Count your Gas Blessings Carefully.

The cost of fuel (Okay, the price) has gone down a bunch recently. I have to think that it's because the big oil companies are cutting back on their profits in order to help the economies of the world.

HA! Just kidding. But, wouldn't it be nice?

I suspect that the price of gasoline going down is related to many issues, not the least of which is the success of renewable sources of energy. Don't let them fool you. Even the Biggest, Oiliest Oligarchs are divesting from oil. Every one of them uses solar and wind energy generation at their "Dacha's". Why wouldn't they? They like to save money, too. You just won't see it in their, "aren't we responsible?" advertising. According to the ad, BP have invested over 4.5 Billion Dollars in the Gulf for rebuilding. That's not so much an investment, as a court ordered fine to compensate for all the damage that their slovenly practices caused to the people and the environment of the Gulf. It's like me saying, that I invested over $20,000 in the State of Colorado, instead of me saying, I've had three DUIs!

Unfortunately, a huge contributor to this gasoline "discount", is the glut of natural gas, that these very same companies are extracting out of the ground in ways that make oil extraction look like a gentle kiss from a dying grandmother. You've heard of "Fracking", haven't you? This term is short for Hydraulic Fracturing, which is FAR more hideous than you'd ever expect. These oil barons take pipes and force them into the ground under your homes and into "seams" where free methane and propane are trapped as part of the decaying process of ancient organic life. In order to fracture the rock formations, and therefore "free" the trapped gas, they inject millions of gallons of fresh water, because everyone knows that we don't really need water for human life to exist, mixed with a concoction of carcinogenic chemicals and other chemical agents that assist in the destruction of the rock layers. The contents of this mixture are top-secret because Dick Cheney made sure we'd never know what's in it. Thank God, we know we can trust Cheney. Now, historically these oil entrepreneurs, have always looked out for the welfare and well-being of the public, and in these cases, they are just as publicly responsible as they always have been (Exxon Valdez, Deepwater Horizon, Keystone XL Pipeline, etc).

Take the dip in gas prices with a grain of salt and remember that in Battlestar Galactica if you got "Fracked" it meant something altogether different . Or maybe it didn't.

Baby Steps...

Old King Coal. Not so merry.

Coal miners have been around for a awhile. 

Mining is dirty, dangerous work, that doesn't take a lot of education, just mostly muscle and courage. And a desire to take care of your family.
Especially in rural areas where the coal is found, West Virginia, Kentucky and Missouri, to name just a few. Miners generally have a pretty tough life, filthy, back-breaking work, for long hours. As long as the employer can legally require, that's how many hours a coal miner will work.

I just drove through Ludlow, Colorado where an abomination against humanity took place a while back. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre)

Fortunately, thanks to the unions and the incredible war-like struggles that they went through to get the miners a living-wage and some protections, the miners can enjoy a somewhat normal standard of living. A liveable standard, even though these mines tend to be in horrible, back-woods locations where the boom-town economies inflate all the costs that the miners incur. Many of these miners have worked the mines for generations, so much so that it's the only existence that they've ever known, or that they can even contemplate. The job is so ingrained with the life and the culture, that the miners, not only put up with the horrible conditions that the employers thrust upon them, they defend it against all logic and against their own well-being.
The nation should be getting off coal. And petroleum. And Natural gas.

It's obvious. Coal is a dirty source of fuel and mining kills miners through bad and unsafe practices and disease. There are natural, renewable sources of power generation that we can transition into, and these miners can, with very little adaptation, be transitioned into without the loss of any income. These types of energy can, and will, be in the same rural locations where these workers now live. But there's a catch. Isn't there always? The fossil fuel energy companies have powerful and deep-pocketed lobbies that won't allow that to happen.

Workers need to be educated in these things. (another reason that the rich and the corporations are dead-set against any public education) The Politicians and the corporations aren't your friends. They fought against your rights every step of the way and killed countless miners who only wanted to make life better for their families.

Let's get out there and help these people, because by helping them, we help ourselves.
The best way to get even with the Robber Borons, is to make what they stole from us, and our planet, worthless.
Let's do it.
Baby steps...

It works if YOU work it.

This is exactly the way representative, participatory democracy should work. It's a little slow, admittedly, but the more we participate, the better and faster it will become.

After years of cajoling the White House, the solar panels are back on the White House. The lord and savior of the republican/oligarchic party Ronnie RayGunz spent time, energy and presumably money to remove the solar panels that had been installed by Carter. Had those panels been allowed to remain, who can say where research and development might have taken us by now in the renewable energy industry?
Filthy, polluted water-under-the-bridge.

Bill McKibbon and his group 350.org and their fans have turned the Obama administration around on this one aspect of the argument. Good on 'em!
The Keystone XL Pipeline has coughed it's last disgusting tarry-oily death knell, since The Truth is almost always more powerful than what the Koch's want.

Obama is playing the long-game and in order to do it, he MUST have the grass-roots (you and me) help him. All of this hard work is designed to be a sort of political ju-jitsu, in order to make these changes look natural and organic. And it's working. The bonus is that it also makes all the greedy corporations and politicians look like idiots. I LOVE that.
Keep it up!
Baby Steps...