What's in the News?
Method to Grade Teachers Provokes Battles
A growing number of school districts have adopted a system called value-added modeling to answer that question, provoking battles from Washington to Los Angeles — with some saying it is an effective method for increasing teacher accountability, and others arguing that it can give an inaccurate picture of teachers’ work. Read more here...
New York Times
Write to the ERC and DC
I wrote the Governor a letter about everything about the fuel we use (see original post in this thread) I have included a reply back from the Governor’s office with a request to send this info to Energy Resources, Conservation and Development Commission of everything here from our posts (cleaned up of course). Please see below. The more letters that are placed the more they will have a mind to consider the fuel tax. We need to start on this as Dr. Canara says. With not urging the fuel tax we are mired in the black future of oil rather than the green future at our threshold. The time is now to act so please write and urge your friends to write.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for writing Governor Schwarzenegger. The Governor appreciates hearing from people who care about cleaner, more efficient energy consumption in our great state.
Combating global climate change depends on innovative people like you who are willing to take the initiative to develop new ideas and concepts. You are also welcome to share your ideas with the California Energy Resources, Conservation and Development Commission, which can be contacted directly at:
Energy Resources, Conservation and Development Commission
Media and Public Communications Office
1516 Ninth Street, MS-29
Sacramento, California 95814-5512
(916) 654-5106
Again, thank you for writing Governor Schwarzenegger. The Governor truly appreciates your personal commitment to the future of the Golden State.
Sincerely,
Office of Constituent Affairs
Germany taxes
Germany is considering right now the debate over taxing airline fuels. They too realize the system of consumption in transportation and see the virtues of taxing that which consumes the most.
Fuel taxes
Right. Our overall fuel taxes should be higher, ro properly account for the true cost of fuel burning. And, as the only oil state not to tax wellhead output, we need to do that as well.
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Alex
Tax agreement
Okay Alex how do we now format that into becoming something? I have already asked for this of Senators Feinstein and Boxer. Congresswoman Eshoo assures me she is on my side with this. We have energy coming up in the Senate so I feel now the time is ripe with BP and the Gulf disaster to hit while the iron is hot. I still feel the best argument is the consumption rates of industries as a whole. Cars in the hundreds of millions of gallons per year with airlines at billions per year. Calculate a number say at $4 dollars a gallon to fund hi speed rail to help eliminate the less than 1000 mile air travel. It is what happened in Europe over the last decade, but they funded at $7.50 per gallon.
Fuel taxes
If we'd implemented European fuel taxes years back, we'd have:: a) efficienct cars/trucks, b) more rail opportunities around the country, c) more light rail (as we used to have) in cities, and d) a bit less air travel. But, we'd still have a lot to do on HS rail. It may be 'easy' for the Japanese to send out 3000 guys a night to check 12 of the 200+ miles of one Shinkansen line for minor defects, it's another rhing for us to have begun or completed development of similar technology in a 3000-mile country. HS rail works on some routes, but still with much invested time & $.
So, implementing fuel taxes now and making them cognizant of real-world impacts of the oil industry is our best choice today. I forgot too, that added to the above should be e) we'd have lots of fixed bridges not falling donw anymore.
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Alex
A California Utopia
There are those that decry “green energy” failed, and have been a failure since 1910. These status quo fringe elements are the ones in the way of progress. I like the idea the Japanese do with keeping the rails perfect. Cologne Germany could have avoided the hi-speed train wreck had they had workers who get paid to exercise and inspect and clean the tracks. This is the shovel ready personal that eluded the administration early on and is a spot on perfect definition. If we did that inspection on Cal Train tracks it could be a mitigation measure too for the rash of suicides seen. Fixing bridges are for licensed contractor to do but certainly the inspection is merited.
In the 1900's the City of New York revitalized the street sweepers in wearing white uniforms and white hats. The department head (the name eludes me now) had them drill daily in street sweeping etiquette. For the 4 years they ran, the citizens of New York loved their city and the quality of life went up. When a new Mayor was put into office the department head was fired and the city laid off 50% of the street cleaning workforce. The status quo won out. That is a "crabby old man" syndrome that keeps the US from having a high quality of life. There is a more recent incidence: the violence in Chicago and not having an army of maintenance people in the low income housing and hiring people from that housing. We are a cheap society. We want low to no taxes, we blame people themselves when they are unemployed, and we hate to pay for things that relate to quality of life.
I don’t know what magic the Japanese have but we certainly need a dose of it here. So it is a little more than just getting a fuel tax started, it is having leaders that realize quality of life is more important than the overriding cost of doing something. Conservatives hate that. I would say California is the perfect place to do a pilot study on doing the Japanese method.
HS Rail issues
HS rail is good, as a Discussion Topic I added today describes, but it also porvides many more jobs that I realixzed -- the Japanese support their HS rail system by dispatching, each night, 3000 workers to check a 12 mi segment of each line. Jobs & exercise together!
What we need to do to end our oil addiction
The gas we use in our cars was about 340M gallons in 2009. Airlines for domestic flights used about 1.8B gallons in 2009. We could get rid of all the cars and still have air travel as a gluttonous oil addict. The answer? High speed rail all across the USA, through rural cities from sea to shining sea, an American revival, and funded from a gas tax on airlines. Yes, they will pass it onto consumers, but come on folks we are Americans, we can take it. That way, we get rid of some airline and car travel and reduce our oil addiction.
Support this too: http://www.blamesam.org/1/Home.html
Chris
Governator's no drilling for parks
Excellent! Now restore the smoking ban in parks too.