The Great Kleptocracy

So stupid. The Gullibillies believed Trump was going to drain the swamp only they got - just what they had coming - a true, "smash and grab" government.

They handed the keys, all of the keys (the House, the Senate, the White House), to a GOP who had been just waiting for the chance to pillage the state and did they ever.

Check out the excellent article at Vox that explains how, in just one year, the Republicans arranged the wholesale looting of America. Ever wonder why so many veteran Republican legislators have announced they're retiring, won't seek re-election? That's because the first rule is to put as much distance as possible between yourself and the scene of the crime before anybody notices what's happened.

When it comes to the Gullibillies, people that stupid will always be the lawful prey of people as corrupt as today's Republicans. Check out the article, it's a good read.



For something closer to home, more immediate and infinitely more frightening, read Michael Klare's essay at Tom Dispatch about how Trump is militarizing America's energy policy.

Unless Trump can somehow be stopped and his course rapidly reversed, the United States could plunge the world into a climate change holocaust. It'll mean death, not in millions, but in billions. And, yeah, you can fairly call that a holocaust.


Last month, if you listened to the chatter among elite power brokers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, you would have heard a lot of bragging about the immense progress being made in renewable energy.  ...Only one major figure defied this trend: U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry. The United States, he insisted, is “blessed” with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”

A better quality of life through fossil fuels? On this, he and his Trump administration colleagues now stand essentially alone on planet Earth [not quite, right Justin?]. Virtually every other country has by now chosen -- via the Paris climate accord and efforts like those under way in India -- to speed the transition from a carbon-based energy economy to a renewable one.

...

From the onset of his presidency, Donald Trump has made it clear that cheap and abundant domestic energy derived from fossil fuels was going to be the crucial factor in his total-mobilization approach to global engagement. In his view and that of his advisers, it’s the essential element in ensuring national economic vitality, military strength, and geopolitical clout, whatever damage it might cause to American life, the global environment, or even the future of human life on this planet. The exploitation and wielding of fossil fuels now sits at the very heart of the Trumpian definition of national security, as the recently released NSS makes all too clear.

“Access to domestic sources of clean, affordable, and reliable energy underpins a prosperous, secure, and powerful America for decades to come,” it states. “Unleashing these abundant energy resources -- coal, natural gas, petroleum, renewables, and nuclear -- stimulates the economy and builds a foundation for future growth.”

...

What really matters to Trump are those domestic reserves of fossil fuels. Only by using them to gain energy self-sufficiency, or what he trumpets not just as “energy independence” but total “energy dominance,” can the U.S. avoid becoming beholden to foreign powers and so protect its sovereignty. That’s why he regularly hails the successes of the “shale revolution,” the use of fracking technology to extract oil and gas from deeply buried shale formations. As he sees it, fracking to the max makes America that much less dependent on foreign imports.

Does this sound vaguely familiar?

The final step in the president’s strategy to become a major exporter involves facilitating the transport of fossil fuels to the country’s coastal areas for shipment abroad. In this way, he would also turn the government into a major global salesman of fossil fuels (as it already is, for instance, of American weaponry). To do so, he would expedite the approval of permits for the export of LNG, or liquefied natural gas, and even for some new typesof “lower emissions” coal plants. The Department of the Treasury, he revealed in that June talk of his, “will address barriers to the financing of highly efficient, overseas coal energy plants.” In addition, he claimed that the Ukrainians tell us “they need millions and millions of metric tons [of coal] right now. There are many other places that need it, too. And we want to sell it to them, and to everyone else all over the globe who need[s] it.” He also announced the approval of expanded LNG exports from a new facility at Lake Charles, Louisiana, and of a new oil pipeline to Mexico, meant to “further boost American energy exports, and that will go right under the [as yet unbuilt] wall.”

Such energy moves have generally been viewed as part of a pro-industry, anti-environmentalist agenda, which they certainly are, but each is also a component in an increasingly militarized strategy to enlist domestic energy in an epic struggle -- at least in the minds of the president and his advisers -- to ensure America’s global dominance.

...

Donald Trump and his administration of climate-change deniers are quite literally living in the wrong century. The militarization of energy policy at this late date and the lodging of fossil fuels at the heart of national security policy may seem appealing to them, but it’s an approach that’s obviously doomed. On arrival, it is, in fact, already the definition of obsolescence.

Unfortunately, given the circumstances of this planet at the moment, it also threatens to doom the rest of us. The further we look into the future, the more likely international leadership will fall on the shoulders of those who can effectively and efficiently deliver renewables, not those who can provide climate-poisoning fossil fuels. That being so, no one seeking global prestige would say at Davos or anywhere else that we are blessed with “a substantial ability to deliver the people of the globe a better quality of life through fossil fuels.”