Gary Ares, a senior marketing professional in Rhode Island, writes about my article on the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which provides broad authority for the federal government to use the military in domestic operations in order to detain Americans indefinitely and without trial. This nullifies the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as the natural rights of Americans.

As an American with a great deal of love for his country, I’m infuriated that we’ve taken our system of law and government and regressed 800 years, to the days before the Magna Carta. Now, publicly criticizing the federal government (which is what I’m doing this very minute) can meet the vague definition of a “belligerent act,” and result in my arrest and indefinite detainment — without access to a lawyer.

As I mention in my article: “This isn’t liberty, folks. This is not what our brave soldiers have fought and died to defend through the last 236 years.”

Gary writes:

I truly hope I am incorrect when stating that logically, the signing of the 2012 NDAA bill officially begins the rule by oligarchy. Our Republic is now in pieces, with the country being called a “battleground” by our own government. Our generations to come will look at this period as a time just before the collapse of the American Empire. Once again, I hope I’m wrong.

Gary, I hope you’re wrong too, but it certainly doesn’t appear that way to me. Again, I urge all loyal Americans to use the White House Comments Line: 202-456-1111 and/or the online form for comments.

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I have 13 meetings lined up over five days next week spread out from Washington, DC to Boston, starting with an interview with  Jerry Taylor, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, conservative think-tank in our nation’s capital. I successfully appealed to Mr. Taylor on the basis that I have frequent talks with liberal economists, clean energy advocates and progressive policy wonks, but, as I pride myself on fair-mindedness, I would love to sit down and talk about different perspectives.  After all, my next book’s working title: “Renewable Energy – Following the Money” suggests a wide range of political perspectives.  He agreed, and we’re on for Tuesday morning, at his office which is walking distance from my next two meetings.

In my use of the word “conservative,” I’m not suggesting that Mr. Taylor is some sort of knee-jerk right-winger. In fact, he’s distinguished himself as a man of incredible objectivity, in a world so pitifully lacking in this rare commodity. Here he is, arguing (very well) that President Obama handled the BP oil spill very well. Try to find that type of sane, levelheaded rhetoric coming out of any of the Republican presidential candidates.

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Here’s an item from the file “It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.”

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton told the UN Security Council, “The evidence is clear that (Syrian President Bashar al-) Assad’s forces are initiating nearly all the attacks that kill civilians, but as more citizens take up arms to resist the regime’s brutality, violence is increasingly likely to spiral out of control.”

Isn’t it obvious that, in any situation where a nation’s military is killing its own people that the situation has already spiraled out of control? Is there a sense in which a government’s violence against its own people is “in control?”

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Frequent commenter Greg Chick writes:

I am not sure why good leaders are not in politics. Possibly good leaders can make lots of money (in the private sector) …

The single best answer I can provide is that the political process as it exists today is utterly repugnant to good people. I’m sure there are many fine people with noble aspirations to make a difference in our world, but they immediately meet with the cruel reality: getting elected and staying in office is about raising money and repaying it in favors, not voting one’s conscience and doing what’s right for the majority of the people.

Can you imagine the catfights and back-stabbing that is the essence of local politics? From there, jump to the idea of running for a seat in the U.S. Senate, where the cost of a successful campaign is measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Let that idea sink in for a second: nine figures. That money doesn’t come from college students’ $5 campaign contributions, but from sources of money and power beyond your or my wildest dreams. And guess what: they want things in return that have nothing whatsoever to do with your or my happiness, or the welfare of our children.

Looking at this another way, there are plenty of good people in politics, desperately trying to improve our system of government from the outside. The answer, of course, lies in radical campaign finance reform, including a constitutional amendment limiting the power of corporations to influence our elections. I use the word “radical,” derived from the Latin for “root,” because the current system needs to be pulled out by the roots.  

Under today’s laws, ExxonMobil, which made a mere $41 billion in profit last year, can spend as much of that as they wish to ensure that Congressman A is elected and that Congressman B loses.  Call that what you will, but it’s certainly not democracy, my friend.  And if you wonder why we in the U.S. are moving so slowly in the direction of renewable energy, you really don’t have to look much further.  

Speaking of good people, the folks at MoveToAmend are working feverishly to pull off this constitutional amendment; they’re making some headway, and they deserve our continuing support.

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Here’s a good article for those interested in global climate change and the role of government in our lives. Journalist Christian Parenti points out that private sector interests alone will do very poorly in dealing with the enormity of the challenge facing us all in the form of extreme weather events created by global warming.

He notes, for instance, that 2011 was the driest year in the recording history of Texas, resulting in wildfires that consumed more than four million acres. He points out that the cost of repairing the damage to the thousands of homes and buildings, and rebuilding the agriculture businesses lost in the fires, is an estimated $5.2 billion—not something that the private sector can easily absorb. And of course, the Texas drought was just one of many individual extreme weather events whose frequency is expected to increase over time.

For my money, Parenti does an excellent job in putting this issue in perspective: it’s fashionable to hate government, but without some teeth in the public sector, our planet will soon lie in ruins.

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A great number of folks wrote in, commenting on my recent piece in which I outlined Plans A, B, and C, i.e., three broad-level ways in which our society could deal with its sustainability issues vis-à-vis energy. Many people commented that a hybrid approach can – and should – be taken.

Good suggestions include integrating:

 • A holistic approach to transportation that reduces overall fuel consumption and the number of individual cars and trucks in service

 • Energy efficiency and conservation technologies (two different though related things), along with public education and incentive (e.g., time-of-use metering) to encourage use

 • Population control: family planning, and especially education; on average, a literate female will have far fewer children than her illiterate counterpart

 • Realistic ways of phasing out fossil fuels over a period of time, while aggressively developing and deploying renewables; an energy policy that states this clearly would be a good start

Of course, this last item points at the real issue, i.e., there’s a reason this isn’t happening. Our leaders happily take advantage of voter ignorance and apathy, while they rubberstamp the wishes of their paymasters in the traditional energy (oil, coal, and nuclear) industries. We need to communicate that our leaders have two options: 1) make this stuff happen, or 2) get a new job.

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A friend who favors right-wing ideologies sent me a video in which the Cato Institute ripped up Obama’s State of the Union Address, pointing out certain claims as lies – even challenging the legality of some of the actions he’s taken as president. While I’m not a huge fan of the Cato Institute, they’re no fools, and they certainly make some good points here. Let’s also admit that Obama has been a bitter disappointment, as millions of us realized that he’s just another politician, put in place with huge money (in this case, Big Pharma and Wall Street) to protect and expand these interests.

But I’m always astounded when intelligent people believe that one of these two political parties is right and the other wrong. When Romney or Gingrich speak, is it even remotely possible to imagine that they are sincerely interested in anything other than your vote? Or that they have a credible plan to put a space station on the moon (an American one, of course), or to power the world with nuclear energy, or close down the EPA, or “kill our enemies” – does any of this make real sense?

OK, if that didn’t annoy you, try this: What did the Cato Institute say when ex-CIA director George Tenet admitted that the most senior levels of the G. W. Bush administration launched their war against Iraq based upon false pretenses and manipulated intelligence? This isn’t a mere difference of ideology about healthcare or unemployment or debt ceiling limits. These are war crimes – you know what I mean  – the types of things for which people in other parts of the world are brought to justice, then hanged or shot.

I’m amazed that well-educated people can hold on so tenaciously to ideas that either one of these two political parties, in a process that is so overtly corrupt, can save the world, while the other is the route to hell. Sorry if I’ve insulted anyone here, but I find the notion ridiculous.

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Here, Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman speaks to the level of corruption that exists between Washington and Wall Street.  I’m always impressed with people who enjoy the luxury of self-criticism; Stockman is clearly remorseful for the position he took in the 1980s.  

Anyone who expects capital formation around clean energy in the face of this type of cronyism is dreaming. We either fix this, or we suffer the consequences.

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A friend of mine who runs a very successful hedge fund cautions me to expect inflation, and suggests that perhaps it’s a good time for me to get back into real estate. But our discussion so far leaves me unconvinced:

Friend: May be time to buy real estate again.

Craig: Yes, I really think that dollar-denominated assets have to appreciate. Real estate scares me, though, with the glut of foreclosures, etc.

Friend: Yes, but it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Craig: The fundamentals of real estate don’t appeal to me, especially Americans’ gross inability to compete in the global marketplace; we expect to live like kings, but we’ve fallen behind technologically, educationally, and ethically. For every kid like yours (self-directed, over-achiever) there are 50 young human slugs with substandard educations, each expecting to grow up affluent.  They all face a considerable shock.

Friend: Boy, you woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning!

Craig: Ha! Yes, I’m pretty pessimistic — especially for Americans and our prospects for the short-term. I think we’ve made some tragic mistakes, most concerning institutionalized corruption, and I struggle to imagine a soft landing.  I’ve linked a few articles I’ve written on the subject.

Reading parts of Jeremy Rifkin‘s new book doesn’t put a smile on my face either. I quote:

The vast majority of Americans have what might be called a quasi-religious relationship with business. Their Calvinist faith in the marketplace and their hatred of big government –to the point of equating it with a kind of godless socialism — blinds them to corporate greed, letting businesses get away with a form of socialism for the select, and pauperism for the people. Many Americans mistakenly believe that the American dream flows inexorably from an unhampered free market and they close their eyes to the long history of corporate-government collusion. As long as Americans continue to believe that markets perform best for society when unencumbered by the government, while they wink at a political process in which elected officials allow business trade associations to draft legislation that would benefit them at the expense of the rest of society, we are likely doomed as a nation.

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