Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Texas Longhorns with newborn calf in Bluebonnets

Please note I have a new phone number...

512-517-2708

Alan Maki

Alan Maki
Doing research at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

It's time to claim our Peace Dividend

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

We need to beat swords into plowshares.

A program for real change...

http://peaceandsocialjustice.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-progressive-program-for-real-change.html


What we need is a "21st Century Full Employment Act for Peace and Prosperity" which would make it a mandatory requirement that the president and Congress attain and maintain full employment.


"Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens"

- Ben Franklin

Let's talk...

Let's talk...

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Green energy and "jobs, jobs, jobs;" not so fast because your electric bill may go up quicker than unemployment will go down.

Haha... we have people on the left trying to package and sell us on green energy as the solution to our problems in the same deceitful way they packaged and sold us a "face in the crowd," Barack Obama.

If you haven't see the movie, "A Face In The Crowd" you might want to watch it now.

Once again they ask us to rally around green energy in the name of "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs."

An interesting development. It seems loss of profits are getting in the way of expanding wind and solar power with a big loss of jobs:

http://china-wire.org/?p=25578

This "little" issue of multi-national profits is something no one talked about at the climate change rally this past weekend.

Not only were corporate profits not addressed as a hurdle and stumbling block to green energy production; but, the one other important aspect not being discussed is the fact that the more wind-generators and solar production of electricity brought on-line through the power-grid the higher the price consumers are being forced to pay.

Here in northern Minnesota our electric bills have more than tripled in the last five years because coal-fired generators are becoming cleaner and more wind-generated electricity is coming on line through the power-grid.

The obvious solution to all of this is nationalization of the power-generating industry which Minnesota's socialist governor Floyd B. Olson warned--- over 75 years ago--- was going to be necessary.

Anyone can look at the profits and huge salaries of these executives in the power-generating industries and see that we are not paying more for the production of electricity; we are paying more so Wall Street coupon clippers can reap bigger profits and the managers and CEO's can have huge salaries and bonuses.

None of this is being discussed by any of these environmental organizations because their foundation-funding would come to an end.

So, who does that leave to place nationalization of the energy producing industries on the table for discussion? The politicians receiving the bribes from the manufacturers of wind-turbines and solar panels and coal-fired and nuclear power generating industries? Ya, sure; you betcha.

If you and I don't take the initiative to bring forward the nationalization solution nobody will... our electric bills for cheaper produced electricity will just keep going up and up and up as CEO salaries and profits reaped by the Wall Street coupon clippers soar.

We can see from this article workers and those getting the electric bills are paying the price for continued profits before people and the environment.

Bottom line: Capitalism can never be green.

And yet never mentioned by Bill McKibben are profits, electric bills and workers' rights and livelihoods. Go figure while you are trying to figure while you try to figure out how you are going to feed your family, put gas in your car to get to work (if you are lucky enough to still have a job) and still pay your rising electric bills.

No wonder so many people are going nuts in this country trying to figure out how to make ends meet.

Someone should ask Bill McKibben about all of this and at the same time ask him why he refuses to talk about the need for peace as the main way to begin finding solutions to global warming and climate change since Wall Street's very profitable military-industrial complex and wars leaves in its wake the largest carbon foot-print of all.

Haha--- the laugh is on us if we buy into all this green bullshit the way it is being packaged and peddled.

The kind of progressive movement we need.

My Letter to the Editor gets published in the International Falls Daily Journal, the largest circulation newspaper in northeast Minnesota which is an industrial town centered around the forestry industry:

http://www.ifallsjournal.com/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/america-needs-employment-act/article_426a8fec-6680-5a32-81f0-5b6a10b9a757.html

We need to talk about how peace is related to full employment since these dirty wars kill jobs just like they kill people and how fighting climate change creates some jobs--- but, we also need to talk about how a National Public Health Care System will create over twelve-million new jobs and a National Public Child Care System would create another three-million new jobs and how we need to open all the closed mines, mills and factories to begin producing what we need for an environmentally sound stable economy which puts human needs before Wall Street's greed.

We need to discuss re-establishing the WPA, CCC and CETA in order to take care of aging infrastructure, combat the effects of climate change and make sure people are properly trained while working in WPA and CCC programs and projects.

And what about the fact that the huge military-industrial complex leaves behind the largest carbon footprint of all? Anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that peace is provides a bigger way to fight climate change than switching over to new kinds of more energy efficient light-bulbs; both are necessary but that which yields the most potent results needs to be included in the discussion of the remedies--- and so far the importance of peace has not entered the climate change movement because certain forces want to keep peace out of the discussions about both climate change and jobs even though peace is the key to solving climate change and unemployment and getting the kind of public health care and child care systems working people are entitled to.

Why isn't it possible to shape a progressive agenda on all of these factors instead of just approaching the problems in a piece-meal fashion as if all these factors are somehow separate from one another when they aren't?

And why the failure to advocate the need for a working class based people's party which would articulate such a progressive agenda?

Full employment is possible and we need to see to it that the government becomes legislatively responsible for full employment.

Half a million jobs from fighting global warming is good; but, what about the fifteen million more people who are unemployed and those forced into poverty because the miserly Minimum Wage forces poverty on working class families and drags all wages down just like this unemployment is doing?

A Labor Network for Sustainability needs a much broader agenda based on the reality of the dire straights warmongering Wall Street coupon clipping parasites have placed us in making it a requirement that in the process of fighting for these reforms we are challenging Wall Street for political and economic power with working class power.

Let's get these issues properly framed so we can unite the working class in the kind of struggle creating a sustainable economy and world will require if we are going to survive.

Economic stability and prosperity for all along with sustainability in a complex world requires peace and full employment where everyone has access to health care and child care as we combat climate change and global warming; and, it is on this basis we need to build a united working class people's movement capable of defending this kind of progressive initiative where people work, in the streets and at the ballot box.