Complimenting Complementary Transportation Rulemaking

I submitted the following comment (tracking #80a57bc9) in support of a Federal Transit Authority proposed policy change:

As a regular bicycle commuter and proponent of livable and sustainable communities, I strongly support the expansion of the catchment area for pedestrians and bicyclists for purposes of Federal Transit Authority funding eligibility as outlined in FTA-2009-0052-0001 for the many reasons outlined in that document. I compliment the FTA on this proposal and only stand to quibble with the grammatically incorrect use of "complimentary" instead of "complementary" on page 58679. While walking & bicycling may indeed be free, public transportation is only subsidized.

If you want [health care] reform, start with campaign finance reform

I signed Public Campaign's most recent petition supporting the Fair Elections Now Act (S.752, H.R.1826) finally introduced in both houses of Congress. The bills provide for optional public financing of U.S. Congressional races. Given the interesting correlations between special interest campaign contributions and a candidate's support for specific policies, this is the fundamental political reform requisite for meaningful public interest driven change in virtually any other domain.

PATRIOT brought to JUSTICE

True patriots and my former and current senators, Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin, have introduced legislation to redress the unchecked excesses of the PATRIOT Act and recent FISA amendments. I signed the Credo petition and sent this note of largely recycled text to my unelected Senator, Roland Burris, urging him to support this bill, which is also endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Senator Burris,

As your constituent, I urge you to join your fellow Senator Richard Durbin in supporting the JUSTICE Act, which would roll-back the overraching provisions of the PATRIOT Act, as amended, and put in place important accountability safeguards to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens while preserving the government's ability to obtain intelligence to provide for national security.

In an era of global terrorism, I accept that certain nonessential privacies and privileges may need to be foregone in order to enhance our security. However, I demand accountability from those who would diminish our freedoms. We must proceed in such a way to ensure that power is not centralized and abused. We must maintain mutual transparency whenever possible and accountability in all cases. The Foreign Intelligence Survelliance Act (FISA) was drafted specifically to allow the executive branch to engage in intelligence gathering with necessary secrecy while at the same time enforcing appropriate judicial checks to prevent abuse. Checks and balances are an essential feature of our republic and must be preserved to protect us against the corruption that unmitigated authority inevitably brings with it. Unfortunately, the USA PATRIOT Act and its reauthorizations and even more recent FISA amendments weakened these protections to allow additional unsupervised, classified, wiretapping authority (even though FISA already granted technology-neutral survelliance authority and ex post facto warrants), as well as granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications providers who complied with prima facia illegal NSA requests for such wiretaps during the Bush Administration.

The JUSTICE Act redresses many of these missteps, providing appropriate checks on wiretaps and national security letters, protections for libary and bookstore records, and nullifying immunity for telecommunications carriers.

I fully expect my elected representatives to act to protect us from the specter of terrorism, the fear of which robs us of our freedom of assembly, our freedom of movement, and the sense of security required for us to pursue the promise of life, liberty, and happiness which is our birthright. As importantly, however, I expect my elected representatives to defend us against the specter of Big Brother, the presence of which also engenders fear, and which robs us of our freedom of speech, our freedom of thought, and the privacy and security which are also our birthrights.

Reasoned estimates place the likelihood of a U.S. citizen dying in a terrorist attack less than that of accidentally drowning. Neither the public's unreasoned fear of terrorism nor the government's perceived need to be seen as doing something to combat it should force us to give up our hard-fought essential liberties, yet we have already done sowith the overreaching PATRIOT Act and the Bush administration's unconstitutional warrantless eavesdropping program, which has been subsequently sanctioned by Congress in its amendments to FISA.

Please redress this situation by supporting the JUSTICE Act, allowing U.S. citizens to demand accountability from telecommunications carriers for any past misdeeds, thereby ensuring that the rule of law is upheld, and ensuring government accountability going forward by granting appropriately flexible, but checked, wiretapping authority. Thank you for working to restore our rights and liberties.

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The Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill initiative made some progress with the introduction of HR 554, so I asked my Representative to support the legislation:

Dear Representative Kirk:

As a strong supporter of accountability through transparency, I previously signed the Sunlight Foundation's Read The Bill petition calling for passage of a law requiring that the full text of any U.S. Congressional legislation be published on the Internet for the public (and our elected representatives) to read for a minimum of 72 hours prior to Congressional debate.

I urge you to support House Resolution 554, the 72 Hour Rule, introduced in the House by Representatives Baird and Culberson, which moves to enact this simple idea in a meaningful way by modifying the House procedural rules, in order to allow for at least a modicum of understanding of and reflection upon the often complex legislation being considered by Congress, which is too often passed without having even been read by those who voted for it, as evidenced by high-profile bills like the PATRIOT Act, FISA 2008 and ARRA.

Thank you for supporting House Resolution 554.

Waxing on Waxman-Markey

An action alert from Citizens for Global Solutions prompted yet another message to my U.S. Representative:

Congressman Kirk:

I am pleased that Congress has made global warming a legislative priority. I understand that the Waxman-Markey Bill, H.R. 2454, is being rushed to vote in the U.S. House of Representatives as early as tomorrow, June 26. As you know from my previous correspondence, I strongly support strong action to mitigate the worst effects of climate change due to greenhouse gas pollution. However, with H.R. 2454 weighing in at more than 1200 pages of text that has yet to be officially published on Thomas.gov, and with it still undergoing revision just a day before it is slated to be voted on, I cannot comment on its merits. I doubt you or your staff can either. This is itself an issue worthy of attention and one reason I support theSunlight Foundation’s call for all non-emergency legislation to be posted on-line for public review for a minimum of 3-days prior to debate, as embodied in H.R. 554. I urge you to support legislative transparency and allow room for thoughtful policy-making by enacting a 3-day minimum public review period.

However, with respect to the more immediate issue of H.R. 2454, I ask that you work quickly to streamline and strengthen the bill. Given its length, I have no doubt that this legislation has been loaded with dubious programs and budget allocations inserted as concessions to move it through the legislative process, while at the same time, I suspec the core cap and trade program to actually limit greenhouse gas pollution has been weakened. This legislation should be about one thing only: avoiding the most devastating potential impacts of climate change by meaningfully reducing greenhouse gas pollution in the most economically efficient manner. To that end, I ask that you work to strip out any extraneous, over-regulating, money-wasting provisions, and pass legislation that puts a price on greenhouse gas pollution, letting the market work out the details of how to actually reduce emissions. In particular, please strive to see that any enacted legislation:

• Enforces hard, significant near-term cuts on global warming pollution with a specific, realistic, and aggressive timetable for a progressively decreasing cap based on the best available, continuously updated science, which currently calls for decreases to 35 percent below current levels by 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050 to achieve atmospheric carbon dioxide levels of no more than 350 parts per million;
• Ensures that all forms of global warming pollution are covered, with no sectors or industries exempted and no loopholes, such as unlimited "offsets" allowing polluters to postpone emissions cuts or "safety valves" limiting the fees polluters must pay for their emissions;
• Sets greenhouse pollution allowance quantities low enough & trading prices (&/or tax rates) high enough to avoid the mistakes of the EU cap & trade system & force real market competition for nonpolluting energy sources;
• Provides an offset mechanism or other revenue stream that promotes sustainable practices and carbon offset projects in developing nations so that global greenhouse gas pollution reductions may be made while directing economic development in impoverished nations in toward sustainable economic growth, targeting equatorial countries in particular to prevent tropical deforestation, which accounts for 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions;
• Forces all technologies to compete on their merits in the open marketplace, without "picking winners" in advance through subsidies, tax credits, or other government favoritism, in particular tonuclear power, which presents its own enormous set of environmental, health, safety, and national security issues;
• Phases-out subsidies for the fossil fuel industry, which artificially increase production of these polluting energy sources;
• Phases out subsidies & set environmentally sound sourcing standards for biofuels ensuring these interim energy sources actually reduce global warming pollution, do so at an efficient cost, and come from waste biomass so that they produce energy without threatening world food supplies;
• Lessens the short-term economic pain of higher energy prices to U.S. consumers by applying credits against or reductions to personal income taxes;
• Invests any revenue generated from polluters in transition/training programs for fossil fuel energy industry workers displaced by the disruption, as well as in clean energy research, energy efficiency incentives, and additional protections for consumers;

As repeated reviews of scientific studies by the Nobel prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made clear, we must take action now to curb greenhouse gas pollution in order to head off major climatic change and its potentially devastating consequences. The longer we delay taking remedial action, the greater the climatic change, the more pronounced its impacts, the more dramatically we will have to cut emissions in future years to achieve the same results, the higher costs to do so and the higher the costs to recover from the consequences of storm damage, flooding, crop failures, water shortages, and forced migration, and resultant human suffering and political turmoil that may result from significant climate change. Particularly in context of the upcoming December 2009 meetings in Copenhagen to discuss the terms of the environmental agreement that is to replace the Kyoto Protocol, it is imperative that the U.S. takes a firm stand in leading environmental protection. As the largest of per capita emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, America must shoulder its responsibility by taking meaningful action to protect the commons of the global climate and securing a platform for negotiations with the international community.

The Assault on Reason

“If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention.”

That bumper sticker slogan echoed through my mind repeatedly while listening to The Assault on Reason audiobook.

If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention; Or at least you are not paying attention to that which matters most. In this still timely tome, Al Gore mounts an assault on the criminal excesses of the Bush Administration, recounting its repeated violations of the laws and values of the United States in its deceptive mounting and disastrous execution of the Iraq war, the Federal law-breaking NSA wiretapping program, the sanctioning of enhanced interrogation techniques (read: torture) in violation of international treaties, the creation of an environment of policy and practice conducive to prisoner abuse, and the disregard for habeas corpus and judicial protections contravening our commitment to due process under the law, among a host of other impeachment-worthy crimes and hypertension-inducing misdemeanors. Gore makes an attempt to be balanced in his criticisms, substantiating his accusations with the relevant evidence throughout, qualifying his statements, acknowledging the counter-arguments, and giving the benefit of the doubt when possible. Even so, many of his characterizations of Bush’s actions and policies come off as inflammatory, but more often than not, justifiably so, in my opinion. That G.W. Bush was not impeached and forced from office was astounding to me given how comparatively “minor” were the charges that brought down Richard Nixon. That his administration’s prima facia criminal misdeeds are not being investigated now by an independent prosecutor leaves me frustrated and disenfranchised. Gore repeatedly stresses that ours was founded as a nation of laws, not of men, and upon this principle our freedoms find protection from tyranny. But if our laws can be broken with no consequences, what of that?

Gore lays much of the blame for the absence of any appropriate accountability for the string of Bush Administration transgressions on the role television has taken as a our culture’s core communication conduit. TV, much more so than the print media that dominated the early politics of our republic, is a highly centralized, purely one-way broadcast medium monopolized by moneyed interests owing to its cost structure. These characteristics combine to create the potential for a dangerous concentration of power. Moreover, television is entrancing in a way that print media is not, allowing it to bypass our critical reasoning faculties and appeal to base emotion directly. Gore charges the Bush Administration with skillful use of television to create an atmosphere of fear to manipulate public opinion and silence critics as the key to his success in escaping the bounds of a constitutionally limited executive while avoiding consequences. This is the central assault on reason: television’s hypnotic capability to distract us with sensationalistic drivel and manipulate us with sound bites and fear-inducing images.

I have no doubt that Gore’s diagnosis is, on the whole, valid. What I think Gore glosses over a bit too quickly is the lack of leadership by congressional Democrats during the Bush Administration, who, with a few distinguished exceptions, sat on their hands, largely capitulating to Bush’s agenda and failing to call him to account for his overreaching acts. Gore’s analysis does treat this failure from a systemic perspective, noting that the importance of television in election politics forces politicians to spend much of their time raising funds to buy expensive TV ads in order to take their turn hypnotizing voters in order to get re-elected, with much of the remainder spent reacting to the ways in which the public has been manipulated by other politicians, pundits, and moneyed interests through the same medium, leaving little time for matters of governing in the public interest. I agree with that diagnosis, too, as well as the primary remedies that Gore calls for—voluntary public financing of campaigns, increased civic participation through the far more democratic and participatory medium of the Internet—but I believe that these external factors do not absolve Congress from allowing Bush Administration abuses from going unchecked.

To my mind, Gore’s other oversight is that he fails to clearly define what reason is, a shortcoming for a book with the word “reason” in its title and whose central thesis that it is under attack. This omission leaves the work without a consistent framework would allow it to separate reason from unreason and analyze the core issues more systematically. And while I would not deny Gore the persuasive tools of anecdote and analogy in his writing, the lack of such a definition and system of analysis leaves him open to the charge of sophistry when he does employ them, since such techniques are often ironically the agents of unreason in polemics. To be fair, some of this impression may arise from having listened to the audiobook rather than reading the text; The vocal intonations of the reader may have increased my perception of the emotive content of the arguments presented. Moreover, it is understood that The Assault on Reason is not an academic text. Rather, it is a mass market book meant to persuade, and true to its core commitment, it maintains a high standard of rational argument throughout.

Whatever its minor shortcomings, I think The Assault on Reason is an important book. Even though the Bush Administration is mercifully out of power, the damage done has not yet been repaired—among other lingering issues, overreaching planks of the PATRIOT Act and the FISA remain in effect—and, moreover, the underlying systemic distortion of political discourse generated the dynamics of television as our still dominant communications medium remain in full effect. Much work lies before us.

Lipinski's Letter Boosts Bicycle Bucks

I sent the following message to my representative after considering this League of American Bicyclists Action Alert.

Dear Representative Kirk:

I am sure you have received the May 14th "Dear Colleague" letter from fellow Illinois Congressman Daniel Lipinski asking that you sign on to his policy memo to Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Jim Oberstar, Ranking Member John Mica, Highway and Transit Subcommittee Chairman Pete DeFazio and Ranking Member Jimmy Duncan, urging fair financial support for bicycle and other "active" transportation modes in the upcoming surface transportation authorization bill.

As your constituent and as a regular bicycle commuter, I urge you to sign Representative Lipinski's letter, which wisely calls for transportationg funding legislation supporting a "Complete Streets" policy requiring new roads to be design with bicyclists and pedestrians in mind; for an integrated intermodal transportation system via coordinated interconnection of sidewalks, bicycle paths, and public transit to create a safe and efficient transportation network for nonmotorized traffic; and for increased funding for the Safe Routes to Schools program to provide our nation's students with safe streets and sidewalks on which to bicycle and walk to school.

As a nation, we must recognize that the automobile is not our only transportation option and create an integrated transportation system that serves our long-term best interests. Investments in active transportation projects have multiple benefits:

• Sidewalks, pathways, and bike lanes create traffic patterns favoring downtowns as destinations for shopping, dining, and entertainment. Building pedestrian and bicycling infrastructure helps local businesses and is an investment in local economies.
  
• Active transportation promotes energy efficiency, stronger communities, and healthier citizens. It decreases greenhouse gas and other pollution, traffic congestion, suburban sprawl, and dependence upon oil from corrupt, totalitarian states.

I believe that going forward, our new investments should heavily favor making viable for more Americans healthier, less polluting, and more energy-efficient transportation. As a regular bicycle commuter, I know first hand the value of having a dedicated pedestrian and bicycle trail within a block of both my home and office. I am further fortunate enough to live within walking distance of commuter rail service, giving me a public transportation alternative when bicycling is not viable. We must use our transportation funds to open these transportation alternatives to the majority of our citizens, rather than a fortunate few. We must increase investments in beneficial alternatives to our current automobile-centric system in order to direct future growth in a healthier and more sustainable direction.

Thank you for signing on to Congressman Lipinski's policy letter supporting a fair role for non-motorized options in our nation's transportation infrastructure.