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I am a retired physicist and hold a B.S. in Ch. E. as well. I have been an environmental activist since the early 1970s. I was a founding member of the Save Barton Creek Association in Austin, TX. In 2006 I was a member of a select committee of the Philmont Staff Association to advise Philmont Scout Ranch about opposing El Paso Natutal Gas's plan to drill and frack in the Valle Vidal in Carson National Forest. I studied the technology of horizontal gas drilling and the environmental effects associated with it. We defeated the plan proposed by El Paso Natural Gas. have been an active opponent of urban gas drilling in Fort Worth, TX since 2006. My present focus is global warming and the ominous effect of increasing atmospheric CO2.
I have been a writer of opinion pieces and other essays since about 1995 and am a published author of history of the old west. My book, Last Train To El Paso--the Mysterious Unsolved Murder of a Cattle Baron was published in 2014. I have had two articles published in Wild West magazine,. The most recent one, titled "How Jim Miller Killed Pat Garrett" was the lead article in the August 2018 issue.
I have studied monetary systems since 1968.
I am an owner of a home with mineral rights in Fort Worth, Texas. I am politically a progressive.
(3 comments) Sunday, September 6, 2020 The Looming Bank CollapseSHARE
Remember the 2008 collapse? Our friends on Wall Street and their allies in the US Treasury have a new one in the works. In 2008 it was the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that brought the economy down. This time it’s another new similar invented villain, Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs). They are very much like CDOs, but instead of home mortgage loans they involve leveraged loans made to troubled businesses whose debt burden is already maxed out CLOs bundle together so-called leveraged loans, the subprime mortgages of the corporate world.
At present there is more than $1 trillion of leveraged loans outstanding. The majority are held in CLOs. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin say they have managed to move the risk of leveraged loans outside the banking system as was done for CDOs, but that is a lie says this article.
Tuesday, July 21, 2020 500 women at Fort Worth federal prison test positive for coronavirus, second most in U.S.SHARE
The Federal Bureau of Prisons permitted a reporter from the Star-Telegram to interview, on Saturday, several inmates at the Women’s Federal Medical Facility at Carswell (formerly the Hospital of Carwsell AFB, Fort Worth, TX) concerning an official report of 509 cases of COVID-19 virus among the prisoners there.
As I read the article I was horrified at the living conditions described by the inmates. There are 1357 women prisoners housed four to a 36 sq. ft cell. In three weeks the number of COVID-19 cases jumped from 3 to 509. They receive one meal per day--a sack lunch containing a cold sandwich.
I am Quicklinking the article here in hopes that some of you will want to spread the word to your congresscritters and any other authorities you know. This is unacceptable in America.
Friday, May 1, 2020 Unsanitized: Who Gets the Money and Who Doesn't by David DayenSHARE
David Dayen is one of my favorite writers on the subject of the bailout scam structured by the Fed and the US Treasury in connection with the 2009 crash. His book about that heist is Chain of Title. Now, with the COVID-19 virus, they are at it again. In the 2009 crash they had trouble coming up with a credible story. They tried to tell us that the $26 to $29 trillion they created and gave to the Wall Street banksters was in the form of loans. (Yesterday (3/29/2020) Mark Cuban was on CNN saying that he doesn’t yet know how those “loans” were paid back and doesn’t understand how the present scheme is going to work.) Even the Levy Economics Institute paper of 2011 click here could not explain how the $29T debt was paid off as the US government and the Fed claimed was the case. (Hint...It wasn’t paid off.)
Wednesday, April 8, 2020 Corruption in the Time of CoronavirusSHARE
If you aren’t alarmed by this article you have no idea what is happening--and I can’t imagine OEN members being in that state of ignorance. I also want to recommend “Was the Fed Just Nationalized” by-Ellen-Brown. No, the Fed was not nationalized. The Fed/Treasury hall of mirrors just repeated the scam used to suck money out of the monetary system in connection with 2008. They earmarked $250B (?) to be issued to taxpayers gratis and the rest to be issued to business as loans which will be forgiven if the money is used to prepare for restarting the economy. How that “forgiven” loan balance and the grants to taxpayers will be accounted for was not discussed, but no doubt it will be charged to the national debt.
Wednesday, January 15, 2020 Climate Activists Can't Afford to Ignore Labor. A Shuttered Refinery in Philly Shows Why.SHARE
"The fire on June 21 and the mass layoffs of about 2000 employees that followed impacted more than just the physical site of the refinery and the workers who made it run. It also ignited a debate throughout the city about what would become of the refinery site"This article provides a cogent example of a situation that Modern Monetary Theory and a government guaranteed public service employment program could solve. Check out YouTubes by Dr. Stephanie Kelton and Dr. L. Randall Wray to learn more.
(3 comments) Wednesday, January 15, 2020 'I Honestly Don't Trust Many People at Boeing': A Broken Culture ExposedSHARE
This article is a must read before you take your next flight. We are losing our mojo here in the USA. The crashes of two Boeing 737 Max flights as a result of a shoddy software engineering error caused the deaths of 346 passengers. “We’ve all seen this movie before, in places like Enron,” Chesley B. Sullenberger III, the pilot who safely landed a plane on the Hudson River in 2009, said in an interview. “It’s not surprising that before a crisis, there are indications of real deep problems that have their roots in leadership.”“Had they done the right thing upfront, they might have had slightly higher costs upfront, but they would have saved billions in the long term,” Mr. Sullenberger said. “But that’s hard to do in this world run by Wall Street.”
Wednesday, January 8, 2020 The Ongoing Effort to Write Wall Street Out of the 2008 Financial CrisisSHARE
Amazing! They ripped off an additional $26T from the US government after their phenomenal attack on the American people, and now they want to blame the crash they caused on the victims!!!!These bastards have no mercy and need to be exposed as the crooks and liars they are. Otherwise they will repeat their new scam, the biggest heist in history!
Tuesday, January 7, 2020 Bush Official: I Watched the March to War in 2003 and It's Happening AgainSHARE
This article by Amy Goodman is a transcript of an interview with Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. It was published on January 6, 2020. If the American people don’t rise up and remove Donald Trump NOW-- not in the 2020 election, and not as the unlikely result of impeachment sometime in the future (ho hum!)-- we are likely to be looking at the demise of the United States as a world power. It is time for Dr. Bandy Lee’s recommended 72 hour evaluation of Trump’s mental state.
Monday, November 18, 2019 A Gangster for Capitalism: Next Up, BoliviaSHARE
This article is an exquisitely sarcastic polemic about the in-your-face violent demise of democracy in Bolivia--just the latest blatant coup for the corrupt economic power that rules the world today. I enjoyed the brief diversion from the vexing problem of what can be done to alter the disastrous course humanity is taking. Check it out.
(1 comments) Saturday, November 16, 2019 The Costs of Post 9/11 Wars: $6.4 TrillionSHARE
This report from Global Research is must reading. How many of these war budgets have been approved without the obvious killer question, “That’s a great plan, but how are you going to pay for it?” ever being posed? But, hey, $6.4T is small change compared to the $26-$29T paid to Wall Street to shield them from bankruptcy in the 2008 real estate fraud.
(1 comments) Friday, October 4, 2019 Building Genuine Islamic Financial InstitutionsSHARE
This article, by Asad Zaman, shows that from the time of Abraham mankind has invented two economic philosophies, which have driven Christians and Muslims apart–the opposite of what should have happened if they had followed “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” and its equivalent command to Muslims. I can’t recommend this article highly enough.
Saturday, September 21, 2019 Forgotten Teachable MomentsSHARE
This is a very interesting perspective by Ed Wallace on lessons our “leaders” did not learn and how that failure has affected our history. Ed Wallace is a recipient of the Gerald R. Loeb Award for business journalism, bestowed by the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and hosts the top-rated talk show, Wheels, 8:00 to 1:00 Saturdays on 570 KLIF AM. Email: edwallace570|AT|gmail.comEmail address
Thursday, August 22, 2019 Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology!SHARE
Ideology is Dead! Long Live Ideology! By Mohsen Javdani and Ha-Joon ChangAUG 12, 2019 |ECONOMICS PROFESSIONEconomists like to say they’re immune from ideological influence. Our research shows the opposite.Mainstream (neoclassical) economics has always put a strong emphasis on the positivist conception of the discipline, characterizing economists and their views as objective, unbiased, and non-ideological. This is still true today, even after the 2008 economic crisis exposed the discipline to criticisms for lack of open debate, intolerance for pluralism, and narrow pedagogy.[1] {paraphrased >>} Most mainstream scholars still resist identifying ideological bias as one of the main culprits [and cite] other “micro” explanations, such as individual incentives related to academic power, career advancement, and personal and editorial networks.
(2 comments) Saturday, August 10, 2019 Climate Crisis Means the Ruling Class has Failed. Can the Working Class Inherit the Earth?SHARE
This piece correctly points out that global warming is a result of humanity’s deliberate blindness to the fact that exponential growth is impossible. Climate change must be reversed or homo sapiens will become extinct. The ruling class is the cause, and will surely bring about this catastrophe unless they are deposed, and their power is so great that it is difficult to conceive of any way for the 99% to force a soft landing. However, there is a possibility that the collapse will be caused by civil events before a violent end. If that happens there will be a short-lived opportunity to implement a new monetary system that will not evolve into the nightmare we now live in.
Monday, July 15, 2019 The Insulin RacketSHARE
Insulin is a 100-year-old drug whose wholesale price has tripled in ten
years. The reasons why explain everything wrong with America’s broken
prescription drug market.On June 22, 2017, Alec Raeshawn Smith, a
recently promoted restaurant manager with Type 1 diabetes, left his
local pharmacy empty-handed. He’d gone in to pick up a month’s worth of
insulin supplies, which he assumed would set him back around $1000—the
amount he and his mother Nicole Smith-Holt had budgeted the month before
when he turned 26 and, under Obamacare rules, had to drop off her
insurance coverage.For Alec, that price was already steep: Even with his promotion, he was making $35,000 a year with no benefits. He couldn't afford it.
So he left. He never told his mother and he never told his girlfriend. Five days later, he was dead.
(5 comments) Friday, July 12, 2019 Yale psychiatrist predicts Trump's 'disgrace and downfall'SHARE
Raw Story spoke with Yale psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee, who concurs
with that assessment, and has also argued that President Trump suffers
from a uniquely dangerous pathology that will end up wrecking the
country.Lee is a forensic psychiatrist and an expert on violence at Yale School
of Medicine. She is editor of
the New York Times bestseller, “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37
Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” She and her
coauthors recently prepared a mental health analysis of the Mueller report. Next
week, they will present their analysis at a town hall-style meeting on
Capitol Hill as well as unveil five questions they would like to ask
Special Counsel Robert Mueller at his testimony the following day (for
more information, visit: dangerouscase.org).
(2 comments) Saturday, June 15, 2019 (Why) There Was No Jackpot at the End of Capitalism's RainbowSHARE
This article is an excellent critique of capitalism--a polemic that rings true and that screams for change...quickly. The jut-jawed defenders of capitalism have said we’re not yet at the end of the rainbow. Be stoic and patient, they say, and they quote Margaret Thatcher: ”There is no alternative.” Famous last words! The best way to devastate Thatcher’s lie and its effects, so well articulated in this Quicklinked article, is to define an alternative that would get us off this train to oblivion. I am writing a book that answers this need. Hopefully, it will be published by January, 2020.
(1 comments) Friday, May 31, 2019 The Bilderbergers in SwitzerlandSHARE
This article announces the 67th Bilderberg Meeting taking place in Montreux, Switzerland from 30 May – 2 June 2019, where the about 130 invitees – so far confirmed – from 23 countries, are staying at one of Switzerland’s most luxurious venues, the Montreux Palace hotel. About a quarter of the attendees are women. These are the capos of the most evil powers in our species. They are the board of directors of the international conspiracy to enslave and impoverish labor and seize as much of the world’s GDP as possible. Eternal war is their most profitable project. Learn their names and beware their involvement in macroeconomics discussions.
(3 comments) Saturday, May 4, 2019 US-backed Saudi Regime Beheads 37 Political PrisonersSHARE
This article shows that the US Congress is ignoring the most heinous, barbaric, murderous rampage in modern history now happening under bin Salman in Saudi Arabia. This MUST NOT stand!37 men were publicly beheaded, and one of the headless corpses was crucified in public.We must put an end to this incredible insane blood bath no matter what the cost.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019 Could a Green New Deal Make Us a Happier People?SHARE
This article argues convincingly that the Green New Deal is not only going to move us in the direction of less carbon pollution, but will also make us a happier people. We must do it. The alternative is...unacceptable and would be proof that homo sapiens cannot adapt. We have to persuade the Dems and Reps to stop feeding us BS and get on board, because when the train leaves the station it will be too late for them and for us. Their mantra is “We can’t afford it. It’s pie in the sky.” NO! Government spending DOES NOT CREATE DEBT. It creates public assets that benefit all.Read this article and think about it. Then do something and see if you don’t feel a little better.