“There's still people on social media who say, ‘You know, we should just shut up and suck it up. We can get through the winter, even if it's a bit colder.’ But it won't be a bit colder. It might end up being a lot colder and there might be energy rationing, which is the worst case scenario. I think it will be a brutal wake up call for those people.”

Irina Slav is an energy journalist who writes about energy, mining, and geopolitics for Oilprice.com with occasional gigs for Seeking Alpha and other news outlets. She also has one of the best substack columns writing on energy. During this interview, we discussed her essay titled, Life with Energy Scarcity 101 (https://irinaslav.substack.com/p/life-with-energy-scarcity-101).

Follow Irina’s work on Substack (https://irinaslav.substack.com) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/SlavEnergy).

About The Political Economy Project

The Political Economy Project is seeking to create a blueprint to unify our fellow humans on a common purpose to work together based on a harmony of interests of the human spirit leading to a new cultural and economic renaissance.

The Political Economy Project is an EML Publishing brand produced by Evan Matthew Papp and we are a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. Support media, authors, artists, historians, and journalists, who are fighting to improve the prosperity of the working class everywhere.

Follow our work on Substack at: https://politicaleconomyproject.substack.com or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PolEconProject. 

#PoliticalEconomyProject #LaborRadioPod #PoliticalEconomy

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“Workers increase their standard of living and increase their wages through the class struggle, but there's limits to what that can bear if the economy in which that class struggle is happening isn't growing and isn't producing surplus.”

Christian Parenti, Professor of Political Economy and Author of Radical Hamilton - Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder

Christian Parenti is Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, CUNY (City University of New York). His books include “Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder" (Verso 2020), "Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence" (2011); "The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq" (2004); "The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror" (2002); and "Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis" (2000/second edition 2008). As a journalist he reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America for The Nation, Fortune, The London Review of Books, The New York Times, and other publications.

Learn more at: https://www.jjay.cuny.edu/faculty/christian-parenti.

About Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder 

In retelling the story of the radical Alexander Hamilton, Parenti rewrites the history of early America and the global economy. For much of the twentieth century, Hamilton—sometimes seen as the bad boy of the founding fathers or portrayed as the patron saint of bankers—was out of fashion. In contrast his rival Thomas Jefferson, the patrician democrat and slave owner who feared government overreach, was claimed by all. But more recently, Hamilton has become a subject of serious interest again. 

He was a contradictory mix: a tough soldier, austere workaholic, exacting bureaucrat, sexual libertine, glory-obsessed romantic with suicidal tendencies—and pioneer of industrialisation. As Parenti argues, we have yet to fully appreciate Hamilton as the primary architect of American capitalism and the developmental state. In exploring his life and work, Parenti rediscovers this gadfly as a pathbreaking political thinker and institution builder. In this vivid portrait, Hamilton emerges as a singularly important historical figure: a thinker and politico who laid the foundation for America’s ascent to global supremacy and mass industrialization—for better or worse. 

You can buy Radical Hamilton: Economic Lessons from a Misunderstood Founder from your favorite bookseller.

About The Political Economy Project 

The Political Economy Project is seeking to create a blueprint to unify our fellow humans on a common purpose to work together based on the harmony of interests of the human spirit leading to a new cultural and economic renaissance.

The Political Economy Project is an EML Publishing brand produced by Evan Matthew Papp and we are a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network. Support media, authors, artists, historians, and journalists, who are fighting to improve the prosperity of the working class everywhere.

Follow our work on Substack at: https://politicaleconomyproject.substack.com or on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PolEconProject. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit politicaleconomyproject.substack.com

“Power is a good thing for people to have. It can be misused by ugly cliques who take over governments or who exercise some coercion on people or make people degrade themselves and help them to do that. But power in history is what we're aiming for, the power of human beings to do good.”

Anton Chaitkin

Historian and Author of Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I - 1750s to 1850s

Anton Chaitkin is a historian and author and we discuss his newest book Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I - 1750s to 1850s, which provides a new understanding of the industrial revolution and the strategic context for America’s founding.

Anton Chaitkin has been an activist since his childhood in the 1950s. In the early 1930s, his father, Jacob Chaitkin, a pro-Franklin Roosevelt lawyer, had blocked some of the Wall Street financial arrangements with Hitler, and was legal counsel for the American Jewish Congress boycott against Germany. Anton grew up committed to justice, with a strong sense of the realities of power politics.  Chaitkin has provided original historical analysis of  American history, in hundreds of articles and in two books, Treason in America, from Aaron Burr to Averell Harriman -- a 600-page unveiling of the Eastern Establishment as the tory-British-racist-imperialist faction -- and George Bush, the Unauthorized Biography.

Learn more at: https://www.antonchaitkin.com.

About Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I - 1750s to 1850s

A half century ago, the Anglo-American Establishment reversed the policies that made America rich, powerful, and humane. They erased our former way of thinking from public memory. They took away from us our original national mission: gaining scientific control over nature to uplift mankind. They falsely inserted their own goal – power for the few over the many – into our history, so that no remedy from our real heritage seemed possible.    This explosive book by the masterful investigative historian, Anton Chaitkin, restores that stolen American legacy.  The secret to modern history is that all the great breakthroughs in technology were deliberate projects for the improvement of humanity. Chaitkin takes you behind the scenes, to see the two sides struggling to control American policy: nationalist statesmen and industrial innovators, versus the British empire, Wall Street and the southern slave owners. 

You can buy Who We Are: America's Fight for Universal Progress, from Franklin to Kennedy: Volume I - 1750s to 1850s on Amazon. About The Political Economy Project 

The Political Economy Project is creating a blueprint seeking to unify our fellow humans to work together and create a new renaissance and a harmony of interests of the human spirit.

The Political Economy Project is an EML Publishing brand produced by Evan Matthew Papp and we are a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network.

Support media, authors, artists, historians, and journalists, who are fighting to improve the prosperity of the working class.Follow our work on Substack at: https://politicaleconomyproject.substack.com/.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit politicaleconomyproject.substack.com

Shorting the Grid

Shorting the Grid, The Hidden Fragility of Our Electric Grid is an exposé of the insider-ruled practices of the “deregulated” areas of the United States electric grid. The grid in these areas is managed by a regional transmission organization (RTO). Within these organizations, no group is responsible or accountable for grid reliability. The RTO areas have higher retail electricity prices, no way for ordinary citizens to influence decisions, and a more fragile grid. Using the rules and history of the New England grid as an example, the book shows how RTO areas are moving steadily to a future of “rolling blackouts” where the grid operator deliberately cuts power to one section of the grid after another. To by the book, visit www.meredithangwin.com

Book Reviews

“An eye-opening exposé of our grid’s vulnerabilities. The “deregulated” grid is highly political, secretive, overly complex, and unable to meet public needs like reliability, affordability, and low pollution. If you take for granted that the lights go on when you flip a switch, this book may blow your mind. ”

— Joshua S. Goldstein, author of A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow

“Reading Angwin’s book is like chatting with an expert who helps you understand the underlying engineering, finances, and policies creating the risks. Her narrative moves back and forth between insightful overviews and specific examples. The book covers many grid attributes, suggesting realistic conclusions without ideological advocacy.” 

— Dr. Robert Hargraves, Author of Thorium, Energy Cheaper than Coal and co-founder of ThorCon Power

About Meredith Angwin

As a working chemist, Meredith Angwin headed projects that lowered pollution and increased reliability on the electric grid. Her work included pollution control for nitrogen oxides in gas-fired combustion turbines and corrosion control in geothermal and nuclear systems. She was one of the first women to be a project manager at the Electric Power Research Institute where she led projects in renewable and nuclear energy.

In the past ten years, she began to study and take part in grid oversight and governance. For four years, she served on the Coordinating Committee for the Consumer Liaison Group associated with ISO-NE, her local grid operator. She teaches courses and presents workshops on the electric grid.

She is also an advocate for nuclear energy. Her previous major book was Campaigning for Clean Air: Strategies for Pro-Nuclear Advocacy. Meredith has been a featured speaker at several nuclear events, including being keynote for the worldwide Nuclear Science Week in 2018.

Additional Information

During the interview, the following platforms were mentioned that will help better inform the public. Sign up for free information to increase your awareness about energy, power, and the grid. 

* Grid Brief - www.gridbrief.com 

* Utility Dive - www.utilitydive.com

* DeCouple Media - www.decouplemedia.org 

Thanks for reading The Political Economy Project! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

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The Emergency Banking Act (EBA), was an act passed by the United States Congress in March 1933 in an attempt to stabilize the banking system.

On March 12, the evening before banks began to reopen, FDR gave his first fireside chat, a national radio address explaining the alterations made by the federal government on the banking industry. Due to confidence in FDR and the proposed alterations, Americans returned $1 billion to bank vaults in the following week.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Banking_Act

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They got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credit: CMO, CDOs, SIVs, ABS…So Mr. Banker starts leveraging his interest 50 to 1, with your money because he could. 40% of all American corporate profits came from financial services, not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public.The mother of all evil is speculation, leveraged debt, borrowing to the hilt, it’s a bankrupt business model, won’t work.It’s systemic, malignant and is global like cancer.It's a disease and we got to fight back.How are we going to do that?How are we gonna leverage that disease back in our favor? 

Excerpt from Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

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“The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty…”

President Abraham Lincoln, April 18, 1864

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the…people…are much in want of one. 

We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. 

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor.

Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name---liberty. 

And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names---liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty… 

Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures…all professing to love liberty. 

Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. 

Recently, as it seems, the people…have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf's dictionary, has been repudiated.

Full Speech

Additional background 

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Water, food, and energy are the three necessary components sustaining civilization and are thus a universal value of every human.

Learn more at: https://www.empathymedialab.com/politicaleconomy

And watch the video on youtube here.

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...Only a foolish optimist can deny the dark realities of the moment…This is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed through their own incompetence…The unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion. They only know the rules of a generation of self seekers. They have no vision and when there is no vision the people perish.

     President Franklin D. Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address - 1933

Overview

The Political Economy of Labor, Capital, and Oligarchy with Evan Matthew Papp is an Inquiry into how Philosophy, History and Culture shape our world and how dialogue and reason will lead us to a new renaissance based on humanism, art, science,  beloved optimism, and a harmony of interests.

Learn More at: https://www.empathymedialab.com/politicaleconomy

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit politicaleconomyproject.substack.com