POWER UP AMERICA!

[nowellian]

All I can say is it's about time!

Now if Obama would just get out of Afghanistan and stop occupying Iraq we could afford to do this!

Peace.

[sp4lg]

The Federal gov't has the ability to squander money on a scale the private sector can't match, that's true.

[ReliableInsider]

Wise investments are better than unwise ones. That's all I can say.

[sp4lg]

The gov't should spend more on further research. Indeed. But so-called 'green' technologies are not ready for large scale deployment. The efficiency is not there yet.

Rushing to spend hundreds of billions on this, especially with the country sliding into depression, is foolish.

[ReliableInsider]

sp4lg,

At the risk of sounding like a fortune cookie, wise investments are wise investments. Foolish investments are foolish investments.

The Federal Government is a huge investor that has the opportunity to invest for the long term, unlike the private sector.

[ReliableInsider]

Another advantage the Federal Government has is that, if a corporation invested and the return on investment came in the form of a huge upsurge in the quality of life for all Americans, but no immediate financial return, the corporation would be bankrupt.

[ReliableInsider]

I predict that the investments Obama makes in creating a real energy industry (instead one based on technological fossils) will come to be as appreciated as the investments FDR and Truman made in beating the Nazis and the Marshall Plan (rebuilding Europe) and the G.I. Bill (giving our G.I.'s a chance to finish their education, get jobs, and buy a car and a home of their own in a nice neighborhood).

[ReliableInsider]

There are a lot of huge investments, good and bad, that have been made by private investors in this nation's history but there have also been a lot of huge investments made by Congress that turned out fairly well.

Such as the Louisiana Purchase.

One wonders how the new Republican Party would vote on the Louisiana Purchase today.

[ReliableInsider]

As everybody knows, the Internet was invented by a bunch of hippies working on the government dime.

[dickelliott01]

ps. why does every spokesperson that these guys get talk the exact same? This guy is maybe worse than the last guy.

[ReliableInsider]

dickelliott,

The truth is that government has ALWAYS been a big investor. Government builds the infrastructure (roads, bridges, water and sewer) so that the private sector can function.

It's as foolish to expect the private sector to do what the government does better as it is to force government to do what the private sector does better.

Don't be an ideologue.

Ideology is using the same tool for every job which necessarily means using the -wrong- tool on a regular basis.

[dickelliott01]

hahahaha this is such a joke. I sure barrack obama really knows the right places to allocate capital. Why can't consumers decide which form of energy is the most cost effective and efficient. Coal doesn't deserve tax money, wind doesn't deserve tax money. Let investors decide.

[ReliableInsider]

Investors make short-term investments.

Government has the ability to make long-term investments that benefit everyone.

Both have a role to play.

[Biscuitcase]

Nothing can fuel or supply or power this wasteful, greedy lifestyle; government & politics are Obsolete, you are still in the past. Listen to the time-travelers, they are real, not "UFO's. TESLA.

[qxdc]

So, big government, big spending, less freedom.

[killerbandit]

No, it is the people organizing through government in order to make the change that can not be done through individualism alone.

[shoogie06]

Oh no, they're saving the planet! Nixon wanted to free us from foreign oil but didn't know how. Maybe Obama does.

Oh by the way, both Bushes and Reagan with massive debt, Clinton left us ahead of the game. Republicans are big government for the rich with spend and put us in massive debt policies.

[SubmarinerAndroid]

So do you hate the G.I. Bill, our victory in WWII, the Interstate Highway System, and reliable electricity service in rural areas?

Those things all involved big government and big spending, and they all involved temporay high levels of debt. And they all made America better.

[dickelliott01]

hahaha please! Private interprise could have done the same thing cheaper and more effectively and we wouldn't have bridges and roads which are now crumbling!

[ReliableInsider]

Then why didn't it?

Private enterprise (the banks) is what crumbled.

How do you make a bridge a profitable investment? By charging an absurdly large toll to cross it. Very bad for the economy.

[dickelliott01]

Bad for the economy? Absurdly large toll? What do you think taxes are? Working 4 months out of the year to pay Uncle Sam is what I call an "Absurdly large toll". Government does NOTHING better than private enterprise. Government cannot properly allocate resources. Roads, water, sewage, military, you name it - if government is involved resources are wasted. Apparently the big government fairy lied to you and told you that these services have "always" been performed by a government. They haven't.

[ReliableInsider]

How about this?

Anything that the private sector can turn into a profitable enterprise, the private sector can do and anything that is absolutely essential that the private sector can't seem to make profitable, the government will finance.

Does that seem good?

An example? Educating a highly intelligent child whose parents live in poverty.

Providing a doctor who can set a badly broken leg for a hard-working impoverished teenager who has just been hit by a drunk driver.

It works.

[dickelliott01]

Those sound like things charity and private scholarships should take care of

[ReliableInsider]

Charity is a way of gathering money from good people.

Taxes are a way of gathering money from everybody.

The latter seems more fair.

[ReliableInsider]

A church can't set a badly broken leg.

What a church can do is direct someone to go to a hospital and doctors and hospitals in the United States are intelligent enough to be able to do what they do in every other advanced country: work out a system of payments so that the teenager can go back to being a contributing member of society instead of sitting at home for the rest of his life.

[nowellian]

The difference between the US health care system and most others in the rest of the industrialized world is that our is for profit! We have corporations making 100's of billions and insurance companies making 100's of billions of dollars off our health care system every year. That is why an aspirin cost $8 in a hospital. Every cost is so inflated it is criminal.

Dennis Kucinich ran on an not for profit health care system like in Europe, Obama is for an insurance based system. We will go broke!

[ReliableInsider]

We need single-payer.