With Earth Day just one day away, Chris Hayes dedicates his "Story of the Week" to environmentally friendly initiatives that he says must focus on a collective effort.
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Over the past decade, Americans watched in bafflement and rage as one institution after another – from Wall Street to Congress, the Catholic Church to corporate America, even Major League Baseball – imploded under the weight of corruption and incompetence. In the wake of the Fail Decade, Americans have historically low levels of trust in their institutions; the social contract between ordinary citizens and elites lies in tatters.
How did we get here? With "Twilight of the Elites," Christopher Hayes offers a radically novel answer. Since the 1960s, as the meritocracy elevated a more diverse group of men and women into power, they learned to embrace the accelerating inequality that had placed them near the very top. Their ascension heightened social distance and spawned a new American elite--one more prone to failure and corruption than any that came before it.
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I wrote this years ago and NOTHING has changed… except the BP Gulf disaster...
EARTH DAY 2009 - Nothing really got accomplished but it was a great reason for social gathering… ahhhh, I mean protest rally.
Speech made at Earth Day gathering somewhere in California:
“Forgive me for being negative but I’ve heard all this Earth Day (Planet Forward/PBS.org) alternative energy stuff before… It’s ALWAYS just a technology’s breath away from being affordable, economically viable, consistent, reliable and done on a scale that ACTUALLY MATTERS! I hope and pray the Obama/Biden Administration moves forward with it’s stated energy and environmental agendas.
I think humans have been led by greedy &^*#~‘s to believe what is considered VALUABLE. Diamonds, commodities, stocks, cash, credit, gold, luxury car, etc… but we have NO FUTURES without a healthy Mother Earth. For GODS sake WHAT the #*~/ is WORTH MORE to the human race than the eco-system that keeps us from being like the other planets. Earth is the most precious gem in the Universe (definition- “the totality of all matter and energy that exists in the vastness of space, whether known to human beings or not” ® World English Dictionary) … as far as human beings are concerned.
WHY in the #*~/ DO WE TREAT OUR BEAUTIFUL PLANET EARTH like a $10.00 meth whore? What, do all you Republicans/Conservatives want to bury the body of our precious eco-system out on the West Mesa hoping no one finds out the TRUTH? (watch “America’s Most Wanted” 4-25-09)
What we’ve done to the oceans and Great Lakes alone is a crime against Nature. (We should TORTURE the violators, lol. All the conservative talk shows ignored Earth Day and talked about the CIA and patriotism involved with torturing terror suspects)
Legitimate evidence proves our air, land and water have been fouled almost to the point of no return. And these facts, SO many PEOPLE in the USA have ignored or made fun of, REALLY WILL AFFECT THE FUTURE… To do NOTHING about the environmental problems proves these people are either insane or suicidal…
We owe our children and grandchildren the investment in a new kind of infrastructure that takes Mother Earth into consideration. Our parents and grand parents invested in our present system… the power transmission lines, Interstate highway system, sewer/water lines, etc… It was good for us and our Nation but now it’s all aged and failing. New technology is on the horizon and we NEED to START preparing for IT!
Thanks to the Republican Party and Conservative agendas we’re WAY behind the rest of the Western Nations when it comes to the environment and alternative energy sources. I remember when the Conservative Anti-Christ Ronald 6 Wilson 6 Reagan 6 cut funding for solar and wind energy research and development, the Ditto heads thought it was cool. Of course the news never got out that Reagan’s state of California ended up having spend millions to buy wind generators from Japan because our own great minds were too busy working on weapons systems. On & ON & ON… I could tell you 100’s of stories about Republicans #*~/ing over our children future.
The wealthy, powerful, aristocratic power brokers of the past such as big oil, big coal, big chemical and OTHER blatant polluters have STALLED new technology so they can squeeze and few more billion dollars profit from ravaging the planet Earth and using it’s water ways as a sewer
From Wall Street to K-Street to Main Street and ALL points in-between these evil power brokers let the LOVE of MONEY come before ETHICS, RESPONSIBILITY AND ACCOUNTABILITY. These same individuals have PROVED over and over they can’t be TRUSTED but they use their great wealth and power to escape public scrutiny and prosecution.
They pay huge sums of money to their spokespersons such as Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney to divert the public’s attention and make light of those “environmental wackos”. Actually the so-called wacko’s are concerned citizens, intelligent/informed enough to understand the implications of staying the present course and ignoring the signs. I am somebody who loves nature spoact.blogspot.com