Airspace. Alternatives to Cap & Trade

We become what we think about.

We choose what to think about.

The hinges of history are the minds and hearts, the “airspace wars” around our children.
Walmart turns Cap & Trade on its head.

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Technology affects us. A few days ago, I was looking on the Whatcom County Library website for a certain book title. You can never just get the answer alone. Sidebars pop up with other suggested titles.

Librarians no longer are grumpy old ladies with tight buns who tell you to be quiet or leave. Now, sophisticated databases of book collections are fronted by artificially intelligent, data mining, choice tracking, market driving software front ends. And, perhaps, there is a preppy young intern in some smoke free back room cataloging and experimenting with your reading choices.

“Aha! Here is a title you might like to consider. Never mind that you don’t know me.” Who is that man with a white coat watching me through that portal. I don’t know. Does it matter? Do you believe in ghosts?

Anyways, a suggested author and his book popped up on my screen. Air space. Bingo. I saw, connected the “dots”, and checked the book out. Not only one, but three, by the same author. The topic was multinational corporate trending and abuses.

i AM interested in comparing entrepreneurial, mom and pop, small time business ventures with the big, bad boys of international finance, resource extraction, third world manufacturing, global marketing and environmentally swaddled social engineering.

The books sucked. Lots of snappy personal narrative. A LOT of social dogma. The barest of bare citations. These were shill creations, a modicum of truth wrapped with blatantly conflicted conclusions. I started to do web searches, putting in the author’s name – liar – debunked.

I found quite a bit of reaction. Mostly journalists and progressive activists who read the book, saw the holes, started to fact check, found common ideological ground, and ended up “hesitatingly” recommending the author and cutting his stories huge slack.

Airspace. Do you get the picture? Find the young person, and spin yourself to him. Help him create his virtual world along side you on this unhappy ball.

It didn’t matter that in addition to being a former clandestine operative for multinational firms that this author became an expert, published author on psychic mind travel and a poster child “convert” on documentaries by extreme environmental activist groups. It didn’t matter that he was raised in a puritanical Christian home, yet found a global, multinational career with many juicy romps with a string of shady ladies, coming out very cool, smart and “socially corrected”.

Airspace. There was a full index, and several very full appendices of environmentally just, socially equitable non profits you might want to get on board with.  This guy had a lot of help. Do you get the picture yet? Published in 2009, the idea of  B-corps, triple bottom line activist businesses had not yet risen to high visibility it has today. Too bad. Maybe he needs to write another cool book.

You can go and try to find this author in our fine local library if you like.

My point is this. Socialist, environmentalist dialectical advance craves airspace. You must be made to react. When you react, you pull in, and parallel the moves, engaging with the ideas. You become more and more like what you detest. What ingenuity. Keep the children in reaction to fringe elements, and they become fringe element advocates, willingly or otherwise.

Last week, Whatcom County was treated to a Freedom Foundation sponsored debate on proposed cap and trade initiatives of Governor Inslee. In spite of no concrete legislation or proposals, there was a robust discussion.

Dr. Yoram Bouman, youthful pro cap and trade economics professor from University of Washington came for a romp, gleefully throwing out ideas to test audience reaction. Senator Doug Erickson, chair of the Senate Energy Committee, met Bouman steel to steel, idea to idea, fact to fact.

Afterwards, I talked briefly with “Samir”, a policy intern who came along with the pro cap and trade delegation. I asked him if the think tank he was a part of compared business driven energy use projects with grant NGO driven energy use projects. He was not sure what the difference was.

I asked him if he had heard of Walmart’s prototype big rig tractor trailer. He had not.

I asked him if he had heard of the turf war over A1 – A2 milk in New Zealand a decade ago, between a privately held corporation and the big New Zealand milk coop. He had not.

Air space. What ideas do our youth breathe these days?

Right now Western is running a set of positional ads on Whatcom Transit Authority buses, aimed at children and parents, seeking to dominate the air space in parent/child heads. They are visibly competing with Whatcom Community College and Bellingham Technical College. After the recent “acid rain” speeches filling the airspace with affirmative action, enrollment quota, grant seeking agitprop, Western is candy coating themselves again with pictures of nice children hanging out with nice Western students.

Parents need to look at the professors, the books, the student leaders, not getting taken by happy, feely ad pictures. Parents need to fill the airspace with other options than those fronted by publicity and marketing firm. For example, build a worldview membrane of entrepreneurial ideas and experiences in your child’s head that will allow them to partner with divine dynamics, even amid the peevish totalitarian mindsets of today's educational system.

New Air space. FaceBook is a fragmented but real and powerful medium today. It wastes time, aggregates details you would rather not know, could be replaced by the next web medium tomorrow, and fills intelligence files on you for the government. But, with a media and education that is co opted by activists who claim your children for their brave new world, it is gives some airspace to push back.

My suggestion? Drive your own air space.

Yesterday, the boys and I made a chicken tractor. I asked my eighteen year old daughter to take some pictures of our “farmwork” for FaceBook. She was too busy organizing the pictures she took of the Memorial Day event at the cemetery. Memorial day with "old soldiers? That was intergenerational airspace. Okay, she was too busy for the boys for now, but her larger airspace wheel was getting spun.

And, the chickens will still be going to a socially engineered, “happy”, high density urban growth community where they will feed the elite few, with gobs of greenspace to cycle over for the next few months.

So, the thirteen year old brother took her camera and piddled around with it. The dog licked the UV filter while he was taking a ground level shot. It was a long day. But, we had Airspace.

Don’t forsake the next generation, your children and grand children, brothers or sisters, to the media or the union and common core business (Microsoft) mandated educational models. Revisit  your own heart to the Wisdom Book you may have been raised on, and build its golden words into yourself and your children. Character 101. Economics 101. Food 101. Honesty 101. Sacrifice 101. It is in the Book.

Airspace. You do have a choice.

Debate from Freedom Foundation

Walmart's new truck

Walmart truck details