Express Toll Lanes Promoted in Study
The fact that mass transit is not being mentioned at all just goes to demonstrate — yet again — just how thoroughly the developer lobby dominates the transportation issue…
Highway congestion has grown so severe that virtually all of the Washington region’s main commuter routes are chronically clogged and unable to move motorists efficiently, according to a regional study released yesterday.
Drivers on some highways designed for mile-a-minute travel are lucky to make five miles in an hour. Freeways that were manageable three years ago, such as the Dulles Toll Road, are now bumper-to-bumper at peak times. Congestion on some highways has doubled in three years, when the last study was released.
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As President Bush calls on Americans to break their addiction to oil and increase energy efficiency in the face of soaring prices, perhaps no people serve as better role models than the energy-miser Japanese.
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That has contributed to the fact that Japan’s energy consumption per person is now almost half that of the United States. Conservation fever swept the nation after the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 treaty written in Japan that aims to reduce greenhouse gases. The United States has not ratified the treaty.
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The country embarked on a major effort to wean itself off oil. Japan now imports 16 percent less oil than it did in 1973, although the economy has more than doubled. Billions of dollars were invested in converting oil-reliant electricity-generation systems into ones powered by natural gas, coal, nuclear energy or alternative fuels. Japan, for instance, now accounts for 48 percent of the globe’s solar power generation — compared with 15 percent in the United States.
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Democrats Shoot Their Own, Too
I should note that my primary reason for leaving the Democratic Party was that my wing — the progressive wing — is always getting beaten up by the centrists. Thanks to Dennis Kobray on the Green_All_Views (Yahoogroups) Listserv for pointing out this article.
Party leaders, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) recently pressured Cindy Sheehan not to mount a primary campaign against California Senator Diane Feinstein, a woman who has betrayed party principles, such as they are, at almost every turn and deserves to go down to defeat. (It was only after Sheehan said she was considering a primary fight that Feinstein announced she would support a filibuster on Alito.) Now they’ve killed the campaign of Paul Hackett, an Iraq War vet and sharp critic of the war and the president and a candidate who had a strong shot at snatching a Senate seat for the Democrats this fall in Ohio.
http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff02152006.html