News: The midwest flood

How a midwest flood can drag down a nation

Let's go back to the 70s... The midwest was still served by a thick web of railroads, and if the mainline was flooded out there were plenty of branch lines to detour on. The Interstate System was pretty much complete, but was still used at less than capacity so you could actually drive the speed limit. Back then I drove truck for Continental Baking, a typical big company of the era. We had bakeries every couple hundred miles, with 70 of them spread around the country. In Iowa alone we had bakeries in Davenport, Sioux City, and Waterloo, and 3 in Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Rochester, and St.Louis in surrounding states. Look at a map of Iowa, and you'll find we had a bakery within 3 hours drive by truck from anywhere in Iowa. Every bakery was quite self sufficent- our engineers could make parts for our machinery if they had too, and their parts stock would put a decent hardware store's to shame. We jammed the basement of the bakery with ingredients, had a huge bulk flour tank to boot, a couple more boxcars of flour sitting in the siding a mile away, and truckloads more perishable ingredients at the locker plant a few blocks away. If we somehow managed to run out of all that, the Pillsbury "A" mill was but a mile away along with many other suppliers. Most of our bakeries baked just a single 8 hour day, and our drivers worked an 8 hour shift. In the rare occasion when the bakery was down for more than an hour of so, other bakeries ran a little overtime and baked for them. Being scheduled for an 8 hour day when we legally could work 15 hours, we drivers had ample time to make an extra trip to another bakery or make a long detour due to closed roads. That was standard operating procedure back then in american business- an auto plant didn't shut down because a trailer load of parts was on it's side in a ditch 500 miles away.

Back to this century and the brave new world of "just in time" logistics, "lean manufacturing", and the ever popular "eliminating excess capacity". Continental Baking has merged with Interstate Bakeries, but the only bakery they have left in Iowa is in Waterloo- it's shut down by the flooding and who knows when it'll be back up. Only 4 of those 9 bakeries in surrounding states are still baking. The old engineers who maybe spent too much time munching donuts and guzzling coffee but were right there when something broke have pretty much retired but not been replaced.

Most of that web of rails is gone too. What's left is overloaded "main lines" that are often just single track, the second track having been pulled up and sold for scrap. "Branch Lines" that used to parallel the main lines and serve as detours now run a few miles and dead end, if they haven't been torn out entirely. Dozens of rail yards have been torn out and the land sold at huge profits for development- As a result backed up trains plug the main lines because there aren't enough yards to park them in. Despite most railroads now being quite profitable, profits that should have been reinvested in upgrading century old routes through river valleys have instead gone into dividends to satisfy short sighted investors.

How high is the water, Papa? First Person Midwest flood report

The mitigation effort in Iowa City has been tremendous as we prepare for the Iowa River to crest some time Monday or Tuesday. I heard estimates of 1500 to 2000 volunteers just at the Madison Ave staging area on the East side of the river. As I describe to you the efforts around campus and near downtown Iowa City this campus map may be a useful reference. There's also some links to pictures I found on Flickr.
Ok, so if you look in the NE corner of the map I linked you see Dubuque St and the bridge at Park Rd. That's all closed down. The bridge at Iowa Ave, by the English-Philosophy building is also closed. Until tomorrow, I think that the Burlington St bridge and the Benton St bridge (further south than that map shows) remain open. Here's the view from the Burlington Street bridge facing Southwest. That building is the hydraulics research laboratory. After the bridges close, Iowa City will be effectively cut in half, although I-80 North of town should stay open.
There's lots of high ground around the area shown in that map. Downtown Iowa City will not be seriously impacted. That's the area on the East end of that map, up steep hills from the river. Likewise, on the West side of the river the hospital, the medical labs, etc. are on high ground. (I am too, btw). We are very fortunate compared to Cedar Rapids where the commercial and business center of the city has been basically submerged, not to mention numerous residential areas including the historic Czech Village.
The river flows South through the city curving gently to the East. Because of the curve, I think that the areas on the West bank have had the most water. Here's Hancher Auditorium looking from the East across the river. It looks like water is up to the walls at Hancher now. The building you see in this image of Riverside Drive facing North is new and not (I think) labeled on the map I linked. You can see there, however, that the water has already crossed Riverside drive. There was a great effort to move art in the museum and in the student art buildings and get that area sandbagged. I hope nothing happens to that beautiful Pollock in the museum! I'm sure that moving those sorts of things was a high priority. I think the art students had plenty of opportunity to get their stuff as well, though I imagine that for things like large sculpture projects that could be very difficult.

Men of honor. Oh ye Democrats? There is a BIG diff. between talking the talk and walking the walk

GO read Glenn Greenwald's fantastic article Right now.

British debate highlights the cravenness and complicity of congressional Democratic "leaders"

(updated below)
The intense and escalating political dispute in Britain over civil liberties is interesting in its own right, but it also vividly illustrates how craven and barren our own political system -- and the U.S. Democratic Party -- have become. The sacrifices now being made by British politicians of all parties in opposition to expanded government detention and surveillance powers is, with a few noble exceptions, exactly what our political elite in the Bush era have been -- and still are -- too afraid or too craven to undertake. As the Democratic Party prepares this week to endorse the Bush administration's illegal spying program and immunize telecoms which deliberately broke our surveillance laws for years, these contrasts become even more acute.
As I wrote about a couple of days ago, Tory MP David Davis is so passionately opposed to expanded detention powers and to the increasingly invasive British surveillance state generally that he has resigned his seat in Parliament in order to run again on a platform of safeguarding core civil liberties. Although Davis' own Conservative party leadership is infuriated by his resignation (because it risks the loss of that seat for the Tories), a key member of the Labour Party who also opposes increased detention powers is now defying his own party leadership in order to support Davis' re-election bid, an extraordinary step for a Labour MP to take, given that Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the prime force demanding more government power. From The Guardian today:

Gordon Brown faced a fresh challenge to his authority last night after a leading Labour rebel promised to campaign for David Davis in the renegade Tory's forthcoming by-election. Bob Marshall-Andrews yesterday defied the Prime Minister to sack him, adding that he hoped other Labour MPs would join the former shadow home secretary's one-man crusade for civil liberties.
"They can't muzzle the whole of the party, and it seems to me foolish in the extreme in the present climate to start describing civil liberties as a stunt," he told The Observer. "I have had emails asking, 'Why does it take a Tory to say this'?"
Under party rules, Labour MPs risk expulsion for campaigning for opposition parties. However, the maverick MP for Medway said that, since Labour appeared unlikely to put up a candidate against Davis, he considered himself free to speak so that 'the voice of a substantial part of the Labour party may be heard'.

Even more strikingly, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has announced that his party will not even contest Davis' re-election, preferring instead to support the Tory MP's defense of civil liberties even though it means sacrificing an opportunity to have his party take over Davis' seat. From today's BBC:

Defending his decision not to stand a Lib Dem candidate against Mr Davis -- whose Haltemprice and Howden constituency was 7th on the list of target seats for Lib Dems' -- Mr Clegg said it was "a one-off" in exceptional circumstances. Mr Clegg said Mr Davis had told him the night before he announced his resignation about his intentions.
"I thought about it overnight, spoke to some people in the party, and we decided that from time to time it's not a bad thing to say look, there are certain issues which go beyond party politics."
He said while he disagreed with Mr Davis on many issues, he was known to feel "extremely strongly" about the issue of pre-charge detention and ID cards -- and without him the Conservatives may not have opposed those policies so strongly.