Here’s an interesting demographic trend: American teenagers and twenty-somethings are driving less. Data:

The share of automobile miles driven by people aged 21 to 30 in the U.S. fell to 13.7% in 2009 from 18.3% in 2001 and 20.8% in 1995, according to data from the Federal Highway Administration’s National Household Travel Survey released earlier this year.

That’s a sizable drop. And this came despite the fact that the share of 21-30 year olds in the population increased slightly.



Not only are young people driving less, fewer of them are driving at all:

In 1978, nearly half of 16-year-olds and three-quarters of 17-year-olds in the U.S. had their driver’s licenses, according to Department of Transportation data. By 2008, the most recent year data was available, only 31% of 16-year-olds and 49% of 17-year-olds had licenses, with the decline accelerating rapidly since 1998.

Why the change? The article (“Is Digital Revolution Driving Decline in U.S. Car Culture?”) posits that the Internet is largely responsible.

1. Young people enjoy public transportation now more (as opposed to driving) because it frees their attention up to use electronic devices while commuting.
2. Internet telecommuting makes physical presence optional for some jobs
3. Social media allow teenagers the flexibility to interact with their friends virtually so they need not drive around to connect with them

All of those are true, of course, but I think they’re secondary causes for the phenomenon. I think 18-year-olds still want the freedom to drive around town even if they are tweeting back and forth.
I believe the primary force driving this trend is economic, which the article curiously downplays:

The economy, rather than any longer-term secular trend, has impacted driving and licensing among younger people, said Paul Taylor, chief economist with the National Automobile Dealers Association. Unemployment has led some younger consumers to drive less, and the cost of insuring a 16-to-19-year-old driver alone can discourage cash-strapped parents from allowing them to get licenses. State licensing requirements and restrictions by many high schools and colleges on driving are also a factor.

Expense and unemployment are big barriers to teenagers. It costs a lot to keep a car:

According to DOT data, it costs $8,000 a year to operate a car based on the average 15,000 annual miles driven. In all, Americans spend $1 trillion to $2 trillion annually on automobiles, Mr. Draves said, including everything from the cars themselves to the roads they run on, the gas they need and the $100 billion spent insuring them.

Whatever the causes, this trend alters the transportation landscape. One immediate effect is that vehicle traffic now is safer since teenage drivers are more accident prone and there are fewer cars on the roads.
In the longer term, this should prompt a shift in government spending away from roads toward more public transportation, as a larger percentage of the population will be accustomed to living life without a car.

Just kidding:

It was virtually standing room only at the Rutherford County Courthouse Thursday as residents expressed their anger over approval of a Muslim community center.

Anger over what?

At the heart of concerns expressed Thursday is the Regional Planning Commission’s approval of a 52,000-square-foot Mosque in a residential area off Veals Rd. The plan was approved under “use by right” provisions that allow all religious groups to circumvent public zoning hearings by simply submitting plans for approval.

You can see the conundrum the commission caused here by literally applying the public hearing exemption to all religious groups, instead of just to Christian churches, as they were supposed to.
But process complaints were a secondary issue to most attendees–they had bigger concerns:

[M]ost who spoke focused more on the threat they feel the Islamic faith presents to the community.

And they weren’t shy in saying so:

“Will radical ideas and violence be brought to our doorstep?” resident Donald Todd asked. “We would not want white supremacists or Nazis here either.”

I’m not so sure about that.

Resident Karen Harold warned that Hitler came to power when folks turned a “deaf eye” and feared Muslims might try to kill her for speaking out.

“I’m not against any kind of religions,” Harold said. “Hindus, they are not trying to kill us. But everybody knows who is trying to kill us, and it’s like we can’t say it, and they (are) a scary thing.”

We must keep our deaf eye focused on the threats.

“I think everybody realizes we are in a war with somebody,” resident Pete Doughty said. “We can’t identify all these people at this point, but we’re in a war.”

And someday we will defeat that somebody.

Resident Jackie Archer agreed and expressed concerns over America’s willingness to tolerate other religions.

“I think the problem is we are novices at this struggle whereas the people we oppose are veterans,” Archer said. “They see our big open hearts and arms in our American open society as a loop hole, and they jump right in before we know what’s happened.”

Tolerance is a problem; we should get back to the intolerance that our founding fathers intended:

Resident Roy Grady expressed concerns over the “motivation and potential threat to our Christian world” he feels community Muslims present. “Our country is under siege, ladies and gentlemen, because it was founded on the belief that Jesus Christ is our lord and king, the virgin born son of God and risen savior, the living God.”

Thanks to the Internets, I frequently engage in discussions with people from all over. Stereotypes being what they are, I periodically get accused by outsiders of living in a backward region.
“It’s not so bad,” I sometimes argue, defending my home turf. “We’re really not all that different than the rest of America.”
But when I read articles like this, I wonder: “Why bother?”

Via Kevin Drum, here’s a fun interactive feature at Forbes.com which shows internal American migration (from one county to another) during 2008.
Here’s the map for Knox County:

Many of the people moving to Knoxville came from Florida, the Carolinas, the Midwest (especially Michigan), and Southern California.
Meanwhile, others moved from Knoxville to the Gulf Coast, Texas, the Bay Area, Seattle, and the Northeast Corridor.
I suspect much of this migration was jobs-driven–many people moved to Knoxville from areas with high unemployment or where the housing bubble caused the biggest turmoil.
You can create the map for your county here.

Like many other people I thought President Obama’s Oval Office address fell short because it lacked specificity, substance, and even vision. It looked like the sole purpose of the speech was simply to present the president as engaged and doing something–anything–about the BP oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico.
That reaction is understandable–I think that Obama has taken a lot of unfair and even silly criticism regarding this incident. I’m sure that he’s been quite engaged behind the scenes and that doesn’t always translate into the evening news. But if you are going to have an address to the nation at this stage–weeks into the disaster–you really need to demonstrate that you have a handle on the situation by discussing concrete steps you are taking to keep the oil off the coastline.
I didn’t hear that. Or anything memorable, really.
Dan Froomkin, on the problem with the White House’s approach:

How unmoored from reality are Obama and his top advisers to think that some pretty words with so little substance could accomplish so much? It makes me wonder: Was that ultimately the lesson they took from the 2008 campaign — rather than that a nation was hungering for, you know, actual change?
And how much power do they invest in the trappings of the presidency, such that they thought the Oval Office setting would make his feeble call to action so commanding that it would suddenly, benevolently redirect the public’s visceral outrage over the oil spewing from the sea floor, the perfidy of BP, and the sluggishness of the government response?
I don’t blame the speechwriter. I blame Obama, or Rahm Emanuel, or David Axelrod, or whoever it was who ultimately decided that words, rather than action, were the best way to change the perception that the government isn’t doing enough in the Gulf.

The piece asks a number of questions Obama’s speech should have answered. [Incidentally, why the Washington Post ever let Froomkin go is an case study in how that outlet has gone downhill].
Froomkin concludes with a broader political point that the speech illustrates:

The extraordinary barrage of vitriol and obstruction with which Republicans and the right-wing media have consistently responded to Obama, pretty much no matter what he says, has become a fact of life in Washington. So one of the biggest mysteries of Obama’s still-young presidency is: Why doesn’t he find that liberating?
If you’re going to get savaged by your opponents, no matter what, why talk in half-measures and generalities that make even your supporters cringe?
It’s also smart politics. One of the countless lessons of the Bush era is that the American people, for better or for worse, respond very positively to a leader who acts with conviction (unfortunately, that is the case pretty much regardless of what that conviction may be).
By contrast, Obama’s ambivalent mush is getting ripped apart by both the right and the left this morning. Being attacked from all sides is, unfortunately, some people’s notion of good political journalism, but it’s nobody’s idea of effective political leadership.

Correct. President Obama sometimes does a rhetorical dance in an effort not to say something which will upset someone. But some people make it their business being upset. In his futile attempt to placate them, he sometimes comes across as being ambiguous or indecisive. And when unemployment is high, or people need health insurance, or oil is leaking into the Gulf, that’s not what concerned citizens want to see.

On her show tonight Rachel Maddow offered a fake presidential address. I don’t agree with all of her policy recommendations, but it clearly illustrates the direct call to action our president needs to make.

This week (Monday, actually) I reported for my first-ever stint as juror in Knox County Circuit (civil) Court. The summons the court mailed me wasn’t very detailed. So if you have similarly received a summons and are wondering what to expect, here’s what I found out the first day.
The summons recommends you park at the Dwight Kessel Metropolitan Parking Garage. Why? Among other reasons, because it has an all-day rate of $5, which is equal to the parking allowance the court gives you. Other lots cost more. You don’t need to keep the garage tickets for reimbursement–the court gives everyone the parking credit regardless of if you park there or not.
When you report to the circuit court desk you are directed down the back hall to the jury room. There you’re given a short questionnaire which asks about your work, your family situation, previous jury experience, and your address. The court keeps the latter (to send jury pay) and shares the rest of the information with attorneys.
After allowing everyone in the jury pool (in my case, about 40 people) time to fill out questionnaires, the court clerk instructs everyone on the process, as follows:
The circuit court jury term lasts nine days (Monday-Friday the first week, Monday-Thursday the second week). Although the court has several trials going every day, it only schedules one a day which may require a jury. And often those settle or are otherwise resolved without going to the jury. So many days no jury is required.
Essentially jurors are on call. Every day after 5 pm you call in and are notified by recorded message whether you are report the next day or not.
The clerk said that the previous jury pool only got called in two days (out of nine). This is my third day and we’ve not yet been called for trial. It just depends on how the current docket plays out.
The clerk said that about 90% of the cases that juries in this court hear are auto accidents. The balance are medical malpractice suits and sundry other claims.
Jurors are paid $11 per day that they are called in.
In a nutshell, that’s how the system works. In the coming days I may or may not have an opportunity to learn more and fulfill my civic duty.
UPDATE: As chance would have it I did not get called in again for actual jury duty during the two-week term.
Oh well, maybe another time.