Politics

Democracy died on November 21st, 2013. I imagine that sounds a little dramatic, but hear me out. Congress is composed on the House and the Senate. Congress is all about numbers and there's little room for justice there if you can just overwhelm your enemies with superior numbers and push through any law you like. The Senate is trickier. There are options to block laws which offend your sense of justice and you need much higher numbers, and greater agreement of all involved, to end that action, that blockage called a Filibuster. We've had them since the beginning of the country, this option to force all sides to agree on less extreme options in order to make one Senator shut up. Both sides use this when they have to. And that's why this is a big deal. They changed the procedural rules to make it easier to end a filibuster, without getting all the senate to agree. The Democrat party things they've won a victory. They forget that they used Filibusters more than Republicans did. And should control of the senate shift in numbers to the Republican party, or those few votes needed are won, without that prior large majority, they can stomp the Democrats flat. This also means that Democrats can stomp Republicans flat, and screw over half the population in each vote. All sorts of things can be done like this, really bad things. Say, for instance, enslave all doctors to work for free, or execute all Gitmo Prisoners or Declare War on Syria. They can do that now. Nobody can stand up and say no you can't, not anymore. This is how Democracy dies. With cheering. I'm pretty sure there were huge demonstrations of party workers voicing their gratitude and joy when a certain chancellor was elevated to higher office in a struggling European nation about 80 years ago. Ahem. The trouble with the entire thing is this now makes Senate races actual battles for control of the actual laws of our nation, and that heavy weight, the power of effective Senate instead of the former useless senate, means senators votes, and thus lives, are at risk depending on their position before key votes. If you can't convince them to vote your way...this opens the door for a whole lot of political violence, like we often see in the Third World. I'm very glad I don't live in DC. Its going to get scary there. The News will love it. It'll be like Brazil in the 80's or Argentina in 2000.

Apparently my politics are a little too polarized for general consumption and is probably why I haven't been offered an interview for a Reporter job at the local paper, despite those buying the paper itself mostly having the same views I do, and those who don't pay for it having the opposite. Meh. I'm going to censor political opinion in posts except for ones I'll label opinion.

The Libs don't. I wanted them to see what its like getting repeatedly jabbed on a sore subject like the failure of Obamacare and his presidency in general. Considering my primary worries about energy depletion are directly linked to his foreign policy, and the price of oil to the wars he starts or continues despite promises to the contrary, it IS near and dear to my heart. The consequences of his choices, and I can't call them anything else since they serve no strategic purpose and make America look really bad internationally, his choices kill Americans and make us all pay more for basics, including food.

Energy is mostly based on fossil fuels, which means they were run out. Who gets the last of it is politics. Right now, it looks like the USA will get the last of it, both because we have the military to take a lot of it by force or threat of force (OPEC), and because we've got a lot of it buried in oil shale, which we're gradually learning how to extract. There's a Saudi Arabia (largest oil producer on earth) under California, and another two of them under western Colorado and Wyoming, and another one in Alberta's oil sands, though separating this oil and tar from its source rock is frequently expensive in energy and raw materials. If it gets more efficient and clean, great. As it stands, its an ecological and engineering problem that's become very political.

Appeasing OPEC publically when those nations are mostly run by crazy people bent on Bond-Villain level rants of world domination? Yeah, that's the best reason to get OUT of dealing with OPEC and getting domestic oil going again. And its happening, kinda slowly. And there's a lot of politics there too, here and overseas and who gets to pay who bribes to be the next billionaire. A lot of dirty money in this industry. A lot of dirty politics too. Neither side is clean.

The LiveScience website has been threatening us this week with the future of 11 billion people and world hunger and water shortages. The solutions require work and cooperation in various regions, or expensive local answers, probably both. The big reason we don't have cheap solar yet is solar companies get jerked around on their profits, which impacts how many go bankrupt, which is caused by ebbs and flows in the energy market. OPEC is the biggest enemy of solar power because price fluctuations there determine whether home owners install solar panels or not, and the answer is usually NOT. So far, its not cheap enough, and the political answer to getting some installed at all is all about subsidies and grants, which are often exploited for the money and the business is totally dependent on the margin. When the law expires, the business can't survive. This means that solar power is largely a govt smokescreen in hopes that it will become solid one day. So far, not. That's also politics.

Locally, here in the Gold Country, even with the price of Gold losing 1/4 its value from 1600 down to 1200 and still falling, there is reason to reopen the local gold mines. Many have begun processing tailings, which are leftover ore fragments usually still on the mine site, discarded previously as being too low grade to bother with. In many cases, they get sufficient gold to justify the effort now. One of the bigger mines in the area called the Idaho-Maryland Mine, south of Grass Valley but mostly below it, goes down 10,000 feet, which is unfortunately full of water since the mines shut down due to politics in 1934. There is believed to be around $5 billion in gold still down there. That's NOT small change. However, the tunnels are full of water, 10,000 feet of water, all of which is soaked in tin, silver, arsenic, potassium, and with a significant deviation from safe. Because its inside a mine, its considered industrial pollution and if they pump it out, that pollution is legally their problem and must be cleaned to California EPA standards, which are the highest in the nation. That water also presents a flood hazard since it would flow down the nearest creek, Wolf Creek, which goes right through town. I used to work next to that creek, right above it. Any pollutants would be a major lawsuit issue. It doesn't matter that they're naturally occurring or valuable metals. A French company bought the mine and wanted to reopen it, but debate over cleaning the water polarized everyone involved and after a few years of debate, the project was dropped. I think the real death blow is the French admitted to wanting to import miners from overseas rather than hire them locally. In a gold mining town with high unemployment that was a seriously stupid move. It was bad politics. Someone else, with a valid plan, will probably succeed at stripping the metals out of the mine water during pumping and get money from it before it drops into the creek, with full state permits and EPA standards met and monitored, before they can start getting into blasting out more ore and turning that into Gold. I hope they hire locally. Its good politics in a litigious state like this one. And the Gold is just worth too much to leave in the ground. That much gold is politics too.

Corn ethanol is politics. Its all about votes from corn growing states, tit for tat. Water is politics. Water is also life and pressure for or against birth control. Birth control is politics. Uncontrolled leads to unbalanced votes, to population shifts, to unfair taxation because those votes are political. Its especially nasty when you throw in religion and morality. People get hypocritical about that. That's also politics.

My background is science, and my best friends are engineers. Every morning I wake up angry, and then I drink coffee and write a blog post and lingering anger is there in my words. Usually its sarcastic and bitter. If I read the news, I enjoy responding to things with my opinions or experiences. Its funny how one political leaning considers their experiences to be vast wisdom, and the opponents experiences not to count unless documented in a book that's been peer reviewed. I hate hypocrites. And I hate people who tell me I can't have an opinion about something I've lived through. That's insulting on many levels. I suppose they hate me for expressing my experiences in front of them because they had comfortable opinions of their own, ones My experiences contradict and show baseless, false, and probably self-harming. That's politics too.

The nature of a blog is writing. My posts on non-political, or more neutral topics, such as engineering, get considerably more read hits. I will endeavor to focus my efforts there and hopefully drive up my numbers, rather than drive away people by pointing out they're wrong again. Honey, vinegar, and who wants to catch flies in the first place?