Camp Justice

The Divided States of America plays out it’s daily drama.  As we the people prepare for an election of mounting importance for both us and the rest of the world, we’re reminded in an important way just how divided we really are.

I’m kind of a middle of the road guy when it comes to general politics, but some things I take a hard line with.  The rule of law has to be applied evenly and without prejudice or it’s worse than no law at all.

A 5–4 vote in the US Supreme court is as close as things can get, that’s why there is an uneven number of judges and it’s also why there is so much heat when it comes to appointing a new judge, we’re stuck with these people till they die or retire.

Today the Supreme Court of this great nation handed down a 5–4 decision that the foreign prisoners, some of whom have been detained for 6 years at GITMO have the right to challenge there detention in federal court.

For 6 years some of these people have been held without due process.

The Bush administration has called them prisoners of war and thus exempt from the laws of our land.  Even though divided the supreme court has handed down yet another blow.

Are we at war?  I know a few things about what we are doing.  I have some friends in the Navy.  I know we have put our children in harms way to fight for justice?  How can we fight for justice when we refuse to give justice to others?

Like it or not half the people in this country thing they are entitled to everything and have no remorse killing and destroying to take what they think god or some other divine law told them was for them.

There is no Justice, just us.

Black Days

“…how would I know that this could be my fate?” well, how couldn’t you know.  in October of 2007 Don Paul, CTO Chevron told us sort of, the shape of things to come.

If you read the article in that link all the way through you get a taste for the kind of hopeful, if not, flat language we’ve all been spoon fed since we could sit up in front of a TV.

If you stop on the third paragraph and do the math it begins to settle in what kind of black days we’re in for.

Before you go any further remember this statement was made in 2007.  More up to date information is out there.  Our own governments short term estimates are very reassuring, take a look at the eia numbers.

No one really argues anymore that we are near what’s been termed Peak Oil.  If there was a trillion barrels of oil we could get to in October 2007 and we used 3 billion a day, our days are numbered.  Almost 40% of the energy on this planet comes from oil, that means unless we are actively transitioning from oil to something else during the decline a lot of stuff is going to stop working.

I went to the gas station this morning.  I wasn’t surprised at the price of gasoline, I was shocked at the fact it was over $4.00 and I wasn’t surprised.  There is no let up in sight and it’s going to get worse.

People tend to ignore the blatantly obvious so let me just spell it out for you.  The oil companies are making record profits by gouging us at the pump.  Here’s another obvious thing for you.  No one is doing anything about it because the powerful people are all getting stinking rich.

Even as we talk about hope in the upcoming election no one is saying anything real about our uncertain economic future or the reality that we’re in Peak Oil NOW.

There are laws on the books to stop companies from destroying our individual and collective financial future by raping us.  But these companies know the game is up and they are going to get every last penny from us before they finish there destructive march of greed.

Our greatest ally in the middle east is what Saud-Arabia?  Roughly 40% of the oil we get is from Saud-Arabia.  If you take a look at the global distribution of wealth, there are per-capita more billionares in Saud-Arabia than there are here.

We’re in the middle east with boots on the ground because the last of the old wars is being fought.  It has nothing to do with keeping you and me safe and everything to do with keeping you and me under the boot.

Great men are almost always bad men.  These are the guys who make our laws and write our countries policies and it’s not just us, the same goes for every country in the world.

Do you make more than you did five years ago?  I hope so because you are spending more for the same thing.  It doesn’t stop with you paying more at the pump.  That cabbage you buy at the supermarket, it gets there on a truck that uses oil based fuel, from a port where it arrived on a ship burning some of the worst oil based fuels out there.  Everything is going to get more expensive, it’s an oil based economy.

We’ve had a couple chances.  Back in 1899 the Electric Carriage & Wagon company was producing working electric cars.  Then came the Baker Electric and just after the Detroit Electric.

These cars worked, but like any technology they had there problems.  One of them was we’re morons and when flashy adds tell us electric cars are for chicks and men need load murderous cars to be men we fall in line like lemmings.

Then in 1987 everything changed, our sorta shot at a better world began to become a reality.  General Motors, AeroVironment and Hughes Aircraft made the world a better place, sort of.  They built something called Sunraycer.  They built it for one purpose, to win the World Solar Challenge, they built it so well it didn’t just win, it destroyed the competition.  It was so difficult to build they did it from scratch in 10 months.

in 10 months these companies didn’t just build Sunraycer, they built a hope for a better world.  They showed us what we could do if we really wanted to.  From this winning design a prototype called the GM impact was built and introduced to the world at the January 1990 LA Auto Show.  That’s right, only a short three years later.  This lead to the ZEV and our first real steps towards a better tomorrow.

In 1997 after heavily investing, GM released the EV1, but it was only available under a lease program which had a “no purchase” clause.  A hint perhaps of things to come.  By mid 2000 GM had closed the EV1 plant and soon began to recall the vehicles.

Instead of pursuing the EV and the better world we would all like to live in GM chose to murder us and one of our best hopes.  Instead of fulfilling the dream of energy independence and environmental health, not to mention just doing the right damn thing.  GM did an about face and sued California to roll back the State of California to roll back the clean vehicle regulations it was so instrumental in helping establish.

If you want to know why are are in such shit maybe you should ask the question Sony Classic Pictures asked in it’s film Who killed the electric car?

In 2001 GM and DaimlerChrysler sued the State of California and CARB on the grounds that the new ZEV rules violated federal law barring states from regulating fuel economy.  By 2003 the last 78 EV1 vehicles in storage had been transferred to the General Motors Proving Grounds for disposal.

GM went from our savior to our worst nightmare.  The math they used to justify this move is weak even if you give it to a forth grader, people just aren’t that stupid… or are they?  GM and Chrysler actually got support when they sued California by guess who, Uncle Sam.  Yup that’s right.  The same uncle that now has our sons and daughters dying in the middle east, that’s our Uncle Sam.

Sine the death of the EV1 there has been a lot of advances in both electronics and batteries, but a lot more has to be done.  Maybe these guys at Tesla Motors actually give a shit.  Take a look at this car.  Our hopes may be pinned on it.  Maybe.

The Federal Government has been killing us and our hopes, using fear and war and fuel to control and manipulate us, but the truth is out there if you want to look.  We need to put an end to our Black Days.