The Daily Cascadian

2010-08-06T12:07:00.001-07:00

I pledge allegiance
to the principles
of the United States of America

and to the republic
that holds them true
one nation, indivisible
with liberty and justice for all

2007-08-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Juan Cole's recent request to his readers, a chart of US military fatalities in Iraq since the beginning of 2007 (the period of the so-called "surge") and the same period in 2006.

At least from the standpoint of US casualties, if this is success I'd hate to see failure. Of course, if you look at Iraqi deaths nationwide, those are up too.

2007-06-27T11:53:00.000-07:00

2008: Ending the Imperial Presidency

Most of the media attention for the 2008 election focuses on a single job, that of President of the United States. This is understandable, because the presidency is a powerful position, and most of the country is thoroughly fed up with the current occupant of the White House. Even many largely apolitical people are probably impatient with Bush and want to see someone else talking at them on their television sets and being made fun of by the late-night talk shows.

This focus on the presidency is, in fact, a sympton of a huge underlying problem. For decades, there has been an increasing focus on the presidency and a decline of both the power of Congress and the power of the Cabinet. Particularly since 1947, power has shifted away from Cabinet to White House-appointed positions such as the White House Chief of Staff and the National Security Council. This has meant an erosion of Constitutional checks on executive power, and a shift from policy implementation by competent administrators to policy by small coteries of partisans devoted to a charismatic or folksy lelected eader who is the voice of imperial powers that are largely driven by those same unelected advisers. This also tends to marginalize Cabinet-level departments and squander the institutional memory and expertise of thousands of government officials and workers.

This trend has reached its nadir under the current presidency. The Vice President, technically elected but with little popular support, acts internally as the de facto chief of staff, while blocking the independent power of the Cabinet and the oversight powers of the courts and Congress, all in the service of a private agenda. That agenda is opposed by the majority of the people, a majority of Congress, and most of the career officials in various government agencies.

This is a crisis of government that will not be fixed simply by electing a new president, of whatever party or platform. What's needed is a conscious break with the imperial presidency itself, and a strengthening of civil administration through Cabinet departments and the power of Congress.

This is why I can't get excited about the presidential field, if it's seen only as a field of potential imperial presidents, prone to the same abuses of power as the current president, even if they are much more likely to exercise restraint in their abuses. However, if the same field of candidates is viewed as a slate of Cabinet officials who will be delegated real powers over policy by a president who focuses on the big picture, it suddenly looks promising.

Take Joe Biden as a good first example. The guy's largely a tool of special interests such as banks. He's not alone in this, but he's a particularly good example of the type. His ego is enormous and one can only ponder what he would do with the imperial powers of the presidency. On the other hand, Biden has years of experience on the Foreign Relations committee and shows an acute understanding of military issues. He would be an effective Cabinet officer as Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense.

Bill Richardson is another excellent example. He was ambassador to the UN. He has been a broker in negotiations with other countries. He's already got executive experience as Governor and as former Secretary of Energy, though his record in the latter case is weak. But he would make an excellent Secretary of State.

So let's continue this exercise and think through all of the Cabinet offices, in order of precedence:

Secretary of State -- Bill Richardson
Secretary of the Treasury -- Chris Dodd, who is currently Chairman of the Senate Banking committee. Dodd also has committee experience that would make him a good choice for Commerce, Labor, and State.
Secretary of Defense -- Joe Biden
Attorney General -- You want a good legal administrator here, with a record of standing up for the people more than for elected officials. I'd pick Elliot Spitzer.
Secretary of the Interior -- Public lands, Indian and territorial affairs, and wildlife management. This started as a catchall department. To streamline government, all management of public lands, resources, and the environment should be folded into a single department. Because the EPA is granted Cabinet status, I'd merge Interior, EPA, and Agriculture into a single Department of Land and the Environment. This department would balance the protection of the public and public resources against commercial and recreation uses of land, and the combined department could develop an integrated federal land policy that views forests, farms, and environmental concerns in developed areas as part of the same land use system. The Indian and territorial affairs functions might make more sense moved under State.
Secretary -- Al Gore
Secretary of Agriculture -- Al Gore, within the new Department of Land and the Environment.
Secretary of Commerce -- This should be recombined with the Labor Department, so that one agency manages rules that affect businesses and their employees. Secretary -- John Kerry, who currently serves on various commerce-related committees.
Secretary of Labor -- John Kerry, if combined with Commerce. If standalone, Dennis Kucinich or John Edwards.
Secretary of Health and Human Services -- Barack Obama, if he's not VP. He's got the committee experience.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development -- consider rolling this office into HHS, adding the Social Security Administration, and possibly rebranding it as a Department of Social Security.
Secretary of Transportation -- ?
Secretary of Energy -- ?
Secretary of Education -- Dennis Kucinich, if he's not already running Labor. He has committee experience in both labor and education. Consider recombining with HHS.
Secretary of Veterans Affairs -- Obama, if he's not VP or Secretary of HHS. It would make sense to combine this into one agency.
Secretary of Homeland Security -- If possible, this should be abolished and its functions returned to other departments.

Hillary Clinton has experience appropriate for many of these offices. She's on a health, education, and employment committee, the Armed Services committee, and some environmental committees, so she would be a good choice for EPA, Labor, HHS, Education, or even Defense. But really, I think her talents are best suited for the job she's currently seeking, president. So long as her power was checked by strong Cabinet officers and a reenergized Congress, she would be a good choice for a strong leader who nevertheless can oversee a transition away from the imperial presidency. The biggest concern is the danger of a dynastic presidency.

So, within the eight Democratic candidates, seven have experience that would serve them well on the Cabinet. The eighth, Mike Gravel, served on several environmental committees and would be a good choice for EPA or Interior or a combined agency, though my guess is that he doesn't want the job and might not be a great administrator, and would prefer to spend time in retirement after his campaign is complete.

If all of them accepted positions, this would take five Democratic Senators and eliminate their majority, so the results of the 2008 Senate elections are crucial. But leaving aside those political calculations, the central idea is sound. Don't just elect one person and hope that person can change the tone of the executive branch--elect one person who will appoint the others according to expertise, so there's a range of informed opinions channeled through a single competent president who gives each Cabinet official freedom to enact policy and reserves her role for arbitrating disputes and gaining public support for the policies of that Cabinet.

Imagine a general election campaign that lays out a whole shadow cabinet ready to hit the ground running on Inauguration Day, with specific policies controlled by each shadow official, with an overall message coordinated by the presidential candidate consistent with the efforts of each official. The theme could be competence and restoration of a government that works for the country as a whole instead of narrow interests.

Key policies for each department could include:

State: Lead the efforts for peace in the Middle East, starting with an end of the Iraq war and a settlement of related regional issues.
Treasury: Progressive income tax reform by raising the standard deduction and adjusting marginal rates to maintain revenue.
Defense: Rebuild the armed forces after a withdrawal from Iraq, and redeploy to domestic defense and international anti-terrorist efforts.
AG: A restoration of habeas corpus, an end to torture and extraordinary rendition, and the abolition of many parts of the Patriot Act.
EPA: A national carbon tax, offset by tax reductions elsewhere.
Interior: No commercial use of private land at taxpayer expense. Mining and logging, etc. without government subsidy, and within stricter environmental protections.
Agriculture: Phase out price supports that favor agro-corporations and hurt family farms, and use the saved money to buy up land to preserve agricultural uses against suburban sprawl.
Commerce: Work with other departments to encourage energy efficiency, environmental protection, and economic growth.
Labor: Improved enforcement of labor laws and better funding for worker retraining.
HHS: National health care
Social Security Administration: Move to pay-as-you-go by freezing the trust fund to limit the liabilities in the general account, and then use existing revenues to raise benefits. Then index the future payroll tax rate to the number of beneficiaries, while eliminating the income cap, creating and gradually raising an income floor, and shifting the tax rate to upper incomes. This saves Social Security with minimal tax changes and minimal effect on national debt.
HUD: Shift public housing dollars to support creation of low-income housing within private housing developments, favoring mixed-used developments. Work with Labor to create new job opportunities in cities.
Transportation: Invest in national rail network upgrades, including long-range plans for high-speed rail. Eliminate federal road funding, shift to tolls for maintenance and expansion of roads, and shift federal funding into mass transit infrastructure.
Energy: Plan for full energy independence by 2050, using conservation, renewable energy, and nuclear power. Work with EPA carbon tax and transportation and housing investments.
Education: Rework NCLB so that failing schools receive greater investment rather than being closed punitively.
Veterans: Full funding for physical and mental health care; free work retraining; free college education.
Homeland Security: Disband.

2007-05-11T12:04:00.000-07:00

Over on Metroblogging, a contributor muses about planting ivy to cover up the ugliness of the viaduct on the Seattle waterfront. The idea is silly even without considering that ivy is an invasive species that is illegal to plant locally. One of the commenters mentioned covering it in moss instead, which sparked in me the following vision:

Because Seattleites can never agree on what to do with the viaduct, its likely fate is to slowly decay over the years. An earthquake might topple some of the columns, but others will remain. As we continue to argue about how to properly tear a broken viaduct down, it will slowly be retaken by nature.

Moss will cover the columns and dandelions and horsetail weeds will insert themselves in the cracks. Invasive blackberries will cover the old road surface, providing habitat for rodents and adventurous vagabonds. Seeds from fir trees will eventually find a niche among the weeds, slowly transforming concrete into a new urban forest along the waterfront.

Three hundred years from now, the viaduct will remain as a ruin of our time, eternally demonstrating the inaction and stupidity endemic to our way of life.

The only question is whether our descendants will be buzzing around the Viaduct Forest in electric cars powered by renewable energy, or living primitive lives amid the ruins.

2007-04-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

New York City Mayor Bloomberg announced a proposal for congestion pricing in Lower Manhattan. The system would add an $8 toll to the existing tolls for bridges and tunnels into the city, using cameras that can record the license plate of cars. The idea is modeled upon a successful congestion pricing plan in London introduced by Mayor Ken Livingstone.

This is a great idea that uses modified market incentives to discourage driving, while raising money for road maintenance. It shifts costs from general taxpayers to drivers. The question isn't why New York City and London are doing this, but why other cities around the world aren't.

The typical objections are:

This is an attack on drivers, and thus politically unviable in cities dominated by driving.
This makes sense if there is mass transit, but most cities don't have enough mass transit.
Damn liberals and their freaking taxes and big government!
Tolls are inconvenient or intrusive.

These reasons are actually closely related, as becomes clear when the idea is examined. It's true that congestion pricing affects drivers. But the flip side of this is that congestion pricing raises revenue for roads. This isn't a raise in taxes but a shift in taxes from the general population to the people who actually put a strain on the road network. That means that there is more room in the general budget for other projects, or for a drop in taxes if people decide that's a better policy. Congestion tolls are an avoidable tax, because people always have the option to use mass transit. Tolls also direct government taxation at a smaller group of people, and acknowledge the usefulness of markets, making them superior to general taxes and policies based on mandates rather than incentives. Those opposed to a high degree of regulation should be happy to support an alternative that reduces regulation. Modern tolls can avoid slowing down traffic by using cameras to identify vehicles, sending a bill every so often to the owner of each vehicle. These cameras are no more intrusive than the transportation cameras that are already in use in most cities.

That leaves the question as to how much public transportation is required for congestion pricing to work. Cities with poor public transportation provide few options for commuters, most of whom will have no choice but to pay the toll, move, or change jobs. Most will simply pay. But that's not a bad thing. Even in a city with no public transportation, tolls represent a fairer way to pay for road maintenance. They encourage people to move closer within the toll boundary, or to get a job closer to their home, completely outside the toll boundary. In either case, transportation is made more efficiently. As for bringing better public transportation, by shifting road costs to tolls, more money is available in the budget of cities to improve mass transit.

Only if the toll is so onerous that it impacts the overall economy of a city is it a bad idea. So setting the level of the toll is important. The toll should encourage more efficient use of roads and increased use of mass transit without being an economic burden. One way to ensure this is to exempt certain vehicles from the toll, such as trucks delivering freight to and from major ports. Another is to start with a relatively low toll, measure the effect, and then modify the toll based upon the results on traffic and economic development.

Here's what I envision for Seattle. The city of Seattle is geographically constrained, particularly on the north, west, and east. While the worst traffic areas might be in the downtown core, it's actually easier to set tolling cameras based on geographic features. The Lake Washington Ship Canal is crossed at only six points--I-5, SR 99, Montlake, University, Fremont, and Ballard. The two floating bridges are the only points in from the east. Most of the west side of the city is on Elliott Bay, except for West Seattle across the Duwamish. There are two bridges that cross here--the West Seattle Bridge and the bridge for SR 99/509. Boeing Field takes up most of the rest of the city to I-5, and toll cameras at the correct points on East Marginal Way and Airport Way, and northbound I-5, complete the tolling system on that side of the city. The southeast part of the city is a little more difficult, but a close look at the map shows that putting in four cameras along the four major roads that cross at or near Henderson Street north of the Rainier Beach neighborhood is sufficient to cover every route into the city.

Seventeen cameras. WSDOT already has cameras in the right spots north and southbound on I-5, on I-90, on 520, and several close to other locations, and it would not be difficult to upgrade these cameras for tolling purposes and add fourteen more in the other locations. Beyond that, all that is needed is an administrative system to mail bills and collect tolls.

Set the toll to start at $1.50, which matches the one-zone peak fare for Metro and Sound Transit buses. Reduce or eliminate the tolls for off-peak and low-congestion hours. Incorporate the existing local MVET (motor vehicle excise tax) fees into this toll, to simplify local taxes. When the light rail trains open, make sure that the toll is at least as high as the light rail fare. Direct 50% to road maintenance and 50% to transit.

If the early system is successful, add an additional dynamic toll above the flat congestion price rate that rises and falls with congestion on each major regional highway, and signs in key locations that advertise the current price. This way, motorists can choose the cheaper and less congested routes based on live information about traffic. This increases efficiency of the roads while raising even more revenue for road and transit projects.

Finally, as state and federal carbon mandates are introduced, adjust the system to ensure compliance with those mandates. If there's a carbon tax, it will be possible to distribute the tax according to road use, if that's allowed. If there's a carbon cap and trade, the tolls can be used to reduce the city's use of greenhouse gases and possibly generate carbon credits that can offset the additional tolls. During economic downturns, the tolls could be adjusted downward temporarily to help ease the impact on lower-income commuters and encourage short-term economic growth.

When I briefly outlined this idea over at the Slog, I was told that this was tantamount to banning cars from the city, and that I was better off voting for Kucinich and Nader in 2008. To the contrary, I think this is an achievable and moderate step that could be sold politically, while also actually making a difference for the city of Seattle.

2007-04-18T12:51:00.000-07:00

Fixing the United Nations

Over at Angry Bear, contributor Stormy wrote a post about a British attempt to empower the United Nations Security Council to act on issues relating to global climate change. The logic is that changes to climate can affect the security of nation states, with war among the possible consequences.

I think this is a commendable effort to create credible international action in an area where other efforts have failed. Despite the limits to its power, particularly its inability to prevent member nations with a veto from acting without UN consent as in the case of Iraq, the Security Council is nevertheless one of the few parts of the UN capable of producing effective action that would not be possible otherwise.

The British effort to create novel powers for the Security Council demonstrates many of the deficiencies of the UN, among them:

The UN's powers are focused around narrow security issues, and larger global problems such as climate change, global pollution, poverty and underdevelopment, disease and natural disaster management, immigration, and trade are pushed to the margins.
The Security Council is the only part of the UN with some teeth to its decisions, but only if no permanent members use a veto.
The countries that can exercise a veto do not represent the balance of power, economics, or population around the world.
UN funding is inconsistent and largely voluntary, and there are few consequences for failing to pay dues in a timely fashion. Overall funding is too low to effectively make a difference on most international issues, even those closely related to the core security functions of the organization.
There is no popular accountability. Governments appoint UN ambassadors with no public input, and UN decisions are not subject to popular approval. Thus, the UN is an organization of government elites.
The UN is largely disconnected from theoretically related international organizations and treaties, and has no power to enforce them. The lack of a central enforcement mechanism for international law weakens the ability to deal with international problems.

I think the seriousness of global problems and the failure of nations to deal with those problems alone or through ad hoc agreements argues strongly in favor of fundamental reform of the UN. Here's what I would like to see:

First, the UN should be given explicit powers to address global issues other than security. Real power requires more than a change in the UN articles stating the new priorities. It requires money, popular accountability, legislative power, a singular international legal framework to interpret that power, and a credible enforcement mechanism. In short, the UN needs to become a limited global government, with the primary responsibility for acting on international issues.

All of these changes ultimately depend upon the consent of the global population, as well as the consent of member states. So any serious effort at fundamental reform starts with a UN constitution that describes its powers as well as the rights retained by individuals and nations. This should not be a global version of national constitutions. It should focus on the international mandate of the UN. Rights critical at the national level in representative democracy, such as the individual right to free speech or social rights such as guaranteed housing and medical care, would not be appropriate. What is appropriate is a description of the rights that exist in the absence of these national rights. What rights are so fundamental that they transcend cultures, and should be protected internationally?

Here are the rights I think should be recognized:

Citizenship. Every person is a citizen of the planet, and of the United Nations, separate from their national citizenship, not revokable by any nation state, and regardless of whether their nation is a member of the UN. This citizenship entitles everyone to a vote in any popular election by the UN.
National Citizenship. Each nation has the right to define its rights of national citizenship, and what privileges extend only to citizens, including access to government services, so long as UN rights are respected.
Travel. Every person has the right to travel, within his or her means, to any member nation, for a temporary period that is the same duration for all travelers.
Border Security. Each nation has the right to limit travel by criminals, citizens of countries from hostile nations, and any individuals reasonably suspected of substantial association with criminal or hostile agents. Each nation has the right to limit the duration of travel visas, except in the case of refugees.
Refuge. Each person has the right to enter the territory of any member nation to flee from war, repression, or genocide, or when deprived of national citizenship. Each refugee has the right to stay for the duration of the event that led to his or her refuge. Each refugee has full rights of return to his or her country of origin.

To preserve these rights, member nations are compelled to accept a portion of the global refugee population proportional to each nation's population compared to the global population. Member nations are also compelled to accept refugees returning to their country or region of origin, regardless of national citizenship or changes in the national government.
Selective Refuge. Each nation has the right to refuse admission to specific individuals or groups of refugees, but the total number of admitted refugees must meet or exceed their proportional quota.
Work. Each person has the right to seek and accept work in any member nation, and may remain in the nation for the duration of his or her work permit. Each person who loses his or her job in another nation has the right to a full-length travel visa, and can stay in a foreign country until the travel visa expires. Every person with a travel visa can seek employment, at which time they are eligible for a work visa.
Employment Security. Each nation can limit the length of work visas, so long as the duration is the same for all foreign workers. Each nation can require foreign workers to leave at the expiration of all work and travel visas for a period not to exceed the combined length of such visas.
Legal rights. Each person has the right to legal redress at the UN to protect their other stated rights. Specific legal rights include a right to counsel, a right against self-incrimination, and a right to a hearing. Each nation has a similar right to legal redress before UN courts, with the same legal rights as individuals.
Freedom from prosecution. The UN has no power to enforce criminal actions against individuals, except to return individuals to face legitimate criminal charges in a member nation. The UN can only enforce the compliance of member nations, by assessing penalties, limiting national voting rights, or suspending or revoking membership for the duration of non-compliance.

To protect these rights, the UN needs power and funding corresponding to each right:

Global Citizenship. The UN will establish full diplomatic missions in every member nation. The UN will offer passport services to anyone who prefers to travel under an international passport. The UN will administer popular UN elections through agreements between its embassies and each national government.
Refugees. The UN will pay to transport and house refugees for the duration of the precipitating crisis for each group of refugees.
Travel and work. The UN will monitor travel and work visas by each member nation, to ensure that the rights of each traveler and worker are respected.
Legal system. The UN will create and adminster a legal framework for defending global citizen rights, and for defending the international treaty rights of member nations, acting as an impartial mediator and arbitrator. Member nations must abide by legal decisions to remain in good standing and retain full member rights.

After establishing rights of individuals and nations, and creating a legal system, the next step would be planning for legislation and administration. The legislative function of the UN would have powers both to raise money and to define international standards and regulations for all member nations. The scale of what the UN can accomplish and how much power it can wield is in large part determined by its funding. To acknowledge the scope of global problems, its budget should at least be on par with the typical nation state. I'd like to see the UN funded relative to member GDP, and fixed at 1% of global GDP, so that each member nation would direct 1% of its GDP to the UN. With current global GDP of over $60 trillion (using PPP figures, for those who care), that would work out to a budget of $600 billion per year, some 30 times the current budget. Jeffrey Sachs has estimated that .7% of world GDP would be sufficient to eliminate global poverty by 2025, leaving some $120 billion for other UN projects.

The structure of the decision-making bodies of the UN is the next big question. Currently, there is a General Assembly of UN ambassadors from each country that has little formal power at all, and a Security Council that can act on security matters alone with the consent of all permanent, veto-wielding nations, and a clear majority of the whole Security Council, which also includes 10 rotating members.

I do think the power of the UN should remain limited by allowing vetoes. However, I think the vetoes should be balanced by population, by wealth, and by regional distribution, and that each veto should be exercised regionally and not by a specific member nation. Each region would then decide how to select a representative to wield its regional veto (or affirmative vote), through a process of discussion and election among the UN ambassadors for each nation in the region. So the Security Council of today would be superseded by Regional Councils of Nations and an Executive Council. Each member of the Executive Council could propose resolutions suggested by members of his or her Regional Council.

To counter the power of the councils, the General Assembly would be made up of popularly elected representatives, each representing a similar number of people (say, 1% of the population, or currently about 70 million people.) The General Assembly could submit resolutions to the Executive Council, and ratify the election of UN officials including the UN President. It could also override one or more Executive vetoes by a margin representing double the population represented by the vetoing regional councilors.

The exact implementation details are not important, though the apportionment should consider both population and GDP of regions and attempt to roughly balance them. Here's one quick take on the Executive Council:

Americas (Currently the US slot): One position, over 850 million people, $16-17 trillion GDP.

Europe (Currently the French slot): One position, almost 500 million people, $12-13 trillion GDP.

Asia, including Australia (Currently the Chinese and Russian slots): Two positions, 4 billion people, $18 trillion GDP.

Africa (Currently the UK slot): One position, 900 million people, $1.6 trillion GDP.

Another approach would be to add more veto slots, with some representing combined national populations in a region, and other representing combined economic zones.

Another alternative would be to grant vetos to the highest population and/or wealthiest countries, enable each veto-holder to form a voting coalition with other nations including other veto-wielding nations, and then weight the vetoes or votes according to the combined population and/or weight of each coalition. Because veto overrides would require a number of General Assembly members representing twice the population and wealth of the nations represented by the veto, it's OK if the weight of each voting coalition is different.

Top five countries by GDP, representing over 68% of the world's production:

EU: $13.1 trillion (separately Germany at 2.4 is the only European country in the top 5)
USA: $12.2 trillion
China: $8.8 trillion
Japan: $3.9 trillion
India: $3.7 trillion

Top countries by population, representing over 52% of the world's people:

China: 1.3 billion
India: 1.1 billion
EU: 500 million (no European country alone is in the top 13, unless you include Russia @ #8)
USA: 300 million
Indonesia: 230 million

That's six countries, four of which are on both lists. If an even ten was preferred, the next countries on the list would be Brazil, Russia, and two of the following: Pakistan, Bangladesh (by population), Canada, Mexico, South Korea (by GDP).

If we start with the current veto holders and then expand based on these stats, we'd have something like:

Europe (previously France): 1
USA: 1
China: 1
Russia: 1
(UK: 1, surrenders veto)
India (takes UK's veto): 1
Japan: 1
Indonesia: 1

Final three to make 10, based on population:

Brazil: 1
Pakistan: 1
Bangladesh: 1

And finally, selecting next on the population list so that Africa is represented:

Nigeria: 1

Interestingly, this same list of eleven countries can be generated by considering the top eleven nations by population alone, as Japan is the 11th most populous nation. These ten nations represent the top ten nations by both GDP (European nations considered separately) and top eleven by population (EU considered as one), and every continent on Earth. They represent 73% of GDP and almost 65% of the world's population. On every vote, each of these countries could wield its veto or affirmative vote alone, or with the added weight of other countries. Because each nation would tend to have more ties with regional neighbors, regions would often join together in a bloc. By continent, then, including only the ten veto-wielding countries, the regions would be:

Asia, six vetos: China, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan; 47.3% population and 29.5% GDP.
Europe, two vetos: EU and Russia; 9.7% population and 23.9% GDP.
North America, one veto: USA, 4.6% population and 19.9% GDP (23.5% with Canada & Mexico).
South America, one veto: Brazil, 2.8% population and 2.6% GDP.
Africa, one veto: Nigeria, 2% population.

In practice, the countries in the first three regions would be able to wield their vetoes as a group and even individually in some cases without soliciting the help of smaller nations. South America and Africa would be better off forming semi-permanent continental blocs, or even a combined bloc. South America as a whole has 5.6% of the population and 4.3% of GDP. Africa as a whole has 13.7% of the population and 2.7% of GDP. Together, at 19.3% population and 7% GDP, they represent a formidable force, particularly if GDP is removed from the equation.

In terms of people on the ground, each nation should be responsible for committing a percentage of the overall effort proportional to the percentage of its population. This would be true both for peacekeepers, and for non-soldier employees in the field.

Getting from here to there is the hard part. I think it actually makes sense to start with reworking the veto, and then once the balance of power is changed, work on increasing funding and the scope of operations. In short, these are the steps:

Britain transfers its veto to India, but retains veto influence within the EU.
France transfers its veto to the European Union as a whole.
Six more vetos are created for the six most populous nations without a current veto: Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Japan. (The elected, rotating members of the Security Council are reduced to four, two for Africa, one for Latin America, and one for the Arab or Persian Middle East.)
The Security Council weights votes by population as a symbolic first step, and allows the elected SC members to add their population weight to any vote or veto by a permanent member.
The Security Council allows General Assembly members to add their weight to any vote by a permanent member, effectively replacing the elected members of the SC.
The Security Council introduces a Security Council override, where the population-weighted votes of the nations voting yes must be at least twice the weighted vote of the vetoing countries.
The Security Council votes to broaden the charter language on security to explicitly include other global issues.
The Security Council submits a new charter with an article of rights, a popularly elected General Assembly, and a taxation system built into trading measures, designed to collect 1% of world GDP for UN projects. As part of this charter, the Security Council becomes the Executive Council. To give legitimacy, the charter must be approved by a majority of all global citizens worldwide, and a veto-proof majority of nations. Any nation that disagrees has the option of leaving the UN and negotiating unilateral agreements with other nations.

2007-02-14T11:42:00.000-08:00

Misplaced priorities
Governor Gregoire announced yesterday that the revised tunnel option proposed by Mayor Nickels for the SR 99 corridor is no longer under consideration. She and the DOT gave several reasons, but the bottom line is that the DOT is more concerned with building a highway than with the effect upon the people who live and work in Seattle.

Transportation policy in Seattle continues to be driven--I choose that metaphor carefully--by the need to push as many cars as possible through the state-owned concrete pipelines called highways. While highways aren't going away and we can't ignore the fact that most people still drive to work, it is foolishly shortsighted to continue to prioritize the movement of cars over the movement of people.

The misplacement of priorities can be seen by comparing funding for public transit compared to funding for highway construction. Highways, including ferries (which are legally highways and almost entirely move cars) together collect 86% of state taxes and receive the same percentage of state funding. About 3% of state transportation revenue is federal and affects the general population. The remaining 11% of taxes, taken from general taxes that apply to everyone in the state whether they use state transportation facilities or not, goes to public transit (8%) and heavy rail (3%). Superficially, this might seem fair, until you realize that public transit serves many of the same transportation corridors as state highways, and that every person using transit represents one less person in a car--and on average almost one less car. Car users are receiving the benefits of transit for free.

The situation seems even less fair when you include local transit funding, which collects anywhere from 20% to 40% of its funding directly from transit fares, and none from car or fuel fees. Now, certainly a portion of these fares account for fuel and other operating costs that in the case of cars on highways are borne privately by drivers. But it's by no means proportional, because the typical $1.50 one-way, one-zone Sound Transit fare is roughly comparable to the amount the average commuter spends on gas each way on their commute. Even including privately-borne insurance and maintenance fees for cars, drivers are paying a much smaller proportion of the marginal costs of their commuting than transit users, who split costs among dozens of people per vehicle trip. In effect, cars are being subsidized by transit users.

Looking at state totals bears this out. The 86% of WSDOT revenue that is paid by highway and ferry users totaled a billion dollars in the last biennium. That's $500 million per year divided among more than 4 million drivers. The out-of-pocket cost in taxes for each driver averages $125/year, or less than $3 per week, on top of the private costs of driving.

A transportation model that fairly balanced costs and benefits and used an integrated roads and transit approach designed to move people rather than cars would result in a completely different funding mechanism. General construction and capital costs for all systems would come equally from general funding, since everyone benefits from transportation infrastructure. The combination of roads and transit would favor transit in order to move more people more cost effectively. Revenue for operational costs would come from people in proportion to how much they contributed to those costs.

In practice, this would work out to a system of highway tolls that collected enough revenue from each vehicle to represent the operational costs of that vehicle to the transportation system. In the case of transit vehicles, that cost would be passed on in the form of fares, as it is now. But drivers would have to pay more. This would also create a situation where the cost per transit trip would fall below the toll cost for a private vehicle. It would also enable transportation projects to move forward more quickly, as rises in highway operations and maintenance costs would be reflected immediately in the cost of tolls to cover the difference.

2007-02-13T16:44:00.000-08:00

This is a satellite view of the West Coast of the United States, from Google Maps. It's sometimes useful to look at the region without regard to political borders.

2007-02-12T15:39:00.000-08:00

Transportation in Seattle
Part two: What to do about it? Answer: Sound Transit Plus
Previous post

Having established that transporation planning in the Seattle area is broken, the question becomes what to do about it. The danger in proposing solutions is that the crux of the problem is one of the Seattle process. Simply put, democratic government in Seattle is broken, at least when it comes to transportation, with too many people having input and no one having the final authority to make a decision.

I have no problem with public involvement when planning the future. That is the essence of democracy. However, when nobody has the power to make a final decision, the public input just becomes a means for doing nothing--or even worse, for an undemocratic result to arise from a lack of official inaction. If public discussion does not result in public action, that's not democracy, it is the very antithesis of democracy. Any solution that adds more input without assigning responsibility for decisions and actions simply compounds the problem.

The question then becomes how can we organize decision-making responsibilities about transportation in Seattle so that the people who live here can contribute to those decisions without preventing our leaders from making clear decisions and acting upon them. Some basic principles are clear:

The Seattle metropolitan region is larger than Seattle, so comprehensive decisions must be regional.
The Seattle metropolitan region has completely different transportation needs from the rest of Washington state, so policies that apply statewide will often be inappropriate for the city.
Because the Department of Transportation has a statewide mandate, it is not the appropriate agency to make transportation decisions in the Seattle metropolitan region.
When two agencies both have decision-making power for the same area, those agencies will fight for their own interests, creating political gridlock. Therefore, only one agency should have decision-making power.
The state has an interest in coordinating metro and statewide projects, so any regional agency should include a representative from the state level to help coordinate regional and state projects.
The state has already designated Sound Transit as a regional agency for the Seattle metropolitan area. The Sound Transit district includes the urban areas in three counties surrounding Seattle that constitute nearly half of the state's population.
Transportation policy is ultimately about moving people and freight, not vehicles. Any effective transportation policy must be technology neutral, and must include all forms of transportation in a corridor as part of a single integrated system designed to move people and freight as quickly as possible.
An integrated system is most efficiently run by a single agency. Therefore, all transportation facilities in the Seattle metropolitan area, including all roads and highways that connect two or more towns or cities, should properly be the responsibility of the regional agency.
The agency that makes transportation decisions must also be able to make decisions about the revenue that it needs to implement those decisions. Therefore:
All state revenue used to support state highways that is currently collected within the metropolitan region must be redirected to the regional agency. Furthermore:
The regional agency must have the power to raise new taxes, without the necessity of expensive and resource-draining public referendums.
To account for this power of taxation, the governing board of the regional agency must include some directly elected representatives. This provides a way for voters to hold their elected officials responsible for transportation decisions.

Interestingly, Sound Transit is well-situated to take on these additional responsibilities. As an agency, it already includes among its board of directors elected leaders from the cities and councils within the Sound Transit district, as well as state representation in the person of the director of the DOT. It needs only three additional powers before it can fulfill the principles above:

Control over state highways within the Sound Transit district.
Statutory power to raise taxes.
Directly elected members on the board of directors.

I call this proposal "Sound Transit Plus." It's funny that I've come to this conclusion, as I was for many years an opponent of Sound Transit, not because of their goals but because of how they were managed. I was also a supporter of the monorail. But I realize now the real problems with Sound Transit are the same as the larger problems of democracy in Seattle. They were competing with other agencies, did not have final say over transportation in the region, and did not (and still do not have) enough money to put their vision into action. The Seattle Monorail Project, as well-intentioned as it was, was fatally flawed because it used city politics to achieve a regional goal. There was simply no way that good management could come from creating a second city-wide government to do what the city council wouldn't--implement a transit system to solve a larger metropolitan problem.

If Sound Transit had the state highway money that is collected within its district, it suddenly becomes a much more effective agency. It can decide whether that money is best spent on beefing up highways as DOT planned, or better used in some combination with transit. They can decide upon the best use of current revenue--mostly gas taxes, sales taxes, and vehicle taxes--and then determine what still needs to be done.

That's when it needs to use the power of the purse to dramatically change the system. Here's what I would recommend:

A system of adaptive congestion tolls on all state highways and major commuting arterials in the Sound Transit district. This system of tolls would have the dual purpose of raising money for road maintenance and transit while also discouraging congestion. This is superior to no tolls, or tolls only on new or selected projects, because it creates market incentives for people to choose transit, carpool or vanpool, choose a less congested (and thus less polluting) route, and forego unnecessary trips. It also prevents people from simply avoiding selected tolls by choosing untolled roads.
Possibly an additional congestion charge for people entering the downtown Seattle core, high enough so that bus and rail alternatives are cheaper than the toll alone.
Additional user fees on cars, when appropriate.
An acceleration of the light rail and commuter rail timeline and scope so that the entire regional system is complete within 15 years, and includes areas not in current planning such as those along the 99 corridor.
In the short-term, retrofit the Alaskan Way Viaduct to prevent its fall during a major earthquake. Make changes to mitigate the eventual loss of the viaduct, including light rail transit and freight transit improvements to the east and south (and possibly making some downtown lanes freight-only north of the viaduct). Do not expand Alaskan Way beyond its current four-lane size. Begin redeveloping the waterfront side of the road. Only after all of these steps are taken, consider whether it is possible to remove the viaduct without replacement.

The state would lose a lot of power and money in this deal, and along with skeptical voters it would be one of the greatest obstacles to these changes. But if it could be brought around, this would free it to redefine its mission. It could:

Consider encouraging other metro areas in the state to develop their own regional transit agencies. The other areas that might qualify include, in order, Spokane, Clark County, Kitsap County, Yakima, Olympia, Bellingham, and the Tri-Cities. The state could develop a threshold for metropolitan size, and then allow metro counties to opt in if they qualify.
Redefine its emphasis to focus on connecting metro regions to each other, and maintaining the current rural highway system, rather than building new highways.
Redirect its new construction money that remains to projects connecting metro areas in the state with metro areas of adjacent states and provinces. A major priority would be regional rail, possibly high-speed, connecting Seattle with Vancouver BC, Olympia, Portland, and Spokane. This could be a model for an eventual renewed national network of high-speed rail.

This may not be possible, but it would certainly fix the current problems with the Seattle process. The remaining questions are ones of political feasibility. How do we get there from here? That's an open question that I will likely revisit in future posts.

2007-02-12T12:27:00.000-08:00

Transportation in the Seattle metropolitan area
Part one: Background to political gridlock

Decision-making about transportation in the Seattle metropolitan area is broken. Seattle is seen, mostly rightfully, as a relatively progressive city. Despite this, for decades it has been collectively incapable of making decisions that result in a transit system worthy of the city's reputation and aspirations.

Like many American cities, Seattle ripped up its old streetcar rail lines in the early-to-mid 20th century, convinced that cars had rendered them obsolete. As cars multiplied, Seattle built highways and freeways and more freeways. As early as the 1960s, while this freeway boom was still at its height (it is still ongoing), some people began to ask if there were better ways to move people. Several attempts were made to build commuter and light rail systems in the city, but all efforts failed until the state created a "Regional Transportation Authority" in the early 1990s, which created a regional agency with authority in the urban areas of the three counties making up the larger Seattle metropolitan area--and nearly half of the state's population. The agency's "Sound Move" plan was approved by voters in the district in the 1996 general election, and Sound Transit was born.

Sound Transit's plan expanded bus service, but also began building regional commuter rail and light rail lines. The early years of the agency were marked by mismanagement and cost-overruns. The voters approved a 25-mile light-rail line that would stretch from Seattle-Tacoma airport to the Northgate Mall north of downtown by 2006, but that was pared down to a 14-mile line running from downtown to almost two miles short of the airport, a few years later. By the turn of the century, even many progressives had soured on Sound Transit, seeing an expensive system that didn't even get people out of Seattle proper, much less throughout the region.

Partly in response to the early failures of Sound Transit, voters within the city of Seattle launched a multi-year grassroots initiative to build a monorail system within the city limits. The vision began with a citywide system that would in part duplicate Sound Transit's plan, but the original thinking was that Sound Transit was so mired in the notorious "Seattle process" that it might never get built. As the monorail plan moved forward, it became clear that Sound Transit would build its truncated line, and studies showed that the corridor most overlooked by Sound Transit and most likely to benefit from a monorail was on the west side of the city, connecting the West Seattle neighborhood on the other side of Elliott Bay from Downtown, to Downtown, and then to the Ballard neighborhood in north Seattle on the other side of the Lake Washington Ship Canal. This was the "Green Line" monorail proposal that was passed by the voters.

Unfortunately for the monorail, the funding attached to the Green Line proposal ended up 30% short of estimates. This eventually led to the demise of the plans for the monorail, after a complicated episode involving a flip-flop by Mayor Greg Nickels and an anti-monorail campaign that dishonestly used the full multi-decade financing costs of the monorail in future dollars to make it seem as expensive as possible.

Meanwhile, the Washington State Department of Transportation was planning more state highways. Despite its name, the WSDOT is really a highway-building agency. It funds no mass transit projects. It controls several highways in the Seattle metro area, the two largest of which are SR-520 and SR-99. 520 is one of two cross-lake corridors that connects Seattle to Bellevue and other Eastside suburbs. The other corridor is served by Interstate 90. The 520 floating bridge and most of the highway that supports it was completed in the 1960s, and is now seriously past its prime. Similarly, the 99 corridor, once part of old US Highway 99 running from Canada to Mexico in the days before Interstate 5, is in serious disrepair. In downtown Seattle, the central portion runs on a raised highway--the Alaskan Way Viaduct--built in the 1950s for a much smaller volume of traffic than it now supports, which was significantly damaged in the 2001 earthquake. The state has drawn up multi-billion dollar plans to rebuild both highways, expanding capacity and bringing them up to current seismic and safety standards.

This is where the political mess begins. The political leaders of the city want to tear down the viaduct, put in a super-expensive tunnel, and "reconnect" the business district with the watefront where the viaduct set them apart. While the viaduct is a relatively short segment, it covers extremely valuable real estate that would be redeveloped if the viaduct came down--think huge dollars for downtown developers and real estate investors. The state was initially on board with the city, because the tunnel was a huge expensive freeway project that would fit within their highway-building mandate. The DOT put together several options for the corridor, ranging from a retrofit to a rebuild to a tunnel. It eventually narrowed down its options to tunnel or rebuild, initially pushing more strongly for the tunnel. However, as the true costs of the tunnel became clear--we're talking Big Dig territory in terms of money and disruption to the city, and involving rebuilding a seawall that keeps Elliott Bay away from the low-lying parts of downtown--the tunnel ran into huge resistance.

The opponents of the tunnel were in a few camps. Some suggested a rebuild would be cheaper, but that threatened the plans of the Mayor and his downtown supporters to redevelop the waterfront. Others suggested a retrofit of the current bridge, which also threatened the Mayor's redevelopment plan and left a 50-year old highway in place. Still others, wanting to move the city away from its reliance on cars, suggested tearing the viaduct down and reconnecting city streets, and using the money saved for parks and ecological restoration on Elliott Bay. This last position eventually became known as "Surface Plus Transit." The transit was originally going to be the monorail Green Line and possibly increased bus service to that line.

When the monorail was finally rejected in November 2005, the situation with the viaduct became even more complicated. Without transit along the corridor, pressure to rebuild the highway grew. But it also became clear that federal and state money to support the project would not be forthcoming, not at the newly inflated estimates for the tunnel. It would even be difficult to raise money for the rebuild. With the pool of available financing shrinking, and with plans to replace 520 gaining steam, the various factions became more intractable. The Mayor kept pushing for the tunnel, while the state (both the DOT and the Legislature) started backing away and pushing for the rebuild. The problem is that neither the state nor the city has final authority for the project. The city has the ability to block permits for construction, and the state has the highway funding. The political stalemate came to a head when Governor Gregoire told Seattle local officials that if they did not choose between the options, she would choose for them, and her choice was the rebuild. Within a couple of weeks, Gregoire backed off a bit and said that the city had the option of choosing one or the other, and that if they did not choose, she would use the money for 520 instead, leaving an earthquake-weakened structure intact and the nearby seawall that was also old and damaged and in danger of collapsing in any future earthquakes.

The city council responded by calling for a spring election with two non-binding votes on the rebuild and tunnel options. The surface plus transit folks were ignored. So now we have a huge standoff between Democratic politicians at the local and state level, and everyone else so upset that pressure is growing for a "No-No" vote in the advisory elections. If this happens, it's likely that the state will take the money originally set aside for the viaduct and use it for 520, and the city will be left with an aging highway and no redevelopment of the waterfront. This standoff has led to continued city-state negotiations, but it's likely that nothing will be decided before the advisory elections, if ever.

Meanwhile, Sound Transit has finally gotten its act together somewhat, and is building light rail. The existing bus tunnel is being retrofitted for rail, and rails are being laid throughout the line. The first portion of the line is scheduled for completion by summer 2009, from downtown to 1.7 miles short of the airport. The connection to the airport will follow by the end of 2009, and is already under construction. An expansion to the original planned northern termimus at Northgate Mall has been set aside, but Sound Transit is well on the way to securing federal funding for an expansion to the University of Washington by 2016. They have also conducted voter surveys and initial planning for an expansion of the line post-2016 to the suburban Eastside (passing through downtown Bellevue and terminating near Microsoft headquarters), and northward past the original planned terminus at Northgate, all the way to the suburb of Lynnwood. That proposal will be put to the ballot soon, and is likely to pass. They've also built and planned for expansion for a smaller light-rail line in Tacoma and supplementary commuter rail from Everett to south of Tacoma.

But here's the downside. 2016? For a line that doesn't even match the original plan for 2006? For a system that doesn't reach the suburbs until 2030? For a system that doesn't connect any of Seattle's west-side neighborhoods, those connected to downtown through the viaduct route? It's a disaster and an embarrassment. Transportation in the Seattle metropolitan area is broken, and residents of the area need to do something dramatic to change it, now. I'll describe some of my ideas about what should be done in upcoming posts.

2006-10-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

More on recent global warming

From the Seattle Times (though it's originally from the Chicago Tribune):

RESOLUTE BAY, Nunavut — They never used to need air conditioners up in the Arctic.
But officials in the Canadian Inuit territory of Nunavik authorized the installation of air conditioners in official buildings this year for the first time. Artificial cooling was necessary, they decided, because summer temperatures in some southern Arctic villages have climbed into the 80s in recent years.
Inuit families in the region never used to need to shop for groceries, either. But the Arctic seas that stayed frozen well into the summer have started breaking open much earlier, cutting off hunters from the seasonal caribou herds on which their families depend for sustenance.
And experienced Inuit hunters, as comfortable reading ice conditions as professional golfers are reading greens, had seldom fallen through the ice and drowned. But this year in Alaska, more than 12 vanished into the sea.

The effects of global climate change are no longer potential. They are actually happening. I wrote about the effects in my part of the world this summer. When are we going to do something about it?

2006-09-29T16:32:00.000-07:00

I am an enemy combatant

Fellow Enemy Combatants:

The Senate of the United States, the US House of Representatives, and soon the American president have colluded to declare us all, Americans and un-Americans, unlawful enemy combatants. They have yet to fill out the paperwork making it official for most of us, but they've announced their legal right to do so at any time in the future.

We are supposed to be comforted that the new legislation retains the right of habeas corpus for American citizens. The other 95% of the world's population? Any of them can be kidnapped at the order of our president, thrown in jail forever without charge or trial, deprived of sleep, subjected to disorienting sounds pummeled in through high-decibel loudspeakers, left in rooms barely above freezing, and waterboarded, with no legal recourse outside of the same military authorities that have kidnapped and tormented them. It's even legal to kill people during interrogation if it's an "accident." Us lucky citizens, we can just be labeled, kidnapped and given a public defender (or spend our life savings getting real representation) in order to defend ourselves against the same list of practices.

We are supposed to forget that three years ago our same government floated the idea of "Patriot II" (PDF) legislation that would enable the government to strip people of their citizenship and deport them for providing "material support" to terrorists. Under this proposal, anyone giving money to a group labeled as terrorist would be subject to the new provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006. We are supposed to be comforted that Patriot II has not yet been introduced, even though there is little preventing Congress from reviving the legislation at any time. We are supposed to be comforted by the idea that surely our government would never falsely accuse us of terrorism, even though we know it has done so for thousands of others so far. We are supposed to feel confident that the same Congress that happily signed off on waterboarding by a 31-vote margin would not possibly vote for Patriot II. We are supposed to be confident in the Democratic Party or the Supreme Court to one day reverse some or all of this legislation.

I'm not confident that any of this will be reversed. I'm not comforted that the destruction of our rights is still not complete. I haven't forgotten what has been done to take away our rights, and I don't trust this government not to do more of what it has already admitted it wants done. Already, the Congress has begun debate to massively expand wiretapping efforts against American citizens.

Make no mistake, we are all targets of this government. Until we end the current administration and its Congressional rubber stamp and restore our previous rights, until we repeal not only the Military Commissions Act but the entire original Patriot Act itself, until we refuse our consent for this madness, we will remain active targets of our government. Denial is not an option. George W. Bush has said that we are either with him, or against him. If so, I am against him. So long as there are enemy combatants with no rights as defined by the whim of the president, any president, I am an enemy combatant. And so are you.

(Cross-posted at: http://llachglin.livejournal.com/50833.html)

2006-08-30T15:07:00.000-07:00

I like maps

Here's a map of North American watersheds (2MB) that I found at the Commission for Environmental Cooperation:

It really helps to visualize the local watersheds and regions that make up Cascadia. The seaboard watersheds north of California (in mint green) and the light green range of the Columbia River watershed show its maximum extent. Note how the Puget Sound/Strait of Georgia area is a single watershed from the Fraser River to the Nisqually River. That's the heart of Cascadia, though I'd also include the Willamette River and Cowlitz River valleys for historical and cultural reasons--even though they are tributaries of the Columbia--along with southern Vancouver Island and the Olympic and northern Oregon coasts.

It's also a good demonstration of the other major ecoregions in North America. This raises an issue concerning management of our waterways. Wouldn't it make more sense to have bioregional management for the major systems, rather than relying upon the national and state governments do it? These are clearly federal issues because they cross state boundaries, so each national government could reasonably enact legislation creating watershed districts. Those that cross national boundaries could empower watershed districts by treaty, maybe as a modification to NAFTA. The organization that made this map, the CEC, was established as a supplement to NAFTA, so there's precedent for greater cooperation. It's just a matter of expanding the environmental agreement.

For North America, I see the following continental watershed districts based on this map, 23 in total:

Arctic
Yukon
Mackenzie/Slave/Bear
Hudson Bay
Saskatchewan River
Great Lakes/St. Lawrence River
North Pacific (the rest of Alaska, and BC north of the Strait of Georgia)
Puget Sound/Strait of Georgia/Olympics (Cascadia proper)
Columbia
Pacific Coast (Oregon and California)
Mexican Pacific (Baja to Chiapas)
Mexican Atlantic
Mexican Interior
Colorado River
Nevada (no outlets to the sea)
Rio Grande
Texas
Missouri River
Arkansas River
Ohio River
Mississippi River
Gulf Coast
Atlantic Coast

That would shrink the management scope from something like 97 governments (including federal governments, states, provinces, and territories), many of which are fighting over jurisdiction, to 23 each with a clearly-defined mandate. There would be some sharing of responsibility for major tributary systems to larger rivers (Missouri and Mississippi, say), as well as for all watersheds opening into a common part of the ocean (such as those around the Gulf of Mexico.

2006-08-30T13:39:00.000-07:00

What this is about, Part II

So now that I've set the stage with my discussion of bioregionalism in Cascadia, what does it actually mean in terms of specific topics of interest for this blog? The short answer is that any topic that relates to this framework, starting from my personal life and working outward to issues of global importance, is relevant here. Anyone who shares interest in these same topics is welcome to comment, even if your own personal and regional context is quite different. In fact, I particularly welcome comments from people in other parts of the world who nevertheless feel a sense of common experience or perspective. By enjoying the common ground that brings us together, we broaden the scope of the communities in which we live. On the Internet, many of those communities are united in experience despite strong geographical differences and long distances.

Personal issues relevant to this blog include my own personal experiences of and reflections on life in Cascadia that speak to broader concerns. These are likely to be the least common, but could range all over the map of possibility.

Local issues include:

The health of local watersheds, including possible daylighting of urban creeks, including Horse Creek in my own neighborhood
Water quality and animal and fish habitat in local creeks, the Sammamish River, and the greater Lake Washington watershed.
The protection of local wetlands and urban biodiversity in general, and the coexistence of humans and animals in urban and suburban environments.
Sustainable development and urban density, focusing on projects and policies in my immediate area in the northshore of Lake Washington, and particularly Bothell.
Occasional architecture musing and whining.
The protection of green space and parks.
Cycling trails and facilities.
Future transportation options between my local area and nearby towns and cities. Muttering about the lack of rail options in the Northshore area, and lamentations about Lynnwood.
Road projects that affect life in the area.
Cleaning up local air and water. Why I'm not bothered about the waste treatment plant and related pipeline in my neighborhood.

Regional issues include:

The water quality and bio-diversity in Puget Sound and other interior waters of the Pacific Northwest including British Columbia.
The health of local forests and other important ecosystems such as fisheries. What's the proper mix of ecological, recreational, and industrial uses?
Regional transportation issues. Why is monorail dead, and is there a place for it in the future? What's good and bad about Sound Transit? Why is there no prospect for high-speed rail? When can we stop favoring cars over everything else? Why can't Seattle and its environs ever get this right? What can we learn from Vancouver and Portland?
Urban and suburban sprawl in the Puget Sound region, and how to prevent it. The state's Growth Management Act. The King County Critical Areas Ordinance. The lies of "wise use."
Education
Local economics and important industries and companies
Lowering barriers at the US-Canadian border
Regional earthquake and other disaster preparedness
Other county, state, and regional cross-border issues

Global issues include:

Climate change and the health of our oceans and atmosphere
Poverty, disease, and underdevelopment
Natural disaster management
War
The impact of trade
Immigration
The proper role of international agreements and organizations, and how to integrate them with local and regional concerns.
National issues when I simply can't avoid ranting (or more rarely, raving) about them.

I'm not really an expert on any of these subjects. I studied history and political science extensively and my bachelor's degree relates to those areas. But mostly I'm just interested in these subjects as an informed citizen and resident in this part of the world.

2006-08-30T11:43:00.000-07:00

So what's all this about, anyway?

When I created a blog called "The Daily Cascadian," I risked committing myself to three principles inherent in the title:

First, the name suggests posts on a regular schedule. If taken literally, I should have something to say each day. Additionally, when I post the content should relate in some way to this nebulous thing called "Cascadia." Finally, the definite article suggests that my efforts are unique. There may be other daily blogs and other Cascadian ones, but this is the Daily Cascadian.

On all three points, I'm sure to fall short, which is why my title is more a suggestion and goal than an outright declaration. But I should at least clarify what I consider the domain and purpose of this site.

First, it's a place for me to write about things that are not solely personal, that have a larger social impact beyond me and my immediate friends and relatives, and may be of interest to anyone who stumbles onto my site. This means that I will sometimes opine about the larger world beyond "Cascadia." But the name is intended to be a focus, a reminder to ground even my larger commentary in my own experience, and in the context of the communities of which I am a part. My intention is to relate most posts back to this conceptual center.

"Cascadia" is a bit of a problematic word. As I've already mentioned, it doesn't have a commonly-agreed definition. Most people who live in the area, no matter how it is defined, are probably not familiar with the term, and would likely resist the concept even if they were. In particular, Canadians in British Columbia are usually mystified by the idea and often annoyed. It's a term that can be simultaneously provincial and mistaken for nationalist. It can be seen to threaten existing national, regional, and cultural identities, while also implying new divisions.

When I speak of Cascadia, I don't speak of a different national identity, and I don't intend for it to threaten existing labels or concepts. To me, it is simply a description for my personal regional community. It is a way of overcoming barriers and seeking common ground. It's a framework that adds to our collective understanding of ourselves. It suggests new ways that people from different backgrounds who share a common region of the world can cooperate to make their shared world better.

Ultimately, "Cascadia" is an ecological concept, which is only secondarily social or political. As humans, we are part of a larger ecology that we have a tremendous capacity to change. That means we have a responsibility to act consciously within an ecological framework. This responsibility has personal and political consequences.

The World Wildlife Fund, one of the most prominent organizations to support global biodiversity, popularized the concept of the "ecoregion" or "bioregion." An ecoregion is defined as:

"A large area of land or water that contains a geographically distinct assemblage of natural communities that:
(a) share a large majority of their species and ecological dynamics;
(b) share similar environmental conditions, and;
(c) interact ecologically in ways that are critical for their long-term persistence. "

The WWF defines 8 major ecozones and 867 ecoregions (counting only terrestrial areas and not marine areas). One of those ecozones is the Nearctic, which is nearly identical to what is now North America. It is ecologically distinct because it exists on a continental plate that was separated from others long enough to develop a unique ecosystem.

One interesting thing to note about these ecozones is how much they change over time and how much they interact in the global ecosytem. For example, all canines, camel-like creatures, and equines originated in North America, as did the Cheetah, though most of those creatures have been found predominantly outside of the area throughout recorded history.

My ecoregion, as defined by the WWF, is the "Puget lowland forests" ecoregion. It includes the coastal areas around Puget Sound and nearby interior coastal waters from Vancouver, BC to Olympia, WA. 95% of this ecoregion has been altered by urbanization and agriculture, so ecological issues largely concern the health and welfare of the people here, and maintaining what biological diversity remains in the context of the larger region's ecology.

The Puget lowlands forest ecoregion is part of a larger grouping of "temperate coniferous forests" ecoregions in North America. Adjacent eco-regions include the "British Columbia mainland coastal forests," the "Cascade Mountains leeward forests," the "Central and Southern Cascades forests," and the "Central Pacific coastal forests" (Vancouver Island, the Olympic Peninsula, and the coastal ranges in Oregon). Some non-WWF ecoregion classification systems include all of these areas as a single ecoregion. Collectively, they make up the heart of what I call "Cascadia."

Surrounding these ecoregions are the "Fraser Plateau and Basin complex ," the "Okanogan dry forests," the"Central British Columbia Mountain forests," and the "Eastern Cascades forests." These represent a secondary region that can be seen as part of a broader "Cascadia."

Further out (from north to south) are the "Northern Pacific coastal forests" around Prince William Sound in Alaska, the "Northern transitional alpine forests" east of the Alaskan panhandle in British Columbia, the "Pacific Coastal Mountain icefields and tundra" bio-region which is the only tundra bio-region in this grouping of temperate forests, the "Queen Charlotte Islands" in coastal BC, the "Blue Mountains forests," and the "Klamath-Siskiyou forests"in Oregon and northern California. These regions have much in common with the Cascadian regions, but with the possible exception of the last region are far enough removed from the Cascades that the term is not really appropriate. However, they could be grouped with the Cascadian regions as part of a larger "Pacific Coast" super-region.

Finally, there are several interior ecoregions in Eastern Washington and Oregon, north-central British Columbia, northern California, and Alaska that could be seen as part of the larger region. They connect to the coastal regions through common watersheds, particularly those along major rivers such as the Fraser River, the Columbia River, the Snake River, and their tributaries.

These are the natural regions to which I feel some local affinity, starting with those closest to me and working outward. Any farther out beyond these regions, and my interest is as a human being and concerned foreigner. They relate more closely to the global view in which my region and super-region interact with other parts of the planet.

These areas collectively define my geographical regions of interest, and mark an ecological framework that's useful in focusing my personal, social, and political concerns and relating them to a broader context. My interest corresponds well to the concept of bioregionalism, in which ecoregions help to define the political, cultural, and ecological milieu and decision-making processes of people within each region. Rather than replace our existing political and social processes, I see bioregionalism as a helpful concept that can lead to new processes and institutions, as well as individual choices and behaviors, that supplement the effectiveness of existing institutions.

So, hopefully I haven't lost everyone by now. In future posts, I'll build on the foundation of bioregionalism to explain the key issues that are important to me as someone who lives in this particular part of the world and is interested in what happens both here and on the planet as a whole.

2006-08-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

Cascadia Heats Up

Global warming is killing the Pacific Northwest Coast.

From the Oregonian:

Ocean scientists took their first look Tuesday into the oxygen-starved "dead zone" spreading off the Oregon Coast and were shocked by what they saw: a lifeless wasteland of thousands of dead crabs, starfish and no live fish at all...
...Dead Dungeness crabs off Cape Perpetua, just south of Yachats, "were like jellybeans in a jar. You just can't count them, there were so many."
Oxygen levels in places along the central Oregon Coast have sunk to the lowest levels ever recorded on the West Coast of the United States, said Francis Chan, a marine ecologist at Oregon State University and the Partnership for Interdisciplinary Studies of Coastal Oceans, an alliance of research institutions.
Scientists suspect swings in the Earth's climate tied to global warming may be shifting wind conditions to bring about such grim results.

Right now, the dead zone is complete in only a few spots, but signs of low oxygen levels stretch for 70 linear miles, and reportedly 2100 square miles total.

The Seattle Times tries to blunt the impact by noting that crab harvests in Oregon in some places have hit records, but it makes sense that if crabs were fleeing low-oxygen areas they might be more plentiful in other areas in the short-term, until those areas are fished or the extent of the dead zone expands. Needless to say, I don't feel too confident that a decent crab harvest in places is a good sign.

There are other worrying signs in our region recently, including a sighting in Oregon of a rare "king-of-salmon" fish associated with warm waters, and an epidemic of shellfish poisoning in Hood Canal associated with unusually warm temperatures. Hood Canal is something of a bellwether because its shape and location make it particularly susceptible. There's also a huge algae bloom off Vancouver Island this summer, again associated with warm waters.

This should be a big story locally, but it was a throwaway article yesterday or today depending upon the newspaper, and the TV is focused on terrorism hysteria and war (I had to stumble over a blog post to find it myself). But this is the real big story, not just locally but at any level. Our way of life is killing the sea, and with it the natural heritage we need to survive and thrive. Nothing is more important.

Oh, and it's not just the Northwest. A similar warming trend has been noticed in California, which is experiencing El Nino like conditions even though it's not an El Nino year.

Maybe the consistency with global warming models is coincidental, though with similar symptoms apparent in other places around the world such as the English Channel, the coincidences start to become too numerous to dismiss. It could just be a bad year, but the problem with climate change is that it's indistinguishable at the local level from a bad year. Regardless of the full range of causes and in the absence of certainty, we ought to take this threat very seriously. That means examining the global picture and taking reasonable precautions based upon the global model.

2006-08-04T12:07:00.000-07:00

Cascadia

I've chosen to label this site as Cascadian because that regional identity is an important part of who I am. My family has history in the region going back four generations, when my paternal great-grandfather, a Finnish immigrant, arrived in this country during the first decade of the 20th century. Victor Hujanen entered the country in New York, passed through Finnish immigrant communities in the Midwest, and ended up working copper mines in Butte, Montana.

That was a time of great immigrant and labor unrest, and Victor was deeply involved in the local unions, including the radical Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as the Wobblies. The Wobblies supported worker's rights and free speech, demonized the management class, disregarded electoral and partisan politics, and called for industrial democracy through "one big union" rather than several distinct unions. None of this sat well with the powers that be or the more conservative elements of society, and several violent episodes involving the Wobblies and their enemies occurred throughout the country, but particularly in the Northwest.

My grandfather was born in Butte in 1917, and a few years later the whole family moved to Aberdeen, Washington, a coastal logging and fishing town with a history of labor radicalism. Victor's lungs were failing from years working in the mines, and he took a job as a barber. My grandpa grew up spending much of his time in the old Finn Hall, a Wobbly watering hole and social gathering place, where politics, music, eating, and drinking combined to cement the community. The town was divided at the time by political and ethnic factions. The rival Red Hall, with some Finns and Russians, was supportive of the Bolshevik revolution. As a child, my grandpa and his friends often engaged in rivalry with the Swedish kids living just across the river, forming gangs whose activities never got more serious than throwing rocks and chasing each other around town. His gang was the "River Rats."

As he grew up, my grandpa realized he had a talent for playing the fiddle. The guys at the Finn Hall recognized this and pooled money to send him off to music school at Cornish in Seattle. This was in the middle of the Great Depression, and he ended up working various jobs until war came. Shortly after the war began, granda joined the Army Air Force and was stationed at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas as an aircraft mechanic. While he was there, he met and married my grandmother, the daughter of a German-American immigrant who was also German Consul to the state of Texas. Fortunately, he was never deployed abroad and spent the entire war in Texas.

My father was born in 1944. In the late 1940s they moved to Seattle. Victor died of black lung disease near that time, and my great-grandmother remarried Tom Brown, a local activist in the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU). Tom found my grandpa a job as a longshoreman. He ended up working there, and at the Seattle Symphony as a violinist, until his retirement from both in the 1980s.

My mom, meanwhile, was born in 1947 to parents who had worked in Seattle during the war. They moved back to North Dakota for a few years to join the extended family, but relatively quickly returned to Seattle. My parents met in 1964 at the old Flag Pavilion in Seattle Center, site of the 1962 World's Fair. The event was a summer hootenanny for the presidential campaign of Lyndon Johnson, who was fighting the war on poverty and promised to keep the nation out of war.

I was born in Seattle, on Capitol Hill, in 1969, the second of their children. Despite having four generations of family history here, my siblings and I are the first to be born in Washington (though western Montana is certainly part of the greater Northwest.)

As a Northwesterner, I grew up appreciating fishing, hiking, boating, sailing, and clamming. Of all those regional pastimes of my youth, the hiking was the only one that really took. I learned to love the outdoors and particularly the natural beauty of the local mountains and forests. As I grew up, I saw those forests come under attack, from unsustainable logging, ill-conceived suburban sprawl, and industrial pollution. I saw old farm and foothill towns turned into outer suburbs. I saw the ability to make decisions about our region's resources and ways of life outsourced to transnational corporations and the federal government in Washington, DC. I began to realize that I identified more with my regional background than with my national background. I saw that our nation was going awry, and that nationalism was taking over for national community. I consider myself first a human, and then a political liberal, and when it comes to geographic identity the region comes first. The Pacific Northwest is my home, and I am a Northwesterner. But that's a mouthful, and now there's another word that means more or less the same thing: Cascadian.

I'm still an American, and I admire American ideals even as they are realized less frequently and the reality of the American nation becomes uglier. I don't think that those ideals and that identity should be abandoned. But I think that all Americans, regardless of where we live, can find ways to improve our way of life by rejecting a blind nationalism and integrating our regional identities into how we see ourselves and how we live our lives. Some of our collective decisions make more sense at the regional level, defined by a common geographical history and destiny.

Cascadia can be defined many ways, but at its heart it is the natural bioregion that includes the Cascade Mountains and all of the waterways that connect those mountains to Puget Sound and other interior coastal waters that lead eventually to the Pacific Ocean. The Cascades run from just north of the Canadian border to Mount Shasta in northern California. Some people include Lassen Peak in the Cascades, but in most respects it's better seen as part of the Sierra Nevadas. Cascadia proper then is the coastal area between Vancouver BC and the Fraser River Valley in the north, and Humboldt County and the Klamath River Valley in the south. Because the Columbia River passes through the mountains and is fed by rivers on the east side of the Cascades, the basic definition includes several counties east of the mountains as well. This region includes some of the most spectacular mountains in North America, including several active volcanoes in Washington and Oregon. It includes three great regional cities in Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland. It includes a huge interior coastal region that crosses national borders. It includes the world's largest temperate rain forests.

Other people would define Cascadia more broadly. If the Columbia River fed from the Cascades is part of Cascadia, some would conclude that its entire length and all of its other tributaries count as well. This is also true of tributaries of other cross-mountain rivers such as the Skagit and Klamath and Fraser. This definition expands Cascadia, via the Snake River and other large tributaries of the Columbia, through Idaho and western Montana to the Rockies. This view often includes east of the Cascades rivers that don't eventually cross the mountains to the west, adding much of Oregon and a significant chunk of northern California.

Still others, noting the common anthropological, historical, and geographical features of the larger Pacific Northwest, expand the notion of Cascadia to include much of British Columbia and even parts of Alaska. The largest definition of Cascadia includes all water basins flowing into the Pacific north of the Sierra Nevada mountains, even though the Cascades themselves only cover a minority of that land. Most of the people in the expanded view of Cascadia would not agree with this regional identity (Alaskas see themselves as Alaskans, not Northwesterners), so it's usually a better idea to stick with the less expansive view.

So that's Cascadia. I'll sometimes post about issues relevant to my home region, and I'm posting here as Cascadian, even when I'm talking about national, international, or other non-regional topics.

2006-08-04T11:50:00.000-07:00

The Daily Cas

The Daily Cascadian is intended as a journal of personal, political, and cultural thoughts, updated regularly (though perhaps not daily). I am a native of the Pacific Northwest whose perspective tends to range all over the liberal-progressive-left-wing side of the map, though my specific views can be iconoclastic.

This site and its URL is in no way associated with Daily Kos, The Daily Olympian, or any other similarly named publication online or off. It just seemed slightly clever and memorable, and wasn't taken. There is one Google result for "The Daily Cascadian," but it's a single passing hypothetical reference by someone posting in Eugene, OR in 1998, and I figure if they haven't done anything with the name since then there's no reason I can't.