Reflections on a rainy Friday

It is a good morning for a hot bowl of cheese grits and a large cup of coffee. Here are a few reflections on this rainy Friday.

– It is official. The two largest English speaking economic powers have people in leadership positions who have a problem with the truth. It will be entertaining the first time they are at odds with each other, which will happen.

– Speaking of Boris, it is fitting that he is Prime Minister when Brexit occurs. When it does, it will be a very difficult time for our British friends. Regardless of the veracity (or lack thereof) of the mission, any time you interrupt a free flow of goods across borders, it will be prone to difficulties and disruption.

– The US president is headed toward an impeachment in the House of Representatives. I encourage people to listen to the folks who risked so much to testify under oath against a very vindictive person. They spoke of protecting a relationship with an ally. He spoke of it being OK to extort them for not the country’s benefit but his.

– It should not be lost on anyone that Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron brokered peace discussions between Ukraine and Russia. Having the US president involved would make it all about The Donald.

Finally, well deserved kudos to climate change activist Greta Thunberg for being voted Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019. The sixteen year old is well-informed and speaks hard truths to power. My favorite line of hers is “Don’t listen to me, listen to the scientists.” It was highly predictable that the US president would childishly react to her honor believing all honors are his to be won. I will keep it simple – the one who acts like an adult won and the one who acts like a child did not.

Have a great weekend.

Climate change shout out

Earlier this week, the US president began the official process to abandon the rest of the world by leaving the Paris Climate Change Accord. As a response, I posted the following on the websites of many Democrat presidential candidates. Please feel free to modify and use accordingly.

“Please shout from the roof tops that if you win the presidency you will have the US rejoin the Paris Climate Change Accord the day of your inauguration. Leaving this agreement is poor stewardship of our planet and detrimental to our global leadership.

In less than three short years, we have recurringly ceded our global leadership role forsaking our allies and trading partners. We have also become less trustworthy because our president cannot be trusted. Rejoining Paris would be a huge step back to being a good neighbor.”

Wednesday walkabout once again

It is a Greenwich time Wednesday, so I thought I would meander over several paths on my walkabout. So, get out your hiking boots and let’s go for a walk.

On one path, I thought of the passionate advocacy of the young kids over insufficient climate change action. Greta Thunberg is a hero to our planet and her efforts should be applauded. A couple of months ago a conservative Australian pundit decided to attack her person making fun of her having Asperger’s syndrome. He was roundly and rightfully criticized.

It was followed up yesterday by a Fox News guest speaker who equated Thunberg’s Asperger’s with a mental illness and was roundly and rightfully denounced even by the Fox network. Then there is the US president who likes to denigrate people tweeting “tongue-in-cheek” how happy she looked. Many of us had predicted the president would act true to form because he simply cannot help himself from picking on critics. And, he called himself the “Chosen One” recently. Chosen by whom for what?

Down another path, I thought of poor Boris being ruled against by the UK high court for canceling parliament for so long before Brexit. Right now, the UK is so ill-prepared for Brexit, that who would think canceling parliament could even resemble a good idea. Yet, while Boris is short on doing his homework, he is never bashful. Let me say this for the umpteenth time, Brexit is not the best of ideas in the view of many financial people, but I understand the rationale. Yet, please do not let people that don’t know any better convince the UK a “no-deal Brexit” will be OK. It will be about as big a disaster as can be imagined. Brits should be worried that the US president thinks it will be OK as he is as studious as Boris.

Moving on to another path, the US president does not think it is wrong to try and strong arm a country for dirt on an opponent. He also does not think it is wrong to avoid the whistleblower rules. Both of these are crimes. I will not be surprised to learn that the departures of Dan Coats and Sue Gordon, two well thought of Intelligence leaders, in August are related. When people say the Mueller report cleared Trump, it did not. He obstructed justice and would have done more if some folks followed his orders. He continued to obstruct Congress after then. Yet, the Mueller report also showed a lot of poor action and behavior on his staff in courting Russian officials. Mueller did not delve far enough, but I feel he would have found more. But, what he did find showed sloppiness that was easily taken advantage of.

As I said last week to staff of Republican Senators, what will the Senator have to rationalize next week, next month or next year about the president? And, what may have scared them the most is when I said he or she won’t know if the sin has already been committed or will be committed in the future. The whistleblower stuff had already been committed. That should scare the hell out of Republicans. And, should because they have fed this monstrous behavior. The president is a clear and present danger to our democracy, our planet and the Republican party.

 

 

You can’t comb over climate change

“You can’t comb over climate change,” the sign read at the Climate Change strike yesterday. This metaphor speaks volumes about a huge problem that a certain person in leadership continues to hide like thinning hair.

The kids get it. Their passion and acknowledgement of the existential threat to our present and future is even applauded in halls of government. Yet, it shames these legislators who still do not act because their funders tell them not to.

I am both a tree-hugger and a capitalist. I have actually said this to legislators in open forum, which usually draws a chuckle. Yet, i am more than gesting. I left the Republican Party a dozen years ago in large part due to their ostrich-head-in-the-sand stance on climate change. My thesis is I could not be a member of a party that is ignoring the greatest threat facing our planet. There is no Planet B.

The cost of failing to act now will dwarf the cost of action. But, the economics go deeper. The cost of renewable energy is more on par with fossil fuel costs from a production standpoint. When all costs are factored in – acquisition, environmental degradation, transportation, burning, maintenance, health, litigation – the cost of renewables is actually much cheaper than coal and cheaper than natural gas. The dropping costs of renewables continues to drive the increase in their use. Iowa actually gets over 35% of its electricity from wind energy, eg. Even Texas gets over 16% of its electricity from wind.

Being a capitalist, the place for investment is in growth industries, not retrenching ones. Coal has been in demise for the entire decade. Solar jobs are 5X more than coal jobs. And, per the recently passed oil tycoon, T. Boone Pickens, natural gas was needed to buy time before wind and solar decreased in cost. He said this in the first half of this decade.

So, the future financials favor renewables. Yet, then we must add in that climate change thing. We must address the heating planet being worsened by humans. If we don’t, it is more than just our kids we need to worry about. We need to worry about us.

The kids get it. Adults, are you paying attention?

Wednesday walkabout

There are a lot of things to ponder this Wednesday, so let’s go for a walkabout. A young sixteen year old from Sweden has twice spoken candidly with members of the US Congress. Two take aways from Greta Thunberg’s comments:

– do something
– listen to the scientists

Yet, while she has been here, the US president’s head of the EPA, a former coal lobbyist, has rolled back an Obama regulation on clean water and overruled California’s ability to have tougher emissions standards for autos sold there. Call me crazy, but this 60 year old man sides with the 16 year old and the climate scientists.

The US president should thank Boris for taking some of the spotlight away from his inane antics. The UK is headed toward a cliff and Boris is saying follow me as he hits the gas. Brexit will be challenging enough, but a no deal Brexit would be a disaster. The British public should listen to the business community who is sharing its concern. An inability to govern this issue has been evident from the outset.

Somebody blew up oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. Iran is the most likely culprit. It is my guess someone is testing the waters with hawk John Bolton gone. Sadly, we are in this mess because of Trump’s decision to back out of a deal all other parties begged him not to, including US military and intelligence leaders. So, Trump’s building a coalition will be harder with our not listening to allies in the first place.

Finally, I am in the middle of Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, “Talking to Strangers.” The thesis is we are horrible judges of when strangers are lying to us. Meeting the person actually is detrimental to the effort. A comment I just read is belief is not the absence of doubt; it’s the absence of a sufficient number of reasons to doubt. Fascinating read.

Have a great rest of the week.