You are one of a handful of people that, if you recommend a book, or say, Substack, I will read it, no other reason. I've checkout and bought so many books on your blurb alone, and have yet to be disappointed.
I am using this thread to “off-gas” a bit because I know you will be a sympathetic audience. I listen to The Daily, nytimes podcast. They regularly have these EXON ads for carbon capture, and to make matters even more cynically worse, the voiceover is from a Black woman (I’ve also seen the ad on TV). Exon is SO incredibly evil. Just never ceases to amaze me!
I am so glad that you mentioned Sammy Roth and his excellent climate reporting. I look forward to his "Boiling Point" newsletter every Tuesday and Thursday. He really does deserve a Pulitzer.
You think women won't vote to keep reproductive health care?
If anything, the Presidency will be the hardest election this fall, since Biden needs to win by over seven million votes to overcome the electoral college and election tampering by Republicans.
Here's another special election that I'm finding encouraging in relation to polls:
"In yesterday’s special election to fill the NY-26 congressional seat (Buffalo), Democrat Tim Kennedy was projected by Cook Political Report to win by 9 points.
I checked Nevada’s polling on 538 as I was making my list, and it didn’t look close. But polling, I think, is unreliable these days, and the election is still many months away; so who knows?
I think you are right about Florida, with the new abortion law kicking in there.
Arizona’s flirtation with a bad abortion law, whatever the courts decide, should boost Dems too — and they’ve been winning lots of elections there for the past ten years.
A lot can happen before November, but I think the general trend is women will vote for having access to doctors who can save their lives. That’s what’s been happening more and more.
Fortunately Democrats not only support reproductive healthcare. They also support the fight against the climate crisis.
And on that note, we may see bolder action if the higher temperatures continue this summer and exact tragic tolls on the world. I hate to say that episodes like the one in the opening of Ministry for the Future may save us, but that’s what seems to drive irregular voters to pay attention and pitch in.
If you haven’t read it, I recommend just the first thirty pages.
And, ironically, I think we mostly need environmental law deregulation, so we can expand renewable energy faster.
We’re also going to need a lot more electricians ASAP. More high schools should be pushed to offer vocational electrical classes. It would be a win-win scenario, with working class teens being able to get good-paying jobs right out of school.
We should mandate landlords install 220V outlets in renter parking spots for EV charging — as well as replace gas appliances with electrics. And we should give them more generous tax breaks to do it, so there’s less push back and strife over it.
Public chargers are going to get overloaded like gas stations did in the 70s during the oil embargo. Poorer drivers will suffer, and the reputation of EVs will take another unnecessary hit, delaying their adoption.
I think Montana is very iffy -too many fanatics relocating to the state to be part of the American Redoubt-a haven for conservative "Christians" ...this state is stuffed with trump supporters.
There is an attempt to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, but I seriously doubt there is enough organization in the short time left to gather signatures that it will be on the ballot.
Is the task to hold Big Oil accountable, or is it our task, as people who care, to figure out how to rapidly redesign and reconstruct our global energy supply ecosystem to be purpose-built for energy sufficiency complete with habitat longevity and social equity?
When you are wrong and do not know it, you are mistaken.
When you are wrong and know it, well, you are lying.
GHE theory says without it, Earth becomes a -18 C, 255 K ball of ice.
Wrong.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer. Without GHE Earth would become much like the Moon, barren 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
“TFK_bams09” GHE balance graphic (and clones) use bad math & badder physics showing the same energy twice, once from the Sun (342/240/160 in & 17/80/63 out) and a duplicate “extra” calculated version (396 up/333 back/63 duplicate) violating LoT 1 & 2.
396 W/m^2 upwelling LWIR is the Earth radiating theoretical “extra” energy as a 16 C BB.
Wrong.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render impossible a BB surface upwelling and looping “extra” LWIR energy for the GHE.
You now know why GHE is wrong.
Consensus science has a well-documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it. (Bruno, drawn & quartered)
GHE & CAGW are wrong so NWO alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
Glossary
GHE – Green House Effect – Wrong since before 1896.
C – Celsius units on Celsius scale
K – Celsius units on the Kelvin scale.
There are Celsius units on the Celsius scale and Celsius units on the Kelvin scale. There is no such thang as Kelvin unit.
TFK – Trenberth, Fassulo, Kiehl UCAR climate scientists behind erroneous GHE heat balance graphic. Google it.
LoT – Laws of Thermodynamics
W/m^2 – Watts (3.4 Btu/Eng h or 3.6 J/SI h) power not energy, m – meter. Needed for Stefan – Boltzmann temperature calculation: Q, J/h = σ (constant) ϵ (emissivity, ratio of energy leaving by radiation to amount if system were BB at system temp) A (m^2) T^4 (T on K scale)
LWIR – Long Wave InfraRed with a wavelength too long to interact at the molecular level, they just pass straight through – Max Planck. Example: Those ceiling mounted IR heaters over the counters at Home Depot.
BB – Black Body which is not necessarily black. A thermodynamic system that absorbs all energy and emits all energy. All the energy leaving a BB must do so by radiation. Per TFK_bams09 60% is kinetic and 40% radiation which makes BB impossible.
At least thirty years ago I read of a report from a British society of chemical engineers which pointed out that the ultimate climate cost of using natural gas, given how much of it escapes into the atmosphere, would be equivalent to burning coal. As with most aspects of climate reporting, it is only now being taken seriously.
About this latest Senate hearing on holding the FF industry accountable for its decades long & continuing campaign of deception... The evidence is clear and it is certainly useful to bring strong light on industry practices intended to undermine efforts to find remedies for carbon pollution. No one has done more than Sen. Whitehouse to do so.
But at the end of Rep. Raskin's testimony, Sen. Whitehouse concluded by saying that he looked forward to working with Raskin "in the years ahead" to delve further into the issue, e.g. challenging Exxon's supposed privilege to redact & withhold documents, and preparing for expected court cases to force industry to acknowledge wrongdoing.
But I am not looking forward to deeper dives and further hearings on the issue. I think the ground has been covered and the case sufficiently proven. Dotting the "I"s & crossing the "T"s "in the years ahead" is a logical, inevitable pursuit, but implies a) that we have years to complete said inquiry, and b) that doing so has importance for climate mitigation. (It does not, IMO).
The question I did not hear asked: What does industry accountability mean in terms of consequences for climate & energy policy? I think the answer is – very little. That's because energy policy is not driven by climate science or public perception, but by deep dependence on FFs as the foundation of the global economy. No politician is going to suggest the kinds of radical interventions necessary to reduce emissions because every part of the economic system (including the renewables sector) depends on continuous flow of oil, gas & coal to meet rising energy demand. That is the inscrutable predicament that should be the issue in the next Senate hearing on climate.
Draconian regulation to limit FF extraction? Capping industry production and consumption? Actually *reducing* energy use to lower emissions, thereby undermining economic growth and the power of energy corporations and investors? These positions are DOA in government ad every corner of society.
After November, Biden will be freed from the pressure of his campaign, sure enough, freed to return to the torpor induced by ideas he absorbed and associations he formed before he was old enough to be president. We will be left to hope for something better in '28.
That's why it's the other races, for Congress and state legislatures, that matter this year, not the presidential race, where we haven't got a horse. Whichever man wins, Congress will have to be there to either resist him or push him.
Making polluters pay will result in Big Oil passing the fee/tax/fine on to consumers or file bankruptcy and walk away from the mess they’ve created — think abandoned leaky gas wells and rusting rotting hulks of derelict refineries, field processing facilities, pump jacks, pipelines, etc.
Vilifying the oil industry in retrospect for past sins detracts human energy from the urgent interventions (think CPR and tourniquet) needed to get the rising atmospheric and oceanic concentrations — and pH level — back to historical Holocene norms. Reducing emissions does nothing in the near term to reduce concentrations and temperature in the decades time scale when irreversible tipping points already underway become runaway.
Think AMOC, Arctic subsea methane release, Antarctic Thwaites and Greenland ice sheet collapse, sea level rise — nonlinear and irreversible — locked in with concentrations and temperature stabilized at the level when Net Zero is achieved. Ponder mass migration, economic chaos, famine, social mayhem …
Contrary to “the best climate science you’ve never heard of” myth perpetrated by IPCC model delusional assumptions, the delusional conventional wisdom is a suicide pact that amounts to “plan for the best and hope the worst doesn’t happen.” Not a smart strategic plan.
Would you please arrange for Dr. Mann to meet with Dr. Hansen and mediate a responsible strategy to save all our assets?
I'm voting for an environmentalist that will definitely commit to the green energy agenda. Her name Jill Stein representing the Green-Rainbow party for POTUS this Nov. She'll attempt to down size our trillion dollar burden called the MIC. Push back here will be relentless but folks are fed up with our forever wars. It's time to move away from a war economy. Jilll agrees. She'll defend workers rights,human rights, free speach rights, rights to assembly and peaceful protest. She'll champion universal health care. So many laudable social programs that keep a community health safe and affordable if only our tax dollars were appropriated wisely.
If either Biden or Trump win the white house (yet again) the duopoly wins and we lose (yet again).
There are times when it is necessary to have a military. During World War Two, the US was invaluable at ending worldwide slaughter and bringing about unprecedented peace:
It would not have been possible without the manufacturing capacity the US had developed over the decades prior to 1940. We now have much less manufacturing capacity, while China has far more, and China is rapidly building ships and other weapons. Meanwhile Xi Jinping has repeatedly stated that Taiwan is a part of China and suggesting he will do something about this.
Authoritarian leaders tend to do what they say they are going to do. Putin said the same things about Ukraine for years before invading it. There are numerous countries concerned about comments and actions Putin has taken in other Eastern European countries, suggesting he will not stop there.
I grew up opposing the US's military budget. I opposed the war in Iraq to the extent that I remain convinced that G.W. Bush and his cronies should be in prison for the rest of their lives, having invaded a country that had done nothing to the US and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The conflict in Ukraine is different. It is more like the first Gulf War, when an aggressive nation invaded its neighbor. That war may be the best war the US has ever conducted in history, shutting it down within a year with minimal casualties, and preventing an authoritarian leader from doubling his source of revenue (Kuwait's oil stocks), which would have funded more military adventures. We essentially prevented another Hitler right off the bat, rather than waiting for years for his power and damage to grow.
Another compelling example of the US's military success is comparing South Korea to North Korea. South Korea is a functioning democracy that holds its leaders to such high standards of conduct, they put them in prison when corruption is proven. Its economy is robust and its culture has spread and thrives all over the world. Meanwhile North Korea has evolved into a dysfunctional, militant dynasty
While I applaud and support the long term goal of reducing military budgets -- and I definitely believe that some of the US's wars have been terrible -- I don't think now is the right time to pull our support for the military budget.
One interesting aspect of this is how the military budget has shrunk over the past sixty years, as a percentage of our GDP:
I don't doubt you will resist my interpretations of history and what we as a nation should advocate for. I have shared this with you with the best of intentions. I simply do not want US allies to suffer invasions and more war.
That said, I think you will likely agree with me on this, at least: that our military procurement process is bureaucratic and wasteful. If it ran more smoothly, more of the money we pay in taxes would be available for domestic programs, like education, medical research, justice reform, etc.
This is a NY Times article that mentions this bureaucracy, cracked open in case you don't have a subscription:
And on a final note, my issue with Jill Stein is not the values she esteems, but her lack of experience. She has never held public office. She's never been a representative or senator or mayor or governor. Being President is quite likely the hardest job in the world. I would never want someone with no experience doing open heart surgery on me. I certainly don't want someone who has never managed the complex demands of statecraft trying to handle national and international crises.
I hope this doesn't offend you to read it, but I wish for everyone considering her candidacy to seriously reflect on this.
You are one of a handful of people that, if you recommend a book, or say, Substack, I will read it, no other reason. I've checkout and bought so many books on your blurb alone, and have yet to be disappointed.
I'm very glad to hear that--it takes a good deal of time to read a book for a blurb, and I always wonder if it's worth it
Oh., trust me, very much so. Kristin Kobes Du Mez, Bob Massie (of he ever chooses to blurb) and a few more, and that's it.
I am using this thread to “off-gas” a bit because I know you will be a sympathetic audience. I listen to The Daily, nytimes podcast. They regularly have these EXON ads for carbon capture, and to make matters even more cynically worse, the voiceover is from a Black woman (I’ve also seen the ad on TV). Exon is SO incredibly evil. Just never ceases to amaze me!
I am so glad that you mentioned Sammy Roth and his excellent climate reporting. I look forward to his "Boiling Point" newsletter every Tuesday and Thursday. He really does deserve a Pulitzer.
Dems aren't likely to hold the Senate..?
Arizona
Montana
Ohio
Wisconsin
You think women won't vote to keep reproductive health care?
If anything, the Presidency will be the hardest election this fall, since Biden needs to win by over seven million votes to overcome the electoral college and election tampering by Republicans.
Let’s hope. We’re working hard at Third Act. Add Nevada to your list. And I think Fla could be in play
Here's another special election that I'm finding encouraging in relation to polls:
"In yesterday’s special election to fill the NY-26 congressional seat (Buffalo), Democrat Tim Kennedy was projected by Cook Political Report to win by 9 points.
He actually won by 36 points."
https://www.threads.net/@marklevinenyc/post/C6buAC_uXxr
I love that you are in the fight.
I checked Nevada’s polling on 538 as I was making my list, and it didn’t look close. But polling, I think, is unreliable these days, and the election is still many months away; so who knows?
I think you are right about Florida, with the new abortion law kicking in there.
Arizona’s flirtation with a bad abortion law, whatever the courts decide, should boost Dems too — and they’ve been winning lots of elections there for the past ten years.
A lot can happen before November, but I think the general trend is women will vote for having access to doctors who can save their lives. That’s what’s been happening more and more.
Fortunately Democrats not only support reproductive healthcare. They also support the fight against the climate crisis.
And on that note, we may see bolder action if the higher temperatures continue this summer and exact tragic tolls on the world. I hate to say that episodes like the one in the opening of Ministry for the Future may save us, but that’s what seems to drive irregular voters to pay attention and pitch in.
If you haven’t read it, I recommend just the first thirty pages.
And, ironically, I think we mostly need environmental law deregulation, so we can expand renewable energy faster.
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/progressives-need-to-embrace-progress?utm_medium=email
Red states have an easier time building it out at the moment.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/26/red-states-lead-usa-renewable-energy-wind-solar-power
With transportation as our biggest source of pollution, it’s great news that EVs are rapidly becoming cheaper.
https://www.techradar.com/vehicle-tech/hybrid-electric-vehicles/byds-astoundingly-cheap-electric-car-sets-a-record-that-could-spark-a-new-price-war
We’re also going to need a lot more electricians ASAP. More high schools should be pushed to offer vocational electrical classes. It would be a win-win scenario, with working class teens being able to get good-paying jobs right out of school.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/dept-of-energy/the-great-electrician-shortage
We should mandate landlords install 220V outlets in renter parking spots for EV charging — as well as replace gas appliances with electrics. And we should give them more generous tax breaks to do it, so there’s less push back and strife over it.
Public chargers are going to get overloaded like gas stations did in the 70s during the oil embargo. Poorer drivers will suffer, and the reputation of EVs will take another unnecessary hit, delaying their adoption.
Lifelong Montanan here.
I think Montana is very iffy -too many fanatics relocating to the state to be part of the American Redoubt-a haven for conservative "Christians" ...this state is stuffed with trump supporters.
There is an attempt to put an abortion rights amendment on the ballot, but I seriously doubt there is enough organization in the short time left to gather signatures that it will be on the ballot.
That’s a shame. Seems like Jon Tester is a good representation of Montanan values.
Also interesting: for a while lots of Californians were moving there to Bozeman and Helena. Did that fad wane..?
COVID influx. It has slowed down.
Conservatives Californians appear to be moving here.
Housing costs are abysmal and ridiculously expensive now. The cost has doubled.
Thank you!
Is the task to hold Big Oil accountable, or is it our task, as people who care, to figure out how to rapidly redesign and reconstruct our global energy supply ecosystem to be purpose-built for energy sufficiency complete with habitat longevity and social equity?
that's a good task too. many tasks!
Are you for real?
It’s all AI
When you are wrong and do not know it, you are mistaken.
When you are wrong and know it, well, you are lying.
GHE theory says without it, Earth becomes a -18 C, 255 K ball of ice.
Wrong.
Earth is cooler with the atmosphere, water vapor, 30% albedo not warmer. Without GHE Earth would become much like the Moon, barren 400 K lit side, 100 K dark.
“TFK_bams09” GHE balance graphic (and clones) use bad math & badder physics showing the same energy twice, once from the Sun (342/240/160 in & 17/80/63 out) and a duplicate “extra” calculated version (396 up/333 back/63 duplicate) violating LoT 1 & 2.
396 W/m^2 upwelling LWIR is the Earth radiating theoretical “extra” energy as a 16 C BB.
Wrong.
The kinetic heat transfer modes of the contiguous atmospheric molecules render impossible a BB surface upwelling and looping “extra” LWIR energy for the GHE.
You now know why GHE is wrong.
Consensus science has a well-documented history of being wrong & abusing those who dared to challenge it. (Bruno, drawn & quartered)
GHE & CAGW are wrong so NWO alarmists must resort to fear mongering, lies, lawsuits, censorship & violence.
Glossary
GHE – Green House Effect – Wrong since before 1896.
C – Celsius units on Celsius scale
K – Celsius units on the Kelvin scale.
There are Celsius units on the Celsius scale and Celsius units on the Kelvin scale. There is no such thang as Kelvin unit.
TFK – Trenberth, Fassulo, Kiehl UCAR climate scientists behind erroneous GHE heat balance graphic. Google it.
LoT – Laws of Thermodynamics
W/m^2 – Watts (3.4 Btu/Eng h or 3.6 J/SI h) power not energy, m – meter. Needed for Stefan – Boltzmann temperature calculation: Q, J/h = σ (constant) ϵ (emissivity, ratio of energy leaving by radiation to amount if system were BB at system temp) A (m^2) T^4 (T on K scale)
LWIR – Long Wave InfraRed with a wavelength too long to interact at the molecular level, they just pass straight through – Max Planck. Example: Those ceiling mounted IR heaters over the counters at Home Depot.
BB – Black Body which is not necessarily black. A thermodynamic system that absorbs all energy and emits all energy. All the energy leaving a BB must do so by radiation. Per TFK_bams09 60% is kinetic and 40% radiation which makes BB impossible.
CAGW – Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming
NWO – New World Order – 1984 style.
I was not aware of what the Dems in the Senate were doing regarding the hearings on Big Oil Disinformation. Happy to be made aware of that!
Thanks for the link to the reprise of James Balog's career.
At least thirty years ago I read of a report from a British society of chemical engineers which pointed out that the ultimate climate cost of using natural gas, given how much of it escapes into the atmosphere, would be equivalent to burning coal. As with most aspects of climate reporting, it is only now being taken seriously.
About this latest Senate hearing on holding the FF industry accountable for its decades long & continuing campaign of deception... The evidence is clear and it is certainly useful to bring strong light on industry practices intended to undermine efforts to find remedies for carbon pollution. No one has done more than Sen. Whitehouse to do so.
But at the end of Rep. Raskin's testimony, Sen. Whitehouse concluded by saying that he looked forward to working with Raskin "in the years ahead" to delve further into the issue, e.g. challenging Exxon's supposed privilege to redact & withhold documents, and preparing for expected court cases to force industry to acknowledge wrongdoing.
But I am not looking forward to deeper dives and further hearings on the issue. I think the ground has been covered and the case sufficiently proven. Dotting the "I"s & crossing the "T"s "in the years ahead" is a logical, inevitable pursuit, but implies a) that we have years to complete said inquiry, and b) that doing so has importance for climate mitigation. (It does not, IMO).
The question I did not hear asked: What does industry accountability mean in terms of consequences for climate & energy policy? I think the answer is – very little. That's because energy policy is not driven by climate science or public perception, but by deep dependence on FFs as the foundation of the global economy. No politician is going to suggest the kinds of radical interventions necessary to reduce emissions because every part of the economic system (including the renewables sector) depends on continuous flow of oil, gas & coal to meet rising energy demand. That is the inscrutable predicament that should be the issue in the next Senate hearing on climate.
Draconian regulation to limit FF extraction? Capping industry production and consumption? Actually *reducing* energy use to lower emissions, thereby undermining economic growth and the power of energy corporations and investors? These positions are DOA in government ad every corner of society.
"forests are on fire... because we keep heating up the planet". Well said
After November, Biden will be freed from the pressure of his campaign, sure enough, freed to return to the torpor induced by ideas he absorbed and associations he formed before he was old enough to be president. We will be left to hope for something better in '28.
That's why it's the other races, for Congress and state legislatures, that matter this year, not the presidential race, where we haven't got a horse. Whichever man wins, Congress will have to be there to either resist him or push him.
This hearing was infuriating https://youtu.be/smdCEriClrA?si=LscCgynKsnmyKHXA
Making polluters pay will result in Big Oil passing the fee/tax/fine on to consumers or file bankruptcy and walk away from the mess they’ve created — think abandoned leaky gas wells and rusting rotting hulks of derelict refineries, field processing facilities, pump jacks, pipelines, etc.
Vilifying the oil industry in retrospect for past sins detracts human energy from the urgent interventions (think CPR and tourniquet) needed to get the rising atmospheric and oceanic concentrations — and pH level — back to historical Holocene norms. Reducing emissions does nothing in the near term to reduce concentrations and temperature in the decades time scale when irreversible tipping points already underway become runaway.
Think AMOC, Arctic subsea methane release, Antarctic Thwaites and Greenland ice sheet collapse, sea level rise — nonlinear and irreversible — locked in with concentrations and temperature stabilized at the level when Net Zero is achieved. Ponder mass migration, economic chaos, famine, social mayhem …
Contrary to “the best climate science you’ve never heard of” myth perpetrated by IPCC model delusional assumptions, the delusional conventional wisdom is a suicide pact that amounts to “plan for the best and hope the worst doesn’t happen.” Not a smart strategic plan.
Would you please arrange for Dr. Mann to meet with Dr. Hansen and mediate a responsible strategy to save all our assets?
Doug,
Stop with the fossil fuel industry shilling. Seriously, STFU.
I'm voting for an environmentalist that will definitely commit to the green energy agenda. Her name Jill Stein representing the Green-Rainbow party for POTUS this Nov. She'll attempt to down size our trillion dollar burden called the MIC. Push back here will be relentless but folks are fed up with our forever wars. It's time to move away from a war economy. Jilll agrees. She'll defend workers rights,human rights, free speach rights, rights to assembly and peaceful protest. She'll champion universal health care. So many laudable social programs that keep a community health safe and affordable if only our tax dollars were appropriated wisely.
If either Biden or Trump win the white house (yet again) the duopoly wins and we lose (yet again).
There are times when it is necessary to have a military. During World War Two, the US was invaluable at ending worldwide slaughter and bringing about unprecedented peace:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/globally-deaths-war-and-murder-are-decline-180950237/
https://www.vox.com/2015/6/23/8832311/war-casualties-600-years
It would not have been possible without the manufacturing capacity the US had developed over the decades prior to 1940. We now have much less manufacturing capacity, while China has far more, and China is rapidly building ships and other weapons. Meanwhile Xi Jinping has repeatedly stated that Taiwan is a part of China and suggesting he will do something about this.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/were-not-ready-for-the-big-one
Authoritarian leaders tend to do what they say they are going to do. Putin said the same things about Ukraine for years before invading it. There are numerous countries concerned about comments and actions Putin has taken in other Eastern European countries, suggesting he will not stop there.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/commentary/2024/03/03/world/stopping-putin/
I grew up opposing the US's military budget. I opposed the war in Iraq to the extent that I remain convinced that G.W. Bush and his cronies should be in prison for the rest of their lives, having invaded a country that had done nothing to the US and causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.
The conflict in Ukraine is different. It is more like the first Gulf War, when an aggressive nation invaded its neighbor. That war may be the best war the US has ever conducted in history, shutting it down within a year with minimal casualties, and preventing an authoritarian leader from doubling his source of revenue (Kuwait's oil stocks), which would have funded more military adventures. We essentially prevented another Hitler right off the bat, rather than waiting for years for his power and damage to grow.
Another compelling example of the US's military success is comparing South Korea to North Korea. South Korea is a functioning democracy that holds its leaders to such high standards of conduct, they put them in prison when corruption is proven. Its economy is robust and its culture has spread and thrives all over the world. Meanwhile North Korea has evolved into a dysfunctional, militant dynasty
While I applaud and support the long term goal of reducing military budgets -- and I definitely believe that some of the US's wars have been terrible -- I don't think now is the right time to pull our support for the military budget.
One interesting aspect of this is how the military budget has shrunk over the past sixty years, as a percentage of our GDP:
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/military-spending-defense-budget
I don't doubt you will resist my interpretations of history and what we as a nation should advocate for. I have shared this with you with the best of intentions. I simply do not want US allies to suffer invasions and more war.
That said, I think you will likely agree with me on this, at least: that our military procurement process is bureaucratic and wasteful. If it ran more smoothly, more of the money we pay in taxes would be available for domestic programs, like education, medical research, justice reform, etc.
This is a NY Times article that mentions this bureaucracy, cracked open in case you don't have a subscription:
https://archive.ph/UA8Rt
And on a final note, my issue with Jill Stein is not the values she esteems, but her lack of experience. She has never held public office. She's never been a representative or senator or mayor or governor. Being President is quite likely the hardest job in the world. I would never want someone with no experience doing open heart surgery on me. I certainly don't want someone who has never managed the complex demands of statecraft trying to handle national and international crises.
I hope this doesn't offend you to read it, but I wish for everyone considering her candidacy to seriously reflect on this.
People
Planet
Peace
for ever wars enrich the few while the many suffer.
Let's start using our words instead of our fists. DId'nt we learn this lesson in kindergarder.
where are the adults in the roon in the halls of congress ?
Great job Representative Raskins. Thank you