Why do people spend so much time listening to The Brass? I'm not talking about some new ensemble of horns and trombones; I mean the parade of trumpeting generals, including local Marine retiree John Batiste, who are now calling for Don Rumsfeld's head.

If you pay even approximate attention to what these guys are saying, you see there's no cause for joy - just new riffs on the supposed casus belli. The brass are tut-tutting not about US imperialism (of which they are actually the avant garde) nor about mere murder and mayhem (their stock in trade). No, what gets them is Rummy's lack of effectiveness and efficiency, his basic unsuitability for implementing the Powell Doctrine (quick and massive application of force to annihilate the opposition and avoid another "quagmire," i.e. any situation in which the little guy is able to hold out against our high-tech assaults.)

True to form, the generals just want more bodies to finish the job. Take Batiste at his word. This man - perfectly suited to be a corporate executive who gives closed-door, high-priced pep-talks to business types, as he is doing this week at Nazareth College - thinks we need 350,000 US troops on the ground, minimum. At least that's what he told City Newspaper's Tim Macaluso.

The math says it all: Batiste is telling us we're once again fighting with one hand tied behind our back, as right-wingers contended we were in Vietnam. Men like these are constitutionally unable to say a war is wrong and should be stopped, least of all a war that has left blood on their own hands.

I don't care how many times Batiste goes after his former boss. Mr Spit-shine makes me queasy every time he speaks. Besides, Rummy isn't the issue. The issue is the war and occupation, which must be ended with all deliberate speed, primarily on moral and legal grounds. You might even say it's better for the world that Rummy's still in charge. His ineffectiveness might make it harder for US forces to do maximum damage.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 23:38 EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 4 October 2006 09:39 EDT

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This summer more than a few people took a ride with Jonathan Tasini as he bicycled across New York State to galvanize his primary race against Hillary Clinton. Now the totals are in; Tasini got almost 14 percent of the Monroe County vote for the Dem nomination, and he reportedly got around 17 percent statewide. (The state elections board hasn’t yet posted the certified results.) Not too shabby for someone without instant name recognition or the “power of incumbency.” And oh yeah, Clinton outspent him something like a billion to one.

But the media did their usual part in keeping a principled insurgent in his place. Even a New York Times columnist remarked that “some may even believe that his first name is Little-known, given that he is sometimes referred to as Little-known Jonathan Tasini.” Some, indeed. A few weeks after Haberman made his point, the Times itself called Tasini “Mrs. Clinton’s little-known opponent.” And on primary morning, I heard a WXXI newsman call the shots: Clinton, he said, “is expected to trounce little-known candidate Jonathan Tasini.” I wonder how many iterations of this noxious phrase popped out of newsreaders’ and pundits’ mouths over the months as they systematically withheld the coverage that would have made Tasini well-known to the electorate.

Mindless repetition wasn’t the media’s only, or most grievous sin. In the Democrat and Chronicle, Joseph Spector and Jay Gallagher followed up a perfectly reasonable comment (“Tasini was hoping to pull off an upset modeled on Ned Lamont's surprising victory over Sen. Joseph Lieberman in last month's Democratic Senate primary in Connecticut”) with a bunch of crap, to wit: “But [Tasini] never gained any leverage as he attacked Clinton for not vehemently opposing the war in Iraq.” The crap part is the implication that Clinton opposes the war to some slight degree, and that Tasini would have been satisfied only if she made the rafters ring with demands for withdrawal. But the point is: as a senator, Clinton has been a strong supporter of the war, first by voting for the resolution that started the whole mess, and since then by refusing to repudiate her vote or join with actual anti-war people in Congress. (And don’t forget that Clinton was implicated by more than marriage in the sanctions regime that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis in the 1990s.)

The local “alternative” joined this media race to the bottom, as well. I couldn’t recall anything much about Tasini in City Newspaper, so I checked the paper’s online archive. The search turned up three items, one of which is a letter-to-the-editor, and another of which is a glancing reference to Tasini in a long article by Krestia DeGeorge on Spitzer nemesis Tom Suozzi. City’s only substantive coverage of the Tasini campaign appeared way back in March, when DeGeorge gave Tasini the equivalent of one decent paragraph in a long piece about a Democratic Party rural conference.

Whatever the vote tally – and Tasini’s 117,000-vote statewide total is no drop in the bucket – the New York peace insurgency aimed at taking back the Senate was well worth the effort. Tasini got voters talking and thinking about the war and Hillary Clinton’s hypocrisies. His platform also called for single-payer health insurance, another sane measure that Hillary Clinton has worked hard to derail. He ran to promote action against global warming, too. From top to bottom, in fact, his positions read like a progressive dream. No wonder he lost. He was just too good to lie or carry water for the folks that make a killing on war and misery.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 22:09 EDT

Updated: Thursday, 21 September 2006 18:39 EDT

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My August bike trip to the Adirondacks brought no end of pleasures: hearing the loons’ early morning call over a pond near Inlet, NY, as I coasted down a steady grade; watching the shadows gather and shift through the hemlock-beech-maple forest late in the day near Big Moose Lake; feeling an incomparable rush while descending a three-mile hill near Camden, NY; feeling another sort of rush when topping the “last hill” that turns out to be the first of many… But there were other transportation experiences, too, while “sharing the road” with vehicles seemingly designed to express post-adolescent male rage. The muffler-impaired motorcycles were standouts, of course; their riders claim that noise makes for safety, i.e. alerts other motorists of their presence.

Maybe, maybe not. But I can say the high-decibel blasts and farts do nothing for bicyclists’ and pedestrians’ safety. The highly distracting noise-assault makes it much harder for human-powered folks to get the sensory information they need to avoid all sorts of road hazards. But what the hell, the point is that the roads are for the powerful – places for the testosterone-soaked to play out their fantasies of the wolf pack on wheels. (Interesting tidbit: Animal behaviorists now say our inherited ideas about “alpha males” and other aspects of wolf psychology are wrong: the pack is usually a multi-generational family unit, essentially a cooperative, not a “free market” of unrelated individuals ruled by the gnashing of teeth.)

Now I’m back in Rochester for the duration, and one thing on the horizon particularly grabs my attention. The Coalition for Bus Fareness has formed to counter the new fare structure imposed last spring by the Rochester Genesee Regional Transportation Authority. On one side the fare structure is a gift: You can ride anywhere on the system, including to far-flung destinations like Lyons and Avon for $1.25. The Rochester-to-Lyons trip, which I frequently took, used to cost $3.10. So RGRTA has been most kind to suburban/rural commuters. But the flip side is not so good: Since the plan has eliminated transfers, which used to cost 15 cents, urban riders that need to make connections often end up paying more. For example, a commuter from northeast Rochester who paid cash (i.e. did not buy a special pass) to get to and from the Marketplace mall area used to pay $2.80 daily (two fares at $1.25 each, plus two 15-cent transfers). Now that same commute costs $5 upfront (four $1.25 fares), unless the commuter buys a so-called Freedom Pass for $3 (which will go up to $3.50 in October).

So what we have here is a minor but not insignificant transfer of wealth: The suburbanite park-and-rider gets a substantial break, while many low-income urbanites pay a bit more essentially to subsidize other riders. Truly a sign of the times – like the ear-shattering motorcycle.

A fightback is brewing, though, with the new coalition in the lead. Check out the notice below, which is making the rounds on local listserves:

Public Forum on Bus Fare Changes

Thursday, September 14

4:30- 6 pm

Gleason Auditorium, Bausch & Lomb Library, downtown

How have these changes affected you?:

·                                 Lift Line increase

·                                 Transfers and routes eliminated

·                                 Fare increase (did you know that the fare is increasing again on October 1st?)

 Forum Sponsors include, Ibero American Action League, 19th Ward Community Association, Spiritus Christi Mental Health Center and Prison Outreach, Rochester Poor People's Coalition, Grace of God Recovery House, Homeless Services Network, Poor People United, GPOMC, Liberty Research Group, Metro Justice

Please contact the Bus Fareness Committee for more info- 325-2560.

Thank you,

-Jon Greenbaum, Metro Justice Organizer

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 12:19 EDT

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I'm listening to a Bush news conference as I write this; don't ask me why. Maybe I like the way some white noise in the background stimulates my inner curmudgeon. In any case, my outer curmudgeon is headed up to the Adirondacks by bike, on a recumbent that I'm just breaking in, or that's breaking me in. Those of you who've got emails from me know my signature includes a great quote from Chilean Senator Viera-Gallo (I got the quote from Ivan Illich's essential work, Energy and Equity): "You can get to socialism only by bicycle." I plan to ride with that in the back of my mind.

On a more mundane level, I'll be thinking about how to address some transportation issues when I get home. There's much more to say about the fast ferry debacle. For example, beneath all the scandals and failures is the basic arithmetic that doomed the service from the start: Any vehicle that burns almost 9,000 gallons of diesel fuel for a 200-mile round trip is bound to sink financially, even at the fuel prices of two years ago. And the environmental implications of such fuel consumption (recall the ferry uses more fuel than all the motor vehicles it carries would use if going by land) are pretty grim, too.

Of course, the logical alternative to such wasteful, harmful transport is the one that consistently gets the shaft: intercity rail. Here's a signpost that tells what's happening on that front: Amtrak is now posting notices that warn of delays of up to 90 minutes on all trains between our region and Albany. The delays result from track work that CSX Corporation is doing - work that's undoubtedly been slowed and delayed by today's retrograde politics of rail.

Well, check in again soon. And please comment on the posts, whether to soothe or antagonize the resident curmudgeon.

Posted by jackbradiganspula at 10:49 EDT

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