@MarilynW a Canadian expat pensioner in Costa Rica. Was surprised to find that he is all up with Trump's ideas, rounding up dissenters, etc. First time to meet a person from Canada with right wing beliefs. Heh.

(PS left a response to your comment last night in EB.)

Thanks for moving forward...

@polkageist Thank you for engaging here. I appreciate your perspective. I'm 57 yo and of course I know lots!

cheers!

I'm 81 and just go along for the ride nowadays. Too many of my systems are failing to feel I can do much besides donate a little where it will do some good and talk when anyone will listen. Too fragile to demonstrate or face up to the enforcers. I was around for the sixties and did what I could; now I have to leave it to others.

I think you are right when you make the point that we must demand what we want and not be sidetracked by political parties. Most of our discussions here have been about whether or not to resurrect the Dems or start a new party. I think you show that that logic is backwards: let's fight for what we want and let the parties come to us somehow, but always with hat in hand.

@Tony Wikrent Jacobson and others' study was a comprehensive inventory, state by state, of what was needed to get us off fossil fuels. It is doable and I would contend that it IS the jobs program we desperately need in this country.

In November 2009, Mark Z. Jacobson, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, and Mark A. Delucchi, at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Davis, had an article in Scientific American that surveyed what was required to end the era of burning fossil fuels by 2030:

It is great to see you posting essays and commenting here too, Tony.

In November 2009, Mark Z. Jacobson, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, and Mark A. Delucchi, at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Davis, had an article in Scientific American that surveyed what was required to end the era of burning fossil fuels by 2030:

• 3.8 million 5-Mega-Watt wind turbines;
• 49,000 300-Mega-Watt concentrated solar plants;
• 40,000 300-Mega-Watt solar power plants;
• 1.7 billion 3-kilo-Watt rooftop photvoltaic (PV) systems;
• 5,350 100-Mega-Watt geothermal power plants;
• 270 new 1,300-Mega-Watt  hydroelectric power plants;
• 720,000 0.75-Mega-Watt  wave devices; and
• 490,000 1-Mega-Watt tidal turbines.

In 2011, they posted two pdf files providing heavily footnoted details of their 2009 Scientific American article; the pdfs provide all the details you could want, including discussion of critical material shortages, such as rare earth elements, for a mass, crash program.

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies.

The estimated cost of this program is $100 trillion. As I explained in Dear Dems: Give me $100 trillion and I'll save your sorry ass (November 27, 2014):

What about the $100 trillion price tag? Sure seems staggering at first. But only because we have internalized the decades of propaganda promoting neo-liberalism by the one percent and the banksters. It is actually well within our capability: the entire world economy produces $71 trillion in goods and services each year (of which the U.S. economy produces around $16 trillion). $100 trillion over 15 years is just under $7 trillion a year. That’s just a ten percent increase in world output, right now! Less than ten percent with a 20 or 35 year program. That would make for the longest sustained world economic boom since the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after World War Two.

But where do we get $100 trillion? Well, the financial markets in the USA alone trade over $5 trillion each and every day in stocks. bonds, options, futures, swaps, and other derivatives. And, there is over $50 trillion sitting around in the world’s offshore hot money centers, which the one percent are hiding from tax authorities. To fund $100 trillion in new infrastructure we can either take that money away from the one percent, or take away their control over the creation and allocation of new money and credit, which they are misusing for speculation and usury. We can just create the money needed out of thin air. That is, in fact, the way money has always been created.

In addition, we need to renovate, rebuild, or replace every single building on the planet - residences, factories, office buildings, everything - to make them all carbon neutral. The Scandinavians have developed construction technologies that manufacture buildings with the tolerances used for machine tools and engines, with carefully designed HVAC systems. These buildings are able to keep occupants warm with just the head emitted by light sources and other appliances. Very impressive for buildings that are near or north of the Arctic circle. There is an industry association, in Sweden I think, that has a good website on these this building technology.

In addition, we need to build a LOT of urban rail mass transit systems. In New York City, the density of the rail transit system, in terms of route miles and stations per land area and per capita is about one half the density of rail transit systems in London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, and many other cities overseas. But the density of NYC is twice that of the next USA city, Chicago. In NYC, some 80% of trips in Manhattan are by rail transit system, and I think the figure for the entire city is well over 50%. USA cities like Miami, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, etc., are basically jokes when you look at the wonderful systems of places like Paris or Vienna. A good site is http://www.urbanrail.net/. In march 2009, I posted 3.195 trillion -TRILLION - for urban RAIL transit.

To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $3.195 trillion. That is just construction costs – it does not include the cost of new rolling stock and maintenance rail vehicles. It is a project that can create 7.5 million jobs a year, for ten years.

Finally, a number of years ago Ian Welsh posted a list of policies to end Wall Street's dominance of the economy, and David Cay Johnston also posted a great list of policies. I blogged about these at the time and can probably find the links if anyone is interested.

The problem of course, is to seize control of the creation and allocation of money and credit from Wall Street and the City of London and the world's rich, to start funding all this work.

The problem after that, I think, is going to be shortages of labor.

@Tony Wikrent

Just to add:

http://www.politicususa.com/2015/06/09/report-shows-oil-industry-benefit...

Report Shows The Oil Industry Benefits From $5.3 Trillion in Subsidies Annually

By Rmuse on Tue, Jun 9th, 2015

... In a new and disturbing report from researchers at the International Monetary Fund, the world’s governments are providing subsidies to the highly profitable oil industry to the tune of an astonishing $5.3 trillion in benefits per year. Another way of looking at just how much the world pays the oil industry that bears responsibility for decimating the Earth’s environment; imagine they receive $10 million per minute. That is $10 million every minute, every day, of every month, of every year. Those mind-boggling entitlements have grown over the past couple of decades and are increasing every year.

What that also means is that every minute the world’s population is paying $10 million to help the fossil fuel industry pump climate-changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. ...

What most Americans may be surprised to learn, if they even care, is that the IMF report revealed that besides the obvious cash “subsidies” being regularly “gifted” to the oil industry of a collective $88 billion from the G-20 nations alone, are the horrific consequences of burning fossil fuels that very few nations, including the Koch-American government, are even willing to address. These are consequences such as the permanent and prohibitively costly health and environmental impacts affecting both local regions such as air and water pollution, and the more dangerous global consequences such as melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events wreaking havoc on the entire world.

Actually, it is the effects of pouring billions of tons of climate changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that accounts for nearly three-quarters of the final $5.3 trillion annual figure arrived at by IMF researchers. According to a statement from Benedict Clements representing the IMF’s fiscal affairs department; “While the large size of our new estimates may be surprising, it is important to put in perspective just how many health problems are linked to energy consumption and air quality.” According to conservative estimates of the World Health Organization (WHO), “One in eight global deaths are attributable just to air pollution.” Obviously it does not included the deaths from drought-related food shortages, lack of water, extreme and deadly weather events, or any of the other consequences of anthropogenic global climate change caused by burning fossil fuels. The WHO strongly suggests that even beyond the global climate benefits of the entire world working in concert to eliminate the highly-profitable oil industry’s entitlements, any one nation’s efforts to keep fossil fuels in the ground and out of the atmosphere “will carry very significant health and economic benefits at the local level.”

The IMF’s report revealed that ending oil industry entitlements would cut by half the number of deaths attributed to outdoor air pollution alone and save about 1.6 million human lives each year. Besides, the level of money being paid to the oil industry for nothing would be better spent on healthcare, education, and infrastructure improvements and relieve the crushing poverty plaguing third world nations like America and drive robust economic growth. Part of that spending naturally includes investing in more cost-effective and money-saving projects like clean and renewable energy and research and development of more energy-efficient uses for oil and gas. ...

In November 2009, Mark Z. Jacobson, at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, and Mark A. Delucchi, at the Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California at Davis, had an article in Scientific American that surveyed what was required to end the era of burning fossil fuels by 2030:

• 3.8 million 5-Mega-Watt wind turbines;
• 49,000 300-Mega-Watt concentrated solar plants;
• 40,000 300-Mega-Watt solar power plants;
• 1.7 billion 3-kilo-Watt rooftop photvoltaic (PV) systems;
• 5,350 100-Mega-Watt geothermal power plants;
• 270 new 1,300-Mega-Watt  hydroelectric power plants;
• 720,000 0.75-Mega-Watt  wave devices; and
• 490,000 1-Mega-Watt tidal turbines.

In 2011, they posted two pdf files providing heavily footnoted details of their 2009 Scientific American article; the pdfs provide all the details you could want, including discussion of critical material shortages, such as rare earth elements, for a mass, crash program.

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials

Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transmission costs, and policies.

The estimated cost of this program is $100 trillion. As I explained in Dear Dems: Give me $100 trillion and I'll save your sorry ass (November 27, 2014):

What about the $100 trillion price tag? Sure seems staggering at first. But only because we have internalized the decades of propaganda promoting neo-liberalism by the one percent and the banksters. It is actually well within our capability: the entire world economy produces $71 trillion in goods and services each year (of which the U.S. economy produces around $16 trillion). $100 trillion over 15 years is just under $7 trillion a year. That’s just a ten percent increase in world output, right now! Less than ten percent with a 20 or 35 year program. That would make for the longest sustained world economic boom since the rebuilding of Europe and Japan after World War Two.

But where do we get $100 trillion? Well, the financial markets in the USA alone trade over $5 trillion each and every day in stocks. bonds, options, futures, swaps, and other derivatives. And, there is over $50 trillion sitting around in the world’s offshore hot money centers, which the one percent are hiding from tax authorities. To fund $100 trillion in new infrastructure we can either take that money away from the one percent, or take away their control over the creation and allocation of new money and credit, which they are misusing for speculation and usury. We can just create the money needed out of thin air. That is, in fact, the way money has always been created.

In addition, we need to renovate, rebuild, or replace every single building on the planet - residences, factories, office buildings, everything - to make them all carbon neutral. The Scandinavians have developed construction technologies that manufacture buildings with the tolerances used for machine tools and engines, with carefully designed HVAC systems. These buildings are able to keep occupants warm with just the head emitted by light sources and other appliances. Very impressive for buildings that are near or north of the Arctic circle. There is an industry association, in Sweden I think, that has a good website on these this building technology.

In addition, we need to build a LOT of urban rail mass transit systems. In New York City, the density of the rail transit system, in terms of route miles and stations per land area and per capita is about one half the density of rail transit systems in London, Moscow, Paris, Tokyo, and many other cities overseas. But the density of NYC is twice that of the next USA city, Chicago. In NYC, some 80% of trips in Manhattan are by rail transit system, and I think the figure for the entire city is well over 50%. USA cities like Miami, Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, Los Angeles, etc., are basically jokes when you look at the wonderful systems of places like Paris or Vienna. A good site is http://www.urbanrail.net/. In march 2009, I posted 3.195 trillion -TRILLION - for urban RAIL transit.

To build adequate urban rail transit systems in the 39 largest U.S. cities, where nearly half of all Americans live, is going to require $3.195 trillion. That is just construction costs – it does not include the cost of new rolling stock and maintenance rail vehicles. It is a project that can create 7.5 million jobs a year, for ten years.

Finally, a number of years ago Ian Welsh posted a list of policies to end Wall Street's dominance of the economy, and David Cay Johnston also posted a great list of policies. I blogged about these at the time and can probably find the links if anyone is interested.

The problem of course, is to seize control of the creation and allocation of money and credit from Wall Street and the City of London and the world's rich, to start funding all this work.

The problem after that, I think, is going to be shortages of labor.

@dkmich All I speak are English and Spanish, so I claim no authority.

end of March for me, daughter, and grandsons. A. Escape route, and B. Eldest grandson wants EU citizenship for grad school and work. Very disappointed with Brexit for this reason. I am afraid even more countries will pull out, and it will have been a lot of expense for nothing.

@Linda Wood It's based on faith. Even gold was based on faith. "Oooh but they're supposed to pay it back!" That will never happen. The government prints money and tells everyone to go to work on X. What we ought to be critiquing are the virtues (or lack thereof) of working on X. Yeah, war sucks. Let's divest from war.

Thank you for this essay, this outline, this hopeful view and for your spirit.

I think we need to put war out of business. In order to do that, in order to stop our government from spending money we don't have on crimes against humanity and the planet, we have to find a way to stop signing off on our government's debts for criminal activity. Somehow this needs to be established and legally achieved. No more printing press for dollars for death.

The national debt in the year George W. Bush took office was about $5 trillion. When President Obama left office it was over $18 trillion. Where is that money? Are we seeing it in our infrastructure or our social well being? No. It has gone to war. We signed off on this madness. We can stop.

@Azazello Outstanding piece that is very much like Dallas Doc's here. Great minds!

Along the same lines as your piece. counterpunch

@Phoebe Loosinhouse Exactly.
You beautifully said what I ineptly tried to say.

Yes, we need to have an activist agenda enumerated clearly to those in power AND we need people in positions of power who are able to implement the agenda.

If we don't do both, we will be continually left in the position of putting faith in politicians who are doing nothing but responding expediently to the demands of the day (prime example Schumer and Pelosi as we speak)or who will take our demands and bastardize them as happened to our calls for healthcare reform when Obama was elected.

We've never had any problem identifying what we want, Dallasdoc's platform is one that almost any liberal could get behind, we just haven't been able to ever successfully reach the implementation stage.

Marches and protests are great, but it's what comes after the marches and protests that count. TPTB learned one great lesson since the days that Viet Nam protests basically ended the war - if it isn't covered, it doesn't count. IMO when oceans of anti-Iraq War protestors didn't count for spit, I thought that day was over, even though it has great value for bond building and for letting people know that they aren't alone and that masses of others feel the way they do.

The only reason the Women's March got coverage IMO was because TPTB are ambivalent about Trump and don't mind seeing him defanged and humbled so that he will believe that he needs them. They are basically gaslighting him - look at how unpopular you are! but not to move any progressive agenda forward. If anything, they'll be more successful in rooting out the few less malevolent tendencies he was displaying, like not dismantling Social Security.

Face it, most elected politicians already have an agenda and it isn't ours. We can march, we can petition, we can write letters, we can withhold our vote, we can blog, we can threaten, we can cajole. But while we do all those things we should be focusing on building a movement/Party that runs people that don't need any of those tactics to persuade them to do what is obviously the right thing in the first place.

Up until now, we have always been successfully played or ignored or veal-penned or co-opted or stigmatized or distracted or pragmatized or divided by those who don't share our goals but want our votes. We can start by reforming ourselves to vow that this time we won't let that happen again. We need both a short and a long game.

@dfarrah @dfarrah
--something about levels of need and honest action not being met, though Jane must have seen this too. Today I think that his surprise at the response to his diagnosis, especially after Portland, showed that he hadn't had time to really think through or feel the depths of how poisonous the dems' metamorphosis under tha aegis of the Deep State is. Now at least he has illuminated the stage where a living body politic meets gangrene and different maps are possible.

characterizing Bernie as a veal pen-er.

There is simply no way he could have built the infrastructure for a 3rd party at the time he considered running for pres.

But what about before, you might ask? Why didn't Bernie get things going a few years before? Well, he likely bought into the myths that socialistic candidates could not win, and that they sure couldn't outraise the big-money candidates.

He unexpectedly blew those myths up. And he, based on reporting here and there, probably succeeded to an extent beyond his wildest dreams.

@k9disc
"We need to make corporate sponsorship an ethical and moral anvil."
And, per the CStS video above, to deal with the also already accomplished corporate destruction of the election process.

I completely agree with your entire list here, but how?

Seems to me that taking on this platform requires that our problem be properly diagnosed.

We need to make corporate sponsorship an ethical and moral anvil, especially for politicians and political parties. Drumpf is completely germane here, and his corporate friendly policy and his Oligarch cabinet should be called out for the corporate confidence scam that it is -- clearly called out.

This is not happening. IMO, this must happen if we are to have any kind of shot at getting this platform a fair public airing.