Includes a dialog with The Offender
With friends like these, who needs enemas?
The Transport Innovators online discussion group is nothing if not a bubbling cauldron of problematica®, so it's good to see it is still capable of eliciting a good-old-fashioned spit take:
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From: Bill James [mailto:bill....@jitcorp.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 07, 2011 3:11 PM
To: Sorel, Thomas (MnDOT)
Cc: [list]
Hi Tom
We have refined the summary of the 28th Amendment as a basis to end government monopolies over power and transportation infrastructures.
We are preparing a citizen suit in which we will name you and the State of Minnesota for blocking privately financed solar-powered mobility networks. It would be much better if Minnesota will allow such networks.
Unless you have some means to guaranteeing access to affordable gasoline, as noted in the summary of the 28th Amendment, the decay of the oil-powered economy seems likely to kill about 8 in 10 Americans over the next 20 years. Geology is slow and relentless. We can preempt the crisis by becoming self-reliant and ending our oil addiction.
Please consider that if people die, the civil aspects of the citizens suit should be expanded to criminal accountability. People are already losing their homes because DOT mandates oil as the lifeblood of our economy.
Thanks
Bill James
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - "Tom" is Thomas Sorel the Commission of MnDOT, and "Bill James" is the Bill James of the JPods personal rapid transit company.
Bill James is allowed to say and do whatever he wants, including making astoundingly boneheaded moves.
The Minnesota Department of Transportation is only one of the entities PRT advocates and vendors are trying to work with. Lawsuits and threats of lawsuits only serve to antagonize these partners, and make potential partners think twice.
James is also adding to the unwelcome and nonsensical partisan politicization of PRT. To date such politicization has been the province of PRT opponents, with their distortions, cherrypicked facts and claims of conspiracies which have attained urban legend status.
Bundling PRT with "solar-powered mobility" and a balanced budget amendment gives more ammunition to these opponents, as well as increasing the gap in gravitas between US PRT designers and their industry-leading cousins in Europe and South Korea.
Dear Mr_Grant
ReplyDeleteOil is a finite resource. Therefore, life based on oil is finite.
Citizen suits are a way to hold governments accountable for their breaking law. JPods has offered to build networks in Minnesota at no cost to the government. In fact we will pay the aggregate rights of way holders 5% of gross revenues.
If we cannot build, then documenting that they had a choice is the best we can do.
As the oil powered economy collapses, we will have tools to hold them accountable for the damage they have done.
It was not necessary for you to lecture this blog about the oil-based economy. TWIP, Get On Board PRT et al are dedicated to an environmentally healthy and sustainable future, not limited to urban full-coverage electric transit networks.
ReplyDeleteToday's commentary concerns your Minnesota strategy, which helps politicize PRT in order to open a stream of revenue for your business. It doesn't matter that you are seeking private funding, your goal is to provide public service in public rights of way, therefore there is a public interest in it being regulated by the people's government, which includes transit planning and operating agencies.
That you have chosen this strategy in conjunction with promoting a fiscally irresponsible federal balanced budget amendment only adds to the politicization.
Federal deficits are a problem only when certain elements in Legislative and Executive branches fail in managing the economy and refuse to adequately tax prosperity.
Corporate-backed 'citizen suits,' so-called, against transport agencies are almost universally regarded by the US public (e.g., transit users) with suspicion. Such lawsuits come with built-in grassroots opposition.
In your small way, you are providing propaganda material to opponents of transit R&D, who falsely equate PRT with being Republican transit, and therefore non-transit. You are helping maintain the ambivalence with which the mainstream of the American pro-transit/environment coalition (see grassroots opposition, above) views PRT.
I strongly urge that you knock it off.
Dear Mr. Grant
ReplyDeleteTransit authorities are the cause of Peak Oil and Climate Change. Government subsidies of highways, socializing instead of capitalizing the into gasoline prices the cost of wars and pollution resulted in wars and pollution.
As for debt, it is a tax on future labor, the labor of children that cannot yet vote. You seem to advocate obligating the labor and liberty of children so you can live off those debts.
Bill
When you attack "transit authorities" and "government" in the US, you are attacking the people, since those are expressions of popular will.
ReplyDeleteOf course, our system is not perfect. It requires an educated and interested electorate, acting on accurate information. It can take a lot of time for so many people to sort through all the information, to investigate and evaluate the competing claims and choices.
But that's how we get things done in our Enlightenment-based constitutional republic. We certainly don't do it by attacking the people's government and our ability to tax ourselves for the contemporary and intergenerational purposes we choose via elections and representation.
Often those purposes can be slanted inequitably in favor of interests that have gained disproportionate influence. Those errors are what political activity are meant to correct.
But it is dangerous to demolish our form of government in the name of any doctrine that treats our system as if it can't generate enormous prosperity, distributed broadly and used to ensure the security of future generations.
The difference between liberal progressives and 'reformers' of both extremes is that the former believe a People can do anything
when they set their minds to it -- and care enough to manage it responsibly and democratically.
The latter don't.