Socialist Football and Passing Wind…Energy

If those who ran the Bank of North Dakota were like the folks who run the Green Bay Packers, we would be awash in wind energy production, instead of predominantly burning coal, thus begging for a “Darwin Award” on behalf of the entire planet.

Other than the Texas Panhandle and parts of Saskatchewan, no other place in North America beats western North Dakota/eastern Montana for potential wind energy. Our high ridges should be festooned with wind turbines, sporting cell phone towers, so that we could heat and cool our homes, while twittering about our NFL fantasy teams.
But Nooooohhhh!

Capital available for investment is not being used to serve common sense, or the common good [except for Green Bay], but strictly for the profit of a selfish few, the coal and fossil burning freaks in industry and both political parties here… and Bret Favre.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a bitter Packers’ fan, nor a Bret Favre hater of any sort, now that Lovie Smith has come to the Bears and taught them how to beat the Packers every now and then, even with Favre. But as a progressive, my political heart belongs to the Green Bay Packers.

They are socialists, you see. The Green Bay Packers are owned by the people of Green Bay.  More importantly, the team is still run by people who understand this and act accordingly. As painful as it was, they showed prima donna Favre the door, when he put his private interests above the public interests of the Packer team.

One can hardly blame Bret Favre for behaving as he did. The rest of the teams in the NFL are run by private interests, some magnanimous, some spendthrift, some skinflint. The Bears are in latter category, George Halas being famous for “throwing nickels around like manhole covers.”  Still… I’m a Bears’ fan.  No good explanation.

Thanks to the Nonpartisan League of North Dakota, Green Bay Packer fans have never had to explain their collectivist organization to the nation,...not even to their local, world class red baiter, Joe McCarthy. In 1920, on behalf of the Bank of North Dakota, and others, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, declared that socialism in the U.S., at the state or local level, was constitutional.

North Dakota wind energy fans have little to cheer about, however.  With the exception of tuition scholarships for North Dakotans, leaders of the Bank of North Dakota, Governor Hoeven, and the “lignite boys” at the PSC, unlike the Packer organization, prefer to mostly serve private interests rather than public ones nowadays.
This is a far cry from earlier NPL days when the Bank tried to compete in the marketplace on behalf of the entire State, rather than just be another private “piggy bank.”
 
It’s not that money couldn’t be made in wind energy, it’s just that the people making money might be different. Possibly a few more of them. Possibly even people who live in North Dakota, but are not part of the inner circle of “pinstripe patronage” that prevails here.  Maybe even—*gasp*—T. Boone Pickens!

The technical problems are not great. The “Grid” is a randy bi-sexual, and does not care if it is turned on by “Mr. Fossil Fuel” or “Ms. Windy.”  I learned this interesting piece of information courtesy of a spokesperson for a major coal burning facility out here, when I was their guest in June, 2004, along with Tim Mathern and others, due to my running for the Legislature that year [District 34].

During the Q & A session, I asked, “What percentage of the problems of ‘the Grid’ are technical and what percent are political?”

After expressing gratitude that I had asked the question, the spokesperson responded:  “90% political and 10% technical.”  Name and gender withheld to safeguard the person’s job.

Unfortunately, our planet is not safe from short-sighted idiots in North Dakota who would rather use wind energy to burn fossil fuels than use it directly,...about as useful in the long run, as teenage boys lighting their own farts at summer camp.

Bret Favre’s talent is beyond ideology, and so is the game of football.  But, even as “capitalist” Vikings beat “socialist” Packers on Monday Night Football, “acid rain” produced by “King Coal” fell on fans in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin alike.

Too bad.  I was hoping my grandchildren could “breathe easier,” but their chances this century look about as good as the chances that coal will be “clean,” that pigs will fly, and that wind turbines and their cleaner brethren will replace fossil fuel energy.

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