The Plunder Generation
Writing for Breitbart.com Jay Hayward recently complimented radio-host superstar “Mark Levin’s” latest book “Plunder and Deceit” capturing the gist in concise terms,…
“liberalism is strip-mining the future to make themselves rich and powerful today, while making dissent increasingly difficult for a populace robbed of its freedoms”.
Andrew C. McCarthy describes Levin’s concept of “intergenerational theft”:
The Ponzi scheme has never been sustainable: The beguiling original promises of minor, nearly unnoticeable “contributions” mandated to secure “insurance” for the sake of the common good have steadily metastasized into massive inter-generational theft. But while the trendy abstractions that guide environmental stewardship may careen from “global cooling” to “global warming” to (I know, let’s call it) “climate change,” the basic principles of arithmetic endure — meaning socialists do eventually run out of other people’s money, even if those people haven’t been born yet.
As Levin stresses, this is a betrayal of the intergenerational compact, the duty the present owes to future generations to preserve and expand on the legacy of those who’ve preceded us. It is virtue fortified by civil society that instills this duty, and virtue has been eroded by what Levin, borrowing from Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff aptly describes as the “Take As You Go” policies — seizing ever larger amounts of resources from the young and struggling, transferring them to the older and better off — that both major parties have executed in recent decades.
This treatise on what ails America is a worthy read not solely because we sleep next to the U.S. elephant.
Canadians too share the realization that the problems we have are not what they first appeared to be. Levin devotes a chapter to the enviro-chimera rural Ontario will recognize from our battle against “green”energy. Hayward selected quotes which highlight problems wind warriors have all experienced.
“…so you thought the environmental movement was about clean air, clean water, and polar bears?”
“…such messages are especially seductive to younger people, albeit hugely deceptive and manipulative.”
There is no reasoning with people who have been indoctrinated since childhood to believe in the magical planet-saving power of industrial wind turbines. Those who have internalized the new religion or, the old totalitarianism, react with confusion or hostility when confronted with facts. Demented Ontario re-elected a provincial government known to be, at the very least, spendthrift.
The wind industry lobby has successfully embedded itself in every facet of society through “third party intervenors”, such as professional associations, unions and political groups, even race supremacists. Governments have become corruptors as they have been corrupted. Logic, language and ethics have been perverted in service of the ends-justify-the-means green agenda.
Ontario Clean Air Alliance, making the argument for parasitic wind-power, blamed “dirty” coal generation in Ontario for causing more premature deaths per annum than there were actual bodies from all causes – facts pointed out by Dr Ross McKitrick – but it’s the “narrative” that counts! The wind lobby defending against blame for needless bird and bat mortality first denies, then deflects and ultimately resorts to deceit.
Appellants against the approval of wind developments the world over have seen the same old industry-generated studies and expert testimony trotted out despite scant science and elaborate subterfuge . Years ago wildlife expert Jim Wiegand presented what amounts to a primer on rigged mortality studies and the situation has only worsened.
Batchawana First Nation (BFN), according to aboriginal mythology “Keepers-of-the-land”, have given a huge area over to wind development and massive roads often cut close to waterbodies which may simply engulf turbine-maimed raptors on a downward death spiral. Recently,
“Two power workers found the 12-pound raptor near a wind turbine at Altamont Pass in Livermore, according to officials from the Lindsay Wildlife Experience. The workers watched the sub-adult Golden Eagle struggle as she flew near the ground before falling.”
The Golden Eagle in this sad story was identified as a recovered rescue; it wore a wildlife band and a GPS backpack, which had an identifying serial number.
Update 7 Aug 2015
This story released today explains clearly why this golden eagle fatality could not be hidden by the wind industry. The eagle was being monitored independently. Without this monitoring the public would have NEVER been told about this wind turbine fatality.
This eagle carcass will be sent to the Denver Eagle repository. Since 1997 approximately 31,000 unaccounted for eagle carcasses have been sent to this facility. Despite media propaganda and an industry/Interior Department cover-up, wind turbines are the number one killer of eagles.
The FWS also has been banding eagles for decades yet the leg bands recovered off dead eagles at wind farms has never been revealed.
The article states “In all, 18 golden eagles have been fitted with the devices, with ten currently active.” When were these eagles fitted with tracking devices and what happened to the other 8 eagles?
The article also states……………”In the past 12 months, Lindsay has treated 238 raptors, six of which were golden eagles.” How many of these 238 wounded raptors were found wandering around the Altamont pass turbines? h/t J. Wiegand
Bow Lake/ Nodin Kitigan wind farm may be a prime example of all the favourite death-count ploys; search only infrequently, underestimate scavenger activity, look for cadavers within only a small gravelled radius of the turbine base, exclude some remains for inconclusive cause of death. This BFN project should take the prize for making it impossible to find anything even if you try really hard to search widely and often.
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Prior to the Environmental Review Tribunal decision on this Northern Ontario project, the wind industry and government had been getting away with an argument that is basically: the (allegedly) small number of bats killed by industrial wind turbines is of no consequence since they will (an opinion not based on solid science) be extinct in 5 years due to White Nose Syndrome (WNS).
The Bat expert for our Appellant won a small victory in convincing the Tribunal that the few bats which may be resistant to the fungal WNS malady are worthy of immediate mitigation measures (turbines only cut-in at an increased wind speed) which is a far cry from not degrading their habitat at all. Oh, but they put up bat houses (brown plywood box on 4×4 post), seriously!
To fully gauge the level of plunder and deceit perpetrated here for the benefit of the Batchewana First Nation we must ask whether they are knowingly complicit in “intergenerational theft” and ruination of the settler society.
lsarc 
Reblogged this on "Mothers Against Wind Turbines™" Phoenix Rising… and commented:
Stealing from Future Generations…
Good piece, though RE the Breitbart quote, I don’t think true “liberal” values (which emphasize fairness) are driving the wind industry. It seems more aligned with the usual right-wing plunderers, creating odd alliances with honest environmentalists. I’m wary of right-wingers who claim to be against wind turbines for ecological reasons when they’ve shown little concern for other man-made damage from fossil fuels, logging, etc.
Ground crews who install wind turbines seem like callous types, interchangeable with oil workers and coal miners. I wouldn’t be able to stomach what they do to mountaintops at any wage. Wind engineers in distant offices find it easier to use green-speak out of detachment.
I think wind turbines are just further evidence that nature WILL be destroyed, one way or another, until the human species shrinks or disappears. There’s no clean or green answer to replacing fossil-fuel-built infrastructure. The media can at least help by not favoring wind energy propaganda in conflict stories. I see a trend of that but it’s slow to develop.
http://cutt.us/windpowertragedy
Perhaps ‘progressive’ values might be more accurate. Today’s liberals have values far removed from liberals of the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Though the popular culture likes to attribute any social or environmental ill to ‘right-wingers’, a belief fostered and encouraged by progressives and their MSM propagandists, the truth is that the worst environmental destruction has been perpetrated by progressives, statists, socialists and communists. To understand the current dynamics one must clearly distinguish between true conservative values and those that pretend to espouse them. So one must distinguish between conservatives, capitalists and the crony-capitalists.
Wind development companies fall into the later group. They are crony capitalists whose business model is the ruthless exploitation of so-called social capital to transfer public funds and private ones in the case of ratepayers, to their own accounts. Their business model relies on never-ending subsidies, protectionist legislation and status as ‘politically’ or ‘socially’ favored industries to create their profits and sustain their business.
The Myth of the Robber Barons by Burt Folsom is an interesting study that contrasts the two approaches.and provides a valuable counterpoint to the progressive narrative we read and hear almost exclusively in the MSM.
Your characterization of workers in various industries reeks of progressive relativism and is unfair and a factually incorrect generalization. There are undoubtedly some workers who are callous, but they are to be found in every industry including among the so-called honest environmentalist (an undefined term on your part). One has but to look at the actions of some Greenpeace and other so-called environmental organizations. By and large the workers I have met either believe they are doing the right thing for the environment, or have no option but to work at a particular job because that is all that is open to them.
This demonization of fossil fuels so popular and pushed by the statists, the communists and their useful idiots is unfortunate and counter-factual and in most cases hypocritical. Take the exploitation of the Alberta tar-sands, the biggest natural oil spill in history, shouldn’t we clean it up? And why is it bad that that society derives a large benefit from doing so? Why do we see so many protests against oil sands and Canadian pipelines and none against Saudi or other foreign oil? These are countries with horrible human rights and environmental records. Why protest highly environmentally regulated ethical oil from Canada but not that from these countries?
The answer of course lies in an understanding of the globalist statist’s goals and methods.
There may well be a clean and environmentally friendly option which can provide abundant cheap energy – FAST reactors and the various thorium cycle reactor types currenty being developed.
All animals, including humans, have both positive and negative impacts on their environment. Typically the larger the population the larger the impact. Humans are the first species that have managed to reduce its impact despite a rapidly expanding population. Do we have a lot more to learn and can we improve upon our environmental management and further reduce our adverse impacts – of course.
The first step is a life-cycle cost-benefit analysis. By any measure solar and wind energy do not pass the cost-benefit analysis. They have a disproportionate environmental impact for the amount of energy produced and are economically unviable without subsidies.
Well, the difference between progressives and liberals can often be semantics, though I’ll take the former. Liberals – as in people who just do whatever feels good – are causing damage, indeed. But that’s also a trait of people I call right-wingers. They are more mean-spirited about it.
I’m all for true conservatism but too many Republicans do things like trophy hunting, illegal off-roading, crass engine modifications (coal-rolling), and show a longstanding lack of respect for nature, including the idea that CO2 only behaves according to God’s will (per James Inhofe, who also shoots pigeons for fun). Some of it is religious, like James Watt under Reagan, who literally thought Jesus was coming, so let’s trash it all.
Runaway socialism in old Russia, etc. is not the same as pro-environment activism, and that line shouldn’t be blurred. Greenpeace protecting whales and baby seals is ethical to me, but they’ve also got windy delusions of what’s green. Reading their site on wind power is hard to take, but if those giant towers had never become so widespread, I’d be mostly for what they do. I can’t tell if they’re naive or just trying to maintain funding through wind power’s green image.
I’m not sure why anyone would have an issue with (rooftop) solar since it’s about as small as footprints get. I don’t mind it not being super efficient if it doesn’t take up land. A wind generator is tiny compared to the mass of its support-structure, making solar more efficient for its package size.
I don’t see wind energy blight as part of a cabal, so much as continuation of economic growth vs. a finite planet. It’s like a tall version of housing starts, always trying to keep construction workers employed and treating sprawl as progress. To me, those values are distinctly right-wing and anti-nature. You’d have to take an official poll of wind turbine workers to really know. I don’t see them as innocent for the most part. A number of roads cut for wind plants are being abused for off-roading, etc. I can see a growing mentality of “it’s trashed already so who cares?” Wind power advocates who claim to be for roadless lands are full of it.
http://cutt.us/windapes