By Mickey Walker-February 28, 2010
Someone recently told me that my world view did not exactly
coincide with theirs. I had to agree. My friend still believed
America could tweak and stimulate the economy into something real and
sustainable where anything was possible. Bernanke could manipulate interest rates through the Fed, and our
economy would adjust. And that our
financial system would never fail. I disagreed. I felt my
anger rise as I saw an image of America in financial ruins as we continued our
lemming march off the cliff into financial darkness. A few days ago President Obama said
that such a path of borrowing and spending to cure our financial ills was
wrong. And terminal. I agree.
It’s this simple: I don't think America can keep
stuffing money we do not have, nor money we can print or borrow beyond our
expenses, down the rabbit hole of big government. Printing more at
the Fed causes hyperinflation. Borrowing is just digging a deeper hole. No one can know just how many
Treasury Bills we can sell in desperation to continue to finance our Debt.
China has already withdrawn and has sold off Billions of US Treasuries this
February, 2010. We also just don't know how much in services we can sell
the world as we shrink from a production economy to a service one.
The
Wall Street Journal says our National Debt, our Deficit, and our ballooning
deficit has suddenly become a matter of National Security.
Money is simple. It's as simple as one day you check
your wallet and you can't make the electric bill. No money for gas. Peanut butter and crackers is for lunch
if you’re lucky. Remember those
days of youth when you ran out of money? I do. I’m ticked off to see
us acting like a country of borrowers. Instead of wallowing in debt to
China with our hand out, why not do ourselves a favor and get out of
jail? Borrowing to dig out of the bottomless hole is wrong. A
system like ours that is 12 Trillion in debt and needs constant tweaking, and
stimulus packages won’t work. It is the mark of a faulty system that says,
“Deficits don’t matter.” It is
“Voodoo Economics” gone wild.
Don't we remember how good it felt when we knew we were
doing the right thing? Here are a few of my thoughts about a "world
view" (if I have one) that make sense to me. In fact it is the only
way out of the Wilderness that I can envision. Printing more dollars at
the Fed is buying time the hard way and won't work. It will explode our
currency. And continuing to be at the mercy of foreign governments for
them to buy us a hamburger today for which we will pay them on Tuesday is dead
wrong.
Obama said yesterday on TV that we cannot continue to borrow
and spend and run up deficits and more debt for ourselves and our children, and
that is bang on target. And I agree with the president. Obama's warning
is clear as he goes about cleaning up the mess of many years of war-corporation
spending to build up our military might.
China will cut us off when they cease to need us. Americans need honest private industry,
not of the war-corporation quick-profit variety, but of the Green earth
type such as Solar and Wind and Hydro power. If we go Green, we might just be able to save America and
the planet.
My dream is that America needs to stop borrowing and
spending to meet our payroll and cost of operating the government. How? By shifting government workers into new government-owned and
operated GREEN jobs. That’s right;
Uncle Sam will become a profit center in this, my dream.
America’s got about 2 million workers, not counting the
Postal Service, CIA, and FBI.
See Bureau of
Labor Statistics official numbers.’
According to
Postalreporter.com the US Postal Service employed 787,000 workers as of 2008.
So let us say that roughly, the United States Government
employs roughly 2.5 million workers. My gut feeling is that number is way far more workers than needed to run
our government efficiently. The
payroll alone is enormous, but let’s not debate it now. Let’s try to make government
profitable. At least some of
it. I believe that government
expansion since Reagan promised to get government off the backs of the people
has gone far beyond human reason. It’s time to turn government workers, two-thirds of the number of govt.
workers on the govt. payroll today into a viable, extremely profitable business. These two-thirds will keep their jobs,
but will be reassigned to jobs in Green Energy companies owned and operated by
the US Government. The one third that remains will continue to run
government and readjust tasks consistent with better efficiency.
So let us make a shift of effort as FDR did when he put jobless
Americans back to work for the CCC, the WPA, the NIRA, etc. during the Great
Depression. Let us shift the over-padded government billets in DC and
their tentacle offices to that of Green Energy government-owned companies.
Look at it as a job transfer. Nobody gets fired. But
government workers get moved from a profitless job of finger-tapping until the
next coffee break to one of higher purpose and profits. Should anyone call
it Socialism, then let IBM or GE or EXXON belly up to the bar and buy shares
from UNCLE SAM and be a part of it all. Either get in it, lead, or be
left behind when Green Energy replaces oil and coal. America, with
all its technology and survival spirit of capitalism can sell power to all the
countries of the world and once again be the strongest financial power in the
world.
We can lead the whole world out of the dark hole this way.
And we can pay back our 12 Trillion dollar Debt and put an end to
Deficits. We can generate profits and show a Treasury surplus again.
We can deploy solar panels into space where the sun never sets and transmit the
electricity produced piggybacked to earth on micro waves and provide enough
energy for the entire planet with these alone. It's scientifically sound
and proven technology. See
the science here.
But we cannot leave it up to private industry because they
will not retool and just do it. As
corporations their focus is on how to maximize profits NOW without retooling
and spending more money on Green Energy production. So put the excess
government workers to work immediately constructing and operating Solar
furnaces and Windmills in Arizona, Solar and wind turbines in New Mexico,
floating helium wind generators above the earth in Minnesota, Hydro generators
in Idaho, you know the drill, RIGHT NOW. Training classes to make the
transition would be simple and short. We have the engineers and the designers already on the payroll who could
invent, design, and implement America’s Green Energy vision. Let us sell some government
power. Big Brown and Big Oil just ain’t going to cooperate until Uncle
Sam takes the bull by the horns.
Heck, give us private citizens of America a net metering
bonus like Germany gave their citizens, and we would be self-sufficient
electric producers from Texas to Montana! But Big Electric won’t pay private producers for excess electricity they
send back to the grid (called net metering). Big Electric prevents
private production of electricity for profit by lobbying state legislatures to
keep the net metering laws in the stone age. Big Electric wants to keep
all the profit. The small producer is screwed. But look at the German model.
A few years ago, Germany charged their customers 15 cents
per kwh for electricity. The government passed a law that the electric company
(owned by Germany) would pay an individual for his excess power created by his
own solar panels, 55 cents per kwh. Needless to say, Germany now has the
greatest private electricity grid in the world! Funny thing. Later electric company lowered the net metering price back down to normal.
The result? Everybody is happy and
the private grid is up and making megawatts of electricity. What a great
solution for humans working for the betterment of humanity!
In most states electric companies are not bound to buy back
excess electricity a small producer produces. In many states, the law
reads that if you create excess power at home from your solar paneled roof top,
you got to jump through a million paperwork hoops to be able to sell a fraction
of it. But say you do. Okay, they will pay you what they call the
"avoid" price which is roughly one half of the going rate they are
charging customers. So they get your electricity for say 8 cents and turn
around and sell it to their customers for 16 cents. Sound fair? Not.
That needs to change. This is America. What about
healthy competition and all? We
need to reset our meters, get 2/3 of our government workers off the govt. teat
and offer them jobs in green field technology the USA is funding, running, and
making money on. Trillions of dollars of profits! Happy government
employees, making money by doing their part to save the planet and our
country’s future. What a change we
could make in our own destiny.
Check it out, below, just a few of the existing
technologies. America can do this, and we got plenty of uninhabited
deserts with unlimited sun-days to work with. We would feel
better about ourselves immediately instead of bickering about how to keep
paying for Social Security and how to keep all the excess government workers on
the payroll. The crony war
corporation military industrial complex Ike warned us about would suffer. But guess what? We would no longer have to borrow to
pay Blackwater or Halliburton billions year in the just the killing business.
We would not need to borrow from the Chinese or any other foreign country. Let's get out of the slime pit of war
and fear and go Green. Let’s pay
off the National Debt, and balance the budget! Sure, this is a
dream. But it’s a start. And
the timing is right. Let's admit
our short take on money, borrowing, and band-aiding our country. Let’s tap into its good fiber, the
stuff that made America great the first time around. And flourish instead
of choosing to be broke and needy and fighting endless wars from a place of
fear.
http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/04/spanish-solar-tower-could-eventually-power-an-entire-city/
http://www.us.schott.com/solar/english/index.html
http://www.sandia.gov/Renewable_Energy/solarthermal/nsttf.html