the oil companies own our asses because we keep giving them money

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.