Lessons from Capitol Hill

            For the past several weeks, I had the privilege of working in a member of Congress’s office, learning just a little bit about the types of decisions that are made, the personalities that drive them, and the alternate joy and frustration felt at different times in the legislative process.  Here are a few observations of mine.

Capitol Dome, originally uploaded by mkdc.

         First, the dynamic between the two chambers of Congress is noticeable: the House has rigid time limits for debate, meaning representatives had to be concise in their remarks, with more one-liners and use of key code phrases (e.g. “tax-and-spend”, “government takeover”) replacing the kind of reasoned argument that can only be elucidated over the span of several minutes.  The Senate is much more collegial, with members walking in and out at will, speaking for however long they want on whichever topics.  There is less posturing, more deliberacy—as the Founders intended—and less demagoguery.

         Second, people actually do write letters and send faxes and make calls to their representatives.  Some people actually take the time to send vile pieces of literature to all members of Congress.  But most people fit into simple categories: some voice their approval for the congressman; some of them are incredulous at his actions.  Some are polite and some are caustic.  Some of those in the latter category who call over the phone are not the most reasonable people in the world.  But even those who aren’t so nice tend to say at the end, “Thank you for listening”—meaning that even though they may know their representative isn’t planning on doing what they ask, they still appreciate being able to let their frustrations be known to somebody.

Rotunda, originally uploaded by mkdc.

         Third, some people are not aware of the nature of our federal system of government.  There is a national government, numerous state governments, and even more numerous county and city governments.  Still, people will call and ask for help—sometimes desperate, heartbreaking help—on issues with which no elected official at the federal level is equipped to deal.  Issues with car titling, unemployment insurance, and mortgage payments are all very weighty problems—but the people who are best suited to assist people with their issues are not in Washington, D.C.  It is sometimes forgotten that the people who represent you locally can be more consequential than whomever holds power in the nation’s capital.

         Fourth, I learned that I am a lot more partisan than I thought I was.  Perhaps this is because Republicans behave like children more often than they should.  But I also learned that I am more moderate than I thought.  I guess that is a byproduct of having to often “say something without saying anything”—that is, being able to take a practical stand without alienating people on either side of you.

         And finally, I now know that Nancy Pelosi looks even more dour in person than she does on TV.

The Metro crash: shocking in its mildness

            When we take a look back at mass murders and tragic accidents—the D.C. Metro and Air France flight crashes of last month or the Virginia Tech shooting of 2007, for instance—what outrages us the most?  Is it the fact that so many people needlessly died in a preventable accident?  Or is it because we knew that the tragedy could have befallen us and we are selfishly demanding, out of fear, that it never be allowed to happen again?

            To me, the Metro crash is many things: a warning to a society heavily dependent on computers that even the most fail-safe systems may indeed fail; a case of possible managerial neglect of passenger safety; an egregious example of what can happen when crowded public transportation is starved of funds to buy reliable equipment; and the personification of heroism among both the passengers and the train operator, who did everything they could to minimize the tragedy.

            Although the National Transportation Safety Board will not release its painstakingly thorough analysis for several months, the apparent cause of the crash seems to lie in a trackside circuit which flickered on and off so rapidly that its failure could not be detected by dispatchers.  In the “off” mode, the circuit could not relay information about a train parked on a curve to the following train, causing it to rear-end the parked train under the control of computers.  The train’s operator dutifully applied the emergency brake; but alas, since the train was traveling nearly sixty miles per hour and the curve limited her reaction time, not only did the train not have time to stop but she also did not have time to escape from the driver’s compartment.

            Even though only nine people were killed in the crash, the number is dangerously misleading: this was a reverse-flow train during rush hour, meaning there were probably only a dozen people per car.  Had it been two rush hour trains that had collided, casualties could potentially have numbered in the hundreds.  And that is the most unsettling factor: the failed track circuit could have been anywhere at any time.  There is no guarantee of safety.

            True enough, there is no guarantee of safety anywhere.  Each day in the United States, 119 people die in vehicular accidents.  Considering that this is Metro’s first crash in which passengers were killed since 1982 (and that annual rail fatalities on occasion don’t exceed double digits), taking the train is way safer than driving.  And undoubtedly more lives would be saved through programs that promote safer driving, rather than spending millions of dollars overhauling public transportation.  But we have become acclimated to high road deaths because we understand that humans are directly responsible for most of them; on subways and airplanes and trains, everything is highly choreographed by computers.  When a failure happens, it rattles our faith in the system.

            I don’t necessarily think that lack of funding is a direct cause of the Metro crash, in the sense that throwing more money at the problem might not have prevented it.  However, Metro also has to fix crumbling platforms, deal with increasingly crowded trains, and perfect its communication network.  Those items could potentially cause a disaster in the future if not fixed.  Metro is unique among mass transit systems: it has no dedicated source of funding, and each year it is involved in a tug of war between the District, the suburban Maryland and Virginia counties, the federal government, and the legislatures in Annapolis and Richmond.  Political infighting and grandstanding are part of the reason why President Obama did not include Metro funding in next year’s budget—he wants to see some stability before opening the money faucet.

            My point is that while certainly there are some tragedies which are preventable, terrible things can happen at any time and in the most controlled of environments.  Part of the solution is to take the necessary precautions to ensure that disaster is not repeated; but the other part is an acceptance that the risk inherent in common behaviors can never be eliminated, only minimized.  Millions of people taking minimal risks each day is what makes society work; the fact that we are so outraged when a handful of people die is a sign that the system is working.  Nine deaths in 17 years is an accident; 119 deaths every day is a regrettable fact of life.

[An American] Dream Deferred

        The Chinese Exclusion Act; the National Origins Act; PEPFAR’s ban on HIV-positive immigrants.  America has a long history of controlling which tired, poor, and/or huddled masses are able to enter this country.  In the mid-1700s, for example, Ben Franklin lamented the large influx of Germans (Dutch) into Pennsylvania by citing their godlessness, their lack of English comprehension, the preponderance of bilingual signage and legal documents written German, and their political power (while still admiring their industry and only wishing they were diffused more throughout the country). 

Nowadays, that does not seem to be a legitimate problem: first generation immigrants may not be quite able to master the English language, but by the second and third generations bilingualism fades until English is the dominant (and perhaps the only) language spoken. In a country settled by European Protestants, cultural scapegoats have been found in every corner of the world.  In 2008, it’s Mexico’s turn.

            On the issue of illegal Mexican immigration, let us move from the specific to the general.  First, do illegal workers have the right to full compensation for their work?  The answer is unequivocally yes—both legally and ethically, if a person is in the employ of another, he is entitled to at least minimum wage for his contribution to the economy and out of economic necessity to his family.  For an American employer to hold citizenship over a worker’s head is a bullying tactic; if the services rendered are not proportional to the pay earned, discrimination has taken place.  We have worked to end exploitation of children by adults; of blacks by whites; of women by men; and of industrial labor by big business.  It does not matter who the “little guy” is—civil societies recognize civil rights.

 

         

       Next, should illegals be subject to imprisonment and deportation?  This is a bit tricky to answer.  Legally they did steal social security numbers to obtain jobs, and for that they should go to jail.  And legally also they did enter the country undocumented, and that should justify deportation.  Much of the call for deportation, though, comes at a time when the economy is not doing well—people see illegals with jobs and assume that poor Americans should be given first crack at employment.  This is usually accompanied by insinuations that crime rates go up as immigration rates do (some reports say yes, some say no; if yes, there has to be a distinction between those who get arrested for not having a driver’s license and those who commit murder).  Regardless of the statistics, would you rather have a large population of immigrants with no jobs, who have nothing better to do than idle about on the streets (and most certainly increase the crime rate); or a population that is working, owning homes, and assimilating themselves into the American consumer culture?  By the way, the argument that illegals do not pay taxes is false: if they have a job, buy merchandise, or put gas in their cars, taxes are being paid.

            But ultimately, penalizing immigrants once they are here is kind of like bleeding a chronically ill patient without working to strengthen the immune system.  In other words, should the borders be more secure in the first place?  Absolutely—we need to control the flow through the gateways of country in order to prevent disease outbreaks and terrorism.  At the same time, however, it should not be next-to-impossible to enter the U.S.  If a person has no diseases or criminal record, there is no need to deny him entry.  After all, wide open borders were what made North America appealing to the Europeans a couple of hundred years ago.  Never mind that we pushed Indians aside (don’t worry, we gave them a few smallpox blankets and kindly showed them the way to Oklahoma) in the name of Manifest Destiny, even going so far out our way as to take Hawaii, too.

            Good fences may make good neighbors, but good neighbors should not have to build fences.  There are three large nations in North America and two languages between them, and if Mexicans are willing to assimilate into our culture perhaps we could meet them halfway by becoming more sympathetic and more welcoming to theirs.

Death of a Transit System

      Traffic: it’s a relaxing way to spend some alone-time in the car catching up on your important business—shaving, reading, and listening to The 28th Amendment Radio Podcast*.  But did you realize that below that rosy surface, sitting in traffic can be deeply frustrating and a waste of fuel?  We have come a long way from the days of when “traffic” meant two or more horse-drawn carriages within a five mile stretch of dirt road; now the car is the vehicle of both choice and necessity for most Americans, thanks largely to political machinations and economic strong-arming.

            Go back to the early 1920s.  Very few people (mostly the wealthy) owned an automobile—four percent of the population did in 1915.  But that was just fine because many cities had robust transit systems (electric streetcars) to move people in the cities and in their immediate environs.  When General Motors started to tout buses as the wave of the future, the Powers that Be in cities from New York to Los Angeles figured that the “motorization” or “conversion” or “modernization” of their streetcars would be for the better.  Buses, after all, did not have to run on rails fixed in the ground and they were advertised as cleaner, safer for passengers, and were not burdened with the (somewhat unfair) requirement of streetcar operators to clear snow and pave the roads.  (A federal law separating the electric streetcars from the subsidies of their utility companies was a major blow also.)  In reality, buses running on oil and emitting carbon monoxide were in no way cleaner than streetcars, had a shorter lifespan (needing to be replaced about twice as often as a streetcar), and were able to become snarled in road traffic, making them only the most optimal on light-density lines.  Furthermore, the buses were saddled with the inherent inability to recover their operating costs and forced passengers into cars with steep fare increases.

            But GM was not an innocent bystander in the decision to convert rail to bus.  In order to acquire control of city systems, they were able to muscle their way into controlling most of the stock and thus the companies that were to be converted to buses. (Remember the movie “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?”  Judge Doom buying out the Red Car to create an interstate highway system was entirely akin to the spirit of GM’s acquisitions.) They later formed a holding company with three other corporations and, during the 1930s and ‘40s, acquired 62 transit companies across the nation.  In 23 of those cities, streetcars were replaced with General Motors buses, running on Firestone tires, and fueled by Phillips Oil (in the east) or Standard Oil (in the west).  Simultaneously, city planners were being graduated from the seemingly-prestigious General Motors Institute (formerly the Flint Institute of Technology in Michigan).  A new field at the time, the students were predictably taught how buses were superior to rail travel and that is consequently what they advised their employers in city halls across the nation.  GM offered easy financing for organizations that wanted to scrap the streetcars, tore up rails upon acquisition of streetcar operations, and reportedly bribed city officials in Tampa with brand new Cadillacs to scrap their streetcars.  GM was eventually taken to court in 1949 by the U.S. government where it was found to have violated the Sherman Antitrust Act—the executives were fined one dollar each.

A 1948 ad for the motorization of the Key System in Oakland, Calif. What the ad doesn't mention is that GM now has control of most of the company's assets and is giving the contract for bus conversion to themselves.

Rails now gone, fare increases and elimination of service prompted transit users to opt for their own personal vehicles rather than hop on the now-crowded, smelly, and infrequent buses.  With the end of World War II came increased wealth, increased automobile use, and the inclination to construct Levittown-type suburbs with highways to connect to the cities.  Americans were weaned from their urban centers and mass transit withered.  Now the advent of sprawl and exurban communities has allowed people to own substantial tracts of land and to be tethered to their jobs, their cities, and their commercial centers by car.  Cheap gas, a modest gas tax, and the natural American desire for mobility and ownership combined to make available the infrastructure and the psychological satisfaction of car use.

            Now look at our mess.  Communities have extended farther from job centers than transit could keep up; automobiles have gotten bigger than is sensible; and rail and bus service, which had been utilized to their maximum before the gas crunch, now find themselves overcrowded and underfunded as their infrastructure needs upgrading.  People have driven about ten billion fewer miles this May than compared with last year and, in a catch 22, that lost gas tax revenue cannot be put toward mass transit application.  Aside from people making lifestyle adjustments—moving closer to their jobs, trading in large cars, buying bicycles or motorcycles—cities are also seeking to institute (or reinstitute) rail systems that were lost in the mass transit holocaust of midcentury.  Washington, D.C., for example, has already ordered modern electric trolley cars to be ran on a new 1.3-mile-long segment; the District’s last streetcar ran in 1962 and since then Congress has banned overhead wires, which hampers any further expansion into the city.  Still, the construction of a new transit system is twofold: to both ease automobile congestion and to encourage retail and housing development along the tracks.

            Another tack by local governments is to encourage transit-oriented development.  With the example of Tysons Corner, Virginia, which will be served by multiple Metro stations, the idea is to build new urban centers of housing, retail, and corporate offices around a regional transportation network.  In addition, San Francisco, a haven for all styles of mass transit, finds that its vintage streetcar system is filled to the brim with commuters and tourists and seeks to restore more vehicles in the coming years—an effort to appease the needs of modern commuting and to bolster the image of a historic city.  Further, commuter rail is experiencing a boon, with systems in Albuquerque, Salt Lake City, and Nashville being recent upstarts.  Commuter trains, which use conventional train tracks to reach people farther into the suburbs than buses, light rail, or trolleys, are languishing in a dozen other states for want of funding and increased capacity.

            What is the solution to the gas crisis?  An orchestrated investment in all of the options—more reliable and expanded inner-city mass transit; increased capacity and frequency to commuter rail service; encouragement of economically-feasible forms of personal transportation; reengineering sprawl and exurban communities to reduce the need for car travel while still maintaining the sought-after lifestyle; and a bolstered oil supply to satisfy current needs and fund enhanced infrastructure.

*no such podcast is extant

8/6

Phunny Fotos

Inspector’s Gadget

The Washington, D.C. police department is now accepting crime-solving tips via text messages, along with many other municipalities across the nation.  Any potential informant (a.k.a. “snitch”) can simply send the skinny to 50411 (“putting the 5-0 to the 411″ is slang for talking with the police) and the message is received by an officer.  Numbers remain anonymous because the computer program routes and stores phone identification through servers in Canada, where privacy laws are strict.  Boston police were the first to roll out the service in 2007 and in the past year they have received almost as many text tips as telephone tips, some of which have led to arrests.  While text messaging is not preferable to telephone or in-person contact, D.C.’s Police Chief Cathy Lanier says, “It’s a really quick, cool, easy way to communicate, and if I don’t tap into those people, I’m shooting myself in the foot.”  In that vein, those who are fond of text messaging will also be able to tap into the services of the police in a unique way: