The Spring Offensive - Raid on Heber Springs: How Garage Innovators are Leading the Charge Against the Status Quo

I received an e-mail this week from my favorite adolescent delusional mental patient expressing his concern about the future of the 100,000 man army we are raising for the express intent of completely changing the world's concept of personal transportation.

It is of course true the world's five largest and most profitable corporations are all oil companies and any one of them features annual revenues greater than the gross domestic product of over 90% of the countries on the earth.  All 50 states tax gasoline sales as the primary means to fund their roadwork , cumulatively about $25 BILLION in tax revenu and are so insanely jealous of those revenues that at least 10 of them have laws on the books or pending to tax electric vehicles, which already comprise nearly 50,000 of our 254 million vehicles here in the U.S.  That's about 0.02 PERCENT of the total.  The U.S. government raises another $25 billion in gasoline taxes and there are 166,000 retail locations selling gasoline at this point within the United States.  12 countries comprising OPEC and most of the middle east have a vested interest in the continuation of oil sales.  All major automotive manufacturers have a huge investment in the status quo and some serious problems with their business model, including a small mountain of very profitable consumables, when considering a transition to magnetic drive.

With all of that arrayed against us, why do I feel like we have them surrounded?  Well because we very nearly do of course.  And the tiny army of 100,000 we are raising, to convert cars from gasoline to electric one vehicle at a time, is perfectly on pace and almost beyond the pace we can manage at EVTV to keep UP with them.

So who IS delusional here?  My little friend in the mental institution, or yours truly?  It very well could be me.  But am I having fun.

Let me provide a little peak under the sheets.  I was born so poor we couldn't pay attention.  In fact, we couldn't afford to live near people who WEREN'T poor so I was probably in my late teens before I realized we weren't actually quite wealthy.  These things being somewhat relative.  I was blessed with a kind of an unusual mind by my parents and grandparents.  And I've had a great and adventurous life since.  Spent my youth traveling the world courtesy of Uncle Sam's canoe club and then did a stint working for the largest and most dicked up corporations in the country - mostly defense contractors.  I retired at age 33, and have since made and lost TWO separate fortunes of almost inconceivable numerics.   Initially in the PC craze and later in the development of the Internet.  Me and Al Gore.  Actually.

And most unusually, I paid VERY close attention not so much to what was happening along the way, nor even why it happened, but more mechanistically as to HOW it happened.  And it is remarkable at this point to near 58 summers with all of that more or less intact while I'm still young and pretty enough to do something about it.

One of the things I learned along the way is that we live in a vast sea of communication, messages carefully and artfully crafted and delivered at no small expense, for the express purpose of manipulating us, not just in our information but even down to our emotions and sense of well being.  It is an enormous curtain hiding the wizards and it is almost entirely SURREAL.  It has no reality component at all.  It is a totally false image, constructed by a huge NUMBER of entities for their own very pecuniary purposes, in a totally cynical fashion.

You may have noted that I'm almost entirely unaffected by the "opinions" and "beliefs" of online poseurs, but to some degree even of our own viewers.  You see I don't believe those ARE your opinions.  Or your beliefs.  I think they were programmed into you by the machine.  Very deliberately.  Very cynically.  And on a MASSIVE  scale.  I am deeply and personally devastated by each and every one of you that accepts that uncritically, and absolutely hysterical with relief and joy each time I meet another sentient who is resistant to it and questions it.  They tend to be kind of crabby old guys who just never bought in.

Some examples.  Al Gore.  A 24 year old titty blonde newscaster was doing an interview of Al Gore during the 2000 Presidential Election.  In one of his replies Vice President Gore made the mark that "Back when we created the Internet......blah de blah blah...."  The newscaster immediately recognized her scoop and ticket to fame, fortune, and career success and armed with all the skills and intelligence it takes to make it through make up and a mic check brayed HYSTERICALLY that Al Gore had made the preposterous claim that he had invented the Internet.  This was picked up by every national news organization and of course every Republican pundit and strategist and by the end  of the week Al Gore was painted as a total moron and a liar to boot.  He lost the election by such a narrow margin that they were examining paper dust and "chaff" from the machines in Florida for a couple of MONTHS before the election was finally decided by the Supreme Court and to this day 99.99% of the population recalls this as the MAIN feature of Al Gore - that he claimed he invented the Internet.

The very uneasy 0.01% are the guys who where there when he did.  Actually, he never claimed to have "invented" the Internet, he said "Back when we created the Internet" with a very editorial "we" but it was true he implied he was part of it. Actually he was.  Early and often and long for MANY years.  And so involved that as our only real champion on capitol hill, he waited until the perfect moment in the perfect storm, when the NSFNet was scheduled to pull the plug and six or seven companies were poised to put billions into it, if anyone could just define what it WAS and whether it would survive without DARPA.  The perfect chrysalis in the super saturated solution, he introduced the $1 BILLION National Education and Research Network bill - NREN and with NO ONE on capital hill except him, then a Senator, knowing what was in it or why we would want to do that, got it passed by a huge majority just on personal tickets and tokens owed.  NOBODY in either house had any clue what it was except Al Gore.  But it was only a billion dollars and he was good for it politically, by chit, token and trade.

NREN, which stands for National Research and Education Network, was the central feature of the High-Performance Computing and Communications program, legislated in 1991.

I hope you DO understand that this was three years prior to the release of the first browser for Microsoft Windows - November of 93, a story we broke in January 1994. There was no World Wide Web as you know it prior to that. And that 1991 legislation was at the end of YEARS of being active in the use of the Internet and participating in discussions of schools and school children and libraries and so forth being linked globally that Al Gore was always enthusiastically in the middle of.

It was designed to upgrade the existing NSFNet (the central U.S. component of the Internet) to higher bandwidths (initially 4 GB/sec) primarily to meet the needs of heavy-duty scientific and engineering applications. NREN (also referred to as "Gore I") was the legislative outcome of a long campaign by then-Sen. Al Gore.

Today there are hundreds of NRENs around the globe, all following this model. And the outgrowth of our own is a network now termed

Internet2

So here is an example of something 99.99% of the population knows, and believes, and has an opinion on.  Just one problem. It is COMICALLY untrue by any measure or point of view. A total lie started by an ignorant girl child with a microphone, but that spread through the population to the point that if you mention his name, the normal response is a reference to his claim to invent the Internet.

I can give you hundreds of these examples.  We owe $16 TRILLION dollars to other countries, mostly China and the Middle East, via our U.S. Treasuries and that debt has to be repaid and will burden our children to the nth generation.

Actually the largest holder of U.S. treasuries, some 75% of the total, is the Social Security Administration. Yes, they took the money you sent in and "invested it" - in U.S. Treasuries. They took the "proceeds from the sale and SPENT it, like drunken sailors and whores. Now they ponder the implications of this "serious problem" and the Obama solution is to RAISE YOUR TAXES to pay for the shortfall they stole?

Drinking and driving is the number one cause of fatalities on the U.S. road system.  EVERYONE knows this, EVEN the drunk drivers.  It is just a given.

Except the only point where we would know is the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration database.  And THEY annually put out a document on drinking and driving and alcohol that is curiously unscientific. In fact it reads more like a religious tract. And it is in SPITE of the data in their own database.

Look through their database. It's open to the public.  It's terribly technical and convoluted.  But take a week like I did, pull it down and start looking at it through various sliceways.  EVERY auto accident involving a fatality has to be reported by law enforcement to this entity.  Alcohol involvement has held absolutely steady at 40% for the entire reporting period where that has been the law.  In fact, in contrasting and comparing the various data elements contained in the database, you will FAIL completely at drawing any connection between drinking and driving and fatal accidents.  There is a correlation at 40%.  But nothing, including all the enforcement, increased penalties, longer jail terms, MADD mothers, et al, appear to have moved it at all and the rise and fall of fatalities is almost totally disconnected in any mathematical sense from the reported alcohol involvement.

The leading cause of traffic fatalities is evidenced by the direct rise and fall in the percentage of the driving population between 17 and 25 years old in total tandem with the fatality rate.  That's right.  Mothers can be MADD as hell.  But the adolescents are NOT in danger of the drunk drivers.  It would appear the drunk drivers are victims of the adolescents.

If you ask any police officer how they know to stop a driver for a sobriety test, you would think it would have to do with speeding and weaving and running over trash cans. Not. They are driving too slow and they always have their brights on. Why? They're drunk. Their reactions are IMPAIRED. And they don't want to have a WRECK.

But like Al Gore, you already KNOW the answer.  And no amount of data is going to ever change that.  Because to do so, you would have to admit to being manipulated, and the whole concept is repugnant to our sense of freedom and worth as individuals.  You BELIEVE you are your own man.  And that your beliefs were the careful consideration of your superior mind.

I could easily show hundreds, not dozens but HUNDREDS of examples of this to both small degree and large.  In reality, there are millions.  Because you have millions of entities churning out press releases, studies, and television interviews, all with an ax to grind, to the point that the message ALMOST becomes the reality.

But it doesn't quite.  Reality continues undisturbed actually.  It has no opinion.  It has no belief system.  It just is.

The GREATEST LIE OF ALL - essentially Satan's great lie, is that you as an individual are POWERLESS in the face of forces MUCH greater than you.  Vaster, more numerous, measured in millions and billions and brazillians of dollars, people, springbok mating on the Sarenghetti plain, and gallons, and barrels and cars and well - everything.  Huge corporations.  Armies.  Air planes.  Guns.  The President.  The Congress.  We can only hope and pray that THEY somehow act on our behalf because we as individuals are essentially powerless and MIGHT AS WELL GO BACK TO THE COUCH AND WATCH HOW IT PLAYS OUT ON THE TELEVISION.........

Is there a clue there?  Was that a crack in the window?  Did the curtain just blow an inch, revealing a sliver of a sole of a shoe?

All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing....  You don't have to JOIN the Evil.  Just stand aside.  Take it easy...  Relax...   There's nothing you can do anyway.  You're just one guy.  You can't even get permission from your own wife.  And how would you do anything anyway???  You're busy all the time just eeking out a living...

Comically.  Hysterically comically.  The underlying JOKE beneath the GREAT LIE.  You are the ONLY one that can change ANYTHING.

Look about the room you are in.  Every object in it.  However minute (door hinge pin) or vast (Aircraft Carrier, World Trade Center) ALL of it.  ALL of it.  Each piece started out as an idea in ONE person's mind.  Not two.  Not three.  Not 30 brazillion.  ONE person conceived of it first.  And it grew from there.  And the early days of growth were funded and executed by OTHER individuals, ONE person at a time. Mano a Mano.  Eventually, it hit the tipping point and became common knowledge throughout the population.  And today MOST of us have cell phones.  Steve Jobs technically did not invent it. Most of us are on the Internet. And no, Al didn't actually INVENT it. And Jack Rickard did not invent in any sense or aspect the electric car.

Today, you have no choice.  You are BOUND to go to the gas station and feed the monster with an extraordinary portion of your income just to move freely about the planet.  And feed the monster you will because it very much wants to be fed, and you very much want to go where you want to go.  Despite the fact that the exhaust fumes are gradually coming to light not poisoning the planet, not causing "global warming" but apparently directly causing autism, cancer, Alzheimer's and a host of other "modern" diseases that just really weren't much of a gig a hundred years ago.

You ALWAYS KNEW you could kill yourself by shutting up in a garage with the motor running.  But somehow the thought of 250 million of them all starting up each morning with a great bellow and roar would be a free pass because they WEREN'T shut up in the garage??  They were out in the "fresh" air?????

And we are funding the largest transfer of wealth from one country to another in the HISTORY OF THE WORLD. To countries that believe we ARE Satan and must vow to the death to destroy us.

You see the great machine works on TWO fronts.  That that it tells you.  And that that it rather pointedly does NOT tell you.  Like the fact that Social Security is the greatest global ponzi scheme ever invented and if Barney is in jail, so should be every President, Congressman and Senator who has served in the last 75 years.

There were a couple of hundred people involved even casually with the Internet when I first encountered it.  Today it sports 4.7 billion.  There were no accidents.  It grew organically for very specific reasons every step of the way.  One guy, to another, to another.  It merged parallel efforts in commercial online services, electronic bulletin boards, Fidonet, a dozen "other" nets.  And ultimately the entire landline telephone system, the cellular telephone system, satellite communications, intercontinental fiber networks and at the moment it is chomping down on television radio, and the conscious minds of the entire planet.

Bonjour.  I'm a French Model and I wouldn't lie to you on the Internet.

In reality, the only way ANYTHING happens is by individual initiative.  By the scant few people who never quite conform to the norm.  Who rebel at feeding the machine.  The status quo does not serve. Where the yoke rubs the shoulders a little too raw.  And if the solution they find serves to free them, even in a small way, they pass it on.  And others , increasingly uncomfortable with the game dealt, likewise adopt it.  It grows slowly at first, but with every individual that joins, the mass grows and begins to expand logarithmically.  And something in our nature, when it reaches about 8 or 10% of the population, it flashes over in the space of a weekend and becomes, very much, the new norm. The tipping point.

The beast immediately ingests it, and begins the long laborious task of rewriting it's history, changing it's meaning, and attempting to manipulate its future.  But it IS the new normal.

Today, the advantages of globally and universally converting our need for personal mobility to magnetic drive from explosive burning of noxious liquids is so obvious, I need not sell it.  We're all about spreading it, how to do it, one guy to another on what is at first a slow march up the logarithmic hill.  EVTV is not very much about why.  It's more about how. Those who "discover us" were already increasingly uncomfortable that "something ain't right" about this gasoline thing and the prices that don't seem connected to anything. If it's all about the price of oil how come these companies are making more money than the Catholic Church and the Federal government. And why are our kids coming home maimed and dead after fighting over empty desert and rock cliffs? And oil....

Iran. Working on nuclear weapons. Weapons of mass destruction. Or maybe a threat to Israel. Or maybe a help to Syria. Or maybe because they imprisoned a missionary journalist monk who just happened to work for the CIA. But somebody has to do something about those guys. It's the American way.

Actually it's because they set up an oil trading bourse on Kiche Island and wanted to trade oil for currencies that were NOT U.S. dollars. Ergo the economic embargo. By the way, that exact action predated our invasion of Iraq a few years earlier. Nuclear weapons worked then. Why not now? In reality, our leaders are terrified of the U.S. dollar's status as a reserve currency around the world to buy oil eroding in the slightest. You were duped for Iraq. And they want to do it again with Iran. And it is ALL about oil. And they'll murder your children to do it. Not THEIR children but YOURS would be ok.

Unemployment falling at last? No. We've moved over 10 million of them from UNEMPLOYED to DISABLED in four years.

My personal hero this week, is an 85 year old retired engineer from an aluminum plant, who starting in 2003 began a long quest to convert a brand new Toyota pickup truck to electric drive.

This afternoon I'll take that truck for a drive.  Thanks Gerry Botteron.  You're my hero.  And no, I never bought into any of that shit either.

Our move into component sales has had one very interesting effect quite beyond the economic, which we never paid much attention to anyway.  It puts us very much in touch with the new blood, the new builders, the new projects just starting life.  And I'm pleased to report that it is at a pace of growth that it is all we can do at EVTV just to keep abreast of, and report on.  We don't lead anything.  We hold up a lens so you can SEE it going on. And you can do it yourself. But one camel sneeze and we're in deep camel do-do. We can only grow so fast at a comfortable pace.

And so no, we have fortunately not reached the steep part of the curve.  But it is building very surely and very stably as more and more individual men, and it is of course 99% guys, take charge of their own personal mobility and build themselves a way out of feeding the monster. There's a bit of rebellion going on here. A bit of "wait a minute..." happening. At any cost.  At any effort.  And not because it makes any sense at all.   They are simply done participating willingly in something that they have uneasily come to realize is total nonsense and doesn't need to be that way.  At least not for them. They've had enough, without being absolutely certain what it is they've had enough of. But they know something isn't right here....

The question DOES have to be begged...if you can do this for yourself, in your own garage, with hand tools, what the hell IS going on?

Will this grow?

Uh...yeah.  It will grow.  And yes, I will take deep joy and personal satisfaction as it grows from a few sad whacky apologetic but a little bit angry guys in their garages to a mighty army plowing down the road silently, subsuming all that lies before it.

As I've said.  I've had a great life. And it just keeps getting better.....

It's not precisely electric. A shaver is electric. A car is Lithium Powered Magnetic Flux Drive. And if we hit the Warp button, you might be best advised to get the hell out of the way.... I'm liquored up. I've been playing with high voltage. And I'm going for a drive....

Jack Rickard