We are familiar with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) model legislation to promote charter schools and vouchers, as well as to eliminate teachers’ unions.
The New York Times reported today that ALEC and the Koch brothers are working on behalf of the electric industry to block and reverse support for the rooftop solar power movement. When the public was concerned about over-reliance on fossil fuels, many states offered incentives for homeowners to install rooftop solar panels. Some allow homeowners to sell excess power back to utilities. The power industry wants to get rid of these incentives. And they are succeeding. In the Trump era, there is no form of progress that can’t be rolled back.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Trump, Betsy, the Waltons, and the Koch brothers are taking civilization back to the Dark Ages. Forget about the 1930s.
Or before they get there we may get back to
July 26, 1953
or
November 7 1917
or
JULY 6 1789 .
Never ends well when oligarchs overreach
These Fossil Fools are endangering our children’s and grandchildren’s futures. They MUST be called out and denounced for their callous disregard for the future. Any politician who accepts funds from these greedy psychopaths MUST be defeated in 2018.
Ed,
From your mouth to God’s ears.
I have a file which I call WRECKING BALL, in which I keep the links to articles that show how much we have lost since this ‘Horror Clown’ has ascended to the Presidency.
here are a few;
Trump’s Infrastructure Plan Claims to Relieve Taxpayers—but It’s a Sleight of Hand | The Nation https://www.thenation.com/article/the-score-soaring-prices/?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%2006302017&utm_term=daily
Fifty Shades of Trump – The New York Times
Yesterday, the Department of Labor announced its decision to rescind an Obama-era standard that expanded workers’ protections against wage-law violations. The “joint employment” standard expanded the circumstances under which businesses could be held responsible for wage-law violations. This is yet another sign of the Trump Administration’s willingness to support big businesses at the expense of workers. More details on the rule here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-labor-idUSKBN18Y2PZ
He is the king of disruptions: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/04/opinion/trump-declaration-of-disruption.html ONE of the essential, if often unstated, job requirements of an American president is to provide stability, order and predictability in a world that tends toward chaos, disarray and entropy. When our political leaders ignore this — and certainly when they delight in disruption — the consequences can be severe. Stability is easy to take for granted, but impossible to live without.
Projecting clear convictions is important for preventing adversaries from misreading America’s intentions and will. Our allies also depend on our predictability and reassuring steadiness. Their actions in trade and economics, in alliances with other nations and in the military sphere are often influenced by how much they believe they can rely on American support.
Order and stability in the executive branch are also linked to the health of our system of government. Chaos in the West Wing can be crippling, as White House aides — in a constant state of uncertainty, distrustful of colleagues, fearful that they might be excoriated or fired — find it nearly impossible to do their jobs. This emanates throughout the entire federal government. Devoid of steadfast leadership, executive agencies easily become dysfunctional themselves.
Worse yet, if key pillars of our system, like our intelligence and law enforcement agencies, are denigrated by the president, they can be destabilized, and Americans’ trust in them can be undermined. Without a reliable chief executive, Congress, an inherently unruly institution, will also find it difficult to do its job, since our constitutional system relies on its various branches to constantly engage with one another in governing.
But that’s hardly the whole of it. Particularly in this social media era, a president who thrives on disruption and chaos is impossible to escape. Every shocking statement and act is given intense coverage. As a result, the president is omnipresent, the subject of endless coast-to-coast conversations among family and friends, never far from our thoughts. As Andrew Sullivan has observed, “A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene.”
A presidency characterized by pandemonium invades and infects that space, leaving people unsettled and on edge. And this, in turn, leads to greater polarization, to feelings of alienation and anger, to unrest and even to violence.
A spirit of instability in government will cause Americans to lose confidence in our public institutions. When citizens lose that basic faith in their government, it leads to corrosive cynicism and the acceptance of conspiracy theories. Movements and individuals once considered fringe become mainstream, while previously responsible figures decamp to the fever swamps. One result is that the informal and unwritten rules of political and human interaction, which are at the core of civilization, are undone. There is such a thing as democratic etiquette; when it is lost, the common assumptions that allow for compromise and progress erode.
In short, chaotic leadership can inflict real trauma on political and civic culture.
All of which brings us to Donald Trump, arguably the most disruptive and transgressive president in American history. He thrives on creating turbulence in every conceivable sphere. The blast radius of his tumultuous acts and chaotic temperament is vast.
Mr. Trump acts as if order is easy to achieve and needs to be overturned while disruption and disorder are what we need. But the opposite is true. “Rage and frenzy will pull down more in half an hour,” Edmund Burke wrote, “than prudence, deliberation and foresight can build up in a hundred years.”
Mr. Trump and his supporters don’t seem to agree, or don’t seem to care. And here’s the truly worrisome thing: The disruption is only going to increase, both because he’s facing criticism that seems to trigger him psychologically and because his theory of management involves the cultivation of chaos. He has shown throughout his life a defiant refusal to be disciplined. His disordered personality thrives on mayhem and upheaval, on vicious personal attacks and ceaseless conflict. As we’re seeing, his malignant character is emboldening some, while it’s causing others — the Republican leadership comes to mind — to briefly speak out (at best) before returning to silence and acquiescence. The effect on the rest of us? We cannot help losing our capacity to be shocked and alarmed.
We have as president the closest thing to a nihilist in our history — a man who believes in little or nothing, who has the impulse to burn down rather than to build up. When the president eventually faces a genuine crisis, his ignorance and inflammatory instincts will make everything worse.
Republican voters and politicians rallied around Mr. Trump in 2016, believing he was anti-establishment when in fact he was anti-order. He turns out to be an institutional arsonist. It is an irony of American history that the Republican Party, which has historically valued order and institutions, has become the conduit of chaos.
Gosh we have a CRAZY and destructive potus. He is taking us backwards. He’s a very SICK person, and boy can he throw hissy fits/tantrums if he doesn’t get total attention and total subservience from others. I have an image of that DUMP exploding all over himself and his people. Another one is Dump and his people. being swallowed up by a sink hole at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump supporters can’t afford solar panels so they won’t have a problem with this movement.
According to these guys generating your own energy is freeloading. Their reverse logic is downright Orwellian.
Orwellian indeed. When the Steve Bannons and the Donald Trumps of the world don’t realize that they themselves are actually the Deep State, the era of believing in ration and reason are over. Very exciting times ahead.
Technically it is freeloading.
There is no such thing as a free lunch (as a result of the second law of thermodynamics) but rooftop solar power is about the best one can do.
With our Ignoramus at the top, anything and everything destructive is possible.
I can hardly wait to see what is next on his list. Wouldn’t it be great if he thought about the consequences of his actions? All he wants is to see his name everywhere.
I don’t think he’s smart enough to realize what he’s doing. He also doesn’t care.
The Saudis figured him out quickly. Vanity. Ego. Flattery gets you whatever you want. When he visited Riyadh, they treated him royally and projected his face on a five-story building. Two weeks later, he jumped into a spat between the Saudis and our Quatar, our closest ally in the region. He attacked our ally and sided with the Saudis.
The Saudi rukers know all about vanity because it drives everything they do (that and harems, which is also basically a vanity thing)
A scoop from The Intercept:
Qatar is blockaded today, accused of financing terrorism, with Jared Kushner pushing internally for a hardline against the country. Yet over the past year he and his firm have been secretly lobbying a financier there for a half-billion loan to bail out their flagging flagship property, 666 Fifth Avenue. Welcome to global politics in the Trump era:
The whole family should be locked up. Their greed “trumps” the national interest.
Thanks, Diane! Glad you wrote this truth. That Dump is CRAZY. Maybe he needs shock treatments. I can’t imagine being related to him let alone married to him. But, $$$$$$$ talks, so his BS walks. The Dump’s $$$$$$ is from foreign interests.
Donald Trump Jr. Reminds Everyone How Incompetent His Dad’s Administration Is: The Daily Show
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah
Published on Jul 10, 2017
First Son Donald Trump Jr. is accused of meeting with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election in hopes of obtaining damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Diane agree with your statement: “The whole family should be locked up. Their greed “trumps” the national interest.”
Thought this was a great summery of how well tRump is thought of in Australia.
BY ISHAAN THAROOR Washington Post
…Perhaps the most scathing critique of Trump at the G-20 came from Chris Uhlmann, the political editor of the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corp., whose televised segment recapping Trump’s trip went viral over the weekend.
“He was an uneasy, lonely, awkward figure at this gathering, and you got the strong sense that some of the leaders are trying to find the best way to work around him,” Uhlmann said. He called out Trump for showing “no desire and no capacity to lead the world,” for whiffing at the chance to make a strong statement on the threat posed by North Korea, and for being an attention-seeking celebrity who “barks out bile in 140 characters, who wastes his precious days as president at war with the West’s institutions like the judiciary, independent government agencies and the free press.”
Uhlmann, a stolidly centrist figure in his own country who has railed against “cultural Marxism,” concluded with this devastating assessment: “We learned that Donald Trump has pressed fast-forward on the decline of the United States as a global leader. He managed to isolate his nation, to confuse and alienate his allies and to diminish America.”…
This is a losing battle, though. The Kochs will lose. Solar and wind are gaining a bigger and bigger segment of the market.
We have a municipal solar field where I live and it’s far North.
This is interesting:
“Forget what you’ve heard: the Los Angeles Unified School Board’s two newest members say they’re not here to usher in a new golden era for charter schools.
Nick Melvoin and Kelly Gonez both benefited from record outside spending by pro-charter school political groups on this spring’s school board campaign. After they take their oaths of office on Thursday, they’ll become the third and fourth board members to receive the California Charter Schools Association’s exclusive endorsement — enough, in theory, to form a majority on a seven-member board.
But in separate and broad-ranging interviews for KPCC’s Take Two, both Melvoin and Gonez were adamant: this new school board is not about to open the floodgates for more charter schools in L.A.
“No … I’m not interested in a dramatic expansion, or really an expansion at all, of the number of independent charter schools in the district,” said Gonez, who now represents the East San Fernando Valley on the board.
“I’m concerned about the financial health of the district,” Gonez went on, “and I’m concerned about students in district schools. ”
The candidates did NOT actually run on charter schools (despite how ed reform depicted the race) so this makes sense politically. We’ll see if they follow thru substantively.
http://www.scpr.org/news/2017/07/06/73543/lausd-s-new-board-members-aren-t-interested-in-mas/
Big Energy tried this in Florida last year and failed. Their tactics included having petition signers deliberately confuse people as to WHICH amendment they were supporting, as a pro-solar group was also campaigning at the same time for another amendment. Even though I wrote about it for Florida Politics and Folio Weekly, I almost got nabbed by the paid petition personnel. Very devious and underhanded. Looking forward to getting my rooftop solar panels running on the grid this week.
“Keeping the power out of the hands of the commoners”
That seems like an apt slogan.
OMG–Watching PBS’ “Nova”–“Funded by the David S. Koch Science Foundation.”
!!! OxyMORONic.