Do Not Arrest This Recovery!

By forming a consumer group based on consumption, energy, the individual can make money and provide power for the larger business & industrial community. Let’s call this group the Citizens Utility Cooperative. Through local financing, voter approved bonds can empower the private home owner to be part of a massive & all-inclusive provider-based smart grid by having locally manufactured wind & solar generators providing efficient, clean local energy. During the day energy flows to the grid, making money for the individual provider, not some corporation drilling at depths of 5000 feet. At night, we can tap back into the grid to get a return on our investment. Germany has a very sustainable alternative energy Utility source provided by the citizens and it is expanding.

The unemployment problem stemmed from a few states, Arizona, California, Florida & Nevada when the housing build out credit fueled Wall Street Musical Chair Credit Theory suffered an embarrassing chair shortage. This snowballed to other regions and industries, like berries through a goose. These States should be the forefront of the assault on the problem…the rest will follow naturally. Said states are also naturally suited for renewable energy generation. This is where the focus of all our resources should be. Keeping it where the meltdown happened removes the need for population migration & further attrition to the local communities.

Requiring, through local legislation, that power provided for the business & industrial needs be purchased from the co-op, there will be no longer a need for foreign sources of energy. By keeping the WPA-type project local, meaning that excess capacity (idle factories) & excess capital (labor) are based on the local infrastructures ability to retrofit existing factories, railway/waterway accessible preferred. Towns along most of the major rivers in California have facilities just waiting for this moment and lord knows we have the sand, so to speak. The trick is conversion to mono or poly silicon. Research is needed to get a handle on costs.

You need five major manufacturing components: wind turbine, solar panel, solar roof tile & inverters and most of all battery storage. The internet can provide the best organization of resources at the most efficient return. Imagine the employment building out the infrastructure, full as far as the eye can see. Patents will be a problem, I can see now, as greed is in play. Apparently, the word “share” is not part of Business School-speak. Must be a generational thing…go figure.

The beauty of this plan are the consequences on fossil fuel consumption & price supports. In order to compete, oil would have to plunge in price, making it no longer feasible to pull from the ground, save for military readiness…game, set & match. There will have to be tariff protected industries here in the States to guard against Chinese poaching through their governments targeted approach in skewing the competitive market by monetary manipulation. I believe the Chinese already own quite a large share of the panel market.

One caveat concerning organization & labor…these are cooperative-owned projects using limited revenue resources through public financing. There will be no room for union wage scales in such a massive effort. Take a look at the Bay Bridge construction at the moment, we are buying foreign steel to support union labor here. The unemployed, I would venture, are willing to make a comfortable living wage & not demand two suv’s in the driveway , a boat and a McMansion in the suburbs.

Think of the savings in not having a military patrolling the world to protect corporate interests or foreign sheiks who suppress their population. There is one big caveat in this. The U.S., British & other intelligence community better have a pretty good plan to destabilize all third world nuclear countries & snatch their weapons…without such, were are all screwed anyway, so why bother. I’ve noticed lately that said third world countries in the southeast Asian rim are actively seeking submarines, why? The better question is how can this be legal, selling war ships to dictators, potentates, Russian oligarchs & just plain nasty riffraff.

Seems “look, Squirrel” has taken the focus off our real situation…jobs, price of food & energy, jobs, housing, jobs…did I mention jobs?