Speaking of blind eyes -- I continue to be amazed by how many people in US politics and media now know how vast and pernicious the effect of dark money has been on national elections
(as in the famous book by Brock, later hired as Clinton's media response person, and the book
Dark Money)... without understanding that the agenda which they report on involved the management of the federal government itself more than elections per se. At some level, those folks feel they don't even need elections, and I seriously worry they might get rid of them. I recommend reading Orson Scott Card's trilogy, Empire, to get a feeling for the mindset. (Not that it is a realistic mindset. Like the jihadi mindset, it is a reality we need to face up to, and of course there are some of us who understand how both of those mindsets are suicidal in the bigger picture.)
SO WHY DO THEY ASSUME GOVERNMENT AGENCIES ARE UNTOUCHED, BY
AN OUTGROWTH OF THE JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY DEDICATED TO FIGHTING CONSPIRACY WITH ITS OWN CONSPIRACY, to fighting government tyranny by using the same Soviet tactics they remain haunted by, which ultimately mean creation of a new tyranny uninhibited by government or democracy? (Then again, Erdogan's crew is no better, and his money men are certainly not limited to Turkey or Egypt in their operations or ambitions.)
Is Trump just lying when he says something different from Comey about their recent discussions? Some people would naturally assume, since Trump is crazy and unreliable, that Comey must be telling the whole truth and most be unimpeachable, like his former deputy now running the FBI.
But what of a little caution here before rushing to judgment.
Could it be that BOTH men are putting spin on what they are saying? (How could I imagine such a possibility for a fine upstanding government official? Well, I have seen a lot of fine upstanding government officials first hand, and I know so well that they are neither devils nor angels. And one needs to understand the context to have any idea what is really going on.)
Could it be that Trump was immensely frustrated when people just took Comey's perfection at face value, "at least this time he is the incarnation of truth and justice," and that he was helpless in defending himself against an excessive tendency to just assume that Trump is the source of all problems on earth? Could the conversation taping thing be just a wild expression of wishful imagination, wishing he had a way to show what really happened?
At the end of the day, I still remember the last chapter of the book "A G Man's Journal" , and I remember what I have seen first hand talking to people in many government agencies.
If Trump goes, do not expect a gentle honorable man like Ford surrounded by a classic democratic environment. Trump himself might resign himself to becoming a puppet of the new imperialists,
as in his health care legislation, but if he is impeached it now seems >90% that folks worse than him will take over.
If only the investigations would dig out the rot which has grown up in the executive branch.
It is clear that Comey was deferring to Lamar Smith and his pals, in much the same way that I saw Pramod Kargonekar do at NSF, deploying unAmerican tactics of control quite similar to what Erdogan has used on Turkish NATO officers. As they investigate Russia, will they investigate the much bigger money stories, the penetration which has ACTUALLY occurred already, and points back to places other than Moscow? Or will Trump pick a new FBI head who is ready and eager to lead the imperial coup d'etat? He might. Poor guy does have a problem with situational awareness.
And no, information technology is not a small part of this. It is a big part of the narrative of how tyranny can lead to death. Or is it just to fading away or gotterdammerung?
But for me, it is just IT now, and then retreat to some PDE mathematics in early June, if we all live that long.
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I was thinking this morning of posting something more practical and useful:
Could honest conservative
principles work better than a carbon tax?
The current Administration
has strongly opposed all actions, whether subsidies or national regulations or
even a carbon tax, to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions or dependency on fossil fuels. But could there be a silver lining
in this cloud? Could it it be that conservative principles which the
administration has promised to push harder this year would actually do better
than a carbon tax in expanding market-based profit-based renewable energy? Could it be that the outcome would be better
if we pushed them to actually implement their principles instead of just paying
lip service or being distracted by other things?
Many economists would say
“That could only be possible if there has been a huge market failure here.”
That is exactly what
the problem has been. The most important barrier to economically
sound growth of renewable energy has been endless regulation blocking the
development of interstate transmission lines. The reason for that is
simple. Renewable energy in the best
sites is now costing as little as 3 cents per kwh, in actual Purchase Power
Agreements accompanied by actual construction, in regions of sun so reliable
that it isn’t intermittent energy any more. But wind and solar in areas of
mediocre weather and less sun costs far more, to the point where many demand
subsidies worth 40 cents per kwh to justify it, and utilities have to pay a lot
of additional money to compensate for the intermittency.
Why is it that FERC was long
ago given the authority to cut through unnecessary complexity, and approve
interstate gas pipelines, but never given that same authority for long-distance
electricity transmission? Why does the political system give special preference
to projects like pipelines to enable the Canadians to sell their gas to the
Chinese, while not respecting the huge unmet potential for Texans to sell
electricity from wind or sun to the East Coast US (especially between noon and
8PM Eastern Time, where the numbers look good even without subsidies)? (It’s
not because the gas pipelines encounter less local opposition!) Why did
Congress rubber stamp the requests of the oil and gas industry, while rejecting
the findings and recommendations of the Edison Electric Institute back in 2008?
This is not a level playing field. This
is a rigged system, picking Americans as losers and Chinese as winners. Maybe
this might be a good time to put a stop to this kind of imbalance.
Of course, support for
interstate commerce was one of the founding principles of the United States.
Some further sources:
www.werbos.com/Atacama.pdf
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But honesty isn't what I see anywhere on CNN right now, and important as this step would be, it is not enough by itself by a long shot. So much would be needed to get us to a sustainable situation!
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