Noel's Green (make that SUSTAINABLE) Blog » Political Ignorance

Distractions divert us from what is important

noel — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:36:48 +0000

Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says that getting to where we want to be requires focus on the “wildly” important. Covey said that it is all too easy to get off-focus from that. Instead, we get pulled off-course by the myriad of “urgent” demands in our every day lives. Covey notices that people who are successful or happy, do it by staying focussed on the “important.” Most of us get distracted from what is important.

Take this distraction: American politics.

We have this terrible engineering and environmental disaster going on as a result of BP Oil’s sloppiness and lack of foresight. They took chances in the Gulf of Mexico and sadly, lost.

Now theres a clip on the news, of a US representative from Texas, Joe Barton, apologizing to the chairman of BP Oil. Apologizing for President Obama making BP take full responsibility for the blowout and the damages.

Barton is acting the clown in a strange comedy of errors. The government never had much oversight over deep water rigs, and somehow, we never considered what might happen when something like this happened. The risk was ignored and there was a failure to plan or insure against it. It was an error to believe that big corporations are fully capable of regulating themselves, (i.e., covering their asses, AND OURS, at all times).

(The engineers at BP might have raised a flag, but no one paid them any mind.)

Now here comes a clown, apologizing to BP to help them feel better about ruining the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal environment for our children’s children. I am ashamed of so-called leaders like that guy. I am distracted from what is wildly important. The politicians in congress done have a clue as to what is important.

Dependence on oil has a BIG cost

noel — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:28:06 +0000

the common Oil slick

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too big price to pay for our dependency on oil. Now we have to re-evaluate our energy plans. FINALLY. The sustainable approach is to stop drilling and spend more money on energy conserving measures and renewables.
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In this months supplement to Engineered Systems magazine, there was an interesting editorial
The Way I See It: Saving Billions — One Customer At A Time by Randy Rawson, the President of the American Boiler Manufacturers Association. He said:

“The great unfathomable mystery of why commercial, institutional, and industrial upper management remains so averse to saving money and, where appropriate, increasing shareholder value through greater attention to their energy use continues to dog this industry, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

So why is industry dogged by an aversion to saving money? I am sure it is lack of proper education and understanding. Science and math have been battered and beaten down in the US. So many good brains have ended up playing on Wall Street. This is a case of lots of money and potential income streams “hiding in plain sight” due to lack of recognition by those in charge.

Imagine a mile long parade of armored cars, all filled to bursting with 100 dollar bills, passing by a board room during a meeting. The parade stops for a moment, and then returns to the bank. When the executives ask why the money was not delivered, the engineers tell them, “Sorry, you have to TAKE ACTION FIRST (replace the boilers), then you get the money, you monkeys!”

President Jefferson said:

noel — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 04:06:49 +0000

“I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Listen up Newt Gingrich! How radical was that?

“…we hold these truths to be self-evident, except…”

noel — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:43:03 +0000

It’s become a sad fact that politics in America has become polarized. Moderates and centrists are now squeezed into a hairline dividing the left and right. The media has a part in this, cable television and the Internet especially. Take Fox News, claiming to be “fair and balanced”, and an evident mouthpiece for extreme right wing Republicans. At almost any turn, they bash Democrats, moderates, and the middle.

Judging by FoxNews accounts, George Bush was an excellent president who hardly ever made a mistake. Now 14 months into Barack Obama’s first term, they are telling us that everything wrong with our economy is Obama’s fault. They use Reagan’s famous catch phrase that he is all about “tax and spend”. They never mention that Bush presided over the bailout of AIG, Fannie Mae, Citicorp, et al, using $1 trillion to “borrow and spend”.

FoxNews opposes health care reform effort in knee-jerk fashion. They did the same thing with the job stimulus bill(ARRA), the energy bill, the carbon cap and trade proposal, and almost every other proposal coming from the President. Facts are hard to come by at Fox. Instead of constructive and intelligent criticism, they bitch and whine – and have wasted a whole year doing so. FoxNews supports the Republicans, who are the party of “NO”!

Their polls are slanted (and the numbers are often “out of range” compared to polls by others). They seem to be merely entertaining their right wing viewers. They feature weird celebrities like Karl Rove and Sarah Palin to distract. They hire sensationalists like Glenn Beck

and Geraldo Rivera

to expouse a point of view focused on trivia. They invent fabricated issues like health care “death panels”, what kids wear, religious expression issues, et al, to avoid reporting on the reality.

The most popular pundit at Fox, Bill O’Reilly, continuously scoffs at the idea of global warming. Glenn Beck calls global warming a left-wing plot. Strange. Their ultimate boss, CEO and founder of News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch, believes that global warming is a serious problem. Murdoch has directed his company to fight global warming by becoming “carbon neutral”. Murdoch’s own employees are undermining his directions!

FoxNews doesn’t discuss the health insurance industry itself. They prefer to broadcast people who bitch and complain about the legislators, including majority leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, calling them all kinds of names. Medical costs and health care premiums have been skyrocketing for years. Fox News omits this critical fact, except to tell us our taxes will go up if the reforms “take over” the supposedly free insurance market. But this insurance market is hardly free. It is out of control.

Truth: I know someone shopping for individual health insurance at this time. He paid $250 a month at his last employer for his group plan. Now he is looking at costs close to $1200 a month because he needs an individual policy. The insurers tell him that regulations set these insurance rates anyway. So what is Fox News talking about?! We need health care reform to control these costs. FoxNews must be fighting it because they are actually lobbying hard for the insurance companies.

Glenn Beck plays on the fears of the right-wing by repeating the word socialism over and over in reference to health care and energy policy reform by the Democrats. Glenn Beck may tell you that he cares about American families. I highly doubt it. He has an agenda to help the interests of big health care, not to mentions big banks, big insurance, big oil, and so on.

Voters who represent the center, should call out Roger Ailes, chief of Fox News for this mixed-up news and commentary. Maybe this is beginning to happen.

Howell Raines, in this March 14th Washington Post commentary, Why don’t honest journalists take on Roger Ailes and Fox News? says that Ailes is “using the network to conduct a propaganda campaign against the Obama administration — a campaign without precedent in our modern political history.“

He goes on to say “Fox [is] turning reality on its head with, among other tactics, its endless repetition of its uber-lie: ‘The American people do not want health-care reform.’… For the first time since the yellow journalism of a century ago, the United States has a major news organization devoted to the promotion of one political party…”

Last, but not least, Raines makes the point that “The American people and many of our great modern presidents have been demanding major reforms to the health-care system since the administration of Teddy Roosevelt. The elections of 1948, 1960, 1964, 2000 and 2008 confirm the point, with majorities voting for candidates supporting such change.”

So, my question is, with truth out the window, “in whose back pocket is the News Corporation?”

Now about that $500 hearing aid tax credit …

Attn Washington DC: Stop dithering on Energy !!!!!!

noel — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 20:32:27 +0000

My previous post was a cute diversion from the horrific economic mess we have dug ourselves into. We have watching the policy monkeys in the Fed kick the can for 30 years. But this is not cute. I am sick and tired of the wait. Now they talk about a major, comprehensive energy bill getting through sometime on 2010. Yeah right.

Political paralysis :

Between the “Do-nothing, know-nothings crowd “, and the “Lets bail out Wall Street crowd” , we seem to be witnessing the death of common sense.

Why do we care about having the big banks still extant? Fire the execs and break the banks up!!!

Why is it in the public interest to encourage more drilling for oil?

What are we doing here in the USA?! We haven’t cleaned house yet! We still have to retro-commission what we already have, which is falling apart! Fixing and updating the many millions of old buildings with ORDINARY UPGRADES, will create more jobs and save us $30 billion year, easily. We are already falling behind and its getting worse day by day. And it has very little to do with the ridiculous comments about global warming.

Recommissioning is quite inexpensive (10-30 cents a square foot?). The so-called low hanging fruit can return up to 40% annual ROI , cash on cash!

Think about lighting occupancy sensors. Inexpensive and wireless now.

How about sealing leaky walls and windows and ductwork? Easy to detect with pressure testing, and infrared scanning in cold weather. Also scan your building in the summer, from the inside, shade the sunny windows, and so on.

Do the TV pundits (FoxNews, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN) know this? Do they and the politicians they talk to know much, if ANYTHING about SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the FACTS? No, they are too busy yacking with Sarah Palin. Heck, now they all want to jump on the nuclear generator bandwagon, when just a few years ago they were deathly afraid of them! Fuggedaboutit guys, scientific method will win in the long run, politicians go to the 7th circle of hell!

Add some ground-source heat pumps, simpler to use controls, a little more training for building owners, some heat recovery and we will be on our way. A new and improved, SUSTAINABLE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE.

And do not forget energy independence! We needed that 30 years ago and we are not waiting any longer.