Public Transportation Service Cuts/Layoffs Coming to Buffalo

As the peak oil era stretches on, and high oil and gasoline prices become the norm, one would think it should be obvious that the last place state and local governments should be making budget cuts is in public transportation. Sadly, that is not the case, as this story out of Buffalo shows:

The Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority has approved a budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year. Cuts in state aid and dwindling revenue from NFTA owned properties have left the transportation authority with a 15 million dollar budget gap. To fill that hole the Board of Commissioners has approved several deep cuts in personnel and service routes.

- 50 positions are being eliminated. 20 of those positions come from the NFTA's police force.
- 81 bus service routes will be eliminated.
- 14 other routes will see reductions in service.
- Metro Rail service will be eliminated on Sundays after 8:00 pm.

Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown was at the budget meeting and addressed the Board shortly after the vote. Brown says up to 80 percent of the NFTA's bus customers are city residents and many rely on the bus system as their only source of transportation. Brown added that he has reached out to the state legislature, the Governor's office and the New York Power Authority for assistance. The NFTA will be holding several public hearings on the budget cuts in the coming weeks.

At least Buffalo's mayor is cognizant of the negative effects these cuts are going to have on the citizens who have to ride the buses to get around. The scary thought is contemplating what is going to become of these people when the day finally comes that the buses stop running altogether.


Bonus: looks like the boys from ZZ Top may be waiting for the bus a bit longer

Congress Ending 2011 With Worst Approval Rating Ever

Gee, who would have ever thought that a group of individuals led by contemptible scumbags like John Boehner, Nancy Pelosi, Eric Cantor, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell might be historically unpopular, especially in light of the latest debacle involving the payroll tax?

In his biography of American iconoclast Mark Twain, Albert Bigelow Paine quotes the noted author referring to the U.S. Congress in a less-than-congenial manner: “Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself,” he famously said.

No matter how much times have changed since Twain’s death in 1910, there’s one thing that remains a seeming constant in the U.S.: then and now, we hate our political class. But more than at any point in history, a new Gallup poll out this week shows more Americans today are dissatisfied with Congress than ever before.

The governing body is now set to end 2011 with the lowest one-time approval rating in its history: 11 percent. Their annual average for 2011 came to a whopping 17 percent, which is also the lowest ever recorded.

Overall, Gallup found that the nation’s 112th Congress had an 86 percent disapproval rating by the end of December, 2011: yet another record-breaking statistic.

Independent voters were the most dissatisfied, Gallup found, holding Congress in such contempt that it earned just 7 percent approval. Republicans and Democrats were both similarly cynical, with just 14 percent of Democrats approving of Congress, and 12 percent of Republicans.

The numbers come at the end of a highly contentious year that saw the government nearly shut down twice when Republicans and Democrats failed to agree on a budget due to squabbles over tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. Most voters want to see top-tier tax rates increase as budgets for things like food stamps and unemployment insurance are cut, but most Republican lawmakers are opposed to that step.

Wow...normally it is impossible to get 86% of the people to agree on ANYTHING. Yet right now they all agree that Congress sucks balls. Sure sounds bad for the Congresscritters, huh?

Yet I'll make a prediction right now, and you can feel free to come back here next November and call me out for being full of shit if I'm wrong. My prediction is that despite these awful poll numbers, over 80% of congressional incumbents who choose to run for reelection next year will win. Even 20% defeated would be a veritable tsunami of failure as historically the reelection rate is well above 90%, so I feel pretty confident in my prediction.

Sadly, despite the above numbers, the same poll showed evidence that a majority of Americans still have their heads shoved far up their asses when it comes to understanding the political system:

Fifty-five percent also agreed that “the political system can work fine, it’s the members that are the problem,” while just 32 percent felt like the system had broken down entirely.

Yep...despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, even now slightly less than one-third of the population understands that it is the system itself that is the real problem. Until that number rises to become a substantial majority, there is little hope that any genuine change is going to come about in this country.


Bonus: Bill's classic bit on politics, "Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control."

Hostess Brands on the Verge of Bankruptcy, Possible Liquidation

Let me start off this post by saying that Hostess makes shitty products. Their snack cakes alone have contributed as much as any single factor to the obesity epidemic in America. And Wonder Bread is actually a crime against the fine art of baking. Still, it's tough to see anyone facing the prospect of losing their job, especially right before the holidays. Here is the New York Post with the details:

Hostess Brands, America’s biggest bakery, is on the verge of filing for bankruptcy again — perhaps as early as next month, The Post has learned.

Staying out of Chapter 11 is proving tough for the Twinkies maker, a source said, adding the question now is whether it will be a pre-packaged bankruptcy or not.

“We are working hard to keep it out of [Chapter] 11,” another source close to the months-long talks with lenders and unions said.

The tipping point: Hostess maintains it cannot afford to stay current on its $700 million in outstanding loans and keep contributing to the unions’ pension plans, sources said.

Hostess has not been paying future pension benefits since August, thereby breaking its union contracts.

Even with the pension expense savings, the company still needs more money within the next several weeks. And private-equity firm Ripplewood Holdings, which holds a controlling ownership in Hostess, will not reinvest capital unless it gets its union concessions, one source said.

“I would read that as pretty drastic,” another source said. “It’s not easy to resolve that kind of issue.”

It's an all too common theme these days, lose your benefits or lose your job altogether. Here is a telling quote:

A Hostess worker said, “We understand that, should we pursue some form of legal action to require the company to live up to the terms of the contract, they may close, but we have come to believe that they will close anyway.

So what exactly will bankruptcy mean?

Much is at stake for Twinkie the Kid. The firm filed for Chapter 11 in September 2004 and spent 4 1/2 years there before Ripplewood in February 2009 bought it after gaining union concessions.

There is a concern that if it files again, the result could be liquidation with many of its brands, including Hostess, Wonder, Nature’s Pride, and Drake’s, sold for cash.

In that scenario, the first to be paid would likely be the company’s lenders, including General Electric, Monarch Alternative Capital and Silver Point Capital.

The unions will likely rank behind them in a bankruptcy, and Ripplewood’s equity stake would be wiped out, sources said.

So typical, the financial institutions get paid while the workers get the shaft. Just another sad tale of modern corporate America. Almost makes me wish I had some comfort food to help me forget all my troubles.

Lies, Damn Lies and NAR Statistics

As a follow up to the story I posted this morning about the record decline in the building of new homes comes word via Zero Hedge that the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has overstated the sales of existing homes by a whopping 14% since 2007, as shown in the chart above. Why is that date significant? Because that was when the housing crash got underway in earnest, of course.

There are no laws against a private organization misreporting statistics, but given that these data releases have a material effect on the rising and falling of stock prices, perhaps there should be. At the very least, I would think that anyone who had shorted housing/mortgage/construction industry stocks these past few years and got burned should have grounds for a massive class action lawsuit.

Most importantly for the rest of us, this is yet another example of just how desperate those with a vested interest in areas of the economy that are quickly dying are to try to maintain appearances in the vain hope that someday there will be a real recovery. The truly amazing thing is that so many people still maintain faith in the system and what they are told about it by organizations like the NAR despite the fact that they should have long ago been thoroughly discredited. I always tell people that they should NEVER listen to advice from someone who is trying to sell them something. That's just common sense, something else which is in all too short supply these days.

Bonus: I'd like to dedicate this song to the NAR

Single-Family Home Building Headed For Worst Year on Record

More proof was reported this week by Bloomberg that the so-called "recovery" has been nothing more than a cruel mirage perpetrated by the politicos, the Federal Reserve and the mainstream media:

More than two years after the U.S. recession ended in June 2009, construction of single-family homes is heading for its worst year on record.

The CHART OF THE DAY shows that while total housing starts bottomed in 2009, construction of one-family houses will probably post a new low this year at around 419,100, about 11 percent less than in 2010, according to Bloomberg News calculations. The building industry is being propped up by a projected 45 percent jump in work on multifamily units as more homeowners who lose their homes to foreclosure become renters.

“A lot of people just look at the headline numbers, they don’t realize the breakdown tells the story,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Corp. in New York. “Foreclosures are forcing people to transition from ownership to rentals. In a sense, the multifamily sector is benefiting at the expense of single-family.”

Americans have little incentive to buy newly built homes when they can purchase distressed houses, which have made up about a third of existing home sales this year, at a discount.

That means there will be little reason to build new homes next year, said Meyer. About 8 million distressed homes are in the pipeline to be sold over the next four years, including foreclosures and short-sales, according to Bank of America estimates.

I've said it before, but it cannot be repeated often enough. Without a recovery in housing there is no real economic recovery. Housing will not recover unless new good paying jobs are added to the economy. Good paying jobs will not be added to the economy as long as energy prices remain elevated, squeezing the margins of employers and consumers. Energy prices will remain elevated as long as new cheap sources of oil are not being discovered. And peak oil means we have used up or are currently pumping from all of the cheap sources of oil.

Which is the very definition of the downward spiral.

Fight Your Own Damn Wars

The picture above that appeared on Tuesday on the blog Rebel Pundit of a bunch of alleged Syrian protesters chiding President Hopey-Changey's supposed lack of belligerence and praising George Bush the Lesser is a neoconservative's wet dream. The reason I say "alleged" is because of the English used on a banner being displayed in an Arabic speaking country, and the political sentiment is a bit too obviously partisan to be a genuinely spontaneous display.

As much as I deplore what Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad's thugs have been doing to his own people, it is an internal Syrian problem. If the Iraq War proved anything at all, it is that invading and occupying a foreign country in order to depose a despicable dictator can actually cause more death and destruction than if things were allowed to sort themselves out. Beyond that, America is already teetering on the edge of the economic abyss thanks to 10 years of disastrous neoconservative policies. We simply cannot afford to be the world's policeman anymore.

So my message to the men holding the banner, whose motives I find to be highly suspect, is short and succinct: go fight your own damn wars and leave America out of it.

America Has Now Reached “Peak Imprisonment”

Despite our supposed love of individual liberty, America has long been known for having by far the highest incarceration rates among the world’s developed nations. Some would argue that this is a good thing, as shown by the country having 20 years of continually declining crime rates. More criminals in jail = less crime on the streets. That just makes sense, they would argue. But it also comes at the terrible price of non-violent drug offenders being incarcerated for long periods, as well as the tremendous monetary cost to the taxpayers of housing such a large percentage of our adult population as wards of the state.

Not surprisingly, as the ravages of the Great Recession continue to hammer governmental budgets at every level, the states and even the federal government are becoming less inclined to place people behind bars and to keep them there for long periods of time. Here is the Economist with the details:

IN AMERICAN slang, to send someone "up the river" means to send him to prison. The phrase comes from New York, specifically, from Sing Sing prison, which is around 30 miles north of New York City on the Hudson River. I visited a couple of years ago, and was struck by the beautiful views the inmates had of the Hudson River Valley. Some local politicians think the views are wasted on convicts, and have suggested replacing the maximum-security prison with condos. Perhaps it comes as some comfort to them knowing that there are fewer convicts on whom those views are wasted. In 2000 it housed 2,300 prisoners; today around 1,700 are imprisoned there. Crime rates have fallen and drug laws changed in New York; both have resulted significant declines in the state's prison population. And its governor, Mario Cuomo, plans to close some prisons to close budget gaps. After all, prison is expensive: according to a Pew report, states spent between $13,009 (Louisiana) and $44,860 (Rhode Island) in 2005 per prisoner per year. Total state spending on corrections now runs around $52 billion.

But that figure may be falling. According to the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 2010 America’s prison population declined year-on-year for the first time in nearly four decades. There were 1,605,127 prisoners behind bars in state and federal correction facilities in 2010, 9,228 fewer than in 2009. Although that is less than a percentage point decrease, it is still significant. Half of the states reported decreases in prison populations, with Rhode Island and Georgia (where one in 13 adults is under some form of correctional control, one of the highest proportions in the country) reporting the largest percentage decreases, 8.6% and 7.9% respectively. There were some increases, most notably Illinois, which saw the largest increase in absolute numbers, followed by Texas. But the largest percentage increase in the state prison population was in Iowa, up 7.3%, followed by Illinois, up 7.2%.

The imprisonment rate is also down. The rate last year was about one in 201 residents. Since 2007, when it peaked at 506 per 100,000 residents, the imprisonment rate has declined each year. Illinois reported the largest rate increase, while it fell in 33 states. About one-third of admissions result from parole violations. Surveillance has been a key component in correction supervision since the 1980s. Consequently, parole violations caused a seven-fold increase in people returning to prison from 1980 to 2000. In 2009 parole violators accounted for a third of all state prison admissions, but this sort of admission declined last year, thanks in part no doubt because of the efforts made at the state, local and federal level to lower recidivism rates. According to a Pew report, 43% of offenders are returned to state prison within three years of their release.

Also encouraging is the news that releases from prison exceeded admissions in 2010 for the first time since 1977. This means that many prisons are not operating at full capacity.

I just want to pause for a moment to point out that there is a significant typographical error in one of the stated figures in the article. Surely, the imprisonment rate number included in the second sentence of the third paragraph above should read “501” and not “201,” because otherwise that would mean that more than half of the entire prison population had been released during the past four years, which is obviously not the case.

Even so, just a slight drop in the imprisonment rate from 506 to 501 after rising steadily since the 1970s is significant given the proliferation in recent years of private “for profit” prisons and that no politician these days would ever allow themselves to be seen as soft on “law and order.” One of the most obvious backlashes against the counterculture movement of the 1960s was in the area of law enforcement as a “throw away the key” mentality took hold in the minds of what Richard Nixon called “the silent majority.” Given that the peaking of the imprisonment rate perfectly coincides with the start of the economic downturn and the plunging of state and federal tax revenues, I have no doubt that the real reason for the decline is tied to the bad economy rather than any increase in empathy and compassion for inmates.

How ironic is it that the prison population is actually decreasing at a time when one would have thought that with an increasingly desperate population it would be exploding? Of course, as I previously reported here on this blog, other than in some unfortunate locations like Camden, New Jersey, the national crime rate has also counter intuitively continued to drop since 2008 despite so many more people having been flung into poverty as the Great Recession grinds on. Whatever the reason for this drop, it’s an interesting conundrum to ponder as it doesn’t seem to fit with trends forecaster Gerald Celente’s repeated assertion that “when people lose everything, they lose it.”


Bonus: Seems like an appropriate time for this song

HMC Hospitals in Hawaii to Close, Nearly 1,000 Jobs Lost

I've actually been surprised by the number of recent stories about layoffs in the medical profession. Here is one from Hawaii that appeared over the weekend:

The operators of bankrupt Hawaii Medical Center hospitals in Liliha and Ewa plan to close the facilities within three weeks, putting nearly 1,000 people out of work and eliminating more than 340 hospital beds.

The closures would affect the region's economy with the loss of 990 jobs, the Honolulu Star Advertiser reported Saturday ( ). Also, there would be a dramatic impact on health care.

HMC provides dialysis services and operates the only organ transplant center in the Pacific, while the Ewa facility is the only full-service emergency hospital in West Oahu, the newspaper said.

With the planned closure, the 150 patients in the two hospitals will have to be moved or discharged.

State officials are hoping a buyer or buyers can be found to keep the facilities running.

"Our understanding is there are still lingering interested parties," said Donalyn Dela Cruz, spokeswoman for Gov. Neil Abercrombie. "There are interested parties looking to reopen the facilities. If and when that occurs, the state will expedite that process."

Because so many health care workers will be losing their jobs, they'll likely have a difficult time finding new employment, according to health officials.

For a small state like Hawaii this has to be devastating. It's difficult to get a handle on exactly what is causing the financial troubles in the health care industry, but stories such as these put the lie to the notion asserted by clueless politicos that such jobs are the wave of the future as the economy "recovers."

A Glimpse at Our Post-Collapse Future

It's a common vision of the future, as popularized by fictional works like the book and movie versions of The Road, desperate survivors picking through the ruins as they try to get through even one more day. But there is at least one place in America where the future is now:

Two people allegedly hunting for scrap metal were killed Wednesday after part of a vacant nursing home collapsed on them on Detroit’s west side.

Fire, police, and rescue crews were called to Seven Mile and Glastonbury, near the Southfield Freeway.

Two bodies were discovered in the abandoned five-story building. Fire Chief Kwaku Atara said it’s believed the two men were scrapping at the time of the roof collapse.

Sad as this story is, I couldn't help seeing the black humor in this:

“If you see someone scrapping in your neighborhood, call police immediately. This activity directly affects the Detroit Fire Department, because the firefighters have to respond to buildings just like this in emergencies. Not only firefighters but all emergency responders, possibly may have to go into these facilities,” said Atara.

And he says it’s very dangerous. “We would like to urge residents that this is extremely dangerous way to make a living and we would discourage it at all costs,” said Atara.

You know what else is really dangerous? Starving. Which is about the level of desperation it takes to get someone to go scrounging around in a dilapidated building looking for scrap metal.

Jonathan Alter: Warmongering Douchebag

I've stated before on this blog that I was opposed to the Iraq War from the very beginning. As such, I remember having passionate arguments with some of my conservatives friends and colleagues in early 2003 during the run-up to the invasion. The war didn't turn out exactly as I and others who were opposed to it predicted, but here were a few things I was certain of even back then:

1). That there was no connection between Saddam and Al-Qaeda.

2). That Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction (and that even if they did, they wouldn't be so foolish as to actually use them).

3). That the war would be a humanitarian disaster that was going to get many innocent people killed.

4). That it was all going to cost a shit-pot load of money.

Right there were four great reasons not to attack Iraq that anyone whose brain hadn't been short-circuited by an overdose of testosterone should have realized before the first shots were even fired. It was bad enough that the conservative/Republican drumbeat for war was deafening. But the really sick part was that so many Democrats/liberals--like Tom Friedman, Richard Cohen and Hillary Clinton--were right there with them. And now, as the American military ingloriously heads for the exits having failed to plant the seed of democracy in the middle of the Arab world, there hasn't been so much as an apology from any of these assholes for the utterly senseless death and destruction they themselves advocated.

All of which brings me to a recent article by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek in which he calls out the Republican presidential candidates for exhibiting collective amnesia on Iraq. Alter starts out with a reasonable assessment of the war's disastrous cost:

All U.S. ground troops will be out of Iraq by Dec. 31, and soon this sorry conflict will fade quietly into the past, the second-dumbest war in American history. Yet the Iraq War has been missing in action during the Republican presidential campaign.

Like “body counts,” “Khe Sanh” and “My Lai” from Vietnam, “IEDs,” “Fallujah” and “Abu Ghraib” are already meaningless to many younger Americans. Today’s young voters were preteens when the war began in 2003.

The forgetting will be faster than with Vietnam because Iraq never penetrated our consciousness in the same way — unless you were among the 30,000 who came back physically wounded or the more than 100,000 with psychological problems. If you add these 130,000 to the 4,500 dead and include the toll on their families, more than half a million Americans were directly affected by this war.

Our soldiers served with great courage, and they deserve respect (and jobs) when they return. But only now are we learning some of the chilling consequences of what took place. The New York Times revealed this week an internal report that details massacres of civilians in Haditha by U.S. forces. One U.S. officer, Major General Steve Johnson, described the killings as “a cost of doing business.”

Speaking of cost, the full price of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is at least $1 trillion, which President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress put on the credit card.

He goes on to chide the candidates for pretending like the war never happened:

One might imagine that having been colossally wrong about Iraq, the Republican front-runners would want to hire advisers who got it right. Nope. Gingrich says that John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, would be his secretary of state. In 1998, Bolton, who makes Donald Rumsfeld look like Michael Moore, was among the 18 signers of a Project for the New American Century letter that kicked off the movement for regime change in Iraq. Romney’s top foreign-policy adviser on the Middle East is Walid Phares, a stridently anti-Islamic lobbyist for Israel who pushed hard for the Iraq War by lumping in Saddam Hussein with Osama bin Laden and Yasser Arafat. Both foreign- policy “experts” are now leading the charge to invade Iran.

Sounds reasonable, right? Oh it's very reasonable, until you consider this passage:

Is Iraq better off? Yes, we removed Saddam Hussein, but the Arab Spring might have done that by now without us. The Iraqis viewed us as occupiers not liberators, and recently refused even a residual force of 10,000 U.S. troops to help protect them. The Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, heads the most pro- Iranian government in the Arab world, other than Syria. For all of the diplomatic niceties when he visited with President Barack Obama this week, Maliki has trampled on the rule of law and assumed quasi-dictatorial powers. Iraq is a democracy in name only.

If we knew in 2003 what we know now — about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the cost in blood and treasure, the length of hostilities, the blow to American prestige — would we do it all again? Of course not. Even those like me who supported the war at the outset must admit the whole thing was a fiasco.

First of all, let me address the question as to whether Iraq is better off by saying, are you fucking kidding me? I've got over one hundred thousand dead civilians (no one really seems to know for sure exactly how many), an utterly devastated formerly modern infrastructure and a security situation so bad that Baghdad was recently rated the worst city in the world in which to live that says Alter is full of shit. Saddam was a bad guy, and jailed, tortured and murdered many of his own citizens, but what he wrought upon the country was nothing compared to what has happened since the invasion.

Juan Cole has a few more details:

Population of Iraq: 30 million.

Number of Iraqis killed in attacks in November 2011: 187

Percentage of Iraqis who lived in slum conditions in 2000: 17

Percentage of Iraqis who live in slum conditions in 2011: 50

Number of the 30 million Iraqis living below the poverty line: 7 million.

Number of Iraqis who died of violence 2003-2011: 150,000 to 400,000.

Orphans in Iraq: 4.5 million.

Orphans living in the streets: 600,000.

Number of women, mainly widows, who are primary breadwinners in family: 2 million.

Iraqi refugees displaced by the American war to Syria: 1 million

Internally displaced persons in Iraq: 1.3 million

Proportion of displaced persons who have returned home since 2008: 1/8

Rank of Iraq on Corruption Index among 182 countries: 175

It's easy for Alter to say Iraq is "better off." After all, its not like he ever got shot while approaching a traffic checkpoint, or contracted cancer from depleted uranium munitions, or was tortured at Abu Grahib prison, or saw one of his kids' limbs blown off, or had to watch helplessly as some pissed off Marines stormed his house and forced him, his wife and children to the floor, pinning them there while they ransacked all of their earthly belongings.

But the most galling part is that last sentence, where Alter condescends to admitting he was wrong about the "fiasco," but clearly sees no reason why he should say he was sorry, let alone resign from his position in disgrace. After all, it wasn't anyone he personally knows who was butchered or maimed, or had their home and/or livelihood destroyed by the arrogance and hubris of warmongers like Jonathan Alter. Heck, all those people that bad stuff happened to were not Americans, or even Europeans for that matter, so it doesn't really count, don't you know. Unlike in a real job, being a card carrying member of the punditocracy is not only great fun, but also gets you a mulligan on being completely wrong on matters of life and death.

If you want to know yet another reason why not only American liberalism, but also the mainstream media are so thoroughly discredited, look no further than the example of Jonathan Alter. I almost prefer far right commentators like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to the likes of him. At least those guys don't pretend like they care about the horrendous damage caused when their hideous ideas become public policy.


Bonus: Chimpy Bush wasn't Cheney's only toy

(In)Famous Last Words

There are two ways to look at the list below of famous quotations predicting the future that turned out to be completely wrong. One way is that since many of these are technology related that technology marches forward in ways that few can comprehend, meaning that a technological fix may be found for the intractable and soon to be calamitous problems of peak oil, resource depletion, climate change and overpopulation. Obviously, I don't subscribe to that notion. Technology has been able to march forward BECAUSE the cheap energy was there to allow it to do so. Take away the cheap energy and it only makes sense that technological progress will grind to a halt.

Instead, I prefer to look at these predictions this way: that the future is unknowable beyond the realm of the educated guess, and anyone who claims a certainty about exactly how the next few decades are going to unfold given the challenges I just mentioned should not be taken seriously. It's been a long, strange trip already since the Long Emergency got underway in earnest back in 2008, and it's likely to get a lot stranger before it's all over.

"Man will never reach the moon, regardless of all future scientific advances."
- Dr. Lee DeForest, "Father of Radio & Grandfather of Television."

"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
- Admiral William Leahy , US Atomic Bomb Project

"In the future, computers may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year."
- Editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923

"640K ought to be fast enough for anybody."
- Bill Gates, 1981

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
- David Sarnoff's associate in response to his urgings for investment in the radio, 1920.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
- A Yale University professor in response to his student Fred Smith's paper proposing a reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
- Gary Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in "Gone With The Wind."

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies.

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."
- Driller who Edwin Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

"But what is it good for?"
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
- Marechal Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre, France .

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required."
- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

"I don't know what use anyone could find for a machine that makes copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."
- Head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox.

"The abdomen, the chest and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon."
- Sir John Eric Erickson, Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

And last but not least...

"There is simply no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

Bonus: one such quote they left out that I always loved was Who drummer Keith Moon saying to guitarist Jimmy Page back in 1968: "Your new (as yet unnamed) band is going to go over like a lead zeppelin."

So When Do We Reach an Awareness “Tipping Point?”

It is a constant frustration among those who are peak oil aware and anticipating the eventual collapse of our modern industrial civilization. When do we reach the so-called “tipping point” when awareness of what is coming spreads from a very small cadre of the informed to a substantial portion of the population at large? I would argue that it partly depends on what your definition of “awareness” is. It’s pretty clear from recent public opinion polls showing overwhelming disapproval of Congress and stating that the country is on the “wrong track,” plus the number of dour, gloom and doom economic articles that frequently appear in even mainstream publications, and the rapid brushfire manner in which the Occupy protests broke out all over the country nearly simultaneously that many people are at least dimly aware that something is very wrong in the “shining city on the hill,” as Ronald Reagan so laughably described America on one of those occasions in which he was blowing sunshine up the voters’ asses.

Nevertheless, there is still a huge gulf separating being a discontented citizen of the empire after four years in the economic doldrums and recognition that there has been a fundamental change in which the era of economic growth has switched over to an era of permanent economic contraction. The attempts by governments and central banks across the globe to prop up the façade of our zombie globalized economic model, combined with the relentless cheerleading of the politicos and mainstream media has so far concealed the ugly truth about our predicament from most people. The efforts of blogs like this one to put out the truth pale in comparison to the mind control power of even one relatively low rated cable teevee channel like CNBC.

The evidence of this is very easy to see. However much angst and anger may be being detected in those public opinion polls, many millions of people who are still employed have not changed their behavior one iota. They are still engaging in long-term destructive behavior like whipping out the plastic at the mall and going into hock to buy stuff they don’t need, socking their money into a 401(k) or IRA account they cannot access for many years, encouraging their college bound children to take out gigantic student loans to pay for what will likely turn out to be an utterly worthless education, and buying houses in the far flung suburbs “at the bottom” while ignoring the fact that with few good jobs being created and the Baby Boomers getting ready to retire and sell their houses in massive numbers there is no chance that prices are going to recover.

I posted a story recently about how Republican primary voters in the state of Florida overwhelmingly told a pollster that they favored ending our overseas military entanglements over slashing Social Security as a way to bring down the federal budget deficit, and yet were still least likely to vote for one of the two candidates who might actually ramp down military spending: Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman. This reminds me of those upper middle class “greenies” who nevertheless live in a suburban McMansion and drive a large SUV to keep their precious little snowflakes “safe.” It’s like the old saying goes, “put your money where your mouth is.” People may profess to believe all kinds of stupid shit, but it is their actions, particularly in regards to how they vote and spend their money, that belie the real truth about their value systems.

All of which brings me back to the main question in this essay: when do we reach the “tipping point” of real awareness of what the future holds from a peak oil and resource depletion standpoint? Quite obviously, we are nowhere near that point yet. Looking around at the people who populate my own life, other than my father and my brother I do not know a single other person who holds such true awareness. Some have an understanding of part of the picture to varying degrees, and a few have even taken affirmative steps like paying down debt to allow them to better weather the coming storm. But true awareness that we will soon be passing through the “eye of the needle” in which not just a sizeable minority but a vast majority of the population will find themselves utterly destitute and struggling just to survive is lacking even for them.

Perhaps that is for the best. Given how unprepared all but a very tiny segment of the population is to survive without a functioning modern infrastructure to support them, I cannot envision that our society would hold together for very long if the truth were to suddenly become widely known. Instead, there would likely be a mass panic and scramble to secure food and other resources that would quickly bring down the entire system, like a rush for the exits after someone screams “fire!” in a crowded theater. In essence, that is what those who believe there will be a “fast” collapse need in order to be proven correct. I’ve said before that I don’t think such a scenario is in the cards, at least not as long as there remains sufficient resources to keep the basics of the system operating even as it slowly devolves and millions of individuals fall through the ever widening cracks. Whatever else they may do, the elites will do everything in their power to keep the game going for as long as possible and manage the descent as much as they are able.

Even having said all of that, 2012 is shaping up to be a key year in the Long Emergency, just like 1968 was for the counterculture movement of the sixties. I look at what is going on right now, Europe teetering on the financial brink, the Occupy movement bubbling at a low boil, the promises that a real “recovery” is just around the corner sounding increasingly threadbare and a presidential campaign that no matter whom the Republicans ultimately nominate (it won’t be Ron Paul) will pit two arrogant, out-of-touch oligarchs against each other and I see the possibility for massive instability and unrest that might even put the late-1960s to shame. On the flip side are the proto-fascists among our elected officials, just waiting for the right moment to spring the next major curtailment of individual civil liberties upon the citizenry. Unfortunately, there is a decent chance that as anger and frustration with our broken political system mounts they will get what they desire sometime during the coming year.

By this time next year, I suspect the landscape will have been altered dramatically. Whether that will also shock enough people into awareness along the way so that we finally reach that “tipping point” of awareness remains to be seen, but I tend to doubt it. In the meantime, I’ll be here, reporting the truth as I see it, hoping to reach the very few souls out there who are receptive to hearing the message while there is still time enough for them to act upon it.