Focus Hope

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Comment by Louielamson2000 on February 19, 2009 at 8:46pm

Hello Focus Hope Group.
...In the hearts and minds of America. Americans People and US Congress need work together, to support T. Boone Pickens Plan. Boone Pickens Evolutionary, and make a change for America Energy Independence, in 21st century.
Thank you for invite me...

Best regards,
Louielamson2000
Dalat Vietnam Feb 20, 2009

Comment by Michael Shawn Kendall on February 18, 2009 at 2:19pm

Hello group, A video that was just made for youtube.
Energy Independence US Treasury Bonds discussion group michael.kendall@ymail.com Best Regards, Mike

Comment by Hunter Hannaford on February 15, 2009 at 8:58am

Michael,
Thanks for the invitation to join. I am enjoying the lively discussions and comments of the wall.

Comment by South Dakota Wind Energy on February 15, 2009 at 8:42am

I hate to be a negative in the group.

In my opinion, the money allocated by the "stimulus bill" will be wasted, stolen and put into the pockets of politicians and we will never know where it was really spent.

WE the American people have had the largest spending bill ever, pushed down our throats, by a congress that did not, could not and admittedly not having even read the bill. Is that what the American People want from their government? NOT ME

Monty

Comment by Liliane Stern on February 15, 2009 at 8:08am

Thankyou for including me in the Focus Hope group. I have a hunch that Obama is not too interested in domestic natural gas as an energy source but only in solar, wind, hydroelectric, etc. Also Senator Bob Casey of PA does not understand that we need to build electric transmission lines to areas needing more power even if the energy we transmit is not for PA. He voted against it because the energy from alternate sources such as solar and wind farms currently in existence will be transmitted to other states. He claims that PA's historic sites would be lost or defaced and the environment would suffer, etc, if such transmission lines were to be constructed in those areas that are needed. I did email him with my opinion. That we have to do what is best for the country as a whole not just Pennsylvania if we want to become energy independent. I urged him to seek professional help to modify the building plans so as to cause as little loss or negative effect on both the historic sites and buildings and the environment. If every state refused to have transmission lines for those same reasons we will never become enrgy independent. I also pointed out to him, and he is a Democrat, that President Obama's Stimulus bill has funds allocated for just this purpose. I hope he will see the light especially if more of us support this.

Comment by Michael Shawn Kendall on February 14, 2009 at 9:40pm

Hello group, I received an email today about a non-profit group that is working towards creating green jobs. In the email it said there was 500 million appropriated for green jobs back in December. Does anyone know the specifics about this?
Best Regards,
Mike Kendall

Comment by Chandrashekar Tamirisa on February 14, 2009 at 2:14pm

The issue is not that people do not have the time to read a large bill. It is that the bill is not accessible to many people in a form that permits them to provide input as it is being made, besides of course unless one is paying close attention to what the Congress and the President are doing through the news media or through some outfit in Washington.

We need more transparency from government, taking advantage of the kind of teledemocracy which got this President elected and that we are leveraging through the Pickens Plan. As an example, Christopher Tidman should not need a new political party either up north in Canada or down south in the United States but the government must enhance the CRS summary and details of its current bills to make them more informative and interactive, to receive comments from lobbyists and citizens alike.

Ideally, such a more transparent process can evolve later into a more formal mechanism of incorporating a better informed and reasoned popular will into the Congressional voting process and to give the president line-item veto powers, instead of relying on pollsters and the media to gauge popular will. It would be the C-SPAN of the legislative process, not simply to watch but to engage more effectively in the political process in a manner that has an impact on the outcome.

A simple but cogent critique of this bill is that the tax credits or deductions, on both the production and consumption sides from which the Pickens Plan benefits are great, but they are not useful unless one can avail of them. To avail of them we need to fix the financial markets in a manner (1) the government does not own a piece of the economy so that lending and investment in the United States can rise again, and (2) the probability of recurrence is substantially diminished.

Therefore, instead of focusing on cosmetic measures such as executive compensation or tax payer equity through temporary government ownership and so on, we need to reform the markets in a manner that happens only once in a century as it had once before in 1913 with the creation of the Federal Reserve System after the 1907 market panic which J.P. Morgan mediated and again during the time period from presidents FDR through Eisenhower. Now, we need to do something similar to what both Wilson and FDR did then. And most importantly, we can do this and we must because we know a lot more about how the economy works than we had known then.

It does not appear that the Congress or the Treasury are contemplating doing this, and even if they are, it is unclear if the current administration's mindset to turn left before turning right, that is, some degree of nationalization before denationalizing the economy, as it was clearly evident in the President's Lincoln commemorative speech in Springfield, will change.

Such a mindset precludes creative thinking about reforming the system while working within the constraints of our nation's values, principles and Constitution. Recovery and reform are not sequential, but reform is the vehicle for a sustainable and robust recovery.

"Buy American" either in the labor or product markets by edict is neither a very sophisticated nor an effective approach to the current crisis. We should buy American because we are better, not because our government wants us to.

The United States in 1929 was a second rate global power, but today we carry the responsibility for the world on our shoulders. This has not happened because of the SEC or the SSA, but because we stood steadfast by our principles and values.

Therefore, whatever we do must set an example as to how we resolve our problems when faced by daunting circumstances, because our form of government was not created with the expectation of perfect human beings, but that human beings are fallible and the periodic fallout from this fallibility can be cleansed by the checks and balances embedded within the structure of our government.

The bottom line is that any form of wage controls or market ownership by the government are unacceptable, not as a matter of ideology but as a matter of comprehensive analysis. Even during the Great Depression they were not acceptable and now there is no reason why they should be because there is a better way to solve the problems at hand, if only there is the political will with no demand to go beyond the self-interest of an elected official because reform is in their self-interest.

It is encouraging that most Republicans registered their discontent by voting against the bill in both the senate and the house.

Chandrashekar Tamirisa
District Leader, MD-08

Comment by James Everitt on February 14, 2009 at 11:23am

Educational_Video_Resources_for_Teachers_and_Students.rtf

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Comment by Victor Saylor on February 14, 2009 at 9:42am

We have to keep working as just because they passed this bill our work has just begun. I hope everyone keeps on working in there own community to try to get there local government to take steps to make changes to there energy programs and modernize them. I plan on going to the next town hall meeting and asking if they have any plans to update our electric grid or to turn to different sources like wind and solar. I will report back when I have an answer from the meeting.

Comment by Jeanene Louden on February 13, 2009 at 4:00pm

Thanks so much for the invitation. Small IS beautiful. "Co-generation" has had great merit from the beginning of this conversation. "Local solutions" have always had great merit. The one-size-fits-all answers to the energy questions that face us have led to our being controlled by the multinational giants. I look forward to this conversation and the ideas we can share. Let's go!

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