[Carry_Okie]

Nice compilation. Still, he misses how much money the people financing this monstrous scam with our money intend to make selling natural gas at prices inflated by shortages.

It will be California in 2002 on a national scale.

[Avoiding_Sulla]

When was the last time your read your conclusion at that link? Have you ever considered backing off a bit on your condemnation of "we?" Because so few of us individuals have the power you imply to actually even slow the collective.

This problem with electrical energy is but one of many markets infested with the NRDC, which is involved in everything from water to "air quality." Hopefully, the scope and depth of this story has convinced you that the problem is systemic. The NRDC is but one of many such hired guns for the foundations playing the great mercantilist game. So to start, just remember: We asked for this.

We asked for this when we invested in government the power to regulate instead of holding our judges and representatives accountable. We asked for this when we demanded collective and coercive powers over private property. We created the demand when we did not realize that failure to pay our brethren for the environmental services we were demanding is what led them to race to the bottom. We did this to ourselves when we did not seek means to verify the truth, instead of allowing the media to herd us around like frightened lemmings. We did this to ourselves when we bought into the idea of compulsory government education. We did this to ourselves when we instituted an income tax that violated once almost-sacred standards of individual privacy. We did this to ourselves when we instituted regulatory power. We did this to ourselves when we instituted the legislative power to define tax-exemption in a system of laws supposedly delivering "equal protection." We did this to ourselves when we forced insurers to charge the same price for coverage without regard to customer behavior.

In short, this problem started when we began hiring bureaucrats and police to force others to do our collective will, instead of forcing our representatives to abide by the principles to which we supposedly ascribe: limited government, unalienable rights, private property, and free enterprise, all operating under a system of simple laws adjudicated by courts with fully empowered and competent juries. It is only when we stop meddling with families and take the reins of our government while simultaneously respecting its limits that this mess will truly begin to change. It starts in the individual heart, hearing the limits we were given on Mount Sinai, and learning to see them in the faces of our brothers and sisters. It is only then that we can stop wasting the vast bulk of our work in trying to control each other. It starts in the heart, which hears from the mind. So if this message has meant anything to you, I ask that you teach it.

It's been more than a dozen years since you wrote that C_O. You mentioned Hegelian and other influences in another comment today or yesterday. How much of that "we did this to ourselves" was in actually foisted upon us by something akin to the Dephi Technique? And who amongst us knows what countermeasures work against such subterfuge and can teach it? I don't know of anyone; do you?

And maybe I ought to have written "could have taught it," because I'm pretty sure we are beyond the point of solving any of our problems pedagogically.