There can be no question
that this movement is backed by the oil-gas-coal industry and funded by the
likes of T.
Boone Pickens, Ted Turner, and the Koch
brothers and their cronies.
Of course, it helps to
have a powerful and, pathetically, popular TV network
at your beck and call, as the Tea Partiers do, to evangelize your outrageous
claims.
It's especially bizarre
that these hoodwinked people actually believe "smart counters" on
their electrical meters are tracking them and taking over their lives, when
most of them probably use E-Z
Pass or a GPS or smart phone or Onstar or ATMs or Facebook or Google
or Yahoo or one of the many other devices and sites that actually DO track them.
Counterbalancing the Lies
We need to attend these community meetings where these frightened uninformed and misinformed people are playing into industry's plan by pushing to crush sensible public policy.
We could use a massive funding
campaign for viable sustainability-promoting nonprofits that are being cut off
because of communities' fear of "Tea Party" backlash -- Ã la the way Planned Parenthood received such a
massive outpouring of support after the Susan G. Komen Foundation so stupidly
defunded it for political reasons.
We sure don't want to
take money from big organizations; heaven knows, many if not most of the "Big Greens" are quite
corrupted. But, if enough of us each gave $25 (or
as much as we can afford) to our local sustainability-promoting, antifracking, anti-mountaintop
blasting, anti-tar-sands-extraction, anti-nuclear, pro-renewable-energy, or
climate-change-focused community grassroots groups, and another $25 (or as much
as we can afford) to one of the independent media that are reporting these
issues, we would tell politicians the ignoramuses aren't the only ones who can
be vocal.
Most important, thought,
we need to show up. We need to talk to our neighbors, and make sure they have
good information, not hysteria-inducing corporate-state propaganda. Then, once
we've found a couple of allies, we need to go together to the town board and
city council meetings. We must stand up and speak out, to counteract the B.S.
with facts.
Once we have that small cadre of allies, the numbers will grow. Then we can divvy up duties. One of them should be to scan mainstream media reporting of environmental issues, and to take a few minutes to write a quick rebuttal when we see shoddy or deliberately misleading stories like that from the New York Times discussed above.
Only if
we continue to call them out on this and hold their feet to the fire will MSM
even consider doing any real journalism. It may be too late for the Times
-- probably is -- but if enough people begin seeing it and other such
corporate media for what they are and stop buying them, maybe support for good
indy journalism will prosper more.
Plant the wrong seeds,
and choking poison weeds grow.
Plant the right seeds,
and nurturing beautiful plants grow. Let's get the seeds started.
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