We explore real-life reformation here in this informed, online community.
Way back in May 1981, the GAO published a report entitled “Federal Electrical Emergency Preparedness Is Inadequate,” warning that the nation’s electric power systems were “very vulnerable to disruptions from acts of war, sabotage, or terrorism,” and that the “Federal Government is not now prepared to handle a long-term national or regional disruption in electric power.”
Since that time there have been hundreds of effective sabotage attacks on on non critical nodes, killing power to tens of thousands of households at a time. These terror attacks continue at approximately 1.5 per week.
Outside grid security experts and engineers have argued for years that the industry needs to improve physical security standards for critical assets in the country’s electrical grid, motivated in part by a federal study which showed that physical sabotage attacks against only a small number of critical nodes in the grid would be sufficient to cause a prolonged and devastating nationwide blackout, meaning a long-term absence of lighting, internet, functioning gas stations, trucking, refrigeration, grocery store deliveries, drinking water, or water in toilets. How long? Months to years, depending on which nodes are hit by cyber or physical attack.
Yet over the past nine years, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has declined to order a fundamental overhaul of an obviously ineffective physical security standard despite numerous formal complaints and petitions. Below: one perfectly placed bullet round killed power to 44,000 in North Carolina.
Bill Madden writes, "Refusing illegal orders in the military is difficult to do because they normally are generated high in the chain of command and very few officers in the chain really know what is or is not a legal order. Immediate superiors can be very demanding and the orders are usually given in high pressure environments. Refusing an illegal military order is tantamount to whistleblowing and, as much good as it does for the concept of truth, the whistleblower’s life is made miserable as a punishment for his honesty and a warning to others."
I watched this happen with Army Spec Michael New during the Clinton years. He disobeyed an illegal Clinton order, was arrested on base in Germany, was then given an unjust, unconstitutional trial, and then a Bad Conduct Discharge. But he stood his ground the whole time and has been proven right since.
“Fact check; not locking down at all (like Sweden) would have saved lives in UK. Hard to believe how much money the UK spent on its sham covid inquiry.”
--Jay Bhattacharya
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry cost millions. It finally released the core political chapters of its long-awaited report. After nearly three years of hearings, millions of documents, and tens of millions of pounds spent on legal fees, the conclusion is now unmistakably clear.
They’ve learned nothing, even while watching millions suffer from lockdowns and vaccination.
Worse, they may not want to learn. The Inquiry’s structure, its analytical frame, even its carefully curated narrative all point in the same direction: away from the possibility that Britain’s pandemic response was fundamentally misguided.
Not the personal sub;
the private American car. Americans owe $1.66 trillion in auto debt. Delinquencies just hit levels not seen since the Great Financial Crisis. Nearly 30% of all trade-ins are underwater. Average amount owed: $7,000 more than their cars are worth.
Auto loans are now a bigger consumer debt category than student loans (8.9%) and significantly larger than credit cards (6.6%).
So is that shiny late model vehicle a blessing, or a curse?
