Constant Vigilance

One of the purposes for our representative government is so that we can go on with our lives without having to study out each and every issue—and have it decided on by whatever the media persuades the majority to believe. But going on with our lives—leaving the elected officials unmonitored—is too dangerous today. Constant vigilance is required of us.

floor of the Texas Senate
from a tour in 2018

Today’s post is Texas legislation information. But it may be of instructive interest to others. Here are just a few issues I’ve been paying attention to this session.

Just to remind, the Texas Legislature meets mid-January through May every other year. We’re approaching 3 ½ months in. A rule of thumb is, if a bill can’t get voted out of committee in its originating chamber by the end of April, it’s dead. There’s not enough time to get through the remaining steps before the end of the session. So there’s a lot that really needs to happen immediately.

 

School Choice

I’ve been working, along with many others, to pass a bill in the Texas Legislature on school choice. The bill is titled the Family Educational Relief Act. I wrote about it here, and did a shorter op-ed published here.

This bill takes no money away from public schooling; in fact, it adds funding sources. But it is a way for low-income families to escape failing schools.

Opponents will do practically anything to keep kids in failing schools. One tactic, last Thursday, was to put the following amendment in the budget bill (the budget is pretty much the only requirement of the legislature during the session):

Prohibition on Use of Appropriated Money for School Choice Programs. Money appropriated by this Act may not be used to pay for or support a school voucher, education savings account, or tax credit scholarship program or a similar program through which a child may use state money for nonpublic primary or secondary education.

The amendment (slightly longer) was pre-introduced by Republican Rep. VanDeaver, then removed on a point of order, but replaced by this one by Democrat Rep. Herrero.

Beside the basic fact that I disagree with the intent, there are some major problems. This is a policy issue; putting it in the budget does a skirt around the committee process and prevents public discussion. For that reason it is likely to be stripped back out during reconciliation with the Senate. (The bill, SB 1,  originated in the Senate, got loaded up with amendments in the House, and then has to go back to the Senate, where changes will be made until there is agreement on what should be in the budget bill.)

When you talk with opponents of our school choice bill, they say they could never take money away from public schooling—which shows you they have not read the bill.

The vote was 115 in favor of the amendment; 29 opposed (5 not voting, including the speaker during the vote). All of the Democrats voted for the amendment, of course. The problem is, of the 83 Republicans, only 29 voted against it. Two were absent, so that means 52 Republicans voted to keep children in failing schools without a way out under any circumstances.

The Texas Constitution (Article VII, Sec. 1) requires that students be educated:

A general diffusion of knowledge being essential to the preservation of the liberties and rights of the people, it shall be the duty of the Legislature of the State to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.

The Republican Party platform has some 340 planks, including unequivocal support of school choice, but the platform starts with 10 constant principles—which Republican officeholders are required to agree with. Principle 7 is We believe in:

Having an educated population, with parents having the freedom of choice for the education of their children.

In addition, at the Texas GOP Convention, the delegates voted on 8 top legislative priorities, and one of these is school choice:

School Choice for All: Empower parents and guardians to choose from public, private, charter, or homeschool options for their children’s education using tax credits or exemptions without government restraint or intrusion.

In speaking against the amendment, Rep. Toth presented the polling data: all over Texas, among every demographic and party, no less than 70% approve of school choice.

In Florida, a voting bloc of black mothers who wanted school choice made the deciding difference in electing Gov. DeSantis.

Someone wryly said to me, “If only we could get a Republican majority next session—Oh, wait!”

We’ve had a Republican majority in the House and Senate, plus the governor, since 2002. And yet we can’t seem to get the will of the people done.

Here is the vote count on that amendment:

My representative, Hull, voted against the amendment (so, on the side of school choice), as did local representatives Swanson, Oliverson, and Murphy. Schofield, who is usually very reliable, was absent, so at least he wasn’t a wrong vote. Rep. Harless voted in favor of the amendment. I have been thinking he’s more conservative than his wife was, who held the seat before him and was frequently unreliable, what we call “squishy.” Maybe he isn't better. His constituents ought to call him and ask what he was thinking.

Where does the opposition come from? Teachers’ unions. Teachers unions are not about better education for students. They are not even about better pay or conditions for teachers. They are about power for teacher’s unions. And they’ve been accruing that power for a long time. They control the message—in the media, among teachers. Politicians are afraid of them. We need to let the politicians know we are the voices they should be listening to.

Call to Action

We believe we have enough support among Republicans in the State Senate. So here’s an immediate call to action for anyone in Texas:

Call the following and ask for an immediate public hearing for the Family Educational Relief Program, SB 1968, as well as a vote in committee followed by a floor vote so it can be sent to the House:

·         Governor Greg Abbott: 512-463-1782, email https://gov.texas.gov/contact.

·         Lt. Governor Dan Patrick: 512-463-0001, and email ltgov@senate.texas.gov,  info@danpatrick.org or here.

·         Senate Education Committee Chair Larry Taylor, phone: 512-463-0111, and email here.     

 

Constitutional Carry (permitless carry)

screenshot from here

Another legislative priority worth discussing is Constitutional Carry. I think when people use that term, they’re talking about the US Constitutional 2^nd Amendment right to self defense “shall not be infringed,” which means people ought to have the right to carry a firearm without government interference. Texas—while very pro-gun—has allowed concealed carry only with a license. A concealed weapon would be a handgun, so handguns were handled differently from hunting rifles or shotguns.

What this bill is really about is permitless carry. That is, as long as you’re following all the rules a concealed carry permitholder would abide by, you can carry a concealed handgun without a permit.

There are multiple bills trying to accomplish this. As always in the messy legislative process, some get enough attention to move, and others don’t. Thursday, April 15, the House held a hearing on two of these: HB 1927 and HB 1911. HB 1911 was left pending in committee (no vote was taken), but HB 1927 passed out of committee and passed on the House floor, so it was sent to on to the Senate.

The problem is, HB 1927 is not a good bill. I heard from my son shortly afterward it passed the House. He’s a prosecutor and has been working on a case for quite some time now of a gang leader who was charged with illegally carrying a firearm. It is possible to have a permit and still be illegal—because violent gang members are not legally allowed to carry, for obvious reasons. This bill removes the ability to charge violent gang members with illegally carrying a firearm; it facilitates their use of firearms as they carry and deal their drugs through the Texas corridor.

Political Sphere had contacted his representative before the bill’s hearing, but got no response. So I contacted my state senator’s office to see if there was something they could do by way of an amendment during the Senate hearing on the bill. I had met with my senator’s district director in early February. She’s new with the senator this session. She has a background in police work and told me to contact her on issues related to criminal justice. She and the senator had already noticed that problem with the bill. She asked for contact info for my son, and he reports they had a good, long conversation.

Meanwhile, there’s a huge pressure campaign to get HB 1927  passed in the Senate. Any resistance is dealt with as being outright anti-2^nd-Amendment.

Stuff is happening. HB 1927 was referred to the Constitutional Issues special committee, with a public hearing on April 29. Meanwhile, a new bill, SB 2224, was given special permission to be filed (way past the deadline for filing, which was March 12). It has been referred to Administration, which isn’t a normal committee. I believe it is intended to replace HB 1927. It was long, and time was short, but Political Sphere plowed through it, and he’s very pleased. Here’s what he wrote to his state senator:

As a big proponent of Constitutional Carry, I have been following the various bills that have been presented. Unfortunately, the House, in HB 1927 has passed what seems to be an impossibly broken attempt at Constitutional Carry. It is rife with contradictory sections and a completely unworkable framework. As a lawyer who will have to deal with these if it passes, I cannot support this version of Constitutional Carry.

While HB 1911 dealt with many of these issues, I was much more impressed with SB 2224. I was worried that such a rushed bill would have some major problems, but, while there were still a few things missing from my ultimate wish list, I did not find any major problems.

I want to express my utmost support for SB 2224. Please do what you can to see this version of SB 2224 passed by the Senate. Please do not pass HB 1927. As much as I want Constitutional Carry, I want it to have a framework that will hold up through court. That means it would be best to have SB 2224 pass, but would, unfortunately, be better to go without Constitutional Carry than to pass HB 1927. Thank you for your consideration.

Go ahead and use what he says as a pattern, and contact your state senator.

If SB 2224 passes, I think it will then have to go through the House, from scratch, since it’s not just an amended existing bill. People think this is game playing to keep “constitutional carry” from passing. But it isn’t. It is an attempt to keep a self-contradictory and badly written bill from becoming law and affecting criminal justice in ways the public would not intend.

Call to Action

·         Contact your state senator and ask him to support SB 2224, to replace SB 1927. Find contact info here. 

·         Submit testimony for Thursday’s hearing on SB 1927 to oppose it, so that you can support real Constitutional Carry in SB 2224.

o   To testify in person, follow these instructions.

o   To submit written testimony, use this form.      

Electric Grid

image from here

After the disastrous freeze we had in February, there was a flurry of legislation attempting to prevent future power failures. Some of these are:

·         HB 14: Creating the Texas Electricity Supply Chain Security and Mapping Committee, which will be activated to improve coordination and flow of energy during power disasters.

·         HB 1520: Authorizing the Railroad Commission to obtain securitization bonds during power disasters to protect consumers from being saddled with high electric bills.

·         HB 1572: Closing a regulatory loophole to ensure that facilities purchasing temporary emergency generators are not subject to power generation facility regulations.

·         HB 3648: Directing the Railroad Commission to designate "critical natural gas facilities" during disasters, exempting them from load-shedding requirements and ensuring a consistent flow of natural gas.        

These all look to be good and useful bills. All of them passed the House on April 20, and were moved along to the Senate but have not yet been assigned to committee. But they’re at a good stage so far for the session.

I asked a friend, Fred Reitman, who is usually up on electric grid issues, what news he had for me. While he approves of the bills above, he is looking at what he refers to as “pre-February grid issues.”

We’ve been working on the electric grid since long before the freeze. Multiple legislative sessions. The concern is a solar flare (natural) or EMP strike (terrorism or war attack), which could take down the electric grid. (Read here—better yet read this book.) Fortifying it is a relatively inexpensive solution to prevent utter long-term disaster, and could be passed along to consumers fairly painlessly, without undue burden on electricity providers.

So, on that kind of electric grid issue, here’s Fred’s update:

The most important bill is Sen. [Bob] Hall's SB 1606, and [Rep. Matt] Shaheen's companion bill HB 3792. Those are getting nowhere.

SB 1606 has 23 authors, five of whom are on the Business and Commerce Committee. The problem, once again, is Committee Chair Hancock. The committee needs to vote. Hancock is holding that up. And over on the House side similarly Shaheen's bill was assigned to committee a month ago but no hearing yet scheduled. Go figure.

The Senate Business & Commerce Committee Chair is Sen. Kelly Hancock. In his bio he claims all kinds of conservative bona fides. While this ought to be a bi-partisan issue, it’s a wonder yet again why these elected officials aren’t listening to the people.

Call to Action

·         Call and ask for the SB 1606 to be voted on in committee and sent on for a floor vote:

o    Senate Business & Commerce Committee Chair Kelly Hancock, 512-463-0109, email 

·         Call the Business & Commerce Committee members and request that they vote to pass SB 1606 and move it to a floor vote.

o   Committee members listed here. Find their names, and then go to their member page for contact info.

That’s a good day’s work you’ve just been assigned. Do what you can. Get better at it. And then learn to do more. Because, for those of us who love freedom, free market, and civilization, the odds of getting and/or keeping those things are against us—even in a Republican/conservative-led state like Texas.

Gearing Up for the Legislative Session

During the past several legislative session, some friends from the local Tea Party and I have done some citizen lobbying at the local state representatives’ and senator’s offices. In Texas the legislature meets January to June every odd year, so there’s a session coming up. I’m in the process of gathering the ideas we’d like them to be thinking about. And since some of the bill numbers will start being assigned in about a month, I’m drafting a heads-up letter, to let them know what issues we hope they’ll support. This is only a draft so far; I’ll be asking for feedback from the Tea Party, to see if I’m missing anything crucial, or to see if the issues I include resonate with others. Anyway, here’s the communication:

_______________________________________________________________

Dear Legislator,

It’s time to start thinking about the upcoming Texas legislative session, and I know you’re already working on legislation.

During the past several sessions, those of us in the Cypress Texas Tea Party have been following bills, and letting you know what our interests are. I expect we’ll be visiting your local office during the session, as in the past, and talk with your staff. But this year we thought we would start early and let you know the issues important to us—even before there are bill numbers to attach to them.

Right now, this is my assessment and opinion, as the legislative liaison for our Tea Party. Some of our members may differ or have additional/other priorities, which we’ll share with you in our later visits.

Principles of Cypress Texas Tea Party

·         We support the US Constitution and conservative principles in the Texas Constitution.

·         We support low taxes and limited government spending and oppose ever having a state income tax.

·         We support handling each issue at the most local authority possible—with individual and family decisions as the default authority.

·         We support asserting 10^th Amendment states’ rights against usurpation by federal government.

o   We particularly oppose allowing national health care to be imposed on the people of Texas.

·         We support parental rights in the education and upbringing of their children, including local control over spending and curriculum in public schools.

·         We do not as a group endorse candidates, but we provide a platform for sharing information so our members can make informed decisions; individual members may endorse, work for, or become candidates.

These have been our principles since we began in 2010. Issues and policies may change, but we expect to continue to encourage you to work toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization here in Texas.

I’ll present the specific issues we’re interested in under several categories.

State and Citizen Rights Preservation.

Our individual and state rights have been infringed upon by an intrusion and controlling federal government, in direct contrast to guarantees in the US Constitution. There should be several levels of effort toward returning to freedom. First is asserting the 9^th and 10^th Amendments. If a law or regulation oversteps the bounds of the enumerated powers of the federal government, it is up to the states to stand up against the unjust law. Texas is one of the few states large enough and powerful enough to take such a stand.

Among issues that fall into this category are:

·         The Affordable Care Act

·         Refusal to protect the border/Refusal to enforce immigration laws

·         Enforced acceptance of Middle Eastern refugees without adequate vetting

·         Anything related to education coming from the federal government

An additional effort toward freedom is a Convention of the States. We appreciate that Governor Abbott is leading in this multi-state effort with The Texas Plan. As Governor Abbott explains, “The Texas Plan is not so much a vision to alter the Constitution as it is a call to restore the rule of our current one.”

Within the plan, the Governor says, “The Constitution itself is not broken. What is broken is our nation’s willingness to obey the Constitution.” So the purpose of a Convention of the States is to adjust course back to the Constitution. We encourage you to help this idea make it through the legislature this session, so that Texas will be ready to lead other states in this effort.

The most drastic approach to federal tyranny is what we might call Texit—a withdrawal from the United States because the contract of the Constitution has been broken. As in a marriage, the United States are intended to be indivisible, but also as with a marriage there are terms to the covenant that must be kept.

When this issue came up in our senatorial district platform committee, I recommended that we modify the language with an if/then-type statement:

Texas Independence Again! – Should the federal government fail to abide by the 10th Amendment and the rest of the United States Constitution, Texas should hold a referendum asking the people of Texas to decide on whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.

It is the first time this proposal has appeared in the state GOP platform. And at the time we worked on it in the senatorial district, our Senator Ted Cruz was still a strong contender to be our presidential candidate. But the modified language did not remain in the state platform. While the presidential outcome is still unknown, it is highly likely that the Constitution will be ignored, the Supreme Court will fail to uphold the Constitution, and infringements against our freedoms will intensify during the next administration. It may be time to take this idea seriously, and allow the people of Texas to make such a crucial decision.

Immigration and Homeland Security

We appreciate legal immigration. Nevertheless, we still care about border security and illegal immigration, and we’re against sanctuary cities. As mentioned above, we’re concerned about being forced to accept refugees who haven’t been vetted—and we do not trust the federal government to do adequate vetting. We appreciate Governor Abbott’s strong stance on this issue.

One infrastructure concern we’d like you to address is hardening the electric grid. Texas has its own independent grid, so, regardless of the federal government’s lack of action on this vulnerability, Texas can protect its own grid. Costs are relatively low for reaching the minimum levels needed to protect the grid from an electromagnetic pulse (EMT) from either a solar flare or an atmospheric nuclear bomb detonation. Failure to prepare could lead to dire results. I wrote about this here:  http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2016/05/hardening-grid.html. If you need more information to take on this issue with knowledge, there’s a short book by Frank Gaffney, published by the Center for Security Policy, called Guilty Knowledge: What the US Government Knows about the Vulnerability of the Electric Grid, But Refuses to Fix. For updates and more information, try their website SecureTheGrid.com.

Marriage and Religion Protection

In this category, the federal government and the Supreme Court have far overstepped their powers by redefining what a marriage is—and enforcing that new definition on all the states. They have further attempted to infringe on our religious freedoms, and even to make that claim that asserting religious freedom rights as guaranteed in the First Amendment is simply a cover for bigotry. That false narrative must be resisted!

We have previously passed a Pastor Protection Act. We need similar protection for individual citizens and private organizations, so that Texans will not be coerced by a tyrannical government to act against their religious beliefs. We also need to reassert the state of Texas’s right to define marriage without federal interference.

An additional concern this legislative session will be protection against the administration’s attempts to force all public buildings and schools to allow biological males to use women’s restrooms and locker rooms. This misguided attempt to accommodate the extremely small demographic of transgenders creates an opportunity for sexual predators, and disallows women and girls from expressing their discomfort without accusations of bigotry. Texas needs to stand strong against this federal overreach.

Education/Parental Rights

We’re in favor, once again, of the Texas Parental Rights Restoration Act. This is to protect fit parents from the risk of losing custody of their children. This often occurs when extended family, such as grandparents, sue for court-imposed visitation or custody, often because they disagree with the grandchildren being homeschooled or being raised in a religion the grandparents disapprove of. Again, these are fit parents, losing custody of their children, or being drained of their income—at times in excess of $1 million—to defend themselves in one case after another. Every time such a case has reached the Texas Supreme Court, the parents have won. But lower courts have continued to allow this injustice to continue.

It is a basic principle that parents have the right and responsibility to see to the care, education, and upbringing of their own children. Only when parents are unfit should this right be questioned.

We will also support, once again, UIL participation by homeschoolers and other private schoolers, referred to as the Tim Tebow Bill the past couple of sessions. UIL was originated in 1913, when most students in Texas were homeschooled or privately schooled. Six decades later the rules changed to deprive non-public school students from participating. We believe participation for all students should be restored.

There’s a new issue this year that we hope you will support: Educational Savings Accounts. This is a way of incorporating competition and free-market principles in education. Without spending additional money per student, more options open up, and competition may bring on more options and lower costs. Power is placed in the hands of the parents, to design the education that works best for their child, and money stays with the child, so unspent funds can be used the next year or eventually for college. This is already being done in Arizona and other states with surprising success. The Heritage Society and The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice have been studying this issue and recommending how best to implement this for the most students in Texas. I wrote about this issue here: http://sphericalmodel.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-parents-job.html 

Life

The Courts have interfered, yet again, with Texas’s efforts to protect life of both mothers and the unborn, by preventing Texas from requiring clinics from meeting basic surgical center standards. That is unfortunate. But the part of HB2 that prohibited abortion after 20 weeks, when unborn babies are known to experience pain, was upheld.

We believe it would be beneficial to also prohibit abortions that dismember the fetus. Such abortions not only cause additional pain to the fetus, they also cause greater risk, from puncture, or from failure to fully extract all part of the fetus, leading to infection. Such laws have been enacted and upheld elsewhere, and are a logical next step for Texas.

Free and Fair Elections

The Courts have interfered with Texas’s Voter ID Law. It may be possible to retry this effort by addressing whatever failure the Courts claim the law had. We must be able to prevent voter fraud, and some form of photo ID is still a logical and fair step toward that end.

We are against efforts to implement online voting, or any other type of voting that may encourage voter fraud. We are in favor of better safeguards for elderly who vote by mail, to prevent operatives from voting for people who have no say in their vote, or who are coerced or unduly influenced.

We discourage efforts toward a return to paper ballots, which are much more easily compromised by fraud. We encourage requirements to purge voter rolls of those who have moved or died, or who are fraudulently registered.

We encourage efforts to improve security of the ballot, and training of poll workers and poll watchers, so that Texas may be exemplary in voter integrity.

Thank you so much for all the work you do. We look forward to meeting with you during the upcoming legislative session.

Sincerely,

Hardening the Grid

Two years ago I wrote about the book One Second After, by William R. Forstchen, which novelizes the aftermath of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) strike. It’s time to write about that issue again.

Frank Gaffney
photo from
Center for Security Policy

This past Saturday I was privileged to sit in a room with some influential people, and listen to Frank Gaffney, Founder and President of the Center for Security Policy, a national security think tank; Dr. Peter Pry, Executive Director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional advisory board dedicated to protecting the US from an EMP attack and other threats; and others who were trying to get us informed about this issue.

Here’s the short of it: an EMP is a super surge that fries electrical systems. It’s like a lightning strike—only much much more powerful and much more widespread. It can affect any unprotected electronics, from giant transformers down to phones, computers, appliances, cars, and the whole gamut. It can mean that a large portion of our infrastructure—the electric grid—is vulnerable, leaving everything we use electricity for ruined.

There are natural and man-made threats. The natural threat comes from the sun: solar flares. Not just any flare, but really big ones, called a coronal mass ejection. The size to be concerned about is called Carrington class, named for a really big one that happened in 1859, taking down the telegraph system. Telegraph units burst into flame. Even trans-Atlantic underwater cables were affected.

We weren’t at that time dependent on electricity as part of our infrastructure, like we are today. Estimates now predict that loss of power could lead to the deaths of up to 90% of the population in a relatively short time—a few weeks or months. Our food, transportation, communications, and sometimes even air and water depend on electricity. People dependent on electricity for medical conditions might be most immediately affected. It could take up to several years (not days, weeks, or months) to rebuild infrastructure—assuming that the resources still exist outside the affected area.

Dr. Peter Pry
photo from Center for Security Policy

How likely is a large coronal mass ejection? Likely. In 2012 we had the largest one since 1859, and two years ago we had a near miss. It’s sort of like waiting for an earthquake. Chances are, at some point, the big one(s) will come. In the meantime, you can ignore the danger, but ignoring it does nothing to alleviate the threat. Such a solar flare would travel to us at a speed of 3 million miles per hour, so we would have nearly no warning time to prepare.

The man-made threat comes from a nuclear explosion above the atmosphere. Our enemies know our vulnerability. Enemies include North Korea, Iran, Russia, China, and any other bad actors with nuclear capabilities or seeking them. This type of attack is more likely than a nuclear missile attack on land. And since most of our defense technology depends on electricity, our ability to respond would be compromised.

The awareness of our vulnerability has actually been there a while. One of our speakers on Saturday was Texas State Senator Bob Hall, who gave us some history. Back after he graduated from the Citadel, in the 1960s, as a second lieutenant, he worked on the Minuteman Missile program. The Pentagon had become aware that their high altitude tests knocked out power in the islands below. 

Meanwhile, Russian tests knocked out power in the Soviet Union. That led to agreements to halt high altitude tests (underground testing continued after that). So, with the awareness that electronics were vulnerable, Senator Hall’s job was to protect—harden—the missiles.

He eventually left the military and never talked about this, because it had been highly classified. And then a few years ago people started talking about it openly. And he realized it was something he felt called to act on. He calls himself a “recovering political apathetic.” He stepped out of what he retirement, took on being a state senator—and in the last legislative session he carried the bill dealing with this issue.

Even though it’s a trans-partisan issue (we all use electricity, and we’re all vulnerable to the loss of our electricity), it’s just barely reaching people’s awareness. Issues often take multiple times in the legislature to get through. But we remain vulnerable as long as this isn’t handled.

Let me spell out a few important details. Hardening the grid is not technologically difficult. It’s something like putting metal in the right places, so that a surge would hit the metal rather than the electronics within. A Faraday cage is a simple version—scalable to use at home.

We learned Saturday that your home microwave can be used as a Faraday cage—to protect your essential medical equipment or something else, of course only when the microwave is not in use. Another simple home version can be a metal garbage can. Whatever you place inside should be placed in a plastic bag or container, so the electrical object doesn’t touch the metal walls of the can.

Nor is hardening the grid expensive. The entire US could have the basic grid protected for $2 billion. If we gave up a single unconstitutional regulatory program, we could immediately pay for it. Greater protection of the entire infrastructure could cost up to $20 billion. But that investment could come eventually; the immediate insurance should be the basic grid.

There are three electric grids covering the contiguous US states: the eastern grid handles about 75% of the population. The rest is covered by the western grid and the Texas grid. Yes, Texas has its own independent grid. We have no federal oversight. It is our responsibility. We can protect ourselves, regardless of what the federal government does or does not do.

Electricity is essentially a private industry product—85% private in the US. And those of us talking about it are free-market anti-harmful-government-regulation types on principle. So what’s going on? One question that came up Saturday was, why don’t the utility companies do something about this?

The answer isn’t exactly simple. Already in Texas, government officials have offered the money necessary to harden the grid—at no cost to the utilities. And the utilities said, “No thanks; we have it under control.” To this, Senator Hall asked directly if they were ready to be audited for an EMP attack; they obfuscated.

Their workers, board members, and owners will all be subject to the same loss of life and civilization as the rest of us. Yet they refuse to act.

One explanation is that these companies aren’t run by engineers; they’re run by lawyers. Their priority is to protect against liability. In a way, responding that they know the danger exists is an admission that they should have already protected the grid. So refusing to act is a way of refusing to admit knowledge—so their liability is safe.

The best answer I heard Saturday was from Dr. Pry, that the electrical industry is acting similarly to other industries in history. The zeppelin industry insisted on hydrogen, and refused to pay a little extra for helium, claiming they were so careful, an accident would never happen. Until it did. And then the industry was destroyed entirely.

The automobile industry didn’t put safety glass in cars, and seat bests and other safety measures—until public demand followed by government regulation forced them to.

Union Carbide pesticides are another example. They went to Bhopal, India, where they were free from regulation. Until they had an accident resulting in many deaths. This cost them $100 million that they could have saved if they had taken the required safety measures.

There is a natural reaction—put this off. Don’t think about it now. Maybe nothing bad will ever happen.

If the public demands grid hardening from the utility companies, it will happen. But maybe not soon enough. Maybe not until government regulation forces them.

So, that brings us to the what-can-we-do question. It’s time for some citizen lobbying.

There’s an awareness at the national level. At least eleven studies have led to the consensus: “The nation’s bulk power distribution system can be disrupted or destroyed over large areas due to various man-caused and naturally occurring phenomena.[i]” The Shield Act, to harden the grid, has come up in several legislative sessions. But it hasn’t gotten through both houses. The threat of an EMP strike was mentioned by Ted Cruz during one of the presidential debates. All of the Republican candidates have been briefed on the issue,but no one else has made it a priority.

Call your representative and senators; let them know you’re aware of the issue, care about it, see it as essential—and you will hold them responsible.

If you’re in Texas, contact your state representative and state senator. Let them know how urgent you believe this is. If we work during the next several months, we can get them to make it a priority in the next legislative session. Let them know that Senator Bob Hall will be carrying this bill again, and encourage them to sign on with him.

But that means we’re looking at the legislative session that starts January 2017. Most legislation that actually gets through that session gets implemented around September 2017, or even later. That’s another year and a half away, during which something could happen.

This could be handled by executive order. The necessary budget for handling this critical infrastructure could be diverted from other infrastructure funding—right away. Since offering help to the electrical industry hasn’t worked, and since protecting infrastructure is an essential government function, if we let Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick know we care about this, we can get action much sooner.

If you’re in another state, press your governor to act. Once one governor acts, others will begin to follow.

Guilty Knowledge
by Frank Gaffney

If you need more information to take on this issue with knowledge, there’s a short book by Frank Gaffney, published by the Center for Security Policy, called Guilty Knowledge: What the US Government Knows about the Vulnerability of the Electric Grid, But Refuses to Fix. For updates and more information, try their website SecureTheGrid.com.

There’s also the Forstchen book I mentioned earlier; even though it’s a novel, it contains notes on what’s real and where to find that info. As I was researching today I came across a book called A Nation Forsaken: EMP—the Escalating Threat of an American Catastrophe, by F. Michael Maloof. I haven’t read it, but it looks informative.

Last Tuesday, April 26^th, on the Glenn Beck Show, he talked about this issue and other disasters with some experts, including what you can do to protect and prepare yourself at home if the government and utilities refuse to act. I believe he made that episode available without a subscription.

Among the suggestions for preparing for any disaster: have some food and water available to get you by for a while. Start with a three-day kit. Extend to a month. And then extend to a year if you can.

We have been prudent and done that, for a couple of decades, at our house. Long enough that a good portion reached its expiration date. We resupplied about eight years ago. But by then I was pretty limited in my diet. I need a refrigerator in order to eat without poisoning myself. So I’d much prefer hardening the grid—in time—to depending on my personal preparedness.

If you’re not ready to go off grid and live off the land, then this is the time and the issue to take on with citizen lobbying.

---

[i] From the foreword of Guilty Knowledge, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., p. 6.