Apprenticeship - a Short-Lived Remedy for a Dead End Economy

Old Blowhard doubled the federal dollars to administer the apprenticeship advocacy program run by the Department of Labor. Secretary Acosta said the redoubled effort, "helps states expand apprenticeship, an evidence-based approach to preparing workers for jobs." A model program is found in South Carolina, yet Germany's program is the sine qua non that appears currently out of reach for the U.S.

In promoting apprenticeship, the Blowhard administration and the Green Party are agreed:

The Green Party views learning as a lifelong and life-affirming process to which all people should have access. We cannot state more forcefully our belief that in learning, and openness to learning, we find the foundation of our Platform... 

e. Promote a diverse set of educational opportunities, including bilingual education, continuing education, job retraining, distance learning, mentoring and apprenticeship programs.

However, the budget cuts from other workforce development programs leave me with the uneasy suspicion that apprenticeship was elevated more for the cachet attached to Blowhard's former TV series than for its "evidence-based" effectiveness.

ALI GOLDSTEIN/NBC; RON SACHS/EPA/POOL

While there are a few apprenticeable job titles that align with an emerging green economy, many more are environmentally neutral or antagonistic. Almost none lend themselves to preparing for a return to agrarianism. Keep in mind that before the industrial age, 90% of the population were farmers. I'm estimating that only a decade remains before the industrial age collapses. Note that an apprentice farmer must put in 8,000 hours of on-the-job training and about 600 hours of classroom instruction to become fully trained. There are many who won't be ready in time if agrarianism makes a quick comeback.

It Takes a Pillage

The preliminary version of the Department of Education's budget proposal looks like they took the Green Party platform on education and came up with ways to do everything the opposite.

Hogwarts by Steve Tannock

Green Party Position	Blowhard Budget
The Green Party supports equal access to high-quality education, and sharp increases in financial aid for college students.	The Blowhard administration supports unequal access to high-quality education by promoting private schools, and sharp decreases in financial aid for college students.
The Green Party is strongly opposed to the dissolution of public schools and the privatization of education. We believe that the best educational experience is guaranteed by the democratic empowerment of organized students, their parents and communities along with organized teachers.	While advocating local control, DeVos proposes to use federal dollars to entice districts to adopt school-choice policies, adding new investment in alternatives to public schools.
We must stop disinvestment in education and instead put it at the top of our social and economic agenda. Effective schools have sufficient resources. Too many of our teachers are overworked, underpaid, and starved of key materials. We also must be more generous to our schools so that our children will learn what generosity is, and know enough to be able to be generous to us in return.	The Blowhard administration administration plans to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives.
We also call attention to the results of a quarter century of corporate funding from the likes of the Bradley and Wal-Mart Family Foundations and a decade of No Child Left Behind — a vast, well-endowed and lucrative sector which seeks to dismantle, privatize, or militarize public education and destroy teachers unions. Regimes of high-stakes standardized testing and the wholesale diversion of resources away from public schools are provoking crises for which the bipartisan corporate consensus recommends school closings, dissolution of entire school districts and replacement by unaccountable, profit-based charter schools. The Green Party is unalterably opposed to the dissolution of public schools and the privatization of education.	The Bradley Foundation awarded a William F. Buckley prize to the Devoses last November. The Walton Family and Walmart Foundations have contributed large sums to Devos's school choice PAC.
Provide free college tuition to all qualified students at public universities and vocational schools. It's time to forgive all student and parent loans taken out to finance post-secondary and vocational education.	Blowhard's proposal would have undergraduate loan recipients pay up to 12.5 percent of their income for 15 years before it could be forgiven.
Oppose the administration of public schools by private, for-profit entities.	Charter schools are the darlings of the Blowhard education department. The budget includes $400 million to expand charter schools and vouchers for private schools and another $1 billion to push public schools to adopt choice-friendly policies.
Increase funding for after-school and daycare programs.	The proposal eliminates $1.2 billion for after-school programs and a $15 million program that provides child care for low-income parents in college.
Promote a diverse set of educational opportunities, including bi-lingual education, continuing education, job retraining, distance learning, mentoring and apprenticeship programs.	The Blowhard budget dedicates no money to a fund ($400 million in 2017) for student support and academic enrichment.
Give K-12 classroom teachers professional status and salaries commensurate with advanced education, training and responsibility.	Cut $2.1 billion for teacher training and class-size reduction.
Teach non-violent conflict resolution and humane education at all levels of education.	Anti-bullying support would be cut.
Make student loans available to all college students, with forgiveness for graduates who choose public service occupations.	The budget proposal eliminates a program to forgive loans of those who  pursue careers as social workers, teachers, public defenders or doctors in rural areas.
Expand arts education and physical education opportunities at school.	The proposal cuts a $27 million arts education program, $12 million for Special Olympics education programs, and support for physical education.
Oppose efforts to restrict the teaching of scientific in-formation and the portrayal of religious belief as fact.	Vouchers for parachioal schools would be greatly expanded.

The principal motivation for the incipient takeover of K-12 education by private entities is the (often delusional) hope by parents to give their children a better education than those in public schools. In the process, a lot of identification with one's community is lost by both the children and the parents. By encouraging this trend, the Blowhard administration exploits parental concern in order to divide communities and weaken local politics. It all plays into the nationalistic agenda of these fascist elites who seek to subjugate the working class in the same way they fight the efforts of labor unions and other local groups to organize and make common cause.

Everything is Fine

Wages are up and unemployment down in the latest monthly figures for the U.S. economy. Everything is fine...except that the rise in employment probably doesn't make up for the drop in productivity, which is caused, at least in part, by the sour mood of national politics. At least the economy keeps humming along... which is actually the problem.

Photo by Steve Fuerst (CC BY-ND 2.0)

We cannot continue to pursue growth in a fossil fueled economy. It's a dead end - at the edge of a cliff - dropping off into the raging sea which is pounding at the cliff and threatening its collapse. Old Blowhard is opening up the throttle of free enterprise and disconnecting the governor. At this speed, our runaway engine won't be able to avoid sending us off the cliff. We need to back down on the throttle and steer in a new direction. A renewable economy would steer us away from the cliff, though that is a course Old Blowhard has clearly abandoned with his appointment of Daniel Simmons to head the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE).

"EERE" sparks notions of an eerie silence that would pervade our surroundings in the absence of blaring internal combustion engines. It's as if we fear that before these engines enslaved us a century ago our forebears lived a medieval existence. Ironically, however, it is not EERE which would take us back a millennium, but our neglect of transitioning to renewable technologies.

The catabolic collapse that the world is currently encountering is not predestined to reverse all of civilization's progress (though it may). Renewable technologies enable civilization to retain the benefits of the industrial revolution while abandoning its initial, unsustainable devices. The more we invest now in renewables, the less we will be forced into further difficulty as the collapse proceeds.

The Count of Mar-a-Largo would be pleased enough to live a sumptuous life above the fray of neo-medieval peasants struggling for their survival, but we don't have to accept such an extreme reversal. We need to rid our government of bad apples like him and institute a Green New Deal that will bring measured progress to our times along with blessed quiet to our communities.

Robbing Hood

Here's the kind of tax philosophy we were hoping to get from a people's president who promised to drain the swamp in Washington, D.C.

... make corporations and the super-rich pay their fair share ... progressive taxation, shifting tax from individuals to corporations, taxing "bads" not "goods," taxing unearned income at the same rate as earned income, taxing speculation on Wall Street, and cutting corporate tax giveaways ... comprehensive tax reform to simplify the tax system ... eliminate loopholes and other exemptions that favor corporate and wealthy interests over tax justice ... Small business, in particular, should not be penalized by a tax system which benefits those who can "work" the legislative tax committees for breaks and subsidies. ... substantive and wide-ranging reform of the tax system that helps create jobs, economic efficiencies, and innovation within the small business community ... end "corporate welfare." 

Campaign promises from the Count of Mar-a-Largo? Possibly, but also an excerpt from the Green Party platform on Fair Taxation.

Photo by David Shankbone

In any case, Old Blowhard's negotiating opener on tax reform seems to be pushing in a direction egregiously in favor of corporations and the wealthy with a 1.5% tax reduction bone thrown in to mollify the middle class - a direction opposite to his campaign rhetoric.

N afta that, he swung around to leave in place the corporatist trade agreement with Mexico and Canada that will only perpetuate the poverty of laborers and further damage the environment.

These depredations will not stand. A free people will not be tricked for long by false populists before ousting them and adopting an honest and egalitarian party to lead the country.

Good Neighbors Make Low Fences

Regarding migration, which Samuel P. Huntington called "the central issue of our time," the Green Party takes a humanitarian, internationalist view. In the long run, the Green position is that North America should become more like the European Union with regard to border policies, rather than building walls on the U.S. southern border.

This week may be decisive as to whether Blowhard's promised wall will be built. He wants to get it into the bill that continues funding the government, but the 60% majority needed for its passage appears to be out of reach. He's even threatening to shut down the government for his pet project.

Photo by Michelle of  Cultivate Oxford

Spending oodles of tax dollars on a big wall to keep Latinos out would be a net negative. If Jared Diamond's observation that good international relations with neighboring countries is key to avoiding collapse, then we would probably be better off without a giant wall.  Good fences might make good neighbors in New England farm country, but they aren't too high to climb over, much less talk over. A border wall needn't be a bulwark.

We also do not want to be guilty of repelling climate refugees. Those in tropical and equatorial regions may be pushed in the direction of the poles as the earth warms. Somehow, we need to become reconciled to accepting millions more into our country, even if it reduces our overall standard of living, because the alternative is tantamount to genocide. Yet, reducing the incomes of international corporate elites in order to raise living standards for the working classes in the U.S. and Mexico would make this an easier choice. An excerpt from the Green Party platform's extensive dissection of the immigration issue weaves together several of its many complex threads:

The understandable concern about immigrant workers competing for jobs with current citizens cannot and should not be addressed by criminalizing undocumented immigration or punishing fellow victims of U.S. corporatist policies. Instead, we must reverse these policies. Among other things, we should repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, Fast Track and other corporate globalization policies. We must stop using our tax dollars to subsidize corporate agribusiness and to promote poverty in Latin America, and start using them to help reward environmentally responsible family farmers, encourage improved infrastructure and economic conditions in Latin America, and raise labor standards, at home and abroad. Here at home, we must also promote the policies, as outlined in the Economy and Workers' Rights sections of this Platform, that can help us achieve a full employment economy at a living wage, including strictly enforcing and expanding the rights of all workers to form unions.

The Blowhard administration is taking a more bronze and white view of the matter. Illegals - even those brought here as children - are seen as subject to deportation. The fact that ICE and CBP are prioritizing illegal aliens who behave criminally doesn't prevent them from sweeping up incidental non-criminals and dreamers in the process. They would like to arrest more, but they don't have the manpower to do so. That will not be the case once Blowhard's 15,000 new agents are deployed.

Such a hard line approach could backfire if enforcement agents lose their perspective on what sort of behaviors and attitudes by illegals warrant deportation. The criminal element does deserve deportation and there are also those who are guilty by association or by other indications that may be best determined by field agents. However, there is a slippery slope to deporting innocents, especially en masse, that management should be careful to avoid. The strategic goal for them should be to prevent the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico from deteriorating due to arbitrary deportations, because that would probably be much more damaging to the state of the union than admitting a few million impoverished foreigners into the U.S. A monolithic border wall would be even worse - symbolizing abandonment of any pretense of normal relations with our southern neighbor.

First they came for the Muslims, but I did not speak out - Because I was not a Muslim...

George Calvert's vision for Maryland was a religiously tolerant colony where citizens would be entitled to live as landed gentry.  Lord Baltimore had embraced Catholicism, though much of Europe was turning to Protestant puritanism. As a consequence, Maryland became a refuge for all faiths; for Catholics especially.

It is not unlikely that there were even some Muslims among those who settled early in Maryland, but most came later to the colonies as slaves. It is estimated that up to 1/3 of the slaves in the colonies were Muslim. Their faith did not flourish in the new world, however, as religion was just another part of their liberty that their Christian overlords decided to withhold.

Repression of Islam by American society (like that which occurred in the early years of our democracy) has surfaced again since we became embroiled in constant war in the Middle East. A homegrown propaganda industry has warped many Americans' perception of Islam no less than the Russian propaganda machine slandered Mrs. Clinton, while boosting DJ tRump. DJ Blowhard's popularity going into the election was also enlarged by his stance against Muslim immigrants. Yet, we saw the blowback as soon as the vote count was announced with marches decrying his racism. Many of those aroused by this issue were college students. If deportation of Muslim student immigrants were to commence (the specifics of each case, no doubt, remaining classified), it would not surprise me to see a revolution begin on campuses across the country, led by sympathetic millennial cohorts.

By Andreas Hierling

The Green Party is sympathetic to the plight of American Muslims who have suffered greater persecution lately and are in a state of alarm over how the new administration views them. Rephrasing the steps from the Green Party report on Islamophobia, Greens are encouraged to take the following public actions:

1. Educate others in your circles and correct blatant misperceptions voiced over Muslims and Islam.
2. Seek information and advice from Muslim leaders on current issues as to how they are seen by the Islamic community.
3. Be conscious of how your own words and manners can be oppressive or demeaning to Muslims.
4. Diplomatically intervene on behalf of Muslims being oppressed, subtly or overtly.
5. Build bridges between your own faith and others of different faiths.
6. Work together on common goals and projects in the community, with an eye to improving cross-cultural understanding.

Before Letting the GeNe Out of the Bottle...

Applying the Precautionary Principle to genetically modified organisms (GMOs), we support a moratorium until safety can be demonstrated by independent (non-corporate funded), long-term tests for food safety, genetic drift, resistance, soil health, effects on non-target organisms, and cumulative interactions. - Green Party Platform (Agriculture)

The Green Party would probably like to idle CRISPR until we better understand all of the ramifications of making changes to an organism's DNA, but its inventors have come out with a benign version that can be used just to detect a particular disease. It does this through matching RNA of the virus or other pathogen, typically from a blood, urine, or saliva sample. The fact that the new system, named SHERLOCK, can be impregnated into paper and stored there until needed makes it very cheap to produce by the millions for bedside detection of communicable diseases, cancers, and other urgent conditions. Each unique RNA sequence being checked (Zika virus, for instance) could have a SHERLOCK produced within a few days and it would be 1,000 times more sensitive to detecting the virus than the most common tool now in use (ELISA).

Photo by Ricardo Hurtubia

This looks like a biotech development that should sail through FDA approval and soon be in the hands of clinics worldwide. That will be a huge boon to the Broad Institute of MIT and its spinoffs, giving them and CRISPR great publicity and more of a chance of approval for wider application. Regulators and lawmakers should move quickly to set limits on genetic engineering. The extent to which the food industry has already taken liberties with biological pollution is disconcerting to many and now can be expected to accelerate unless authorities step in.

The Green Party  is calling for a federal Technology Assessment Office to examine how technology fits with life on Earth, with our neighborhoods, and with the quality of our daily lives. There was such an office for a short while until Congress decided they could politic just fine without looking into risks and unintended consequences. SHERLOCK looks like a wonderful tool to prevent diseases from spreading. While celebrating, let's make sure to look hard at CRISPR and other related technologies before we let that surge of optimism carry us away.

Raiders of the Lost Watershed

Maryland has decided to forego the fracking craze! One of the major reasons is the damage to aquifers from use and disposal of fracking fluid. Water is life.

If anyplace exemplifies that statement, it is Las Vegas. They need lots of water to make their desert village seem like an oasis to visitors. They get it from Lake Mead on the Colorado River. Unfortunately, like frackers pumping every ounce of oil or gas they can reach, Nevada has tapped Lake Mead all the way to the bottom in their desperation for water. If the long-term drought continues (though snowpack this year promises some relief), by 2030 there will not be enough water to conduct business as usual in Las Vegas.

Photo by Robert Couse-Baker

Southern California, which would also lose its supply from the Colorado River, could at least start desalinating sea water. Vegas doesn't appear to have any realistic alternatives besides conservation which, gauging by the falling level of Lake Mead, hasn't been enough to beat the drought. I doubt there was any consideration of the possibility of Las Vegas running out of water when the NFL decided to move the Raiders there starting around 2019. The business case for that move includes stadium attendance of 2 million visitors every year. 😕

Greed-driven growth will only exacerbate Las Vegas' water shortage. They are just one example of cities that need to take a whole new approach to navigating the resource constrained future looming over us. They could start by applying a concept out of the Green Party platform:

Consider the carrying capacities of the bioregions in which our cities are located and attempt to match urban populations to these natural limitations.

Losses in Space

Artificial intelligence, though developed with benevolent purposes, might soon open up IT to catastrophes that would turn us away from technological overreach. Combining AI with robotics raises the possibility of a Frankenstein scenario. An intelligent computer that wanted to solve the world's problems might conclude, through machine learning, that we humans must be culled in order for life on Earth to continue. Inside a brigade of self-arming robots, that knowledge could spell trouble. Yoshimi, we may need you soon.

On the way to creating Frankenstein's monster, intelligent computers will be employed in fights against one another. Most IT systems are developed with information security and anti-tampering tools added on, rather than included from conception. As a result, early versions are often more vulnerable to hacking than those which have matured. If AI systems incorporate self-taught protection from cyberattacks, the cycle is likely to become shorter, provided the system's intelligence doesn't become impaired by prior attacks.

A red cell running progressively more sophisticated attacks on the system would build its immunity prior to going live. The red cell will eventually consist mainly of an AI computer dedicated to giving new AI systems experience in identifying and defeating cyber attacks. Successful attacks from a real adversary would be for keeps. Those with an edge in cyber warfare stand to be able to destroy their target's system or hijack it for their own purposes.

To illustrate the stakes involved in cyber warfare, consider the fact that there are about 1,000 satellites in use which feed us information about earth and relay communications around the globe. Additionally, there are about 350 which perform like functions for militaries. Three major powers (China, Russia, and the U.S.) own two-thirds of all these. Not only could a cyber attacker steal information, but they could corrupt it with bad data, or disable or even steal the satellite. Massive cyber warfare in space could set back global coordination, navigation, and weather forecasts half a century (though, initially, those would be regressed even more for the period of time it takes people to relearn many black arts). War in space is war on many nations' way of life. That's why, in their platform,

The Green Party calls for the end of Space militarization and opposes any form of space-based military aggression. We embrace peaceful Space exploration as a means for all people on this planet to work together. The benefits of inspired education are well worth the investment in peaceful Space exploration.

Though we might forswear space war, there is no guarantee other players will cooperate. To be prepared, do we accept a way of life that doesn't depend on information coming from satellites? Do we enlarge the battlefield to retaliate in kind?

In spite of what the President's budget proposes to cut, in the near future the only aspect of satellite technology that matters much will be earth sensors. When empires become passé, there will be little need for military satellites. Global communications may not be so important in another decade when we walk in the dark shadow of peak everything. Environmental information, however, will be crucial for safety and restoring balance to ecosystems. Outer space should be a place of wonder and inspiration, not shock and awe.

Andromeda Galaxy by NASA

Future Farmers of America: You and Me

If the U.S. collapses all the way back into a herder/cultivator society, that should alleviate many of the problems inherent in our food system, but it won't necessarily protect us from the ravages of climate change. But, since farming will be so popular, more people could learn climate farming. Jacke and Toensmeier, in Edible Forest Gardening, express the opinion that food forests will be essential to feeding the population, given the pressures of climate, energy, and biodiversity. +Albert Bates is writing a series that discusses climate ecoforestry, which includes agroforestry along with permaculture. The Green Party platform includes many important points on the topic of forestry, but fails to explore its vast potential for restoring the environment and creating livelihoods.

Apple tree, comfrey and currant bush guild by London Permaculture

Over the past four years, I have become minimally adept at making and using biochar, gardening, raising mushrooms, and mitigating stormwater runoff. Forest gardening is an ongoing interest. Now would be a good time to get close to communities and organizations which practice the many and expanding methods of forest restoration and permaculture. Few who aren't indentured to the powers that be will be able to find any other means by which to live.

More to come on this subject, but keeping it brief this time leaves you more time for the inspiring reads linked above.

Riding Out the Storm

The world is entering what is likely to be the most horrifying period in history. Civilization is about to collapse globally for the first time. Not that it proves anything, but has there ever been a time when so many large-scale hunger crises have occurred simultaneously? Somalia, S. Sudan, Nigeria, and Yemen are just the beginning. We have a choice to help or to abandon other parts of the world as they undergo collapse. Our choice should depend on the global context.

Neil Howe would have us understand that The Fourth Turning applies not only to the United States, but to most of the civilized world. With the rise of globalism, the cycle of collective consciousness, disenchantment, destruction, and revival has taken on more synchronicity among developed nations. In foreign policy, Trump/Bannon would cede upholding liberal democratic principles to the assumption that fourth turnings will spawn nationalism around the globe. In addition to cutting foreign aid, they can't see much return in continuing our campaign to democratize the East.

Against this dismissal of relationships with emerging democracies cultivated over decades, Michael Gerson argues that abandoning those efforts would result in a renewed reliance on "spheres of influence" among the great powers to deconflict geopolitics. Gerson cites a speech by recently retired elder statesman Dan Fried who proclaimed,

A sphere of influence system would lead to cycles of rebellion and repression, and, if the past 1,000 years is any guide, lead to war between the great powers, because no power would be satisfied with its sphere. They never are.

The Green Party platform lauds the spread of grass roots democracy while also calling for less manipulative foreign relations:

We strongly feel that our country should view itself as a member of the community of nations... not above it. The United States could well play a leadership role in that community but only if we become committed to an eco-social vision of peace, national self-determination, and international cooperation... Reducing militarism and reliance on arms policies is the key to progress toward collective security.

The Green Party wants us to be less assertive not only in democratizing, but also in military coercion. Yet, wouldn't it be nice if we could maintain some continuity in our efforts to promote freedom and democracy, at least as a sign of good faith until we make it through our crisis period?

To answer that question, let us consider the global context of what the world will be like after our crisis is over. My assertion that world civilization is headed for collapse is based on the Limits to Growth study, which, in the World3 model, shows the tipping point to collapse occurring around 2030. Assuming the rest of the world bears the brunt of whatever this collapse entails, isolationism for the U.S. would, perhaps, allow us to survive long enough for the next Spring of the secular cycle.

This existential crisis of encountering the Age of Limits could become the focal point of America's resolve to exit the fourth turning. Trumpists are battening down the hatches and getting us set to ride out the storm.

Photo by Frans Berkelaar

Isolationism may be essential to surviving the coming collapse. Trump is preparing to wall us off from, not only Mexico, but from other parts of the world where we currently have military, diplomatic, and economic relations. This leverages our geographic advantage to isolate us from wars and refugees. Our advantageous geographic position insulates us from much of the turmoil of migrating hordes and resource wars. Self-preservation is a natural human tendency. Under the expectation that the rest of world's problems would overwhelm us, can anyone blame America for pulling back? Governments are expected to protect their citizens.

If rapid global collapse occurs during this fourth turning, the "high" that follows will be like coming out of the ark after the great flood. When we emerge, the geopolitical chessboard will be completely rearranged. As for the concerns over great powers' "spheres of influence," there won't be any great powers left. Any diplomatic love shown now may be long forgotten in the light of the new day.

Juxtapositioning the Fourth Turning concept on the Limits to Growth, as I have just done, offers the horrifying realization that the next decade may well be as close to hell on earth as the world has ever come. The Limits to Growth model does not project the depth of the collapse, e.g. in population or production. Though the graphs show the metrics past the point of collapse, the World3 model would have to be reworked at that point based on the new arrangement of civilization. That rearrangement, if we do not resolve our energy shortage, would place us three steps back into a herder/cultivator economy. If we were able to transform our energy sources and take only one or two steps back from our global information-centric world, we would retain industrialism or agrarianism  (The BEST Model pg. 1-9). We may be able to transform the energy system post-collapse, but the recovery would take immensely longer.

Escape from Trumpism

Aside from the devastating effect on liberal Californians of seeing Trump win the presidency, another big influence on the rise of their secession movement was the 'leave' vote in Great Britain that triggered Brexit. Some of the same elements of populism that drove the UK's decision are also at play in the YesCalifornia campaign. Perversely, it was Trump's populist appeal to the working class that vaulted him to power after they had been sorely neglected under recent neo-liberal administrations. In an article published last August, Marxist Martin Jacques described how neo-liberalism is in its death throes, with Trump as an example of how class inequality is now the main issue:

[Trump's] arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period... But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump’s appeal is to a white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans...

Jacques' predictions for what would happen to the our country with Trump as POTUS were strikingly dire:

A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society.

We are already seeing plentiful instances of those predictions coming true. Note that Jacques describes several manifestations of the process of descending into authoritarianism. We may not have an authoritarian government yet, but we are headed there quickly.

Stephen K. Bannon's cryptic mandate for "deconstruction of the administrative state" is shorthand for the federal government washing its hands of social responsibilities, but enlarging its control of whatever the President considers threats to national security (both internal and external). Trump's gaffe at calling the deportation surge a military operation was just what you would expect of a militarist. Enter, the security state. Nigel Farage, former leader of the Brexit campaign and a Bannon fan, noted that these ideas are what Bannon would like to see adopted "across the West."

Meanwhile, the neo-liberal Democrats have decided to take their fight to Congress, rather than waste all their energy protesting Trump directly. In shouting matches at numerous Republican Congressional town halls they hope to hold their Representatives and Senators to the neo-lib standard, rather than follow Trump in his version of economic nationalism. Their playbook is the Indivisible Guide, which explains its purpose thusly, "We believe that the next four years depend on Americans across the country standing indivisible against the Trump agenda." Ironically, in these townhalls, the Indivisible movement manifests America becoming "a deeply polarised and divided society," as predicted by Jacques.

Photo by Markus Tacker

It is interesting that while the Trump victory is seen as America's Brexit, there is little anticipation of Calexit or the 49 other potential exits brewing in the country. That, too, would be a sure fulfillment of becoming a "deeply ... divided society." Calexit and others that follow will not be a populist response to the failure of neo-liberalism, but an escape from Trumpism. The Green Party would do well to concentrate on formulating agendas tailored to individual states and to participate in the revolutions occurring at that level.

Of Choke Points and Checkpoints

Of the 55,710 bridges in the U.S. that need structural reinforcement, only about 1,700 are on interstate highways. That is only 3% of the 56,448 interstate highway bridges. Another 10,000 or so (18% of all interstate bridges) are inadequate for the role they should be able to perform, e.g. they lack capacity. These typically result in traffic choke points.

Photo by Daniel Mennerich

The interstate highway system was built over several decades beginning in the mid-1950's. Back then, its bridges were built to last about 50 years, so the first refurbishment/replacement cycle began about a decade ago and will roll on for the majority of this century. If we were to keep pace with repairs of deficient bridges, deteriorating roads, and anticipated traffic growth on interstates, the maintenance cost would be about $1 trillion over a 30-year period.

DJ T-Rump wants to spend that amount over ten years to upgrade all vital U.S. infrastructure. If $33 billion per year of that $1 trillion is spent on interstates, then a ten-year program would include $670 billion for other areas of infrastructure, e.g. airports, telecommunications, pipelines, docks, and waterways. Which infrastructure to upgrade would be partly determined by builders, who might be asked to pay 18% of the cost to upgrade the systems, later recouping their 18% and more through tolls/usage fees. If the builders foresee insufficient usage, they won't risk bidding the job because their profits depend on the tolls they would collect from users.

One sticky wicket in this scheme is that, according to Ed Rendell, a chairman of the advocacy group Building America's Future, only about 500 of the country's structurally deficient bridges can be tolled. Even assuming all of those are on interstates, 500 is less than one-third of the 1,700 dying interstate bridges. Additionally, Congress would have to repeal a law that precludes charging tolls on interstates. Assuming they would do that, more of the cost to maintain interstate highways would fall on users particularly, rather than on gasoline and diesel purchasers in general, since much of the cost today is funded by fuel taxes. The growing number of hybrid and electric vehicle owners would thus join the rest of us in being charged their fair share of maintaining the system.

The market-driven selection of interstate bridge repairs means that some bridges would not be chosen for repair resulting in abandoned routes, shifting interstate travel to other roadways, and causing choke points. In effect, those choke points could serve as points of entry to regions with toll collection sensors tracking folks' comings and goings. Placed well enough before the choke points, these sensors could alert law enforcement of subjects of interest and facilitate arrests or detentions. These tolled choke points could also serve as border checkpoints, setting the boundaries for our future federated states.

When the Green Party takes over in four to eight years, they may try to magnify the choke point effect . The Green Party favors reduced driving and reversing the practice of more and more road construction. They also want to see more truck freight shifted to rail, which is more fuel-efficient. Cutting down on interstate access would support these objectives. Taken together, using market forces to inform construction decisions and charging directly for usage are steps that should reduce frivolous road trips and expansion of the interstate system. They may also facilitate the shift to a more regionalized economy and possibly even a federated polity.

Making America Small Again

President tRump's intentions for improving the economy may actually include some useful preparation for the "high" of our first turning which is due to begin in about a decade. Assuming this next turning will entail a less complex, more fragmented society, rather than the Great America tRump is shooting for, the @RealGreatDivider may accidentally usher us into a transition to smallness.

Smallness, in this case, refers to the size of corporations. With trade wars and import taxes in the offing, U.S.-owned international manufacturers are going to suffer some setbacks. While these will cost jobs at home, especially in the South and Midwest, small domestic manufacturers will gain opportunities to fill the home market demand for various goods/substitutes at more competitive prices. The big company jobs lost in the process may shift to smaller companies, especially if layoffs provoke more entrepreneurship.

Photo by Jo Morcom

The Small Business Administration will have to play an outsized role in perpetuating that shift to some 700,000 small businesses created every year. Someone who started and ran an outlandish enterprise like World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) could be just right for the job. As one of the few women cabinet officials, former boss of wrestlers Linda McMahon is a good match for the other showman in the room.

Not that tRump, himself, isn't pro-small business. The Apprentice cast its competitors in entrepreneurial roles and tRump ostensibly selected winners. Picking talent; it's what he does. So far, he has made a point to reduce regulatory burdens on small businesses and to improve their financial situation through efforts to eliminate Obamacare and increase access to loans. Realizing how intent tRump is on encouraging entrepreneurship even helps explain why he felt compelled to ask for prayers for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Celebrity Apprentice symbolizes the way forward - we need a few million successful "apprentices" in order for small businesses to make up for the disruptions tRump is creating.

Whether these steps will be sufficient to avoid a recession in the next year or two is doubtful


but, it may make something of a recovery possible to a more regional or local, sustainable society. By then, we will be able to kiss tRump good-bye and welcome our country's new Green leaders.

Coming Apart at the Seams

The financial system is commonly seen as the point of origin in scenarios that postulate societal breakdown. Its precarious condition is one of the big causes of our ongoing long emergency. If the wrong thread is pulled in the financial system, the whole fabric of civilization could come unraveled pretty quickly.

When one of those threads was pulled out in 2007, the U.S. and other governments went into crisis mode in order to patch up and reinforce damaged areas. One of the reinforcements was a 2,300-page law known as Dodd-Frank which bankers have wheedled and whined against for the past six years and now have a so-called President who is willing to accommodate them in reforming it. In doing so, tRump could loosen the binding behind the crazy quilt of the financial system. After eliminating safeguards, Congress will try to pass a watered-down version of Dodd-Frank or a new manifestation of Glass-Steagall, but as with the ACA, tRump appears to be mainly in demolition mode. The question is, how far can the financial industry stretch a weakened fabric before splitting the seams?

Splitting of those seams along national boundaries may contribute to fulfilling tRump's isolationist ideals, but, even if the financial fabric remains intact, the likely result of gutting Dodd-Frank is more oligopolization of the financial industry. Lip service is being paid to improving the lot of communities and consumers, (and tRump's friends with "nice businesses") but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau looks like it will be weakened by the reforms. The argument that Dodd-Frank is disproportionately hurting community banks is weak since that sector has been dwindling ever since 1984, probably due to the same oligopolistic environment that this change would magnify.

Rolling back Dodd-Frank requirements for bank liquidity increases the chances that another bail-out will be necessary to prevent a total meltdown. Strengthening Wall Street banks is the opposite of the direction taken in the Green Party platform. The Green Party solution for banking reform wouldn't merely dismantle a set of rules and replace them with other more or less constraining rules. It would break up the big banks and create a more competitive environment, leveling the playing field for community banks and credit unions.The Green platform has this to say about bail-outs:

Oppose the federal government being the final guarantor of speculative investments. During a financial crisis, if the federal government and/or a central bank must provide relief, it should be given in an equal manner and at the most local level possible, so that benefits are equitably dispersed and burdens are equitably borne. So rather than pouring trillions of dollars into the banking system, they should have provided direct mortgage relief to homeowners suffering the most from the housing bubble and negotiated with lenders to provide partial loan forgiveness.

That would not be possible in the current environment because the global financial system is rife with derivatives making the failure of a major bank unthinkable. The tRumpist reforms would aggravate this further by eliminating the Volcker Rule that limits speculation using a bank's capital. As with Obamacare, the Republicans vow that their replacement version will do a better job at what Dodd-Frank promised, but such promises strain credibility.

Photo by Beverly

Thanks to tRump and the Republicans, it looks like America will suffer an even greater economic divide before people wake up to the better way offered by the Green Party. Instead of playing along by trying to regulate TBTF banks, we should try to break them up before they hurt people again. If we don't dismantle these financial behemoths first, capitalists, in an orgy of greed, will cause it to all come crashing down.

The Greens are Batting Clean-up

If the political pendulum does loft the Green Party to prominence by 2024, it will not be all that glorious. We will have a big mess to clean up.

The ascent of the Green Party, though beautiful to lovers of nature and humanity, will mark a reversal from the myth of perpetual progress that took hold as the industrial and information ages rolled on. Not that the Green Party is terribly Luddite (their platform lauds high speed computing, advanced telecommunications, and the space program, but circumscribes nanotechnology due to several unknown risks). Yet, the Greens' ideology is nowhere near as sanguine over homo sapiens' capacity to evolve as, say, the Singularitarians'.

What the Green's are keen on is sustainability, which will be precious after we finish ravaging the land, sea, and sky in our final turning of this secular cycle. Our current trajectory will put us in poor stead for the start of the next one. As we wrap up the fourth turning, we are likely to undergo disintegration rather than reorganization, fragmentation rather than evolution, ending up with a less rather than a more complex society. Greens favor a more agrarian society, rather than the heavily industrial agriculture that now dominates. Foreseeing the inevitable collapse ahead, they see some disintegration as desirable, though it ultimately diffuses their power structure. The way it is going, however, we will have a lot of pieces to pick up once we take over.

Photo by Michele Bighignoli

The tipping point for this crash landing is likely to come from one or more of the five causes of collapse identified by Jared Diamond. The trumpists are driving each one of these (more or less) in the wrong direction:

• Environmental Damage - ignoring scientists, gutting agencies, and revoking regulations will accelerate damage to ecosystems which are already under duress.

• Climate Change - denial and cancelling our part of the Paris agreement will put the world well over the 2 degree temperature increase. With the ice caps melting, the positive feedback from permafrost methane releases could already be enough to make our own contribution negligible.

• Hostile Neighbors - Mexico is not happy with us, will be charged somehow for the border wall, and will lose some or all of NAFTA provisions.

• The End of Help and Support from Friendly Neighbors - Canada is not aligned with tRump's rejection of Muslims. Were he to pay Canada a visit, as is customary on a President's first foreign trip, he would be besieged with protesters. The way tRump has been abusing other allies, he will likely piss off Trudeau in short order.

• The Failure of Leaders to Find Constructive Responses to Problems and to Give Meaning to a New Reality - Make America Great Again is a regressive theme, not compatible with the new reality of limited resources and growth. 

The point is, if anything is important at this stage in our history, it is that we smooth our descent and transition to a sustainable path in as many ways possible, all the while resolving the ongoing crisis. TRump is wholly focused on a resolution of the crisis at the expense of sustainability, while aggravating all of the major factors leading to our society's near-term collapse. He will be remembered as a scourge on our civilization.

Greens are On Deck

Green Partiers were not in the audience, but The Charles Koch Foundation CEO Brian Hooks said something that should be very encouraging to them at the Koch network semi-annual retreat last weekend. After describing how Barack Obama's election to President was a backlash against the failures of the George W. Bush administration, and Trump's election a backlash against Obama's failures, he predicted that we could see the same thing amplified after the Trump administration debacle. Hooks said,

 “If things don’t get better, then we should expect history to repeat itself. We should expect that the political pendulum will swing with even more force to the other direction the next time. With people even further to the left than Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren! There are people right now who are prepared for the next four years to be a failure, people who cannot wait to be there to address the frustrated American people and introduce them to their own vision of radical hope and change. So the stakes are extremely high.”

The Libertarians/Kochists will certainly not be on the rise when the pendulum swings from right to left. That leaves the Green Party as the most likely party to succeed the Trumpists in four or eight years!

Aside from pondering the political pendulum on my own before Brian Hooks described it so well, another reason I put great hope in our next presidential turnover is the theory of the secular cycle of American history described in the 1997 book, The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. After the current fourth turning, which should end with the tRump administration, we will begin the secular cycle anew. The resolution of the crisis of the current phase will set us up for the beginning of the next 80 to 100 year secular cycle. Our next 20 to 25 year phase (the new cycle's first "turning") should be far less turbulent.

There comes a galvanizing event in a fourth turning which unifies national resolve and the problem we then join together to solve serves as a proxy for all of the major ills and threats facing us. To me, it looks like climate change could become that nexus, even within the span of tRump's presidency. Something worse than Hurricane Katrina, perhaps, would bring climate change to the fore. The Green Party would rapidly rise in esteem.

Photo by peterkreder

Then again, it doesn't have to be climate change that gives the Greens their turn at bat. The Green Party also holds very antimilitaristic ideals. Should we become involved in a devastating war (as all of our fourth turning forefathers have), the nation may afterward turn utterly away from militancy and bring the Greens in for assurance that our national security policy will embrace pacifism.

Whatever culminating problem the fourth turning involves, the Green Party platform offers hope through a banner of solutions showing how we would endeavor to serve the nation in crisis and in calm. When the time suddenly arrives for Greens to assume the mantle of leadership, having stepped up, advocated, and participated in shaping our democracy, let us finally be ready to govern.

Truth Seeking

It seems disingenuous that so many liberals cling to RT and other sources distorted by Russian propaganda when there are many liberal homegrown options that don't have the ulterior motive of sowing chaos through disinformation. One might conclude that adopting such a post-truth stance, whereby you can pick a narrative arbitrarily and ignore any evidence to the contrary, betrays an unprincipled intent to destroy the existing economic and political structure in order to replace it with one that is more socialistic. Maybe this expedient to promoting revolution stems from affinity to socialist ideals which Russia tried and then corrupted, as opposed to capitalist ideals which are flawed at inception. The latter motivation is more noble, but there are surely news sources with more integrity that align with socialism.

Much fuss has been made over The List of over 200 websites that turned out to be Russian stooges, but, as much as I hate to banish sites like "Assassination Science" and "Bare Naked Islam" from my reading list, there are still more real news sources to be tapped than I would ever have time for. There are also numerous weekly news magazines that aren't beholden to big corporate interests. Here are some independent sources that publish breaking news and commentary:

• The Real News Network - Baltimore based, left wing news with sights on becoming a TV station
• The Christian Science Monitor - Global, balanced news of significance with humanitarian focus
• Reuters - The largest international multimedia news agency, a division of Thompson-Reuters
• Reuters TV - Video-rich Internet TV reports of Reuters news; app available for mobile devices
• The Nation - Opinionated and aspirational writings by mostly young progressives
• ProPublica - In-depth investigative reporting on topics of significance to U.S. citizens
• The Center for Public Integrity - Investigative reporting within the U.S., mainly on the public sector  
• Reveal (The Center for Investigative Reporting) - San Francisco Bay area investigative news covering stories around the U.S. and internationally. Also produces a podcast.
• AllSides - Reporting from left, right, and center from various sources with the hope of reconciling understanding of clashing views
• FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) - Alternative news organization seeking to reduce the power of mainstream media
• Who, What, Why - Unvarnished forensic journalism. Podcast and blog, too.
• WorldNews (WN) Network - A news junkie's paradise with over 750 sources for multiple perspectives
• Watchdog - Investigative reporting to hold government (states, in particular) more accountable

              Sources cited were obtained from Gemini Fox's Soapboxie post after removing Russian propagandists.

Photo by Joe Clay

As for myself, after running back into the arms of the Washington Post when I learned that I'd been snookered by the Russian fake news machine, I have become more aware of the slanted perspective of our own mainstream news, as well. The Green Party platform aided my awareness of this, noting that:

Our media laws and rules promote the formation of huge media conglomerates while discouraging competing voices. As a result, the mainstream media is increasingly cozy with the economic and political elites whom they should be investigating. Mergers in the news industry have accelerated, further limiting the spectrum of viewpoints in the mass media. With U.S. media overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and supported by corporate advertisers, investigative journalism is in an alarming decline.

With the above list of trustworthy independent news sources, I am looking forward to expanding my perspective of important topics, and having a firmer grasp of ground truth.

Do and/or Die

Peter Wadhams has ample reason to believe that when a truck ran him off the road, it wasn't just an accident. The Cambridge professor is a recognized and outspoken Arctic sea ice expert who is calling for a dramatic curtailment in fossil fuel use, lest the arctic meltdown shift into a cataclysmic series of positive feedback loops. At one point, the professor speculated that oil industry or government agencies had hired the driver to kill him, just as three other sea ice scientists encountered suspicious demises in the past few years. Causes of their untimely deaths were ascribed to falling down stairs, lightning, and vehicular collision while biking.

Death threats and assassination are nothing new to climate and environmental activists. The least you can do when so threatened is to put it on record, prompting an investigation if you are killed. Professor Michael E. Mann, famous for the hockey-stick graph of global temperatures, recently leveraged his potential martyrdom in a push back against the rhetorical garbage that continually belches from Trump's craw. 

In August 2016, Dr. Wadhams sealed his testimony about our predicament in the form of a book titled, A Farewell to Ice, fortuitously published a few months before the canary in the Arctic began to swoon with temperatures now 50 degrees Fahrenheit above normal, high enough to melt ice in Winter. Wadhams sees 2017 as the first likely summer without a polar ice cap, which would remove the reflecting shield from the Arctic, causing more warming, which would allow undersea permafrost beds to disgorge greater amounts of methane stored there. He has identified ten positive feedback loops associated with Arctic warming.

Hope, nonetheless, springs eternal and Wadhams puts his hope in a radical shift away from fossil fuels and a Manhattan project scale effort to draw down atmospheric carbon. If we don't carry out this change before 2035, Wadhams fears it will be too late. Leaving out the geoengineering piece, the Green New Deal offered by the Green Party could bring the U.S. to 100% fossil-free energy by 2030. If Wadhams is right, there is little room for letting this timeline slip. Either we change our way of living, or our world will change intolerably. Or, maybe we will die from unnatural causes before that, because we were bold enough to point out the problem.