Now we've seen the wave and it did indeed sweep through Congress. What's hopeful is that now there is a more balanced legislative body and as long as the Republicans are willing to dance the dance of compromise, along with Dems doing the same, we might finally get things done. That is, of course, contingent on the Republicans not following through with their pledge to making their #1 priority making sure that Obama is a one-term president.
In all the shouting about Health Care and Financial Reform, both of which were important pieces of legislation, the moneys already put into the economy by the Stimulus has yet to see a large recovering in the job market and a reduction in the unemployment rate. What are the problems still holding us back? According to Bill Clinton it's that we don't have people with the skills to fill the jobs opening up. He said on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart that there are three jobs being posted for every one applicant. What he saw as a necessary solution is a concentration on retraining those people still looking to stay in the work-force, those not near retirement age, to move into those positions.
Chris Matthews, on the other hand, says that we need to get back to being a country that builds things. He cited other tough economic times when the government created public works projects that created tons of new jobs that were labor jobs, especially construction jobs, which are some of the industries hardest hit by the death of the job market. Central to his rants about public works projects is that we also need to combine that with looking forward and cites the high speed trains in China.
The truth is that despite all the rhetoric about how we are the greatest country in the world with the greatest technology and the wealthiest country, much of the wealth is in the highest two or three percent of Americans. Much of the technology is locked up in specialized areas of the economy, such as the technology employed by the military. There is absolutely no excuse for the fact that more than a few countries now have high speed rail, or other public works infrastructures that represent investments in green-technology or a desire to be environmentally responsible.
Some countries tap into their geological features such as Iceland which incorporates a large amount of geothermal energy into their power system. They also recycle 95% of their consumer waste. Some people may say that that wouldn't work in the United States, or if they are ignorant and crazy they'd say that that is foreign socialism trying to take over and that that may work 'over there' but it isn't right for America. Well, let me say this - we have to wake up and address serious environmental threats that are affecting our economy which go beyond the BP oil spill. There is more and more trash being dumped into the oceans than ever before. It's not just the United States, but because we have so much coastline for which fishing and the ocean are central parts of their economy, it is crucial that we deal with these things. Another example is, of course, the dying sea food industries in New England, a region for which sea food and fishing are a major economic component.
So what are the solutions? What could Dems have done and could still do?
- Education - We have for decades stressed that kids have to go to college. People put a lot of emphasis on graduating from high school and dropout rates as a problem and then cite kids going on to college as indicators of the success of our education system. Those aren't ways of solving our problems with our work-force. And let's be real, if someone goes on to college and doesn't major in chemistry or engineering, or in a business degree with some practical application like accounting, or in a teaching degree, then that person has to go on to get a master's degree to be competitive at all in a large city. In a high school in metropolitan areas it is necessary to have a master's in order to be competitive. The Solution: Concentrate on funding training programs, not community colleges necessarily, but training programs that specialize in manufacturing and technological fields in the green energy industries. That would represent a green energy commitment that goes beyond rhetoric about 'green technology' and 'green energy solutions'.
- Public Works Projects - What the Obama administration has talked about when talking about infrastructure has been rebuilding highways and bridges. Yes, is that important? Absolutely. And as exhibited by surveys of bridges, we have far too many crumbling bridges. That's not progressive thinking, though, and it's not a solution that provides significant enough jobs, not in comparison to the need for labor positions. What we need is massive works projects like Eisenhower's interstate highway system. Chris Matthews is exactly right when he talks about high speed trains. There is no reason we couldn't have high speed trains at least from Boston to DC that would cut travel time between those cities from eight hours probably down to two or three hours. There is no reason people couldn't take a train from New York to LA in a day or two when they could drive it in two or three but on a train it might take a week. The portioning out of the necessary components of a high speed rail line would be fantastic. You could have a dozen states building what would become the actual train itself. The track for the high speed rail, which despite what some people might think would not be able to run on traditional train tracks because they wouldn't be able to handle the load and stress, would create construction jobs in every area it went through and at the very least could be contracted out to a handful or more of construction groups. All of this would go toward a type of building project that would potentially have an enormous impact on our travel habits and how we think about green solutions.
- Government Contracts - One of the things I've been saying for a few years now was that because the US government leases SO many cars for their agencies and government employees, everything from bureau chiefs having government supplied cars to the cars that security and law enforcement forces use, there is an immediate market for the manufacturing and commercial distribution of clean energy cars. Now whether that would be hybrid cars or hydrogen cars would be a logistical issue. I think, however, that if the US government contracted with Honda, who came out a few years ago with a hydrogen fueled car, for a few thousand hydrogen cars and put in the fuel stations to supply fuel for those cars, we could have commercially viable clean energy cars gaining a major foothold in this country. Honda hasn't been the only company working on a hydrogen fueled car either. GMC has been working on a model for years. How close that is to production, I don't know, but if one major hurdle to revolutionizing our fleet of government leased cars is trying to buy American made cars, then hopefully that solution will come soon.
- Green Energy Solutions - More than a decade ago in MN there was a controversy over a nuclear power plant. At that time there was a lot of discussion about alternative energy solutions, since MN is a state that bases the vast majority of its economy on the environment, between the huge number of farms or the enormous amount of travel business brought in by our wilderness areas and lakes. It was interesting to hear a serious discussion in the early 1990's about the many types of green energy sources, especially biomass, ethanol and solar and wind power. Now when you drive through parts of MN, especially southern MN, you see wind farms with dozens of massive wind turbines where it was once nothing but rows of corn. We are a state that has for years sought green energy sources and solutions. Whatever green energy revolution we have in this country will have to come from a diversified energy portfolio. Some types of green energy that might work in one part of the country simply will not work in another. In MN solar power isn't practical as for much of the autumn, winter and parts of the spring it is too overcast. That's one reason why wind power makes sense, especially in parts of the state known for their wind storms and tornadoes. Solar power does work, however, in areas with large expanses of desert, or in areas with arid plains not really suitable for farming and maybe not really suitable for grazing livestock. I'm not sure what the issues would be with power companies, but if our government were serious about green energy, we would be building strategic power stations that played on the strengths of those natural resources and leasing them out to companies. That would provide jobs on the local level while having a major impact on our energy consumption.
- Green Production - To piggy back off of a few earlier points, our government builds and renovates government buildings all the time. Buildings have to be maintained and updated constantly all across this country. If we are serious about the development of green industries, than it is crucial to not just talk about green energy, but to draw upon the many industries producing green construction materials and green cleaning products, as well as recycling. Just a simple internet search shows that there are many types of construction materials and products that are green and just as good as traditional materials. Anyone who has looked through the aisle at the supermarket with the cleaning supplies knows that there are environmentally friendly products out there. Even adding exterior features to existing buildings, specifically solar panels, would not only boost the availability and production of solar panels but also provide even more energy solutions on the local level.
What's important to realize about all of these is that suggestions is that they all either train people for jobs or create jobs. The push for green energy and production and the creation of new jobs are not mutually exclusive. The government has the potential to do these things on a massive scale and thereby ensuring that our nation finally gets out of the dark and back into a leadership position in green technologies. All we have to do is look to model countries, especially in northern Europe, to see that these are real and concrete solutions and that the options for incorporating these solutions into our society through government agencies is enormous.
All of these things could have been done by Democrats right away and have placated the base, or could still be done through compromise with Republicans, many of whom have a vested interest in environmental action, and to have stimulated desirable areas of the economy and created jobs.
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