This is to introduce you to AMASS, and its concepts of cooperative self-reliance.
AMASS is the Assurance Mutual Association for a Sustainable Society, an international financial group for grassroots cooperative assistance to the fundamental productive sectors of free economies throughout an increasingly populous world.
Since its inception in the fields of America in 1987, AMASS has been conceived, designed and refined to act as the ultimate tool in support of a new socio-economic model - a more efficient, equitable, responsive and sustainable system of distribution of essential goods and services to the free, peaceful and productive people of the world.
AMASS is constructing a free and open membership five-tiered cooperative association based on a cellular structure of local production co-ops, served by area logistical co-ops, feeding regional industrial processing co-ops, supplying national distribution co-ops, all integrated into, and advised by, an international financial assurance mutual, AMASS.
AMASS is founded upon the realization of the fundamental and universal principles that:
1. All 'Real' Capital is the product of solar energy striking the Earth, and, thru some thermo-dynamic, thermo-chemical or photo-chemical process, storing that energy in a form useful to sustain life, or perform work. Capital is merely stored energy!
2. All economies are, therefore, and of necessity must be, based upon the primary production of those food, fuel and fiber forms of stored energy needed for the sustenance, shelter, security, transport and productivity of the Citizenry. The better an economy serves these basic needs at the grassroots local level, the more stable and productive that Society will be!
3. Every society must seek sustainability thru more prudent and proper care, use and conservation of all of her productive resources, and the more equitable distribution of the resultant production to all its Citizens, to forestall its own demise. The more equitable and less wasteful a Society, the longer-lived it will be, and the faster it amasses wealth!
4. Every economy based upon best harnessing the energy and creativity of its Citizens thru the free exercise of their own individual nature, initiative, competitive spirit, private ownership and personal gain will continually out-perform every other economic model. The more unfettered and egalitarian the competition, the more productive and wealthy that society will be.
5. Every Citizen has the inalienable right to life, liberty, property, self-defense and self-determination, along with the responsibility to hold the rights of others harmless from their exercise thereof. Inherent in that right to life for any material life form must be the right of access to the basic necessities of life - clean air, pure water, wholesome food, direct sunlight (or some stored energy) and space sufficient to sustain ones continued existence.
Thus, we can see that all new 'wealth' is only harvested from the farms, forests, seas, and mines of our biosphere, or is value later added by further processing those same commodities into products more useful for life.
The "service" based economy, as well as every other, other than the 'primary production' based economy, is a cruel and fraudulent myth!
An even more 'criminal' myth is that of the universal benefit supposedly received by human society from all trade in our "Global Economy"!
Wealth is never generated from any form of trade. In fact, there is an inherent loss in every form of trade, as it burns some of the energy stored in that commodity in the process of moving the asset from producer to ultimate consumer.
If you burn more energy in a trade than is stored in the commodity traded; you have entered into negative territory and a wholly unsustainable business practice!
Therefore, AMASS insists each co-op should operate a central marketplace for provision of basic needs from the most local production possible, as the less transport involved in any trade, the less energy is expended, and the more wealth is retained.
With this conservative strategy, AMASS will re-build our Society from the ground up. As opposed to the "Rich get Richer, and Poor get Poorer" effect of the current inverted construct of our economy, which concentrates capital in an elite class at the top of a house of cards, in a proper pyramidal structure, AMASS distributes the greatest mass of capital where it belongs at the base of the economy, in primary production, and every economic sector above that must add value to that production, rather than consume it.
The inefficient, irresponsive and fraudulent wealth creation schemes common throughout our current government-instituted, bureaucracy-regulated, monopoly-based, purely-partisan and oligarchic, predatory capitalist system can never result in resolving humanity's problems, but can only result in generating more human misery!.
With the current "credit crisis" fresh in our minds, we should be able to plainly see the folly in the present inverted construct of our economy. Predatory Capitalism is at its end!
The logical forces of Laissez Faire Capitalism, Compassionate Conservativism and Christian Cooperativism must immediately stand up to rescue us from certain disaster!
Our forefathers survived the wild frontiers and built this country upon cooperative effort, we will need these skills again to survive this challenge we now find ourselves in!
Only by returning to the wisdom of our Founding Fathers, insuring the free and open association of sovereign individuals in an unassailable state of equal treatment under the law will be able to save us from this 'uncontrollable tailspin' we are entering into.
We can all see that we are at a turning point in history, where a paradigm shift in Social Justice and Responsibility is imminent. Will we make logical sustainable changes for the future of all life, or continue on the path of purely personal immediate self-gratification?
Will we drive these developments, or be driven by them like sheep to slaughter?
We all like to talk the talk, but when given the opportunity to help change the unjust way this irresponsive and inefficient system works, will we walk the walk?
In the Good Book, we are instructed to "Tithe" 10% of our net income to maintain communal stores of all essential commodities sufficient for surviving 3 years of severe drought. This 'tithe system' was designed, not to support an elite clergy, but for the security of the nation in times of hardship, and the ultimate support of widows, orphans, and other truly indigent citizens as those stocks are rotated out and replaced with fresh. Where are these stores? How will we survive without that insurance?
If we wish America to continue to secure the blessings of our God-given Liberty, we must follow these commandments, and restore grains and other essential commodities to our now-empty storehouses for weathering the coming calamities!
In this life, we never know what the future holds, but we know there will be challenges, wise and prudent people keep good insurance policies against those eventualities!
You are just the person this world needs to help solve the problems that plague us all.
So, I am asking you to invest your sweat-equity in helping to build this private social security system to provide the basic necessities of modern life, from insurance to electricity, clothing to tools, bread to gasoline, thru thick and thin, to all those willing to live, and work, in peace with their fellow man!
In closing, remember that all Governments, by their very nature, are bought and paid for by selfish special interests! They are not responsive to the needs of all of the People! Even if politicians wanted to deliver more than empty campaign promises, Governments can never solve all of our problems for us!
Working together, at the local level, we can solve our own problems! Working together, we will overcome all hardships, survive to fight again, and, one step at a time, win a better life for all on this beautiful planet for generations to come!
Please feel free to contact me, only if you really want to build a better, brighter world!
Larry M. Aden, Nemaha, Iowa, 712-636-4490

As I drove home last Thursday from a Renewable Energy Fair in Nebraska, where I encountered a particularly ignorant, hateful and virulent strain of Ultra-Liberalism, I was listening to news of our most recent financial meltdown, and the ridiculous political 'finger-pointing' and cries for "more stringent re-regulation".
I felt like I have been a voice crying out in the wilderness.
These two groups of nitwits running our World will never learn, yet it seems that we don't either, because we keep believing their lies, voting them back in, and giving them our hard-earned capital to squander!
Yet, the next morning, as I drove to work at Merrill Manufacturing, in Storm Lake, the news announced that overnight the SEC moved to temporarily suspend short selling of financial securities, and co-workers at the factory said, "You've been ranting about that for months!"
I didn't think they were even listening!
Not to beat a dead horse, but if the SEC admits that short selling is so wrong that financial companies must be protected from it for some time, why doesn't every stock deserve the same protection, and why would it ever be allowed to resume?
That is like saying to the whole world, 'We had to stop the parasitic blood-sucking, temporarily, or we would have killed the host, but we will let the parasitism resume, as soon as we get the patient back on his feet!' This is a de facto admission of my contention that speculation serves no good purpose in the marketplace, and will eventually cause another collapse as devastating as it did in the Great Depression, or worse!
Of course, I am not a prophet; anybody willing to look objectively at the fiat money supply, and the Fed's mismanagement of our entire economic system, could see it coming!
Even McCain saw it coming; he and GW tried to prevent it, several times in prior years!
But not the Democrats, not Obama, even with his self-proclaimed superior judgment, just like GW; they were all more interested in providing easy money for speculators and illegal aliens to buy houses!
I want every American Citizen to be able to buy a house, too, just like GW, but not at any price, not at the inflated prices in a market of "irrational exuberance"!
I am not the only man on Earth smart enough to understand real intrinsic values in capital, nor am I the only one with eyes to see how international bankers have been manipulating our money supply to collect a 'hidden tax' on our capital for their own private benefit since the Federal Reserve Act of 1913.
I learned all these things from great thinkers of the last several hundred years from Adam Smith, to Charles Walters, to Ron Paul, and my own Father.
If the People really understood how the Federal Reserve Bank works, daily, to steal the fruits of our labors, the guillotine would come back in vogue as a tool of social change!
Yet, as we all watch, seemingly helpless, the temblors shaking our financial house of cards, we must all remember that when we point our fingers at others, we have three fingers pointing back at ourselves.
The Dems blaming the GOP for deregulation is disingenuous, the darling of the Kooky Left, Carter, signed the first bill, and Clinton signed the second, to repeal the regulations FDR signed when the banks failed after his election, which killed our economic recovery, until WWII. Both of these parties are equally complicit in this collapse!
We all need to change the way we operate to build a stable economic system!
Several people have asked me what we should do, now, to save our own capital.
First, don't panic! Just like in the Crash of '29', with so many little people in the markets, today, only they will get hurt, if we panic. If you didn't move by Friday, Sept 12, you are too late to pull out, now!
You only get hurt on a roller coaster, if you try to get off before it stops!
Secondly, move slowly and deliberately, on the pull-backs, to reinforce your position with future good-value investments of real intrinsic value -
ASAP, buy only enough land to feed your family (if you have more, you should sell it, now, to some family that needs it), a dispersed agrarian economy is the most stable.
Farmers should insist upon payment for their crops in Gold, or any other noble metal!
Then, we should all save up to 10% of our incomes, preferably, in silver coins, for daily trade in an emergency, and gold, or platinum, for long-term savings.
Take physical possession of these, and find, our form, a local bank, or credit union; that will accept them as deposits, and return same to you upon demand.
Above all, absolutely, do not bury your talents, or stuff your mattress, but keep your money working in the local economy!
After that, we should all invest in local manufacturing, preferably in cooperatives, or employee-owned corporations, that add value to locally produced commodities.
For instance, local people should use this great buying opportunity to gain local control of the local bio-fuels and food processing industries to diversify and support our ag sector. Remember, the safest bet is that everyone will need to eat every day!
Next, do not buy useless paper - no non-convertible common stocks in any other than local companies adding value to local commodities, or precious metals mining companies, no preferred stocks in any financials without local control, no bonds, no paper money, no investment funds, or unnecessary insurance, not even a ticket to a ballgame!
If the expenditure you are considering will not produce a physical product useful to sustain life, or do productive work, do not spend your cash on it! We need forward motion, no treading water, and no backstrokes! If you support any activity that does not produce a domestic product with intrinsic value, you are part of the problem!
Finally, make it clear to all Congressmen and Senators that:
We will not accept any further arbitrary regulation of our economy, but want a retroactive 70% punitive tax on all purely speculative cash earnings, and any executive compensation of $1 Million value, or over!
We want and need a Gold-backed Dollar that the world can believe in thru thick and thin!
We will not accept any vote to bail out these bankers, or any industry executives, and let them walk away with their own personal fortunes intact!
If they refuse to vote for the People on any of these issues, we will work tirelessly to make sure they never have an opportunity to cast a vote in Congress again!.
We need to finally let all of these parasitic scoundrels hang in their own noose!
Larry M. Aden
Nemaha, Iowa
712-636-4490
lmaden@frontiernet.net

The 'Greens' want us to stop burning all fossil fuels and cut atmospheric CO2 back to pre-Industrial Age levels to negate the increased 'greenhouse effect', but they also scream for "wetland" restoration.
Such 'mosquito hatcheries' are detrimental to all warm-blooded animal and human health, and the greatest producers on Earth of methane (CH4), which is 21 times more effective than CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
Now, I agree that we should take immediate steps to clean up our rivers and restore percolation into our subterranean aquifers. We should renovate all of our lakes and prairie potholes for the survival of all aquatic species. We can kill three birds with one stone by dredging out the highly organic material-laden silt of thousands of years of erosion, build up our farmland with it, divert all drainage ditches from our riparian systems to these static bodies, and build community biogas generators with settling ponds at each ingress. These will trap silt and agricultural run-off, collect CH4 from the anaerobic digestion of fertilizers and crop residues, and return that organic matter to our fields.
We must not degrade our environment and economy by such ill-advised and irresponsible actions as destroying productive farmland to build new 'mosquito hatcheries'.
Naturally discharged CH4 is a greater threat to life on our planet than CO2 ever could be.
First, because Carbon is not the enemy! All life is made from it! Carbon is Life!
Higher atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2), not modern technology, is the greatest contributing factor to our higher contemporary crop yields, because it acts like a super-fertilizer for plants. Ag technology leaders, like ADM, have known this, and have been using CO2 in their bio-tech greenhouses, for the past 30 years. We can feed 6.7 Billion people, on the farmland we have today, primarily because of that higher CO2 level.
Recent crop yields are not the result of the fossil fuel-based synthetic chemical fertilizers and many toxic ag petro-chemicals that most "experts", as varied and world-renowned as agronomist Norman Borlaug and economist Jeffrey Sachs, would have us to believe.
None of these "Doctors" are as knowledgeable about the carbon and nitrogen cycles as Gary Zimmer, who regularly achieves 200 to 250 bushel corn yields on his Spring Green, Wisconsin farm with organic culture methods. He claims that, as he continues to improve soil tilth and organic fertility, he will soon reach 300 bushels per acre, all this without so much as one ounce of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer.
Likewise, there is no greater threat from CO2 produced by burning fossil hydrocarbons, than from burning renewable carbohydrates and hydrocarbons, tho' some of each are cleaner burning than others. All petroleum fuel processing yields many toxic by-products spread across the globe by consumers as plastics, synthetic rubber tires, waste oils, solvents, asphalt, and agricultural, consumer or industrial chemicals. Obviously, it would be most advantageous if we were to develop renewable substitutes for all of these.
But, if we return our atmosphere to pre-industrial CO2 levels, we will also return to the mini-ice age and mass starvation of the several centuries prior to the Industrial Age.
Secondly, Nature already created thousands of highly efficient carbon sequestration schemes; they are called plants, they consume CO2 and produce Oxygen (O2) in a completely self-regulating cycle of life!
We do not have too much CO2! We have too few plants!
This is because most humans are better at building deserts than gardens!
We should try growing more plants, before we spend millions on wacky science projects!
Algae are the simplest and fastest growing plants, some are excellent human and animal food, some are excellent fuel, all consume CO2, and none require expensive farmland! In fact, they grow very well in deserts, in sewage ponds, even in saltwater!
CO2 is locked up in plants or organic humates in our fertile soils, and surface waters, only until it decomposes back into CO2 to feed other plants.
The simpler the carbonaceous material, the faster it decomposes. Algae decompose rapidly, trees more slowly, charcoal hardly at all!
Processing algae by pyrolysis can yield a full range of clean, renewable automotive fuels and a charcoal referred to as biochar.
Biochar from algae is the answer to recuperating fertility in deserts and other depleted soils, stabilizing the carbon cycle, and to feeding and fueling a hungry planet!
We can filter these algae from any watercourse, static body of water, tank, or translucent pipeline, and produce as much as 15,000 gallons of auto fuel/surface acre/year.
That is about 100 times the best production from an acre of land!
Remember, Carbon is life!

Grandpa drummed it into our heads, "Waste not; want not!"
In 12 years working throughout Latin America, I found that we are far from the most wasteful Society, as the 'Greens' would have us to believe. In fact, I found that poverty in every Society appears in direct relationship to its own wastefulness.
Prudence dictates that we make the most of our every resource! Conserving energy is an important facet of our struggle to solve our energy problems. As we have already established that capital is just stored energy, conservation of our capital is just as important! We have much to do, and no time, nor money, to waste!
The Government rarely does the right thing. In fact, outside of the most economically depressed areas in our country where government jobs are the best paying jobs to be had, most of those stuck in public service are of such mediocre intellect that they are rarely capable of discerning right and wrong.
Remember, these are the same nitwits that thought it would be a great idea to take every city's greatest energy resource, build huge mountains of urban-dweller's trash over vast areas of our productive farmland, and cover it with very expensive dirt, so it could never be recycled and wouldn't break down in a thousand years.
When they spend our money, they like to buy $900 toilet seats and such things.
Private enterprise would never allow such outrageous waste!
In the past 35 years, the US has spent Billions on targeted 'tax credits', 'research', 'feasibility studies' and 'pilot projects' in alternative energy, energy storage, environmental remediation, and carbon sequestration schemes.
In all that time, I have rarely seen any "research" paper that came to any firm conclusion and did not end with "more research is needed"! University researchers are extremely self-serving in that regard. Our universities and industries have often conspired to tie up any real advances in self-serving exclusive contracts that have brought little or no benefit to the taxpayers, who paid the bills!
The "Production Tax Credits" (PTC's) targeted for certain alternatives, but not for others, has distorted the market, caused unsustainable development of inefficient technologies, and served only to further enrich those who were already gaining undue profits from the preferential treatment given them by our present tax code.
The "feasibility studies" have done little but enrich a few engineering and marketing firms for producing a lot of worthless copies in triplicate of useless documents.
Nearly every last "pilot project" was dismantled and scrapped at the end of the trial!
Most of the "energy storage", "environmental remediation" and "carbon sequestration" schemes were pie-in-the-sky technologies that any decent student of freshman general science could have predicted were a ridiculous waste of time, money, and resources.
Most of the "alternative energy" technologies they "researched" were invented and developed into commercially viable products over 100 years ago - we had a successful ethanol industry, alcohol-burning, flex-fuel and electric vehicles, hydrogen electrolyzers, hydroelectric and wind turbines long before our present petroleum-dependent systems.
University Doctors and the Captains-of-Industry have rarely been the source of truly great advancements in the human condition. They are too far removed from the real needs of the grassroots of society.
We never know where the next great inspiration will come from, as God deals out gifts to man in a mysterious manner! Many times in history the most creative inventors were poor, uneducated, eccentric, inept salesmen, and abysmal accountants.
Thomas Edison was expelled from the 1st grade for being addled and could not have equipped nor kept his laboratory going for the thousands of experiments it took to invent the lowly light bulb, if he had not had the capital of others to run on!
Nikola Tesla had no formal training in electrical engineering, yet gave us the Alternating Current motors and electrical system we all use today, but not without the money and business expertise of George Westinghouse.
Henry Ford was no mechanical engineer, just a farmboy shy of an 8th grade education, yet he changed the way we travel, farm, move freight, and make nearly everything, but only with the investment of other's.
If we wish to make the greatest progress, in the least time, at the least cost, we need to use tax breaks to stimulate unlimited private investment in the work of thousands of private inventors to solve our energy problems.
Tax breaks must apply to all people and comparable alternatives equally. We must not dictate which persons, alternative energies and conservation technologies get tax credits, as has been recent tax policy.
Which alternatives best serve the needs of the People is for them to decide, voting with their own dollars in a highly competitive marketplace, with the maximum amount of choices that human ingenuity can afford them.
Larry M. Aden, Nemaha, Iowa
712-636-4490

If Obama was truly a leader and a uniting force in the Senate, he would have been in the so-called 'Gang of Ten' Senators that came up with a bi-partisan energy plan, but he wasn't, and he isn't. His entire campaign is nothing but smoke and mirrors about "Hope" and "Change"! He is interesting to listen to. He almost never says anything you can disagree with. Because, like a true professional politician, he never really says anything! He very rarely gives any real specifics on how he plans to accomplish all the dream-world "change" that he so readily promises.
After the GOP raised a stink about the Dem leadership shutting down Congress and going on vacation while working Americans have to cancel their vacations due to high energy costs, Obama announced a few specifics on his Energy Plan.
In keeping with his slim but very far-left voting record he resorted to the first inclination of every statist liberal - throw money at the problem! Forcibly take money from those who earned it, and give it away to others to buy as many votes as you can!
He wants to give every American family a $1000 check to ease the pain of enriching the oil speculators, then, he wants to pay all the incompetent and over-paid American auto executives to re-tool the factories they've closed to build 1 million over-priced electric cars. The working poor need these cars to commute to work in, but, instead, the elite will park these in their garages beside their Rolls, their Hummers and their Ferraris for bragging rights with their liberal friends.
With 250 million cars daily burning fuel in the US, 1 million electric cars, seldom substituting for a Ferrari in a joyride around the block in Hollywood, will do absolutely nothing toward reducing our dependence on foreign oil.
To paraphrase one GOP Congressman, 'It is the working poor who most need relief from high gas prices; they generally drive the farthest to work, for the least pay, in the oldest, least efficient cars!' Upgrading the cars of these millions of commuting Americans would increase our productivity, reduce fuel consumption and improve our environment more than building expensive hi-tech cars for a few rich elitists!
If GM was still building the no-frills 1962 flex-fuel 4 cyl. Chevy II, but with 4.00-20 tires and a 5 spd. Overdrive, for less than $10,000, we could all afford a 45 mpg car! And, GM would not be losing $15.5 Billion per quarter, and closing American auto plants!
In lockstep with his party, Obama wants to raise the CAFÉ standards. But, Company Average Fuel Efficiency means nothing, if they never sell anything but a few 12 mpg luxury vehicles to rich folks. That is exactly how the 'Big 3' have been setting record losses, and losing the US car market to foreign companies, most of the last 35 years.
The Democratic Party's approach has been complicit with incompetent management of big business in setting up this massive failure of American industry to address the real and pressing need for sustainable energy policy in our Society!
I don't suppose we have any hope that they might call the Congress back to do the People's business, now that their national convention week is upon us!
But, I am sure they will heap plenty of fertilizer upon us!
Too bad it isn't the kind we could put on our gardens, or put in a biogas generator, to get some energy out of it!

Our 9%-approval, do-nothing, Democrat-controlled Congress has just gone on vacation without addressing our energy problems in any way.
The Dem leaders abandoned their duty to the American People, knowing that, if they had allowed any energy vote to come to the floor, they would have lost.
The majority of all Americans, Democrat voters, and even their own junior Congressmen don't support the Party position on domestic drilling.
They have continued the same obstructionist tactics that they had used for 12 years as the minority to avoid doing the People's business, and the GOP from taking credit.
They hope the American people haven't noticed, but they are wrong, hence the 9% approval rating!
Dem leaders have proven very adept at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
It looks like Pelosi and Reid are about to learn the same hard lesson that the voters taught the GOP leadership, just 2 years ago. Do your job, or we will turn you out!
Neither major political party, nor their presidential candidates, seems to have any firm grasp of the gravity and immediacy of the serious threat that our current energy problems present to our economy, nor do they have any real clue about how to properly fix these problems in time to stave off a world-wide depression.
McCain has improved his stance on energy, but continues to favor subsidizing nuclear power, giving coastal states a veto over drilling in federal offshore leases, and to oppose drilling in ANWR. These positions are foolhardy, but the GOP is willing to compromise.
If nuclear power was so "cheap, clean and safe", it would not need the taxpayer's money to shoulder the liability for operations, radioactive waste disposal, and decommissioning. Yet, oil drilling technology, today, is clean and innocuous, we can drill almost anywhere without hurting the environment, or even the scenery.
Obama has not improved his positions on energy one iota. He continues to parrot the foolish and illogical position of the un-Democratic Party - Windfall Profits Tax, market regulation, higher CAFE standards (all failed policies of the past), Solar, Wind, Electric Cars (that we've no surplus power to charge), and "We can't drill our way out of this!"
There is no more ignorant and ridiculous statement, unless you count the other Dem mantra - "It wouldn't help, it would be 10 years till we would see a drop of that oil!"
First, that is an outright lie; some of this oil could be on the market in 1 year, plus, to announce drilling, today, will bring the market down, tomorrow!
Secondly, that is the same dumb argument these nitwits used 32 years ago when the subject first came up, and virtually every year since! The Dems have demonstrated no willingness to negotiate on this, or any other energy question.
Converting our economy to a renewable energy base (which any sane person recognizes must be done) will take even longer! That doesn't mean we shouldn't start, today! The same logic applies to drilling for our own oil!
Drilling is the only way we have left ourselves to get out of this predicament, as we have ignored the warning signs, and made little progress toward an oil-free economy, for the last 35 years. Now, we have only one chance to extricate ourselves from our dependence on foreign energy in a rational, economical manner - that is to use our own last oil reserves as a bridge to reach a truly clean and renewable energy future!
As the oil is ours, we can dictate the terms of its sale, the use of clean extraction technologies, and that the oil and gas must remain here.
Regulation, however, is never the way to control industry, as it lends itself too readily to corruption, political manipulation, and gross unintended distortion of the marketplace.
Instead, we should use taxes to influence industry to make the right decisions for long term energy security and penalize those who make business decisions detrimental to that goal. Taxes may also distort the market in direct measurable relation to the percentage applied, but are a clear calculable expense that can be readily adjusted as the market shows the need, and cannot be arbitrarily applied like regulation.
We must adopt a comprehensive energy plan that uses every safe energy resource available, today, to pay for our conversion to more renewable technologies for tomorrow.
We must eliminate taxes and regulation on all energy production, but heavily tax every use of dirty, foreign, non-renewable, or unsustainable energy, or technology.
These taxes should fund our conversion to more efficient use of clean, domestic and renewable resources thru a revolving loan fund for working Americans to buy American-made energy-efficient cars, appliances, and renewable energy production systems.
The time for talking about high ideals, researching alternatives and political posturing is long past; we need the fast action that only a free and fair market can provide.
We must do everything we can, today, to prepare for tomorrow!

Now the nitwits in DC want to reduce our productivity in the middle of an economic slowdown by reducing speed limits nationwide to 55. If 55 is good, then 15 Mph would be even better, why stop there, couldn't we just crawl to work? This was a dumb idea in the 1970's, which never had majority public support; it is even dumber, now.
Not only did it destroy respect for law enforcement and reduce our productivity enough to be a major contributor to the "stagflation" of the late '70's', it also made our highways less safe, contrary to what its proponents claimed.
Tho' traffic deaths per year went down nationwide at 55, because most traffic accidents are caused by tired drivers, the greater number of hours spent on the roadway made accidents per 100,000 miles traveled actually go up. Since actual miles required to complete a given trip, or freight hauling job, is more pertinent than an arbitrary and irrelevant gauge of measure like a year, this is also more pertinent data to the question.
Another one of the unintended consequences of letting these nitwits run our country is that it emboldens them to dream up ever more intrusive forms of "federal blackmail" and dictatorship to impose upon us from above in pursuit of the greater good for the greater number. So, our beloved Republic becomes the accursed 'democracy' that Thomas Jefferson warned us of, when he said, "All 'Democracies' die very violent deaths, when 51% percent of the people oppress the 49%!"
We are already a very closely and bitterly divided nation. Let's not start down this road of federal micro-management of society, lest we fulfill the entirety of that prediction!
A better strategy would be to use a fuel inefficiency tax to force car makers to reduce the aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance of our autos that make them less efficient at higher speeds. This is easily accomplished by putting smooth body panels under our autos, and using narrower, larger diameter, and higher pressure tires. We can also reduce car weights and carbon footprints by making body panels and frames from all vegetable composites made from hemp and flax fiber with corn and soy based plastic resins.
Even better yet, quit stopping traffic unnecessarily. It is not just the fuel that our autos burn at the stop, but also the lost productivity, the wear and tear on brakes, tires, suspension parts and the roadway, and the even greater fuel consumption to re-accelerate all that mass that wastes much more energy than driving fast.
Years ago, I designed an economical, solar powered, mass sampling stoplight to replace all our current traffic lights and four-way stops, which determines the masses approaching an intersection and allows the greater mass to proceed unhindered.
It is utter foolishness, and inefficient, to stop a 40 ton Semi traveling at highway speeds in favor of a VW which just pulled out on the roadway, just because a camera sees it first or an automatic timer just happens to be cycling thru its program.
I would freely give this invention to the world, if they would just use it! I know lots of other people with great creative problem-solving skills, who would be happy to help out (tho' probably not for free), but instead, we get nitwits hell-bent on re-imposing the same dumb policies that never worked before.
All of these suggestions would save hundreds of millions of barrels of oil each year, improve safety, and increase productivity, all at the same time!
However, I fear that we will never see a logical applied engineering approach to solving our problems until we get both lawyers and political parties out of politics!

I wanted to discuss how we should make use of wasted local energy resources like that biogas flame at the sewage plant and the algae from Storm Lake for bio-fuels, but the nitwits are attacking on other fronts, so I must rush to the ramparts.
This won't be short, so if you would rather not learn anything today, or you don't want your present world view to be confused by the facts, stop reading, now!
I am often fond of saying that God created every person with a special talent and their own little piece of the truth. The real trick is in finding each persons talent to employ them to their fullest, and to recognize their little piece of the truth, so that we can put it in its proper place in the jigsaw puzzle of life to recreate that picture of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden. Sadly, not every living being is willing to lend their talent and their knowledge to this quest. For this reason, we all continue to suffer.
Texas oil man, T. Boone Pickens, whose talent seems to be making money for himself, made over $1Billion speculating in oil and gas in 2005, again in 2006, $1.5B in 2007, was earlier estimated to be worth $3 Billion, but has since been instrumental in pushing crude oil beyond reason with his very public pronouncements that "oil is going to $150".
It is now hovering around $145 as he quietly sells the barrels he bought at $50, after all, he's not greedy; he doesn't have to have every penny of that $150!
Whenever you hear a speculator say one thing, you should run the other direction!
Just like when George Soros caused the devaluation of the US Dollar, when he announced to the world that he was getting out of Dollars and buying Euros. That should have been interpreted by all of us that Soros had already sold all of his Dollars and bought all the Euros he could buy. He went public, because he wanted everyone else to do the same, so he could get out of Euros near their high and buy Dollars cheap.
Because Soros is rich, every fool listens to him. All the lemmings bit on this one, and rushed to dump their Dollars, stressing our economy and raising the price of food, fuel and everything we buy in the process. George only wants money and a Dem elected President, and he doesn't care who he has to hurt to get it!
Paraphrasing Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, "If you mix a big lie in with a little truth, and tell it often enough, you can convince everyone it is the truth."
That is what T. Boone is doing with his very expensive TV ad campaign touting PickensPlan.com to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Everything he has to say about the harm buying foreign oil is doing to our economy is absolutely true. That we should use more of our own CNG (compressed natural gas) for our autos is also true, and absolutely achievable with technology we have had for decades. That we should make more use of wind and solar energy, of course, but, that we can take Natural Gas (NG) away from electrical generation and replace that with wind and solar power shows he is either extremely ignorant of the fundamental facts about electricity, or he is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for his own profit!
Call me cynical, but I am betting on the latter, as recently, Pickens has heavily invested the profits of his oil speculation into both wind and natural gas!
He has also invested heavily in water rights, what should that tell us about what 'shortage' might develop next?
I am all for anyone making money, just do it honestly, without hurting your fellow man in the process, always giving your trading partners equal fair market value.
To see why Pickens' Plan is not perfectly honest and achievable, we need to understand our energy consuming habits and needs.
Electrical power providers categorize our energy demand as 3 types of "load" - base, intermediate, and peak.
"Base load" is the minimum level of electrical power consumption at any one moment throughout any hour of every day of the year. This is constant demand and requires constant generating capacity, as alternating current cannot be stored, it must be used at the moment it is generated. They use hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal-fired steam turbine generating plants to provide this power, as these are cheap, constant and dependable, but cannot be started and stopped quickly to meet new load.
Geothermal, ocean thermal, offshore wind, wave, and ocean current energy could also be used for this load, and these represent the only safe and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy available to us to address 'base load'. Why does no one even mention them in this debate on what we should do about energy? Why should we build nuclear plants when we haven't even sunk one turbine in the Gulf Stream, yet?
"Intermediate load" is the demand that increases from 6AM, when the world starts to stir, to 9PM, when it starts to wind down, getting ready for bed. This happens like clock work every day, regardless of the weather, it can be planned for, so they fire the boilers in those coal-fired plants, a little harder, a little ahead of time, to bring more steam turbine generators on-line, or open another gate on a hydroelectric dam, when you and I want to shower and go to work.
"Peak load" is different every day of every season, depending heavily upon the weather and variable human activity. It is normally between 12 Noon and 4PM, with space heating and air conditioning being the greatest variable in demand. This demand changes rapidly and requires instantaneous response in generating capacity from hot gas turbines, which burn NG. There is no alternative to this gas, except other more expensive gases. If we take this NG from electric companies, we will be constantly plagued with brownouts and blackouts, or see massive increases in the price of our power and fuel, or both.
Wind cannot replace this power, in fact, our need for NG in electrical generation will actually increase with increased dependence on the fickle wind, as it almost never comes when we really need it. Most of the best wind comes at night, when we do not need it at all. The power companies really hate to be forced to buy wind power for 3.5cts/Kwh while shutting down coal-fired generation that costs them 1ct/Kwh. Who could blame them? Likewise, where the best wind comes, from West Texas to North Dakota, we do not have the necessary transmission lines, because there are few people living there to serve this power to.
High tension interstate transmission lines are very expensive, and very intrusive! Nobody wants these monstrosities built in their back yard!
What we could, and should, do is hook every alternative energy source we can find to a local load that matches it.
Solar photoelectric energy is a good match for air conditioning, refrigeration, and water pumping. Demand for these always increases when the sun shines, perfect match! It is expensive, inefficient, and nearly useless for anything else. Solar heating is little better, but should be passively designed into every new building.
Wind is a great match for space heating, water pumping, battery charging and other automated industrial processes that can be run when the wind blows, and shut off when it doesn't, such as cryogenic distillation of air, hydrogen electrolysis, anhydrous ammonia (NH3) production, and other industrial gas production from these processes.
Huge quantities of our precious NG are spent senselessly in manufacturing NH3 for fertilizer, when it has long been cheaper to return to the original carbon-neutral, and infinitely renewable process of making it from water and air.
We must rewrite the REA charter to cover all forms of rural energy distribution, empower local REC's to fund, sell and maintain distributed generation systems for their members, and to empower those members to sell all forms of energy directly back.
Then, we must erect wind and water current turbines everywhere we can possibly put them, thousands of big ones, and millions of smaller ones between them, that we manufacture here (not expensive imports). Each can be wired into our present electrical grid without building new transmission lines. Then, we must hook each to a water electrolyzer, and a booster pump, to store the off-peak energy as Hydrogen gas (H2), putting this, along with methane (CH4) from our every hog house, poultry house, cattle feedlot, and sewage plant, into the local low-pressure NG pipelines that serve our houses, farms and industries. Underground low-pressure NG pipelines are cheap and innocuous.
NG, mostly CH4, the very same biogas produced by every marsh, cow stomach, and manure pit, is compatible with both gasoline and diesel engines, and is perfectly interchangeable with propane, butane, and Hydrogen in low pressure gas systems (

The market has finally realized that every commodity has an energy value, we should to! The value of every crop is directly proportional to the energy it has stored in it.
Yet, we need to understand that markets don't create capital.
The only new capital created is the daily product of sunlight striking the Earth's surface, and, by some thermodynamic or thermo-chemical process, converting and storing that solar energy into a form useful for maintaining life, or accomplishing some productive work. So capital is stored energy!
Here in Iowa, we have always grown energy, we have always controlled the capital at its point of creation. It is time we recognize that we hold all the Aces, and stop letting the market manipulators steal the fruits of our labors with their fraudulent wealth creation schemes.
I recently had a heated discussion with two local farm-raised classmates, both dear friends, both of above-average intelligence, and both were opposed, as I am, to regulation of .futures markets, but neither seems to recognize the harm that speculation in these markets can do.
Any willing buyer should be able contract with any willing seller to buy whatever they need on whatever terms that both can agree upon.
That does not mean that you should be able sell what you do not have, nor have any means to produce; that we would call fraud in any other trade!
Likewise, in a market of finite resources necessary to life, you do not have a right to more than you need, no matter how much richer you are than the other mouth that you wish to take it from, that is hoarding!
That is exactly what speculators do, they sell what they do not have, and buy what they have no need of. They never intend to create, or even provide, any energy useful as capital to their trading partner, nor take possession of anything they buy to add value to it, nor move it from where it is, to where it is needed. It is all false market supply and demand, tending mainly to drive prices up with trading only on paper. Speculators serve no useful purpose to the market, nor to Society!
Yet, Society treats speculative earnings as normal 'Capital Gains', and favors these parasites with a preferable tax rate less than half that of those who earn their income producing useful energy, work, and capital.
Some say we need speculators to add "liquidity" to the market (liquidity is always having a willing buyer available to every willing seller), but when every person on the planet needs food and fuel, you cannot get any more liquid market than that! Period!
When everyone has enough, that is enough! Any further buying, can only distort the market, and stimulate overproduction. There never was, nor never will be, any need for speculators in the marketplace!
Normally, those who defend this practice are either totally ignorant of how a market works, or are themselves committed to living by these fraudulent and parasitic practices. However, both my friends defended commodities speculators, and opposed increasing taxes on speculative earnings.
I asked why speculators deserve a tax break, and the best they could come up with was that many are retirement fund managers just making our 401k's grow for us.
Now, if I had a 401k, and I was really stupid, I might think that is a good idea to hire someone to use my money to bid against myself in the market for everything I need to live, today.
But, why not just keep switching my money from one pocket to the next, and every time I do, just give a portion of it to some bum on the street, because he thought it would be a good idea. The effect on my pocketbook would be the same, and the bum would appreciate my small contribution more than that fatcat fund manager!
The Dems have finally awakened (tho' months after their arch-nemesis, GW Bush, did) to who the villains in this market are, but if these nitwits are successful in increasing margin regulation of the futures markets, then only the extremely wealthy will be able to buy their livestock feed, or anything, on the futures - just one more case of their hatred of capitalism blinding them to the harm they work against the little guy they claim to be for.
In addition, further regulation of this market, here, would only drive the speculators to do more of their trading in foreign markets.
In 2003, there was $13 Billion in the commodities futures markets; in 2007, there was $260 B, 20 times the market manipulation.
Now, does that give you any clue as to why the price of a barrel of crude is $145, when industry analysts say that according to supply and demand it should now be $55?
Just face it, folks, speculation is a crime against all of us!
High prices may be the cure for high prices, but we pay the piper for these parasites, in the meantime, and we never get that money back. It is legalized theft!
Whatever earned income pays for taxes, speculative earnings should pay double, regardless of their origin!
It is the only way to completely stop this madness without government regulating the marketplace, and it would stop it, the very next trading day!   Read More »

Clueless Leadership and Political Pandering
To Selfish Interests Yields Unintended Consequences
One blessing and the curse of having a 157 IQ is that problems which seem unsolvable to most appear to have very simple and obvious solutions to me.
I'm sure others find it quite tedious and insufferable to listen to my frequent corrections and rantings upon the mental deficiencies of our leaders, but I pray just once you could all view the long tragedy of man's existence upon this planet thru my eyes.
Born into a garden, we'll not stop to think until we have turned it all into desert.
After 2000 years of Christianity, we should know how we cause our own problems.
After 232 years of liberty in self-determination thru a brilliantly designed republican system of governance, we should have no problems left to solve.
After 9/11, I had great hopes that Americans were ready to return to the Protestant Christian ethic that gave to all mankind this great nation, this beacon of light and hope in a world full of darkness, despair and destruction. That love fest sure didn't last very long! Now, we are back to the same selfishness and petty partisan political squabbling that has kept man from making any real progress for the last two millennia.
The ultra-liberals want us to make war on the dirty capitalist rich, take their money, make us all support those who contribute nothing but unruly babies to society, give free health care to those who won't even care for themselves, and keep those evil oil companies from drilling, or even exploring, anywhere, at all cost; ultra-conservatives would have us ignore every ill that pure greed gives us, subsidize a nuke power plant or auction off.an oil drilling lease even on the White House lawn.
Can't we find some sensible common ground in between these extremist positions?
Just like the 'greens' were wrong about the Alaska pipeline hurting the wildlife it has actually proven to help, they are wrong about clean, modern directional oil drilling technology's likely effect upon the ecology of ANWR. It is public land, so we can dictate exactly how careful the oil companies must be in exploring and exploiting this public resource, and where that oil must go when it is pumped out (Asia has been the only beneficiary of our investment in the Alaska Oil Pipeline). They also say it would be 10 years till we see a drop of that oil, and that's what they have said for 21 years!
They are also wrong about the effects of opening these reserves to exploration - they say there is not enough oil there to make a significant difference, but in their infinite wisdom and religious-like zeal they have continually blocked even complete exploration of the area. So how do they know this, are they also prophets? Yet, the opening of just the known oil reserves in ANWR would immediately drive many speculators out of the market (who selfishly added $60 to a barrel of crude over actual demand in recent months), driving down the price, taking money away from terrorists, and saving the global economy from a very sure and painful depression.
Of course, the left is right that more oil is not a cure for our oil addiction. There is no one cure for such a huge problem. We must take every sensible action to keep this economy alive while effecting the cure to our foreign oil addiction, now!
We need exploration and exploitation of all of our own fossil energy resources, construction of pipelines and clean refineries, as well as more efficient and more flexible personal and mass transit schemes, conservation of all kinds, conversion to alternative and renewable energy resources wherever possible, and, most immediately, to install clean hybrid coal and biomass burning technologies on new and retrofit powerplants.
No more partisanship, no more refusals to compromise, and no more excuses!

Everbody Has An Opinion
Americans are world-famous for all having opinions on subjects they know little or nothing about, so much so that the Canadians made a very successful TV show entirely dedicated to laughing at this peculiar flaw in us.
Listening to the 3 remaining presidential and other major party candidates bloviate upon every subject in their political quivers reminds me of that comedy show.
None of these 'court jesters' have a clue of what has caused all of the problems we have facing us today, and nearly every change they propose would only make matters worse.
The Health Care proposals of all remaining candidates seem farcical to anyone, like myself, who has lived both in countries with Socialized Medical Care, and with 'free markets' in pharmaceuticals. I can tell you that a truly 'free' market solves problems, and government causes problems. If Americans ever get Socialized Medicine, they will surely wish they never had, but it is hard to get rid of once the mistake is made.
Now, John McCain and Hillary Clinton are both committing themselves to a federal gas tax "holiday", which is one more example of perfect political pandering to all the 'little people', but will accomplish absolutely nothing of value to anyone.
Obama wants to borrow more money from the Chinese, so he can give you one more rebate check, and then you can buy one more Chinese TV from Walmart, or three more tanks of gas from the Arabs.
Almost all Democrats, and their presidential candidates, want a windfall profits tax on oil companies, which has been tried before, was an absolute disaster, and would be again.
What was that definition of insanity, again?
It reminds me of what Thoreau said, "For every one of man's problems, there are a thousand men chopping at the branches for every one chopping at the roots."
These 'weed pruners' need to spend time walking a bean field or cutting thistles in a pasture to learn the basics about cause and effect in the real world!
Most "environmentalists" also need this kind of reality-based educational experience to learn that the way that might seem right to the untrained eye often causes more problems than it solves, and that every human is not the 'enemy'.
Farmers were the first biologists and the first ecologists. For over 5000 years, they have been studying Nature and helping her everywhere they can to make life better for all.
For 30 years the liberals, tree huggers and carrot killers have whined for renewable fuels, while they continued to buy petroleum at the pump and ungratefully cuss the oil companies - blaming them for providing what we all demand. Now that tax credits have finally given us ethanol and biodiesel, they don't like either anymore, because now all of us can't afford bread, tortillas, milk, meat, or cooking oil.
High food prices hurt poor folks, and people living on fixed incomes, the worst.
By the way, rice, wheat, and every other starchy grain can just as easily be used to substitute for corn in ethanol plants, or in animal feeds, which is just one reason they have all been going up in price, together, but the farmer's share of that $4 box of corn flakes is still only about 10¢. The package costs about 3 times that. The cost of shipping "sugar-coated puffed air" great distances across the country is highly significant, as well as the profit required to pay company executives millions in salaries and bonuses.
More subsidies to top-heavy big businesses are not a good answer. Recent ethanol over-development should show us that big business is the most self-serving and the least responsive to the actual needs of our society and small business creates more jobs per dollar invested. Though we would still have no wind power today without those heavy government subsidies to big business, it is not because wind won't pay in small scales, but because utilities have too much power and politicians won't buck them. They don't like wind, and they control the price!
Wind is fickle and doesn't come in the peak demand hours when they want it.
Nothing can change that; we must force the utilities to offer the same price to all small producers that they pay each other for power, change the REA Charter to allow local REC's to purchase power directly from members, as well as their regional provider, and learn to match off-peak demand to use the wind when it comes!
Wind comes later than peak demand, so you transmit the excess to the West. Wind increases wind chill and air exchange from buildings, so it is a perfect match for space heating, and some cooling. Wind increases plant transpiration, animal perspiration and evaporation, so it is a perfect match for water pumping; it also often comes at night, which is the right time to irrigate. Many other automated high energy demands like chemical fertilizer manufacture, hydrogen fuel production and carbon sequestration can be turned on, or increased, automatically when the wind comes.
We don't need hundreds of huge wind turbines owned by big utilities, anyway, we need millions of small ones owned by all of us. When one out of a million is struck by lightning, or ripped out of the ground by a tornado, nobody notices, but when one out of a hundred goes down that's an immediate 1% cut in production. The use of small, low-technology wind turbines has proven viable on these plains for 150 years.
Changing the REA Charter would also make it possible for thousands of farmers to install millions of small hydroelectric plants, biogas/electric generators, and biomass co-generator systems, as well as wind turbines, under profitable conditions.

Saving Us From Ourselves
The best way of saving fuel, reducing your food bill, and breaking the power of big business over every facet of our lives, immediately, is to refuse to buy from them, but instead, buy what is produced locally. There is nothing Iowa soil and Iowans can't produce for ourselves.
If any of our leaders, including co-op leaders, had any visionary grasp of our problems, they would have built mills here to add value to our grain crops, milk, meats and eggs decades ago. We cannot turn back time, but we can reinvigorate the cooperative spirit that conquered the plains, and do now what we should have done then.
If we had real leadership in this country, all of our ethanol plants would be wet milling plants to produce sugars, starches, celluloses, alcohols, oils, plastics and other valuable nutritional and chemical components, built to feed CO2, waste heat and water to adjoining greenhouses, alongside matching dairies and beef feedlots to consume the by-products and feed manure to a biogas generator, which, in turn, feeds nutrients, energy, waste heat and CO2 back to the greenhouse.
We did not need 60 giant ethanol and biodiesel plants in Iowa, consuming more corn than we produce, but 400 smaller plants integrated with 400 small dairies and 400 small feedlots, with 400 biogas generators, along with 400 small milk, meat and egg plants and 400 cereal, flour, bread, cookie, cracker and corn chip plants, in the hands of Iowans, would have solved many more problems for our society. Better late than never!
The 'greens' also now belatedly claim that it takes 2.5 Btu's of energy to provide a car with 1 Btu of ethanol, counting every Btu from harvest to harvest thru distillation to the gas pump, but what they don't tell you is that it has always taken 3 or more Btu's of energy to bring your car just 1 Btu of gasoline. So grain ethanol alone can boast a 17% increase in thermal efficiency over current oil cracking technology.
Increasing ethanol fuel blends to 20% would save us 3.5% in energy over gasoline. With an existing multi-fuel system that GM refuses to sell in America, we could burn all E85 that would save us 14% in energy over straight gasoline. No small potatoes, even if we do not attach some value to the cleaner air that burning ethanol gives us!
If we made ethyl alcohol from sugars of sweet sorghum, Jerusalem artichokes, sugar beets and sugar cane instead of starches from grains that savings would be greater yet!
The mere connection of current dry milling grain ethanol plants with a cattle operation and a biogas generator has proven to change the plant energy equation from a positive 1 Btu energy input to 1.3 Btu ethanol output to a vastly improved 1 Btu energy input for every 43.67 Btu's of ethanol produced!
It is foolhardy meddling in the marketplace with tax and regulatory policies pushed by those 'true believers' in government power that has caused the inequitable and unsustainable development of the ethanol industry from 1791 to today.
I wish we could just eliminate all taxes and regulation, today, and expect the free market to return to normalcy, but far too many extreme inequities have developed from the foolish application of the coercive power of government. These will not rectify themselves without more taxes that will undo the damage. We can't put the genie back in the bottle!
All of this should serve to teach us one fundamental and irrefutable truth; if you want to discourage something, tax it; if you want to encourage something, cut taxes on it.
When our leaders say there is nothing we can do about the market price of oil, they only prove that they are either too corrupt, or too inept, to deserve our vote.
If we want to lower the price of oil, we need only to eliminate speculation by placing a 70% punitive tax on purely speculative earnings, this would not hurt, but only help, any legitimate, productive business, and would cut oil prices in half, over night.
Of course there would be a great outcry from the likes of George Soros and T. Boone Pickens, but these filthy rich parasites have caused enough suffering to all in this world already, and they will have no problem finding other legitimate investments.
There would be many economists speak against it, most just trying to justify their own speculative investments, others merely confused as to the true utility of the "liquidity" they claim that speculation serves to add to markets. They will all soon realize that we never lacked "liquidity" in these markets, in the first place. It is impossible to lack liquidity in a market for commodities essential to all humans.
If we want to completely solve our food and energy problems, we must put an end to welfare for wealthy land owners and paying for non-production in the farm bill. These programs have not added stability, but only more volatility, to the farm markets. We should limit all welfare for farmers to no more than $50,000/yr. We should restrict all government subsidies for business only to corporate entities that are open to the public and governed by one man, one vote, essentially, open co-ops. We should eliminate the ethanol blender's tax credit on grain alcohol, but keep it on for cellulosic and sugar ethanols to encourage the conversion of our excess grain ethanol production capacity to more sustainable feedstocks. We must reduce taxes and import duties on all clean, renewable energies and augment taxes and import duties on dirty fossil fuels and all petroleum derivatives according to their carbon content. We must institute high export duties on all energies and highly progressive taxes on gas guzzling vehicles and energy hog appliances, decreasing as energy efficiency increases. We must create a luxury tax on conspicuous consumption and a revolving loan fund for small businesses and the working poor to purchase energy-efficient vehicles and appliances with progressively decreasing down payments and interest rates for increasing efficiency ratings.
I would be happy to explain exactly how and why each of these actions should be taken, if anyone has a further interest in understanding the logic.
Listening to the 'greens', now that they have changed their minds about ethanol, would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Government pandering to some of these mental midgets with a professed passion for preserving all things "natural", but with a demonstrated hatred for all things human is the problem, not the solution.
I am as dedicated to the protection of God's Creation as anyone on Earth, but humans are an integral part of that Creation; unless we are willing to start killing humans, then we had better figure out how to control our environment, raise more food, and transport it to feed the 6.5 billion people on this planet, and those billions more to come.
The increased CO2 and other 'greenhouse' gases in our air that we blame for global warming have also increased crop yields to help us feed more humans than have ever lived before till now, whether we add more, or natural forces do, those same gases could take us over the brink of an ecological collapse that might threaten the existence of the human race, as well as nearly every other animal on this planet.
Luckily, there are no real problems without real solutions, but all require planning and preparation to effect!
I am holding a Patriot's Picnic on the Aden Family Trust Farm at 2694 180th Street, near Nemaha, from May 30 thru June 1, for all of us to discuss what can and should be done to elect good leaders and develop real solutions to cure our very real problems.
You may find more information by logging on to www.wecansolveit.org/page/event/detail/jwc, or call me at 712-636-4490, or e-mail me at lmaden@frontiernet.net, if you intend to attend this gathering and join us in taking steps toward real change in our local communities, our beloved country, and our beautiful planet.
I invite all concerned citizens to come, listen, and express your viewpoint.
Nothing good will come from sitting around and blaming the other guy for the what we are all guilty of - living, breathing, eating, drinking, and going to work!
We surely are our own worst enemies, but we are also masters of our own destiny!
Let's do some mastering!

Tho' I am sending this invitation to our brothers all over the Americas who speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Ketchwa and Tupy/Guarani, I will write it in the universal language of trade and transport, English, so that all may understand the essence of this call to arms, and save me some time.
Whether you believe humans have caused global warming, or not, we humans are all far too dependent upon petroleum, and the greedy, power-crazed men who control that resource.
Our brothers in Brazil have made great progress in breaking their oil addiction with ethanol, but no other government has heard the people's cry for mandates to force the auto manufacturers to provide us with the appropriate vehicles to use it.
The Midwestern U.S. has also made some progress with ethanol, biodiesel and straight vegetable oil (SVO), tho' we are far from curing the problem, as the people control less and less of the production each year, and we have few vehicles designed to make use of these pure renewable fuels, or even significant percentage blends of them.
If we are ever to solve this problem, the people will have to band together in a cooperative effort to provide ourselves with affordable transportation solutions.
We have waited since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973 for Detroit to provide solutions, but they refuse to even provide us with cars that have better fuel economy than the Model A Ford had eighty years ago (about 25 mpg). In fact, we had higher gas mileage cars from the Japanese and Germans in the late 1970's than they are supplying today!
Thirty years of the consumer's cry for affordable transportation have fallen on deaf ears!
In the late 1990's, I had the great honor to work with one of Argentina's most-renowned automotive engineers, Heriberto Pronello, on promoting the Mini Auto Popular (MAP), a cooperative effort of 30 to 40 after-market auto parts manufacturers in Argentina.
This beautiful little car was nearly ready for production when the politics of big business killed it by cutting off the government funding which had brought it that far.
Such a waste of taxpayer's money we usually think only happens in the U.S., but the tentacles of this monster encompass the globe and make this a global struggle to liberate all of humanity from the stranglehold of the petrochemical industrial complex.
In this case, man's liberation could never be effected by bullets, but must be done by the common man joining with his neighbor in a peaceful effort to finish bringing this little Coop commuter car to production in every country on Earth.
To move our auto technology forward, the X-Prize Foundation and Progressive Insurance have recently teamed up to provide a $10 Million Dollar prize for the first viable production vehicle to achieve 100 Mpg!
We can do this, and we can win this prize, if we are willing to work together, just like our forefathers shared their field work and scarce farm equipment to build everything we have today. We have the brains, the brawn and the material, all we need is the will!
The Creator has provided everyone with some useful talent that we could use in this struggle to beat the big money boys to this goal. We will turn down no one's help.
I am calling for all who care about our future to join me, join AMASS (the American Mutual Association for a Sustainable Society), keep up with my reports on tribulationwatch.blogtownhall.com, and volunteer your hands and minds to help make this happen.

Larry M. Aden, 2694 180th Street, Nemaha, Iowa 50567, 712-636-4490

Let OPEC eat their oil!

Check out this link:
http://www.progressiveautoxprize.org/auto/prize-details