Where's the NEW deal gonna go? part one...

First a little music, thanks to Old Growth for playing our little venue and rocking the old school power trio,
old gorwth myspace here
On to business.

If ever we have a time for a new deal it's now, but how bout a really new deal?

Obama and the pundits are all calling for "shovel ready" highway projects to bolster our pocket books. Great, let's see how much of the money goes to the owners and shareholders of the huge construction firms that land that beefy contracts...

Here's a strategic plan:

Now how about Obama's science team hire some really innovative thinkers like the folks at Rocky Mountain Institute or Bucky Fullers legacy The Buckminster Fuller Institute

I feel like there is so much waste in our economy from how we transport goods to how we live in and build our homes that getting out from under this "recession" will take more than a few bandaids. Someone in charge needs to look at every sector of the economy, analyse it for savings to the economy as whole and start passing laws and starting programs that will favor efficiency and building the missing pieces to the puzzle.

Banking: good luck here, I don't really understand why we still have the Federal Reserve printing our money for us? do you?! This knot is tied tight and has been played by some of the smartest...
Here's something written about the history of central banking, usury, etc. If you prefer video
watch this click on the left one, addendum.

Transport:
This one is simple. Make a new system of buildings owned by the state, funded by the feds that are rail depots. Places that trains stop and drop freight, where local/regional private delivery systems take over. Think UPS, postal service, produce and food, tools, wal mart. What ever needs to move distances greater than 100 miles can go this route. Everything fits in a shipping container and gets dropped off.
Jobs for construction and jobs for warehouse logistics. State owned = state revenues.

Make the scheme affordable by taxing long haul trucks according to the damage they impose on the Interstate and intrastate highways. That's tax per mile = revenue and real value of highways' use reflected in cost of transport options. Trains will become the affordable option(they really are more efficient) and with new depot system in place before taxes take effect no big hit to the economy. More train employees, more regional drivers = less long haul trucks on highway = safer roads that last longer, much much longer. Better for national security as well. Now this is more applicable outside of NE corridor but even there it would have some play.

Resource extraction/resource use:
Complicated regulations and very cheap grazing/mining/logging leases need to go bye-bye. The cheap leases (and lack of paying for down stream/atmospheric storage of waste) deflate the value of industrial/commercial supply chain commodities and almost ensure inefficient use of them in all applications down the supply chain. If commodities are expensive because of real cost reflected in their price, than they are not as easily wasted. This reality would drive the price of some things up at the consumer level but it will level the playing field with alternatives to those commodities.

Example; in the suburban home construction sector, the price for lumber is far below what it is really worth because of federal losses in timber sales. This drives the overall value of trees down significanlty for every producer so it's a double wammy! If we had lumber cost what it's really worth than fiber composite boards (fiberboards for sale) would take over the lumber market, creating new manufacturing jobs, new agricultural jobs(the source of fiber) mitigating cost of large forest fires in poorly manged national forests, give us the go ahead to actually fix the forest ecosystem with small diameter thinning projects along population interfaces(more jobs). This would also help west coast salmon runs, (more jobs)increase the value of reclaimed(yet to be recycled) paper, and spur the implementation of new construction methods as well.

How bout we throw in a law that mandates use of 80-100% post consumer paper in all federal, state and county paper trails to the extent the supply chain can handle it. That will drive up the price of recycled paper, which has plummeted recently, and ensure that it all gets recycled again because suddenly it will be worth something.

I know i've been barking up this tree before and here it is again. Tax carbon emissions at stationary industrial source points. Most electricity waste and un-mitigated heat loss waste will be fixed internally by source polluters because carbon tax will make this waste unacceptable in bottom line. Electricity generated with coal/natural gas will cost more than other sources and shift market dynamics in favor of true renewables. Carbon trading schemes will just help bloat trading floors with more exotic paper to buy and sell. Carbon taxes could go right into federal programs that aid emerging technologies.Read this for more opinions and
how stuff works article
here for Wiki

I have much more to spout out but will save it for another time.