Drivers

I've come to the conclusion there are two kinds of drivers in Oklahoma: courteous drivers and scoundrels.

My drive home from work today took thirty minutes longer than usual because of construction on Broadway Extension. I appreciate that the lanes need to be narrowed so construction can proceed. What irks me are the drivers who either don't know or don't care about merging into traffic.

One school of thought - and I think this is what they teach in driver's education classes - is that a responsible driver should merge into traffic as soon as they see a "Lane Closed Ahead" sign. Sounds like a good idea. But the scoundrels zoom past dozens of cars only to cut in line at the last possible moment, leapfrogging past all the responsible drivers waiting patiently in line.

We've all seen this happen. And there's nothing we can do about it.

Some scoundrels seem to take great pleasure in cutting in line as fast as possible. They probably were the bad kids in grade school who cut in lines. Now there's no teacher to put them back in their place; they can get away with it.

Other scoundrels inch along, five or ten miles an hour faster than the responsible drivers, with their turn signal on. They're still leapfrogging, but they seem apologetic about it. OK, just stop until a nice responsible driver lets you merge. Don't continue taking advantage of the situation.

In my side mirror this evening I saw one such kind person waiting for an opportunity to merge. Behind them was an impatient scoundrel who drove onto the shoulder to get around them so they could jet down the lane in front of them. They just couldn't wait patiently for their turn in line.

Another sore spot is Broadway southbound approaching 63rd Street, where the right lane merges. I've seen scoundrels move over onto the shoulder in order to pass traffic and get as far ahead as possible. Maybe they're late for work, but I always understood you weren't supposed to drive on the shoulder. And certainly not at 60 miles an hour!

Occasionally I've toyed with straddling the stripes, hoping to discourage a scoundrel from leapfrogging me. I know, that's against the rules too, but hopefully I won't get hit in the rear or sideswiped. I've had a few near misses, I must admit. Maybe there's magic in numbers - maybe if all the good drivers straddled the stripes and we worked in unison, we could curb the illicit behavior. But then they wouldn't be good drivers themselves, and it would run against their nature. So much for mob mentality, I suppose.

What really aggravates me is the scoundrel who cuts between me and the car in front of me. I leave a little room so I won't hit the car in front of me if they slam on their brakes. But the scoundrels apparently have amazing parallel parking skills. One car I've seen, on several occasions, cut from the disappearing right hand lane across my center lane to the left lane, all with no signal light! No telling how many hundreds of cars they bypassed.

Everyone wants to get to work as fast as possible, and get home again at the end of the day. With no rapid transit in Oklahoma, we're dependent on the highways. And, while I see an occasional motorcycle cop on Sunday afternoons, they all seem to disappear during rush hour. Maybe if they rode three abreast down Broadway Extension, like pace cars in the Indy 500, they would deter scoundrelous behavior. I'm sure the State or city could use the extra money from fines. Maybe the job is just too much for them, much as Mexico can't control the drug lords.

I consider myself a pretty conservative driver. I haven't had a speeding ticket since 1979, and I'd like to keep that record intact. But unless there's a little more law enforcement presence on the highways, there's nothing to discourage the scoundrels from their nefarious activity. The good guys, waiting patiently in line, don't stand a chance.

Spring planting

I got my hands dirty today. I worked in my garden.

I brought in six bags of fresh topsoil, because I think my raised beds had too much organic matter in them last year. After working in the topsoil, I planted five rows of onions as well as peas, cucumbers and beans. I won't put out my tomatoes until later in the spring, and I have room for potatoes and carrots as well. I need to refresh my herb garden, because it looks like the chives are the only thing that survived the winter. Looks like I also have a good start of strawberries from last year.

There's something special about the feel of garden soil. After everything that's happened in the past year - losing both my mother and my father, being in the hospital four times myself, and my lingering physical problems - digging in the dirt in the springtime is a nice change of pace. It's a reminder of the circle of life, that after we bury things there's always a rebirth just around the corner for the next generation. Maybe that's the medicine I needed on this day, my birthday.

The Sovereign State of Oklahoma

It's been a long time since I've posted, for which I apologize. It's been a busy few months, and I'm behind on the things I like to do besides the ones I need to do. But, I'm back!

The latest curiosity to come out of the Oklahoma legislature is the "attempt" to assert Oklahoma's sovereignty. Hmmm. Most people probably thought that war was fought, oh, about 150 years ago. Can a state secede from the Union? Can they thumb their nose at a federal government that adopts objectionable laws, like the freedom of slaves?

The controversy actually swirls around the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights. It reads, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Sounds simple enough. Actually it added nothing to the Constitution; it simply stated the obvious, that if the federal government hasn't been given a power, it rests with the states and the people.

But the federal government isn't trying to seize more power, as House Republicans and other right-wing blathering idiots would have you believe. There are two ways the federal government attains comprehensive compliance. First, the federal program carries with it significant matching funds. If you don't comply with minimum federal requirements - say, a 55 mph speed limit, or .08 blood alcohol content, or a 21-year-old minimum drinking age - then the state government will lose federal highway funding. A good primer on that is South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203 (1987). Or, if states don't fall in line with a federal education program like IDEA or No Child Left Behind, federal education funds can be at risk.

There's nothing to stop a state like Oklahoma from saying "no" to these federal initiatives. But try telling the Oklahoma Department of Transportation that they're not going to receive $340 million in stimulus money to be used for road and bridge projects. That makes up the largest chunk of the $465 million the state is expected to receive.

State Transportation Director Gary Ridley was quoted this winter as saying, "My boss expects me to secure all federal funds that are available to us, and I'd sure hate to have to go to him and tell him we lost some money."

Industry experts estimate that for every $1 billion in transportation project value, about 32,000 jobs are created.

The second method of encouraging states to implement federal programs is to take over a field at the national level unless the state itself implements its own program of regulation that meets the minimum federal standards. See New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992). In Oklahoma, a good example is consumer credit. Reg Z is regulated by the State of Oklahoma because we adopted the Uniform Consumer Credit Code, and federal law allows us to govern that field of law as long as our regulations meet or exceed federal regulations. Other examples are the Clean Water Act and OSHA. In all those areas, Conress had the power to regulate the subject matter under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution.

The law recognizes that the federal government's power is not absolute. In the case of Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) the Supreme Court held that the national government could not directly require state law enforcement officers to conduct background checks under the Brady firearms legislation. It held, "(T)his Court never has sanctioned explicitly a federal command to the States to promulgate and enforce laws and regulations."

Ironically, this concept of cooperative federalism is a good way to minimize the size of the federal government. It's better for us to take care of things on a local level instead of having all decisions made in far-away Foggy Bottom.

For Oklahoma legislators to rattle sabers and refuse to accept federal economic stimulus money only worsens our reputation in the country. While we've been fortunately buffered from the worst effects of this recession, we now have an opportunity to spring forward with economic development while other states struggle to survive.

And, while the amount of borrowing in the stimulus plan is nauseating, something's got to be done to fix the problems created by overzealous corporations in an underregulated economy. Hopefully the economy will grow enough that we'll have enough tax revenue in future generations to pay off the debt. That's the saddest part of all - corporate greed is the real culprit that will be imposing this legacy on our children and grandchildren.

Spitting in the Fiscal Wind

Responding quickly to save us from tumbling into a recession, President George Bush and House leaders have proudly unveiled an economic stimulus package worth some $150 billion. If approved, the plan will distribute checks to households across the country this summer. The resulting spending spree will spur the economy into a new era of prosperity.

Yeah, right.

The problems with the American economy run deeper than that. Huge overseas trade deficits, a shrinking dollar, federal budget deficits (except in the Clinton era) and incessant consumer borrowing are taking their toll. The chickens are coming home to roost.

We have transitioned from an agricultural economy to a manufacturing economy to a service economy while much of the world still lies in poverty. As a result, it’s cheaper to have paperclips made in China and imported to the United States than to hire American workers to do the job.

While that may keep consumer prices low, it also keeps Americans out of work, and fuels foreign economies that compete for market share. A recent U.S. Business and Industry Council report showed that only five of 114 U.S. industries gained market share against import competition between 1997 and 2006.

Foreign investors, flush with currency from selling paperclips to Americans, have been buying U.S. Treasury notes, in effect financing our budget deficits. But the same interest rate cuts approved by the Fed to stimulate the economy also make the purchase of Treasury notes less attractive to foreign buyers. At some point, those foreign investors will decide U.S. Treasury notes and assets are no longer safe havens, and will either quit buying or start selling them, investing their money elsewhere. At that point, the value of the dollar will plummet and the value of other currencies like the euro will continue to rise.

Meanwhile, we all know the government has been running record deficits, passing our responsibilities to future generations. After the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the super-wealthy, our government only collects enough non-Social Security revenue to cover two-thirds of the government’s non-Social Security expenditures, including a frivolous war that has cost $1 trillion so far. And, of course, the Republicans want to make those tax cuts permanent. That tax policy gives millions of Americans — an entire generation — the message that it’s all right to borrow from the future for instant gratification. That’s not a good message to send. Borrowing another $150 billion to spit in the wind doesn’t help.

It’s clear we need to cut our budget deficit and improve our trade imbalance. But American consumers are hobbled with stagnant income growth, rising energy prices and nagging consumer debt. They consequently shop for the best bargains available, which fuels the demand for cheap foreign goods, and the cycle continues.

The fact is that for most Americans the refund will vanish into the black hole of their everyday bills. Much of that burden consists of high interest rates on credit cards and consumer debt, and even higher rates on heavily promoted payday and signature loans. As consumers become more desperate to stay afloat, a greater percentage of their available cash goes simply to interest, which produces no goods and no real economic benefit. The consumer loan and credit card industries have mushroomed in the past decade, largely unregulated thanks to millions of dollars in lobbying spent to curry favor with Washington under the “pro-business” banner.

CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who has one more Harvard economics degree than I do, says the Fed rate cut and stimulus package are “nothing more than bandages for a hemorrhaging economy.” He’s right. The economy is hemorrhaging because people don’t have enough disposable cash to buy American, thereby putting Americans to work and fueling the nation’s economy. Sure, American goods cost more in part because American workers make more money than Chinese workers. But a Chinese worker isn’t likely to buy American, employ an American or pay U.S. taxes, and it’s that type of demand that’s needed to bolster our economy.

Instead of a token one-time drop in the bucket, consumers need long-term relief. We need to abandon the foolhardy Bush tax cuts to generate additional tax revenue and rebalance the budget. But Congress also needs to direct the Federal Trade Commission to get serious about curbing usurious interest rates and predatory lending practices. That will put real dollars into consumers’ pockets, month after month, with which they can afford to buy durable goods from American manufacturers. The dollar will consequently strengthen, the home mortgage foreclosure rate will drop, and our trade deficit will shrink without excessive inflationary pressures.

The solution therefore is not a hot check from Washington, but sound fiscal policies that help consumers revitalize the U.S. economy for the long haul.

- Edmond (OK) Sun, February 1, 2008
- AP photo

Polar Bears, Big Oil may not mix well

This one was easy to spot. First, on April 29, George Bush railed against Congress for failing to open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling. Bush effectively was blaming Congress for today’s soaring gasoline prices, insisting that we should be drilling for oil in America to free ourselves from reliance on foreign oil imports.

The next morning, John Hofmeister, president of the U.S. division of Royal Dutch Shell, sided with Bush’s comments on a television news program. One sentence particularly caught my attention. Hofmeister said his company “has won $2 billion worth of high bids for the Chukchi Sea — that’s a few years off before we could begin production.” I’d never heard of the Chukchi Sea, and maybe you haven’t either. But remember that name.

Then came the clincher. The same day, a federal judge ordered the government to declare by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed as a threatened species. The ruling came because the Department of Interior had failed to announce a decision on the status of polar bears by Jan. 9 as required by the Endangered Species Act, contending in court that the case was “too complicated to decide before June 30.” Once an animal is listed, the Fish and Wildlife Service must designate critical habitat for it, placing restrictions on how that habitat can be developed.

Where do polar bears live? On ice floes in the Arctic, including the Chukchi Sea between Alaska and Russia. Sea ice is critical to the polar bear, which evolved 200,000 years ago to hunt for seals through air holes in the ice. Now, with global warming, the ice is disappearing. No ice, no air holes, no polar bears; by 2050, unless they adapt unnaturally fast, they may all be extinct.

The Chukchi Sea is the size of New Mexico and Arizona combined, and usually is navigable only about four months out of the year. But with rising oil and gas prices and the disappearance of sea ice, the Chukchi Sea has become increasingly attractive to the energy industry. By violating the law, the administration was able to conduct an auction in February for a record $3.3 billion in offshore oil leases across 30 million acres in the Arctic before the Chukchi Sea could be designated as a critical habitat for polar bears. Not too complicated after all, is it?

The truth is, Big Oil isn’t interested in producing more oil in this country. They just want to bank the rights to it. The Bureau of Land Management has issued 28,776 drilling permits on public land — an increase of 361 percent in the past decade — but only 18,954 wells actually have been drilled.

A recent report from the House Committee on Natural Resources shows companies already hold leases to nearly 68 million acres of federal land and waters where they are not producing oil and gas. Those leases could produce an additional 4.8 million barrels of oil and 44.7 billion cubic feet of natural gas each day, nearly doubling total U.S. oil production and cutting oil imports, all without touching the protected ecosystems in the Arctic.

Why the delay in drilling? Oil companies buy and sell their lease holdings all the time. With prices rising, a billion dollars in lease holdings today can be worth millions more tomorrow — a tidy profit without drilling a well that may not hit. Since it’s less expensive to import oil from producing Middle Eastern fields under existing contracts, there’s no motivation for the industry to drill new wells domestically. The real race is to secure government leases before their competitors beat them to it.

For political leverage, however, Bush couches his rhetoric in terms attractive to consumers, weary of soaring energy prices, in order to pressure Congress. One of his biggest fans, Congresswoman Mary Fallin, said last week to find and develop more reserves is an “immediate solution to rising energy prices.” That’s not true, but it’s part of the propaganda.

Notice that Bush is silent on Boone Pickens’ proposal to accelerate wind and solar energy development. That’s not part of Big Oil’s agenda. ExxonMobil raked in more than $40 billion in profit last year, but invested less than half a percent of those profits in clean energy. Meanwhile Americans send $700 billion of our hard-earned dollars overseas every year that should be invested here at home.

The real power play is in oil and gas speculation. By now, that should come as no surprise. We just hope the polar bears will understand.

- Edmond (OK) Sun, July 17, 2008
- photo courtesy Greenpeace

Beijing's Olympic Reward Remains A Big Mistake

I’ll never understand how the 2008 Olympics wound up in Beijing. I guess I’m from the generation that knew China as Red China, the nuclear-armed Communist haunt of Mao Tse-Tung that backed North Vietnam against American soldiers. Instead of conquering us militarily, they’ve taken over our country economically.

After the Communists took power in 1949, their failed Great Leap Forward agricultural policies in the 1950s and the oppression of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s led to political and economic turmoil and the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese.

When Mao’s adversary, Deng Xiaoping, became premier after Mao’s death in 1976, relations with the West improved dramatically. Deng modernized the Chinese economy, phased out agricultural collectives and encouraged industrialization and trade with the West. They promoted what they called “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” which encouraged the development of market economies while keeping the state involved in ownership of large enterprises.

Local communities became free to develop their own businesses with few restrictions. As a result, China’s cheap labor sucked industrial output from the United States through joint ventures with Western corporations. By encouraging growth from the bottom up, China embraced capitalism without the trauma endured in the Soviet Union’s centrally planned perestroika a decade later. At least the Russians got a new flag out of the deal.

The change has been more dramatic than the economic growth of the United States in the 1950s. Life expectancy in China soared from 35 years in 1949 to 73 today, with a literacy rate of 91 percent. The Chinese poverty rate has dropped from 64 percent in 1981 to 8 percent today, meaning an amazing 500 million people were lifted out of poverty in a generation. They’ve become the second greatest economic force on earth, consuming half the world’s concrete and steel and more coal than the next three largest countries combined. The environmental devastation is unprecedented. With more than 1.3 billion citizens, nothing is done in a small way in China.

While making the transition to a modern industrialized society, China’s human rights policies remain repressive. Freedom of opinion and expression are severely limited by the one-party government, as student protesters at Tiananmen Square learned in 1989. Many of the forgotten survivors remain in prison today. By some accounts, 90 percent of the state-sponsored executions in the world are held in China, for crimes ranging from murder to tax evasion and even attempted theft. Freedoms of speech, expression, association, religion, the press and labor remain heavily restricted.

China’s “Re-education Through Labor” program involves forced-labor detention designed to reform bad conduct through torture and abuse. There are no charges, no trials, no access to family or legal counsel and no appeals. RTL is intended for what one official newspaper once described as “actions between crime and error.” The practice is used against anyone who steps out of line. Conformity and compliance, after all, are the only acceptable behaviors.

China’s reputation for civil rights abuses is not just domestic. They get much of their oil from Sudan, funding the Sudanese government as it prosecutes the genocide in the Darfur region. The Chinese government also is relentless in suppressing dissent as it asserts sovereignty over Nepal, and they jail people who happen to practice religion.

Some would say politics should be kept out of the Olympics, and in an ideal world that sounds good. But the Olympic Charter requires countries to reject “any form of discrimination … on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise” as a condition of participation, and seeks to promote “respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” When China bid for the 2008 Olympics, they promised to improve upon their human rights record. So far that promise has rung hollow, with no change in sight. Meanwhile, the Olympic Committee looks the other way.

Economic prosperity alone isn’t the bellwether of a great nation. A few fellows on this continent once declared that all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That message hasn’t spread to China yet, but it’s a lesson we should seriously value and never abandon.

The Olympic Committee gambled with another rising star in the 1936 Olympics when they allowed Hitler a world stage. The good name of the Olympic movement doesn’t need another black eye like that, but now the deed is done. Put simply, rewarding Beijing with the Olympics was a mistake that may haunt the Olympic movement for decades to come.

- Edmond (OK) Sun, July 31, 2008

Black Beaver's Oklahoma Legacy Should Not Be Forgotten

As we celebrate Oklahoma’s statehood centennial, we often overlook the fact that life existed on these plains before the land runs began in 1889. One of the most interesting characters of the 1800s in present-day Oklahoma was a Lenni Lenape (Delaware) Indian named Black Beaver.

Phil Pruner, who lives in Oklahoma City, is a great-great-grandson of Black Beaver. He spoke recently at the Chisholm Trail Museum in Kingfisher about his ancestor.

Born in 1806 in Illinois, not far from St. Louis, Black Beaver began trapping and trading beaver pelts as a teenager. During his life he saw the Pacific Ocean seven times as well as New York City and Washington.

In his 1859 guide book “The Prairie Traveler,” Randolph Marcy wrote that Black Beaver “had visited nearly every point of interest within the limits of our unsettled territory. He had set his traps and spread his blanket upon the head waters of the Missouri and Columbia; and his wanderings had led him south to the Colorado and Gila, and thence to the shores of the Pacific in Southern California. His life had been that of a veritable cosmopolite, filled with scenes of intense and startling interest, bold and reckless adventure. He was with me two seasons in the capacity of guide, and I always found him perfectly reliable, brave, and competent. His reputation as a resolute, determined, and fearless warrior did not admit of question, yet I have never seen a man who wore his laurels with less vanity.

“The truth is,” Marcy added, “my friend Beaver was one of those few heroes who never sounded his own trumpet; yet no one that knows him ever presumed to question his courage.”

Black Beaver spoke fluent English, French, Spanish and about ten Indian languages, and was able to communicate with even more tribes through sign language. His skills became invaluable to white settlers and military expeditions. When Marcy escorted the first five hundred emigrants from Ft. Smith to California during the gold rush days of 1849, he engaged Black Beaver as his guide. On the way back, Black Beaver, anxious to return home, took a shortcut across the prairie that reduced the two month trip to two weeks. Thousands of future emigrants followed his California Trail west.

By 1860 Black Beaver was the wealthiest and most famous Lenape Indian in America, and was living comfortably at present-day Anadarko. But that was soon to change. In May of 1861, General W. H. Emory, stationed at Fort Arbuckle, learned that 6,000 Confederate troops were advancing toward him from Texas and Arkansas. He gathered the soldiers from Forts Washita, Cobb and Arbuckle near Minco, but to escape to Kansas across the open prairie he would need a guide.

All the other Indian guides turned him down because they knew the advancing rebels would punish them for aiding the Union troops. Desperate, Emory guaranteed Black Beaver the government would reimburse him for any losses, so he agreed to help. He scouted the approaching Confederate troops and provided information for Emory to capture their advance guard, the first prisoners captured during the Civil War. Black Beaver then guided over 800 Union soldiers, their prisoners, 200 teamsters, eighty wagons and 600 horses and mules in a mile-long train across 500 miles of open prairie to safety at Ft. Leavenworth without the loss of a single man, horse or wagon.

Sure enough, the Confederate Army destroyed Black Beaver’s ranch and placed a bounty on his head that kept him in Kansas for the rest of the war. His losses were never fully compensated by the government.

After the war, Black Beaver and his friend Jesse Chisholm returned and converted Black Beaver’s escape route into what we now call the Chisholm Trail. Three million head of stray Texas cattle were herded to railheads in Kansas, from which they were shipped east to feed a hungry nation.

Black Beaver resettled at Anadarko, building the first brick home in the area. He had 300 acres of fenced and cultivated land as well as cattle, hogs and horses. He died at his home on May 8, 1880, and was buried on his ranch. In 1976 his grave was moved to Ft. Sill.

He was the first inductee in the American Indian Hall of Fame in Anadarko, which was only fitting because it is located on part of his ranch.

Phil Pruner has good reason to be proud of his legacy. It’s a story that should not be forgotten in today’s busy world.