Another Look At Our Energy Policy

Thom Hartman has been pitching the idea of a value added tax again. I was and still am inclined to not like such a production tax on industrial products because such taxes discourage the very behavior we are trying to encourage in this country. As Thom Hartman puts it, it's just a little tax added in in every stage of the production of a good. So if you're building cars they tax the product while mining the metal, and smelting it, and refining it, and molding it into sheets, and finally on the whole car. Hartman believes with the tax spread around like this that the consumer won't feel the bite. Yeah, and I've got some swampland in Florida I want to sell you. Clearly the intent of such a tax is to remind us all that energy is extended in every stage of production. Hartman introduces the silver lining of this otherwise regressive tax by saying that "at least the big corporations that pay nothing in taxes now will be taxed at every stage directly at production." I think what our government needs to do first is to delay implementation of the Health Care act provisions, all of them, until this economy gets back up on its feet. Because as Dick Morris points out, this Act is probably unconstitutional because it mandates more state medic-aid and also mandates individual purchasses to private corporations. Such provisions can be easily argued as infringements on state law and state sovreignty. I imagine such questions will be asked of the next candidate for Supreme Court justice. In a similar vein, I am against any form of a carbon tax or any tax which would tend to slow down this economic recovery. However there are things we can do now live invest in solar pannels. I see nothing wrong with subsedizing these like the German government does, and the southwest gets a lot more sunshine. Some have argued that since oil is used much less in the production of electricity than it is for transportation, it makes a lot of sense to have hybred electric cars. Hartman states that half of the cars in use are used for less than twenty miles of travel during the day. Given my own experiance I highly doubt this, but I'll let it pass. If we could get these forty or fifty percent of people driving hybreds instead of 100% gasoline cars we could shift away from oil, and we can use wind power for electric generation like T Boone Pickens talks about. The secret is to have the wind farms spread out in diverse areas. That way if you have three wind farms, the wind is most likely blowing in at least one of the areas. I think market forces along will dictate that auto manufacturers produce increasingly efficient car engines that get at least 35 miles to the gallon, as lofty as that seems. Something else we can do that might be market force related is go vegie burger instead of meat. This will be one of those "concepts" introduced to the public, like no trans fat oils were, that will take time but will happen as surely as wind and water sculpt rock in the desert. Also as Hartman also teaches, if we empower women to liberate themselves, population rates will go down. When you think about it, this is an essential part of the puzzle since left unchecked- - perhaps no ammount of energy efficiency will suffice. George Bush talked about switch grass. But hemp is another obvious comodity we need to cultivate for our energy needs, and neither product is a food item. Hemp paper will save trees.

People are worried about whether the proposed finance reform laws will have teeth in them. We need something drastic as far as lobbying goes. How about we start with a five year ban on ex congressmen becomming lobbiests, and see where that takes us. We need to make financial and corporate questions the center piece of grilling the next Supreme Court before congress. If he or she will not go for strong laws, don't vote for them We need at least a quarter percent stock trader tax, and one half of a percent would be even better. Since computers do modern trades they can trade securities so rappidly in buy and sell actions that such a tax would slow this artitrage process way down. At the center piece has to be laws dealing with derivitives or bets on money, or bets on bets on monitary actions. Originally such derivitives were used by farmers to insure they wouldn't lose too much money on a bad crop, but we've gone way beyond that. Dick Morris said that he is the last of a dying breed of moderate democrats. I do not know to what extent "moderate" or blue dog democrats played a role in shifting the balance to democrats in 2006. Republicans were saying back then democrats only got elected because in campaigns they sounded like republicans. Many say that without economic reform, we will be only "re-inflating the bubble" and another bust cycle will follow soon. Randy Rhodes pointed out that homes on the West Coast of Florida sold for $350,000 in December of 2005 but now the same property sells for $85,000. But when the mortgage holders try and cut a deal to settle for $150,000 that bankers refuse and that the bankers would rather take a bigger loss and auction off the property for the lower $85,000 citing tax write off laws. I must confess that the math on this escapes me. Even at the fifty percent income bracket, you'd still lose money. Some are still predicting another wave of real estate forclosures this year.

The owner of the West Virginia mine where 29 miners died probably won't see the inside of a prison even though over five hundred safety violations were found. The people at the top never are convicted. Not unless they can pin the rap on some hired underling. Of course the whole region is an ecological disaster with heavily polluted streams and sheared mountain tops and debris filled valleys. Obama's the guy who wants "clean coal". But we also need to make it safe coal. You thought all mining jobs were unionized. Apparently not. I have no idea how carbon sequestration has come. Actually I don't see why we don't use natural gas such as propane instead of coal anyhow. It's easier to obtain and transport, and it's cleaner.

Meg Whitman is pro abortion and favors government funded abortions. She voted for Barbra Boxer and even aided her campaign. Most of the time Boxer has been on the ballot I have voted republican. Whitman favors aid to illegal aliens and now I learn that she favored the massive TARP bank bail-out. I guess Money loves its own. I'm still a registered republican and I'm voting for Poisoner because on the issues where I am conservative I agree with him.

President Obama seems to want our space program to end entirely. He's canceled our going back to the Moon by 2020. Of course this would be a prelude to our finally getting to Mars. When I was a kid they showed that cartoon series "Space Explorers" which depicted our going to Mars by 1978 and I remember thinking, "That date sounds about right". We learn so much from our space program. Instead of cancel it, I would double or tripple its funding, because we get all these scientific dividends, not to mention what it does for the human spirit. Doesn't Robert Schuller teach that mankind should always think in big possabilities? And many times you never know how much you'll learn without taking those vital initial steps.

Apparently I am having computer problems. I'm getting red print warnings. My phone hasn't worked in two days and yesterday my internet went completely out, but it came back after twenty minutes, but "error" rates have skyrocketed. Yesterday was a jinxy day for me anyhow. I lost a gold coin I found a month ago with foreign writing on it. I have no idea whether it was worth anything or not. The bathroom room light bulb is burnt out. My phone bill is being hiked for inferior service. I see the messages is gone now. Maybe that's a good thing.