Green Jobs

There is something so sad about a nation that loses its energy- seems old, feeble and incapable of dynamic action.  I thought of the British that way for many years- and watched as pieces of their treasures went on the auction bloc- how London became piece-mealed to Arab oil money, Indonesian manufacturing money and so on.  There was some poetic symmetry in the vast British Empire being auctioned off to billionaires from India and Pakistan-- what in the name of a caste system have you done to deserve such Karma!!!
The US was supposed to be different the inexhaustible reserve of our national spirit-- it has been sapped away.  Not from the people- they still hunger, not from the economy- well despite our ridiculous treatment of oil, derivatives, and insurance- all of which need attention from criminal law prosecutors; we still have a vast economic potential here. We are weary because we have parasites in the heart in our energy-generation part of us.  The Republican Party has been waging an assault on the US economy an insidious cancer eating away at the strength of government.  They have starved the US economy to plunder Iraq for the war machine- creating a few hundred billionaires at the expense of economic collapse.  We collapsed and Obama rebuilt the economy with bold action.  The the Republicans went at it again- using State governments which they had starved under Bush.  By the time we got the Recovery Act money to the States- they had no resources to plan and do thing- they mostly  just took $billions and fixed a few streets, rebuilt a few collapsing bridges-- projects that had been there on the shelf-- because they were so cash strapped they could not plan, could not develop new and  meaningful ideas.

So we still have more sunlight than Germany and use a fraction of the solar panels they do.  WE still have young inner city workers who have never had a job- 20% unemployment in Detroit few months back  - maybe 40% among young Black men-- We have windy planes and no windmills. We only use enough biomass to tease ourselves and we have deliberately dragged our national ass on electric cars.

So many Could Be's :

• subsidize the costs of electric cars for female single heads of households so that the effective cost is say$5,000 which we can provide guarantees and let the thieves in commercial finance - finance it.

• Lets have every city  that wants it to have some double tractor city buses- natural gas powered to use on their most populous routes- like in Detroit up and down Woodward, Jefferson , 8 Mile,  or Gratiot-- Broadway or 7th Ave. in Manhattan,  Pennsylvania Ave and 7th street/Georgia Ave in DC.-- capitol grant  and operating subsidy.

• Lets solar panel 100 homes in each of 50 medium to large cities- buy America, install and service them.  Free to the owners picked by lottery from the tax rolls.
• Lets initiate urban farming in an organized way- with heirloom vegetables and training on organic farming techniques, and hope we can foster a new source of food production - safe foods, traditional foods- and sell them at nominal fees and donate to food banks, schools, charities.
• Lets pay teachers and other qualified people to make instructional videos that add knowledge and skills: tutorials on math from Master teachers; how to repair things in a home by craftsman; how to build things - book cases, small furniture- something o reacquaint Americans with hand tools and wood.

Why do these things?? - just to prove we can  make a plan that makes a POSITIVE difference, one we can see.  Just to put some $ in some green collar American wallets. The Republicans have been trying to convince us we are only good at making War somewhere, that  everything else is less important than the national debt- which they ran up in War and destroying our economy. So lets make some green jobs- electric car builders, bus builders, solar panel builders and assemblers.
So we need a reminder that the even if we have been infected by fatal levels of insurance,derivatives hoarders, and Republicanism-- we are still the USA, we can still make a way when no one believes we can-- its a tradition here-- winning!