Interesting twist: The governor of California is currently swanning around in New York City, so the lieutenant governor has the authority of the acting governor until he returns. Acting Governor What's-her-name can sign this bill into law.
Really hoping that all Californians who check in here will be sure to go to the webpage of the Boundless Savage Subhuman Hypocrite (a.k.a. The Worst Governor Ever) and tell him to VETO SB 771. You might add that if he signs this abomination this is the sort of thing that won't look good on that resume he is building, that Doomed Quest, of running for Prez in 2028. If you have the energy after this endless summer, ring the Gov's phone off the hook too. That'll annoy 'em.
Be sure to scroll down the long list of bills on the menu and check the SB 771 box.
What I wrote:
SB 771 should be vetoed. It is an infringement on free speech, no matter what it claims in the text. And if you sign it into law, it will eventually be struck down by SCOTUS as unconstitutional. Meanwhile you will have to defend it against attacks from both the left and the right. There is no upside to signing this bill, please veto it.
I mentioned that in the text of the email I just sent to Gruesome: "Signing SB771 will be a permanent stain on your quest for POTUS." I also cut and paste Article 1, Section 2 of the California State Constitution regarding freedom of speech.
This is Scott Weiner´s lawyer. I demand you send him 1 million dollars now or you´ll be real sorry! And by the way, the correct pronunciation is WAY-NER, nor weener.
I don’t mind your messages Chris even though I tend to be harsh in general about your state. I’ve been there and seen its beauty and its ugliness firsthand. So I get it and appreciate that you love your state and that’s why you do what you do. You always have your posts using proper investigative research and arent just crap piles of hyperbole which makes them if nothing else, interesting and informative reading. THanks for all you do.
Yep, Chris demonstrates here what the old-fashioned Middle America religious folk call The Watchman on the Wall. "It's 11:59, and the Philistines are riding fast."
And of course, culturally, California at one point led the nation. In the sixties, that may have been a positive; musically, Hollywood, questioning Viet Nam, and questioning "authority."
At this point, they lead negatively, and still think they lead the nation. They represent the "authority" that rams shit down its citizens throats "for their own good," in the name of climate warring, trans rights (whatever that is), homeless "advocacy"..... anything on which lots of money can be "funneled," with Hollywood now taking themselves seriously as the moral beacon of the world.
I agree with your second paragraph and I will admit that a great deal of my ire towards Californians is formed by 99% of the expats which have “had to wind up in this God forgotten hell hole”. None I have come across and all have been owners of the houses I was hired to work on for them for whatever it was each had me do. Usually repainting and minor repairs and I always maintained a professional demeanor, but I think it was a form of game to half to be the whipping post of a multitude of reasons they could not stand Texas. The way we drive, that there weren’t enough good places to eat (which surprisingly all never tried local eateries and were complaining about chain stores) I suggested some places and was always told it was good but… only one Trader Joe’s which yes I’m glad we have two now. Best produce in quality and price. Good $3 wine that holds up to wine snobs, some of their spices I like the rest is too pricy for what you get for me but I do t have issue grocery shopping across four stores.
They sold their properties back home. Moved into what equivalent structures in California would be what all burned in Pacific Palasades. As $1.5 - 4M these guys purchased new homes with were enormous upgrades from California and it was complaint after complaint and I dealt with it until they started in on all the people from Texas. Then my attitude became then go home. Quit trying to make Texas California go back and fix your broken state. And they kept coming. All of a sudden they are paying themselves into local politics and now we are dealing with city councils who sue to live. Not in their district as per city charter but elsewhere because the schools where they represent aren’t good enough for their children.
Hell we just had city councils who sue vote themselves raises of $45000/year for a job that they do for two hours once a week and they can’t be bothered to listen to citizens. Local members are following the lead because the new people are well progressive. I’m jaded and wish to strap them to MAC flight air drop pallets and stuff them all i to C5s and once over California air push them out the back of the plane.
But that’s my issue. What you all deal with is well by your own doing and just a different type of problem but ai liar to what we have here. You guys have a communist politician issue, we deal with politics that supersede party through familial ties and old oil money and those who are in state politics here are 4th-5th gen kids who will be the finality of their family’s wealth and oil money dictates what happens here.
Paxtons impeachment defense was paid by Tim Dunn oil man. He paid off the Texas senate through checks and threats of being primaried to ensure his attack dog Paxton would by exonerated and they did it in front of t of the nation and the level of public display of corruption was astounding
Texas biggest issue is infrastructure, no oversite to our water supply, and power grid was placed into the hands of a foreign ow ex co
Pant because the idiots that purchased the software to run it didn’t pay to hire anyone to run it, and didn’t purchase the expansion kit which would allow it to be run locally. They do have a local liaison government entity that is nothing g ore than a warning to us on when the power grid will be shut off for brown outs and that in in climate weather they shut it down because Texas won’t pony up for cold weather emergency backups because that type of cold is a once a decade thing Our water supply is at jeopardy to the water baron who has purchased almost all water rights for naturally produced water. Our underground lakes. That stuff is sold in plastic bottles to the Chinese govt.
Our current fresh water is fracking waste that they have to supply in trucks from the oil fields and the persons who connect the hoses to go from truck tank to holding g tank must be in LVL 5 hazmat protection suits from the high levels of sodium fluoride and other toxins from fracking. The amount of chlorine that they have to use to make it potable needs to be gassed out if you want to make anything with it u less you enjoy the taste of bleach. We all pay for it too. And they always need more and more here are no open financial records the public can see. I’m sure you all deal with similar. But the level of openly hostile municipal governing bodies do what they will when they will. If you work for the city you also are immune to having to be held to the law. Example is I have had two of my firearms stolen from me by a city worker and she sold them to another and those are lost. I do most t know where they are at all. I reported them stolen and because the person who stole them works for the city, the police will not question them or recover my property. And I will still be accountable if the firearms are used in a crime. The police did not process my report through the national database. Which I cannot access to enter a theft report. Which is what my attorney told me. Yeah we all deal with corruption.
I don't get what the big deal is. It says right there in the bill that the "purpose of this act is not to regulate speech." Sure I might get Substack shutdown for saying illegals constantly litter and violate zoning laws or that many gay men became that way as a result of sexual trauma inflicted at a young age, but that's just the price of living in an Our Democracy™. O also you're a bigot, bigot.
"Scott Wiener voted for the bill, in committee and on the floor, which is usually enough information to know which side to take."
Long ago in a presidential election year, the receptionist at one or another doctor's office and I were chatting and she said she never bothered to find out anything about the candidates. Rather, said she, she listens to her husband's friends talk about who they support and, knowing which of them (the friends) are total idiots, votes accordingly.
Speaking as a 64 graduate of George Washington High School in San Francisco, I can’t tell you how much I wish it had turned out differently but today, seeing everything that has been squandered , I just don’t give a damn.
Worse yet, the George Washington High School grew up to become the George Washington University, and moved to D.C. and graduated a whole bunch of idiots, including (almost) me!
You might have gotten a better education at the High School. California had a great school system, quality teachers, minimum but effective administrators we were diverse too. Our QB was Japanese, with every ethnicity you can imagine playing various positions. The idiots came in after the class of 68, each generation getting worse.
Not altogether O.T., Steve, but what was your classmates' and your own reactions to the Trotysky-ite (?) lefty, totally politically correct politically correct, if avant la lettre WPA style murals then covering the interior walls of GWHS: e.g, George Washington himself on his plantation's verandah lording over his slaves in the fields; the Westward Ho pioneers stomping over the corpses of the defeated Indians; etc. Did you perhaps follow the later denouement several years ago when the fragile daisy GWHS students and their teachers demanded that the horrifically offending murals be painted over, obliterated, terminated permanently. But when the SF School Board discovered that rather than hiring one union guy with a bucket of white paint for a day or two for five hundred bucks, the California Enviro Quality Act "CEQA" mandated a full-bore Enviro Impact Assessment —likely to cost a cool hundred and fifty thou USD $$$ at minimum— the Board decided not to send the murals into the irretrievable memory hole after all. The global professional society of Impact Assessment professionals was holding its annual conf that same year, with the theme "future of EIA: evolution or revolution". I submitted an "or revolution" panel Abstract focused on bullsh*t enviro overkill as having far less of a political constitutuency than the Greenie claque realized (since they were only talking to themselves) likely to eventually backfire... citing the GWHS case amongst others. The conf organizer refused to accept that onto the program, declining without comment or explanation. Eventually, I discovered that the "or revolution" panels had to be pre-selected by the organizers, and at that point I blew off the International Association for Impact Assessment terminally. You might surf through my website...
I followed it closely because I learned in history class that this school was built by WPA during the depression, an agency founded and directed by the Roosevelt Administration, well known bastion of extreme right wing ideology. They even hired a muralist who was a devotee of the Mexican fascist artist Diego Rivera. The artist, who was also a Mexican-American Nazi artist obviously was celebrating the life of racist George. The tMy all white, black, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Russian, etc student body walked by that Mural every day with little or no regard because, it was representing the life of George Washington which we didn’t find unusual considering the name of the school.
Chris, you could begin your essays with, “We interrupt your regular programming with breaking news from Crazyland.”
Every time I think I’ve seen it all in California, something new comes along. Every time I think Newsom is toast by signing some form of insanity into law, a fresh new insanity lands on his desk. How many nails are needed for Newsom’s coffin?
Whenever I read about some craziness down in California and think I'm glad I live up here in Washington instead of there, I turn to the news from Olympia and see that it's much the same as Sacramento's, although often with a slight time delay.
Sometimes I think I should move back to Illinois where I grew up. But then I remember how Chicago ("Law enforcement is a sickness that needs to be eradicated") dominates that state like Seattle does here. And Washington is so much more scenic...
Wrote the governor and was very nice and stayed away from screaming at him. Think there's chance he'll veto it as he is running for president and is trying to take a more middle of the road on issues, except his middle is still in the wrong lane.
Mr. Bray: I LOVE your articles and thank you so much for your latest on the ranchers of Pt. Reyes. As a former Californian of many decades who used to go hiking every single weekend in that lovely peninsula for decades, I really appreciated your detailed reporting on that, especially about who is behind the takeover of the ranches.
I have only one thing to point out and it's something most people do these days, which is to use the term sociopath when they are talking about actual psychopaths - I believe the correct term to be used for Gov. Gruesome is not sociopath, but psycho path. I was a therapist for many years and learned the difference between the 2. Sociopaths are merely out for joy riding basically and don't get their jollies out of destroying or murdering other people, they simply like to take big risks and dont' care who might get hurt. Psychopaths on the other hand, get their kicks out of harming/murdering others. If you look at the folks running this planet at this time, you might see that they go out of their way to harm/hurt/destroy the decent humans who inhabit planet earth. I believe Newsom fits this category as do most of the "deep state" entities. Just my 2 cents.
The dream of 2030–2050 is the oldest dream of power: to mold mankind from above. History teaches how such dreams end — in revolt, in ruin, in the sudden fall of those who thought themselves unshakable. The elites may write the script, but the crowd will always have the last word.
It's the tower of Babel all over again... and again, and again. You are spot on in calling it the dream of power. That is the motivation, and the problem for the individual with the pathological will to power is it that it is insatiable.
Interesting twist: The governor of California is currently swanning around in New York City, so the lieutenant governor has the authority of the acting governor until he returns. Acting Governor What's-her-name can sign this bill into law.
https://ltg.ca.gov/about/
..and thus, Newsom's hands are clean and his campaign for higher office can continue unabated.
On the plus side, the Fed's already have rules on the books about suing platforms for the actions of users.
I suspect CA's new rules will, in enacted, get shut down in court.
He came home, so the ball is back in his court. We'll see!
I think he has until October 12.
Their hypocrisy is boundless. Their savagery is subhuman .
Great concise line! Two sides of the same coin. Heads is the hypocrite and tails is the savage.
Really hoping that all Californians who check in here will be sure to go to the webpage of the Boundless Savage Subhuman Hypocrite (a.k.a. The Worst Governor Ever) and tell him to VETO SB 771. You might add that if he signs this abomination this is the sort of thing that won't look good on that resume he is building, that Doomed Quest, of running for Prez in 2028. If you have the energy after this endless summer, ring the Gov's phone off the hook too. That'll annoy 'em.
Be sure to scroll down the long list of bills on the menu and check the SB 771 box.
What I wrote:
SB 771 should be vetoed. It is an infringement on free speech, no matter what it claims in the text. And if you sign it into law, it will eventually be struck down by SCOTUS as unconstitutional. Meanwhile you will have to defend it against attacks from both the left and the right. There is no upside to signing this bill, please veto it.
I mentioned that in the text of the email I just sent to Gruesome: "Signing SB771 will be a permanent stain on your quest for POTUS." I also cut and paste Article 1, Section 2 of the California State Constitution regarding freedom of speech.
Geez, we have a colossal fight ahead of us.
Are you channeling Review Brah from 'The Review of the Week'?
I’d have to know what that was so no.
"My disappointment is immeasurable. And my day is ruined."
I’m truly sorry . 🤷🏻♂️
Maybe better that it passes and is immediately challenged on 1A grounds?
Actually it would be better if Scott Weiner (who is obviously a sexual predator) didn't have the temerity to propose restrictions on speech
Dir Sir
This is Scott Weiner´s lawyer. I demand you send him 1 million dollars now or you´ll be real sorry! And by the way, the correct pronunciation is WAY-NER, nor weener.
Shouldn't that be WHIN-ER??
More of a long E; Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-ner. If you have to pause for breath or practice circular breathing, you pretty much have it.
I don’t mind your messages Chris even though I tend to be harsh in general about your state. I’ve been there and seen its beauty and its ugliness firsthand. So I get it and appreciate that you love your state and that’s why you do what you do. You always have your posts using proper investigative research and arent just crap piles of hyperbole which makes them if nothing else, interesting and informative reading. THanks for all you do.
Yep, Chris demonstrates here what the old-fashioned Middle America religious folk call The Watchman on the Wall. "It's 11:59, and the Philistines are riding fast."
And of course, culturally, California at one point led the nation. In the sixties, that may have been a positive; musically, Hollywood, questioning Viet Nam, and questioning "authority."
At this point, they lead negatively, and still think they lead the nation. They represent the "authority" that rams shit down its citizens throats "for their own good," in the name of climate warring, trans rights (whatever that is), homeless "advocacy"..... anything on which lots of money can be "funneled," with Hollywood now taking themselves seriously as the moral beacon of the world.
I agree with your second paragraph and I will admit that a great deal of my ire towards Californians is formed by 99% of the expats which have “had to wind up in this God forgotten hell hole”. None I have come across and all have been owners of the houses I was hired to work on for them for whatever it was each had me do. Usually repainting and minor repairs and I always maintained a professional demeanor, but I think it was a form of game to half to be the whipping post of a multitude of reasons they could not stand Texas. The way we drive, that there weren’t enough good places to eat (which surprisingly all never tried local eateries and were complaining about chain stores) I suggested some places and was always told it was good but… only one Trader Joe’s which yes I’m glad we have two now. Best produce in quality and price. Good $3 wine that holds up to wine snobs, some of their spices I like the rest is too pricy for what you get for me but I do t have issue grocery shopping across four stores.
They sold their properties back home. Moved into what equivalent structures in California would be what all burned in Pacific Palasades. As $1.5 - 4M these guys purchased new homes with were enormous upgrades from California and it was complaint after complaint and I dealt with it until they started in on all the people from Texas. Then my attitude became then go home. Quit trying to make Texas California go back and fix your broken state. And they kept coming. All of a sudden they are paying themselves into local politics and now we are dealing with city councils who sue to live. Not in their district as per city charter but elsewhere because the schools where they represent aren’t good enough for their children.
Hell we just had city councils who sue vote themselves raises of $45000/year for a job that they do for two hours once a week and they can’t be bothered to listen to citizens. Local members are following the lead because the new people are well progressive. I’m jaded and wish to strap them to MAC flight air drop pallets and stuff them all i to C5s and once over California air push them out the back of the plane.
But that’s my issue. What you all deal with is well by your own doing and just a different type of problem but ai liar to what we have here. You guys have a communist politician issue, we deal with politics that supersede party through familial ties and old oil money and those who are in state politics here are 4th-5th gen kids who will be the finality of their family’s wealth and oil money dictates what happens here.
Paxtons impeachment defense was paid by Tim Dunn oil man. He paid off the Texas senate through checks and threats of being primaried to ensure his attack dog Paxton would by exonerated and they did it in front of t of the nation and the level of public display of corruption was astounding
Texas biggest issue is infrastructure, no oversite to our water supply, and power grid was placed into the hands of a foreign ow ex co
Pant because the idiots that purchased the software to run it didn’t pay to hire anyone to run it, and didn’t purchase the expansion kit which would allow it to be run locally. They do have a local liaison government entity that is nothing g ore than a warning to us on when the power grid will be shut off for brown outs and that in in climate weather they shut it down because Texas won’t pony up for cold weather emergency backups because that type of cold is a once a decade thing Our water supply is at jeopardy to the water baron who has purchased almost all water rights for naturally produced water. Our underground lakes. That stuff is sold in plastic bottles to the Chinese govt.
Our current fresh water is fracking waste that they have to supply in trucks from the oil fields and the persons who connect the hoses to go from truck tank to holding g tank must be in LVL 5 hazmat protection suits from the high levels of sodium fluoride and other toxins from fracking. The amount of chlorine that they have to use to make it potable needs to be gassed out if you want to make anything with it u less you enjoy the taste of bleach. We all pay for it too. And they always need more and more here are no open financial records the public can see. I’m sure you all deal with similar. But the level of openly hostile municipal governing bodies do what they will when they will. If you work for the city you also are immune to having to be held to the law. Example is I have had two of my firearms stolen from me by a city worker and she sold them to another and those are lost. I do most t know where they are at all. I reported them stolen and because the person who stole them works for the city, the police will not question them or recover my property. And I will still be accountable if the firearms are used in a crime. The police did not process my report through the national database. Which I cannot access to enter a theft report. Which is what my attorney told me. Yeah we all deal with corruption.
I don't get what the big deal is. It says right there in the bill that the "purpose of this act is not to regulate speech." Sure I might get Substack shutdown for saying illegals constantly litter and violate zoning laws or that many gay men became that way as a result of sexual trauma inflicted at a young age, but that's just the price of living in an Our Democracy™. O also you're a bigot, bigot.
I mean, if they SAY....
Scott Weiner* doesn't strike you as a trustworthy public servant?
*To the apparatchik reading this pursuant to SB 771, CHECK THAT GUY'S HARD DRIVE
It will though regulate speech that those on the committee deem offensive and what criteria are they using as a metric to determine that?
I am being deeply sarcastic. Obviously this bill is a disaster
Do you have a million-dollar check ready to pay the fine? I've got so many here...
Um... shouldn't that be "you're a bigoted bigot, you bigot?
On a different note, if you figured out how to get a trademark symbol, it must be possible to figure out italics, as well. Nice work.
Sounds like they're collaborating with the lunatics running Canada into the ground.
In the worst case, you have the 1st Amendment and a sane majority on the SC.
We up here are absolutely SOL, and many, many of us pray that this administration will not countenance Venezuela2 on it's northern borders.
We also have BC transferring land ownership from the current owners to the hundreds of indigenous tribes throughout the Province.
Indigenous permission is also required for any project that might improve the lives of the colonial/settler/oppressors.
Maybe “the Big One “ will slice off the source of our discontent.
When does Alberta bail on the rest of Canada?
"Scott Wiener voted for the bill, in committee and on the floor, which is usually enough information to know which side to take."
Long ago in a presidential election year, the receptionist at one or another doctor's office and I were chatting and she said she never bothered to find out anything about the candidates. Rather, said she, she listens to her husband's friends talk about who they support and, knowing which of them (the friends) are total idiots, votes accordingly.
Speaking as a 64 graduate of George Washington High School in San Francisco, I can’t tell you how much I wish it had turned out differently but today, seeing everything that has been squandered , I just don’t give a damn.
Good luck Chris. Keep your head down.
Worse yet, the George Washington High School grew up to become the George Washington University, and moved to D.C. and graduated a whole bunch of idiots, including (almost) me!
You might have gotten a better education at the High School. California had a great school system, quality teachers, minimum but effective administrators we were diverse too. Our QB was Japanese, with every ethnicity you can imagine playing various positions. The idiots came in after the class of 68, each generation getting worse.
Not altogether O.T., Steve, but what was your classmates' and your own reactions to the Trotysky-ite (?) lefty, totally politically correct politically correct, if avant la lettre WPA style murals then covering the interior walls of GWHS: e.g, George Washington himself on his plantation's verandah lording over his slaves in the fields; the Westward Ho pioneers stomping over the corpses of the defeated Indians; etc. Did you perhaps follow the later denouement several years ago when the fragile daisy GWHS students and their teachers demanded that the horrifically offending murals be painted over, obliterated, terminated permanently. But when the SF School Board discovered that rather than hiring one union guy with a bucket of white paint for a day or two for five hundred bucks, the California Enviro Quality Act "CEQA" mandated a full-bore Enviro Impact Assessment —likely to cost a cool hundred and fifty thou USD $$$ at minimum— the Board decided not to send the murals into the irretrievable memory hole after all. The global professional society of Impact Assessment professionals was holding its annual conf that same year, with the theme "future of EIA: evolution or revolution". I submitted an "or revolution" panel Abstract focused on bullsh*t enviro overkill as having far less of a political constitutuency than the Greenie claque realized (since they were only talking to themselves) likely to eventually backfire... citing the GWHS case amongst others. The conf organizer refused to accept that onto the program, declining without comment or explanation. Eventually, I discovered that the "or revolution" panels had to be pre-selected by the organizers, and at that point I blew off the International Association for Impact Assessment terminally. You might surf through my website...
<https://cultivateunderstanding.com> wherein IIRC, I unpacked the GWHS debacle at length. It's buried deep in there somewhere.
I followed it closely because I learned in history class that this school was built by WPA during the depression, an agency founded and directed by the Roosevelt Administration, well known bastion of extreme right wing ideology. They even hired a muralist who was a devotee of the Mexican fascist artist Diego Rivera. The artist, who was also a Mexican-American Nazi artist obviously was celebrating the life of racist George. The tMy all white, black, Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, Russian, etc student body walked by that Mural every day with little or no regard because, it was representing the life of George Washington which we didn’t find unusual considering the name of the school.
That scottweiner is a real dickhead!
that's too kind imo.
Chris, you could begin your essays with, “We interrupt your regular programming with breaking news from Crazyland.”
Every time I think I’ve seen it all in California, something new comes along. Every time I think Newsom is toast by signing some form of insanity into law, a fresh new insanity lands on his desk. How many nails are needed for Newsom’s coffin?
Wait… could that be considered hate speech? Oops…
Well and the other problem too is that what starts in California tends to spread…lived through enough of that up here in Washington state.
Whenever I read about some craziness down in California and think I'm glad I live up here in Washington instead of there, I turn to the news from Olympia and see that it's much the same as Sacramento's, although often with a slight time delay.
Sometimes I think I should move back to Illinois where I grew up. But then I remember how Chicago ("Law enforcement is a sickness that needs to be eradicated") dominates that state like Seattle does here. And Washington is so much more scenic...
Want to bet Newsom signs it with glee thinking of chairing the committee that evaluates and determines whether to fine these companies?
No apology necessary. I think of you as our war correspondent from behind enemy lines.
Wrote the governor and was very nice and stayed away from screaming at him. Think there's chance he'll veto it as he is running for president and is trying to take a more middle of the road on issues, except his middle is still in the wrong lane.
Yes, he's currently pretending to not be a sociopathic communist
It’s still painfully obvious that his horns are the only thing holding up his tarnished halo.
Mr. Bray: I LOVE your articles and thank you so much for your latest on the ranchers of Pt. Reyes. As a former Californian of many decades who used to go hiking every single weekend in that lovely peninsula for decades, I really appreciated your detailed reporting on that, especially about who is behind the takeover of the ranches.
I have only one thing to point out and it's something most people do these days, which is to use the term sociopath when they are talking about actual psychopaths - I believe the correct term to be used for Gov. Gruesome is not sociopath, but psycho path. I was a therapist for many years and learned the difference between the 2. Sociopaths are merely out for joy riding basically and don't get their jollies out of destroying or murdering other people, they simply like to take big risks and dont' care who might get hurt. Psychopaths on the other hand, get their kicks out of harming/murdering others. If you look at the folks running this planet at this time, you might see that they go out of their way to harm/hurt/destroy the decent humans who inhabit planet earth. I believe Newsom fits this category as do most of the "deep state" entities. Just my 2 cents.
Ugh! I hate this state! Thanks for the warning, Chris!
The dream of 2030–2050 is the oldest dream of power: to mold mankind from above. History teaches how such dreams end — in revolt, in ruin, in the sudden fall of those who thought themselves unshakable. The elites may write the script, but the crowd will always have the last word.
It's the tower of Babel all over again... and again, and again. You are spot on in calling it the dream of power. That is the motivation, and the problem for the individual with the pathological will to power is it that it is insatiable.