This is (at least part of) your platform
The government was urged Wednesday to launch a broad program supporting science education, research and innovation in an effort to maintain the nation’s economic dominance.
_Improve math and science education in elementary and high schools by establishing a merit-based scholarship program to attract 10,000 students per year to careers teaching math and science.
_Increase the nation’s investment in basic research by 10 percent each year for the next seven years, with a special emphasis on physical science, math, engineering and information science.
_Provide 25,000 new undergraduate scholarships each year and 5,000 new graduate fellowships for U.S. citizens enrolled in physical science, life science and math programs in American colleges and universities.
_Modernizing the U.S. patent system, provide tax credits to companies that increase research and development, ensure affordable broadband internet access.
I would also add that we need a long term Manhattan/Apollo style program to make America energy independent within 15 years. Yes, it would cost money – but if it means that Paris Hilton, Bill Gates, Michael Dell or the Walton family have to buy one less Porsche for Christmas… that’s certainly better than thousands of lives lost in the middle east again and again and again, isn’t it?
There are people already at work on energy independence — check out http://www.apolloalliance.org/
Basically for the price of what we now pay out in subsidies to the coal and gas industries, we could launch a new set of industries to create 2-4 million jobs, reduce pollution and give a pink slip to the Saudi Royal family all at once.
All we need is an administration that values stuff like this, and I am beginning to have hope we will soon have one.
Are you sure those three individuals and the Walton family could pay for all of that or would you have to raise taxes on most working citizens? Or would your cut-off point be the Democrats super rich designation, $200,000 and above? I mean, if you are going to be specific about what looks to be a good program, you should be specific about who pays for for it. You know, just coming up with good things to spend money on is not the primary challenge of good government. BTW, Paris Hilton might resonate with the tin foilers, but adults will want to see more.
Dugger
Isn’t it amazing what you can propose as long as you say you’re going to pay for it by raising taxes on Paris Hilton & Bill Gates? To date, Dems have proposed the following programs that will be paid for by raising taxes on the rich:
Universal Health Care
Universal College Education
Increased Airport/Seaport/Nuke Reactor Security
Fixing Social Security
Increasing Medicare
Increasing Welfare
Increasing Public Housing
Updated Mass Transportation, including Aamtrack and Local Busses
Energy Independence
Increase Veteran’s Benefits
Environmental Protections
Updated Voting Technology
Whew… Did I leave anything out? Now I know Paris & Bill make a LOT, but with that list we’re going to need to go back to 90-95% tax rates. Is that REALLY what Dems are proposing?
No, they’re not ‘proposing’ anything. They NEVER propose anything,
They’re simply trying to recycle-repackage-resell tired, worn-out, lame, and generally unrealistic and unworkable policies which have been rejected time and time again by the American people.
But it doesn’t stop em though, bless their hearts…
I take it neither one of you feel up to the challenge of explaining why it’s better to continue subsidizing coal and gas instead of pursuing energy independence?
Time to piss or get off the pot, boys.
Sadie -
We’ve tried time and time and time and time and time and time…whew…again to become energy independent, but in each and every case, people like you come running out of the woodwork telling us we “can’t do this” or “we shouldn’t do that” blah blah blah pure T-BS and in most cases out and out lies.
Dems and RINO’s have time and again stopped any efforts for us to become energy independent. Yet somehow it’s us who need to “piss or get off the pot.”
You are funny, I’ll give you that.
Sadie,
Just like stating how great it would be to spend billions on research and this and that great program, the idea or desirability of achieving energy independence is not the real intellctual challenge here, you understand. That’s not a break through. Energy independence?!! Now why didn’t we think of that! And, I could have had a V-8! Anybody can state platitudes (like the all new 2008 Gore Hydro-mobile) . The challenge is to come up with a viable, affordable, realistic, sustainbale energy program that doesn’t wreck the current economy and substantially reduce our standard of living. And before you tell me all of these great ideas, keep in mind the people in industy are also smart and they just love to make money – and they would with a useable no-energy mobile. They just haven’t been able to do it. The hybrid cars are a good start – maybe – but as I write this Toyota is recalling theirs and there are reports that they actually save very little gas.
Dugger
We’d LOVE to be energy independent. But it’s Dems and their refusal to allow new drilling just about anywhere inside the US that’s forcing us to seek resources elsewhere.
http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0508/feature1/fulltext.html
This one is even better, and actually the article I was looking for. I subscribe to the dead tree version and read it there, and picked the wrong article out of the google search. But give this article a read. It offers what I think is a very level-headed description of the challenges faced with finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Shorter answer to the questions from them, it ain’t going to happen any time soon!
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1028_041028_alternative_energy.html
This article from National Geographic should provide some needed perspective to this discussion.
Frank
Good point. The recent increase in oil prices have probably made the ’shale’ program much closer to being economically viable. Thre’s a huge untapped potential there (heretofore too costly to pursue).
Dugger
There’s also the question of just how close to zero are we? I read mearly 30 years ago, that the reason why it seems like we’re perpetually “about to run out of oil,” is because our (meaning the big oil companies’) projections for supplies only go about 30 years in the future, just as a look in our cupboard might lead us to believe we’re out of Peanut Butter, when all we need to do is go to the store.
There’s also a huge natural gas “bubble” out in the middle of the Pacific that’s miles from nowhere, and would cost billions of dollars to exploit. It may soon be worth it.
Dugger;
How to pay?
We could start with corporate welfare through tax loopholes that in 2000 totalled 445 Billion Dollars. Probably 50% higher than that now. I’m not talking tax breaks for Rand D and such, I’m talking the ‘wink-wink’ breaks written into the code on purpose.
http://www.ctj.org/html/hemenu.htm
Semant – if that is such a brilliant idea, why hasn’t it been before? Evil Repubilicans, you say. Well what about when Democrats controlled the whole shebang? And FYI, in my real world most of the big tax breaks I come across are for low income housing programs (not that there aren’t more). So I hope you are not talking about kicking poor people out in the dead of winter. In fact i suspect a lot of “tax breaks” are targeted to fine tune specific deisred results – like low income housing, oil exploration and that blindly eliminating them across the board wouldn’t work. Which is probably why your Democrat buds never did it either.
Dugger
Dugger
Dugger;
You are too seasoned to ask; “if that is such a brilliant idea, why hasn t it been before?”
Unenlightened self-interested corruption (Both Parties) that seeks cover of dark for it’s success. You really have to ask?
Getting the pork addicts off their fix of easy votes and money ;that’s a little tougher. But it has to be done.
Now THIS is an idea !!!!!
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/10/14/16367/267
It doesn’t mater how much you tax a business. It will always be passed on to the consumer (i.e. you and me). Raising corporate taxes raises prices and reduces consumer spending which leads to unemployment. There is no free lunch.
Semant,
Lets ask it another way. Are you sure you know better than the leaders of both parties? I mean corprate welfare sounds bad ‘corporately’ but when you look at each case separately, 9 times out of 10 you can find a practical reason (jobs creation, public housing, inner city investment, disease cures) why its been done. You yourself are saying all these other ‘practical’ reasons are bad (for corporate welfare) but mine, R & D, is good.
Dugger
but mine, R & D, is good.
I exluded R&D.
But if you are under the impression that our entitlement programs are lean and mean, I wouldn’t know what to say to you. My contention is there is a lot of fat that can be trimmed. Someone’s ox is gonna be gored. But if your telling me the system is unchangeable because it is basically a workfare social program in conservative clothing(and democrat) then there is gonna have to be alot more of it in the alternative energy field. Either that , or we’re gonna be grinding wheat in windmills.
Energy independence does not mean drilling for more oil or digging more coal. It means finding new ways. I get the impression none of you looked at the Apollo Alliance site?
The bad news is, if Dems fail to recapture the government and we keep on doing what we’re doing, we will still end up with all this wonderful technology, sure. In the long run that will be the same.
The difference is, instead of being the ones who invent and develop it and sell it to the rest of the world, like we have with so many other things, we’ll be buying it from someone else, at whatever price they name. The Apollo Alliance will have been another squandered opportunity on the road to becoming a once-great, has-been country.
The Apollo Alliance is little more than a Bush – bashing left – wing wish list. As usual, it comes down to “Where are you going to get the dough – re – mi?” It’s obvious that there is no real plan to pay for all the proposals, as if repealing one tax cut will pay for all of it.
The major objection of most Republicans to these plans has never been “We don’t want everybody to have health coverage,” or “we don’t want people to affordable energy” — despite what Democrats say. The objection has always been, “To make these things affordable for the ‘target population,’ we would have to tax everyone else to the point where it wouldn’t be worth it.”
Because the Democrats always argue that people are “entitled” to these things, they skirt the issue of where the funds will come from.