Myron Collar Jobs

Demonstrating the theory that every news report that cites Myron Ebell as a witness is false, those square-eyed folks at Media Matters managed to snag a short segment of CNN disgracing itself with an Ebell quote:

EBELL: "Green-collar jobs" are probably overall a net loss to the economy. If the government is saying that people have to use wind power or have to use ethanol, that means that they'll be using less electricity or less gasoline from conventional sources. So those new jobs in those new industries will be displacing old jobs in old industries

... WILLIS: These jobs will likely come from the white-collar and blue-collar sectors, as you need people to work on high-end technology and those on the ground installing solar panels. The critic we talked to in the piece also said, hey, don't forget, for every "green-collar job" you create, another one in a different sector will be taken away. So, we have to wait and see how and if this will be implemented.

MM's beef was that CNN hadn't reported Myron Ebell's ties with Exxon and mislead the viewers that he was an independent expert rather than a corporate shill.

This is not enough.

The real problem is that Myron Ebell has such a long and well-documented history of lying, misrepresenting the evidence, and poisoning the discourse with thoroughly unsubstantiated and discredited allegations that any news media that even pretended that it wasn't a sewerline of propaganda would have long ago put his name on a black-list of those who should never ever be called up for comment under any circumstance whatsoever.

On this particular issue of green collar jobs, Ebell alleged that if people were forced to use only wind power instead of fossil fuels, there would be less economic activity in the sectors which currently depended on that power. Notwithstanding the fact that a larger part of the industrial activity has already been moved out of the country -- none more so than Exxon's core business of oil extraction (and let's not get distracted with the usual balls about the droplets in ANWR when we know it's all still in Saudi Arabia and Iraq) -- the generation of fossil fuel energy is nowadays a low jobs and skills sector. This is illustrated by none more so than mountaintop removal mining, a process that employs a tiny fraction of those required for conventional deep mining, if that happens to be a factor you think is important.

It's well known that the skills and labour required to design and build the infrastructure for green technologies means lots of jobs, with no unpleasant side-effects, except a possible threat to Exxon's business model which is based on economic domination and technological stagnation by ensuring that its agents, such as Myron Ebell, lie and lie and lie again to an incompetent media and to corrupt politicians until those necessary policy shifts become too late to avoid mass extinction and die-off.

As the force-of-life, Jeff Dorchen said on ThisIsHell this week:

So a $150 billion tax cut—that's this idiot's plan to rescue the economy? Oh, and don't criticize me for calling him an idiot, that's what he is, let's be honest for once, it's time to call things by their names. A tax cut. Can there be anything lazier? "Eh, I guess we'll just do another tax cut, I don't feel like thinking right now, too hard on my brain bone." Jesus! If you've got $150 billion dollars to burn, how about thinking up something clever to do with it, instead of just distributing it among the corporate and financial geniuses whose incompetence let our economy down in the first place? "Here, do some more of your magic."

Lazy, that's what it is. Bush and what's left of his advisory posse of the ideologically deformed just don't feel like bothering to think of anything effective to do. Did they consider, Hey, let's spark some industry development, encourage investment in something American ingenuity and work ethic and entrepreneurship can really sink their teeth into. Like maybe get in on the ground floor of this whole hydrogen economy thing. Whoever positions themselves to profit from that will be riding the crest as the economic powerhouse of the future. Think of all the money that would change hands as researchers came up with better ways of generating and storing hydrogen, think of all the contractors and laborers and tradesmen and engineers busy as beavers converting gas stations to hydrogen stations, and the auto industry and the advertising—good lord, a few billion judiciously channeled and matching-funded and dangled like carrots in front of the right noses, and this economy would be blazing on all cylinders—to use a one-day-to-be-outmoded mechanical metaphor. How about we redirect our resources and young men and women out of destroying the Middle East and channel them toward poising the U.S. economy to be the dominant force behind the hydrogen revolution that will end petroleum's reign of terror forever?

Did any of those bums think of anything remotely like that? No, it was: "Just throw the money out the window. Someone will probably pick it up and buy some stuff with it. That'll jumpstart the economy or whatever."

Thank you CNN for channeling a force-of-death like Myron Ebell into the minds of the public. For Media Matters, I will incorporate your sidebar into this blog on a trial basis if I can.