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Retired ('92)after working for every Administration since Truman, with the exception of the last 3 administrations. Mainlining golf is a major addiction, along with grandchildren, travel, great books, and the leisure to really absorb it all. A policy wonk with a penchant for supporting issues including but not limited to: modern monetary operations, industrial hemp cultivation, wave energy powering the Gorlov helical turbine to replace most fossil fuels used to generate electricity, cultivation of industrial hemp to replace cotton and other inferior products, as well as thousands of other products normally produced with petroleum by-products.
I firmly believe in the following: "In the absence of freedom there is no creativity, and in the absence of creativity, there is no progress." RB 1972
The gold standard monetary system is dead. Yet, all of our erstwhile leaders continue to make policy based on these outmoded rubrics. They don't know that we can't go broke, and that federal taxes don't pay for anything. A sovereign currency nation is not constrained by revenue to spend. Taxes are stabilizers for aggregate demand, not revenue. Same for borrowing. Nothing is bought with those funds. Under a gold standard the US would have lost the second world War, still be in a depression, never ventured into space, Vietnam, or the age of technology. Gold standard rubrics served as a constraints on Federal spending. The real constraint is, and will always be the level of unemployment. The need for federal spending is higher when unemployment rates are high lower when UE rates are low.
Anthropomorphic methane build up from oil and gas exploration creates methane hydrate accumulations in sea beds and permafrost. Oil and gas exploration use fresh water to pressurize wells and that water mixes with CO2 to form methane hydrate. There is no other way to create these hydrates. When they dissociate the explosions can be deadly to drilling wells and catastrophic to civilization if accumulations in the arctic, Siberia, Lake Baikal, and Alaskan permafrost are destablized.