An End To Oil, and a Return to Manufacturing Jobs

[Since it’s such a nice day and I want to get out, I’m just gonna post a recent e-mail from a smart friend of mine, Doug Kortof from Seal Beach, whose specialty is electric cars and whose business is in solar panels.  Enjoy!  And for God’s sake, argue! – V]

Hi,
Pessimism about the future comes easily.

Surely another wave of foreclosures is waiting in the wings; too many people are living on savings or debt, unable to find jobs, perhaps subsisting on the dole, on relatives’ largesse, or Unemployment.

There’s a continuing loss of jobs, high unemployment, huge debt, and more than one imperialistic war we can’t afford.

At the same time, the number of millionaires is up this year, and there’s an unprecedented and worsening unequal distribution of wealth and income.  The poor can only imagine the lives of the rich and famous, as depicted on their ubiquitous dream-tubes.

The effect that we see is a skein of insoluble problems, linked and binding each other, restricting any attempt at dealing with them.  Congress and state government are paralyzed because of huge “special interest” lobbying, that precludes tax hikes or spending cuts.  Over a billion dollars in California alone over the last 10 years, according to today’s LA Slimes article.

California is afflicted with a Governor so ignorant that he charged into power proclaiming that he would eliminate the “duplicate agencies” such as CAL-EPA (he thought duplicated federal EPA).  This ignoramus and fraud wound up allowing a tiny lobbying group to stop needed tax hikes in California; a REAL governor would have broken the logjam and actually solved problems, instead of blowing hot air (and cigar smoke) from his “smoking tent”.

But aside from nitwits like Schwarzenegger, the underlying CAUSE of our effect is traceable to debt, “free trade” and other bad policies from Bush II.  [Vern note – As I remember, Clinton was equally to blame on “Free Trade.”] We’ll be decades fixing the problems caused by faith-based nincompoops put into positions for which they were not in any way qualified during the reign of Bush II.

There are a few hopeful signs that we’re starting to revive manufacturing in this country.  Manufacturing, actually producing goods, is the key to wealth generation and the source of meaningful jobs.

Service jobs do not an economy make: no amount of nail and hair salons, fast-food joints and financial services networks will actually produce things that are saleable.

Restaurants allow improvident people to avoid cooking their own food, and, at a very high price, allows those who are poor to pretend that they can afford servants to prepare and serve their meals.  Such vanity doesn’t come cheap; families that cook their food can live on a week for the cost of one day’s MacCrap or TacoMako.

No recovery is possible without a revival of our manufacturing base.

That’s been eroded by the idea of predatory labor markets, which was repackaged as “free trade”.  Under this false idea, countries that can’t support our pricing structure are allowed to compete unfairly with our own, honest manufacturing companies.  This is what might be called “trade piracy”, stealing our standard of living and exporting our jobs for the enrichment of a cadre of scamming companies and middlemen.

What’s needed are high and protective tariffs to stop the importation of unfairly manufactured goods (a “misery tax” that stops trade pirates from benefiting from slave- and child-labor).  We need, also, to start incentivizing manufacturing companies by tax breaks and subsidies for machine-tool construction in this country.

To do all this takes a strong political arm, because the “Trade Pirates” who are undermining our unions and eliminating the good jobs we used to have here are powerful and able to flood corrupt Congressional wimps with big money.

The other big problem that needs solution, without which no real progress can be made:  we need to eliminate foreign oil imports:

We need an END TO OIL.

This is simple, technically:  solar rooftop power and plug-in cars.

The unused rooftops of America, over 10,000 square miles, could more than supply all of our energy, even if all of our transport were electric plug-in cars and electric trains, trollies and buses.  Just cover them with solar panels; millions of jobs would be created making and deploying these panels, taking people out of the offshore oil drilling industry and putting them into jobs with a future.

Producing plug-in Electric cars would also create millions of new jobs.  We have proven that auto companies could, in a matter of six (6) years, produce viable plug-in all-electric cars, with batteries that last more than 100,000 miles and more than 10 years (we’re still driving them, cars that still have over 100 miles range).

After the batteries wear out, perhaps 100k or 200k miles, the SAME BATTERIES can be melted down and, using all the elements in the old batteries, processed into new batteries.  More jobs, here in America, jobs that are sustainable.

The plug-in cars run on electrons made here in America; we don’t import any electric energy.

Fantasy?  NO.  The GM EV1, for example, used NiMH batteries made here in America, the cars were made here in Michigan, and they were powered entirely by U.S. electrons.

But it can’t be done without breaking the power of Standard Oil.

That’s a much bigger task than any other.  One way to do this is to outlaw traitorous Big Oil executives, who are sending our money overseas to fund our enemies.

It’s our biggest issue; without dealing with manufacturing, wealth and energy, we don’t have much future.

There’s no “recovery” possible so long as we are importing 12 million barrels of oil per day, $1 billion US Dollars per day, which is exported to foreign countries, leaving us only the pollution from burning it.

Moreover, our War Department budget of over $500 billion per year largely goes to fund wars that protect oil supply lines that benefit Big Oil companies like Chevron, Exxon, Conoco, BP, Shell.  Non-national, piratical organizations with no loyalty to our country.

Multiplying it out, that’s $2 billion dollars per day for wars to protect wasting $1 billion dollars to import oil.

Another way of looking at it: the price of gasoline, $2/gallon wholesale, is burdened with a hidden $4/gallon War Tax, paid for by borrowing money from China.

If we continue losing manufacturing jobs, shifting from good, high-paid manufacturing jobs to low-paid, non-sustainable jobs doing pedicures and selling cheap Wal-Crap, and continue subsidizing cheap gasoline with debt, we’ll just continue on the road to ruin created by Bush II.

Ironically, the Bush family got its start in Ohio, working for Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company (and his Remington Arms unit) back in WW-I.  Guess they still work for Big Oil to this day.

I drink your milkshake. I drink it up.


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.