Welcome! Donna Shaner
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- Are you interested in becoming an organizer in your area?
- Yes
- Tell us about your experience with alternative energy:
- No experience though I am becoming familiar.
- What excites you about this campaign?
- The large number of people participating for an imperative & immediate cause. The change this can bring about in a relative short time period. The next surge of 'The Third Wave'. Very exciting!
- What do you want to do to help?
- I am open and ready to lend a hand in whatever capacity needed.
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EMAIL A LETTER TO YOUR REPRESENTATIVES BY USING OUR EASY RED "CONTACT CONGRESS" BUTTON -This is urgent, because the Energy Bill in Congress is in danger of not passing! With little effort, we have the ability here for you to send a letter to our Representatives in Washington and Governor, too. Go to THE PLEDGE (at the very top of this page on the blue header) On the top of the pledge page there are three rectangular buttons- two blue ones and ONE RED BUTTON, that reads "CONTACT CONGRESS" . Fill in the short, standard form. Done!
YOU CAN ALSO HELP BY BRINGING 5 FOLKS TO JOIN the site today, so that we can build a voice big enough that Congress will finally have to listen to us, instead of the lobbyists and special interests, who are trying to derail this historic effort.
YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE PLEDGE on the main page. Print out 10 or more of them, get them signed and fax them back to Boone ASAP. This is how we build our numbers fast! Be a leader, be a part of the "100 CLUB", by faxing in 100 signed pledges. Let me know when you are done and I will add you to the list.
PICKENS U has been formed for college and university students to get involved. If you know of a student who would like to become an ambassador to helped coordinate the pledge drive please submit names to Pickens U site. This would be good for job resume.
THERE IS NO TIME TO DELAY
…to wait and see…or to see if someone else will step up to the plate. It is time for US to roll up our sleeves and go to work. Right now momentum is working in our favor, but if gas prices retreat, the public will forget the pain, and our moment may be lost.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Check out Pickens "August Call to Action"- for a course of action! Here is an informative video "Topeka, Kansas Town Hall Meeting": http://www.pickensplan.com/news/2008/08/04/video-of-the-topeka-town...
PERSONAL ACTION OPTIONSWe need to do more than “preach to the choir”. Sharing ideas with each other is encouraging but that will not 1) increase our membership nor 2) influence public policy. If you know someone in the press or someone who blogs - get them to cover this. Ask those in the public eye to support this plan.
A GROUP FOR EVERYONE. Join the Guides and Materials for New Members Group. Lot's of good information there.
Check out the many groups for Solar, CNG, your area, etc. Connect, learn and share. We grow stronger with your input. If you don't see a group that speaks to your interest, then start a group of your own.
PLEASE FRIEND ME so we can keep in touch
I beleive that this PPArmy concept is as big as or bigger than Google and Yahoo at their infancy. (Sorry, my geek is showing). I also beleive that many of the ills of American life, as we now live it, intrinsicly are linked. What I mean is that energy drives our economy disproportionately and the effect of that cause is driving other excesses such as;
- Property \ Homeowner Association abuse in the light of the sub-prime meltdown.( They are suppose to protect property value, but they really act like really selfish, unregulated mini-governments who have come to the realization that thier pool of paying customers is shrinking rapidly).
- Failure of the States to regulate banking at the consumer and retail banking levels (All fifty govenors and legislatures have abdication of responsibility for maintaining financial order within their jurisdictions to anyone with the upfront capital to pay for a license.)
- Failure of the Federal courts to reverse credit slavery (usery) imposed on American citizens by the global credit-card banking industry. (The CC Companies, in concert with the banks behave like global locust; they consume everything in their path, and give absolutely nothing of substantive value back).
The above items deserve their own Army of concerned citizens who recognize that what Pickens did was demonstrate how it is done, not the way to do it. We have to perceive the reality as it unfolds before us.
Politics is a Janus like creature. It has two faces on one head. One side for the masses and another for those who are willing to pay for what they "want."
For far too long, we have villified people who declared a selfish interest in seeking our support for public or community projects. We forced so many to go to private underwriters that an industry sprung up around fleecing entrepreneurs, inventors and innovators.
I like to aim my blogs to provide lenses for our focus. I know that there will be opposition within and external to Picken's Army, but that is the price of being human. I think we really need to prohibt dogs and jackasses from participation in our organization. ;-)
For example there are greeters who welcome newbies at Picken's Plan; but what we need now are people who are willing to do the work of determining "who" wants to do what and when. It should be easy to replicate the social interaction format that presently exisit in the real world, but perhaps this Internet forum could serve to improve on elimnating much of the pettiness and secretcy of traditional politics. W/Picken's Plan, so far has been so good.
On a side note, I have often worndered why it is that we humans allow ourselves to be led by the most ambitious and selfish among us. Perhaps its because we don't seee ourselves as humans ahead of our cognition of our egos in terms of nationality, race, religion or ethniticy (feel free to prioritize you preferrences to suit your ego). In any case, we are now faced with an opponet straight out of SciFi, only it is real and more deadly that most would care to comprehend.
Climate change as in weather (drought, storms and floods) and seismic activity has caused more deaths in the first eight years of the 21st Century than war, (humans favored method of self-annillation). Add the biologial aspects of influenza and HIV-AIDs and you get to the grim reality, we are under attack. Our natonal energy policy must take certain global issues in to account outside of the technical aspects of global warming, contaminated water, etc . . . there are those among us who figure they can buy thier way out of extinction.
Well, perhaps I am being too extreme . . . In any case, the model has been presented and it has pretty much been validated by the million plus (and growing) participants. We really don't want to divert attention from this focus, but we must investigate the prospects because they truely are related.
I am looking at how energy related expense effect domino actions in the market place, just as you are. What I like to share is an observation:
1. Energy prices went up and drove up the price of housing, health care, transportation and everyother thing but wages, salaries and average worker compensations.
2. Credit was loosened to conteract the depressing effects described above.
3. Interest rate regulation on personal loans was abolished so lenders could charge whatever they pleased
4. Mortgage regulation was amended to keep big ticket items available in the marketplace
5. A construction boom took advantage of the above regulation and overbuilding was encouraged by sub-prime financing. The near-to-metropolitan center ecologies were trampled by suburban expansion
6. Bank became more reliant on loans to each other than loans to real humans with tangible needs, desires and ambitions.
7. Energy prices jumped in response to repeated assaults by Nature (Mother, is a sexist term?) that crippled the nations refining industry, which in turn is artificailly reliant but definitely run on imported oil.
8. Real people (credit card) Interest rate jumped thru the 30+% window for substantial if not the majority of working people, and
9. People who could pay asked for reductions (and many got them); people who couldn't stopped paying and people who never earned or deserved credit in the first place ask for and got more and more.
10. The banks realized their mistake and attempted to correct the problem by tightening credit to businesses.
11. The businesses went abroad (overseas) and found credit more to their liking.
12. The foreign bankers extracted industrial capacity (aka, jobs) as security for their investments. They sent their product back to America and kept building factories to produce more exportable (to the USA & Europe, mostly), like we could and would consume everything they could produce.
13. Mainstreet (aka, Walmart & the ilk) joined the hit parade of credit / debit card branding and hawked those products to America at ever low-low (artifically) low prices
14. The cows came home to roost . . . Energy production took another hit from 'Mom N' and the fabric began to fray in the political arena where the President and the Federal Legislatures popularity nosed dived
15. Without the strong leadership necessary to course correct, we kept (keep, some say) fight wars to pump more oil in foreign lands instead of recognizing that the problems stem from buring fossil fuel to generate energy
16. In the ensuing confusion, mauraders took over the global financial systems. The purse was closed, no money for nobody till ransome is paid to retain the familiar old system.
17. President Bush capitulated like a hungry puppy. He won't back out of Iran, but he sold us out so fast that Congress had to stop the sale in order to give us a chance to see what was being sold.
18. U.S. Financial market makers vomited and the world waited to see just how much blood was in the mess. Then they raced in to lap up the mess
19. The global financial community discoverd the sub-prime poison in the regurgitation. It was too late, the marauder had their money and the problem was transferred to the American public.
In essecense, nothing changed. The value of publicly traded global corporations' stocks and bonds are relevant to institutions like hedge funds, insurance companies and people like Warren Buffet. The value of domestic corporations is important to the global corporation because they are the customers the big guys turn to to distribute, service and collect revenues from the public. The domestic corporations (subsidiaries of the big boys) in turn virtually manipulate the state and federal opportunities by supporting the local politicains that protect their individual industry interest.
No where in all the above workflow do see how the entrepreneurers, inventors and innovators fit into the scheme, unless you are willing to concede that their only roles are as employees. But wait, many of us work for people who take advantage of our loyal labor by refusing to adequately compensate us for our inventions, innovations or other tangible contributions to the group effort organized under corporate charters. So what has all this to do with alternate energy?
We can only do two things in the face of item 17 facts. Pay up or withdraw from the global financial system by refusing to pay. Obviously, we're going to pay, but perhaps we should consider and demand timetables that allow us to get our house in order before we do so.
Our house needs is a new energy policy that addresses not only what alternative fuels we are going to prioritize, but what technologies we are going to use to generate sustainable and bio-friendly energy here in the USA and elsewhere in the world. Yes, we paid for the right to lead this effort by beating down the opposition to the Saudi Kings in Kuwait. Now we must come to the realization that we have the opportunity and we must take the lead in switching the world to alternative energy sources, not just the people United States.
As a sorvereign nation, we must act in our own best interest, first but we cannot be short-sighted because the enemy isn't Arabic, Islamic, Russian, Chinese, Cuban, Nigerian, European or Venezuelian. These are competitors. Some may have axes to grind with us with reference to past offenses, but the bottomline is that Mom N, doesn't discriminate in her retaliation. Even if they don't admit it, all humans have to suffer for some of those nations' attempts to match our economic (especially industrial) progress.
Welcome to the Pickens Plan community. Thank you for supporting a new energy future for all of us.
MJ