Guest Opinion | The Feds and the damage done

— from Joseph Murphy —

When someone’s dogs are being pinched it is human nature to look around
for someone to blame. It is becoming more apparent by the day and hour
that the force which is most responsible for the ongoing damage to the
way of life preferred by Islanders is us. Trusting fools that we are we relied
upon the state, the county and the feds to make intelligent and democratic
decisions on our behalf. Hah!

One cause is most certainly the ongoing and intensifying environmental
catastrophe referred to by scientists in the know as, ‘anthropogenic climate
change,” The ‘anthro’ – that’s us, humans. We have caused the change
that chokes our skies and prompts warnings from health authorities.Prepare? Bottled oxygen anyone?

And, yes, the village scold reminds everyone that the US Military and their
far-flung archipelago of horrors use a whopping half of all fossil fuels in the world, as in (on the planet) to perpetuate this continuing carnage. But there are the humans above and the humans below in this military action against the people of the San Juans and beyond. The military and the monetary are above, as citizens struggle down below. Market forces at the point of a gun — or Growler — and everyday people who, by and large, just want to left alone to live life as they choose.

Unfortunately, the space in which we choose is being compressed, the
commons of democracy and democratic process foreclosed, in the interest
of suffocating any dissent and maximizing profit. We trust all of those technocrats out there to make proper decisions on our behalf until they can no longer be trusted.

Take the Port of Orcas, please. Here we find the disregard for due process
taken to absurd extremes; a battle royal between the technocrats and
pilots who salivate over FAA funds and the rest of us who would rather not
be controlled by either the FAA or Port ‘executive sessions’ that divide the
spoils and stick taxpayers with the bill.

And then there are the Federal agencies that hide behind the shields of
technocracy and scientific method while serving the interests of corporate
greed.

The FAA control of air space over the sacred lands of the Olympic
Peninsula, means that Boeing-built Growlers disrupt what was the quietest
place in the contiguous forty-eight. Busy beavers they as they prepare to
recertify the deadly 737 Max. Soon, expect to see surveillance drones
disguised as hummingbirds gather outside your window as you sip your
morning coffee.

While 2nd District Congressman Rick Larsen attempted to steer blame away
from the aircraft manufacturer in his district whose name will not cross his
lips, members of his Oversight Committee received over one hundred K from Boeing toward their re-elections. Don’t want to hurt Boeing’s little feelings or deflate their stock price. Instead, blame the dead pilots for inadequate training. Yeah, that’ll work.

Then you have the FCC greenlighting unproven 5G technology. As for the
EPA, well, don’t get me started.

Meanwhile, Julian Assange is, I am sure, laughing his Aussie head off if not
crying in his warm English beer over the hideous spectacle of American’s
buying up every dead and dismembered lamb in America so to celebrate the death of a political criminal and truthteller (that would be Jesus the
Christ) while passing draconian abortion bans and dusting off the WWI relic “espionage act” to prosecute contemporary truth tellers such as himself.

That boot on the back of the neck is starting to suffocate the last vestiges
of public process. The FAA is a rogue agency that has been co-opted like
the FCC and the remnant EPA into the services of Empire. I believe this is
how the term, “regulatory capture” came into being. Shouldn’t it be, “regulator captured”?

As Eric Garner gasped before he died: “I can’t breathe”