In the end, maybe we all become lobbyists for automobility

I was talking with someone today about Maryland politics, which made me remember that Barbara Mikulski became a politician as a result of her leading neighborhood opposition to freeways in Baltimore, specifically in Fells Point:

Baby Blues, 4/20/2009, frame 1.

From "Charmed Century: 100 Years Of Baltimore News--And You Are There" from the Baltimore City Paper:

1968-78: Roads to Nowhere

Neighborhood-based organizations wage a grass-roots campaign to stop crosstown freeways, including the Leakin Park Expressway and spurs connecting interstates 83 and 95, that would have required demolishing several east- and west-side neighborhoods. Their partial victory preserves Fells Point, Federal Hill, Leakin Park, and Rosemont -- and ignites the political career of a Highlandtown social worker, Barbara Mikulski.

We didn't think it was right to destroy healthy neighborhoods so that suburban commuters could get in and out of the city faster. . . . We talked to the planners, the architects, and the politicians. We organized the neighborhoods and we challenged the cost-benefit analysis. We ran bake sales so we could rent buses to take us to Annapolis, to City Hall, and to Washington to protest the very public policies that were going to happen to us. While we were doing the bake sales, that design concept team [for the highways] had $5,000 in audiovisual equipment alone -- to educate us. So with the mimeograph machine that we borrowed from the Holy Rosary Holy Name Society, we began a neighborhood movement. (Barbara Mikulski, in a 1979 speech to the American Planning Association, excerpted in The Baltimore Book)

Baby Blues, 4/20/2009, frames 2 and 3

These days, Senator Mikulski's bright idea for revitalizing the U.S. auto industry is making fully tax deductible interest payments on car purchases. Although this provision has been removed from the Stimulus bill, a special tax break for car purchases has been inserted. See "Maryland Politics: Obama Expected to Sign Mikulksi Car Tax Break" from the Baltimore Sun.

The disconnect between the U.S. economy and its dependence on oil and how this makes for an unbalanced and unsustainable economy continues.