The Coalition is proud to announce that the Policy Director for the U.S. Libertarian Party, Carla Howell, will be joining us this Sunday. Carla has a resume worthy of two lifetimes. Before becoming active in politics, she worked in the tech and healthcare industries in engineering, marketing and management. 

Since becoming politically active, she has several ballot initiative campaigns, a run for the Massachusetts Governor's office, and a run against the late Ted Kennedy for U.S. Senate under her belt. In her bid against Kennedy, she garnered the highest vote percentage ever for a Libertarian in a race against a Democrat and a Republican. In 1998, she won the endorsement of the Boston Herald in the race for Massachusetts State Auditor.


Tune in this Sunday at 10 a.m.  for an hour of compelling, issues driven radio on AM 790, or listen live on the web or your smartphone.

(Editor's note: This submission was made by Peter Nightingale, who appeared on The Coalition on March 22, 2015. It has been edited for grammar and punctuation, AND NOTHING ELSE! #1stAmendment You can follow him on Twitter @Peter_Night)

At the beginning of March, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved Spectra Energy's AIM Project, pipeline expansion that will bring more fracked gas from Pennsylvania to New England. As we discussed on The Coalition, this project and the national energy business plan of which it is part are immediate threats to the communities near the frack jobs, and those near the pipelines and the compressor stations that pump the gas downstream.

Expanding the natural gas infrastructure is likely to accelerate climate change, one of the biggest threats faced by mankind; up there with nuclear holocaust. At best, these kinds of projects will delay getting off fossil fuels. Quite possibly, given that natural gas is a bigger threat to the climate than oil and coal, this energy policy will ruin life on Earth. In a brief for a court case in which teens sued the federal government for not creating a meaningful climate change action plan James Hansen, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote:

"...failure to act with all deliberate speed in the face of the clear scientific evidence of the danger functionally becomes a decision to eliminate the option of preserving a habitable climate system."

Instead, the national corporate buiness plan, run out the White House under the guise of dealing with climate change, features the AIM Project and its counterparts that will lock us into decades of increased dependence on fossil fuels.

Why then do we have a national energy policy with natural gas a bridge fuel? Because Wall Street is heavily invested in the shale oil and gas bubble which has been creatively engineered by the usual too-big-too-fail investment banks that own our government. Read Richard Heinberg's Snake Oil about fracking if you want know more about this.

This is how the window dressing works. The White House appoints the commissioners of FERC, the agency that, as we are led to believe, regulates national energy projects. The commission is chaired by Cheryl LaFleur, a former top executive of National Grid — yes that's the company headquartered in Great Britain that was looking for a 24% rate hike of the electricity prices. Given that the Party of Corporate America owns the White House, ss its no surprise that FERC rubber-stamps every industry proposal that comes it way and ignores objections raised by the People.

Cheryl LaFleur at the National Press Club at the end of last January, made it clear where she stands:

"...But our review is project specific and confined to the information in the docket. Speculating about unquantifiable impacts is not part of that process. I think that our nation is going to have to grapple with our acceptance of gas generation and gas pipelines if we expect to achieve our climate and environmental goals." 

FERC does not speculate; indeed the standard response to objections raised against the AIM Project are dealt by "we do not speculate." Never mind that the policy as a whole gambles with the lives of countless millions!

The fake regulation at FERC plays another important role in our political system. It allows our political class to hide behind FERC's supposed technical expertise and its role of gatekeeper of the statutory system that emerged after the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. We're not supposed to notice that expertise of the undoubtedly competent and well-meaning staff is systematically suppressed and that the statutes have been corrupted by pollitical appointees and lobbyists.

But, hey, don't we have to protect "regular Rhode Islanders" against spikes in the price of natural gas, as Senator Whitehouse argues here? Talk about speculation! Isn't it interesting that these frightful spikes did not occur during last winter? Reuters reports here why this did not happen: you avoid spikes by planning and storage, not by pipeline expansion. Might there be a hidden agenda here? Export perhaps? Don't take my word for it; convince yourself and look at the map shown in Spectra's Atlantic Bridge Project. Hail, Party of Corporate America, those about to go under salute you!

Why are not more people protesting at the FERC hearings or protesting in the streets? Why have most tuned out of these scams? As Mary Wood, who was featured on Bill Moyers' "last" interview, explains in her book Nature's Trust

"Within the statutory system, a mother protesting a toxic facility near her children's school, for example, might find herself having to speak in terms of ARARs, MCLs, NESHAPs, SIPs, MACT, BDCT, and BACT.33 Few incoherencies impede democracy more than the utter lack of accessible language by which citizens can hold their government officials accountable." 

Thousands of acronyms cannot change the fact that little has changed since Adam Smith wrote:

"All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind."

The good news is that the People are fighting back against the corporate take-over of our political system. Project Gutenberg, where you can read Adam Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,  is just one tiny example that shows that another world is possible.

Green Power to the People!

On this weeks show, we will be joined by two of the leaders of the movement protesting the expansion of the SPECTRA/Algonquin pipeline in Rhode Island. 

Nick Katkevich and Peter Nightingale are members of FANG (Fight Against Natural Gas) and NOPE (No Pipeline Expansion). Earlier this year they participated in the march from the Burrillville compression station on the pipeline to the statehouse. Katkevich was arrested at Senator Jack Reed's Rhode Island office during a sit-in to protest the pipeline expansion. Nightingale had the same warm response from the folks at Senator Sheldon Whitehouse's RI office.

Both men participated in the "laugh-in" at a speech by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse at Yale University. The protest was meant to draw attention to the hypocrisy of the so-called "environmental champion" for supporting the pipeline, and the hydrofracked gas that it would carry.

We'll find out what makes them tick, and their take on the future of protest movement this weekend on The Coalition.

Be sure to tune in Sunday at 10 a.m. to AM 790, orlisten live on the web or your smartphone.

This week's show is all about the media. The right to a free press is enshrined in our constitution. Of course, it doesn't get as much attention as the 1st and 2nd Amendments, but  it's vital, nonetheless.

Joining us in the studio will be Phil Eil, former news hound at the now defunct Providence Phoenix. We'll be talking about the role that the free press plays in our country, the decline of the so-called "legacy media", and the influence of social media on modern journalism and journalists.

Tune in to AM 790 this Sunday at 10 a.m. or click here for livestreaming options.

On this week's show, we will be talking about the economic climate and the so-called focus on jobs and the economy in the RI legislature.

Joining us will be Scott Gibbs. Scott has a long career in business and economic development, dating back to the early 80's when he served as the Economic Development Coordinator for the town of Chicopee, Mass. He  has accrued degrees in political science, regional planning, and is currently pursuing a PhD in business.

Gibbs was formerly the Vice President of Economic Development with the Northern RI Chamber of Commerce, the president of  the Woonsocket Industrial Development Corp., and currently serves as the president of the Economic Development Foundation of Rhode Island.

Be sure to tune in to AM790, Sunday, March 8 at 10 a.m. for a frank discussion of Rhode  Island's economic woes, and what we need to do to fix them. You can listen live on the web at http://player.listenlive.co/25591 or us the iHeart Radio app on your  smartphone.