Open Letter

Dear Mr President,

I listened to your energy speech and I was amazed that we still cannot have an adult conversation about our energy problems here in the United States.

I mean, you all but said we should "drill baby drill". Your administration is giving out deepwater permits like they're candy, before the oil corps have even cleaned up the last mess they made. They still have not shown that they know what they're doing or how they can prevent another disaster in the Gulf. We have leaking wells there that aren't being attended to and we still have tarballs and plumes almost a year later. Your own commission charged with analyzing the accident recommended a complete re-engineering of the "blowout preventer" BECAUSE THEY DO NOT WORK AS ADVERTISED.

We need a CLEAN GREEN JOBS INITIATIVE the size and the urgency of The Marshall Plan, and we need it NOW NOW NOW!

Imagine if we took the 3.5 billion that we give as a gift to GE(one of the most profitable corps in the history of the world) and instead fund a solar panel plant in every county in the US - JOBS!

Take the billions we give away to Big Oil, and build a windmill plant in every big city in the US - JOBS!

Take the obscene subsidy we give every year to Monsanto, and use it to buy the solar panels to line our freeway right of ways to provide free power to the streetlights and municipal buildings adjacent. This will LOWER THE COST OF THE PANELS SO THAT HOMEOWNERS CAN AFFORD THEM.

Use the bully pulpit to make these transnational corporations pay their taxes,(or just take some chump change out of the "defense" budget) and use that money to help homeowners buy the panels and windmills that will build the distributed power network that will bring us into the 21st century stronger than ever.

Now, THAT would be an energy policy that I could get behind.