Colorado News Stories: Connecting Some Dots

Today was another day in which a number of news articles caught my eye.  They warrant additional context, especially the connections between some of them.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been working behind the scenes to talk with what the corporate media likes to term “centrist”/”moderate” Democratic Senators regarding health care.  He will continue to try to convince CorporateDems to vote to allow debate on the Senate health bill.  What’s the center position between corporatist lackeys and principled public servants anyway?  Another very popular Washington buzzterm came into play: Salazar is involved because he was involved in several bipartisan agreements while a Senator.  He was at the forefront of what I term the Gaggle of Gangs in the Senate – joining with other “centrists” to keep the filibuster around but ensure Democrats wouldn’t use it while in the minority.  Which is part of the reason why Salazar is being sent back to work on his former colleagues: the Cons are threatening to filibuster the health bill (though Democrats won’t actually force them to carry one out) and -gasp- Democrats might join them.  That’s the answer to “How did that bipartisanship end up working out”.  Whatever happened to the Cons’ “Upper-down-vote!” they couldn’t get enough of?  One person of concern is Sen. Lieberman, the man who campaigned for Sen. John McCain in last year’s presidential election and is doing everything he can to keep himself in the news this year.  Salazar was “mentored” by Lieberman when he joined the Senate, so I’m sure Lieberman can be convinced to play nice – aren’t you?  Oh, and after watering down the bill with nonsense to appease “centrist” Republicans, where are their votes to move to debate?  MIA?  Why did we negotiate with them exactly?  They’re not going to vote for the final bill.

Colorado Politics: CU Chair; Environment vs. Jobs; Ozone Pollution; Oil & Gas Poll

It’s interesting that this piece of news didn’t garner much discussion: The University of Colorado is looking to hire an endowed chair in conservative thought and policy.  This is the result of something the Cons have perfected: play the refs and get the bonus.

CU is currently developing a $9 million program which will bring nationally recognized conservative scholars to teach on the Boulder campus. The program will allow CU to create an endowment for a visiting chair in conservative thought.

What exactly is the push for this crazy idea?  It all arises from the Republican penchant for self-victimization.  The whole world is out to get every singe Con-servative, according to them.  The push is coming from entities like the American Enterprise Institute and the Independence Institute who have conducted “studies” demonstrating how crazy liberal every public college in America is.  What doesn’t get related by the corporate media is AEI and II are funded exclusively by conservatives.  Their “studies” are slanted from the start to show what they want them to show.  Because they’re so well funded and organized, they can push things like hiring a “chair of con-servative thought”.  How then, you might ask, could a place like CU in “ultra-liberal” Boulder even consider such a thing?  This is what happens when a partisan like Bruce Benson is hired as University President.  I haven’t read any stories about how CU is suddenly swimming in cash due to Benson’s superior fundraising abilities.  But CU is suddenly getting a chair in conservative thought.  Gee, I wonder how that happened.  Can you imagine the screams from the Cons if CU were to hire a chair in progressive thought?

More topics below.

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Global Warming: Disinformation; Poznan; 2008 (so far); Energy Security; European Plan

Jon Caldara (Independence Institute) let James Taylor (Heartland Institute)  spout off global warming disinformation on his show last week.  That’s what passes for proof in Con circles: let each other get away with lies on the media you control and label the results as valid.  When Taylor tells audiences that persons listed on the Oregon Petition have demanded they be taken off (which hasn’t happened, to my knowledge), he can cite the remainder of the delayers as he chooses.  Until then, Caldara and Taylor are charlatans.

As of yesterday, talks were very much behind schedule at Poznan, Poland.  The meeting is supposed to help tame the path toward a Kyoto Protocol upgrade, which many want negotiated at the end of next year (Kyoto expires in 2012).  The rest of the world is still struggling to deal with the inaction of the U.S. under George Bush and the Cons.  Jan. 20th can’t come soon enough.

Global temperatures in 2008 (through November) continued to be high.  Even with a stubborn La Nina working to cool things off for more than 2 years, the 2000s look to be on track to be the warmest decade in human recorded history.  That has real effects on the globe, none of which I would consider good.

The Center for American Progress has released an energy security framework paper.  Highly recommended.

Europeans are thinking of building an incredible renewable energy network.  TREC would combine solar power in north Africa with wind power from the Eastern Mediterranean to the North Sea, bio-mass, and hydropower with a high-voltage direct current (HVDC) system of power lines to provide assured renewable electricity for the Mediterranean basin and Europe.  A massive undertaking?  Yes.  But it’s doable and it might be absolutely necessary.  Oh, north Africans and Middle Easterners would benefit by getting clean, fresh water out of the project, which would undoubtedly improve the geopolitical tensions of the region.

Amy Oliver’s Global Warming Disinformation Campaign

Independence Institute Director of Operations and KFKA’s Amy Oliver was one of the latest personalities to continue the “sun is warming Earth, not humans” campaign. This approach has become a favorite of the Denyer/Delayer crowd, despite the fact that even President Bush has publicly recognized the reality of global climate change.

A nuance of this campaign has been to include Mars, yes Mars, in the planets being warmed by the sun. Any number of obvious items completely undermine this argument. For instance, denyers/delayers like to point out the lack of long-term, viable data here on Earth to support the concept that global warming is even occurring. Apparently, humans have a more robust temperature record on Mars than have on Earth.

But what happens if we take Oliver’s word (bear with me here) that the sun is indeed primarily responsible for Earth’s warming. Is the sun emitting more radiation or getting larger? Not according to any measuring/recording device (and we have many) available. But maybe Oliver has access to a dataset that is unknown to the scientific community.

So what is the sun doing? The sun has natural oscillatory activities that cycle every 11 years or so. We are currently in the minimum of that cycle, meaning the Earth is receiving a negligibly lesser amount of solar radiation and has been for the better part of a year or two. Recall from your schooling that Mars is further from the sun than the Earth is, so in addition to receiving less radiation at any point in time, at this point in the cycle, the amount of radiation reaching the planet is less than it was 6 years or so ago. But somehow, it’s warming.

No, Amy Oliver doesn’t know that the sun is the primary cause of warming on Earth or Mars. Her theory flies in the face of the work of thousands of research scientists’ results over the past 30-50 years. What Amy is doing is shilling for industry, as indicated by her commentary, “There are no SUVs to try and control. There’s no oil and gas exploration. There are no nasty coal-producing power plants on Mars. And it’s still warming. How did that happen? I’m serious; it is the sun, stupid.” And things become clearer: Amy and the Independence Institute continue to try to work over the public on the topic of control. Couched in the language of free-marketeers, her commentary sounds good on the surface, doesn’t it? Who wants anyone to”control” their SUVs? Or extractive industries?

Except the “free-market” really isn’t as free as Oliver and company sell it to be. Do you know why the oil and gas industry does so well (insane revenue and profits)? Do you know why the coal industry does as well as it does? Do you know why so many SUVs are sold? Because we’re all subsidizing their existence with corporate welfare. We as taxpayers, through legislation crafted at the behest of oil and gas and coal and car companies, give very handsome sums to giant corporations. That’s on top of the sweetheart tax breaks state and local governments give to those corporations to have the physical portions of their companies in our municipalities. Pile on the absence of business taxes and you see where things are going.

If there really was a free market, these corporations wouldn’t need billions of taxpayer dollars subsidizing their operations. If their businesses were able to do so well all on their own, they wouldn’t need them. They could openly compete with other energy sources or vehicles. But they can’t, so their controllers don’t let other industries get past nascent stages of development. They’re a threat to the large corporations’ existence. And so Amy Oliver and the Independence Institute work day in and day out to continue pounding home the message that the bad, bad government shouldn’t interfere with their marketplace.

The free market is closed to competition. And global warming is a side casualty to Amy’s propaganda work to ensure the market stays closed. Her disinformation campaign is abhorrent. Where is the liberal media when you need it?