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Once we wake up to how the game is being played, then we will have a real shot at changing things. For decades, the elite have been pulling the strings behind the scenes in both major political parties. That is why nothing has ever seemed to change very much no matter which party has been in power. The agenda of the elite has always seemed to march forward, and ordinary people like us have always been frustrated that we can’t seem to make a difference. But now a shift seems to be taking place. Donald Trump took on the establishment in both major parties, and he miraculously won the presidency. Down in Alabama, the elite spent more than 30 million dollars to defeat Roy Moore, and he still defeated Luther Strange. A political awakening is taking place, and I can’t wait to see what happens during the mid-term elections in 2018.

In Part I and Part II of this series, I talked about how the elite use debt as a tool of enslavement. In Part III, I went over how the elite use the colossal media corporations they own to control what we think. Today, I want to talk about their influence in the realm of politics.

In Washington D.C., it is well understood that the game of politics is all about the money. If I win my election, and online polling suggests that there is a ton of enthusiasm for my campaign, I will be expected to spend most of my time on the phone raising money. As a freshman member of Congress, at orientation it will be explained to me that I am supposed to spend approximately four hours a day doing fundraising, and that is why the House and Senate floors are so empty most of the time.

By law, members of Congress cannot make fundraising calls from their offices, and so both parties have huge call centers just across from the Capitol. Especially around lunch and dinner times (because those are some of the best times to reach people), those call centers are packed as members of the House and Senate run through lists of potential donors.

And it isn’t just about raising money for their own campaigns. As a freshman member of Congress I would be expected to raise at least $200,000 for the NRCC (the National Republican Congressional Committee). If I don’t pay my dues, I would get into big trouble with party leadership.

But you know what? I have already pledged that I am not going to participate in this very corrupt system. If I am sent to Congress, I am going to spend my time doing the job that the people of Idaho sent me there to do.

So will Paul Ryan and the others in leadership get very upset with me for not “paying my dues”?

Of course.

But it is time for some of us to take a stand and do what is right. Congress has become a cesspool of filth and corruption, and it is time to flush the toilet.

Because if we don’t fight this corrupt system, the influence of money in politics will just get worse and worse. Today, the elite pour millions upon millions of dollars even into small campaigns, and in 2016 it took an average of more than 10 million dollars to win a U.S. Senate seat…

Political Economics

October 21, 2017

Political Economics

Who President Trump ultimately picks as the next Federal Reserve Chairman doesn’t really matter. Unless he goes really far afield to someone totally unexpected, whoever that person will be will be largely more of the same. It won’t be a categorical change, a different philosophical direction that is badly needed.

Still, politically, it does matter to some significant degree. It’s just that the political division isn’t the usual R vs. D, left vs. right. That’s how many are making it out to be, and in doing so exposing what’s really going on.

As usual, the perfect example for these divisions is provided by Paul Krugman. The Nobel Prize Winner ceased being an economist a long time ago, and has become largely a partisan carnival barker. He opines about economic issues, but framed always from that perspective.

To the very idea of a next Fed Chair beyond Yellen, he wrote a few weeks ago, “we’re living in the age of Trump, which means that we should actually expect the worst.” Dr. Krugman wants more of the same, and Candidate Trump campaigned directly against that. As such, there is the non-trivial chance that President Trump lives up to that promise.

Again, it sounds like a left vs. right issue, but it isn’t. The political winds are changing, and the parties themselves are being realigned in different directions (which is not something new; there have been several re-alignments throughout American history even though the two major parties have been entrenched since the 1850’s when Republicans first appeared). Who the next Fed Chair is could tell us something about how far along we are in this evolution.

What Krugman wants, meaning, it is safe to assume, what all those like him want, is simple: success. He believes that the central bank has given us exactly that, therefore it is stupid to upset what works.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Museletter #304: Energy and Authoritarianism

October 21, 2017

Museletter #304: Energy and Authoritarianism

Download printable PDF version here (PDF, 148 KB)

This is an extended version of the article. An edited version was delivered in the email Museletter.

Could declining world energy result in a turn toward authoritarianism by governments around the world? As we will see, there is no simple answer that applies to all countries. However, pursuing the question leads us on an illuminating journey through the labyrinth of relations between energy, economics, and politics.

The International Energy Agency and the Energy Information Administration (part of the U.S. Department of Energy) anticipate an increase in world energy supplies lasting at least until the end of this century. However, these agencies essentially just match supply forecasts to anticipated demand, which they extrapolate from past economic growth and energy usage trends. Independent analysts have been questioning this approach for years, and warn that a decline in world energy supplies—mostly resulting from depletion of fossil fuels—may be fairly imminent, possibly set to commence within the next decade.

Even before the onset of decline in gross world energy production we are probably already beginning to see a fall in per capita energy, and also net energy—energy that is actually useful to society, after subtracting the energy that is used in energy-producing activities (the building of solar panels, the drilling of oil wells, and so on). The ratio of energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) for fossil energy production has tended to fall as high-quality deposits of oil, coal, and natural gas are depleted, and as society relies more on unconventional oil and gas that require more energy for extraction, and on coal that is more deeply buried or that is of lower energy content.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Oil Hijacked Alberta’s Politics: Behind the Curtain With Former Liberal Leader Kevin Taft

October 11, 2017

How Oil Hijacked Alberta’s Politics: Behind the Curtain With Former Liberal Leader Kevin Taft

Oil's Deep State Kevin Taft Alberta DeSmog Canada

In his new book, Taft, who served as a Liberal MLA between 2001 and 2012, and as leader of the Alberta Liberal Party — the province’s official opposition — between 2004 and 2008, maintains his course.

Oil’s Deep State: How the Petroleum Industry Undermines Democracy and Stops Action on Global Warming — in Alberta, and in Ottawa is a controversial read.

Notably the book implicates the Alberta NDP, which was elected in 2015 with promises to challenge the sector’s dominance over political processes. To help explain why that didn’t happen, Taft deploys concepts of institutional capture and deep state — a term used when institutional capture occurs with several different entities and is maintained for a long time.

It’s a challenging and insightful read, one that will likely spark many debates about how we talk and think about the oil and gas sector.

DeSmog Canada chatted with Taft about the book.

What inspired you to write Oil’s Deep State?

When you’re in the middle of action in politics, you don’t necessarily see the bigger picture. You’re fighting the local battles.

After I left politics in Alberta, I was invited to go to Australia to talk about the effect of the fossil fuel industry on democracy, because they have some real concerns there. That prompted me to begin reflecting on my own experience.

Essentially, the book is an account of the collision between the oil industry and global warming, and how democracy is caught in the middle of that.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Gold Still Relevant?

September 1, 2017

Is Gold Still Relevant?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, Gold rallies with each political event and then falls back when the event is over. It is not in a sustainable relentless bull market as was the case in the 70s. Almost every stock market has outperformed gold since 1980. This has made me wonder if something is different. Here in India the younger generation do not buy gold and simply no longer look at it as a safe haven as the older generations. When I travel to the USA, I notice the younger generation pay with their cell phones and are not even interested in paper money. In Europe, the younger generation is also disinterested in gold. Could it be that gold is becoming obsolete as the horse and buggy?

POM

ANSWER: Yes, gold is still relevant for the older generation. It should rally right now and the month-end closing was very bullish into September, but not yet a breakout. To be impressive, gold must exceed the 2016 high of 1377.50 intraday. To show real strength into early 2018, we must close above 1393. A closing above the 2016 high would reflect a rally into 2018, but warn that we are more likely going to fall back once again. The rally in gold simply because of the dollar is not sustainable long-term.

Nevertheless, indeed, over the course of generations, the ideas and trends of one generation are eventually replaced with new trends. Just look at art. The paintings of women by Rubens were always robust. If you were thin you were considered poor. In Asia, girls try to whiten their skin because darker skin implies you are poor and work in the fields whereas in the States girls want to have a tan. Trends change as do fashions over time. Investments are the same. The big investment up until 1907 was railroads and industrial stocks were considered risky ventures until the automobile changed that perception.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

James Howard Kunstler: It’s Time To Be Honest With Ourselves

August 28, 2017

James Howard Kunstler: It’s Time To Be Honest With Ourselves

The major systems our society relies on are failing

The ever-eloquent James Howard Kunstler returns to our podcast this week to discuss the dangers of the ‘comprehensive dishonesty’ he observes in our culture today.

We occupy ourselves with distractions (e.g., the fear du jour that our media continually manufactures) and diversions (e.g., our empty social media addiction), while ignoring the erosion of the essential systems around us. Making matters worse, the leaders we assume are focusing on these issues aren’t or are woefully out of their depth.

It’s time for society to take a hard look in the mirror and be honest about the shortcoming it sees. Identifying them then opens the door to deciding what to do about them.

Without the courage to be honest, we condemn ourselves to a failing status quo that likely has little remaining time left:

What we’re seeing is the result of behavior of people who have no idea what they’re doing. Most of the major systems that we rely on are entering a state of failure of one kind or another. And, of course, the larger problem is that they’re interlinked, and that their failures will be mutual and self-amplifying.

These systems include the energy system that has powered industrial civilization, the oil and gas industries which you’ve talked about a lot and I think that our listeners understand pretty well — although the finer points of it, like the ‘energy return on investment’, is something that’s certainly not understood by the general public, or most of the officers in our government, and certainly not in the New York Times, Washington Post or other major media outlets. They just don’t get that.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Need A Social Revolution

August 18, 2017

wikimedia

We Need A Social Revolution

Our future depends on our willingness to fight for it

In the conventional view, there are two kinds of revolutions: political and technological. Political revolutions may be peaceful or violent, and technological revolutions may transform civilizations gradually or rather abruptly—for example, revolutionary advances in the technology of warfare.

In this view, the engines of revolution are the state—government in all its layers and manifestations—and the corporate economy.

In a political revolution, a new political party or faction gains converts to its narrative, and this new force replaces the existing political order, either via peaceful means or violent revolution.

Technological revolutions arise from many sources but end up being managed by the state and private sector, which each influence and control the other in varying degrees.

Conventional history focuses on top-down political revolutions of the violent “regime change” variety: the American Revolution (1776), the French Revolution (1789), the Russian Revolution (1917), the Chinese Revolution (1949), and so on.

Technology has its own revolutionary hierarchy; the advances of the Industrial Revolutions I, II, III and now IV, have typically originated with inventors and proto-industrialists who relied on private capital and banking to fund large-scale buildouts of new industries: rail, steel manufacturing, shipbuilding, the Internet, etc.

The state may direct and fund technological revolutions as politically motivated projects, for example the Manhattan project to develop nuclear weapons and the Space race to the Moon in the 1960s.

These revolutions share a similar structure: a small cadre leads a large-scale project based on a strict hierarchy in which the revolution is pushed down the social pyramid by the few at the top to the many below. Even when political and industrial advances are accepted voluntarily by the masses, the leadership and structure of the controlling mechanisms are hierarchical: political power, elected or not, is concentrated in the hands of a few at the top.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

When Whistleblowers Tell the Truth They’re Traitors. When Government Lies It’s Policitcs.

March 9, 2017

When Whistleblowers Tell the Truth They’re Traitors. When Government Lies It’s Policitcs.

(ANTIMEDIA) Immediately after Wikileaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation — not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

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“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documentsdetailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

“The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.”

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Anti-Intellectualism, Terrorism, and Elections in Contemporary Education: a Discussion with Noam Chomsky

June 4, 2016

Anti-Intellectualism, Terrorism, and Elections in Contemporary Education: a Discussion with Noam Chomsky

shutterstock_125767211 (1)

photo story | Shutterstock.com

Washington DC based History Teacher Dan Falcone and New York City English Teacher Saul Isaacson sat down with Professor Noam Chomsky to discuss current issues in education and American domestic and foreign policy issues. They also discussed the place of the humanities in education and how it relates to activism, definitions of terrorism, and how education impacts the perceptions of the political process in the US.

Dan Falcone: We are here again at MIT to discuss education, history, and politics with Noam Chomsky. Thank you for having us. I was just wondering if you could discuss some of the challenges you hear about from the friends you have in the educational field?

Noam Chomsky: A friend of mine was doing some interesting work in Falmouth. He works in a Falmouth school system. He was a Harvard cognitive scientist, but he’s now working with the schools. He started working with the kids that they have in a special track. I forget what they call it, but the ones who aren’t academically functioning. And when he began to look into it, he found that these kids come to school on a bus with maybe an hour bus ride. They haven’t had breakfast. But when they come into school they go crazy and he started doing some really simple things like giving them candy because he discovered that they have a low glucose level. And that’s having an effect, and when they come into school instead of starting in a math class he just puts them somewhere where they can just go crazy and run around. He’s gotten to the point that these kids are out-performing the main kids in the main schools.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Brad Friedman: Why To Be Suspicious Of Every Election

May 29, 2016

Brad Friedman: Why To Be Suspicious Of Every Election

Electronic voting machines have opened up Pandora’s box

Long an ‘exporter of democracy’ to the rest of the world, there is ample evidence that the United States lacks even the most rudimentary, basic protections necessary to preserve voting integrity within its own borders.

Some of the evidence is circumstantial, some is statistical, and some is pretty direct and clear-cut. Taken together, a pattern that emerges strongly suggesting that ever since voting machines, electronic voting machines were introduced in the United States, we’ve had a string of suspect election results that frankly are not consistent with a free and fair voting outcome.

This week, we’re joined by Brad Friedman, election integrity analyst to understand better the systems and practices currently in place to collect and tally votes in America. As we gear up to elect our next president, it’s clear that numerous concerns exist about the state of ‘free and fair’ voting in our country:

Trust is different than ‘verifiable’. Trust, frankly, has no place in elections. There is no reason to ever trust anybody. We need to be able to verify all of this.

There are basically two different types of electronic voting systems that are currently used today.

One is the touchscreen system that people know about. They’ve seen those votes flipping and so forth. Those machines are, in fact, 100 percent unverifiable — period. I’ve asked the companies that make the systems many times, if they have any evidence whatsoever that any vote ever cast on one of those machines during an election, for any candidate or initiative on the ballot, if any of those votes have ever been recorded as per the voter’s intent, any evidence whatsoever. They have none — they are 100 percent unverifiable. Thankfully, many states are getting rid of those and they’re moving to paper ballots.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Politics in a full world

February 8, 2016

Politics in a full world

When Scientific American published Herman Daly’s “Economics in a Full World” in September 2005, few people knew what lay ahead: oil climbing to $147 a barrel, the relentless rise in global temperatures due to greenhouse gas emissions, the food riots of 2008 sparked by rising food prices, the economic crash that followed, and the development of an increasingly yawning gap between the rich and everyone else in subsequent years. For the vast majority of people on the planet, growth effectively stopped in 2008. Their incomes have essentially flatlined or declined.

Daly’s thesis seems more relevant than ever as government policymakers puzzle over lackluster global economic growth despite unprecedented government spending (and debt) and ground-hugging interest rates in the seven years since the crash. Maybe we have reached the point, as Daly would argue, when economic growth is uneconomic, when the costs outweigh the benefits (except, of course, for a very narrow strata of people at the top who get to put the costs on everyone else).

If we are moving toward a low-growth or even no-growth world because growth is becoming much more difficult and problematic, then Daly’s outline of a new economics will need a companion outline: politics in a full world. I have a preliminary candidate for that outline: Bruno Latour’s The Politics of Nature. Daly’s steady-state economics always implied a revolution in governance without being explicit about it.

Latour never mentions Daly and may never have read him. But Latour clearly understands that the natural world–which politics has always held at arm’s length while nevertheless dealing daily with nature’s demands–must now explicitly invite that natural world to the bargaining table.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Doug Casey Shines a Light on the Sociopaths in Politics

January 31, 2016

Doug Casey Shines a Light on the Sociopaths in Politics

There are seven characteristics I can think of that define a sociopath, although I’m sure the list could be extended:

Sociopaths completely lack a conscience or any capacity for real regret about hurting people. Although they pretend the opposite.

Sociopaths put their own desires and wants on a totally different level from those of other people. Their wants are incommensurate. They truly believe their ends justify their means. Although they pretend the opposite.

Sociopaths consider themselves superior to everyone else, because they aren’t burdened by the emotions and ethics others have – they’re above all that. They’re arrogant. Although they pretend the opposite.

Sociopaths never accept the slightest responsibility for anything that goes wrong, even though they’re responsible for almost everything that goes wrong. You’ll never hear a sincere apology from them.

Sociopaths have a lopsided notion of property rights. What’s theirs is theirs, and what’s yours is theirs too. They therefore defend currency inflation and taxation as good things.

Sociopaths usually pick the wrong target to attack. If they lose their wallet, they kick the dog. If 16 Saudis fly planes into buildings, they attack Afghanistan.

Sociopaths traffic in disturbing news, they love to pass on destructive rumors, and they’ll falsify information to damage others.

The fact that they’re chronic, extremely convincing, and even enthusiastic liars, who often believe their own lies, means they aren’t easy to spot, because normal people naturally assume another person is telling the truth. They rarely have handlebar mustaches or chortle like Snidely Whiplash. Instead, they cultivate a social veneer or a mask of sanity that diverts suspicion. You can rely on them to be “politically correct” in public. How could a congressman or senator who avidly supports charities possibly be a bad guy?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do As You’re Told! – The Case For Social Engineering

January 15, 2016

Do As You’re Told! – The Case For Social Engineering

Wherever we turn we are confronted with politicians, political pundits, television talking heads, and editorial page commentators, all of whom offer an array of plans, programs, and projects that will solve the problems of the world – if only government is given the power and authority to remake society in the design proposed.

Even many of those who claim to be suspicious of “big government” and the Washington beltway powers-that-be, invariably offer their own versions of plans, programs, and projects they assert are compatible with or complementary to a free society.

The differences too often boil down simply to matters of how the proposer wants to use government to remake or modify people and society. The idea that people should or could be left alone to design, undertake and manage their own plans and interactions with others is sometimes given lip service, but never entirely advocated or proposed in practice.

In this sense, all those participating in contemporary politics are advocates of social engineering, that is, the modifying or remaking of part or all of society according to an imposed plan or set of plans.

The idea that such an approach to social matters is inconsistent with both individual liberty and any proper functioning of a free society is beyond the pale of political and policy discourse. We live in a time of piecemeal planning and incremental interventionism.

The Reasonableness of Individual Planning

It is worthwhile, perhaps, to question this “spirit of the times,” and to do so in the context of marking an anniversary. Slightly over 70 years ago, on December 17, 1945, the Austrian economist (and much later economics Nobel Prize winner), Friedrich A. Hayek, delivered a lecture at University College in Dublin, Ireland on, “Individualism: True and False.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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COP 21: There Is a Way to Beat Climate Change

December 13, 2015

COP 21: There Is a Way to Beat Climate Change

PowerPlant, cc Mario Goebbels, Flickr, modified, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

The Paris Climate Change Conference might be the turning point in addressing climate change at the international level. The 21st Conference of Parties (COP21) is the annual meeting of the 195 nations that make up the United Nations Framework on Climate Change. The goal is to reach an agreement and set a target cap for carbon emissions at 450 ppm, limiting global warming within 2 degrees Celsius, which scientists designate as a critical threshold.

It is easy to be cynical about achieving such an international agreement. The Copenhagen 2009 conference will probably haunt the COP21 meeting, due to the failure of delivering a climate deal. Domestic politics and the unwillingness of states to be bound by a top-down decision, hammered in at the last minute between the United States, Brazil, China, South Africa and India, derailed the conference. That is why at this year’s conference the states adopted a bottom-up approach, with every country declaring their intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs). The problem is that, according to a UN synthesis report on the aggregate effect of INDCs, the commitments made so far by 147 countries will not reach the goal of limiting global warming to 2℃ above pre-industrial levels. These INDCs cover only about 85% of the existing emission levels and will not be sufficient to reverse the upward trend. The projections point to a 2.7℃ rise in temperatures. There is also no guarantee that countries will adhere to their commitments. International agreements often set aspirational goals and many countries derogate from their obligations when faced with adverse domestic conditions. The U.S. signed, but never ratified the Kyoto Protocol; Canada dropped out of it in 2011; while Russia and Japan decided not to assume further emissions limitations for the second phase of the protocol.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Too Late to “Save” the Climate, But Not Too Late to Save Ourselves

November 25, 2015

It’s Too Late to “Save” the Climate, But Not Too Late to Save Ourselves

Paris_Vista Yet another United Nations climate confab is about to commence, this time in Paris, France, where the tragic backdrop of terrorism, war, and a growing immigration crisis now grips the country. It’s fitting that global warming talks should happen here, considering the role that climate-induced drought in Syria has played in worsening the wave of the violence and desperate migration that’s spread throughout the region. Perhaps the gravity of the moment will weigh more heavily on UN delegates as they ponder a world where extreme weather, rising seas, and punishing droughts become the norm, leading to ever more conflict and misery.

Still, we’re unlikely to see a plan emerge from the Paris talks that truly stems the tide of rising carbon pollution, much less any binding agreement to ensure that meaningful climate protection goals are met. Those who’ve pinned their hopes on a global accord that ramps down carbon levels are singing from the same songbook as they always have, year after year, from Rio in 1992 to Kyoto in 1997 to Copenhagen in 2009. Time and time again the refrain is always: “It will be different this time.”

Environmental commentator Brian Tokar has outlined each of these progressive failures in his painfully incisive piece, Is the Paris Climate Conference Designed to Fail? With excruciating detail, Tokar provides a behind-the-scenes look into why these global processes have perpetually missed the mark, concluding that “progress toward a meaningful climate agreement has continued to be stifled by big-power politics and diplomatic gridlock.” That appears unlikely to change anytime soon, certainly not in the 20-30 year timeframe that climate activists proclaim is critical to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels to stave off massive climate disruption.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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