ModeShift | At the Frontlines of the Global Transition

2021 Will Be Better; The 2020s Will be Great

by Keith SchneiderDecember 27, 2020December 28, 20200

There really is not a way to hit on a word, or even an assembly of words, to adequately encompass the tough, dangerous, and ultimately exceptional year that 2020 has been. Next year will be better. And the 2020s promise to be a decade of real progess. During this decade technology and ecology will marry more firmly than ever to produce pathbreaking achievements in sectors that really matter— energy, transportation, agriculture, climate, resources, and manufacturing. …

Trump’s Big Lie Like Other Big Lies – They Exact A Cost

by Keith SchneiderDecember 12, 2020December 12, 20200

BENZONIA — So here we are weeks from the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as president and vice president. A viral disease is infecting over 200,000 Americans and killing nearly 3,000 of us daily. A manic, insane sitting president remains in office, unmoved by the pandemic and acting out the anarchic farce that he won the election. The most charitable assessment is that the weeks since the election revealed, certainly for the majority …

Benzie County’s Summer and Fall COVID Tourist Economy – Surprise! – Was Very Strong

by Keith SchneiderDecember 5, 2020March 7, 20210

BENZONIA — On May 15, persuaded that COVID-19 infections and deaths were convincingly low, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) lifted the executive order that for eight weeks had closed most businesses in Benzie and neighboring Northern Michigan counties. Six months later, as COVID-19 infections and deaths mounted as never before in Benzie and the rest of the state, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services reinstated parts of the shutdown—calling for a three-week “pause”—from November …

Joe Biden’s Smashing Victory and What It Means For America

by Keith SchneiderDecember 3, 2020December 12, 20200

BENZONIA — One of the oddities of the 2020 presidential election is how Joe Biden’s smashing victory was greeted by such discouraged enthusiasm by his supporters. You’ve heard it. Democrats lost seats in the House. Republicans hung on to seats polls predicted they would lose in the Senate. Though Trump was soundly defeated, too many Biden supporters worry that he will somehow retain relevancy. Well, as Joe Biden would say, here’s the deal. Biden walloped …

Biden Wins White House. Dancing In the Streets; Dying in ICUs in the Dakotas

by Keith SchneiderNovember 8, 2020November 8, 20202

SOMERSET, KY. — Well, step one is a wrap. Every time Americans have confronted grave peril, we’ve displayed the good sense to pursue a saner path. We did that last week. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won election on the most progressive political agenda of our lives. It calls for beating the novel coronavirus. Improving our health care and health insurance systems. Ending racial and gender violence and systemic injustices. Working with allies and competitors …

Forget The “What Ifs.” Actual Data Portends A Big Biden Win

by Keith SchneiderOctober 29, 2020October 29, 20201

SOMERSET, KY. — Like an early fall snow flurry, the “what ifs” are swirling as Election Day nears. What if the polls are as wrong as they were in 2016? What if voting machines are hacked? What if armed Trumpsters show up at voting stations in heavily Democratic regions? What if the Justice Department finds a way to interfere in the count? Here’s my response. It’s not a “what if.” It’s an analysis of data …

As Virus and President Rage, Biden Steps Closer to Election Victory

by Keith SchneiderOctober 28, 2020October 28, 20200

SOMERSET, KY. — The nation is six days away from Election Day. The virus is infecting more people than ever before in the United States. The number of daily deaths has climbed above 1,000 again. The president is gathering his cult in super-spreading rallies in swing states, including those with raging disease, and insisting the pandemic is a figment of news media exaggeration. Joe Biden, campaigning in Georgia, Florida, Arizona, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania — …

Hatched In Trump’s Rhetoric, A Supremacist Plot To Kidnap Michigan and Virginia Governors

by Keith SchneiderOctober 14, 2020November 27, 20200

In this era of the anti-American president and his psychotic “law and order” campaign, it is easy to move past the import of what happened just six days ago. The F.B.I. infiltrated a cell of domestic terrorists and arrested 13 white men connected to the Wolverine Watchmen. The men were charged with plotting to attack the Michigan capital in Lansing and kidnap two United States governors — Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Ralph Northam of …

Biden vs. Trump: It’s A Greg Fogle Campaign Moment

by Keith SchneiderOctober 6, 2020November 27, 20200

BENZONIA — With less than a month from Election Day, we’ve come to the Greg Fogle moment of the 2020 presidential election campaign. Fogle was a big, bullying energy industry executive who unwittingly served as an ally in a grassroots campaign I helped organize in Michigan in the mid-1990s. Donald Trump is now playing the same role in the 2020 campaign. Let me explain. Back in the mid-1990s, when the natural gas industry was clearing …

Donald Trump and George Armstrong Custer: Lessons in History

by Keith SchneiderSeptember 27, 2020November 27, 20200

BILLINGS, Montana – About 1,000 people a day make their way off Interstate 90 and head a few miles north to the Little Bighorn Battlefield, a national monument in eastern Montana. Established in 1878 , the memorial’s mission has evolved. Initially it was meant to honor the 210 American cavalry troopers, including their commander George Armstrong Custer, who died on June 25, 1876 in a “last stand” against a much larger mounted war party of …