Jobs and energy independence -- check this out!

[scarletwoman]

Aiming for the moon
Ruth Rosen

"SURE, IT'S a dream," says Michael Shellenberg, executive director of Americans for Energy Freedom, based in El Cerrito. "But when President Kennedy directed the first Apollo Project to put a man on the moon, who believed it would actually happen?"

The dream to which he refers is a new Apollo Project -- a 10-year, $300 billion research and investment plan that aims to attain energy independence from foreign oil and create millions of new jobs in energy-efficient industries.

The Apollo Alliance is the new labor-environmental coalition that is promoting the project. The Alliance consists of 12 of the country's biggest unions -- including the United Auto Workers, the United Steelworkers, the Service Employees International Union and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- and has received ringing endorsements from the Sierra Club and other environmental groups.

<snip>

Labor is impressed. The slogan of the Alliance -- "Let's switch our energy dependence from the Middle East to the Midwest" -- appeals to people in states where industrial jobs have disappeared. "We believe this plan can create good manufacturing jobs, good construction jobs, can improve the public infrastructure, can be good for the environment and reduce our dependence on foreign energy," said Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers of America.

This is important! A real solution -- a new paradigm!

Here's the Apollo Alliance website: http://www.apolloalliance.org/

Three Million New Jobs.
Freedom From Foreign Oil.

Apollo Alliance: Ready for Lift Off

Americans have always pulled together during times of hardship to accomplish great missions. In World War II we rolled up our sleeves and built the strongest industrial base the world had ever known. In the cold war we put a man on the moon in under a decade.

We can do it again. This time for energy security.

For thirty years our addiction to Middle East oil has put us in danger. Each price spike and supply disruption hurts our nations economy.

Yet over the last three decades our dependence on foreign oil has actually increased from 35 to over 50 percent.

And oil is the tip of the iceberg. Our energy system is aging, inefficient, and vulnerable.

Enough already. The time has come for action. The time has come for a new Apollo Project, one that frees us from our over-reliance on Middle East oil, by increasing the diversity, efficiency, and security of our energy system.

Like President John F. Kennedy's Apollo Project, which put a man on the moon in under a decade, a New Apollo Project will bring together the country to create a safer world and a stronger economy.

(more -- do yourself a favor and check it out!)

sw

[bread_and_roses]

1. this looks like a step

in the right direction! Thanks for posting it. This reminds me of Sweeney's latest move...circumventing the current system by creating new alliances and coalitions.

[Mark David]

2. The "invisible hand" strikes again!

All this talk about supply and demand reminds me of Adam Smith, the neoclassical political theorist who popularized the concept of the "invisible hand" during the era of the American revolution. As you might recall, Smith developed a rationale for so-called "free market" economics, and ever since, that "hand" has grabbed us by the balls and ain't never gonna let us go!

Our dependence on foreign energy is fundamentally a question of demand, not supply. Americans constitute roughly 6% of the world's population but consume a substantially larger share of the world's resources. At this rate, I'm afraid that "hand" will continue to put the squeeze on us! An "Apollo" project is bound to fail if it addresses only one side of this very lopsided equation.

By the way, I just joined the "Underground" as a memeber, and read a fine editorial on Globalization by Sandra Jewell. Here's a brief review. (It also piggybacks on the jobs theme which is a focal point in this string.)

Jewell does a fine job of exposing the Administration intent to replace the civil service with corporate profiteers.

I'm a Federal govt employee, and everyone I know is upset by the Administration's intent to cancel the cost of living increase for 2004, ostensibly to assist with the war effort. In view of all this ballyhoo about the evils of privatization, I guess we should feel lucky just to be working.

My own view--which I and many others in the public sector don't broadcast all that volubly--is that govt workers are generally overpaid for the actual work they do. Having served in both the private and public sectors, I can tell you that Feds--unless you happen to be on the front lines in Iraq--live in a wonderfully insulated environment, relatively immune to the vicissitudes of the market economy. In govt, we live comletely free from that whole stress-inducing psychological dynamic of beating your competition to the client's doorstep, relentlessly hawking your products, and keeping your employees in lock-step discipline by threatening them with the loss of wages, benefits, and jobs. The prospect of dealing with this kind of bullshit scares the hell out of me. But for most of my colleages, and a significant percentage of the Federal workforce, it's less of a concern than Jewell's article suggests. Between a third and a half of all Fed employees will retire by 2010. Not much race left for these rats. Only hefty pensions...

Conservatives have always maintained that national defense and safety (police, fire and the courts) are the only truly essential services that govt provides. If Jewell's predictions are accurate, we'll soon discover how effectively the Bush whackers can whittle down the dead wood. (Alas, there's still lots of it.) The Administration has already proposed accelerating the conversion of numerous military specialties into civilian jobs, thereby enlarging the pool of prospective front-line combatants for duty in Iraq.

My biggest concern with globalization is the accountability and oversight issue. I agree with Jewell that government must be sufficiently muscular to resist the depredations of big business. The greater risk, which Jewell didn't mention, is that big business will continually find ways to manipulate our laws and regulations to insulate themselves not only from political accountability, but also from the leveling effects of economic competition. And it's economic competition which is the greatest counterveiling power restraining corporate excess, both at home and abroad. (Short of electing Ralph Nader or some other progressive administration.) Even conservative economists like Armentano in his book, Antitrust and Monopoly, admit that government has always been, in one form or another, an accessory to corporate wrong-doers.

Economic competition, to the extent that it exists at all--ensures that no one stays on top--or the bottom--for long. Take Big Steel in this country, for example. Big Govenment was in it's pocket for years, but the Steel barons began visibly suffocating in the 1960s, and experienced cardiac arrest in the 1970s with the importation of cheap Japanese steel. But over the years, Japanese prices began to rise, and with them, the standard of living of Japanese workers, who's wages rose from "microscopic"--to use one of Jewell's colorful descriptions--to enviable. Of course, when the forces of competition eventually knocked on the door once again, Japanese steel bacame too expensive. At that point, we discovered Korea's exploitative wages, and the pattern began all over again.

I'm inclined to think that out best hope for restraining the concentration of corporate power is twofold (short of full-blown economic democracy and the dreaded "S" word): (1) Maintain the intergrity of our judiciary so that, to the extent possible, no one--big or small--is exempt from the law, and (2) Ensure that all markets are open so that no one corporation can hold the public hostage by acquiring monopolistic control. (Yes, we can stand up to Microsoft, or anyone else, for that matter, provided we have the will to do so.)

Foreign workers in the U.S. don't scare me. That could change if I wake up one day, and find they're all in the police and national guard. Or if images suddenly appear of non-English speaking, jack-booted, paramilitary units beating the crap out of young people here in this country trying to engage in peaceful protest. On the other hand, perhaps by then it'd be too late...

[newyawker99]

3. Hi Mark David!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: