What a LEADER Would Do (Alternative Energy NOW!!!)

[alcibiades_mystery]

(or, since I don't like the very idea of "leadership" as it is trumpeted around in all its Fuhrerprinzip glory across American politics, What an Original Thinker Would Do?)

If George W. Bush were truly the leader he has been fetishized as by the proto-fascist "leadership" worshippers of the right, he would get on television and announce the following:

I am hereby challenging our scientists and inventors and businesses and all creative Americans to develop a viable alternative energy source by the end of the decade. I will send to Congress an appropriations request for $XXXXX in order to kick start this program, along with a request for a new department, to be run jointly by the Department of Energy, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of the Interior, with special oversight by the EPA. The new agency will operate on the model of NASA. I will propose several pieces of legislation that set aside tax credits for those working on alternative energy, and I will put the full power of my administration behind a push for such sources. We as Americans have met out technological challenges in the past. President Kennedy challenged us to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, and we did that. We must now face this pressing task, and use all our ingenuity and effort to accomplish it.

That's what Bush would do if he had a lick of sense, or a sense of the moment, or any concern at all for our society, and our children.

[Bumblebee]

1. Re that -- the editorial from the NYT

Waiting for a Leader



Published: September 1, 2005

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/01/opinion/01thu1.html

[Riverman]

5. In response to a National Emergency, a leader would:

- Days before the Category 5 hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast Declare a National Emergency
- Immediately order all federal agencies, national guard, coast guard and all available military assests to move into place to be prepared for the aftermath
- Order all federal employees to immediately return to work, deploy them in 12 hr shifts, six days a week, to work on disaster relief efforts.
- Implement the Contingency Emergency Preparedness Plan that the real leader has ordered prepared on January 20th, the day of his inuaguration
- Anticipating a major catastrophy be on the phone days before the hurricane made landfall with all foreign leaders and the UN to move assests, medical supplies, water, food, tents, etc. into place to be ready to be deployed as soon as possible as the hurricane passed
- Call the CEOs of the Fortune 500 to order that they commit assets and resources to be moved into place.
- Sign an Executive Order to immediately nationalize any business that exploits with price gauging the misery of people in the aftermath, including the oil companies, and even local mom and pop stores
- Sign an Executive Order to freeze prices for all necessary commodities and shelter before the hurricane strikes, specifically the hospitality industry in the Southern states, restaurant and food supplies, gasoline providers, etc.
- Sign an Executive Order commondering the media networks and use the airways to communicate about the disaster, solicit information as to where the need is most critical in order to prioritize allocation of resources to safe lives, and to provide information about missing people, connect family members, direct emergency services and information, direct traffic and more.
- Order the Army Corps of Engineers to immediately repair levee breaks.
- Order the Navy to commondeer all cruise liner ships in the region and move them into Gulf cities to provide hospitals, shelter space and food service for thousands
- Order the Air Force to do food and water drops over the flooded neighborhoods of New Oleans where people cannot get out

There is nothing on this list and far more, that could not have been contained in a continengy Emergency Preparedness Plan that would be implemented the minute the path of the Catergory 5 Hurricane was locked in. I am sending this list to Senators Feinstein and Boxer and Congressman Doolittle (my reps) tonight.

I am sure others have much more comprehensive and well thought-out lists.
Blessings and Peace to everyone!

[blue sky at night]

2. man with a brain over there.....

beautiful post. Why not? Really, WHY NOT? Well, there is this little habit the boys in the Administration have gotten themselves into: They cannot ever do what is right, it is beyond them. (aren't we going to Mars?) I ripped off a letter to my House Rep. tonight asking for a Windfall Tax, I wish I had seen your post before I sent it! BTW, I totally forgot about the "Energy Bill" in my anger and disgust...it was like a punch in the stomach! Oh ya, we can't tax the obscene profits the Oil Companies are making....NO, we have to give them TAX Breaks!!! God what is the matter with me?... asking a simple House Member to step up and do the Right Thing! (see the above)

NOMINATED

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. True dat

This administration is peopled by incompetents, and worse, arrogant incompetents. If they made alternative energy a crucial national project with benchmarks to celebrate, the American people would embrace it and - goddamnit - make the planet and our own lives better as a result. But they won't do it, cuz they're too much in the pocket of the oil industry, and because they have no imagination, full stop.

The sad part is that Americans are virtually screaming for such a project. Everytime you see one of the gas price interviews on TV, you hear people talking alternative energy. It could be sold to the Lefties as the environmental concern they've been yelling about for years, and it can be sold to the uber-nationalists as the end of reliance on Middle eastern oil. It would be tremendously easy to sell politically, if difficult to accomplish scientifically. But they won't do it.

[richabk]

3. Include centers of higher education...

I have had thoughts along the same lines. But I was thinking
of all the wonderful universities we have in this country.
Give the top X universities $Y millions and tell them to have
at it. The best plan in so many years would get a very
nice grant size from the government.

The US has shown over and over again the ability to solve
any problem when we had to...I think this is one of those
times.

[gauguin57]

6. I was just saying to a friend today that if Gore had rightfully moved into

the White House in 2001, we'd be on the way toward alternative energies right now.

But PRESIDENT OILY BUTTHEAD is in the White House, and so, people, we is SCREWED!