Different Slants

Everyone in the U.S. is upset about the high price of gasoline and the first impulse when faced with a problem of this magnitude is to find someone to blame.

We would like to blame “The Arabs” because they are far away and different and we have been told they hate us because we are free. On the other hand, if we piss them off, they could just pump a little less oil out the ground and drive prices up even more. There is really not much we can do to them that wouldn’t just make matters worse.

Then there are the oil companies. They had it last so they must be responsible for the high price of gas. They are also within reach. Should they be punished for charging us so much for their products? Barack Obama seems to think so. According to his website he does. He would take away the oil companies tax breaks and impose a windfall profits tax on them. I couldn’t find any mention of the oil companies on John McCain’s website. However, he does talk about letting them drill in areas previously considered too sensitive.

So what should we do with Big Oil? Should it be punished or rewarded? (Read on …)

On June 19th, Bacack Obama announced he would not participate in the public-financing system for the general election. The reasoning behind the decision is that while the public-financing was intended to limit the money spent in a campaign, it contains loop-holes that allow unlimited spending by groups not directly associated with the candidates. These loop-holes have been exploited in previous elections and would likely be exploited in this one too.

Campaign finance is corrupting our system of government. It transforms it from a democracy to an auction. The public-financing system does little to solve the problem. The problem is the cost of running and the system does not come close to providing enough money to cover those constantly rising costs. I doubt it ever could.

But there is a solution available. The weakness to the solution is that it must be implemented by those already elected and it is not in their best interest to do so. Perhaps, this is where Obama could make a difference. (Read on …)

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

This is what I’d do, and I’m older than you are, so listen to me:

1…Stop funding expansion of the Interstate Highway System.  Maintain what there is, but no more widening, lengthening or any new entrances and exits.  It just beckons more cars and delays our conversion to sophisticated rail transportation.  Make cars increasingly unnecessary and make the trains run on time, like it matters.  Because it does.

2…Create and fund a National Railway Authority, some kind of public/private organization.  Hire both retired, existing RR workers and also the unemployed to create a national railroad that will rival or exceed Europe’s in efficiency and economy.  Map out and immediately begin building tracks coast to coast and into every little town on the map.  Knit the whole country together.  Make everyday travel by train inexpensive, realistic, convenient and possible by running trains everywhere.  Put a food car back in the system where the food is actually good, reasonably priced and the service is polite.  It’s possible.  Just hire people who like people.

Build them in America.  If we don’t make trains anymore, then hire people from wherever they still do make trains and create (or recreate) a new industry right here.  Shift the national priority from individual car mode to mass, and pleasant, transit.  Stop consuming oil.  Let OPEC dry up and blow away.   Put millions of men and women to work.

3…Create the “ONE HUNDRED MPG”  prize to be given to the person or company that can invent or convert or modify a type of engine that can be mass produced NOW for a basic 5-passenger car to replace what we have now as fast as possible.  The time is right for people to change their minds.  Offer a billion dollars or whatever your administration feels would be a sufficient inducement to bring the inventors out into the sunshine and get them to thinking.  A billion dollars is about a day in the Iraq War, so let no one bitch about the cost.  We can’t afford to wait until existing major American industries deems it the right time to retool.  Their economic priorities are not in the national interest.  The “Of the people, By the people, For the people” concept should rule the day here, in the interest of helping the most people in this country as fast as possible.

Insure honesty and fairness (to the degree such a thing is possible) by having the awards committee composed of engineers, physicists, metallurgists, chemists, materials engineers and transportation experts.  No car industry types should be allowed anywhere near that committee.  There should be no national boundaries to who gets the prize.  Anyone, from anywhere, if they have a brain…then they’re in the game.   Keep the identities of the committee members a secret so they can’t be corrupted.  Pay them enough, legitimately, so they can make decisions that are in the best interests of this country, and not for themselves.

4…Create a new Tribal Council of Indian Affairs run by a committee of twelve qualified and committed individuals from a dozen different tribes representing all parts of the continental USA and Alaska with ten year terms and annually rotating chairmanship so nobody dominates what ought to be a joint effort to improve the lives of America’s neglected and endlessly cheated Indians.  Keep the Anglos away from it.  They’ve done enough as it is, for the past 300 years.

(Read on …)