The United States has become a banana republic. The mainstream media won't report it. But there is a pattern to the disintegration of our democracy. This has happened four times now since the year 2000 – where the frontrunner Presidential candidate, who had committed to do something about Climate Change, has lost due to cheating (such as gerrymandering, poll closures in poor communities, purging of voter rolls, likely remote control of vote counting, and essentially every other dirty trick in the book). Those unfortunate candidates were Al Gore, John Kerry, Bernie Sanders, and now Hillary Clinton.
Allow
me to quote the Palmer
Report about the 2016 election:
“In order to believe that
the official vote tallies are legitimate, you have to accept that all
of the above legitimately happened: African-Americans in the south
went from turning out in droves for Hillary Clinton in the primary to
not caring if she won the general election. Donald Trump got
sixty-something percent of the same-day voting in Florida. The
polling averages were wrong for the first time in modern history.
Trump beat his poll numbers despite having spent the primary season
tending to fall below them. Clinton fell below her poll numbers
despite having spent the primary season tending to beat them. In
every state where Trump pulled off a shocking upset victory, he just
happened to do it with one percent of the vote. And in an election
that everyone cared particularly deeply about, no one really turned
out to vote at all. I can accept any one of the above things
happening as an isolated fluke. I cannot accept all the above
happening. And so for once in my evidence-driven career, I’m left
to believe that the conspiracy theorists are right: the vote tallies
are rigged.”
Want
to know who's behind all of this? Follow the money. What giant
industry has the most to gain by electing Climate Change denying
Republicans? We all know the oil companies have pumped huge
sums of money into the elections. We all know the oil companies spend
huge sums of money advertising on mass media (obviously
to manipulate our news). And we all should know that this is our
money being used against us.
They
now have the capacity to steal a landslide election. And they may
have had that ability for quite a few years now. Maybe that's why
Obama's energy policy pretty much up until the end of his second term
has been “all of the above.” Maybe that's why pro-renewable
Energy Czar Van Jones stepped down without a fight. Maybe Obama
suspected that there was literally no way he would ever win an
election if he tried to do something about Climate Change – no
matter how many people voted for him.
It's
now blatantly obvious that the oil companies care more about keeping
their multi-billion dollar income streams than the truth, our
democracy, or even the future of life on the planet.
A
recent study, published in Science
(Advances) has concluded that if carbon dioxide emissions
continue on their current trajectory, the U.S. West will have a
greater
than 90% probability of a megadrought. This is very
serious. A megadrought decimated the Anasazi civilization – and
there are millions more people now living in the Western States. Need
I remind you that the most recent drought death toll for trees in
California now is over
100 million trees.
Twenty
years ago, everyone (Republican and Democrat) agreed that we had
to do something about Global warming. Yet today, with the scientists'
most dire climate predictions literally coming
true (or
worse); there is controversy. It's so blatantly obvious that
money, not common sense, has changed the politicians minds.
As
former President Jimmy Carter recently said; America has become an
“oligarchy with unlimited political bribery.”
-
Subsidies and tax breaks are the only reason fossil fuels are still competitive with renewable energy – and there is no end in sight for these subsidies – no matter how many billions the oil companies make.
-
Fracking is essentially trading fresh water for oil and gas.
-
Deep water oil drilling is so risky we're practically guaranteed more big spills.
-
And going to war over oil hasn't made us safer. It has only driven us further into debt.
Nonetheless,
for another four years, we can expect a repeat of Bush/Cheney oil
politics. Which means there will likely be even more war.
(There has recently been a
revolution in biology, and for the first time in history there may
soon be biblically effective biological weapons. Which means that the
election cheaters have likely given an obvious racist access to
weapons that might be able to kill off whole races of people.
But do the oil companies care?
The First World burns most of the gas. So, if the poor of the world
were to die off, that would just mean the First World could burn more
gas.
I'm not saying that a biowar
is inevitable. But the destruction of our democracy is well under
way. And the consequences of that could be far worse than we ever
imagined.)
We
now know that government really is the
problem – so long as it is a puppet of the fossil fuel industries.
Fortunately,
we can do something about the destruction of our
democracy, the addictive dependence of our economy on oil, and the
mass extinctions already happening in our Environment. This too, is
obvious. We can stop buying oil products. That's it. Without as much
money, they won't be nearly as powerful. Stop feeding
the beasts!
This
won't be easy. But the alternative appears to be living in a fascist
state with a failing economy due to a collapsing Environment – or
worse.
I
already drive as little as possible, keep my earth-bermed house below
60 degrees in the Winter, installed solar panels, and grow a garden
so I won't have to import all my vegetables from the
other side of the planet… But that just isn't enough.
So
I've decided to do this:
(Will
it be enough? Of course not, but I've got to do something.)
I'm
designing an electric scooter – that will hopefully replace some
(maybe even many) cars soon. It will be different from all the
scooters now available – especially how it will be marketed. I hope
to start a local cooperative to help in making components for it from
recycled materials. And then I plan to provide custom frame kits that
can be assembled right in the local bike shop. I'm convinced that
this fair marketing concept could provide promotable value to local
manufacturers and independent bicycle retailers. We might even change
Capitalism a little...
More
on this later.
