John Robb: Occupy Resilience – Condemn the Regional Power Companies and Then Municipalize Them

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
John Robb

Resilient Energy: Municipalization of Power

How can you help your community build a resilient energy system?  One of the first steps is to buy back the energy system from the regional power company by condemning it and then municipalizing it (it can be run as a power co-op or as a standard company …  The structure really depends on the community.).  This moves provides you with the control of the local grid so that your community can:

  • Ensure higher levels of maintenance (tree trimming, etc.) and faster response to failure.  During the two big power outages on the east coast this summer/fall, power was out for much of the region for nearly a week.  In many cases, the municipal power companies get power back on to all of their customers in 1/2 the time of the big regional companies.
  • Cut rates and change energy mix.  As a municipal company, you can select the different types of energy you will use locally.
  • Add advanced micro-grid features.  Everything from community energy markets to local energy backup to power smoothing.   Extra benefit of this approach:  it will prevent the regional power company from using smart grid tech to snoop on everyone in the community by micro-analyzing energy use (which they will then resell to marketing companies or provide to the government w/o warrant for “signature” sniffing).

All of the benefits listed above will double or treble in importance as the global economy nose dives into depression over the next couple of years.  So, it's better to get started early than later.

Here's a few links from the Boulder Colorado effort to condemn and municipalize it's power.  A combo of bad service and a low level of renewables use prompted the effort (use whatever hooks you need to get it done, but get it done):

  •  Renewablesyes.org The site of the citizens coalition.  The astroturf site of the national power company.
  • Citizen groups do the hard work.  A technical group does the modelling and analysis for a municipal grid.  They compare rates, costs, and energy mix  Here's an amazingly video of a member of that team, Sam Weaver.
  • Homer software. The software you need to model a municipal grid from rate analysis to energy mix.  The numbers.

NOTE:  Great article in the NYTimes today on how the big regional companies are so focused on acquisitions, regulatory gaming, and extractative finance; they are delivering terrible service.

NOTE:  Great pushback in the comments on how tough it is to do this.  Basically, crony capitalism (revolving door, bribes, etc.)  + regulatory capture (same mindset) + gov't granted monopoly = lots of opposition.

Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Winslow Wheeler

Washington Post Joins Hysterical Defense Budget Rhetoric

Center for Defense Information, 7 November 2011

Monday, November 7, the Washington Post editorial board published its take on the extreme rhetoric the country has been hearing on the defense budget since Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta starting talking about the “doomsday mechanism” that would reduce defense spending.  Quoting the newer extreme rhetoric of several members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff defending their budget ambitions to the eager-to-listen House Armed services Committee, the Washington Post positioned itself foursquare in favor of hysterics.  It was with an editorial titled “Defense on the Rocks: Mandated spending cuts could decimate U.S. military might.”  Find it here  (although at the web link they toned down the title with the more sympathetic “US Defense on the defensive.”)
Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Military Spending versus Competence”

Videos on Election Fraud/Theft

Corporations, Corruption, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Technologies, Videos/Movies/Documentaries

+ Stealing America: Vote by Vote

+ American Blackout: documentary of Greg Palast's investigation into voter fraud

+ UNCOUNTED: The New Math of American Elections

+ Hacking Democracy: The HBO Special

+ Election theft video archive from Votescam.org

Note: Diebold – “Diebold Election Systems” acquired by “Premiere Election Solutions” then acquired by “ES&S” which was acquired by “Dominion” in 2010 (wikipedia).

Also see:
+ BlackBoxVoting.org
+ Votersunite.org
+ VerifiedVoting.org
+ Election Defense Alliance
+ Citizens for Legitimate Gov

Event: Nov 9 – Nation-wide House Parties to Plan for the Two-Year Anniversary of Citizens United

Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Ethics, Government


More than 150 house parties are being planned
, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will join the parties by phone and webcast. For those in Manhattan, believe it or not, but there is only ONE event listed (60 Wall St, “the Atrium” which is also accessible from Pine St).

 Also see:
Resources for House Party Hosts and Activists Organizing for the Two-Year Anniversary of Citizens United v. FEC

Boulder's corporate personhood measure

Chuck Spinney: Manufacturing Dissent – The Rise of the Tea Party as an Elite Front – Opposite of OWS

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Analysis, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Civil Society, Commerce, Corporations, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency, Misinformation & Propaganda, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

Below is an excellent interview with Anthony DiMaggio in Counterpunch.  DiMaggio author of The Rise of the Tea Party, due out in November 2011. He uses the “propaganda model” developed by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent to document and explain the Tea Party’s organizational dynamics for manufacturing dissent, and he compares these dynamics to those of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Before reading the interview, consider please the following: The forces powering the rage of the Tea Party — the stagnation of incomes and the increasingly unequal distribution of income — were around long before the Tea Party erupted on the national scene.

Click on Image to Enlarge

That the distribution of income had shifted in a very fundamental way toward the wealthy and especially the super-wealthy at the expense of the bottom 80% of the working population was clearly demonstrated in a classic study by Emanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty (Quarterly Journal of Economics, February 2003, updated in 2009), and subsequently confirmed by many other others, including just last week, on 25 October 2011, by the Congressional Budget Office.

It has also clear for years that inflation-adjusted wage growth that underpinned the improved living standards of great American dream machine sputtered out during the 1970s (see chart below).

So, it is simply beyond dispute that a fundamental change in the income distribution has taken place since the late late 1970s.  That change is also correlated with the wave of deregulation, tax cutting, defense spending increases (with a slight interregnum following the Soviet Union’s collapse), and deindustrialization/globalization that took off after 1980 during the Reagan Administration and accelerated during the Clinton and Bush II Administrations.  

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Manufacturing Dissent – The Rise of the Tea Party as an Elite Front – Opposite of OWS”

Chuck Spinney: Screwing the Greeks – Deeply

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Transnational Crime, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Government, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Chuck Spinney

Below are two eye opening reports/analyses by two of the best counterpunchers in Alexander Cockburn's and Jeffrey St Clair's stable of bomb throwers.  The subject is Greece: its political/economic crisis and the myths surrounding average Greeks being the cause of its crisis.

In the first, Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People: The Myth of Greek Profligacy, my friend Marshall Auerback, argues that the masses of the Greek people (the bottom 80% of a highly unequal income distribution) are being set up as scapegoats to pay for a neo-liberal austerity plan that aimed producing income deflation (instead of a currency devaluation) to improve export competitiveness.  Auerback explains why this is  really a plan of collective punishment that is guaranteed to fail while shredding what is left of Greece's social contract.

In the second, Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails: How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land, Patrick Cockburn presents the reader with a micro-case study of what is happening to average Greeks (i.e. part of the lower 80%) on the island of Naxos, the largest and my favorite island in the windy Cyclades.

Chuck Spinney
Barcelona

Destroying the Livelihoods of Thirteen Million People
The Myth of Greek Profligacy
by MARSHALL AUERBACK,
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 24, 2011

Naxos Hangs On By Its Fingernails
How Greeks Were Driven Back to the Land
by PATRICK COCKBURN
Counterpunch, OCTOBER 18, 2011

Phi Beta Iota:  One reason why the Electoral Reform and BigBatUSA endeavors are so important NOW, is because if they succeed in the USA, where Internet connectivity, cognitive surplus, and Occupy awaking have converged, the model can be scaled globally very quickly.  At root this is about secular corruption.  Pope Benedict XVI had a chance to use Assisi creatively but chose the low road.

Reference: Smart Nation Act Draft (Full Text Online for Google Translate)

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Ethics, Hacking, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Multinational, Key Players, Legislation, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Real Time, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats

Proposed Legislation: The Smart Nation Act

Institutionalizing Open Source Information Exploitation

and Multinational Information Sharing Beneficial to All

Continue reading “Reference: Smart Nation Act Draft (Full Text Online for Google Translate)”