The Bush Republicans have been so horribly wrongheaded to hand out all
those huge tax cuts of theirs, most of which have gone to the richest
1% of Americans only (the very consituency that contributes to Bush's
campaign), add that mistake to that other horribly wrongheaded mistake
of theirs, the wasting of some $7 billion per month on that completely
unnecessary and illegal/immoral war in Iraq, this is why the Repugs
have just out and out neglected all the vital and necessary spending on
our domestic and infrastructure needs.

It would have cost less than $100 million to fix and upgrade the levee
system in New Orleans, which the Democrats wanted to spend, but the
Republicans opposed. Less than a $100 million, and the entire post
Katrina flood disaster would have been averted, saving us the hundreds
of billions of dollars we will be spending now to clean up that mess.

It is also worth noting that only 2 years ago we had the worst power
outages in U.S. history, where millions of Americans experienced power
blackouts in much of New York, Ohio and other parts of the Northeast.
That problem, to put in a nutshell, and former Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson described it best, "We're the world's greatest superpower,
but we have a 3rd world electricity grid".

We NEED to bring our power grids back to the 21st century. We need to
modernize our grids, but to do that, we will have to set up a national
"rules of the road" on governing and managing and providing better
access to the nation's transmission system. Presently, we have a
strange patchwork of utility companies, and they use the electric lines
in the same way that truckers use highways, they thus have no interest
in upgrading the grids, no more than truckers have an interest in
fixing potholes on the highway. So you better believe that it's the
role of the federal government to either build up or to help set up the
financial incentives for these utility companies to build the new
transmission lines.

Here's what all the experts agree on, our entire electric system is
being overworked, and it needs to be upgraded. Due to the
Republicans' gross neglect and mismanagement of our domestic needs, we
are falling way behind the rest of the world, such as Japan, for
example, where they are utilizing state of the art fiber optic
technology, whose wires are much thinner than the unsightly, bulky and
unstable electric wires that we see overhead in our cities, and the
fiber optic cable wires are safely tucked, built underground, where
they carry electricty and telephone and television/internet cable
connections, e.t.c., all of this carried in one very thin but sturdy
wire. This is the latest technology, we should be investing in it.

those huge tax cuts of theirs, most of which have gone to the richest
1% of Americans only (the very consituency that contributes to Bush's
campaign), add that mistake to that other horribly wrongheaded mistake
of theirs, the wasting of some $7 billion per month on that completely
unnecessary and illegal/immoral war in Iraq, this is why the Repugs
have just out and out neglected all the vital and necessary spending on
our domestic and infrastructure needs.

It would have cost less than $100 million to fix and upgrade the levee
system in New Orleans, which the Democrats wanted to spend, but the
Republicans opposed. Less than a $100 million, and the entire post
Katrina flood disaster would have been averted, saving us the hundreds
of billions of dollars we will be spending now to clean up that mess.

It is also worth noting that only 2 years ago we had the worst power
outages in U.S. history, where millions of Americans experienced power
blackouts in much of New York, Ohio and other parts of the Northeast.
That problem, to put in a nutshell, and former Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson described it best, "We're the world's greatest superpower,
but we have a 3rd world electricity grid".

We NEED to bring our power grids back to the 21st century. We need to
modernize our grids, but to do that, we will have to set up a national
"rules of the road" on governing and managing and providing better
access to the nation's transmission system. Presently, we have a
strange patchwork of utility companies, and they use the electric lines
in the same way that truckers use highways, they thus have no interest
in upgrading the grids, no more than truckers have an interest in
fixing potholes on the highway. So you better believe that it's the
role of the federal government to either build up or to help set up the
financial incentives for these utility companies to build the new
transmission lines.

Here's what all the experts agree on, our entire electric system is
being overworked, and it needs to be upgraded. Due to the
Republicans' gross neglect and mismanagement of our domestic needs, we
are falling way behind the rest of the world, such as Japan, for
example, where they are utilizing state of the art fiber optic
technology, whose wires are much thinner than the unsightly, bulky and
unstable electric wires that we see overhead in our cities, and the
fiber optic cable wires are safely tucked, built underground, where
they carry electricty and telephone and television/internet cable
connections, e.t.c., all of this carried in one very thin but sturdy
wire. This is the latest technology, we should be investing in it.

What our government has been "investing" in instead (as per the
Republicans), is that our tax dollars have been used to deliberately
reward corporations that eliminate American jobs.

This is exactly
what Bush's father did with our tax dollars until
Clinton ended the practice when he was elected in 1992. Bush jr. has
now gone right back to the same old failed policies of past Republican
presidents, he's using our tax dollars once again to reward the
corporations that relocate overseas.

promptly re-instated when Bush jr. stole the 2000 election, and it
continues unabated to this day. As a result, we are losing jobs every
day. Millions of jobs are lost each year, especially those high paying
manufacturing jobs. And the automobile industry is just one such
example of how our businesses used to utilize the most advanced
technology and employed the most highly educated workforce. But now,
unfortunately, because of Republican policies, these corporations are
going overseas instead, leaving our citizens screwed up and in the
lurk.

last year's, and Ford's sales are down by about 2%. Toyota, on the
other hand, has had it's best recorded U.S. sales ever seen in its
history, increasing by more than 25% from last year's, due in large
part because sales of their Prius hybrid fuel efficient vehicle are up,
way up, by 208% from last year's. Hybrid vehicles get double the gas
mileage of regular gas powered vehicles, and they are a great deal less
polluting, see:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car1.htm

Imagine that. And Bush campaigned against Al Gore, in 2000, actually
telling the American people that our country will lose jobs if we pay
attention to the environment. Al Gore said that this is a "false
choice" for Bush to say that we have to choose between jobs and the
environment. Al Gore kept insisting that pollution free technology
will in itself create jobs that the world is in desperate demand for.
But Bush, and his Republican cohorts, along with this right-winged
corporate controlled media of ours, kept arguing that we will lose jobs
if we vote for the environmentally conscience Democrats.

Let's face it, not only our electric grid system, but also our railroad
and public transportation technology is just as much on a par with the
3rd world as well. Compare our public transport system, our slow,
inefficient and noisy train system to Britain's, Germany's or Japan's,
and you too will agree with me, our public transport system is horribly
backwards. Take a vacation, go overseas, and see how far our nation is
lagging behind these other countries.

And let's talk about education spending too, because even as the rest
of the world, such as Ireland's government and Japan's government, for
instance, they have been steadily increasing funding for education and
schools, which have churned out the latest automobile engineers, but
the U.S. government, under George Bush's tutelage has actually been
cutting funding for education. Compare the results.

While the U.S. automobile industry and many other industries have been
miserably declining, the U.S. oil industry, in marked contrast, has
been making record high profits, profits that have been going thru the
high stratosphere. They are making so much money that they don't even
know what to do with their money. Here's an idea, why don't they build
more refineries? But then, if they do, it will increase supply and
then lower the price of gas, thus reducing their profits, and they
don't want that to happen.

We have oil companies sitting on unused refineries, deliberately so,
completely closed down, while they pretend that they want to sell it to
other oil companies. It's that same old Enron tactic where they
deliberately are creating a shortage.

It was a little more than 5 years ago that the energy companies (which
have very close ties to George Bush and the Republicans), led by Enron,
had deliberately created an energy shortage here in California,
resulting in record high energy prices.

suffered greatly, while Republicans all over the country laughed at our
misfortune. Now the oil companies (who have very close ties to George
Bush and the Republicans) are doing the same exact thing to the rest of
the country that Enron did to California back in 2000/2001.

There should be an investigation to determine whether the current
energy shortage that has led to record high gas prices is a real
shortage or is the result of deliberate market manipulations. But then
you better believe that this investigation will never be done while the
Republicans are in power, because they now control all branches of our
government. And then ALL the oil companies, each and every single one
of them, all of them donate to the Republican party. So the
Republicans will never allow such an investigation.

We NEED a new energy policy. But not one concocted by the oil
industry, as we have now. Here's just one example of how things could
change, the Clinton administration, for example, he ordered sharp
increases in the efficiency of air-conditioners, and this worked out
very well, because air-conditioners are a major demand on peak load
days. But when Bush became President in 2001, just to placate the
energy industry that financed his campaign, Bush immediately retracted
and eliminated Clinton's call for increased a/c efficiency.

A good national energy policy would do 3 very basic things:

#1. Curb demand & implement energy conservation policies

#2. Modernize transmission, and

#3. Encourage new, nonpolluting power sources.

Let's stop wasting that $7 billion per month on the useless Iraq war
and we'll have more than enough money to do all the things that I've
mentioned here.

While I'm at it, let me repost this, it as a perfect example of why we
need to upgrade our nation's infrastructure needs. I posted this last
week, but no one responded to it. So I'll keep re-posting it until
someone responds.

Four years ago, on 9/11/01, hundreds of New York city Firefighters died
in the World Trade Center, because their radio freqencies were not
callibrated to pick up the same radio frequency that the New York city
Police department used. So when the New York city Police, flying in
helicopters clearly saw the twin buildings were near collapse they
tried to warn the firefighters, but the firefighters could not hear
them. The independent and bipartisan 9/11 Commission (whose creation
the Republicans opposed) discovered this, and they emphasized it in the
strongest possible terms that this unorganized communications system
needs to be upgraded. But unfortunately, and we have seen this in the
Katrina disaster, that the 9/11 Commission's reccomendations were
completely ignored. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, we found
out that all the radio communications systems of the First Responders
was just as unorganized and failing as it was in 9/11/01 when we lost
hundreds of firemen there.

Fixing the radio communications systems of First Responders, so that
they have the ability to instantly communicate with each other does not
even require that much money, and it would be money very well spent
too. What is required, for the most part, is that all the
communications systems be looked into and organized in a way that
allows all the different departments to communicate with each other.

This should be our first and most immediate concern, to upgrade the
patchwork of emergency communications systems across the country,
because effective and realiable communication is the most basic
lynchpin of any emergency system. This mammoth problem should be fixed
by the federal level, it is the Bush administration that should get
involved here. No one else can solve this problem, as it is, local
officials are very reluctant to give up authority on their own to buy
their own little customized systems.

An independent/bipartisan Katrina commission would undoubtedly expose
this same exact problem, if and when, or if ever we get such a
commission created to study the government's handling of the Katrina
disaster.

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

The Bush Republicans have been so horribly wrongheaded to hand out all
those huge tax cuts of theirs, most of which have gone to the richest
1% of Americans only (the very consituency that contributes to Bush's
campaign), add that mistake to that other horribly wrongheaded mistake
of theirs, the wasting of some $7 billion per month on that completely
unnecessary and illegal/immoral war in Iraq, this is why the Repugs
have just out and out neglected all the vital and necessary spending on
our domestic and infrastructure needs.

It would have cost less than $100 million to fix and upgrade the levee
system in New Orleans, which the Democrats wanted to spend, but the
Republicans opposed. Less than a $100 million, and the entire post
Katrina flood disaster would have been averted, saving us the hundreds
of billions of dollars we will be spending now to clean up that mess.

It is also worth noting that only 2 years ago we had the worst power
outages in U.S. history, where millions of Americans experienced power
blackouts in much of New York, Ohio and other parts of the Northeast.
That problem, to put in a nutshell, and former Energy Secretary Bill
Richardson described it best, "We're the world's greatest superpower,
but we have a 3rd world electricity grid".

We NEED to bring our power grids back to the 21st century. We need to
modernize our grids, but to do that, we will have to set up a national
"rules of the road" on governing and managing and providing better
access to the nation's transmission system. Presently, we have a
strange patchwork of utility companies, and they use the electric lines
in the same way that truckers use highways, they thus have no interest
in upgrading the grids, no more than truckers have an interest in
fixing potholes on the highway. So you better believe that it's the
role of the federal government to either build up or to help set up the
financial incentives for these utility companies to build the new
transmission lines.

Here's what all the experts agree on, our entire electric system is
being overworked, and it needs to be upgraded. Due to the
Republicans' gross neglect and mismanagement of our domestic needs, we
are falling way behind the rest of the world, such as Japan, for
example, where they are utilizing state of the art fiber optic
technology, whose wires are much thinner than the unsightly, bulky and
unstable electric wires that we see overhead in our cities, and the
fiber optic cable wires are safely tucked, built underground, where
they carry electricty and telephone and television/internet cable
connections, e.t.c., all of this carried in one very thin but sturdy
wire. This is the latest technology, we should be investing in it.

What our government has been "investing" in instead (as per the
Republicans), is that our tax dollars have been used to deliberately
reward corporations that eliminate American jobs. This is exactly
what Bush's father did with our tax dollars until
Clinton ended the practice when he was elected in 1992. Bush jr. has
now gone right back to the same old failed policies of past Republican
presidents, he's using our tax dollars once again to reward the
corporations that relocate overseas.

This "pro-corporation" and "anti-worker" policy of Bush's father was
promptly re-instated when Bush jr. stole the 2000 election, and it
continues unabated to this day. As a result, we are losing jobs every
day. Millions of jobs are lost each year, especially those high paying
manufacturing jobs. And the automobile industry is just one such
example of how our businesses used to utilize the most advanced
technology and employed the most highly educated workforce. But now,
unfortunately, because of Republican policies, these corporations are
going overseas instead, leaving our citizens screwed up and in the
lurk. The latest news has it that GM's sales are down about 5% from
last year's, and Ford's sales are down by about 2%. Toyota, on the
other hand, has had it's best recorded U.S. sales ever seen in its
history, increasing by more than 25% from last year's, due in large
part because sales of their Prius hybrid fuel efficient vehicle are up,
way up, by 208% from last year's. Hybrid vehicles get double the gas
mileage of regular gas powered vehicles, and they are a great deal less
polluting, see:

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/hybrid-car1.htm

Imagine that. And Bush campaigned against Al Gore, in 2000, actually
telling the American people that our country will lose jobs if we pay
attention to the environment. Al Gore said that this is a "false
choice" for Bush to say that we have to choose between jobs and the
environment. Al Gore kept insisting that pollution free technology
will in itself create jobs that the world is in desperate demand for.
But Bush, and his Republican cohorts, along with this right-winged
corporate controlled media of ours, kept arguing that we will lose jobs
if we vote for the environmentally conscience Democrats.

Let's face it, not only our electric grid system, but also our railroad
and public transportation technology is just as much on a par with the
3rd world as well. Compare our public transport system, our slow,
inefficient and noisy train system to Britain's, Germany's or Japan's,
and you too will agree with me, our public transport system is horribly
backwards. Take a vacation, go overseas, and see how far our nation is
lagging behind these other countries.

And let's talk about education spending too, because even as the rest
of the world, such as Ireland's government and Japan's government, for
instance, they have been steadily increasing funding for education and
schools, which have churned out the latest automobile engineers, but
the U.S. government, under George Bush's tutelage has actually been
cutting funding for education. Compare the results.

While the U.S. automobile industry and many other industries have been
miserably declining, the U.S. oil industry, in marked contrast, has
been making record high profits, profits that have been going thru the
high stratosphere. They are making so much money that they don't even
know what to do with their money. Here's an idea, why don't they build
more refineries? But then, if they do, it will increase supply and
then lower the price of gas, thus reducing their profits, and they
don't want that to happen.

We have oil companies sitting on unused refineries, deliberately so,
completely closed down, while they pretend that they want to sell it to
other oil companies. It's that same old Enron tactic where they
deliberately are creating a shortage.

It was a little more than 5 years ago that the energy companies (which
have very close ties to George Bush and the Republicans), led by Enron,
had deliberately created an energy shortage here in California,
resulting in record high energy prices. California
suffered greatly, while Republicans all over the country laughed at our
misfortune. Now the oil companies (who have very close ties to George
Bush and the Republicans) are doing the same exact thing to the rest of
the country that Enron did to California back in 2000/2001.

There should be an investigation to determine whether the current
energy shortage that has led to record high gas prices is a real
shortage or is the result of deliberate market manipulations. But then
you better believe that this investigation will never be done while the
Republicans are in power, because they now control all branches of our
government. And then ALL the oil companies, each and every single one
of them, all of them donate to the Republican party. So the
Republicans will never allow such an investigation.

We NEED a new energy policy. But not one concocted by the oil
industry, as we have now. Here's just one example of how things could
change, the Clinton administration, for example, he ordered sharp
increases in the efficiency of air-conditioners, and this worked out
very well, because air-conditioners are a major demand on peak load
days. But when Bush became President in 2001, just to placate the
energy industry that financed his campaign, Bush immediately retracted
and eliminated Clinton's call for increased a/c efficiency.

A good national energy policy would do 3 very basic things:

#1. Curb demand & implement energy conservation policies

#2. Modernize transmission, and

#3. Encourage new, nonpolluting power sources.

Let's stop wasting that $7 billion per month on the useless Iraq war
and we'll have more than enough money to do all the things that I've
mentioned here.

While I'm at it, let me repost this, it as a perfect example of why we
need to upgrade our nation's infrastructure needs. I posted this last
week, but no one responded to it. So I'll keep re-posting it until
someone responds.

Four years ago, on 9/11/01, hundreds of New York city Firefighters died
in the World Trade Center, because their radio freqencies were not
callibrated to pick up the same radio frequency that the New York city
Police department used. So when the New York city Police, flying in
helicopters clearly saw the twin buildings were near collapse they
tried to warn the firefighters, but the firefighters could not hear
them. The independent and bipartisan 9/11 Commission (whose creation
the Republicans opposed) discovered this, and they emphasized it in the
strongest possible terms that this unorganized communications system
needs to be upgraded. But unfortunately, and we have seen this in the
Katrina disaster, that the 9/11 Commission's reccomendations were
completely ignored. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, we found
out that all the radio communications systems of the First Responders
was just as unorganized and failing as it was in 9/11/01 when we lost
hundreds of firemen there.

Fixing the radio communications systems of First Responders, so that
they have the ability to instantly communicate with each other does not
even require that much money, and it would be money very well spent
too. What is required, for the most part, is that all the
communications systems be looked into and organized in a way that
allows all the different departments to communicate with each other.

This should be our first and most immediate concern, to upgrade the
patchwork of emergency communications systems across the country,
because effective and realiable communication is the most basic
lynchpin of any emergency system. This mammoth problem should be fixed
by the federal level, it is the Bush administration that should get
involved here. No one else can solve this problem, as it is, local
officials are very reluctant to give up authority on their own to buy
their own little customized systems.

An independent/bipartisan Katrina commission would undoubtedly expose
this same exact problem, if and when, or if ever we get such a
commission created to study the government's handling of the Katrina
disaster.

Abel Malcolm

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM IS ETERNAL VIGILANCE

<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>

Educate yourself & go to these links:

http://www.moveon.org & http://www.humanity.org &
http://ww11.e-tractions.com/truemajority/run/oreo &
www.democracynow.org
& http://alternet.org/ & http://www.huffingtonpost.com &
http://thinkprogress.org/