Sacred Trust Update

Sacred Trust Update

You may already know that I've been writing a novel about a group of unlikely compatriots that come together to try and stop a high voltage power transmission line in NH.

While I have tried to avoid the pitfalls of linking the power project in this novel directly with any similar project (duh! as my son says) the obvious connections will certainly be made and I believe that will be useful to those of us who have been opposing the real NH transmission project.

The book is set here in New Hampshire but has much broader implications for similar projects throughout the country, particularly in light of President Trump’s executive order on pipelines and transmission lines.

I am currently about 3/4 finished with the novel - having spent two years to date on it in my spare time - I am hoping to supercharge a final push in the next 3 months to finish it and get it edited and published through a crowdfunding campaign to support the final push.

I'm fully aware that this will not be without controversy. However, I sense that the controversy might be just what is needed to refocus the public eye on the efforts to stop or at least completely bury the proposed project. There has been a palpable drop in public interest of late.

Furthermore, in the panic to get at least some of the line buried we have missed out on a lot of teachable moments that just did not seem to be high priority items in the beginning. Bigger picture issues like the over reliance on large sources of power production instead of smaller sources of power and micro-grids that make our system less subject to large outages from human or natural causes; The desecration of native lands and the massive carbon output associated with flooding of large tracts of land. The choice between direct transmission and a more nimble smart-grid allowing for the creation of power sources within communities that serve their economy and their environment better.

While the novel is first and foremost a fun read about an important trend in the nation as a whole, it is also an opportunity to explore some of these teachable moments a bit. Perhaps even to create a book that serves as the basis for discussion of these issues in classes, book groups, and reading and discussion groups etc. For example, one device that I will be employing will be to have essays addressing some of the important issues written by actual experts who will be portrayed as “Gazetteers” much like the patriots who wrote the Federalist Papers. The purpose of their essays will be to ostensibly provide support to the compatriots fighting the power line but the more important reason for their essays will be to lay out the arguments against this and other similar projects and to examine some of the challenges of providing energy and power to our world in the future.

I am hoping that you will have an interest in helping me to spread the word about the book and the campaign.

If you are, here are some of this things you can do to help:

Pass the word about this campaign on to your friends, especially if they have expressed concern over Northern Pass. I have included a sample note below.

Sign up to receive updates on the campaign and snippets from the book: www.gofundme.com/TreesNotTowers

If you have publishing contacts who may have an interest in looking at the book please let me know and feel free to contact them.

If you know an expert in any of the related areas (climate change, sustainable and renewable energy, Native American rights and treaties, Smartgrids, Energy planning, etc) Please let me know and I will speak with them about contributing to the book.

Best wishes,

Wayne King



Sample Referral Note

Wayne King has been writing a fictional novel, “Sacred Trust”, about a group of compatriots using civil disobedience to stop an electric transmission line similar to the Northern Pass project proposed in New Hampshire. His novel is intended to be a great read with a message, using real experts to lay out the arguments against similar projects.

He is running a crowdfunding campaign to put the book over the top - to cover the costs of paying the experts for their essays, editing and publishing the book.

He is hoping that both the crowdfunding campaign and the book will stir up more interest and help to put fire back into the opposition which has seemed to lag lately.

If you would like to learn more or to help, visit his GoFundMe Campaign page at: www.gofundme.com/TreesNotTowers

The Trump Presidency: this Generation’s Vietnam Moment

The Trump Presidency: this Generation’s Vietnam Moment
Trump May Unify Americans After All - Against Him
by Wayne D. King

Looking back, it was all just too easy . . .

We elected the first black president and the forces of darkness knew that they had to do something. They met, even as he was addressing the nation and calling for unity, and decided that they would oppose everything he did.

Yet despite that in the four years of Barack Obama change came like a waterfall. In the course of two brief years twenty million Americans living without health insurance would join the ranks of the insured, another 10 million would benefit from its provisions with respect to pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, the opportunity to bring another 20 million under the umbrella of coverage was lost to the compromise that relinquished the “Public Option”; but national health was in our sights. In the course of only a few years - beyond rescuing the world from a catastrophic recession - much more would be achieved: marriage equality, medical marijuana, the Dream Act, the Paris accord on Global climate change, Iran Nuclear agreement, and expanded rights for LGBTQ citizens.

In an historic blink of an eye we were again moving toward that beloved community Dr. King described.

But these things occurred in a nation still deeply divided and with the help of the opposition the nation remained divided throughout the presidency of Barack Obama. The changes so many of us embraced came despite those divisions.

Did we think this was just going to happen without an almost cataclysmic clash that began with the push back and then the emergence of a unifying fight? This is how Vietnam and Nixon at first divided and then united us. It began with mostly young people in the streets, opposing the war. They were met with opposition: hardhats beating up those kids in the streets. Waving flags and carrying Nixon signs. In the final gasp of another deeply divided time and after another paranoid national leader emerged, delivered to us at the hands of Sirhan Sirhan.

The divisions evolved into a national strike on college campuses across the country and then the killing of our kids at Kent State and Jackson State Universities. The deaths at Kent and Jackson State opened the floodgate for the “silent majority” . The middle class, shaken to their core at the lengths to which the Nixon administration would go to maintain its grasp on power, came flooding into the streets to join the kids, the hippies and the yippies demanding peace.

It did not end immediately but it brought down a President and ended a war.

The period after Vietnam and up to George W. Bush, though not without its turbulence, represents the longest period of national unity, peace, and economic prosperity in our nation’s history.

Historians will debate for one hundred years what happened to our nation that so sharpened our divisions at the beginning of the new millennium. The symptoms will be relatively easy to agree on, a new gilded age for the wealthy and a shrinking of the middle class; legislative changes that opened the doors for unethical behavior, the lionization of greed and avarice. The causes of this will be more difficult to agree upon and still harder to reverse.

My own view is that we have entered a fourth wave of human endeavor, a new industrial revolution that calls not for reversing existing trends but finding a new way to surf them, as we did during the second industrial revolution - in the period sandwiched between two great leaders named Roosevelt.

However, reaching a point where we can build a national consensus for moving forward will require that we first begin to bridge the divide that separates one American from another and that is where I began this brief analysis. With the opportunity wrapped in a crisis.

Looking back, even to the beginning of the Presidential Primary process, one can make the case that no candidate seemed capable of bridging that divide - given its root causes, though some may have been on the right track for the wrong reasons as I have previously speculated. The election of Donald Trump has, in many ways, simply hastened the day of reckoning.

Never before has an American President sought to deepen the divisions in our country; never before has a President been so out of touch with the truth; and never has a President been so boldly unconcerned and brashly unapologetic about it.

Already Americans are taking to the streets. They are not willing to relinquish American leadership on the critical issues of our time. They still believe that Democratic values hold out the best hope for change that is just, and sustainable. Young people, who have grown up in the era of Barack Obama are unwilling to allow the limits of racism, sexism and homophobia to be defined by Theocratic leaders. Americans alarmed by the pace of climate change are unwilling to allow China, an undemocratic regime that suppresses free science and free speech, to step into the void created by the Trump administration’s climate change deniers.

Every American who has watched with pride as our national leadership has been demonstrated time and again during the last fifty years will ultimately not allow us to cede leadership on the world stage. Their protest signs may vary, but they all translate the same: “This is Not My America”.

The crowds are big, and growing. . . and, as they often say “The Whole World is Watching”.

But there is a notable void in the crowds. Donald Trump has the worst approval ratings of any president since those numbers were first recorded. Yet among Republicans his approval is among the highest ever recorded. 87% of Republicans still state that they approve of the President’s actions; despite the heroic efforts of Republicans like Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Susan Collins who have stood against the tide speaking out forcefully for Western values and Democratic principles.

How do we bridge this divide, particularly when the issues at stake are not just critically important but - in many cases - moral imperatives with little room for compromise that does not spell acquiescence?

The answer is we don’t try. We fight for what we believe but do so with grace and with open hearts. We wait for them, knowing that joining us represents a deeply disappointing revelation for many. They are not our enemies and we do not have a monopoly on truth.

We must stand and deliver. Above all we must be patient and humble. If there is one thing we have learned in the first thirty days of the Trump Presidency it is that when we think the President cannot possibly overreach any more than he already has - he will always find a way.

Already he has shown this with his travel ban and immigration actions which have surely peeled off many previous supporters. Just wait until they try to take healthcare away from 30 million Americans or begin to give polluters free reign or cause a trade war that raises the cost of everything from food to underwear.

Wait until middle class and working class whites realize they have been punked by a billionaire con artist who is far more interested in cutting taxes for his friends than raising the living standards of those who have seen no real income growth in almost two decades. 

Evidence that the Russian connection may lead to the demise of this administration is accumulating. Demonizing the media and banning the most powerful among them from media briefings at the White House is little more than a thinly veiled effort to discredit them in the wake of an ever-widening inquiry and at least three formal investigations by government agencies and the intelligence community.  

It will not be long before disillusioned Trump voters will be joining our ranks.

Then it will be up to us to open our ranks and to welcome all these Americans home. Not only by making space for them but by making an effort to understand their hopes and dreams. By seeking new ways to renew the promise of a growing standard of living for all Americans; by making an effort to find common ground on even the thorniest of issues.

There is little chance that the skies will open and the sun will shine down on us as we sing kum-ba-yah but there’s a pretty good chance that 2020 will see a new President and, hopefully, a lot of Americans carrying signs that effectively say: This is My America.

Ripple of Hope
Includes "Ripple of Hope" Quote from Robert Kennedy

The Fight for the Middle

The Fight for the Middle
Wayne D. King

If anyone is unclear at this point, let me be perfectly clear. . . 50% of the people or more who supported Trump in the election are not going to be reached by any argument or act. We have watched them interviewed in diners in Pennsylvania and W. Virginia and on a thousand tv and radio stations. They are frightened by the fear-mongering of candidate and now President Trump and the coterie of altNews, AltFacts and AltRight he has drawn around himself with the help of Steve Bannon and Kelly Ann Conway. They are angry at being left behind by a world that is shifting under their feet.

If their minds are to be changed it will only happen over time when they learn that Trump has "punked" them. The very fact that on day one he signed an executive order that made the cost of buying a home for lower and middle income people $500.00 more expensive might have been a good warning but Trump slipped that one under their radar.

The battle is going to be for those who voted for Trump reluctantly, those who did not vote, and those who voted for Hillary Clinton reluctantly. We want these people protesting in the streets with the rest of us. Not in support of one party or another but in support of the American constitution and American ideals. Only then will we have a chance of stopping this outrage before it spreads roots that are too deep to pull out easily.

We must put the "fear of the people" into the hearts of Republican AND Democratic elected officials who would walk away from the ACA, or the gains in human rights, LGBTQ rights and religious freedom made under the Obama administration and from the challenge of reversing the income disparity that has led us to this place and time.

Hot Springs Two

Senate Uses Trump Chaos to Relax Regulations on Coal Slag and Bribery of Foreign Officials

Senate Uses Trump Chaos to Relax Regulations on Coal Slag and Bribery of Foreign Officials

The recent actions of the Senate allowing rules promulgated around previously passed laws to be overturned with 51 votes and prevents the agencies from taking any action to assure that the spirit of the law is upheld is very very discouraging. This week they overturned a law that makes it illegal for Oil Company executives to bribe foreign officials and to keep Coal companies from dumping their slag into clean rivers.

There is a growing number of people who are suggesting that many of the controversial actions of Trump and Bannon are intended to create a diversion while they make sub-rosa changes like this that most Americans would find highly objectionable.

First Rodeo