Good Night, Prince Sweet

Eric Sweet, my son-in-law who I consider a son, died suddenly of a heart attack on Monday, April 6 [2015]. Artist, teacher, brilliant, radical mind -- he and my daughter Catherine Armbrust clearly worked hard to grow an honest, loving, intensely creative marriage, and succeeded until it ended too soon in their early 40s.

 

The amusing Eric musing.

He also possessed an amazingly rapid and pinpoint wit, and a deep sensitivity for humanity, especially family -- graceful enough I believe to smile at my twist of Shakespeare in this column’s headline.

I loved Eric’s art, his humanness and wit, but most of all I loved the way he loved my daughter.

His website, theericsweet.wordpress.com, will provide you with a comprehensive look at his artwork. What became clear in the memorial held for him last Saturday in Columbia, MO -- where both Eric and Catherine have been teaching part-time and creating art following achieving their Masters of FineArts – was the respect other teachers and students had for his art, and particularly his caring method of teaching.

 

Catherine and Eric royally partying

He wrote a candid and delightful self-profile on Sept. 25, 2013 for a high-school class reunion. That’s quoted below, followed by the last birthday sonnet I wrote to him last September.  Our love and sorrow are deep, as is our connection – much clearer now – with his spirit.

Eric’s Self-Profile

"I guess I will stop lurking and actually contribute to this even though it makes me feel old. In 1988 I attended Mizzou on an art scholarship. After 4 years getting nowhere in school I dropped out in order to party for a while and worked as a full time bartender. In 1994 I tried to move to Alaska with Doug Mittelberg in a half-assed, half-hearted attempt to figure out something to do with myself. I didn’t last long because I realized that you can’t run away from yourself. So he stayed there and I came back to Columbia and kicked around for a while until I re-enrolled in school where I was able to study for a time in Italy and then earned my Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in painting from Mizzou in 1997.

I then moved to Kansas City and got a job designing and building stained glass domes for a restaurant company called G\R interiors and traveled all over the country installing them. I did that for seven years all the while making my own work and taking every opportunity to learn every hand working skill I possibly could. While working at G\R I also worked as a chauffeur, a blacksmith, and dealer of vintage items. From stained glass I moved into warm glass (using a kiln) and finally glass blowing before I decided that I really hate glass in 2005.

That year I began pursuing an MA in Printmaking at UMKC and also began running the art gallery on campus. While at UMKC I curated shows from all over North and South America and one from Ghana in Africa and set the Guinness record for the World’s Longest Linoleum Print. I earned my degree in 2007.

In 2008 I returned to Mizzou to pursue my MFA in Printmaking and earned my degree in 2011. Since then I have been on year-to-year contracts as a professor teaching all levels of Printmaking and Drawing and running the print lab. I don’t consider it a job because I love every minute and I can’t believe they pay me (even though it is not very much) to do it. One thing I especially love is when my students roll their eyes at me when I quote Mrs. Ewalt and tell them they don’t have to do something they get to do it.

My personal artwork merges and expands the definition of drawing and printmaking and explores the failures of idealism viewed through the lens of 19th century mid-western American utopian societies. I am constantly making work and exhibit nationally and internationally and search for tenure track jobs at preferably research universities but really any place that will hire me.

My wife, Catherine Armbrust, and I met in 1994 and were married in 1998. She is also an artist and professor and her work is mainly sculpture that critiques gender roles in modern society. I am constantly in awe of her brilliance.

We have been fortunate to travel most of the world together and are currently working on finding a way to do her dream trip to Greece sometime in the near, but probably far away, future.

In our spare time we like to make fun of each other and everything else and enjoy most outdoor activities and games and spending time with the people we love."

Their tenth wedding anniversary

THE ART OF PRINTMAKING

A birthday sonnet

for my son-in-law Eric Sweet

The art of printmaking, they say, centers

on originality. That just fits

you: a true original. Consider

yourself a monotype, a composite

of man called artist—melded by the Muse

from the best who’ve come before. When Rembrandt

etched his amazed selfie, or Goya fused

his “Disasters of War,” or Vallotton

kissed his “Cogent Reason,” surely they sensed

something in your waiting soul, your mustached

mouth pressing your wife’s loving cheek—presence

of all that’s human. When Dürer’s eye flashed

upon St. Jerome in his study, surely

he sensed your wit in the great scholar’s psyche.

Roger Armbrust

September 15, 2014

(This column originally appeared in reality: a world of views.)

U of Texas Gunners Stay No. 1 in Wins/Killings

The University of Texas Longhorn Gunners re-holstered their top National Campus Carry ranking Saturday by defeating No. 7 Oklahoma State with 1,245 confirmed killings to 1,207 before a crowd of 94,356 screaming survivors in Longhorn Stadium.

It took a rally by Longhorn captain Barry “Shooter” Bummer, considered the favorite for this year’s national Marksman Trophy, in the last five minutes to bring Texas from behind. The Horns trailed the Cowboys 1,195 – 1,107 with 5:32 left in the game.

Then Bummer, famous for his late-game barrages, found cover behind a body pile of OSU reserves and mowed down a bevy of Cowpoke alums attempting to get a final beer near the east end zone stands.

Bummer then assured the victory with direct hits on each of the Cowboy marching band as they tried to rally their team with a rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff”.

 Bummer mumbled humbly following the contest:

“I have to credit my entire team and our coach Stud Stetson. You can’t massacre a mass of humanity without a solid support system.”

Cowpoke alums mowed down while getting beers.

Sharpshooter Bummer led all scorers with 434 kills and wounding only 49. He also garnered the sportsmanship trophy for the fewest number of murdered children: 19. OSU’s All-American gunner Rance Limpid led the Cowboys with 381 kills, 93 wounded and 35 dead kids.

After the game, Coach Stetson confided:

“OSU packs a solid team with a lot of finesse. Some of their best plays involve guys fakin’ bein’ hit by gunfire, fallin’, playin’ possum, then jumpin’ to their haunches and firin’ with deadly accuracy. They got a lot of quick, and hit ya with the good clean lick.”

In other Top Ten games:

No. 2 Oklahoma slaughtered winless Notre Dame 3,254 to 0. Explained Notre Dame coach Gimp Wince following the one-sided Armageddon:

“Ya know, we’re a Catholic school and pacifists. We don’t believe in carrying weapons or harming others. We follow the, ya know, commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ But we believe in good sportsmanship. And, ya know, being Catholics, our faith requires we suffer to pay for our sins. So we suit up and show up and play the game. And who remains lying in the loam or limps away is, ya know, God’s will.”

 

Coach Gimp Wince praying after Irish losses

No. 3 UCLA downed No. 25 Oregon 1,027 to 840. No. 4 Alabama outlasted No. 5 Georgia 1,844 to 1,723, and No. 10 U of Florida upset No. 8 North Carolina 1,455 to 1,440. No. 6 Kentucky and No. 9 Army were both idle.

The National Collegiate Campus Carry Association (NCCCA) reported Saturday night that their computer totals show the PAC 10 and Big 12 leading the nation in killings on the early season with 95,396 and 91,499 respectively.

PAC 10 commissioner Aimin Shure responded Saturday night:

“We’re proud of our guys here out west. But it’s still early in the season. I’m gonna talk to each team’s head coach. I’m gonna stress that they really need to bear down on accuracy. They need more clean killings and cut down on the number of wounded. And, by golly, they need to really concentrate on not assassinating those young folks. It’s bad sportsmanship, and it’s not really good for the nation’s future.”

Rachel Carson Just May Haunt Donald Trump

Ironic vision: Today in Washington, news reports flooded forth of Donald Trump instituting a media blackout at the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as “temporary suspension” of its business activities. Tonight the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) aired its first “American Experience” episode for 2017: “Rachel Carson”, a profile of the brilliant writer, scientist, and ecologist who ignited the environmental movement.  

Rachel Carson, writer, scientist, ecologist

PBS’s two-hour documentary is everything public educational television should be. It traces Carson’s life from a shy, rural-Pennsylvania child drawn to writing, to a highly intelligent collegian who decides to turn from majoring in English to biology, to an experienced researcher who eventually combines both those talents, effecting major change in the public and political sensitivity to the environment.

Carson’s most vital book Silent Spring was published in 1962. Here’s how the PBS website describes the immediate best seller and its impact:

A passionate and eloquent warning about the long-term dangers of pesticides, the book unleashed an extraordinary national debate and was greeted by vigorous attacks from the chemical industry. But it would also inspire President John F. Kennedy to launch the first-ever investigation into the public health effects of pesticides — an investigation that would eventually result in new laws governing the regulation of these deadly agents.

Trump, a climate-change denier who denies he is, has spent his first week in office not only censoring and freezing the EPA; he also has unfrozen and begun advancing -- through executive orders -- completion of two highly controversial oil pipelines: the Keystone XL and the Dakota Access.

As Reuters reported today:

Trump said on Tuesday in Washington that Keystone XL would create 28,000 jobs, but that figure is at odds with a 2014 U.S. State Department environmental study that said the project would create 3,900 construction jobs and 39 permanent jobs.

The $3.8 billion Dakota Access pipeline is being constructed by Energy Transfer Partners (ETP). Said Reuters:

Trump owned ETP stock through at least mid-2016, according to financial disclosure forms, and ETP's chief executive Kelcy Warren donated $100,000 to his campaign.

As we’ve seen, Trump has no problem with misstating facts. Nor with making business deals; and advancing a $3.8 billion pipeline for a $100,000 campaign donation from a company in which he owned stock…that sure looks like a business deal.

We, of course, could see this coming when, following the November election, we wrote for The Clyde Fitch Report our column “Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond”. You might want to read it. You’ll see specifics on how fascism defines Donald Trump, from his beginnings through this week’s continued attacks on our environment and censoring the press and public information.

It leads to visions of Rachel Carson, with her deeply committed care for ecology and humanity’s future, haunting Donald Trump as he signs those executive orders benefitting the dealmakers and their corporate greed, caring not at all for who they sacrifice in the process – including their own and their offspring’s environment.

A Loving Couple Helping Save Lives

Beckham and Karla Allen Collect Shoes, Turn Them into Pure Water for Haiti, Kenya

In July 2011, Beckham Allen led three other members of his Ozark Water Projects team to earthquake-ravaged Haiti. Their mission: to help local Port-Au-Prince citizens survive by setting up pure-water stations in a starving community.

 

Karla and Beckham Allen...and shoes

While Allen and his cohorts worked with residents, digging wells and setting up water-purification systems to provide clear, running water, his wife Karla was back in their Arkansas hometown of Little Rock, continuing to organize shoe-collection drives--their source for raising monies to purchase water-station equipment to help more struggling people survive.

In January 2012, Beckham Allen and another group of dedicated volunteers will travel to Kenya, then to Honduras in early spring, then back to Haiti in July. They’ll spend a month in each country repeating their life-nurturing service. The Allens themselves--Beckham’s a computer project manager by profession, Karla’s a teacher--find this growing service to be life-nourishing.

“Twenty years ago when we lived in Saudi Arabia we went on vacation to Kenya and Zimbabwe,” Beckham recalls. “I fell in love with Africa and was so touched by the people there that I told Karla I didn’t know how, or when, or what, but some day I was going back to Africa and help these wonderful people. For the next 20 years, from time to time, I would tell her, ‘You know I’m going back to Africa, don’t you?’ ”

They stumbled into the shoes-for-water profession through fate and a failing economy rather than planning, eventually leading to Beckham’s return to Africa.

“In August 2010 I got laid off from my job for the third time in four years.  I was watching a Cardinals baseball game one night and they interviewed a guy known as George “The Shoeman.”  George explained how he collects used shoes and turns them into clean water in Kenya.  I looked up George and gave him a call to get more information.  The more we talked, the more I realized what a great project this was, and one that I could do.  I had several thousands of frequent flyer miles saved up for the travel during my previous employment, so I went to Kenya in January 2011 with George.  Needless to say that trip changed my life.  It confirmed that this wasn’t just something I wanted to do, it was something I had to do.”

 

Beckham in Uganda

Karla also plunged into the clear-water project, and while she holds down the new operation in the U.S., she’s aware and sensitive to the needs overseas. And you can tell from her language, especially the term “we,” her spirit is there with her husband and the Ozark team.

“In Kenya, access to water is scarce,” explains Karla.  “There is water but it is 125 feet down.  In that case we drill a well.  If there is ground water, but its safety is not reliable, we put in a water purification system.  Last January, in Kenya, we dug four water wells and put in place five water purification systems. The needs are different in Haiti. There the water is unsafe, so we mainly install water purification systems there.”

Once the Allens decided to dedicate themselves to the shoes-for-water effort, the next step involved getting financially and legally organized.

“We raised approximately $3,000 from a few very special friends,” explains Beckham, “and shortly after that we created a non-profit charity called Ozark Water Projects.  Since our first shoe drive in January 2011, we have collected more than 85,000 pairs of used shoes.  Our goal for 2012 is to raise 200,000 pairs.” 

The Shoe Collecting Process

Ozark Water Projects collects donated used and new shoes year round from businesses, churches, schools, special events and shoe drives.

Then the shoes receive a second life when The Shoeman exports them to retailers in the developing world. The shoes’ resale “provides jobs and affordable footwear. Affordable shoes are a life-saving tool as they protect the new owner’s feet and overall health from foot abrasions, parasites and mites,” according to the Ozark website. “Funds generated from the export of shoes provide well drilling rigs, water purification systems, and hand pump repair micro businesses to bring clean, fresh water.”

 “We have raised about $30,000 this year” from collecting those 85,000 pairs, Karla notes.  She adds that the 200,000 pairs they hope to amass in 2012 should bring about $70,000. Those monies will go primarily for equipment and travel expenses. Since they’re new in the work of forming and activating Ozark, Karla’s still seeing specific numbers unfold.

“The first expense is the purchase and shipment of the well-digging rig,” she states.  “That totals about $35,000, and numerous wells can be drilled with that one rig.  I haven’t seen any cost accounting to allocate that amount out per well yet.  Once the rig is purchased and shipped we estimate that each well is about $6,000. Workers lodge at wherever is available.  On the last trip [Haiti] they stayed at the Lawala community center.  It was basically cinder block rooms with no electricity or water or windows.  This trip [Kenya] they will stay at a local bed and breakfast.  Lodging for this trip will be a lot higher.”

The Shoeman is George P. Hutchings, 62, of Ballwin, Missouri, a former Marine.  In 1994 he founded Eagle Wings Ministries, a 501(c)3 charity dedicated to humanitarian and educational opportunities. His Shoeman Water Projects is a part of that operation. Since 1998, he has visited Kenya repeatedly, shipping supplies including 21,000 meals for orphans, $2 million in medical supplies, dental labs, and neurosurgeons for pediatric facial reconstructions. In 2008, he began to focus on providing clean drinking water.

The Water Providing Process

Last July, Allen went to Haiti with three associates: Chris Allen, Thomas Hankins, and Clay Baker.  They teamed with The Shoeman’s Haiti Water Projects mission team in installing the water purification systems and repairing hand pumps. Each system purifies 55 gallons of water per minute--about 10,000 gallons a day. The systems are located to serve the most people: usually at schools, churches or other public centers open to an entire community. All that’s needed to generate a system’s power: a car battery.

After establishing a purification system, the team trains two people to be responsible for the system and all components at each site, then returns to retrain them on another day. This training includes basic sanitation and hygiene activities. If the new operators have any problems at a later date, they contact the local water minister or the interpreters who are also trained to set up the system.

In 2012, Beckham plans to dig four wells and install several water purification systems in Kenya, followed by more in Honduras and Haiti.

Growing Water Crisis

Morgan Stanley, the investment giant, recently released a report, “Peak Water: ThePreeminent 21st Century Commodity Story”, stressing that the world’s declining water supply and rising demand will prove this century’s major challenge to global civilization. The report also notes that one of the hopeful solutions involves advancements in water treatment and reuse.

The Allens and The Shoeman, in a small but very active and effective way, are responding to that challenge, one community at a time.

(This column originally ran in 2011 on Yahoo! then in 2015 on reality: a world of views.)

Trump and Imprisoning the Internet

A year ago in early December, Donald Trump called for shutting down the Internet “in certain areas” to fight terrorism. He expressed alarm about young Americans drawn to fight for ISIS.

CNN at that time quoted Trump as saying:

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet. We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

CNN’s reporter David Goldman responded that totalitarian governments may do that. The U.S., however, regulates the Internet “very loosely”, with only rare censorship to stop an activity such as child pornography. Goldman added:

“But a full-on ‘closing up’ of the Internet ‘in certain areas’ would be an impossible task. There are so many players with so much redundancy built into the system, that the Internet is not just something that can be turned off with a wave of a magic wand.”

Fast-forward to now, a year later. Donald Trump is the United States’ president-elect, according to calculated electoral votes, but not the popular vote. He’s now in a position to act on his “closing” idea, and appears ready to challenge that “impossible task”.

This has led The Atlantic, a moderate review magazine, to publish a Dec. 5 article questioning “Will Donald Trump Dismantle the Internet as We Know It?” The publication is predicting a coming policy war between Trump’s administration and open-web advocates, particularly over net neutrality: i.e. open access to all content and applications regardless of source, without favor or blocking of websites or the products they advertise.

Early actions by Trump show that the coming conflict is real. Trump’s FCC transition team includes three heavy opponents of net neutrality. And while the Federal Communications Commission does not directly control the Internet, it does oversee the mammoth phone utilities like AT&T and Verizon that link millions of customers to the web. And, of course, Trump will command the National Security Agency (NSA) and Justice Department's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), two agencies craving to spy on the Internet.

The Big Five Plus Two

In an effort to firm up his position, Trump summoned Silicon Valley’s largest tech firms to New York for a meeting next Wednesday, Dec. 14.  It’s being coordinated by Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor and Facebook board member, who supported Trump.  Invitations to the private meeting appear to have gone to Amazon, Apple, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle.  According to The New York Times’s Dec. 6 article: 

"Two Silicon Valley chief executives appeared willing to test the waters: Safra Catz, of the software maker Oracle, confirmed her participation in next week’s meeting with Mr. Trump. So did Chuck Robbins of Cisco Systems, the networking gear maker. 

"Representatives for other leading tech companies, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Apple, declined to comment. A Trump spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a request for comment."

Meanwhile, according to the UK’s The Guardian newspaper, Facebook, Google, Microsoft , and Twitter are uniting to “tackle extremist content”:

"[The four firms] have pledged to work together to identify and remove extremist content on their platforms through an information-sharing initiative.

"The companies are to create a shared database of unique digital fingerprints – known as “hashes” – for images and videos that promote terrorism. This could include recruitment videos or violent terrorist imagery or memes. When one company identifies and removes such a piece of content, the others will be able to use the hash to identify and remove the same piece of content from their own network."

Such actions immediately concern public-access advocates, including no mention by the corporations of an impartial body to monitor the database.

This effort at corporate control of the Internet should fit right in with Trump and his picks for his potential cabinet. They are all big-money corporate execs who want to privatize everything. And, once in power, they will try to, with little concern for the public or the Constitution.

We detailed this Trump attitude in our November column for The Clyde Fitch Report: “Prepare to Fight Fascism: 2017 and Beyond”. We expressed specific concern about the Bill of Rights, including freedom of the press and freedom of expression. We pointed, for starters, to Trump’s trying to control the press by banning certain reporters from his campaign. Most recently, we saw his knee-jerk over-reaction to the TV program “Saturday Night Live” satirizing him.

Come January, expect his efforts to control the press, public expression, and the Internet to expand.

Big Brother: Welcome the College Professor Watch List

Happy Thanksgiving. Honoring the fascist tradition, a new online watch list has just formed to target liberal college professors in the United States, urging students and others to hunt them out and spotlight them.

According to insidehighered.com: 

A new website is asking students and others to “expose and document” professors who “discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”

The site, called Professor Watchlist, is not without precedent -- predecessors include the now-defunct NoIndoctrination.org, which logged accounts of alleged bias in the classroom. There's also David Horowitz's 2006 book, The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. But such efforts arguably have new meaning in an era of talk about registering certain social groups and concerns about free speech…

Professor Watchlist, launched Monday, is a project of Turning Point USA. The group’s mission is to “identify, educate, train and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets and limited government.” Its national college and university field program works to “identify young conservative activists, build and maintain effective student groups, advertise and rebrand conservative values, engage in face-to-face and peer-to-peer conversations about the pressing issues facing our country,” according to its website.

The watch-list website should be a natural playground for the likes of the National Security Agency, which licks up every bit of online data it can on American citizens and the world.

Also, nyulocal.com, which reports on activities at New York University in Manhattan, wrote of Professor Watchlist: 

The site’s founder, Charlie Kirk, is a rising star in the conservative party. He was profiled by The Atlantic in 2015 as young, smart, and inspiring, a spokesperson for the GOP who had a firm grasp on policy and who was an incredibly rousing and charismatic speaker. He, along with Bill Montgomery, founded Turning Point USA, which has a presence in high school and college campuses all over the country. They aim to “re-brand free market values” through grass roots movements. 

In its report, nyulocal.com called the website’s founding “disturbing news”, noting that it so far already lists three NYU professors: Frank Roberts, Arthur Caplan, and Mark Crispin Miller. 

 

The article, as student-aimed writings often do, mixes a little tongue-in-cheek along with serious concerns, noting: 

We at Local were actually a little insulted, because for the number of times we’ve heard that NYU was a petri dish filled with liberal zombies, we were really expecting more of our commie hero professors to be featured. A junior majoring in sociology and philosophy in CAS was genuinely surprised when none of their professors were listed on the website. 

What’s more upsetting however, is that the website features full names and photos of the professors they accuse, and list the University they teach at as well as their supposed offenses.  

The close of the Local article includes an email interview with Turning Point USA. In the interview, TP USA states: 

In order to be included on the list, the story must be documented by a news source or otherwise documented (i.e. a syllabus or powerpoint slides). Hearsay accusations will not be accepted. 

Of course, there are a number of right-wing publications which cater to such “news”. So “documenting a news source” may not be that hard.

You can read the Local article, including the interview here.

Meanwhile, America’s president-elect Donald Trump has picked a billionaire as Secretary of Education: Betsy DeVos. The Washington Post reports: 

Betsy DeVos is hardly a household name, but the Michigan billionaire and conservative activist has quietly helped change the education landscape in many states, spending millions of dollars in a successful push to expand voucher programs that give families taxpayer dollars to pay for private and religious schools. 

This should expand the conservative push to privatize everything from molding young minds to water supply.

If you agree with this, then have a good life. If you disagree, you might want to get organized (you can’t do it alone), get educated, and get active.

Trump, Sensing Deals, Softens on Scrapping Climate Accord

Donald Trump moved toward his presidential election shouting how he denied climate change and would rip the U.S. away from the Paris Agreement. But today, in a meeting with The New York Times editorial staff, he backtracked, “pledging to have an open mind about climate change.”

What caused the pirouette? Why, because he’s a business mogul, of course. He must be seeing some way where his corporate enterprises might make money off the international climate deal.

And why do we say this? Because Trump made it very clear he sees no conflict of interest in owning corporations and being president. As the Times reported this evening about the one-hour interview with Trump:

…Mr. Trump was fiercely unapologetic about repeatedly flouting the traditional ethical and political conventions that have long shaped the American presidency.

 He said he had no obligation to establish boundaries between his business empire and his White House, conceding that the Trump brand ‘is certainly a hotter brand than it was before.’

So the president-elect -- as we predicted in our column “Prepare to Fight Fascism:2017 and Beyond” for The Clyde Fitch Report – will continue his greedy what’s-in-it-for-me corporate attitude.

What probably helped encourage his swayback: Last week he received a joint letter from 365 companies and major investors stressing a “deep commitment to addressing climate change”. According to a Nov. 16 Times article:

‘Failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk,’ the companies said in a joint letter announced on Wednesday in Marrakesh, Morocco, where global leaders are determining the next steps for the Paris deal. ‘But the right action now will create jobs and boost U.S. competitiveness.’

The companies also said that they would push ahead with their own targets to reduce their carbon footprints regardless of steps taken by Mr. Trump once he is in office.

Also, Trump saw on Friday that 48 nations at the Marrakesh meeting pledged to turn to 100 percent renewable energy by 2050. These are primarily countries “disproportionately affected by global warming such as Ethiopia and the Maldives,” according to the UK Independent newspaper.

Trump’s motivation throughout his career has been to “make a deal”. It’s hard to see him not sitting in private with these countries’ heads of state, finagling some way to make each side some bucks off their renewable energy efforts.

Too, Trump must be seeing what’s happening at home. He may have investments in the highly conflictive Dakota Access Pipeline, but he also knows that U.S. renewable energy is moving ahead despite his energy stance. As Bloomberg predicted tonight in its article “Economics Will Keep Wind and Solar Energy Thriving Under Trump”:

On the plains of West Texas, new wind farms can be built for just $22 a megawatt-hour. In the Arizona and Nevada deserts, solar projects are less than $40 a megawatt-hour. Compare those figures with the U.S. average lifetime cost of $52 for natural gas plants and about $65 for coal.

Environmental rules and government subsidies are no longer the key drivers for clean power. Economics are.

That’s why Donald Trump will have limited influence on the U.S. utility industry’s push toward renewable energy, according to executives and investors. Companies including NextEra Energy Inc., Duke Energy Corp. and others that invest billions in power plants are already moving forward with long-term plans to generate electricity with cleaner and more economic alternatives.

Time will tell if Trump has “limited influence” on the renewable-energy push. It will be intriguing to see -- with his sloughing of any interest conflicts between his corporate holdings and his presidency – if he secretly works out deals to benefit from the push. Or if he might just openly say his family is forming new firms to invest in renewables and “help grow the national and global economy”. 

Meanwhile, he has announced he wants to shake up the federal Environmental Protection Agency. As the Times reported:

The president-elect has heightened environmentalists’ fears that his administration will take on an anti-climate, anti-environment bent by appointing the climate contrarian Myron Ebell to lead the E.P.A. transition. Climate change activists have denounced Mr. Ebell, whose Competitive Enterprise Institute has received funding from oil and gas interest groups.

Trump has made clear he wants to make the presidency a new ball game, and craves to form the new rules along with it. With a Millionaire Congress whose members want to become billionaires, and a conservative Supreme Court which Trump desires to make more conservative with at least one new appointment, he might just pull it off.