Know better than we do

We are headed for another government shutdown, this time extortion is being used  to stop the Affordable Care Act from being fully implemented.

The radical right, henceforth I will call them Republican Fascists, have decided to go all in on stopping the ACA.

And the justification is basically that their constituents are incensed that the ACA represents the federal government condescendingly treating them like it knows better.

The logic of this anarchist philosophy is startling:  if your side lose a vote in a fair exercise of democracy, the minority can  still can stop the action by throwing a fit, and shutting down the government to do it.

This is fascism folks, clear and simple.  Read the history of the rise of fascism in Italy and yes, Germany, during the 1920s and 1930s.  Both movements started as small minorities at the beginning, and used obstructionism and anarchy to slowly erode the democratic institutions (which were struggling with the ravages of WWI) of the time.

The Wiemar Republic, in Germany, struggled against huge odds, to pay unjust reparations and establish a democratic tradition in a former monarchy.  The fascists used the approach that the legitimate government was ineffective because it was using a I know what is best for you approach, was allied with the other democracies in the world (who had just prevailed on paper in WWI), and was failing.

Fascism in Germany preached a return to ancient values, militarism, and hatred of Jews as the source of all of Germany's problems.  And, it also set up a para-government everywhere it could, to prove fascism could govern better.

History shows that this was a sham.  The para-governmental structures that were put together, using outsourcing of civil service function, were in the end, hopelessly corrupt.  Gold was hoarded, expensive art stolen, and fascist "officials" basically used their positions to line their pockets.  You only need to analyze the "privatized" functions in Iraq of Republican Fascism to find the same corruption.

The Tea Party, if you check, is based on Revolutionary War values, militarism, and hatred of liberals (especially a certain President who just happens to be black), as the source of all of America's problems.  In addition the Tea Party has actively taken over local and state governments, to prove that its form of government (we decide you follow or else) can govern better.  It is no accident that states who have been taken over by the Tea Party, have enacted right wing legislation, that curbs civil rights, reproductive rights, and allows no input from the minority party.  

And, the next step, will be through voter suppression, to eliminate the other party.  

And, if you look closely enough, many of these para-governmental activities, are riddled with corruption.

These are not idle coincidences.  There is a plan here, and it is being dictated by the Koch Brothers, the Heritage Foundation; etc., who meet together all the time to plan a coordinated attack against democracy.  The efforts to close down the government and create chaos are just that, an effort to cause chaos and increase calls for dictatorship.

If we allow this cabal of evil to prevail, by extorting us into curbing the ACA, what is next?  I would predict ending various governmental departments, cutting the Civil Rights Act (just as they have ended the Voting Rights Act), and finally suspending the Congress of the United States.

There will be some "crisis" that requires this, which will also necessitate the incarceration of all Democrats and liberals, who could be  forced to carry ID placards hung around their necks.

If this sounds far fetched, it isn't.  Democracy is at risk right now, there is no doubt about it.  If the Republican Fascist Party prevails, we are on our way to totalitarianism in this country.

Fight back.  Call your Congressmen, even Doug LaMalfa (who is in on the above by the way) and tell them that you will work to beat them in the next election if they don't stop the extortion.   And then, in 2014, vote!  Vote, and get others to vote with you, else we won't be voting anymore.

There's Nobody There

The latest in the fracking madness, is the push to mine the Monterrey Shale.  Supposedly this is a huge deposit of shale oil.  Now, shale oil, is not the regular sweet crude, that long ago was mined out in California.  Shale oil is oil trapped in rock and shale deposits.  It needs a special process, called fracking, high pressure hydronic mining, that injects millions of gallons of water and secret chemicals into the shale, releasing the oil that is then pumped to the surface, alone with the water and chemicals.  

Much of the fracking brew, if you will, remains below, supposedly immune from water supplies.  Fracking proponents promise (cross my heart) that there is no way this toxic brew can affect water aquifers.  Of course, there are already incidents where that is exactly what has happened.  However, the Clean Water Act has been walled off from fracking by a Bill pushed by then Vice President Dick Cheney.  This is called the so-called Halletburton Bill, because it benefits Cheney's former company in that no water tests can be done relative to fracked drilling.

So the first promise is, even though common sense screams that clean water is one, being used in huge numbers, and two, there are several incidents where water supplies were contaminated, TRUST us, we know what we are doing.  

The second promise is Jobs, Jobs, Jobs.  North Dakota is pointed to with the growth of thousands of jobs.  

What they aren't telling you is the vast majority of these jobs are created for a short period of time.  Once the fracking is done, and the wellhead is capped and attached to a pipeline, the work moves on to the next frack.  Once all the wells are done, the number of jobs drops to zero; save an inspector here and there.  In short, there is no net increase in jobs due to fracking...none.

But there is one thing that increases, profit for the gas and oil companies.  Fracking costs a lot of money.  It has been a known process for years.  But, the cost of extracting the oil and gas was so high, that companies did not bother.  

Now, that the public is clamoring for more oil and gas, due to the fact that the less expensive ways of mining it are gone, the oil barons can charge just about what they want.

So, fracking does not make for permanent jobs; it just doesn't.  

What it does do is create the illusion that our energy problems are over.  In fact, peak oil was reached several years ago, and it is all downhill from here.

Fracking once again is used to put off doing what we must do, conserve, change our transportation habits, and learn to live in a limited energy production world.

By encouraging a "glut mentality" fracking only hastens the day when we flat run out; broke, our water supplies ruined, and victimized by oil companies that are just plain evil.  

Follow the Tea Party to Disaster

A new political trend or movement developed in opposition to the ACA in 2010.  It appeared, at first blush, to be a grass roots movement against the ravages of the Great Recession, Big Government, and the Democratic Congress.

Closer historical analysis has shown the Tea Party movement to be a cynical ploy by big money interests to effect the balance of political power, rid the Republican Party of "Rhinos", and radically affect the United States.

Some, me included, call the most radical of the Tea Party as a latent fascist movement, aimed at the overthrow of the government.  Many Tea Party Web Sites indicate as much.

Now, we in Northern California are enduring more Tea Party strategy.  The latest is the state secession movement.

I must note, that in Germany in the early 30s, the Fascists  used secession from the national government in a similar fashion to discredit the democratic regime.  The economy was failing, so rural areas in Germany sought "autonomy through the fascist party" on everything from economic policy, tax policy, and finally even defense.

A familiar approach of fascism is to divide and conquer.  And a ploy often used is to seek a break away from central authority, set the party up as a puppet government, then overwhelm the government with fringe local governments who are actually fascist fronts.

Sound familiar?  The Tea Party Movement is practicing the same thing.   It is targeting rural areas in the United States, working on the fear and concern about state and federal governments, to "reform" the system.  In effect, what they are working to do is "take over" the system from outside, using rural areas as a springboard of discontent.

The revival of the "State of Jefferson" in northern California is an example.  Rural counties, like Siskiyou that was recently skewered by the Sacramento Bee, are seeking, with Tea Party members leading the charge, a secession from California.  This goes against all common sense, and is probably not doable, but the Tea Party persists.  The "cause" of the "State of Jefferson" works on fear, and frustration that rural counties have with state government that is dominated by urban areas.  It also is founded on racist reaction to the growing power of urban areas in California and the emergence of people of color as a potent political force.

On the national level, it is way more serious.  The Constitution set up a separation of powers government, that leans heavily to rural lightly populated areas.  There were two reasons for this:  one, the nation was at the time highly agrarian with slavery in half of it and purposefully restrained anti-slavery urban areas; and two, much of  what is now the United States were territories  not even owned by the United States and rural areas had to have more autonomy and power  to lure them into the union.  Territories would not join the union if they would lose all political power to the urbanized north.

As a result of this and other motives, we have a system that gives more representation to  territory than to people.  Each state has two Senators, and the Senate must pass everything that becomes law.  Wyoming has the same number of Senators as California, even though there are many counties in California that have more people in them than Wyoming and Montana together.

The corporate, frankly fascist leaders of the Tea Party have figured this out.  They have discovered that even though they might not ever again  win the Presidency, and may lose the House of Representatives, they can hold inordinate power if they win the Senate, or control it with filibusters.

The rural "outrage" fueling the secession movement in Siskiyou and Shasta Counties is  going on in other urban/rural state conflicts.  This is a quietly led movement by the Tea Party's nation wide, to overcome the increasing power of urban, multi-racial areas.

Which gets us to the next motive:  the use of secession to support white supremacy.  Sounds familiar doesn't it?  The drive for dividing rural counties from urban ones in California is directly related to the fact that people of color are increasingly gaining political power in urban areas.  White racists have fled those areas, for rural areas, and now find hope for the continuation of white supremacy in their white dominated "new states".

Of course, a bitter by-product of this will be the impoverishment of rural areas.  And in fact, "Red" areas of the country are increasingly become poorer when compared with "Blue" areas.

Red areas ironically depend more on central government money for their economies, but work to separate themselves with Tea Party leadership from Blue urban  areas.  The ironic result is impoverishment of Red areas.

Why do you ask, would they do such a stupid thing?  The reasons are evident if you study what happened in Germany.   Bavaria, a rural area, was the base of power for the rise of Hitler. It provided a nice cover to criticize and undermine central authority.  Of course, once Bavaria was successful in undermining the central government, its leadership became the central government, ended democracy and implemented a dictatorship.

This same approach is going on right now in the United States.  The looney secession movement is crafty like a fox.

Its local and seemingly tame objectives hide its true motives, the radical take over and destruction of our democratic form of government.

Delivery Man....Out of Gas

Google and Amazon are competing with one another to build bricks and mortar shipping centers so we all can get same day delivery of all the goods we order on-line.

Local retailers, who order merchandise in bulk, and then sell it to us when we visit their stores are reeling.  On-line purchasing is nothing new, it was one of the first innovations driving the dot-com economic bubble in 2000.  The big idea was grocery delivery via the internet.  Thankfully it failed.

But next day delivery is new.  It requires putting large warehouses close to urban centers, then using inventory control run by computers of course, and robot retrieval of merchandise from the shelves, to be placed on an army of trucks and sent to your door.

This weekend we will all troop into our cars and travel, anywhere, to celebrate Labor Day.  We will consume millions of gallons of gas, at  inflated prices (for the United States anyway), not realizing that this practice will soon be doomed because we are running out of gas.

That's right, we are running out of gas.  Regardless of  all the stories you have been reading about fracking, that   produces natural gas that still doesn't run  most vehicles, it does nothing  to produce an  substantive increase in the supple of petroleum.  

If you have driven on I-5 lately, you will notice the multitude of trucks roaring up and down the freeway.  Trucks have literally taken over I-5.

And we are the reason they are there.

I remember when I was a kid I ordered a Flash Gordon decoder ring from the back of a comic book.  I can remember going to the mail box every day for over a month to get my ring.  It finally came after about five weeks.

That was the way mail order worked in those days, it took a long time to get your stuff.  And we waited, and waited.  If we wanted something quicker, we went to the store.

Today, the store sits on our desktop, and we order everything.  And the trucks keep rolling, burning up gas and diesel and record rates, so we can have what we want right now.

And retail stores either close, or are consolidated into Wal-Marts and the trucks roll on.  Amazon, Wal-Mart and the rest make a few people rich, using robots to quench our endless thirst for speed.

And gasoline prices explode; so we can get our Nintendo NOW without even driving, or pray not, walk to our corner electronics store.

We are the problem.  Most of the nation is once again setting all time records for heat this summer.  The polar ice caps are mostly gone.  Every indication there is says global warming is accelerating.

And anyone with any common sense would tell you that the global demand for gasoline, is depleting the finite resource fast.

And Google and Amazon are coming up with next day service, that only serves to increase the use of gasoline.

This is what we should be doing right now.  We should renovate trains.  We should put a tax on gasoline and diesel that would force us out of trucks for long haul delivery, and back to the rails.  We should have a program that helps truck drivers find jobs with the railroads as this painful transition takes place.  We need to force retailers like Google and Amazon to build real stores in local areas, stock their shelves with produce delivered to their areas by trains, and put those train depot areas closer to populated areas.  There still will be the need for short haul trucking of course, but it needs to be regulated.

Will that be a strait jacket for retail?  To a point yes, But do we need to do it?   In a nutshell we have no choice

And, just think of all the jobs we have eliminated in retail markets, by automating all this.  Literally, robots hunt the shelves of warehouses, and fetch items, carry them to the trucks and pack them.  Stores, people, and jobs, have been eliminated so we can get things right now.

Jobs are lost, and precious gasoline is squandered.

The delivery man will soon run out of gas, and little boys will wait forever to get their decoder ring.  We need to change NOW.

We need to reinvent stores and delivery systems around the conservation of fuel, not on the maximization of profits.

The Eastwood Post and Assholes

I was minding my own business, just checking my Facebook and wham, there it was.

A black background, with a picture of Clint Eastwood.  The text read something like more bullets for assholes.  Like a fool, I checked the comments, and the third comment said, and "this would work for Obama", in short, it threatened the President of the United States.

The post was "shared" by an ex-Facebook friend (I de-friended him immediately).  I also intend to distance myself from him.

And then, in some of the comments I got the inevitable "calm down", "you are over reacting" etc.

Does anyone remember Sandy Hook, it was just six months ago?  

 A day or so ago, a gunman snuck into a school in Georgia, with an assault rifle intent on killing police who were responding.  Thank God he was "talked down" by an heroic hostage and there were no casualties.  Meanwhile we had Trevor Martin, and just today a white young man gunned down for no reason by three African Americans.  And of course, Fox News jumped into that one, wondering why the President didn't comment.  

Of course they ignored that the gist of the Trevor Martin case was that charges were not filed for months after the killing...In the recent case the bad guys were arrested immediately.  

But death is death.  If the President had the time, he should comment of every homicide with a gun; he would have to comment all day; every day...there are hundreds of them a day!  

And the toll just continues.  The United States has the most domestic violence of all the world countries currently not involved in Civil War.  And, we even have more than Syria and Egypt per capita, and they ARE involved in a Civil War.  You have to go to Darfur to see a higher casualty rate.

And posts are made on Facebook that basically say, "If you know an asshole, shoot them".  And Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry himself, who shot bad guys all day long, is the example.  Dirty Harry?  Really!  

This all insinuates that disputes, political, personal; etc., can be solved by killing the "asshole" with a gun.  A bullet solves the dispute.

What are we doing?  What is wrong here?

In Nazi Germany, genocide was initiated by killing Jews, Russians, Poles, Gypsies; etc by lining thousands up to trenches and shooting them in the back of the head.  So many were executed this way, that the German Army was running out of bullets.

That is how the gas chambers were invented.  The Nazis shot so many "assholes" they ran out of bullets.  That is exactly what the Eastwood Facebook Post implied; kill with bullets, but there are more assholes than bullets.

So what is next, poison gas?  In fact, two days ago in Syria, one of the sides used poison gas and hundreds were suffocated; mostly babies and children.  The news accounts were rife with startling pictures of lifeless infants, killed by poison gas.  Who ever did this, certainly felt that the "other side" were "assholes" and should be killed.

Genocide works like that.  Studies show that perpetrators of genocide never get what they have done, there is always a justification:  self defense, fear of genocide against them, racial or ethnic prejudices; hand of course hate.  Killing babies can even be justified, 

Sherman famously said Nits make Lice when questioned about giving small pox infected blankets to Native American children.  

Hanna Arendt wrote her famous "The Banality of Evil", discovering that Germans went about their killing like a job, nine to five, just working for a living...The fact they were killing human beings was a job, a task like changing a tire.  My blood chills just thinking about it.  

Everyday in this nation, we see deaths by gunfire.  There are guns everywhere.  Certainly we have enough bullets for all the assholes who live in the United States?  

Actually no, the NRA has for months been calling for an investigation of the Federal Government who allegedly is using up available ammunition, leaving less bullets for the private "assholes".  Predictably, there has been a run on ammo, gun sellers gleefully selling out of bullets.

So the assholes better watch out, because there just might be enough bullets, and Eastwood's final "solution" can be enacted.

Finally, I have been told to "get a life" "lighten up", you are taking this too seriously.

Tell the parents of Sandy Hook that!  

Idiots

Today in the Sacramento Bee there was an article about global warming.  Basically the vast majority of scientists  have agreed climate change is worse than previously predicted, that ocean levels will raise at least 3 feet by 2100.  

The facts are indisputable that climate change is on us, is proceeding faster than predicted, and is caused by human's over use of fossil fuels.

In spite of this report, by a scientific group that won a Nobel Prize previously for its global warming research, fracking is being touted as the savior of American energy needs.  The black hearted oil companies are executing a perfect pivot, diverting attention from CO2 levels to "clean" natural gas".  

Fracking?  Clean natural gas?    That would be the fracking that is ruining hundreds of water wells, that is belching tons of methane into the atmosphere, only adding to the global warming phenomenon.  Fracking is the current trump card of the right.

After all , they sprout....fracking mines clean energy.  Fracking, I know, I know, its been used for what?   Thousands of years!....Is perfectly safe.  

Watch Gasland.  Just watch it.  And then ask yourself, how predictable have the oil and gas companies been when damage to environment promises are concerned?   Just trust us....has given us the Valdez Oil Spill, Santa Barbara, and the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.   

And why won't the gas companies divulge what is in the fracking chemistries?   Why must this be secret?    And why did the fracking fanatics sneak a law through that makes fracking not covered by the Clean Water Act?  If it is so harmless, why not let the EPA test the water?  How in the world can this be?   If you have seen Gasland, you test the water by roasting marshmallows in your kitchen sink, by igniting your water!   

But, I have friends, who I must call IDIOTS, who still deny.  Who still chuckle whenever I talk about the thousands of wildfires that are currently ravaging the Western United States, who say, "Well that's Redding", when the temperature hits 116, with high humidity; when the sun sets red in a smoke filled sky.

It is all a liberal plot.  It is all a way to get us to leave our beloved super 8 cylinder trucks, with the predictable gun rack, that we have fun going out into the forest and run over plants and animals.  

Idiots.  That is what future generations will call us, for FAILING to HEED WARNINGS THAT ARE SO OBVIOUS THEY SMAK YOU IN THE FACE!

Look, Petrochemical companies hate your guts, they despise you for your idiocy.  They laugh behind your back for being so gullible, so easily fooled.

Nobody respects a fool.  Nobody!  

And the right wing in this country is propped up by legions of people who are being played for fools, who react to propaganda and support causes, like climate change denial, that only harm their best interests.

So, even though I will be called a name caller, I will speak for the future generations, who may see the end of mankind on earth:

Grandma and Grand Dad, you were idiots.  You trusted oil companies over common sense.  You were selfish, holding on to your R.V., knowing in the back of your greedy hearts that you were killing us.  You voted for right wing fanatics, out of racist fear and ignorance.  You followed Fox News without question, with no skepticism.  You bought the hate of Rush Lyndbaugh,  knowing it was bull shit, but afraid to actually question, to read, to research.  You went against science regarding the climate, as it turned to shit around you.  You pushed for more gas, as cheap as you could get it, not caring that we would do when we have none when we need it for essential services.  You just turned your back as children died in one climate catastrophe after another.  And when the Polar Bears disappeared, along with the North Pole, you said that really didn't happen.  You lived in an artificial reality, devoid of science, like idiots.

Because, grandma and grandpa, you killed me because you are idiots.  

It can't Be that good if the Government has to spend money to sell it!

I came across yet another excuse from my conservative denier friends about the Affordable Care Act.

This one dealt, incredibly, with the amounts of money the government is spending to implement the Act.

It was pointed out, with no tongue in cheek, that if the Act was any good, the government would not be spending all the money it is to "sell" it.

I did not bother to look up the approximately trillion dollars anti-ACA proponents have spent over the past five years to discredit the ACA.

Remember 2010?  Who can forget when Congress recessed for the summer, and went home to face an unexpected and well funded "rage" by the ascending Tea Party over the ACA?   It was later discovered that the Koch brothers, and other well heeled interests (including the health insurance lobby) had poured money into the Tea Parties, to create the uproar.

And sure enough, support of the ACA dropped, Republicans were elected to office and it became almost impossible to pass the Act.

Only through some incredible effort was the ACA passed, with the vital "public option", that would have made it even more successful than it will be, discarded.

Studies are now showing, the more the public finds out about the ACA, the more they like it.  And that the deniers hate; and fear!

They hate the fact that a black President is getting credit for the ACA.  He has even given in to calling the ACA "Obamacare", a derisive term cooked up by the right wing's disinformation machine; throwing their argument back in their faces.

But the debate continues, over a change, that has already been approved.

The danger here, lies in the Supreme Court upholding of the Act, that  left the expansion of Medicaid up to the states.

Red state governors took their cue from this mistake, and are making it very difficult on the poor to take full advantage of the ACA.  After all, the singular purpose of the ACA was to extend medical insurance to the approximately 50 million poor, who have no insurance at all.

I can see a migration from Red states to Blue, of the poor, who cannot get coverage in their Red states, because of the actions of partisan conservative legislatures opposing the ACA.

This will only add to the unfairness and misery for the poor; as usual, they get the short end of the stick.

The same complaint was made about Social Security, which took over five years to phase in, and that was done during WWII.  Conservatives, who still hate the singularly most successful social welfare law in our history, complained that the Act was hindering the war effort.

Medicare: same thing; Ronald Reagan famously declared, through a well funded denier campaign, that Medicare would end capitalism in the United States.  And, since the Vietnam War occurred during Medicare's implementation, I remember conservatives complaining that the Act should be stopped because it too hindered the war effort.

Every one of these landmark social welfare acts has been resisted for generations by the conservative movement.   And ironically, much  of the philosophy of these laws actually were born in conservatism.

Otto Van Bismarck, not exactly a liberal socialist,  first came up with the idea of Social Security in Prussian Germany!   Social Security is a public insurance based pension program, based on the conservative ideas of insurance and risk.  Individuals contribute for a lifetime into a fund, that in fact, provides for the retirement of current retirees.  It was, and is, a conservative idea!

Medicare is simply an extension of Social Security, adding Health Care to the  pension benefits of Social Security insurance.

Most people do not have the will, nor the capacity to save long term for their retirement needs.  The financial collapse of 2007 proved that, the middle class had invested and borrowed on their homes, as the sole provider of pension support aside from Social Security.  When their homes declined in value, the equity loans middle class families had taken out on their homes, suddenly were reduced to nothing, leading to widespread foreclosures, and a steep decline in personal wealth; especially in wealth leading to retirement.   As a consequence, baby boomers are left with Social Security as their sole pension source.

As a consequence, baby boomers today must work until they die.  And, those who can retire, must wait until Medicare.

The ACA will change that hopefully, giving "early retirees" a bridge from retirement to Medicare eligibility.

Finally, there is the pesky Massachusetts's  example.  The Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney's claim to fame, what his successful implementation of an ACA type health insurance plan in his home state.  Romney had brokered a deal with the Massachusetts' Democratic dominated legislature for a public mandate driven health insurance plan which is what the ACA is  patterned after.  In fact, the core elements of the two laws are practically identical.

And Romney could not run on his accomplishment, because the Republicans had decided to fall on their swords to scuttle the ACA.  He failed precisely because he could not tout his singular highest accomplishment..

"It can't be that good...."  The unbelievable denseness of that statement given the trillion or so dollars opponents of the ACA are still spending is unreal.

Meanwhile, the Health "Care" Industry in the United States continues, and will continue I fear, to be a monolith, sucking the very economic vitality out of our country, no matter where you stand on the ACA.

The fact is we need even more radical reform than the ACA requires, implementing the kind of governmental controls many European countries did decades ago, on an out of control health care monopoly.

In short we need the public option, which will morph into Medicare for all, with strict government controls, to finally bring an end to our economy killing health care crisis.
And THAT, my conservative friends, is where we very well may will wind up, thanks to your endless denying of the benefits of the ACA.

Maybe President Reagan will be proven right, capitalism in health care may eventually end, killed by the conservative movement's inability to adopt the very social welfare concepts they created!