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The Good Guys Get A Word In [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-04-23
An old college friend saw a January facebook post of mine about losing a job offer in the offshore wind industry because of the results of the election. Reality has proven as bad as I feared, with last week’s termination by Trump of construction on New York’s Empire Wind 1 project. The rest will follow. I have no doubt that Trump will stop work on partially complete wind farms. Welcome to the patronage economy.
After Trump’s January 20 order halting all permitting, colleagues in the field were optimistically kidding themselves that some kind of case was to be made to him about offshore wind’s viability, and its growing importance to the national economy. They struck me as having something akin to Stockholm syndrome. Or like the scene in Independence Day where the Americans tried to communicate with the ship above the White House using a helicopter with light panels. Until the ship blew the helicopter up.
Trump hates offshore wind for three main reasons. First, he lost the 2015 court case in Scotland over the wind farm off Aberdeen, impacting the view from the Turnberry golf course. Second, he is owned by oil interests (which gave him nearly $1B last year). There is no case to be made to him without a few billion more to change his mind back. Third, he’s a regressive thinker (remember his moronic insistence on modern aircraft carriers using old steam-powered catapults, instead of magnetic ones?). The only thing better than the twentieth century to him is the nineteenth.
So my friend saw my post about losing out on a job—I’ve spent the winter teaching special ed, and it’s been a great experience, but I’m not making nearly enough—and sent a camera crew up from Gray TV to interview me. Now that it’s been posted, I’d like to share it.
Like with every other important cause we’re fighting for these days—immigrant rights, women’s rights, environmental concerns, consumer protection, basic human rights, the rule of law, basic decency—keeping our conversation vigorous and constant is one good way to keep autocracy from settling like a shroud over the nation.
And yeah, TV really does add twenty pounds.
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