Mr. Obama in his recent speech couldn't mention jobs without talking about the deficit and these are the same things that Herbert Hoover once said seventy-eight odd years ago. Mr. Hoover's plan for economic recovery hinged on billions of dollars in low interest loans for the major banks and industry and then like manna falling from heaven the economy would right itself and we would all live happily ever after.
The problem Mr. Hoover encountered was that no matter how much money they funneled in to banks and industry their customers still couldn't buy anything and still couldn't pay their mortgages. Mr. Obama is destined to meet the same fate but it doesn't have to be this way. Mr. Obama's mantle as a reformer of bringing hope and change to Washington is quickly taking on the tattered appearance of a mission accomplished banner, all hat and no cattle.
We have in this administration a dysfunctional family that when its programs, plans and public offerings are not greeted with wild acclaim by the base the play's director blames the audience. Imagine a Broadway show at intermission where the director comes out on the stage during intermission and balls out the audience calling them, "F*cking Retarded" for not applauding hard enough.
Gee, what's plan "B" fellas? What do you do for an encore?
A corporatist Neo-liberal masquerading as a mainstream Democrat. I once warned that George W. Bush had destroyed the Republican Party for a generation and that if Barack Obama failed that he would do the same to the Democratic Party and I take no pleasure in being right. We have a two party system that has ceased to function for the well being of the population. We are in the midst of an economic depression that in many categories out strips even the great depression yet few have the testicles to call it what it is because if you admit to it then you have to come up with solutions to fix it.
The big banks are pushing the small banks out of business. No longer is it too big to fail but too small to survive. The politicians couldn't fix that because the big banks wouldn't like it. The federal government could go after the sixty billion dollars in tax revenue that corporate America dodges each year but that wouldn't be a popular thing to do it being an election year. I think you see where I'm going that they can't fix anything without making the people who write the big checks angry.
So instead let's go after Social Security, let's further corporatize and privatize our healthcare system. Let's hire more contractors for the military; let's expand deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Let's give the nuclear power industry nine billion dollars in loan guarantees.
Of all the nations on Earth the United States has the greatest ability to generate wind power. In terms of solar power the United States is the Saudi Arabia of solar power.
In Franklin Roosevelt's first one hundred days he signed into being the Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA created jobs, it created cheap electricity and the cheap electricity brought industry and with it more jobs. The dam sites had to be surveyed and the sites prepared. They needed trucks and the trucks needed roads and the roads had to be surveyed and prepared and paved. The dam's created lake front property and the WPA and CCC built parks and boat launching ramps.
A small cadre of nuclear technicians will construct Mr. Obama's nuclear plants. You must be a nuclear certified welder to weld on a nuclear containment vessel and ditto for pipe fitters. The work going to locals will be site preparation and security. I would wager, for every federal dollar spent ninety cents would go directly into a corporate pocket.
With every billion dollars spent we could purchase one thousand erected wind turbines. That's one thousand sites that need preparation and one thousand sites that will need roads. The technology isn't that complicated and doesn't require nuclear technician ratings or containment vessels or fuel storage facilities. They won't require armed security. They will never melt down or become contaminated eyesores for our grandchildren to deal with.
In the area of solar power the numbers are all ready comparable as states like Texas, and all along the Southern tier of states could become a new American powerhouse of clean, safe and best of all cheap electricity. Why don't we do it then? The technology is here, the sites are available and our people need the work not to mention the necessity because in the next two decades the rise of the electric automobile will make electricity even more precious, so why not?
Suppose Mr. Obama proposed a new TVA type program for green energy who would be made unhappy by it? The coal industry wouldn't like it, the natural gas lobby and the oil industry wouldn't like it. The nuclear power industry would hate the idea. The national association of Service Stations would despise the idea and they would all storm Washington with lobbyists and lawyers headed by the power generation industry itself. They would complain tearfully about how it would destroy their industry and the sky would fall and babies would starve. They would use all of the same arguments the gas light company used in New York when Thomas Edison first brought in his electric light.
This would be a game changer, all ready in Texas wind power is cheaper than fossil fuel generated electricity. Wind and solar have zero emissions so there is no impact on the surrounding ecosystem. No mercury in the water, no smoke stacks in the sky. A program such as this would take a decade because a fundamental change in where electricity was generated would require a change in the infrastructure as well. We all now pay an eighteen cents a gallon motor fuel tax and as we transition to electric cars we are going to have to find a way to replace that money.
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