could wind up in prison for five years if convicted of second-degree assault. Twenty-eight percent of Oregon's present prison population consists of Measure 11 offenders. (Source: http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Oregon_Ballot_Measure_61_(2008)) Measure 11 has cost the state of Oregon significantly, and Measure 61 would cost between $450 million and $2 billion to implement, according to various estimates (http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2008/08/mannix_prison_measure_would_co.html). There are no provisions in Measure 61 for counseling or drug treatment programs.

I fully believe that violent crime is a serious matter, and should be appropriately punished. But it is interesting to note that a 2008 Oregon Department of Health Services study found that violent crime, drug use and property crime in Oregon have been decreasing from 2000 to 2005 (http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/addiction/ad/main.shtml; http://www.oregonmeasure11.com/portland-reports-low-crime-rate.html). It is also interesting to note that in the 1990's, while Kevin Mannix was a member of the Oregon legislature, he invited Nike to move its manufacturing operations from Indonesia to Oregon in order to take advantage of the cost savings of using prison labor (“Are There No Prisons?”, http://www.afn.org/~govern/Prisons.html). Kevin Mannix has sought to funnel large amounts of money to correctional employees over the years (http://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php/Oregon_Ballot_Measure_61_(2008)#cite_note-increase-6). In fact, a Web search of Kevin Mannix will reveal a large number of questionable ballot initiatives backed by him.

Meanwhile, there are some very good state-funded education programs which are of interest and of great use to those Oregonians who are preparing for a post-Peak world – yet these programs are now shrinking due to budget cuts. One such program is the Oregon State University Master Gardeners' education program, which gives students a fairly advanced education in organic food gardening. Another program is the Oregon State University Family Food Educators/Master Food Preservers education program, which provides research and education on storing vegetables and fruits, vegetable harvesting, emergency preparedness, drying food and herbs, canning, pickling and much more. Yet programs like these, and services like mass transit and expansion of bicycle lanes and bike safety programs, may soon wind up being sacrificed in order to satisfy what is an emerging “corrections-industrial complex” in our society – yet another example of the raiding of public resources established for the public good, in order to satisfy the greed of corporatists.

And speaking of corporate raiding, it seems that Bolivia is now experiencing a great deal of civil unrest, due to the opposition of rich land and resource owners in that country to the redistributive reforms of President Evo Morales. Bolivia is rich in natural gas, and as the world runs out of cheap, easily available light sweet crude oil and begins to rely more on heavy and sour crudes, refineries are using more and more natural gas to refine that heavy sour crude. President Morales has resisted efforts by global corporations and Western governments to remove barriers to “free trade” and foreign ownership of Bolivian assets.

So it is interesting that this week, President Morales kicked the U.S. ambassador to Bolivia out of the country, accusing him of instigating a revolt against the elected government of Bolivia. There is evidence to back up this accusation, including the fact that the ambassador recently met with some of the rich resource owners who are opposed to Morales, and a news article which suggests that the violent protests against the Morales government may have been funded by the U.S. government, which earlier this year asked Peace Corps students to spy on the Bolivian government. It is also interesting to note that Evo Morales is the nation's first indigenous Native American president, and that the rich resource owners protesting against him are white. (Sources: “Bolivia Expels US Ambassador Philip Goldberg,” The Telegraph, 12 September 2008, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/bolivia/2801579/Bolivia-expels-US-ambassador-Philip-Goldberg.html; “U.S. Should Disclose Its Funding of Opposition Groups In Bolivia and Other Latin American Countries,” Center for Economic And Policy Research, 12 September 2008, http://www.cepr.net/index.php/press-releases/press-releases/u.s.-should-disclose-its-funding-of-opposition-groups-in-bolivia-and-other-latin-american-countries)

Bolivia may soon join the long list of countries jacked by the rich Anglo elites in the West, particularly those of the United States, who have discovered that the Mideast is not such a temptingly easy target as they may have thought in 2001 or 2002. All this so that we in the USA can continue to drive as fast as we please, in vehicles as large as we like, stuffing our appetites which have been swollen to ginormous size by steroidal advertising.

These things are a shame. Truly, “the love of money is root of all the evils” (1 Timothy 6:10).

A Dicey Time For A Road Trip

We live in interesting times. I am about to experience some very interesting times this weekend, because I am traveling a thousand miles to visit relatives in Southern California. And I am traveling by car. Some may ask why a man who believes that the worldwide peak of oil production is happening now would choose to travel by car – a man who is the author of a blog with a title like “The Well Run Dry.”

I would have liked very much to travel by train – after all, it may well be the most environmentally friendly way to go. But President Bush has bled our nation's passenger rail system nearly dry. An Amtrak trip would take over 29 hours. I suppose I could have flown, but airlines have been getting squeezed hard in recent months by high fuel prices, and have been implementing many cutbacks in order to maintain some semblance of profitability. I fear that the CEO's and boards of directors who are responsible for airline profits may have extended their cutbacks even to such things as aircraft maintenance. I don't want to find out firsthand that my suspicion is right. By the way, if any of you are planning to travel by air this weekend, here's some comforting reading: “Airline Removes Life Vests To Save Weight, Fuel,” Associated Press, 28 August 2008, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26440567/.

In my last post, I mentioned my suspicion that world daily petroleum production figures published by the International Energy Agency and the United States Energy Information Administration are perhaps being artificially inflated, and that world petroleum production may now be faltering. I also mentioned news articles coming from Saudi Arabia which indicate that the Saudi oil industry may be shorting Saudi citizens in order to give the appearance that Saudi Arabia is producing more oil than it actually is. Well, there has been more interesting news out of Saudi Arabia this week – yet another article quoting a Saudi Aramco official denying that there are any shortages of fuel. Of course, the official's actual words were, “The Company has not reduced quotas to authorized clients.” (Zawya, 25 August 2008, http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm/sidZAWYA20080825044210/secIndustries/pagOil%20&%20Gas) Are some clients unauthorized? Are these unauthorized clients the ones who can't find diesel fuel?

Speaking of shortages, there are reports of fuel terminals in North and South Dakota and Minnesota running dry. North Dakota has experienced spot shortages in late summer and early fall for at least two years in a row. (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 27 August 2008, http://www.startribune.com/local/27550659.html?elr=KArksLckD8EQDUoaEyqyP4O:DW3ckUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aU7EaDiaMDCiUT). And this week's EIA Weekly Petroleum Inventory shows U.S. commercial crude oil and refined petroleum stocks continuing to drop.

It also seems that our ever-vigilant and very talented U.S. spy/intelligence agencies have detected a possible link between Venezuela and the Islamic group Hezbollah. Apparently, U.S. government spokesmen believe that Hezbollah is using Venezuelan sites for terrorist training and targeting South American Jews, and that Iran is backing Hezbollah activities in Venezuela. It must only be a strange coincidence that both Venezuela and Iran have oil, and that the U.S. is very hungry for oil... (“Hezbollah Presence In Venezuela Feared,” Los Angeles Times, 27 August 2008, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-venezterror27-2008aug27,0,3877203.story)

Lastly, there is a powerful and increasingly dangerous hurricane bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico, with at least three other storms behind it. It is quite possible that Hurricane Gustav could rival Katrina in destructiveness, and could destroy or damage many offshore oil platforms and onshore Gulf Coast refineries. If that happens, fuel prices in the US may well skyrocket, and North Dakota will by no means be alone in experiencing fuel shortages.

All in all, it's quite a time to be undertaking a road trip. I hope I make it to Southern California and back. If I see anything interesting along the lines of our present national difficulties, I may take a few pictures for my next post. Stay safe this weekend.

The Importance of the Timing of Peak Oil

On 6 August 2008, the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA) released its latest International Petroleum Monthly report, which tallies world oil production for a given month. The latest EIA production figures shown in any given report are usually for a monthly period ending two months before the release date of the report, so this latest issue contains data for May 2008. According to this latest report, world petroleum supply averaged 86.05 million barrels per day in May of this year, which is a new record according to the EIA. World crude plus condensate production during May averaged 74.48 million barrels per day according to the same report, which is again a new record, passing the May 2005 record of 74.266 million barrels per day. In addition, this week OPEC issued its Monthly Oil Market Report, which estimated that world oil supply in July 2008 averaged 87.37 million barrels per day – again, a sign of growing petroleum supply. The release of these figures may be a contributing factor in the continuing slide in the price of oil and petroleum products.

However, some analysts have taken exception to these numbers, asserting that they may be overly optimistic. Gail Tverberg, a member of the Oil Drum staff recently wrote an article which questioned the reliability of initial EIA estimates of world production (“May 2008 EIA Oil Production Record. Will It Too Be Revised Downward?”, http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4386). She pointed out that these initial estimates are usually revised downward by the EIA as time passes, and noted discrepancies between EIA production figures for various countries versus what those countries stated as their actual production. She also pointed out the potential political motivations for the EIA to be less than accurate in telling what is actually going on with oil production. Others have analyzed the discrepancies between the EIA and OPEC numbers for specific countries and have noticed a rather fishy smell (see comments on today's “Drumbeat” section of the Oil Drum website). There is also at least one bit of anecdotal news that indicates that an oil exporting country is shorting its own citizens so that it can send more oil to the US.

I want to suggest (and I am not the only one suggesting this) that the present oil supply and oil market situation is being “gamed” by several powerful key players in order to give the false impression that there is no longer an oil supply “crisis.” This campaign of dishonesty is being aimed chiefly at the West, and specifically at the United States. Why the US? Because the US is still the most powerful nation on earth militarily, and because it is also still the world's most significant economic agent. That supremacy is increasingly resting on a foundation of deception, smoke and mirrors, but while it lasts, the US is a force to be reckoned with.

And this is a Presidential election year. The corporatist powers who actually control the governments of this country know how key a player an American president is in their plans, and will do all they can to install a president who is friendly to their interests. If the American people were to wake up to the actual precariousness of this nation and the magnitude of the mess our leaders have made for us, they might begin to demand the sort of radical changes that would threaten the corporatists.

To a lesser extent, the governments of some of the oil-producing countries are also interested in gaming the system, in order to prevent a large portion of Americans from having to suffer actual petroleum shortages, thus preventing the rise of an American neocon initiative to take over foreign oilfields the way Iraqi fields were seized.

All this means that it is more important than ever to search out the truth about present world oil production, so that we may know what to expect and be prepared to deal with it. I acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Jeffrey J. Brown, a registered Professional Geoscientist in the State of Texas, and to Dr. Samuel Foucher, a long-time oil production analyst. Because of their work and the efforts of others who posted valuable information on the Internet, I went from near-total ignorance of the true nature of our energy predicament to wide-awake alarm within the space of a few months. My awakening had been preceded by growing unease from 2005 to the beginning of 2007, like the unease of a sleep disturbed by an increasingly upset stomach. But it was in the first few months of 2007 that I truly came face to face with the reality of Peak Oil. That awareness has led me to some rather drastic lifestyle adjustments.

But Mr. Brown recently commented that the timing of the worldwide oil production peak is not as important as other issues which we are facing, such as the ongoing and accelerating decline in net world petroleum exports. Here I must respectfully disagree (and I invite him to correct any deficiency in my knowledge, since he knows much more about this than I do). Knowing the timing of the peak and the actual shape of the world oil production profile is very important, because the major controlling figures who run the global “official economy” are closely watching this very issue. I believe that many of them know that Peak Oil will be a severe threat to their status and the continuation of their economic empires, and that they also know that it's in their best financial interests to keep this knowledge from the masses for as long as possible. Therefore, as petroleum supplies become ever more constrained, they will continue to try to game the system, suppressing naturally-occurring market signals regarding supply and demand for as long as it's in their interests to do so. When they finally pull the wool from our eyes, we will surely be confronted by the sight of an economic system that's broken beyond repair for all but the very rich.

So we will need to devise other means for validating whether the world is in fact at or past peak. One bit of data that's still relatively reliable is the EIA Weekly Inventory Report of US commercial crude oil and petroleum product stocks. The EIA Weekly reports for the last three weeks have shown a steady decrease in finished gasoline stocks. This has been due to rising demand caused by lower prices. US crude oil inventories haven't moved from the 295 million barrel range. This seems to show that oil and gasoline prices have fallen because of a perception of reduced demand, and not because of any new supplies. Those who have skills in building complex mathematical models can come up with other means for determining the true state of world oil supply. And we can always look at obvious signs, such as news stories of refinery shutdowns or shortages around the world. Personally, I think we see the beginning of another price spike within the next month. One can't game the system forever. Keep your eyes open!

* * *

I want to start talking about preparations for a post-Peak world. I've been meaning to get onto this subject for a long time, but I keep getting distracted by juicy news stories from the oil patch. In my discussion, I intend to move from preparing yourself as a person to preparing your community (at least those closest to you). These thoughts are just what has occurred to me; others have thought much harder and more deeply, and for a longer time on this subject. As I find time, I will post links to some of their writings. One thing I will soon discuss is the use of appropriate technologies for a post-Peak life (i.e., should I buy solar panels? Should I buy a spinning wheel? How about a portable generator? and so on).

The first thing that occurs to me regarding a post-Peak life is facing the near-certainty that you will have to live such a life. Our economy and society have been built on certain assumptions – the assumptions of ever-increasing technological advancement, convenience, comfort, and prosperity.

These assumptions are about to be overturned.

But facing this reality is a very difficult thing to do for many people. One Peak Oil writer has compared the process of facing the threats of Peak Oil and climate change to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's portrayal of the process of facing death, with its five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Most of America seems to be in the denial stage, as seen in the sales of tabloid magazines at supermarkets, the viewers of reality TV series, and the willingness to listen to corporate media slaves repeating their masters' assertions that everything will be all right. Some people are angry – especially those who have a vested financial or political interest in suppressing the truth of our predicament. But there are also bargainers. I am an engineer and I can tell you that engineers are some of the biggest bargainers around. Their bargaining consists of the unshakable faith that technology will somehow save us from having to live on less, from having to live a more difficult life than we have been used to (Read some issues of the IEEE Spectrum to see what I mean). All I can say is, Dream on!

If one is willing to accept the probability that life is going to get much more difficult, then one can begin to take inventory of all the conveniences he or she enjoys right now due to technology and cheap energy. Then one can begin to make plans for living without some of these conveniences. For instance, living in a time of expensive natural gas or fuel oil might mean learning ways of living without either during the wintertime. Living in a world in which many of your needs must suddenly be supplied by the power of your own muscles is easier if you have prepared beforehand by getting in shape. In other words, the first preparation you can make is to bravely face the future, take inventory of all of its implications, and then begin to harden yourself to be able to cope with it.

Some practical steps might include the following:

1. Learn to commute by bicycle. By commuting I don't mean recreational rides, but rather, going to places you need to visit in order to do necessary weekly activities. Gradually increase the percentage of your commuting per week until it's over 75 percent of your total commuting.

2. Train your body to be comfortable with the thermostat of your house turned down to 60 degrees F or below.

3. Work out regularly to build your strength and endurance. Make your workouts something that you can do at home, without having to drive to a gym.

4. Regularly put yourself into situations in which you must do without your usual comforts. Go camping – in a tent, not in an RV – in all kinds of weather. Learn what works in such situations, and what doesn't. If you feel really adventurous, go bicycle camping, and skip the drive altogether!

5. Learn to live on half of your present income, in the expectation that you may one day be forced to do so.

See if you can add a few suggestions of your own to this list. And tell yourself that you will learn to succeed in facing this challenge. Difficulty does not have to equal hopelessness.

The Replacement of Petroleum Slaves

The advent of Peak Oil means that the amount of energy available to our modern society will soon begin to diminish. This diminishment will cause a diminishing of economic activity. Oil and the energy derived from oil have allowed each of us to do so much more than humans in earlier, exclusively human- and animal-powered times, and the things we do can be done much more quickly. Today after work I had to stop at a store several miles out of my way home. Because I am a bicycle commuter, a journey of 20 miles took nearly two hours. It might have taken nearly as long in a car because of traffic and signals, but had I been racing against a car whose driver was free of such restrictions, I would have lost badly. The expedition of Lewis and Clark in the early 19^th century was a transcontinental voyage across North America that took over two years to complete. By contrast, I can book a flight on US Airways that will take me from Los Angeles to New York City in 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Some have tried to quantify the energy density of crude oil in terms of the amount of human labor required to replace the energy found in a barrel of oil. Nate Hagens, one of the editors at the Oil Drum website, has calculated that one barrel of oil generates the energy of up to 12.5 years of human-powered work. Since the average American uses over 25 barrels of oil per year, he or she annually uses the energy that would be generated by over 300 slaves. If natural gas and coal use are also included in the picture, the total annual energy used by each American rises to the equivalent of over 700 slaves. (Source: “A Closer Look At Oil Futures,” http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/9/2/171333/1102; also check out “What Is A Human Being Worth (in terms of Energy) by Luis DeSousa, http://europe.theoildrum.com/node/4315)

This energy is what is available for personal use. But the incredible energy of petroleum has also been harnessed by businesses to provide goods and services at costs that are low both for the producers and consumers of these goods and services. This is what enabled the replacement of thousands of union workers in early 20^th century factories with automated, computerized assembly lines controlled by programmable logic controllers, guided by a small handful of human operators monitoring man-machine interfaces. It is what also enabled the outsourcing of skilled labor from the United States to countries where wages have been historically low and benefits have been nonexistent. Were you a head of a business in a country whose workers are organizing to demand higher wages and benefits? Until recently, you could respond to such a situation by building factories in Third World countries with oppressed populations, thus lowering your business costs and maximizing your profits. Cheap petroleum-based transport was an inexpensive bridge directly connecting you to your Third World factories, the cost of shipping goods being such a small portion of the total cost of manufacture.

But now this globalist model of big business is beginning to break down, as has been described here on this blog and in many other places. Yet big businesses are still committed to maximizing their profits while minimizing their costs. Where will they turn for pools of cheap labor to replace Third World workers now rendered out of touch by high transportation costs?

I believe I saw some of the answer two weeks ago, when I bought the August 2008 issue of Mother Jones magazine (www.motherjones.com). That issue has a series of articles about our present American prison system, under the general title Slammed. The articles describe how the present justice and prison system disproportionately targets poor people and minorities; how private corporations have taken over the prison system in many states and are turning prisons into for-profit operations; how private prisons are being used to detain illegal immigrants, including asylum seekers, pending deportation or asylum hearings; and how states such as Georgia are outsourcing their probation programs to private companies who charge a monthly fee to people who are placed on probation.

The Slammed article which is most relevant to this post is titled, “Lingerie and Bullwhips: A Peek At the Fruits of American Prison Labor,” and it describes how many large American corporations are lining up to use prison labor in the manufacture or packaging of their products – products such as beef, milk, eggs, chicken products, Starbucks coffee, Nintendo games, brooms, brushes, bullwhips, Microsoft mice and software, school juice boxes, airplane parts and other material for the US military, Victoria's Secret and JCPenny lingerie, dental instruments, entire Wal-Mart stores (!), and telemarketing services, to name just a few things. Inmates are paid anywhere from pennies a day to minimum wage (if they're lucky) for jobs which would command many times the minimum wage on the outside.

These prisoners have no rights, even after their release from prison. 48 states prohibit prisoners from voting, 30 states prohibit felons on probation from voting, and 8 states prohibit certain felons from voting for life. Thirteen percent of black men currently are denied the right to vote. Therefore, these people have little say anymore in altering the prison system through political action, no matter what inequities they witnessed while in prison, no matter how they were exploited by corporate interests while in prison.

And the rich and powerful in this country are doing their best to expand the ranks of people whose rights have been permanently stripped from them. Consider the growth of private prison corporations over the years; Corrections Corporation of America saw its stock price climb from $8 a share in 1992 to over $30 in 2000. In 2005, CCA paid over $3 million to five different firms to lobby the Federal government. Dick Cheney's son-in-law was a lobbyist for CCA, and also had oversight of government discretionary payments to CCA while serving in the Federal government. CCA is typical of the large and growing number of private prison corporations who seek to grow their businesses via the Federal “War on Terror” and the “War on Drugs.” Children are now being sent to private prisons and private detention camps run under inhumane and dangerous conditions, without adequate oversight or redress for any wrongs suffered while they are locked up. (Sources: “Corrections Corporation of America,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrections_Corporation_of_America; “The Truth About Private Prisons,” Jenni Gainsborough, Alternet, 15 December 2003, http://www.alternet.org/story/17392/)

All of these things may be leading to a situation best described by “The Jigsaw Man,” a 1967 science fiction story by Larry Niven. In that story, medical science had perfected ways to greatly extend human life through organ transplants. This led the rulers of society to decree that people convicted of capital crimes should be required to donate all their organs to medicine after their execution, in order to repay their debt to society. But the demand for organs grew so much that lawmakers were forced to continually re-define “capital crime” to insure a steady supply of recycled body parts. The protagonist of the story thus finds himself sentenced to death for breaking traffic laws.

Such a story may have seemed far-fetched in 1967, but it is all too real now – not only in such instances as stem-cell research, but in the depriving of rights for ever-larger segments of the American population while reducing these people to a state of de-facto slavery, as petroleum slaves are replaced with slaves of another kind in order to help Western businesses maximize profits while reducing costs. As some might say, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

* * *

I harvested all the fava beans in my garden two weeks ago, and have been drying them using my truck dashboard as a makeshift solar dryer. This is possible because I don't drive to work anymore. My hope is to use the beans as part of planting my fall garden. I'll let you all know how it works.

Tomorrow, I will be participating in a bike tour of various backyard chicken-raising operations in this city. I'll try to take pictures; hopefully you'll all be able to see them next week. Next week I will also begin to talk more about personal preparations for a post-Peak world. See you then!