Environmental Faux Pas

Through both the environmental push to replace coal and free enterprise fracking slashing the price, natural gas has increasingly replaced coal as the preferred fuel to generate electricity.  But this transition has its quirks. Half of the final consumer cost of gas is transportation. Pipelines are increasingly controversial and costly. Coal comes via our often underutilized freight rail system. It can be stored like a pile of rocks. Natural gas requires new storage facilities, mostly underground. These usually encounter environmental objection. While I won’t even broach the technical arguments, we have all seen the dire consequences of inadequate maintenance of gas infrastructure. The bottom line is simple: we are becoming more dependent upon natural gas without building sufficient supply guarantees.

Given the right set of circumstances, we could briefly close our factories and lose the warmth of our homes. Many will simply blame the demonization of coal, the global warming hoax and environmental extremism. While many environmentalists are sincere people and some objections have validity, the movement is being had and funded by those seeking greater social control and increased dependency.  If you’re not sure who I’m referring to, they are all on Hillary Clinton’s email server.

Often criticized by the socialist left as misappropriation of resources or market failure, the law of supply and demand along with the action of entrepreneurs will always produce a surplus. That is the human spirit unleashed with freedom that made America the model for the world. Given a few organizational twists, Vladimir Lenin thought it the way to go and called it democratic mass production. We are a nation primarily of the descendants of European peasants and the formerly enslaved who enshrined a culture of abundance. But now we build to a precipice of possible restricted supply and diminished possibilities. We need look no further than our recently adopted General Plan to see the power opposing us deplorables that care to remember when America meant exuberance.

Daily and personally we experience this decline (which includes the dumbing down of education) as environmental extremism becomes the norm.  Officially, there has been a change. Institutional and government science has replaced corporate science, but the end product is just as questionable. “Near-infrared is important as it primes cells in your retina for repair and regeneration, which explains why LEDs—which is devoid of infrared—are so harmful for your eyes and health. One-third of the energy your body consumes comes from the food you eat. The vast majority of the energy your body needs to maintain the systemic equilibrium comes from environmental infrared light exposure. LEDs "sabotage health and promote blindness,” according to Mercola.com. I guess that if we are blind, then we won’t have to see a heated up world of forests and fields turned into deserts.

Donald Trump is not our savior. We are. But his presidency could spark a renewal and an awakening. History, and our adversaries, won’t give us a second chance.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett      

Far Out Eric Attacks Again

Eric “Soros” Winslow has reached a new level of verbal depravity in Friday’s  Amador People’s Daily aka the Ledger Dispatch in his letter to the editor entitled “Boitano’s High Flyers”. Apparently, he thinks that out doing the National Enquirer will give the Ledger a competitive edge in our unfolding newspaper war. Little of what Winslow wrote discusses the issues; it is primarily character assassination based solely on Winslow’s imagination and distorted perceptions. While I could easily pick his letter apart word by word, including his frequent caustic and dishonest word choice, I am not verbose or pedantic like he is, and will therefore concentrate on a few points.

Winslow describes a campaign flyer with a photo of our sheriff and district attorney as containing “two…good-looking Caucasian gentleman.”  If I wrote about attractive Michelle Bachman vs. homely Janet Napolitano, I would be accused of sexism - and rightly so, since I would be viewing women as commodities and not people. You discuss a person’s ideas and track record, not their appearance. Look at all the flack Donald Trump got for calling Carly Fiorina unattractive. But it’s OK for double standard Winslow to talk that way. He further illustrates this in his statement “…those who the incumbent apparently considers subordinate to him, particularly women.” Aside from being an absolutely fanciful accusation on Winslow’s part, it further shows his belief in the far left notion that sexism is discrimination only against women.  There is a vast men’s movement literature, almost entirely from liberal and left wing sources, about discrimination against men.  I believe that we are all equal in God’s eyes, and that the simplest and most effective way to reflect that in human society is for us to speak and act that way.

He continues his ideological tack by calling a Boitano campaign flyer “…an example of how some of the great white fathers in our county’s leadership lord it over those whom they take to be their inferiors…” He believes in the discriminatory notion that all white people must be the same. There is apparently no difference between slave owners, those who committed genocide against Native Americans and poor immigrants. Prejudice against Catholics has been a tragic part of American history from Colonial times until the Kennedy presidency. Italian immigrants dug the cut and cover New York subways for the white, Protestant upper class. Conditions were unsafe, and the shoring collapsed one day crushing 900 men to death. The superintendent told the foreman: “Go to the docks and hire some more.” Is this the concept of great white father privilege that Winslow alludes to?   

He further makes the statement “…some of the other Caucasian gentlemen who serve with him on the county board.” There is one woman on the board presently and there have been others in the past. There have also been Hispanic county supervisors. But only a DNA test will tell if they had sufficient Native American blood to satisfy those interested in the discrimination of faux diversity such as Winslow. Personally, I believe in voting for the best people irrespective of their genetic heritage and consider that the most democratic perspective.

When one of Boitano’s flyers conscientiously asks what the SEIU expects in return for its contributions to Frank Axe’s campaign, Winslow goes ballistic. His vitriolic response’s attempt at satire backfires as Winslow ends up accurately describing the SEIU by saying “…that most diabolical and heinous of worldwide hegemonic organizations…” They are thugs who use violence and the threat of violence. Just put "SEIU" + "thugs" into your search engine. One item that comes up is a denouncement of their tactics by Dolores Huerta, president of the United Farm Workers. Another video describes them physically intimidating single women, often immigrants with a limited command of English, who are home health care workers. These women dress wounds that won’t heal or change diapers for the incontinent. These are the people the SEIU claims to represent, yet they are just fodder to pay dues to further their radical socialist agenda. I would not take their money. But Winslow thinks they are great folks, probably because he shares their agenda and somehow has rationalized away their style or endorses it.

He charges “possible wrongdoing and/corruption” by the Board of Supervisors regarding the Health and Human Services Building that will never be properly investigated because Louis Boitano, the other supervisors and the DA are all “such great pals”. This is slander, if not libel, especially against the DA. This avenue could be perused. The political machine that Winslow is a part of has no scruples and will stop at nothing. Unless we fight fire with fire, freedom will die in Amador County.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

   

Steel or Steal?

When the Civil War began, we imported all of our steel rails. But by 1900, we were producing ten million tons of steel. This was the work of Andrew Carnegie who said: “The old nations of the earth creep at a snail’s pace. The Republic thunders past with the rush of an express” in his Triumphant Democracy of 1885. He cultivated talent and promoted only by merit while vastly improving the chemistry of steel making. His Homestead (Pittsburgh area) works employed 4,000 that made three times as much steel as the 15,000 at Krupps’ Essen, Germany mill.  The price of steel rails fell from $160 a ton in 1875 to $17 a ton in 1898 with other steel prices dropping in sync. Everything went down in price, the standard of living rose and we celebrated with the first steel skyscrapers.

U.S. Steel, the successor company to Carnegie, was de-listed from the Standard and Poor’s index of America’s 500 largest companies in 2014. Today, China makes 50% of the world’s steel, increased from a 13% share in 1996. But about 40% of their production is over production to provide employment and prevent social unrest. They dump this overproduction on world markets at very low prices. The US Commerce Department responded with tariffs. The Chinese answer was to change the labels and export to us from Viet Nam. But, in Carnegie American fashion, U.S. Steel developed a real - not government involved - competitive response with a new super steel. The Chinese hacked the research and are probably developing it now. Is it ironic that we cede our jobs to the Chinese, then borrow from them to feed our unemployed? Or is this part of how the insidious globalists achieve power over us? 

When speaking about these factual matters, Donald Trump is vilified in the media as a nationalist with the ring of a Hitler. The globalists will say anything. They are afraid. But we need not be, if we can win in November and Make America Great Again.

End notes: Ten people died in a bloody labor strike in 1892 at Carnegie’s Homestead works. The history books teach this as a story of evil capitalism and a turning point in developing the labor movement. But others say that there was never a valid strike vote, and that radical union leaders intimidated the steel workers into this confrontational situation. I don’t know the truth, but I’m confident that any scholar looking for grant money will have difficulty finding it. And if they did, it would probably destroy their career.

As in everything in life, it’s a two-edged sword.  I recall the jokes popular during the 1890’s about two Irish immigrants named Pat and Mike. While walking home from work one day, Mike asks Pat: “Have you seen the new free library Carnegie built here?” Pat answers: “No, I haven’t had time. I work 12 hours a day at the steel mill.”

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

The Pressure Is On

We are all aware of the big issues like trade, questionable foreign wars, intelligence hacking and many more than I sadly care to recount. But the little issues that harass our daily lives as globalist control moves forward are what is annoying most people. This response, often described in the liberal media as ignorant fear by deplorable people, seems a natural and perceptive awareness. I have experienced this many times.

I was recently barred from Facebook because of alleged malware unless I downloaded Trend Micro Home Call. So I ran several malware programs that found nothing. Several chat rooms informed me that many others had the exact experience, and that it’s a scam to revive a second rate software. Informed sources told me that my AVG would be deactivated and my vulnerability increased. So I could download Trend Micro and then ease that and reload AVG. Or I could open a new Facebook account under an assumed identity. With either option I could get flagged again and be back to square one. Facebook’s scam is wrong and possibly illegal. But like the forced downloads of Windows 10 for future monthly fees, and Obama’s surrender of internet control, our major communications channels are narrowing for the globalist few. Free movement and transportation are also affected.

With family in Chicago I often travel there.  A few years ago I easily pre-purchased a bus/rail pass over the Internet. For my next visit I found myself having to open up a whole new account with MasterCard Ventra to buy a transit pass (incidentally, that account recorded every bus and train trip I made). This account's opening cost was $5, refundable with the following month’s pass purchase. But for visitors, it was a steep 25% surcharge on a $20 pass. It was like the Dark Ages or early Middle Ages fees paid to the nobility when the few controlled the many. With an upcoming visit, I may have to pay a $5 dormant account fee before buying another pass. So we ordinary people are now subsidizing the globalist goal of eliminating cash that they can’t control. In addition to this, it discourages transit ridership requiring more subsidies, thus adding to the tax burden of an already functionally bankrupt city and state.

This upcoming trip also required accommodations. One hotel refused to take my reservations because I couldn’t supply a cell phone number. So it has begun, and will probably grow in adoption, that you must buy a tracking device for the National Security Agency to always know your whereabouts. iPhones vary in price from $400 to almost $800, plus the considerable monthly fees.  It also represents the iron law of wages formulated by British economist David Ricardo. He said that incomes will always remain a bit above subsistence. So we have cell phones, cable or satellite TV, etc just to be ordinary people. We may live well, but the seemingly necessary accoutrements preclude tuning our historically high incomes into wealth, and therefore, power. Ricardo was reminding us that it’s all a façade.  Many endeavors are like that, including inquiry for the public good that is only available to a select few.

Scholars receive government grants to conduct research. The results are generally published in academic journals. But this information, created with our tax dollars, belongs to an organization named JSTOR. Unless you pay them money, or are privileged university faculty, access is denied. That’s prevented me from reading articles academic friends have recommended, and has also dead ended many research projects. Curious individuals and citizen journalists be dammed.  Naming my blog, "Outside the Ivory Tower", is neither a coincidence, nor a metaphor.

The young genius who had invented the RSS feed, Aaron Swartz, hacked JSTOR. He committed civil disobedience in the tradition of Rosa Parks as articulated in his 2008 “Guerrilla Open Access Manifesto”. This was his “‘moral imperative’ to share scholarship locked behind exorbitant subscription walls…(and) viewed in some quarters as a greedy gatekeeper, constricting the pursuit of knowledge”, reported the Boston Globe. But challenging those who seek to control knowledge and seemingly want to return us to the serfdom of the Middle Ages has consequences. Attorney General Eric Holder threatened Aaron Swartz with 50 years in prison. Angered by an online petition questioning his judgment, Holder kept the pressure on. Aaron Swartz committed suicide. His case was never heard, the legal issues he (and we) could have won on where never given the light of day. Many were outraged, from the left wing Huffington Post to conservative Congressional members such as Darrell Issa and John Cornyn. This was another clear we the people versus the globalists issue.

These policies and programs, and many more like them, negatively impact our daily lives. While not as important as war vs. peace or depression vs. prosperity these situations and the awareness they engender inform us of transformations consuming us. These are changes we never asked for. Who benefits the most from this? It’s neither you, nor I.

I often wonder if anything ever really changes. In a previous post, I mentioned my participation in the Sacramento Valley (Amtrak) Depot Stakeholders group in reference to the decision of not allowing Greyhound into their bus terminal to not mix their passengers with the new green commuters. In contrast to 50 or more years ago, there were many black people in the stakeholders group. But it was okay for everyone, black and white, to make fun of the Sikh cab drivers. To even mention bringing in the casino buses that catered to Chinese people was a forbidden topic.

For many years in modern Israel the largest crime was illegal foreign currency transactions. Men would crowd the streets and engage visitors. How is this different than Matthew 21:12 “…Jesus went into the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers…”?  So while the story hasn’t changed, the cast has. We win some and we lose some.

Locally, we now have a restrictive globalist General Plan. You can now choose your town center, but you can’t choose to build your home elsewhere. The freedoms most of us thought were our birthright have slipped away.  A well-financed contingent seized the planning process from the beginning and assigned us, in the name of saving the environment, our limited role in the new world order. Despite the years of pain ahead, some still complaint that the General Plan isn’t restrictive enough. Only total victory will satisfy them.

In 1828, the opposition press called Andrew Jackson’s wife a whore. While that maybe a tame accusation in our current election, none of the media banter should fog over a clear choice. The noose is tightening, and Hillary Clinton is one of those pulling the rope the hardest.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

If It Works, Kill It

Much advocacy has gone into an Amador future of agri-tourism and wine tasting. Promotion has included public money being spent via the Amador Council of Tourism. The success of this part of our economy has pleased most everyone. But the Shenandoah Valley and related area's boom has turned into a bust with nighttime noise and too much traffic for the quaint roadways. The Planning Commission has grabbled with expansion plans on a case by case basis to minimize impacts without a seemingly overall conception or direction.

This diffuse approach has led to the inevitable. An application for a small winery tasting room on Ostrom Road was turned down cold. Was door was slammed shut? Other ventures probably felt the chill. I certainly did, because it felt like the restrictive circumstances that led the ancestors of many of us from Europe to America. If we kill our entrepreneurial spirit, we have turned our future into something other than the existing and self-sustaining America.

The applicant’s presentation to the Planning Commission contained a 32-page Environmental Negative Declaration from our Planning Department. US Fish & Wildlife contributed an additional nine pages. Another 32 pages contained staff reports from other related agencies, public comment and other documents. Every move is under review. As I read these 73 pages, all I could think of was how many bureaucrats (or tax dollars) it takes to screw in a light bulb.

Along with this stifling process, those who most wanted agri-tourism prosperity are now among those preventing this new wine tasting venture. What did they think would happen?  Aside from the obvious possibility of failure, did they think that some sort of fantasy perfect would result? Success breeds success until the market becomes over-saturated. The cure for high prices is high prices say the commodity traders, just as they say the cure for low prices is low prices (production is either reduced or expanded).  How long will this wine boom continue? Are the wine tasters' twenty-somethings beginning a life time habit or middle aged people about to fade away?

But presently, supply is being denied due to external factors. Presumably road improvements could be made without sacrificing the area’s charming qualities. Assuming no new taxes and uneconomic increases in traffic mitigation fees (which the proposed facility did pay), there appears to be three sources of road funding. The first would be cleaning up the corruption and waste at CalTrans. But we lack the courage and leadership to de-fang that imperial behemoth. The second, getting rid of the bicycle/pedestrian set aside, would yield a very small but useful amount of funding. However, that is politically impossible in green California. The third possibility would be increased County tax revenue, but the project denial is the opposite of this.  How much revenue has the County lost due to the delays of the Newman Ridge project? How much public money has AWA wasted fighting lawsuits?

While the three road funding suggestions above are all feasible, none are likely. Katherine Evatt of the Foothill Conservancy has suggested doing a specific plan for this area. While that is procedurally correct, why is more government always the answer? Aren’t the noise problems sufficiently abated through the existing regulation? Does the Planning Department have the staff for a specific plan or do we hire a consultant? Who pays for that? And how long will the process take including hearings, reviews and possible law suits in relationship to the problem just dissipating? But a plan’s worst outcome could be picking and choosing winners or losers rather than have the proprietor’s drive and hard work determine their success.

While I have no magic answers to all the valid complaints of area residents, denying this new facility and the dreams of its instigators is far worse than the alleged problems this tasting room winery could create. The denial will be appealed to the Board of Supervisors this coming Tuesday morning, 9/13. Be there and voice your support for entrepreneurship, freedom and prosperity.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Grand Jury or Grand Inquisition?

Given testimony at the last Board of Supervisors meeting by a nurse that said refund or rebate was re-translated by the grand jury inquisitors into kickback, it appears that the underway Amador coup d’état strategy is becoming more apparent as it sinks to new lows. But you would never know this by reading Eric Winslow’s yellow journalism in last Friday’s Ledger.  He fancies himself a muckraker. While he certainly has the rake, the muck is his own invention. Perhaps he has missed his calling. His more appropriate role maybe at the supermarket checkout stand with stories like: “Alien disguised as bigfoot delivered my pizza” or “Hillary Clinton and her alien lover”.

Simultaneously, we have the witch hunt against Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti. Given a planning commissioner and a school board member refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, this all seems like more than a coincidence. Minus the violence, this feels like living in Germany during the 1930’s. Is something happening behind the backs of Amadorians? Certainly many in our community will implicate the Foothill Conservancy. Their earlier leadership was almost sued, but they are now more subtle. But whatever their behind-the-scenes plotting, I can easily imagine their Soros related funding sources breathing down their necks.

Another local influence is undoubtedly the SEIU. Just put SEIU + thugs into your search engine and the United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta’s denouncement of their tactics and other similar videos appear. They have no compunction about exploiting the very people they claim to help. They are financing Frank Axe’s campaign as he goes door to door, telling potential voters that the present supervisors are a reincarnation of Tammany Hall. They also financed Lynn Morgan, who only won because several hundred complacent Republicans didn’t vote.

We cannot sit idle as the very soul of our county is endangered. When there is a victory against vexatious litigants and no growth nihilists, such as the Amador Water Agency’s development of hydroelectric power at Tanner Reservoir, the story is buried on the last page of the Ledger. Will this become typical of the “new” Ledger? Many people say the new Dollar General store is ugly. Saying that a venue that helps people of modest means save money seems like the real ugliness.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Rhetoric or Reality?

This past Friday’s Ledger Dispatch contained statements from our incumbent Congressional Representative Tom McClintock and challenger Bob Derlet. Derlet’s statements conjured images of Huey Long’s demagoguery. He said that McClintock and others wanted to gut the Social Security system. While this may be effective fear mongering offering unspoken images of old people starving, it has no truth. Tom McClintock has said that Social Security needs to be phased out. He, along with more official, bipartisan reports than one can count, have stated that Social Security is actuarially (and demographically) unsound. It was a depression era quick fix based on a 66 year life span. Many counties, especially in Europe, have similar problems. The situation is best defined as how to create a system to provide retirement income, not as continually tweaking and extending something that will ultimately fail. Conservatives, moderates and liberals in the British Parliament, the California state legislature and throughout the world are discussing and implementing workable solutions. The literature regarding retirement financing ideas is vast.  If he’s not aware of these efforts as he spouts off it doesn’t speak very well of him.

Derlet further fears that McClintock, Trump and others want to turn the system over to Wall Street. If it was in their hands, they would have captured the overall return on invested capital over the past 50 or so years of about 8%. But Social Security has instead returned about 1.6% over the same time period. Derlet believes that this is: “…one of America’s greatest success stories…” Since the entire Social Security Trust Fund is invested in US Treasury debt  (no real money there, just IOU’s), the only success I can see is a scam to keep afloat an over extended deficit ridden government.  He says that “The hedge fund managers can’t wait to get their hands on your money…” While pensions sometimes use hedge funds, they are irrelevant for individual retirement programs or accounts, and not about to be approved under Labor Department rules. Also, hedge funds are doing poorly and falling out of favor as endowments and other investors are pulling their money out. The free market system is self correcting, something he doesn’t seem to grasp. This is not surprising, since he has spent his entire life working for governments or non-profits.

But he not only wants to preserve a doomed retirement income system, he want to increase benefits by closing so-called tax loopholes. This sounds like Obama’s mantra about billionaires and millionaires that don’t pay their fair share. But the IRS data tells a different story. Many people make a million dollars in a certain year; they sell a business, take capital gains on appreciated real estate or stocks, or write a hit song or novel. But they aren’t millionaires, and that million dollar year rarely reoccurs. Derlet doesn’t let reality doesn’t interfere with his rhetoric. We must all be too stupid to see what’s real.

In a stark contrast to Derlet’s factless fear mongering, incumbent Tom McClintock’s companion statement was a practical, feet on the ground exposition of his efforts to remove dead and dying trees. This includes a bipartisan effort in Congress, and the realistic awareness that overcrowded, unlogged forests bred disease. With or without the drought, the pine bark beetle would have arisen to thin our forests. The same phenomenon occurs in Japan, when rice farmers attempt to push their patties with over-planting. The rice blast disease appears and attacks the crop. This is well-documented in Masanobu Fukuoka’s “The Natural Way of Farming, The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy”. The book’s introduction states: “My greatest fear today is that of nature being made the plaything of the human intellect.” He discusses real ecology, not the pseudo science of environmentalism prevalent today.  Nature will always seek a balance just as the free market is self correcting. There is an inherent order to life that escapes the experts given their over educated ability to rationalize away common sense.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett