The following policy recommendations, which are most certainly applicable to Virginia, come from this new report (“Mitigating Natural Gas Use in the Electricity Sector: Renewable Energy, Energy Efficiency, and the Role of States in Implementing the Clean Power Plan”).

By acting decisively to implement ambitious renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs, states can help ensure that the United States does not overcommit to natural gas and that it continues on a path toward decarbonization of the economy. States do not need to wait for the EPA to finalize the Clean Power Plan to get started. The Center for American Progress offers the following recommendations to state policymakers:

States should strengthen existing-or enact new-renewable energy standards to deploy additional renewable energy generating capacity as quickly and as aggressively as possible.

States should enact the strongest possible Energy Efficiency Resource Standards to set clear energy-savings targets for electric utilities. States also should adopt and implement stringent building efficiency codes and other product and equipment efficiency standards to cut customer demand for electricity.

States should enact policies to cut methane pollution from the oil and gas sector. This will achieve important reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and maximize the climate benefit of generating electricity from natural gas rather than coal.

States should consider innovative financing approaches, such as green banks, to attract private investment in new, low-carbon clean energy projects.

Without question, switching from coal to natural gas for power generation can reduce carbon pollution from the power sector. But fuel switching does not go far enough to achieve the deep reductions necessary to avert catastrophic climate change. States should make renewable energy and energy efficiency a cornerstone of their Clean Power Plan implementation and climate mitigation strategies.

I couldn’t agree more. Of course, fossil fuel companies and the politicians who do their bidding (mostly Republicans like Bill “ALEC” Howell, but – sad to say – also some Democrats like Dick Saslaw) will continue to work at blocking any move away from polluting energy and towards clean energy in Virginia. Which means the people of Virginia need to speak up, and Gov. McAuliffe’s administration needs to be a champion on this issue. Let’s see if anyone has the cojones to stand up to Dominion et al.

Nope, can’t get much crazier or more extreme than the gruesome twosome of E.W. Jackson and Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum. A few “highlights” (lowlights?) from this call include:

• Big Lie #1: Rick Santorum claims that, for the “first time in the history of our country, the government encroaching in a very very forceful way into people’s religious liberty.” That is 100% false, of course. If anything, the main assault on religion and tradition in this country is mass consumerism/materialism, aka the “free market.” But of course you won’t hear that from Santorum or Jackson.
• Big Lie #2: Santorum claims that “separation of church and state” has never been part of the U.S. political system, while government has forced “religion back into the four walls of the church.” This is just blatantly ignorant and false.
• Big Lie #3: Santorum repeatedly claims that “religious liberty is under attack” by the government. That is blatantly false; in fact, religion in this country is arguably freer than it is anywhere in the world, possibly in human history.
• Big Lie #4: Santorum claims that ths sentiment, “once you enter into business, you lose your freedom of religion,” is growing in America. Also utter bull****.
• E.W. Jackson says too many pastors have bought into the concept of separation of church and state. Well, yeah, perhaps because that’s one of the fundamental underpinnings of our nation?!?
• Santorum, along with the Family Research Council hate group, is pushing state legislators to watch his crazy/paranoid movie (on January 13, 2015) and to pass something called the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.” Keep an eye out for both those things here in Virginia.
• Santorum says he’s doing “everything consistent with running [for President] in 2016,” but “no decision yet.” Personally, I say “run Rick run” (if for no other reason than comic relief!
• Santorum says “separation of church and state” was in the constitution of the Soviet Union but not the U.S.,” and that’s where it belongs.
• On Ferguson, Santorum says President Obama has been the “divider in chief,” that he chose to “use it as a wedge issue.” WTF?
• Jackson goes on a rant about some member of the “homosexual organization” Human Rights Campaign board (Terry Bean) who is “one of Obama’s biggest donors” was charged (along with “his former boyfriend – it pains me to even say such things”) with “having sex in a hotel with a 15-year-old boy who they recruited online.” Jackson says there’s a “virtual boycott in the news” about this (even though it took me a 5-second Google search to find this CNN article about it – whatever). Jackson proceeds to rip homosexuality, claiming it “promotes this kind of behavior” that Terry Bean allegedly engaged in. Finally, Jackson claims that the media won’t touch this one with a 10-foot pole, apparently because they are hell-bent on protecting President Obama. Seriously. Hahahahahahaha.
  

• Jackson urges Congress to not confirm any Obama nominees, to defund anything they can defund, possibly to shut down the government, whatever it takes to stop Obama’s executive order on immigration and to bring this president “to heel”/stop him from “trampling on our freedom.”
  
• Jackson blasts President Obama for “us[ing] as an advisor Al Sharpton,” says “that tells you everything you need to know” – “case closed,” there’s “something so skewed about his judgment that it’s just…or so radical in his ideology that it’s just beyond comprehension that we’ve got someone like that actually sitting in White House occupying the office of the presidency, but that’s what we’ve got.” Yep, that’s our EW Jackson! LOL
• Jackson completely blames Michael Brown and completely absolves Darren Wilson for what happened in Ferguson. He further claims that anyone complaining that what happened in Ferguson might represent a form of discrimination/racism is a “race hustler.” “These young black boys are going to have to be taught to respect authority…that you don’t fight police officers…basic things.”

As always, don’t forget that E.W. Jackson was the Republican nominee for Lt. Governor of Virginia in 2013. Any further questions about this party?

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Monday, December 1. With regard to the photo, that could be a VERY low-turnout, super-close election, so please do what you can to help Democrat Kathleen Murphy win this thing. Thanks.

*EJ Dionne: How Obama and the Democrats can save their agenda (“Now, it will be a Republican Congress vs. a Democratic president. Voters will have a much easier time seeing who stands for what.”)

*Our view: Happy Tax Cheating Day (“When you shop online today, you’re supposed to be paying a sales tax. But you probably won’t be.” And of course Bob Goodlatte et al are blocking action to deal with this situation.)

*Boehner Faces the First Days of New Power in Congress (This should be entertaining, in a dark sorta way.)

*Pope says it is wrong to equate Islam with violence

*Congress on the brink (“Funding deadline, tax breaks come down to the wire.”)

*Rudy Giuliani Finds A Way To Blame African Americans For Police Killings

*Interstate 395 in D.C. reopens after Ferguson protest (Not sure if this is the best way to win people over to your side, frankly…)

*Tobacco commission grant above recommended amount (Massive corporate welfare to Dominion Power? Shocked, shocked I say!)

*The main job for Va. GOP’s next chair: Figure out how to win elections again (“The state party is preparing to choose between two members of a tea party-influenced coalition.”  Which illustrates the main problem right there.)

*Deans respond to Rolling Stone article

*Black Student Alliance reacts to Ferguson decision (“Group to hold vigil Monday night”)

*Slowing cigarette sales could put Virginia tobacco bond payments at risk

*Porterfield: Our resolve is our weapon to defend our land against Mountain Valley Pipeline

*Va. woman is at heart of pregnancy-bias case

*A New Miss Virginia USA is Crowned (Why does this still exist in 2014?)

*Springlike today, but a wintry mix menace for Tuesday morning

I saw this posted on Jim Webb’s Twitter and Facebook accounts this morning, and thought it was an interesting post-Thanksgiving topic for conversation. Here are a few of the comments on Webb’s Facebook page to kick things off.

Top comment: “‘conquest’…..the Algonquin + Lakota have not been in that round-table workshop, i guess.”

Second-highest-rated comment: “Jim, want to demonstrate some leadership in your pre-campaign, get into the march to Jefferson City. Otherwise, do something to demonstrate that black lives are just as important as white lives. Right now equal protection for young black males under the law is deficient.”

Third-highest-rated comment: “Our constitution is a deeply flawed document. For God’s sake it defined black people as 3/5 of a person. It was written totally to preserve the power and influence if the southern slave states – a power that continues today- the power if the minority radical south.”

More: “Eh. Maybe not founded on conquest but certainly built on conquest.” “Not by conquest? Open a history book for God’s sake!” “Sir, you will have to do better than empty, false rhetoric if you want my vote. Let’s not try to rewrite history, let us move forward ‘eyes wide open.'”

My view is that our nation has made tremendous progress since 1776, but at the time of its founding, it was far from guaranteeing freedom or not being founded/expanded, at least in part, by conquest. With regard to “guaranteeing freedom,” as one of my progressive friends put it, “Equal protection under the law wasn’t in the original bill of rights.” I’d just add a historical fact, that at the founding of the United States, most people were not guaranteed full freedoms, including: African Americans, Native Americans, female Americans, non-land-owning white Americans, etc, etc. To the contrary, African Americans were enslaved through the Civil War, after which the “Jim Crow” system of segregation kicked in for another 100 years. Women weren’t given the right to vote until 1920, nearly 140 years after the U.S. constitution was written. The point is, it took progressive change for this country to evolve into the much, much more free and fair country (but far from perfect, as the events of Ferguson yet again demonstrate) it is today.

As for Jim Webb’s assertion that our country was “founded not by conquest,” I guess I’m just amazed that anyone who’s studied history could say such a thing. Let’s try to give Webb as much benefit of the doubt as possible, and assume he was strictly focused on when the U.S. was “founded,” not what came afterwards. Even so, a 5-second Google search is all it takes to find stuff like this:

In the early years of the British colonization of North America, military action in the colonies that would later become the United States were the result of conflicts with Native Americans, such as in the Anglo-Powhatan Wars between 1610 and 1646, the Pequot War of 1637, King Philip’s War in 1675, the Susquehannock war in 1675-77,[7] and the Yamasee War in 1715. Father Rale’s War (1722-1725) happened in Maine and Nova Scotia. There also occurred slave uprisings such as the Stono Rebellion in 1739. Finally, there was Father Le Loutre’s War, which also involved Acadians, in the lead up to the French and Indian War.

The point is, when the Europeans came to America, it was not a barren land, but one filled with people already living here.  So how did that land end up moving from Native Americans to European settlers? Hint: it wasn’t through sweetness, sunshine, puppy dogs, unicorns and rainbows.

As for U.S. history after its founding in 1776, let’s think about how huge swaths of territory came to be part of our country. Let’s start with Texas, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming and Colorado, all of which came into the U.S. through conquest during the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Florida? We got that mostly through wars against the Native Americans living in that area. Ohio? Try the Northwest Indian War. Guam and Puerto Rico? Try the Spanish-American War of 1898. The Pacific Northwest? Try a series of wars, such as the Yakima War, the Rogue River Wars (southern Oregon), the Puget Sound War, etc. These were most certainly wars of conquest, specifically against Native American peoples which had lived there for hundreds of years. The Dakotas? Numerous military actions, including the Dakota War of 1862.

On and on it goes, but you get the picture. Which is why it’s strange to hear Jim Webb, a man who has studied history, assert so definitively that “We are a country founded not by conquest.” Yeah, tell that to the Native Americans, Mexicans, etc.

On Tuesday, just before my Thanksgiving travels began, I posted a piece here titled One Thing I Know about Ferguson. I posted version of the same thing on my Facebook page, and a Tea Party guy of my acquaintance reposted it under the caption, “Andy Schmookler attempts to further dumb down the left.”

Here on Blue Virginia, in the comments thread, I made mention of the “discussion” that then ensued, involving a variety of this fellow’s political allies, and I described some of what was manifest there as disturbing. That led to some conversation involving several of us as to whether there was anything much “new” going on in the American body politic or if it is now just more visible thanks to the Internet or what.

I am following up here because I tried to provide a link to that Facebook discussion, and simply forgot that Facebook pages are not available to everyone. Let me here, therefore, provide a glimpse into the darkness that (as I saw it) this piece on Ferguson brought into view.

My view is that quite possibly we are looking at a profound and dangerous development in a segment of American consciousness. Not everyone saw it that way, but as I was unable to provide people with access to that material, the discussion was handicapped. I’ll provide it now.

First, my piece was very careful to make a single point that did not take sides as to the facts of the shooting and as to whether a proper grand jury process would or would not have indicted Darren Wilson for the shooting of Mike Brown. My piece, rather, was a criticism of the Missouri officials — the prosecutor, and the governor — for how they handled the process.

Of those officials, I wrote:

We don’t need to know anything about the shooting to know that the officials in charge here failed to serve the public interest.

Their priority should have been to conduct the process in such a way as to maximize the chance that everyone would have confidence in its integrity and fairness. They didn’t even try.

That should have been their priority because taking care not to damage the larger society by exacerbating a major fault line is what has been most important all along…

That would have meant bringing in a special prosecutor, of unquestioned integrity, in charge of the investigation and the grand jury process.

That was it.

Here’s one of the first responses that it got on that Facebook page.

Andy, your kidding right? If your not your either stupid or foolish or just pandering to the left. You guys on the left and you race baiters are trying to gin up some racist issues that were settled over 50-60 years ago. I am tired of being blamed for slavery when NONE of my family supported and some of them bled and died for during the civil war. Most of the crime within the black community is black on black and the thug mentality that the rap culture portrays seems to bolster this view. Its sad we should be coming together as a country. When black witnesses tell the grand jury exactly what the cop said seems to me to be a slam dunk. But of course if he was indited then the grand jury did its job. We either have a system of laws or we don’t, mob justice cannot and should not be allowed to prevail. What do you want to do not have a trial, throw a rope over a tree and put the cop on a horse and a noose around his neck and slap the horses rump, is that what you wanted? That is sure the way the black agitators wanted it to be. We should be ONE NATION, PERIOD.

One issue that arises for me is the question I put to that gentleman:

How did you get from anything in my piece to this idea you bring up of “mob rule.” Or were you fully aware that that whole ugly image (a lynch mob) had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was saying, but chose to bring it up anyway just to rile people up?

Either way I find that disturbing.

If he did believe that he was responding to my argument, that reveals a failure of “reading comprehension” so huge that I’d fail a 9th grader for such a misunderstanding. Then the question would be, how did a guy who is not stupid get to be so “stupid” in interpreting what my piece was saying. And on that point, I would venture that this manifests someone so caught up in his ugly passions of hatred that he has been disabled from dealing with reality in any remotely healthy way.

And don’t we see a lot of that on the right? Wouldn’t this be a sign of something really sick and twisted and destructive that’s come into the American political process far more than we have seen it historically?

Alternatively, if he knew full well that he was distorting my argument and was giving himself permission to pervert the discussion into an occasion to whip up the worst, Limbaugh-like emotions of outrage, and contempt, and racism, and a fury to make war on the “other side,” then that is disturbing, too.

Don’t we also see a lot of that on the right, too, an irresponsibility in the political conflict that goes way, way beyond how politics was conducted even in the hayday of Goldwater and Reagan?

Similar questions arose around a comment from a different fellow. I had just posted a comment on that thread, saying:

My whole premise is that we want to conduct things in such a way as to make our nation as healthy and harmonious as possible, to avoid unnecessarily wounding it. But perhaps that’s the sticking point here.

One really has to wonder whether making things better is a goal of some segments of our body politic.

Somehow, this created the occasion for this other fellow to comeback with this:

So you should indict an innocent party just so you don’t rile up an ethic group, willing to burn down their own and their neighbor’s property….PASS

Once again, I expressed uncertainty about whether he was speaking his true mind:

Do you really believe I said ANYTHING like that? REALLY? Point to one sentence from me that says he should have been indicted.

Because I have seen you as smarter than that, I must wonder if you are speaking in good faith.

I was uncertain, then, and I remain uncertain– neither of those guys ever responded to the question I posed to them about whether they really believed that what they were saying was a responsible reply to my argument that they were so grotesquely distorting.

Nor did I get any response from a question that I posed them by which I sought to get a genuine engagement on the issue I was raising in the piece:

Do you agree that it was important to do things in a way that would maximize the chance that everyone would believe in the integrity of the process, no matter what the outcome?

Do you agree that a great many people — either rightly or wrongly– do not believe that now?

Do you agree that decisions were made that quite predictably assured that this lack of confidence would accompany a decision — whether that decision is right or wrong — not to indict?

That is my whole argument. What in it do you think is mistaken?

What does this mean? I believe that we are here getting a glimpse of something profound that has happened to our country. I believe that we have a subculture that has been cultivated in our country over the past generation or so that basically makes a healthy democracy impossible.

A healthy democracy requires that people be able to talk over their disagreements and come to solutions that meet the needs of the nation and help it grow in good directions.

How can one accomplish that when one of the main forces at work in the political realm is caught up with the spirit we see on those comments– full of the spirit of war, and completely disconnected from reality? *[see Note below]

Yes, ugliness of this sort has always been around. But I think that is a mistake to see that continuity as the central truth, rather than some profound discontinuity that has developed in the American political system. That discontinuity is the rise to considerable power of what I am calling an “evil force,” a rise during which that force has taken over the political right, and made one of our two major political parties an instrument of its destructive purposes.

Here’s how I described how I see it on a comment on that earlier Blue Virginia thread:

I agree that this kind of ugly and irrational stuff has always been there. But I believe, though I would not know how to prove it, that there is another element in the picture.

The issue is not whether the phenomenon is new, but whether it has become a larger part of the national picture. For a variety of reasons — the dark force that’s taken over the right, including the rise of things like Fox News and Limbaugh, and as you say the Internet — we have an interconnected subculture that has been fostering and fomenting some of the darker aspects of the American mind.

Through the workings of collective processes, pushed along by dark forces, what was once a fringe craziness of the John Birch sort has become a powerful part of one of our two major parties.

Likewise, at the grassroots level, people whose parents might have been, say, 5% caught up in political craziness have developed together a set of crazy doctrines and destructive habits of thought and feeling that occupy a controlling portion of their political consciousness.

Two lessons here that seem salient to me, if I’m right about this:

1) The power of collective cultural processes to mold people’s consciousness (thought and feeling) is enormous, and should be kept in mind as we consider what’s happening in our country. (I find myself amazed at how fragile rationality turns out to be.)

2) It is of vital importance that we be alert not only to new things that arise, but also to dramatic shifts in the proportions of things, which can usher in major changes in a society using only old ingredients.  

Our nation is in serious trouble. If my perceptions are correct, we have had a significant portion of our fellow citizens enculturated into a mindset that cripples our democracy, and results in our nation evolving in all sort of directions that are contrary to our values. (On plutocracy, on climate disruption, on what spirit is manifested in our political process.)

This is dangerous, and it is important that we perceive the nature of what it is that we’re fighting against: the thing that produces those ugly responses to my Ferguson piece is the same thing that gave us official torture promoted from the very top of the American government, that gave us the Citizens United disgrace, that entitled a political party to make the failure of the president its top priority in a time of national crisis.

It is ugly. It is far more dangerous than almost anyone seems to be recognizing. And it must be fought and defeated.

See the evil. Call it out. Press the battle.

***********************

Note from above:

* To a supportive commenter that had come into the conversation through my Facebook page, and whom I’d gotten to know when I was running for Congress, I wrote:

We are dealing here with a frame of mind in which, among other things, reality is not given the kind of respect that some of us were raised and educated to give it.

Someone here claims that the grand jury did its job just fine. How he or anyone else can know that beats me. Grand jury proceedings are secret. Is it because he likes the result that he “knows” that. Is it because whatever he wants to be true must be true?

I don’t know if they did there job right or came to the right conclusion. But one acknowledges one’s ignorance only if one has the intellectual discipline it takes to work toward the truth.

I would bet that these same people “know” that climate change is no big deal. And “know” that Benghazi IS a big deal.

Truth, for one of our present political subcultures, consists of whatever serves one’s agenda.

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Sunday, November 30. Also check out the video from the Pentagon City Mall yesterday, of people peacefully protesting what happened in Ferguson, and more generally making the case that – as their signs said – “black lives matter!”

*Energy Efficiency May Be the Key to Saving Trillions (Hello Dominion? Dick Saslaw? Get a clue?)

*Officer Who Shot Teenager in Ferguson Resigns

*When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 5 (“White Americans may protest that our racial problems are not like South Africa’s. No, but the United States incarcerates a higher proportion of blacks than apartheid South Africa did. In America, the black-white wealth gap today is greater than it was in South Africa in 1970 at the peak of apartheid.”)

*Ferguson a defining moment for race relations in USA

*Protesters Shut Down Shopping Centers To Demand Justice For Michael Brown

*Today’s Top Opinion: U.Va. can restore its reputation (“The surest way to restore U.Va.’s reputation is to stress things more serious than … reputation. The university should resolve not only to attain exalted rankings in academics – or even in basketball polls – but to set national standards for addressing sexual abuse, alcohol and drugs.”)

*Schapiro: A holiday wish list for Va.’s pols (“State Capitol lobbyists: The confidence of knowing that whatever the legislature and governor come up with on ethics reform, they’ll find a way around it.”)

*Farnsworth, et al.: ‘Moderate Mark’ needs a makeover (“… efforts to split the ideological difference with Republicans did not secure Democratic victories in most of the closest Senate races this year. The Warner campaign’s continued reliance on moderate politics also almost claimed another Democratic incumbent this year.”)

*Boucher: Is natural gas really cleaner? (Short answer: not particularly.)

*Don’t ignore charges at U.Va. (“For years, the problem has been ignored, downplayed, shrugged off. But the allegations of a gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house have roiled campus and drawn a national spotlight on Charlottesville in the days since an account of the 2012 incident was reported this month.”)

*U-Va.’s entrenched fraternity culture reaches a tipping point

*A thorough examination (“Legislative reform in Virginia hinges on taking an honest look at how the General Assembly operates.”)

*Effort to recognize Virginia tribe draws ire

*State budget, construction drive tuition up at Christopher Newport University

*Norfolk to decide how to hold School Board elections

*A warmer Sunday and Monday, but another cold front is headed this way

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Saturday, November 29.

*Oil prices keep plummeting as OPEC starts a price war with the US

*Federal Judge Finds Goodell’s Story Was A Lie, Immediately Reinstates Ray Rice To NFL (The NFL is basically a cesspool of corruption, misogyny, violence, etc.)

*Deep South justice in Ferguson

*Another reason to avoid reading the comments

*Red State Editor: ‘I’d Have Shot Mike Brown Right In His Face’ (Disgusting comment, but I’m not surprised given who said it.)

*The coming wave of anti-abortion laws (Move right along, no “war on women” here. Uh, nope.)

*Paul Krugman: Pollution and Politics (“Of course, polluters will defend their right to pollute, but why can they count on Republican support? When and why did the Republican Party become the party of pollution? For it wasn’t always thus.”)

*Egyptian Court Dismisses All Charges Against Mubarak

*Senate Democrats add Mark Warner to leadership team (Elizabeth Warren the progressive populist, Mark Warner the anti-progressive populist. Should be interesting!)

*U.Va.: Rolling Stone Article Shines New Light on an Old Problem

*What Jim Webb Will Bring to the Presidential Race in 2016 (“Mr. Webb could bring a robust populist message, Mr. Freedlander argues, adding that he talks ‘about not just curbing the power of big banks but about an inequality agenda that goes beyond raising taxes and the minimum wage in order to help lower middle-class families gain more of a foothold.'”)

*Bill introduced to legalize small amounts of marijuana (Good.)

*Va. gas tax set to rise if Congress fails to pass online sales tax bill (Kind of a non-story at this point, given how low oil prices have fallen – and continue to fall.)

*State group makes 12 recommendations for updating SOLs

*Our view: When Virginia was District One

*Petersburg School Board member dropping out of race for Dance’s House seat

*Stopping pension parade (“A seeming parade of longtime state lawmakers resigned this year, only to be offered – and in most cases, accept – more lucrative employment elsewhere in state government.”)

*Beavers, bouncing back, create big dam problem in Chesapeake

*D.C. area forecast: Cool today, but warming up through Monday