I’m sick of primary babble, and today I’m in one of those moods where I’m all about individual people who rawk, and ignoring how the process/nation as a whole sux. I got this in an email, but you can give her some turkee here.
TOMORROW, fourth congressional district candidate Donna Edwards will bring attention to a fundraiser honoring Rep. Wynn by the nuclear energy lobbyist Entergy.Rep. Wynn is being honored at this high-dollar lobbyist breakfast tomorrow by Entergy, the second largest nuclear operator in the country. As the House Chairman of the Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, whose interests is Rep. Wynn serving? Entergy is one of the corporations Wynn is supposed to police. Instead, Entergy spent more than $1.1 million lobbying the federal government in just the first half of 2007, giving $18,500 to Wynn’s campaign through the Employees of Entergy Operations Inc PAC and the Entergy Corporation PAC.
While Democrats around the country are rejecting the politics of leaders representing the status quo and embracing change, Rep. Wynn has clearly missed the message and continues to work for corporate special interests instead of the people’s interests.
Join Donna tomorrow as she sends the message to Rep. Wynn that his business-as-usual ties to corporate special interests are no longer welcome in Congress.
WHAT: Donna Edwards confronts Rep. Wynn at Entergy lobbyists’ fundraiser
WHERE: Entergy Offices101 Constitution Avenue NW, corner of Constitution and Louisiana Ave.
Washington, DC
WHEN: TOMORROW Tuesday, January 8th 2008
9:00AM
Like this most excellent citizen action I’m convinced the only way to get going down the road of real progressive change is to get in their faces. No violence needed, just show up and laugh and point and shout and use your cellphone cam.
Once, at the Capitol, I was having a smoke with a fat guy in a wig. He was a Character. He was going on and on about his rock collection, his adventures in ’Nam, yadda yadda, one of those types who just lurved the sound of his own voice. Tired of not getting a word in edgewise, I interrupted his self-concerned tirade. I said to him, “Well, you’re a troublemaker and need some tutoring in manners, don’t you?” with a just enough sarcasm in my voice to make it polite. He shut up, laughed, and relaxed a bit, and allowed everyone else on the smoking balcony to join in real conversation.
I later learned he was one of the more important Republicans from this state, and a key player in the budget crisis we’ve been having here.
Bottom line: bullies are, in the end, cowards, just as homophobes are usually closet cases, and both of them will run away, shut up and/or cry when confronted. There is no better way to unman your enemy than to mock him in public.
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nuclear industry
The nuclear industry is trying to stave off doom. If it manages to do so, Americans will be subjected to energy blackmail forever, treating us just as the oil countries and oil companies do today. Advances in alternative energy sources will bring that doom, and soon. Unlike centralized nuclear power which is controlled by a few companies, alternative energy will be localized, so competition will be more of a factor, just what the Entergies of the world don’t want. Aiding Donna Edwards will help rid us of the selfish pieces of crap like Wynn. And Chi, love your work.
thank you, jimbo. that's very kind.
personally, i’m mixed on nukes. on the one hand, i really don’t see how we’re going to power a globe full of 7B people, esp when a significant number of them are accustomed to the energy consumptions levels of the average western consumer, or even in rapidly modernizing china and india. people aren’t going to like being told that they can’t live in certain places, or have jobs far away from home, or even that they can’t run every appliance in their homes all day long. on the other hand- i don’t see how the system we have in place can survive the end of oil.
i’ve tried, these last few years, to think critically about what’s going to happen as petroleum runs out. i know that people aren’t really adapting fast enough, and that there’s too much money to be made from 100, 200, even 500$ barrels of oil. i also know that those who will make that money are superpowerful, politically. not just here, but around the globe. so they’ll fight any “good” alternative energy technology development and implementation, and indeed, they already have. tooth and nail.
so i suspect we’re going to go all the way down to the wire, and then there will be a couple of years of total panic, and then “solutions” like nuke plants will be offered up by shortsighted and ignorant politicians. i’m not really up on the latest in alternative energies, although i’m sure it could be done and we could replace oil and nuke power with a mix of alternatives. the question is how do we do that, how do we get there?
a while back, i posted on a post over at Moon of Alabama, forgive me for forgetting its title, but in it i noted what B noted in the original- the yurpeas are already way ahead of us in the alternative energy tech biz. which sucks, because when i have the money, i’m going to start installing solar panels and wind generators on my property…assuming i can buy any. i know some do exist, and plenty of people are using solar, but in B’s example there was a european town in which homeowners were producing 3X more energy than they consumed, via solar and wind tech on individual homes, such that they could sell the surplus (as a collective) to neighboring municipalities.
we need to get there.
…and damn my cat is needy today. just won’t get off my lap and let me blog. he’s such a stinker, albeit a cute one.