I am getting a packet ready. My colleagues in ministry know what that means, sorting though the photographs. Hmmm. Put that in. Take that out.
I thought I would include a few pics of a younger Clyde.
Current Affairs: March 2006 Archives
I reprint here a study of one state, but all states have similar problems with automobiles. Florida's emergency rooms are in crisis because of auto accidents.
Car reliance is roadblock for California
By Paul Dorn which was an op-ed article published in the Sacramento Bee, 01/23/05
In his second State of the State speech on January 5, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger put his finger on the major source of California's financial distress. "This is a car-centered state," said the Governor.
Unfortunately, Governor Schwarzenegger failed to identify this dependency on automobiles as a problem. "Californians can't get from place to place on little fairy wings," said the Governor. "We need roads."
The Governor's condescension aside, there is a growing recognition that California's over-reliance on cars is hurting our economic competitiveness, harming our health, damaging our environment, and emptying our bank accounts. We can no longer afford our expensive car habit, which costs us plenty beyond the considerable expense of roads, vehicles, fuel, insurance, and maintenance.
Housing
California's high housing costs challenge low- and moderate-income workers while hurting business' ability to attract top-flight talent. This affordable housing crisis is exacerbated by our car-centered transportation system. The huge acreage needed for the movement and parking of automobiles drives up the cost of the remaining land. This expansive pavement reduces our community's tax base, shifting the tax burden onto the non-paved properties, again raising the cost of housing. Precious public money devoted to road maintenance and construction diverts funds away from affordable housing development, education, healthcare and other useful social spending. Off-street garage parking--often required by outdated zoning codes--adds even more to the costs of residential construction.
Healthcare
Motor vehicle crashes kill more than 4,000 Californians every year, and 310,000 car crash survivors require expensive ambulance response, emergency room care, pharmaceutical treatments, and lengthy rehabilitation. This highway carnage adds stress on our heavily burdened healthcare system, driving up the costs of insurance and medical care. Our health care costs are further increased by automobile-related stress, noise, toxic emissions, and the obesity-inducing sedentary lifestyle facilitated by our drive-thru car culture.
Water
Managing California's water resources for the needs of residents, agriculture, industry, and wildlife is a serious challenge, made more severe by the impact of our car dependency. Auto-derived toxins and particulates contaminate surface water sources. Leaky underground tanks at the thousands of gas stations needed to fuel our vehicles contaminate groundwater. Our car-dependent sprawl hinders the replenishment of aquifers, and contributes to erosion and heavy silting of streambeds.
Investment
The considerable expense of owning and maintaining an automobile contributes to the abysmally low savings rate of Americans. Yet this expensive automobile is parked for 90 percent of its lifespan, representing a huge amount of social wealth tied up in rusting automotive metal. Even more capital is consumed in a Sisyphean task of maintaining roads and streets to barely accommodate ever growing traffic. The incredible amount of social wealth needed to support auto-dependency means fewer resources are available for more productive investment, slowing our economic growth and holding down wages.
***
For decades, California's transportation spending has heavily favored automobiles. We are now paying the price of this unbalanced policy. Improving the efficiency of California's transportation system will require a more balanced, multimodal approach that includes transit, walking, and bicycling. We also need policies to better connect transportation investment with land use to discourage destructive and expensive sprawl.
Certainly, as Governor Schwarzenegger suggests, California needs more roads. But we are in greater need of sidewalks, bike lanes, transit systems, and passenger rail. Above all, we need political leadership to tackle the costly auto-addiction of our "car-centered state."
Paul Dorn is executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition (www.calbike.org).
Robert Cornwell writes:
It has taken more than three years, tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, and $200bn (£115bn) of treasure - all to achieve a chaos verging on open civil war. But, finally, the neo-conservatives who sold the United States on this disastrous war are starting to utter three small words. We were wrong.
I read the Feminine Mystique as an undergraduate over forty years ago. My woman friend at the time had read the Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1949) and challenged me to read it. I didn't find de Beauvoir's analysis applied my experience, and always the polemicist, I argued Betty Friedan understood America. I hadn't struggled with Marx yet, and so getting de Beauvoir was beyond my liberal comprehension of the time. I now understand the difference between the two books, between phenomenological analysis and journalism, but in 1963 I found Friedan related more to my experience.
I am re-reading the Feminine Mystique now. Betty Friedan is dead, and she was one of those constants in my life as the decades passed. I forgot what she said in the book, I just knew that it had been part of revolutionizing my consciousness and informing my critique of systemic oppressions. Re-reading it I recognize that my analysis is much deeper and more developed than what is presented in this book. I had imagined it as being profound, because that is how I remembered its impact on me. Women according to Friedan had been shaped by a "mystique" formed by popular culture in the 1950s that made being a mother and housewife the highest calling that a women could aspire to, but women yearned to exercise their talents by productive work in the world. The culture scorned this attitude, and so women repressed the desire for creative and meaningful work, much like Victorian women had repressed their sexuality. The result was depression, shopping till they dropped, excessive use of drugs and frequent visits to the therapist. A little too limited to the middle class experience of the 1950s I would say now, but I was an undergraduate and most of the women I knew were struggling with the reality that Friedan described.
Friedan had more influence on my generation than de Beauvoir. But in time I came to prefer advocates who saw the connection between race, class and gender, beginning with Angela Davis and other Marxists who went beyond dogma to analysis. Now I read women theologians and ethicists and Betty Friedan doesn't compel me as she did in 1963. But I probably would never have been prepared to read Sharon Welch without Betty Friedan. Thanks for being there then, and later.
Many Unitarian Universalists say that they want to deal with issues of class in America. Many of the social justice issues that Unitarian Universalists work with directly confront economic injustice, for example Florida churches have been involved with farmworker issues, and churches in many states are involved with issues involving fair housing, living wage, and affordable health care. But Unitarian Universalists continue to ask for material dealing with classism.
I was a trade union organizer in my young adult years and taught labor history for more than a decade before I returned to theological school. For me, dealing with issues of classism means to join in struggles to organize the unorganized, raise the minumum wage, provide good public schools, affordable housing and quality affordable health care. But these struggles don't answer the question of classism for middle class folks, how does one deal with classism and remain middle class? Joining the labor movement appeals to me, but apparently not to everyone. Perhaps this is website will be helpful to those who want to help overcome classism without ever learning to sing Solidarity Forever.
In this country one can not effectively struggle against the inequalities of class or race without fighting both classism and racism. While this Class Acton is dedicated to educating about classism, it deos counterpose classism to racism.
The incompetence of George W. Bush is becoming scandal even among Republicans, who are reacting with anger as he lies to them, insults their intelligence and then goes on television and lies again.
He was told two days before Katrina struck New Orleans that the levees would break. Here he is on videotape lying about Hurricane Katrina.
Attempting to deflect attention from the hierarchies role in shielding pedaphiles and other abusers among its clergy the Vatican has attempted to scape goat gays in the priesthood.
Perhaps the new Pope thought that his would simply accept this example of pass the blame, but clergy are beginning to speak out. The movement to return the church to the people has been long and hard, but it will not be denied.
These efforts are of interest to religious liberals because overcoming authoritarianism and dogmatism in any and all religious communities advances freedom and that authentic spirituality that we have covenanted to affirm and promote.
