It's the Economy.......Stupid. (Bill Clinton)

By Ivan A. Hall

California's, the nation's, and indeed, the world's economies, all in my view suffer from a common ailment: Stagnation.

The base for the existing power struggle is largely centered around the oil producing countries in the middle east. And, as third world economies attempt to gain momentum thru the shift in manufacturing to them, from first world economies, world wide demand for oil increases. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to massively build up its fixed military assets in the middle east, e.g. in Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq in order to convince ourselves that, "we are in control of the oil supply."

We are truly at a critical juncture in human history. Will we continue the inexorable march towards more war, calamity, and chaos or will Californians seize this unique opportunity in history to vote into office the one candidate who first and foremost preaches the need for California to massively invest in renewable energy, specifically solar power?

The fossil fuel/ nuclear power pathway is ultimately a dead end street. Nonetheless, the energy conglomerates continue to invest heavily in extracting a resource from the bowels of the Earth, combusting it, and then spewing the harmful chemical constituents into the air for all life to breathe into their lungs.

Meanwhile, the nascent solar and wind turbine industries sit poised, bearing forth after 30 years of technological development, with the most advanced mechanisms ever available to human society, in capturing renewable energy from the sun and wind.

It is time to start the fire. It is time for humanity to rise up and demand governments' massive infrastructure investment in solar, and wind power. California is the key. We can seize this moment, to direct tax money away from purchasing fossil fuel power negotiated at rip off rates during the height of our power crisis, and instead invest heavily in solar power.

Consider that, many times before a new industry has fully come into existence government must first massively invest in the infrastructure needed to facilitate that industry's success.

For example, without government's investment in roads, and highways, there would not be modern automobile, oil, and steel industries. Without government's investment in building and operating airports, there would not be an airlines, and airplane manufacturing industries. Without government's investment in dredging harbors and building modern seaports there would not be a modern shipping industry, nor the capacity for worldwide economic trade at today's massive scale.

Government's investment is the crucial foundation at seemingly every turn that facilitated the transformation of society from steam and coal towards oil.

Thus it is logical, and necessary that California once again take charge, and lead the United States in a massive program of solarizing our economy. The first step is a multi-billion dollar investment to place electric generating solar panels, and other modern solar collector technology on all appropriate government buildings. This massive purchase order will dramatically reduce the cost for existing solar technology. The ramifications are prescient.

And as we near the 30 year anniversary of the OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, oil embargo of 1973-74.......we must unite across all political spectrums, to defeat the hugely entrenched special interests of the oil conglomerates, in order to democratically, and dramatically move forward in a bold new direction, which will do more to benefit the needs of humanity of all income classes than any one single ideology.