Follow up on Tri-State's LPEA waiver request

I wrote the following as a "Letter to the Editor" in the weekly Durango Telegraph (8/18/2016) about the Tri-State, LPEA waiver request which seems to be fizzling out - pending yet another round of appeals and lawyerly bickering.  What remains is Tri-State Generation and Transmission unwavering commitment to suppressing regional alternative energy resource development.   

Our local LaPlata Electrical Association is but one of over forty co-ops that Tri-State supplies.  Tri-State is but one of 65 Generation and Transmission CO-OPs supplying 840 distribution co-ops across America.  Too many are still run by dinosaurs committed to yesteryear's realities, while ignoring the changes happening upon our only Earth.

What's important is that these distribution co-ops are member owned, meaning the public is welcome to attend their monthly board of directors meetings.   

Inform yourself, and help educate others, be a citizen's lobbyist.  One informed, honest, communicative individual can make a difference, even if that individual doesn't realize it yet.  But you'll never know until you go. 

Back in June there was a bunch of excitement about the LPEA board of directors considering signing a negotiation-waiver with Tri-State Generation and Transmission the supplier of the electricity that LPEA co-op distributes.  The waiver stipulates that Tri-State would be primary negotiator on contracts with all future alternative energy ventures. 

Basically Tri-State’s waiver would result in relegating LPEA to the position of an impotent, but vital, junior partner in all future forays into developing regional alternate energy sources.  The problem with this plan is that Tri-State has a long history of being hostile towards alternate energy development.  What alternative energy development Tri-State is involved in is minimal, forced, and more focused on PR mileage then on genuine commitment to develop alternate energy sources.  Coal remains their game and strangling expansion of alternate energy seems their business model.

In support of my opinion I offer a couple pieces of evidence. 

Dieter Miesler (7/20/1925 - 5/22/2006), obituary

This is a follow on to the previous post.  It's necessary because certain individuals who don't have any legitimate responses to my pointed critiques, go for the only thing they have - dirt slinging.  Poptech was more than happy to supply a narrative for like minded louts.  Basically, he claims my dad was a Nazi and that I'm a guilt-riddled drug-addict taking it out on those poor climate science contrarians who are only doing their duty of striving to stupefy our public and leaders.

It's fabrication by little minds who reject learning about the climate science and who have made it their duty to demonize anyone who is interested in conveying what scientists have learned about what we are doing to our one and only planet Earth.  Since my position free's me of the constraint students and scientists exist under - I feel it my duty to keep exposing the malicious dishonest underbelly of the double-standard of our current climate science education dialogue.  

But, right now the issue is maliciously slandering my dad in order to demonize me.  Thing is, I had wonderful dad!  Not perfect, but better than most, and way the heck more interesting than any of my friends' dads.

Dieter Werner Miesler (7/20/1925 - 5/22/2006) 

Durango resident Dieter Werner Miesler died in Durango from complications of pneumonia and longstanding Parkinson's disease on Monday, May 22, 2006. He was 80. 

He was born to Helmut and Olga Miesler in Breslau, Germany, on July 20, 1925. His family said he was artistically inclined. He became a self-taught musician, writer and photographer. By his late teens, he played the bass, cello and piano.

On building stairs and integrity.

Recently over at Center For Inquiry's forum which I frequent regularly, I was confronted with another joker repeating Poptech's conjured description of me as a guilt-riddled strung-out druggie and lost soul.  Poptech's slander is his way of responding to my fact checking, critiquing and challenging his claims.  Others of his persuasion have been quick to embrace the bull-pucky.

It seems that every few weeks some new joker finds Poptech's article and gleefully grabs his ammunition and blasts aways at me in the middle of some other discussion.  That they are dealing with figments of their own imagination matters not one wit to them - it's character assassination they're interested in.

What else is there for someone who consistently misrepresents serious climate science?  They sure don't have solid evidence on their side.  Nor do they have the requisite intellectual curiosity to learn about the things they don't understand.  When something confuses them, assume the worst, with ignorant certitude.

Distraction is their game.  Marginalize the messenger and marginalize the message.  Spend all your time wrestling with ad hominems and there's no time to talk about our real world situation.  Go straight for the jugular of your opponent with anything you can conjure.  

There's a certain level of sick humor in reading how these minds can spin facts into tailor-made fictions - but of course, in the end all they want is to destroy any opponent in order to stifle fundamental climate science education - no commitment to honesty, or integrity, or respect for others.  Tragically absolutism and paranoia driven resentment seems all their hearts are capable of.

Admitting to and learning from mistakes is treated like blasphemy by the Republican contrarian crowd.  Nothing funny about that either.

It's irrational, irritating, stupefying and it certainly demands some sort of comeback.  But, I’m not into Poptech’s, or LandscapesandCycles' Jim Steele's or NC20 Burton’s style of childish messenger bashing. 

Still, since they want to get down and personal, I can respond with something personal.  Consider it another character reference . . . . . . . 

It started as a note to a friend . . .

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hey D, 

I never did tell you the end of the story regarding those stairs.  As you might remember last autumn I had me a hernia.  It took months longer to get repaired than it should have, towards the end of that run I was actually invalided, bed to recliner, no lifting.  Innards all funky.  Not fun.  Feeling every bit of my sixty years and reconciling myself to the end of my sweet vigorous years.  Among other dark thoughts was the realization that my carpentry days were totally behind me now.  Which they are, but to ponder that I’d never be able to climb walls again, or help set beams and rafters, or one of my favorites building stairs - that's a different thing from choosing not to do it.  A proud physical old man wrestles with those realities as the 'diminishing' advances with the years.