September 27, 2014

I'm going to enjoy this

First of all, from the information in the article, it would appear that Dave and Charlie Koch are actively lying, not merely willfully ignorant, about climate change. One cannot discount the willful ignorance of a couple of Birch-bred ignorami, since a person who believes that Ike was Communist or that the fluoridation of drinking water is a subversive plot is likely to believe anything.

However, since many fossil fuel magnates who promote the climate-science-is-a-hoax hoax are also inheritance brats who attended Ivy League universities where they probably learned something besides deviousness, sociopathology and ridiculous, unsustainable economic theories, it is difficult to believe that the whole fucking lot of them are so stupid as to question the conclusions of 97% of scientists.

What they are doing is lying to the public in an attempt to keep their businesses on life support.

They profess to believe in the free market, but ALEC crafted model legislation to tax homeowners with the audacity to install solar panels on the roofs belies this. This is nothing less than an attempt to strangle the competition in the crib.

They think coal and oil corporations are too big to fail. Actually, they're just too big for their breeches.

We need to supplant -- not supplement, but supplant -- fossil fuel with renewable energy sources in the next few decades. Fossil fuel is unhealthy. If you don't think so, take it from somebody who uses to drive past the Cheveron refinery between Richmond, California and the Carquinez Strait on a regular basis. Just smelling that place will make a person sick. If you don't live near an oil refinery, just go fill up you car at a gas station. Smelling a gas station will make you sick, too.

We didn't really need climate science to tell us that fossil fuel consumption was bad for public health. However, it's not just a threat to public health. It's a threat to life on Earth, and that is not an exaggeration.

Dave and Charlie are old men and will soon go to that great blazing fossil fuel source under the earth, and their final years will spent being reminded that karma can be very, vary nasty.

September 26, 2014

Please provide some context, sir

I refuse to be put in the same boat as Darell Issa or Louie Gohmert because I believe Holder will go down in history as a poor, perhaps even corrupt, Attorney General. Holder's failings include failure to prosecute Bush administration war criminals, failure to prosecute crooked Wall Bankers, defense of the NSA spy on everyone program, defense of assassination of American citizens without trial and persecution of whistleblowers.

These are real failings, not a ginned up scandal like Benghazi.

I also count as a failing Mr. Holder's inability to hold back the GOP assault on the right to vote. Many are lauding him today for what action he took without mentioning that if Mr. Holder's party loses the Senate, it will be because Republicans successfully barred American citizens from the polling place. Of course, Mr. Holder didn't desire the outcome, but he failed to stop it. There are times that good intentions just aren't good enough.

However, the scandals mentioned in the first paragraph, also mentioned by Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive, were done with no good intentions at all. Denial of due process or the right of Americans to be free from overreaching government intrusion are as much an assault on American democracy as is the denial voting rights.

So excuse me, but add me to those who, unlike Darell Issa or Louie Gohmert, are giving a principled and informerd good riddance to Attorney General Eric Holder.

September 11, 2014

Middle Eastern Wars and Energy Indpependence

It seems a laudable goal to destroy ISIS in the Middle East. ISIS may be an unintended consequence of a failed US policy, and it is a brutal, genocidal view of the future.

It seems an equally laudable goal to achieve energy independence. Unfortunately, "Drill, baby, drill" is a slogan that is proposed by those who would perpetuate the problem. What we need to be energy independent is to be able to make policy independent of fossil fuel corporations.

Let's not lose track of our priorities. We, as Americans, wish to become "energy independent." Going into the Middle East to secure a supply of oil is bad policy. Going to war to secure foreign oil is not being energy independent. It wasn't in 2003, it isn't in 2014.

Neither is it energy independent to tax homeowners for putting up solar panels.

Why is it that Republican party donors grin widely when McCain and Graham demand a bloody, aggressive policy in the Middle East? Why is it that Republican party donors, through ALEC, pushed through the solar panel in Oklahoma? Why is it that the Koch brothers are ground zero for the global-warming-is-a-hoax hoax?

I hate to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's pretty clear there a conspiracy here. Why should that be a surprise even to people like me, who thinks that Oswald killed Kennedy all by himself and that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaida operatives were responsible for the September 11 attacks?

The questions we should be asking concern whether what the President is proposing good policy. We've allowed one president to overthrow a bloody tyrant in the Middle East in order to gain control over oil and it didn't work out too well. What we got was a power vacuum being filled Baghdadi the rabble rouser, an even bloodier tyrant than Saddam. Yet, because we have not become energy independent, but instead allow those who are most interested in perpetuating the dominance of fossil fuel based energy to dictate energy and foreign policy to what is supposed to be a government by the people, not the oligarchs, here we are again. Let's go overthrow a tyrant in the Middle East so that they'll not brutalize the people they rule and install a new puppet government that will allow the west to control their natural resources.

The oligarchs' imperialist war against Iraq was a colossal failure, but they are determined to do again and again until we get it right. That's right, they want us to get it right for their benefit. They expect our children and grandchildren to die in Middle Eastern oil fields to secure a supply of oil for them to sell. To make sure they can sell it, they'll strangle any nascent technology that might eventually supplant it in the cradle, for instance, by taxing its use.

Not only do the oligarchs want to stifle the development of renewable energy industry, but they insist on a new, dirtier and more dangerous technology: fracking. Of course, if we don't like that, then there's always nuclear power. Chernobyl, anyone? Fukushima? Does their business plan really involve the destruction of planet Earth?

I see a common enemy here besides ISIS.

Can we help Middle Eastern regimes destroy ISIS and at the same time limit the influence of our own fossil fuel industries? Those energy corporations insist that we keep them on life support with imperialist wars, taxpayer funded subsidies and bailouts and assistance stifling the growth of new and cleaner energy industry.

It should be the avowed policy of the US government to supplant fossil fuel with renewable energy by the middle of this century. We should have no higher priority. If the Messrs. Koch, Mr. Tillerson, Mr. Blankenship, the Dukes of North Carolina and others want to keep their corporations viable, they can diversify, invest in renewable energy and help that industry grow. If not, we should do whatever it takes to grow renewable energy industries, including direct taxpayer funding to develop the industry as a completely public enterprise. Yes, that is socialism. To paraphrase Patrick Henry, let us make the most of it.

If the government proves unresponsive, then We, the People, independent of the government must make the policy. We will not fight in the oil industry's imperialist wars. We will not pay taxes (did he just propose a tax strike?) to keep the fossil fuel industries on life support or to prosecute wars for their benefit. If the government at any level passes legislation to stifle the growth of renewable energy, such as a tax on solar panels, then put up the solar panels and don't pay the tax. General strikes should also be employed, although they are illegal under the infamous Taft-Hartley Act. Yes, this is a campaign of civil disobedience. Be prepared to go to jail, be prepared for worse than that. We have an idea what the oligarchs have in store for us under their oligarchy. We are fighting not only for our survival, but the survival of planet Earth.