With the Truckers in DC

Truckers live in an alternative dimension, at least so I conclude when trying to figure out how to meet up with the convoy of trucks coming into to DC to protest high diesel fuel prices on Monday. JB, aka Mike Schaffner, one of the organizers of the action, calls early in the morning to suggest various highway intersections, and I have to explain there’s no way a pedestrian can be just standing on one the super-highways around DC. We eventually settle on a spot in a desolate area of southeastern DC, but even so, I probably couldn’t have made the connection without the genes of a grandfather who rode the rails. When I hear the honking, low and steady, and see the first trucks rising out from an underpass, I scramble up to a narrow walkway along their route and start waving frantically. Everyone waves back nicely, and about the fifth truck actually stops. It’s JB and I leap aboard.

JB and I have become friends-by-phone in the weeks since I blogged about the first truckers’ protests in the beginning of April, but all I knew about him as a physical presence is that he always wears a black cowboy hat. Its brim is turned down, locating him in Larry McMurtry’s rather than John Wayne’s West, and his eyes twinkle deeply when he smiles, which is pretty much all the time. Everything seems to delight him: Being in DC for the first time, having 250 trucks behind him, the friendliness of the tourists on the street as we inch our way toward the Mall.

Since he hasn’t been home in Texas since January 1, this – the “bobtail” of a truck based in New Jersey – is JB’s world. There’s a neatly made bed behind our seats and a laptop that can swivel into view while he’s driving, as well, of course, as a GPS, a cell phone and CB radio. From this little control room, which is also a workplace and a living space, JB has helped assemble the hundreds of truckers and their families who are with us now. It’s a life stripped bare: He ordinarily eats only one meal a day (nothing fried or from a buffet), sleeps rarely (just an hour and half last night), and drinks no coffee (“it leads to stops”) but admits to an occasional Red Bull. 

We circle the Mall, slowly, triumphantly, twice. It’s hard to talk over the honking and the excited CB chatter, but JB wants to know if I’ve ever been at a demonstration in DC before. Ah, I explain, I go back to the 60s, but the most recent one was an anti-war demonstration organized by the women’s group Code Pink. He laughs, making me think he finds the name amusing. But no, he shows me he has Code Pink in his cell phone. They had contacted him and will be joining us at the rally at the Capitol. 

We are to park the trucks at the RFK Stadium and walk from there to the Capitol, giving us about a half an hour to mill around on foot in the parking lot first. There’s a bobtail with “Truckin for Jesus” painted on it and, under that, “Truckers and Citizens United.” There are Operation Desert Freedom caps and a POW/MIA flag, as well signs indicting oil companies and “Wall Street speculators.” I chat with members of the mostly African-American contingent of DC dump truck drivers and with Belinda Raymond, a trucker’s wife from Maine, who tells me that people in her area raised $9000 to send a convoy of trucks down here, with the Knights of Columbus accounting for $2500 of that. Whole families have come, and I see a boy carrying a sign saying “What about My Future?” A smartly dressed woman from New Jersey carries a sign asking, “Got Milk? Not Without a Truck.”

If there’s an ideology at work here I’d call it small-d democratic fundamentalism: We own the government, we pay for it, and now it better do something for us. In fact, JB is carrying hundreds of copies of the Code of Ethics for Civil Servants he’s downloaded from the internet to hand out at the Capitol and remind Congress of their duties. The only time I see his smile fade is when the protest’s media coordinator – contributed pro bono by the liberal think tank The Institute for Policy Studies – lays down the ground rules for a meeting with Senator Jeff Sessions (R, AL) scheduled for the afternoon. “But he works for us!” JB protests.

On the 45 minute long march from the stadium to the Capitol, things degenerate toward the level of farce. No one had counted on the rain, which is back in force, or on the fact that, as one guy puts it to me, they’re “truckers, not walkers.” JB, I and a few others fall behind because JB insists on running back to his truck and changing into a shirt printed with the American flag and Constitution. Our little band includes Mike Groff, a heavily pierced 20-something from Pennsylvania who is one of the original organizers of the protests and his pregnant wife Melissa. JB and Mike take turns pulling a wagon carrying batteries for the sound system that will be used at the rally. The rain turns into a torrent. We trudge through the ghetto, then on into a middle class neighborhood sporting azaleas and Obama lawn signs, not entirely sure of our direction and soaked to the skin. Melissa reassures me that, if we pee our pants, which seems increasingly likely, no one will notice.

But things look up when we get the Capitol, thanks largely to Senator Susan Collins (R, ME), who arranges for the truckers to stage a press conference inside the Russell Building lobby and out of the rain. Three truckers – two white and one black – speak about their dwindling livelihoods and the need for immediate government action to push down fuel prices. I can’t fight my way through the media to hear much of what they’re saying, but one speaker mentions foreclosures. This is a wide-ranging cry from the strangled middle class –or working class or whatever you want to call it—and all I can think is: Where are the Democrats? Why aren’t they are pouring out of their offices to show support for the truckers? And wouldn’t have been wonderful if Obama had shown up? Because he’s not going to make it unless he learns to channel the frustration of people like JB, Melissa and Mike.

That’s just my concern though. The whole event has been strictly nonpartisan. The truckers are already focused on the May 1 Truckers and Citizens United protest in New York City (see www.theamericandriver.com). That one, JB tells me, will be in solidarity with the San Francisco longshoremen’s May Day actions against the war.

Comments

[Dave McLane]

Before I moved to Congress Arizona from Japan, I collected CB trucker data on I-40 and I-10 to use for an in-fated video. I gave up on the video -- had to sell the equipment to finance the move to the States -- but have repurposed myself as a citizen journalist and riding with truckers and gathering stills and voice recordings would make for a great story. If anybody knows how to contact them, please let me know.

[Angelia Sparrow]

I'm a company driver, pulling a 28' pup on a 300 mile/day delivery route.

Without me, eastern Arkansas (at least the portion that drives GM vehicles) doesn't go to work.

Since I can't actually be at any protests, how I show solidarity on this issue?

[sarah]

that's a lovely post. well drawn characters, sense of place and definite sense of issues driving them. "but he works for us" will ring through my head for a while.

[Brian]

Great blogging start. I hope you write a book about these times as they are here now and people won't really get that till much later, and we will need some real time history to really understand what we are going through. We are in the shute now and to me it shows a big divergence between real time and cyber time events. The democrats answer now to the media and cyber space pushes and shoves, and not to the people. Susan Collns is one of the good people, she still relates with "the people". She may retire and I hope not. You hit the main theme right off which is the Government is no longer a little d governement and doesn't represent the will of the people at all. I go further and say, the federal governent is an off the shelve entity doing its own-thing government, the best government corportate interests can by(others words), and it answers to no-one but the man who occupies that house on Capital Hill. Congrats America, you have made your prime minister your king. And this in modern times. But you could write a story that better shows the people side of the times. I think no one is doing that, probably not since the Beat's and rail road singing poets made a few telling observations. I think we as a culture need to get away from the media type narrative op-ed analytic in tow of various advertisers to real first person stories. I say this after a younger, probably totally mad women nearly ran me off the road today in her toyota in such a rush to get from her job to her apartment. The last thing I recall about her was her yelling at me through her rear side window with her frizzy hair flying about after she nearly killed my life passing me on the right and almost zipping through me. That is what America has become. That is what it is.

[Barbara E]

Angelia and Dave: Probably best to contact the truckers through theamericandriver.com. If that doesn't work, let me know.

[JCS]

Elected officials haven't been 'civil servants' for 20 years or more. They are our LEADERS. Civil servants are the bureaucrats whose primary job is to serve the elected LEADERS.

[J. X. Rodríguez]

"There was a pray-in at a Chevron station in San Francisco on Friday led by a minister asking God for cheaper gas."

-- from story in New York Sun

[Anarcissie]

'... This is a wide-ranging cry from the strangled middle class –- or working class or whatever you want to call it —- and all I can think is: Where are the Democrats? ...'

The Democrats are lying low because there is nothing substantial they can do about the situation. They can and almost certainly will vote for a gas tax holiday, but all that will do is add to the money floating around without adding to the things the money buys, that is, it will cause faster inflation, just as the rebate and the FRB's new, new, ever cheaper money will do. I expect inflation to become a serious political issue this summer, and a serious financial problem for the Federal government as well.

It's pretty ironical that so many people are complaining that the government has become monarchical, while abjectly beseeching it to override the laws of logic, arithmetic, physics, and economics. They'd probably do as well to follow the example of Mr. Rodriguez's minister.

[chris]

The current difficulties and the wishfulness of some of those who are caught up in the changing landscape reminded me of the 1980s when farmers were feeling some pain. Sam Shepard and Jessica Lange starred in Country, a movie that attempted to capture the angst and anger of one farm family.

Plot

Released in the mid-1980s, this farm drama stars Jessica Lange and Sam Shepard as Jewell and Gil Ivy, who run a small farm in Iowa that has been in Jewell's family for several generations; her father Otis (Wilford Brimley) lives with them, along with their three children. While the work is hard and the earnings are slim, the Ivys have been able to get by, like most of their neighbors, until a one-two punch threatens to devastate the Iowa farming community.

First, a tornado devastates the area, then the Farmers Home Administration calls in the loans on most of the farmers in the area, which they are in no position to repay. With thirty days to "voluntarily liquidate" their property, the Ivys, like most of their friends and neighbors, are desperate to find a way to hold on to their property, and when the stress causes Gil to buckle, Jewell must step in to keep the clan going.

Review

The widespread foreclosure of small family farms during the early '80s forms the backdrop for William D. Wittliff's often affecting, if essentially predictable melodrama, featuring exceptional work by Jessica Lange.

With Ronald Reagan's appointment of former agribusiness executive William Brock as Secretary of Agriculture, the days of the small farmer were numbered. For Lange, who also served as executive producer, the plight of the farmers is clearly close to her heart, and the film's portrayal of a staunch matriarch desperately trying to hold her disintegrating family together occasionally evokes The Grapes of Wrath.

If the scope of its social observation and depth of characterization can hardly stand comparison with the earlier film, there are moments, such as the scene of the farm's auction, and in particular a long shot at the end of a hallway of Lange and husband Gil (Sam Shepard) embracing in silhouette that John Ford himself might have appreciated. Despite having to work with characters condemned to a certain passivity, the cast does an excellent job, and Lange is at her best in a memorable, mutely expressive performance.

Thanks to the fine work of the government that led to the creation of tax credits for ethanol production and a tariff on imported ethanol, food prices are going through the roofs of the big new homes of the formerly suffering farmers.

To lower the price of anything, the solution always involves a strategy to increase the supply. The price of an important commodity will never drop if there is less of it.

Thus, the easy and obvious solution is for Congress to permit oil drilling on all US territory. There are 80 BILLION barrels of proven oil reserves on US territory now off-limits to oil drillers.

When it comes to oil, the US behaving as though it is a nation of starving people who worship cows that walk freely among us because we believe they are holy and cannot be eaten.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... Thus, the easy and obvious solution is for Congress to permit oil drilling on all US territory. There are 80 BILLION barrels of proven oil reserves on US territory now off-limits to oil drillers. ...'

I've been discussing the price of oil with some right-wingers and others in recent weeks in another venue, and the above is a taste of what y'all progressives are going to get if you complain about such things. I believe puffing up nuclear power will also be offered. If war hadn't already been tried and failed that would be on the menu too. Believe me, the corps and the oilmen are ready to increase your supply, and their profits -- or at least go through the motions. Just don't be so prissy about the environment, global warming, war, big business and all that.

Of course, chris's view is a bit limited. Another way of lowering the price is to decrease the demand. But since Americans believe they have a natural right to have and burn torrents of cheap oil, that idea is not going to go over politically at all.

[gaby]

Unfortunately, America is build in such a way that a car is a necessesity. You have workplaces in industrial parks, non-existent public transportation in most areas and poorly maintained or non-existent sidewalks which is making walking or bike riding hazardous. Redesigning cities to make them more people-friendly would be a step in the right direction.

[Anarcissie]

Redesigning and rebuilding the cities will probably happen eventually -- it is a reasonable thing to do. But remember that human beings generally try reason only after every other option has been tried and failed. We have many options yet to go. Right now we're in the phase of looking for scapegoats, conspirators and malefactors. No doubt plenty will be found.

[chris]

anarcissie, if the discussion about oil and energy were purely theoretical, then a discussion of reducing demand for oil would have a place.

But to believe that humans will simply move on to other energy sources, especially when they are many times more expensive, is simply crazy.

Compared with other energy sources, oil is cheap, even at $120 a barrel. Furthermore, you seem rather cavalier about the arrival of cheap alternatives, as though somebody's got them in the backroom somewhere.

I suggest you look into First Solar (stock symbol FSLR) to learn a little about solar energy and why, despite First Solar's full-speed-ahead progress, we're decades from converting sunlight into meaningful quantities of electricity for less than the current price of oil.

The desires of people who think we can simply move away from oil are only achievable if a global tyranny keeps humans from oil. That's it.

Furthermore, you seem to believe that US consumption is the only consumption that matters. The US accounts for 25 million barrels of daily oil use. But global demand is 85 million barrels.

How can the US reduce energy consumption? Whether the primary source is oil, coal, solar, wind, nuclear or geothermal, how can the US reduce energy consumption?

The population of the US is now a little over 300 million. Based on historical growth rates, the US population will reach 450 million by the middle of this century. A 50% increase. How can 50% more people -- 450 million people -- use less total energy than the US population -- 300 million -- uses today?

In the future I envision more cars, planes, trains, buses, trucks, boats, ships, heaters, air conditioners, household appliances, entertainment electronics, lights, heavy construction equipment, light construction equipment, and more.

India is feeling a labor shortage of infra-structure workers -- the guys who can build roads, bridges and all the other venues for the surging motor vehicle traffic in India, a country with more than a billion citizens. India alone expects its leading car company to put a HUNDRED MILLION of its new cheap cars on the road in the coming decade.

Nothing that happens in the US will keep global oil consumption from rising to 110 million barrels a day from today's daily consumption of 85 million barrels.

Why kid yourself about a NET reduction in oil consumption. It is laughable. Preposterous.

The questions you have to answer follow:

What are the alternatives to oil?

How will you induce energy users to adopt new sources?

How long will it take for this global transition to occur?

Which countries, people and/or regions will feel the most pain from a transition mandated by government?

What's wrong with the idea of using oil until it's gone?

[Buena]

How quickly the blowhards start bloviating.

The subject is the truckers' action, and how regular Americans feel their only recourse is to take to the streets.

This IS our country and we need to take it back.

[Yuri Rennenkampf]

"We own the government, we pay for it, and now it better do something for us"
Great idea Barbara! Let's have some price controls. They did great in the 1970s and even better in Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Why, I'd far rather queue for hours for fuel than pay higher prices!

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... What's wrong with the idea of using oil until it's gone?'

Well, it's like a fellow who has a certain amount of money and doesn't know where the next batch is coming from. He can spend it all immediately, or spend it slowly. Depends what kind of drama you like, I guess.

[Anarcissie]

Buena: '... This IS our country and we need to take it back.'

My problem with a statement like that is that I don't know what it means. We, the people, choose our political leaders by voting for them, and we choose our captains of industry by trading with them and working for them. We choose certain styles of behavior, entertainment, living arrangements, art, and so on. No one is putting a gun to our heads. We could have made other choices. We have always had that power. There is nothing to take back.

[chris]

anarcissie,

There is a century of oil remaining at the very least. Uncapped consumption will not deplete reserves in a decade. Uncapped consumption probably won't deplete reserves in a century either. But due to the increasing difficulty of pulling oil from the ground, I'm sure we'd see prices like those in Sierra Leone today -- $18.42 a gallon.

Anyway, your idea of reducing demand by forcing new-car buyers in the US to purchase high-mpg cars won't make a dent in global energy use while the number of cars and drivers in India and China skyrockets.

One day all the former communist countries -- like Russia -- will put cheap cars on the road and a few hundred million more people will begin driving.

Anyway, there is no substiture for oil when it comes to jet fuel. But airlines can go bankrupt. High fuel prices can do it. EOS, A recent start-up airline went Chapter 11 a few days ago due to high fuel prices. Management failed financially. They did not hedge against higher fuel prices as airlines normally do. Thus, every flight was losing more and more money. The pain became too much last week and they pulled th plug.

We've got a century to develop alternative energy sources. That's more than enough time.

Thus, you should try to answer the question I asked.

[Anarcissie]

chris -- you have me mixed up with someone else. I've just pointed out that when you use up the cheap stuff you have to start paying for the expensive stuff. Sometimes it's expensive in more ways than one.

There are a lot of people running around pretending otherwise, but it just ain't so.

[chris]

anarcissie, you wrote:

"Well, it's like a fellow who has a certain amount of money and doesn't know where the next batch is coming from. He can spend it all immediately, or spend it slowly. Depends what kind of drama you like, I guess."

The century-worth of oil in the ground will rise in price over time, but the price will always reflect the price of alternatives.

Thus, if the solar energy industry expands and solar energy becomes less expensive, oil prices will move with solar when they reach parity.

That's probably two decades away, at the earliest.

I'd let oil users use all the oil there is, confident that entrepreneurs would provide the alternative in the face of dwindling supplies.

By the way, gold prices went from $35 an ounce in 1974 to $800 an ounce in 1980 down to about $300 an ounce for 20 years, finally surpassing $800 in the last year or two. Gold and oil are not a fair comparison, but there are points in common.

On the other hand, oil was $3 a barrel until the early 1970s. It went to about $40 a barrel (over $100 in 2008 dollars) in 1983, then down through the rest of the 1980s, reaching a bottom of $10 in the early 1990s, then up and then back down in the later 1990s. And here we are at $115.

In other words, when supplies run ahead of demand, oil prices fall. Hence, the best plan is to drill everywhere oil is detected.

[Anarcissie]

chris: '... I'd let oil users use all the oil there is, confident that entrepreneurs would provide the alternative in the face of dwindling supplies. ...'

In that case we don't need to release any of that locked-up oil you've been talking about. Just put those magical entrepreneurs to work now. The solution is as wonderful as the one where the government passes a law making gas plentiful and cheap.

Amazing how obvious it all is. As someone said, "For every human problem, there is an answer that is simple, inexpensive, easy to understand, and wrong."

[no_slappz]

anarcissie, you wrote:

"In that case we don't need to release any of that locked-up oil you've been talking about."

The "locked-up oil I've been talking about" is ALL the oil on Planet Earth, which will last at least another century. We should tap every known reserve while looking for more and tapping those too.

Then you said:

"Just put those magical entrepreneurs to work now."

Those magical entrepreneurs are self-motivated. It's their nature to solve problems like this big energy problem. They see a need and they do something about it. The US has many of them.

Other countries where science and engineering are studied have them too. But there are none in Africa or muslim nations.

[Anarcissie]

no_slappz: '... The "locked-up oil I've been talking about" is ALL the oil on Planet Earth ...'

So we're just swimming in oil, and there's no problem. The people who trade futures in crude, heating oil and gas say you're wrong, but what do they know?

In any case, I thought you were taking the widespread right-wing line that we do have a shortage of oil, and that this is because of unwarranted government regulation and interference on behalf of conservation, the environment (including the prevention of global warming and pollution), and all that other wet liberal stuff. Just get rid of these laws, and drill everything, and all will be well. What I was pointing out to the lefties and semi-lefties here was that this proposal follows logically from their excitement about the truckers and gas and diesel prices. Fighting wars to seize foreign oil is another logical development of their concern and unqualified demand that the government Do Something Now.

But you don't see a problem, so I guess I'm talking to the wrong guy.

[chris]

Anarcissie, it seems you are confused by the difference between the total quantity of oil in the ground on Planet Earth and the rate at which we extract it.

If a big storm destroyed many off-shore oil platforms, we'd have a true shortage of oil on our hands. But a storm on the surface of the Earth has no effect on the amount of oil in the ground.

This is Earth. There is a finite amount of oil in the ground. But we control the pace at which it is extracted and refined for practical use.

If we increase the rate of drilling more wells, we will increase the flow, which will reduce the price.

Since the population of the world is growing and prosperity is increasing too, the world is demanding more oil. We are now using 85 million barrels a day. That number is expected to reach 110 million barrels a day in a decade or two.

The whole world is demanding more oil, not just the US. But due to the economics of the oil industry and political idiocy, the world exploits its oil resources in a way that is far from optimal.

Oil traders trade the oil that is flowing out of the ground -- not the oil sitting in resevers below ground. They trade based on the rate of flow versus the rate of consumption.

Consumption is running high enough that people believe the margin between supply and demand is about zero.

Oil wells run dry faster and faster. Most of the big ones have been found. Though Brazil may have discovered a true elephant last week. But our seismic mapping gets better all the time, which enables oil companies to find more and more small reserves.

There is more than a century's worth of oil in the ground. But we have to find it and get it out.

[Brian]

The world and the US needs to commit to using less oil and to not sabotage its food supply by shuttling such a huge percentage of its corn into ethanol. While pilot projects to develop and use modest amounts of corn and switchgrass are reasonable to evolve the technology of alternative fuels, we can build more efficient engines, lighter cars and trucks with new light weight materials and better technology. Houses can be better insulated, solar energy and wind can be better tapped, new generations of led lights etc are all coming on-line. People don't have to buy gas guzzling suv's and they don't have to make them so fuel inefficent. Hybrid car designs are just starting to be tapped and fuel cell cars are already here waiting to be developed and a supportive infrastructure to be built out creating new jobs and new industries. Our infrastructure needs rebuilding and with that efficiency can be increased. Safer nuclear power is designable that won't melt down and we still need to complete a waste site end to the fuel's life cycle. By exporting and working with emerging economies in the undeveloped world early we can further help conserve oil as well as export new technologies and expertise to them once again creating jobs. By example and politics we can surely motivate a number of nations to improve their use and conservation of energy supplies as well as help educate a new generation of talent with those skills which will also impact nation's politically in the energy decisions they make. Probably a third of the price of oil is from speculators, hedge funds, governments, and companies who are betting for and against its price with huge leverage. This works against people buying gasoline even when there are adequate stocks in inventory which there currently is. Also tax incentives for big oil need another look to make sure we aren't being counterproductive to an efficent engery policy. Its all a question of political will which means its also a question of real leadership willing to do a real job.