Tulsi Gabbard and HR 246

Reading about how Tulsi Gabbard was summarily disconnected from Google advertising right after her stunningly good debate performance in her first debate had me angry, and certainly on her side about that issue, along with many other issues (including legalization of Marijuana).

But reading about how Tulsi Gabbard voted for HR 246, which expresses House disapproval of BDS, I don't feel anything for Tulsi anymore.  (HR 246 is a basically toothless Resolution expressing the sentiments of the majority of the House.  It does not actually limit free speech, etc.  But it could be followed by actionable legislation, such as sanctions against contractors, as has been tried in several states.)

[Update: Following outrage from former supporters like me, Tulsi has signed on as a co-sponsor to  Omar's boycott protection bill.  OK, I guess I have little to complain about any more.]

Out of the gate, Tulsi had a fresh anti-imperial leftish message which got my biggest donation.

But no more!  It should not be for the US House of Representatives to resolve what citizen speech is wholesome and what is not, even if such resolutions include no criminal sanctions.  The US House of Representatives should be listening to citizens, not telling them how to speak!!!

For Tulsi's candidacy, this is especially fatal as it undermines the rest of her anti-war message.  If she cannot stand up to the Israel Lobby along with fellow congress members Omar and Ocasio-Cortez who notably denounced the Resolution, how is Tusi going to stop the even larger steam roller of the US military industrial complex?

(And of course this is another jewel in the cap of the rising star Ocasio-Cortez, who everyone agrees should be our President immediately after Sanders finishes his last term.)

I'm less interested in the fact Tulsi gets money from right wing Hindus.  That's to be expected, and to some degree Hindus have been treated badly for a millenia.  She has been increasingly distancing herself from such support and nationalist atrocities.  Everyone has a cheering squad with rascals.  The question is whether the candidate distances themself from the rascal activities.  Tulsi has, Trump has not.

I also see nothing wrong with her having met "dictator" Bassir al Assad.  Assad is a highly popular at home elected President who has used terrible means to fight back against even more terrible Western Imperial financed terror to protect his homeland from being upended.  That makes him no worse than the average President in this world, IMO (not Tulsi's, she has actually denounced him more than me).  This argument comes up a lot from people in the brainwashed Western Imperial media sphere--including virtually all of my friends--who seem totally unfamiliar with the atrocities their governments have been up to, but close attention to often fabricated and always out-of-context relatively small atrocities elsewhere.  And, what do we do with popular elected Presidents who may be less than perfect, or even terrible...we meet with them (if we can) of course!  So why is this so dastardly!

Both Warren and Sanders voted against the BDS bill in the Senate (which was worse, it included actual sanctions, so this vote against a likely unconsitituional bill was an easier vote for them).  Elsewhere, Warren is noted for staunch support of Israel.

Bernie Sanders stands out as the best critic of Israel among the Democratic candidates, was an outspoken critic of the attempts to censure BDS (though, he admits, he does not like the strategy himself, which is unfortunate I'd say).

Carbon Tax

Carbon Tax is a good idea, however it cannot be made high enough fast enough to achieve the desired results.

As part of a multi-part strategy, it could play a part, especially in increasing over time.

It should be fully refunded to people, so almost all people have a net gain.

Study should investigate special problem areas, such as home heating oil costs, people with long commutes.

It should increase over time, as renewable energy and transportation systems come on line.

Public funding for alternative energy research and systems should be paid by taxes on wealth, including estate tax beefed up with extra higher rates 100M-100B, and corporate tax offset for US employment, but not executive bonuses, and income schedules above $100M.

We must achieve 50% renewable by 2030, 100% renewable by 2040.

Social security extended, with progressive benefits, to no earnings cap at all.

Jet fuel should go full ag renewable, using alcohol process.  Ag fuel should be for little else, ground transportation should be electric whenever possible, bio when electric is unfeasible.

The ultimate carbon tax should be sufficiently high that leaving fossil carbon in the ground makes sense for all energy use, fossil production only for chemical feedstocks when alternatives unavoidable.

Carbon storage is not likely reliable, effective, or inexpensive enough to be useful.  Nuclear fission processes are not safe enough for utilities, and even fusion should be avoided.  With minor tweaks to actual energy use, and massive energy storage, fully renewable energy is achievable and has sufficient advantages to recommend it over all other approaches.  Renewable energy includes, solar, wind, tidal, geothermal with some limits, very limited ag, and all forms of conservation.  However human populations must also be held to decrease as well, for global heating other sustainability reasons.  Meat production greatly reduced as well.

The true cost of carbon dixoide release is infinite.  In sufficient measure, it would destroy the capacity to support human life on our only planet.  Any CO2 tax is an underestimate of that ultimate cost, which me will barely miss if at all.

Join my Athiest church

This article on the development of an human need for Religion is quite nice.

Although many I respect consider Athiesm to be "No Religion," I'm afraid I regard it as a religion, or more precisely, a class of religions.

Most of which are not very well served by a thoughtful and dedicated clergy, while those religions which preach some form of subservience to race or empire are, perhaps not surprisingly.

If Athiests were so better served, more might join Athiest churches.  It wouldn't seem that hard to outstrip the mindless competition.

In my sect, we'd have twice weekly dance raves with hallucinogenic drugs, orgies, and free abortion.  (What could go wrong?)

But unlike others of arguably fewer scruples at the outset, including Carlos Castenada, and L Ron Hubbard, I'm afraid I haven't a single true faithful follower.  I am a cult of one.

That might well be good anyway.  I've long held that too much success is usually for the worst.  I'm not a great manager, I can barely manage myself and some have thought otherwise.  I'm already at my level of incompetence, all by myself.

But what I'm describing is so obvious, why haven't there even been more attempts?  There is still a movement of intentional communities, but it tends to the conservative and religious nowadays.  One of the earliest polygamous communties became The Oneida Corporation.  I think it's hard to keep a flame going beneath the sea.  The sea of empire and capital.  That topic--the ultimate bias of established religion for established power, despite some degree of seperation in modern societies, was barely touched by the article.  Less was how our very desires are manufactured, let alone the "solutions" for them.  We're in fishtanks we couldn't even live outside of. And each fishtank wants to absorb all the others through a race to the bottom, meaning less for each fish. 

And the reason why extablished power prefers the mumbo jumbo tranditional form of religion, as compared with something more reasonable, is that it prepares people for accepting mumbo jumbo regarding everything else too.

Once you open the door for intellectually free criticism, it could be pointed at established power itself.  So they want to keep that door firmly shut, and keep people reciting mumbo jumbo instead.

Though when it comes right down to it, even fairly reasonable interpretations of logic, reason, and science still require a considerable degree of faith.  Just not a total disconnect from reality, like traditional religion.

Being Undocumented

Illegal Immigration should be a mere civil offense, in the absense of violent crimes.

If an illegal immigrant causes a violent crime, then and only then should the immigration part could be criminal as well.

In such a regime, there should be no detention, deportation, family separation, etc.  People causing violent crimes are caught as always, and given additional immigration charges when applicable.

Nonviolent illegal immigrants should merely pay a extra tax to cover additional civil costs in addition to all normal taxes.

This is all based on a good ethical principle: the punishment should fit the crime.  The punishment should not cause more suffering than the crime.  Illegal immigrants who are causing violent crimes are not hurting anyone, so they should not be hurt.

The tax should best be this: a tax on money sent outside USA.

People who don't understand how employment works, think that "immigrants are taking our jobs."

Immigrants who earn and spend all their money in the USA, are creating as many USA jobs as they are taking.  It's only when money is sent abroad, that the money is creating jobs elsewhere instead of here.

This same economic principle applies to US citizens as well, but they may have rights, authorties, or privileges to send money abroad.  I think it should generally be discouraged, instead of course it has often been subsidized by laws and agreements which socialize the risks of speculation and production abroad.

Anger should most be directed at those laws and agreements, instead, they are barely mentioned in the mainstream distraction.

Media Circuses and the grim truth

Of course the mainstream media is circus, run indirectly by the ultimate power, the deep state, designed to distract.  Always has been.

And so, the way when finally a climate change question was asked at the Democratic debate circus, it turned into "Will your plan save Miami?"

And that's a partly a trick question, in which timeframe.  But mostly, no, Miami is a gonner in the long term, surely in 200 years if not 100.  But maybe other coastal cities could be saved.

But even that's doubtful, given the design and composition of our governing systems--power based on wealth based on exponentially growing destructive processes.  Collapse of everything is the virtually certain scenario, and epochal melt of all permanent ice--though that might take a millenia it will be baked into the cake before the collapse, in the next 100-200 years.

Repurposing the imperal and war machines into green development, turning capitalism and it's exploitative power system upside down, radical and total change could make a difference.  I argue to have a good chance, we also need to simultaneously reduce human population to 1 billion.  It's possible, it could be done without sweat--provided we had a radical communist society.

Under current social arrangement, it's unlikely changes will be more than the window dressing that even at best the world has seen so far, until far too close to total collapse.

If this sounds to hopeless to even care about, I don't mean to sound certain.  While I've suggested a median projection through my vast knowledge from endless sources filtered through a gut reaction (I'm just going a bit past Limits to Growth projections in their last 1999 edition.)  It's within the realm of possibility that a 10 year Green New Deal, if that were possible, that converted us to 100% renewable energy, if that were possible to do in 10 years, and applied through international agreements, mandates, and support everywhere the 600 ppm CO2 track to total ice melt might be avoided.

It's all stretching credibility, but rather than decry all approaches without mass population reduction as Limits to Growth did, which is almost inconceivable, and that the changing of energy sources is a mere slowing of total collapse...which would then be even greater when it did occur, I'm operating under the somewhat more intuitive idea that the more we can do, the better: the more doomsday can be delayed, the more sliver of a chance that we'll slip through the worst, somehow.

So it's worth trying everything we can, full speed ahead, on all hearts and minds, both because it improves the odds of avoiding collapse of everything, and because even if we're avoiding that anyway, it improves the outcome.

But radical change is almost certain to be necessary, ultimately, for success, and the longer it takes to get started, the more radical.