Today's minor thought

from www.juancole.com :

"The argument about whether Cheney/Bush went into Iraq over petroleum is not interesting. Of course they did, one way or another. The question is what exactly they thought they were doing about Iraq's petroleum. I would argue that they threw public resources (perhaps as much as two trillion dollars worth when all is said and done) to secure profits for private companies. Otherwise, the US public will never, ever realize the sort of savings from the development of Iraqi petroleum that would compensate them for the blood and treasure they have spent in Iraq. (Not to mention the opportunity costs of squandering so many resources on a quagmire, when the public investment could have been put to much better uses).*

So we have $2,000,000,000,000 of taxpayer money given to private corporations (aka corporate welfare). What could have happened if we had given $2 trillion dollars to companies in an energy initiative to lower our dependence on oil and fossil fuels? We would have been world leaders in NEW marketable technology. Yes, industry where we would have been world leaders at a marketable technology just like when we were the world auto leaders.

maybe if we get a Democratic president, we can get solar panels back on the White House. That would be cool symbolically--instead of going back to the future. It would be fun to have people in charge who do not need enemies to create a war time economy and look at having a world citizenship.

rojo