Join the "Thirty Plus" Political Movement

A new study out today is more pessimistic about our overall fiscal situation. With new numbers out today Republicans feel more confident in attacking this bloated budget. The President speaks of going “line by line” through this budget knowing full well that he lacks that crucial tool all governors have of the Line Item Veto. Now Congress wants to ban all bail-out bonuses. Clearly we all feel the need to so “Something”. The House as we said passed a law saying that the AIG bonuses would be taxed at ninety percent of that income accrued. Apparently the senate is going to delay this house bill that was passed, and the buzz is that even the President will let the bill slowly die. But there is a question whether such retro-active and overly specific acts of congress are even Constitutional. Now we hear that these new punitive laws will “discourage private investors” who might possibly bail us out of this economic mess. Of course the President can’t even make a joke about his 129 bowling score on the Tonight Show without the Special Olympics people being mad at him. I don’t know if President Obama has the sheer balls to take on the corrupt higher corporate structure in this country the way that Franklin Roosevelt did. People talk about conserving “Energy” but people tell us that Thrift in hard times such as these is not always the best remedy. Just how many “counter intuitive” measures can the US electorate stomach? Personally I think I’d stare down these CEO’s that even Gordon Gecko lectured against for looting their companies. To me, it seems if the people say “We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more” things will begin to really get done like they’ve never gotten done before. Your parents always told you “Do the right thing and follow your conscience and the rest will take care of itself”. I pray this would be true about the National Economy.

What we need is a new Reactionary political party I’d like to call the Thirty Plus party. As a sort of guimic I’d like initially to restrict membership in this party to those who are over thirty. The hook is that I’d like to go back to what Thom Hartman and other lefties refer to as that golden age of Jimmy Carter, when this country was concerned about energy. Just to refresh your memory as to what I was doing thirty years ago, I was having dental work done, having a crown put in. I had just finished up my novel I called “For What It’s Worth” about the world coming to an end as we know it in November of 1973. I have a lot of interesting religious Cult stuff in there, too. I sent the thing off to a Publisher keeping photocopies for myself. It was rejected. And I lacked the intestinal fortitude necessary to make the improvements the Publisher had suggested. Also at just about this time I took an occupational aptitude test at the local CETA office. Most of the task were office duty related. The one area I didn’t totally suck at was an exercise putting various sized bolts on various sized nuts. That’s one test I did half way decent on. But in reality even then Jimmy Carter was in trouble and there were even then rumblings of discontent in Iran that would soon lead to his demise. Back then our total national debt was under a trillion dollars. Today we are running nearly double that for the deficit in just one year. Back then I was still “a young man” in my late twenties. Apple II computers were around and Lotus 1-2-3 was around, not that it was considered kosher for a real accountant to use that. On no. We had to do it the old fashioned way with a chizzel and a stone tablet. I think the reason why “That Seventies Show” was so successful is that many people remember the period as a happier period of their lives. I don’t know but it seems to me people were just more polite and “decent” back then. But if you think thirty years ago, otherwise knows as “The Star Wars Era” as Eric Forman constantly reminds us- - is a little dated, consider Bob Dylan. One gets the idea he considers the ‘Thirties as his golden era. His idea of a good time is getting arrested by corporation goons for holding a union rally. He seems at time to see the Communist party back then as some sort of a utopian organization that would lead us into a Brave New World. The whole concept of “Modern design” seems to have begun then.

I was just watching that Energy meeting in C-Span and they were talking about the Carbon tax and trading carbon credits making it economically viable to be green because it makes being “ecological” as just another economic commodity as something you can buy and sell like Indulgences were by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. One sees the appeal of making forces of the free market work for energy conservation rather than against it. But first in my opinion we have to insure that were are truly out of the economic crisis we are in. Otherwise anything we contemplate won’t be worth a dime. Jimmy Carter saw energy conservation as “doable” rather than as the pure burden and nothing more, that Rush Limbaugh sees it as. We considering it oppressive now but the more people hear about “carbon footprints” the more conscious and self-conscious about it they will be, just as smokers are now about their habit. A utilitarian would say it’s a good then when people who engage in undesirable behavior are defensive about justifying their own activities. But it’s not all bleak. There are the plusses of new energy we don’t even think about. Take harnessing the ocean tides to generate electricity. This is truly a case of a gravity operated turbine. I speak of lunar gravity now, pulling the tides to and fro, first in and then out. Of course if you live in Iceland, then geo-thermal energy may be your vehicle of choice due to geographic proximity. In the southwest of course it’s solar power, as T Boone Pickens talks about. On the western plains and up into Canada it’s wind power. My Uncle used to be stationed in Omaha, and one thing he told me was that there, unlike here, the wind is blowing all the time.

But also there is this thing called “clean coal” and Carbon Sequestration. You know what I think of when I hear the word “Sequestration”, I think of this one Quincy episode thirty years ago. It’s about a guy who deliberately killed somebody by mowing them down with his car. But then he covered up his crime by getting drunk on hard liquor and when the cops caught up with him he was stoned drunk. Quincy had a theory. Because in the “accident” he suffered a nasty crack on his knee, which caused it to swell up and the hospital drew off the fluid. Quincy asked if the hospital still had the fluid in the lab and they said yes so they tested it. This was “sequestered material” and there it was found that the guy was cold sober when the accident first occurred. But of course we know that the more forests we have the more carbon dioxide is filtered out of the air. And healthy trees filter more than sickly trees and dead trees are actually a liability. So what we need in addition to everything else is good forest management to cut down on the likelihood of forest fires. I’ve heard about “clean coal” and it seems like a panacea, and I’m just concerned that we may spend more energy processing the coal than the coal will produce. Once again T Boone Pickens says we need to as a stopgap measure to switch to natural gasses- - methane and propane - - which burn more cleanly than other hydrocarbons. If we do these things and convince the rest of the world to do these things we will again get down below that 350 parts per million they say is crucial to reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere. I hope our President is up to the task.