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What do you think is the most effective way to turn this idea into real policy? Add your suggestions here for how you think we should run an advocacy campaign to advance the idea – including the overall strategy, messaging, targets, and tactics.

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  1. Kactus Kat

    A first step would be to listen to the comment on this site:

    http://www.wecantakeit.org/index.html

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    And then sign the Care2 petition & add your comments to it also.

    http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/national-petition-for-the-reactivation-of-the-us-civilian-conservation-corps

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    Write your Senators & Representative about the ideas for a new train system as talked about on this site!  Better yet, suggest they attend their conference in Oct. 2009.

    http://www.urbandesign.org/newdeal2009.html

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    And these are just websites suggested here on this site!  I'm amazed at all the great ideas there are & all the great minds suggesting them! 

    Better yet, send your Senators & Congressperson a copy of this endorsement site!  Maybe THEY will get the hint we need to do something rather than ARGUE with each other to get our economy back on track!

    Thanks!

    Kat

    Suggested by Kactus Kat on 09/21/2009 @ 04:34PM PT

  2. sonny carter

    Everyone should see "Alcohol Can Be A Gas".  It has the answer and it's so simple and can easily be done in less than two years!  One of the major oil companies threatened to take away their ten million dollar contribution to PBS if they showed the eight part series they did on this in the eighties.  Needless to say that has been locked in a vault ever since!  We've been had!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

    Suggested by sonny carter on 09/07/2009 @ 01:48PM PT

  3. Mahesh Rajannan

    Based on what i see and analyze, below are what i feel as more fruitful steps

    Housing
    1) Give good tax credits for first time home buyers to buy home.This will help stopping the falling home prices.
    2) Give good tax credits for all home owners, whose home value has dropped more than 15% since their purchase.If home prices continue to fall they will also consider foreclosing their homes.
    3) Give tax credits for those responsible home owners who pay of their mortgages many years before their morgage term.Say a house owner having a 30 year morgage pays of his mortgage in 20 years, he deserves good tax credit say 50% of the additional payments he made to pay off his mortgage sooner.

    Housing Rental Market
    1) Identify places where home prices are falling but rental companies keep increasing their rents.This is some thing i widely see in california.Provide some means for the foreclosed homes to be rented and give tax credits for those who rent these fore closed homes.This will help to stop the rents from keep rising.

    Corporate
    1) Give corporate tax credits for all companies (big or small) whose stock values had dropped more than 50% in the past year.

    Jobs
    1) Give tax credits for corporate and small business that hire freshers out of colleges in US.This will eliminate all the middle tier companies that just do contracting for commison.

    Small Business
    As is US economy is so fragile and its noose is entirely in the hands of the stock market.This is because small buisinesses are not thriving.
    1) For all business operated by individuals and their family members with an income less than $100,000 per head, there should not be any sales tax on the goods they sell.
    2) Give tax credits say 30% of the salary those small business they spend in labour.This will encourage them to hire more employees and generate local jobs.
    3) For businesses operated entirely by the owner and his immediate family members there should neither any sales tax on the goods they sell nor any income tax for the individuals involved.This will encourage the families to stay close together and propel prosperity.
    4)Give tax credits for all businesses whose net profit has dropped by more than 50% as compared to last year.

    Health Care
    1) Work with American Medical association and increase number of doctors and paramedics graduating every year.
    2) No sales tax on generic brand drugs
    3) Allow employees to choose their own deductibles(high or low) for their insurance policies.Higher deductibles hopefully will result in lower insurance rates.People having policies higher deductibles people will be more careful in seeing their doctors.This will spur the competion and lower the rates at least at the lower level
    4) Provide tax credits for Insurance companies that pay back a portion of their insurance premiums collected for the policy holders who maintain their good physical state.
    5) Mandate the pharmeceutical companies to list their drug prices on their website.Price variations of drugs are high from place to place.

    Education
    1) Reduce the Public school zone restriction.It has no meaning.Any family in a given state should be able to send their kids to any shool in the same state.This will cause the better schools to grow and the weaker ones to die
    2) Make it easy to lay off or fire teachers and staff when needed based of their performance , or their school's performance.
    3) Parents with family income less than $100,000 and sending their kids to private schools,should get a tax rebate of $12,000 per kid.
    4) Lay off the school employees in areas where most parents prefer sending their kids to private schools.Lease the same school to a private management or individual.
    5) Parents paying for their kid's education beyond highschool should get a tax rebate equal to 50% of the money they pay in tution.

    Energy
    No group,individual or government should decide what is the best form of renewable energy.Let the market decide the best form of renewable energy and the extent it can be used.Government at best can only a "one size fits all" solution and this "good for none"

    1) For all buildings that reduce thier energy consumption compared to last year,their respective owners should get a tax rebate equal 75% of the value of energy consumption that was reduced.
    2) For all home owners who reduce thier energy consumption compared to last year,should get a tax rebate equal 75% of the value of energy consumption that was reduced.
    3) Eliminate the base charge which most utility companies charge.Consumers should pay only for what they use.

    Gas
    1) Decrease sales tax for all category of vehicles that have exceptional milege
    2) Promote Ride sharing,carpooling between people.People are meant to be social beings, let them be.Make every bus stop, parking lot of every state and federal government buildings to be carpool points.
    3)Mandate tourist,entertainment places,shopping centers,schools and colleges to allot the most convenient parking spots for carpool and ride share users.

    New Taxes
    1) Increase taxes on liquor,cigarettes,cigar and the like by 10% every year.
    2) Quadruple fines on DUI.Sentence the convict to prison only when he is not able to pay the fine.
    3) For Prostitution and related crimes quadruple the fines and decrease their sentence in prison
    4) For vehicles below a certain milege and not used for any commercial purpose increase the sales tax.
    5) Increase the fee for alcohol license for all business.
    6) Use of cash should be prohibited in any Strip club.Every dollar spent in strip club should be subject to 20% sales tax to start with and then increased to 40% in a period of 4 years(5% increase every year).

    Suggested by Mahesh Rajannan on 01/24/2009 @ 09:44PM PT

  4. Fred Marsico

    I feel the fastest recovery plan must include the creation of manufacturing jobs, and so it seems logical to create jobs in green technology, solar and wind, and electric drive hybrids, that only use fuel to generate electric when all other methods are not enough.

    New building construction must utilize Super Energy Efficient standards, and provide solar and wind power production at the consumer level.

    Rebuilding the national power grid must be done to decentralize it, accommodating the many small power producing resources, and allowing local and regional grids to be autonomous. This will keep locally produced power within the local area and remove a terrorist target that can disrupt power over a large region of the nation.

    Decentralization must be a priority to create a new and clean energy paradigm for America.

    Fred Mars

    Suggested by Fred Marsico on 01/23/2009 @ 10:18AM PT

  5. Richard Hollman

    If you want to rebuild America through re-powering it, which is one of my top concerns, the single most effective thing to do is educate people about Type IV nuclear reactors, or pebble bed reactors which do not have intrinsic safety concerns and takes care of waste issues while providing the cheapest and cleanest energy to date.

    I know that is a controversial thought- but after you know about a pebble bed reactor think of all the resources needed to build solar and wind, not only are the $ costs higher but more damage is caused to the environment in the production of such products not to mention their power densities take up considerably more space then a reactor.  Learning of a pebble bed reactor should inform you of how safe and green it is. 

    The cheap price would infuse every single economy in the united states- people like to talk about saving power but that does not help at all actually, forget that 40% of the total energy use is electricity and that 20% of that is residential and if everyone did a really good job it would not even equal a 1% difference- and that actually can hurt our economy, we really need to use more energy, but it must be clean and cheaper.

    Here is how industry develops- we have a paper thin economy  that relies on speculation to make money, we are neutered of our ability to operate refineries and factories at satisfactory levels.  It is no surprise shortly after we made it next to impossible to build a new nuclear plant our steel industry dried up, as such our auto is on the ropes, it is not an issues that is popularized because it is out of their control.  We have no shortage of iron and carbon- we cannot afford to process it, at best we scrape along recycling to conserve energy.  Titanium is more abundant in the united states then iron- so why is everything that is made of steel not titanium, it requires ALOT more electricity.  If nobody is producing raw materials locally- then locally people are not going to be processing them into goods, without those goods our financial sector- the paper sector is on the ropes.   Is it a surprise that France is the 3rd largest producer of automobiles when they get over 70% of their energy cheaply from nuclear.   Or how about China and Mexico where air laws allow for cheaper energy.  We can have cheap energy and we can put it to damn good use by completely reinforcing every sector of business- I can name educational institutes that pay millions of dollars per year in just electrical bills- and they are warranted bills.  Nuclear could easily cut that in half, for everyone.  Fossil fuel prices would drop as more processes can be cheaply done with electricity.   For example a hydrogen economy- 40% of the electricity is "wasted" in electrolysis in the production of hydrogen, so it is not very cost effective to warrant heavy development.    So lets see if electricity is cheap enough we can do a significant advance to world with two epochs- age of titanium and hydrogen.  All the goods you buy- all the utilities you pay for, every component or mineral that is harvested and refined directly depends on the price of energy...  It is no wonder we are lacking jobs and our financial institutes are crashing and reforming.

    I realise some people would not be happy with that, I would guess oil companies would have a problem with that so as much as it pains me to say it current coal and oil electrical production facilities should essentially go offline and get paid for it, the workers should be paid and sure the little guy is being helped in finding BETTER jobs. (maybe at say a nuclear power plant or a hydrogen production plant, other types of mining and harvesting will heavily be reinforced by the availability of economically flourishing production of goods.


    So lets recap all the things that a pebble bed reactor can provide by being the cheapest, cleanest, highest energy density (space used is least), and hands down safest energy source. (I can very heavily debate that last statement but it is lengthy and slightly off topic)

    1.(CHEAPEST) Harvesting of raw materials
    2.(CHEAPEST) Refined materials
    3.(CHEAPEST) Processing refined materials into goods
    4.(CHEAPEST) Financial and Educational institutes
    5.(CHEAPEST) Residential for not just utilities but tax and cost to build them.
    6.(FEASIBLE) Hydrogen powered cars and titanium that is cheaper then steel (I can prove that too)   (think how much we would save on maintenance of bridges alone if they where made of titanium (trillions of dollars very quickly)  And with that money saved you can be sure it will be spent on even bigger projects.
    7. A huge supply of high level jobs in every field, if factories run cheaper they only get bigger- and they need people designing and maintenance of their machinery.  Less people folding boxes and more people making robots to fold boxes.    I really cannot even begin to address the increase in productivity across the boards it would enable.   I'll be honest I voted for the other guy- cause nuclear was the single most key issue to me, it IS the root of almost all of our problems but it is buried deep and out of ALMOST everyone control...

    Suggested by Richard Hollman on 01/22/2009 @ 08:44PM PT

  6. Brett Wilson

    We need an alternative energy tax on all highway diesel and gasoline to fund the green projects whether it be solar, wind, geo-thermal, bio-diesel, or clean coal. Step #1 is get out of the Middle East. By having an alternative energy tax it will drive up the price of gas and diesel and force people to get serious about the idea we CAN NOT depend on the Middle East for oil. I would not object to a $.50-$1.00 tax per gallon. The funding for these projects has to come from somewhere instead of the Government putting on their "Credit Card" i.e. printing money like it was going out of style. 

    Suggested by Brett Wilson on 01/21/2009 @ 04:23AM PT

  7. COMMUNITY GREENHOUSE FOUNDATION

    We must not only create incentives for private sector investment into green products, but more importantly we need to create a "need" or "market" for these products to be purchased.  It will not do us any good to produce one million solar panels and not have a someone to buy them.

    Suggested by COMMUNITY GREENHOUSE FOUNDATION on 01/19/2009 @ 12:36PM PT

  8. Bruce Johnson

    Natural gas outlets do not exist across the nation at this time. Small trucking companies that deliver within a 60 mile radius could create natural gas outlets and convert their fleet to natural gas. They would have the ability to fuel their trucks each morning and complete their routes by creating a few centralized natural gas outlets. 

    Bruce Johnson

    Suggested by Bruce Johnson on 01/19/2009 @ 12:23PM PT

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