Best Gas Price Medicine? Build Public Transportation

Americans need to get something through their heads. The price of gas is not going to go down to $2 a gallon again. Ever. Period.

The emergence of China as a global power has and will fundamentally change our world, and we need to adjust to it. And part of that adjustment will be paying real prices for oil.

Congress is getting all in a tizzy about these gas prices, pointing their fingers this way and that. But Republicans seem to be forgetting about the enormous gift they gave the oil industry last year, an energy bill that gave huge subsidies and tax breaks to big oil. Last year the five largest oil companies, Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips took home more than $111 billion in profits. As CNN’s John Roberts noted recently, that's greater than the GDP of 174 of the world's countries

To a large degree the US has brought this upon itself by not investing in an even rudimentary public transporation system. We are a nation obsessed with the car. So much so that in all the recent news reports asking how high gas would have to go before Americans stopped driving, noone’s thought to point out the obvious: They can’t stop driving no matter how much you charge for gas, because they have no other way to get around. Gas could go up to $20 and they’d still have to pay it.

There is No Such Thing as Techno!

Ok so this has been a pet peeve of mine for awhile (one among many, admittedly) so I thought I’d devote an entry to it.

I’ve followed electronic music since I was 16. I’m a big fan, and have moved through the years from going to raves in high school early on in college, rocking out to disco house, trance, anthems etc, to today moving into emerging genres like electroclash.

Never, in all my years of being an electronic music fan, have I ever heard the word “techno” used except when preceded by the words, “I don’t like.”

In fact I’ve never heard the word used in a non-negative sense. I hear it a lot from people who don’t like such-and-such a club because they play “techno,” and they want to listed to hip-hop and pop music.

Prodi's Won

After a nerve-wracking 24 hours, the votes are finally all counted and there is a definitive result. Silvio Berlusconi is out. The center-left coalition under Romano Prodi has scored a slim victory over the conservative leader Berlusconi, thanks to the new expatriate voting blocks Berlusconi himself created.

Berlusconi is one of the most controversial leaders in Europe. His time at the helm of the EU presidency (they have a rotating presidency where each country assumes it for a period of time) was colossally embarrassing for the continent, and his hard-line tactics and cult of personality have failed to solve Italy’s economic woes while inching the country further and further to the right. Berlusconi has been Italy’s longest-serving prime minister since World War II and many Italians only support him because they’re afraid that dumping him would plunge Italy back into the political chaos that has dogged the country for 50 years.

Dueling Speeches Across the Atlantic

Some interesting language used in today’s simultaneous speeches/press conferences by George W. and Tony Blair.

The US Media seems to have picked up mainly on the answer W gave to a reporter about how long troops will be in Iraq, saying, “"That, of course, is an objective. And that will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq." This of course, led to today’s headlines of, “Bush: Troops to stay in Iraq through '08” in the US media. I’m pretty sure this headline will shock a lot of people across the country.

Bush’s statement, of course, is a fairly obvious conclusion. There’s no reason to presume troops will have left by 2008. In fact it’s hard to see how the US could possibly withdraw before then without leaving the country in ruin and chaos.

London Visit

So after a very long hiatus from blog-writing I have returned. Since I was writing so much for work last quarter the last thing I wanted to do when I got home was write blog entries. But now I'm back to doing broadcast so I'll be starved for opportunities to write, so you'll once again be blessed with my pearls of wisdom.

I just got back to Chicago from being all over the place, I took 6 airplanes in 2 weeks, I never want to get on another plane again. But it was worth it.

I flew to Connecticut and spent a few days with my family, then went into New York and hung out with my friends there before flying to London for a week with my friend Pierce to stay with our British friend Aaron in London. Then I flew back to New York, hung out with the New Yorkies again, and then back home to the fam before flying back to Chicago.

Europe

Note: Welcome to my Euroblog. This blog spun out of a personal blog I've been keeping for years. After I decided to devote a new blog to European politics, I took all entries from my personal blog from the last few years that pertained to Europe and brought them over here. Enjoy. New blogs written for this site exclusively began in June of 2007.
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Last night I went out with a friend, and during our dinner conversation we started to swap stories about our respective travels through Europe. I realized as we were talking how intensely I miss it.

My semester abroad in Prague was the best semester of my entire undergrad experience, and probably the only redeemable semester I had at NYU - the only one where I actually learned something. I remember when I left Prague to come back to New York to finish my last semester. I was so incredibly miserable.

Even the whole time I was in Prague I was having slight anxiety about having to leave eventually. I would keep having these dreams where it was time to leave and go back to the US, but I wasn't ready to leave. Then I would wake up in a panic, and realize that it was only October and I didn't have to leave for a long time.

But eventually I did have to leave, and it was difficult. Once the semester was over I went to Paris by myself for a week, but had a hard time enjoying myself because I was so depressed about my semester ending. My last semester at NYU was quite melancholy. I didn't want to be there, I was angry with NYU for having wasted so much of my time and money. And I just wanted to be back in Europe, where I had felt so excited and engaged.

So now I've been thinking, why not just go back? I had entertained the idea before, and I was planning on doing the "Global Journalism" quarter in my program, where I would work for a broadcast news agency in London or Dublin for a quarter.

However, now that I'm doing this fellowship with PBS, I feel as if it would be foolish to pay full tuition for a quarter of working unpaid, when I'm essentially doing that now here, paying no tuition and being paid. And I would just be producing at one of these placements, which is what I'm doing now.

Of course, I could do a print placement, work for the AP in one of their European bureaus, maybe even Prague. But, now that all my quarters have been pushed forward, I would have to do the global quarter in the fall and then come back to do my last quarter in DC.

My original plan was to do the global quarter last and then stay in whatever country I did my placement in. I figured I could either try to get a job where I was placed or use my time there to do some job searching. But, maybe instead of spending all that money for tuition, I could take that money and use it to just get a ticket to London, find a flat, and try like hell to find a job. Maybe I could even travel around Europe for a bit first, handing out resumes.

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that Europe is where I want to spend the rest of my life. When I think about my passion, the thing that I daydream about or maintain an affinity for, it's not really journalism, or filmmaking, or anything like that. My passion is really Europe. In my spare time I study Europe, I go into random chat rooms in Europe just to talk to people there, it's all I think about really.

The fact is I'm excited about where Europe is going, and I'm concerned about where the US is going.

I'm reading T.R. Reid's "The United States of Europe" right now. It's really fascinating the way he ties together all of the trends happening in Europe right now in a way that creates a larger picture of a new Europe that could potentially be on its way to becoming the newest superpower, a counter-balance to the United States. Since the most recent expansion in May 2004, the EU now has a larger population, higher GDP, and more trade than the United States. And it's a society which has a different moral orientation than the United States. It's a society that takes care of its citizens, provides a safety net. It operates a social model which I personally find more appealing than that of the US.

So I guess there's plenty of time to mull that over. But somehow I've got to make it happen. When I graduated college I had contemplated going to Europe and trying to find a job, but I wasn't ready. The idea of living so far away from all my friends and family was pretty daunting. But being in Chicago has, I think, prepared me for such a drastic move. We shall see.