Comments by Fred Lundgren, CEO of KTAE Radio.
America will soon enter another general election cycle and we will be asked to vote for state wide and national candidates who offer us no real change which amounts to change for the worse.
Neither party has a plan for energy independence. Neither party has a plan for living wage job growth. Neither party has a plan for the re-industrialization of America and almost all candidates and incumbents seem clueless regarding monetary policy. Let’s face it. Our leaders have failed and their failure is jeopardizing the future of our Republic.
At the risk of getting sucked into this intellectual vacuum, allow me to offer some common sense ideas. First, with regard to energy independence, we are importing three barrels of oil for each barrel we produce in this country and it’s pushing more and more of us off the economic buffalo jump every day.
We must promote drilling in Alaska, and all along the Atlantic and Pacific coast. This will require much higher tax credits for investors. We need to re complete every productive stripper well that has been plugged since the early 1990s. This will require more tax credits and a roll-back of absurd regulations. We need to offer major incentives for building small modular refineries in America and to the communities that want them.
We need to bring back a modern day version of the WPA, The Works Progress Administration that will be charged with building alternative energy factories and service facilities in every county in America. Put American’s to work in these factories at a living wages so they can buy the systems they build. They can build wind, photovoltaic, and hydrogen systems. Later, these local factories can be sold into the private sector to local energy coops and private companies.
To pay for all this, I propose we return United State Notes to circulation. United States Notes are the currency of the people. They resemble Federal Reserve Notes and they were removed from circulation in 1983 by the Reagan administration.
These non-interest bearing United States Notes should be entered back into circulation at the local level to pay for employee training, factory construction, wages and WPA administrative expenses.
For too long, our leaders have taken us in the wrong direction, propelled mainly by past inertia. Others procrastinate because they lack vision and without vision, they fear change. This level of benign incompetence is not longer an option because it insures the steady and certain decline of our society.
KTAE RADIO
1330 AM
THE LONESTAR LEGEND !
This is Fred Lundgren, CEO of KTAE Radio.
The Democratic Party made history this year with the nomination of Barak Obama for President. Let’s face it. His nomination will cause some voters to support McCain that would have voted for a white democrat. It is sad but very true that even in the 21st century, race is a factor in the voting booth.
I grew up in the 1950 and the early 60’s. Over the years I’ve heard hundreds of republicans say they left the Democratic Party because the party stopped reflecting their views. This was long before issues like a Woman’s right to choose and other modern-day wedge issues were polarizing voters. In my opinion, the exodus from the Democratic Party really began over issues of race in July of 1948 when the Mayor of Minneapolis addressed the Democratic National Convention at Convention Hall in Philadelphia. The mayor urged the Democratic Party to "get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights".
This was code language for ending segregation. The mayor was shouted down by southern delegates who staged a walkout and later nominated Strom Thurmond as the presidential nominee of the new States' Rights Party (more commonly known as the Dixiecrats). The walk-out notwithstanding, Mayor Hubert Humphrey was elected to the US Senate that November and served in the Senate until he was elected Vice President in 1964 where he helped Lyndon Johnson push through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 causing another exodus of Democrats to the republican party.
The year 1948 also marked the beginning of the end of segregation in the military when President Truman ordered the integration of the military and mandated equality of treatment and opportunity. Truman made racial discrimination a crime under military law. This turned some of the military against him and added to Truman’s decline in popularity that eventually made him the most unpopular President in American history until Bush 43. The modern Democratic party has a rich tradition of generating defections to the republican party and those of us who profess to be Democrats should be un apologetic for traveling the path toward the bright sunshine of human rights, a modern day path paved by Harry Truman, Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon Johnson.
Editorial Opinion
by Fred Lundgren
CEO of KCAA Radio
In my opinion, the President's new economic advisory committee needs a liaison to the working wounded like me instead of seeking advice from the financial "upper crust".
Most of Obama's advisors are financially successful. They have gained enough success, power and position to weather the current recession. They don’t feel the pain of unemployment or under-employment. Their lives are isolated from personal need. Some of his advisors were born into wealth, power and position. This silver spoon group is totally clueless and their participation as economic advisors is a waste of committee resources. Too many times, the quality of financial advice offered by those at the top of the economy is diminished proportionately to their wealth, power and position. It's human nature to ignore the pain associated with day-to-day survival if you lack the life experience to understand pain.
Don’t misunderstand me! Success in a capitalist system should be admired, but wealth and power arrests the urgency to act. Advice from people who don’t feel urgency looses relevancy. It is therefore more logical for the president to reach out for advice from those of us who live and work on the lower shelves of the economy.
Here is my advice to the President from my location on one of those lower shelves!
We must change US monetary policy by taking some of the control away from the central bank. The United States can’t recover from a recession by borrowing our own money back from foreign governments or, by creating debt instruments for the Federal Reserve to digest and excrete as more interest bearing credit. Instead, the Treasury Department should re-authorize a healthy printing of United States Notes.
United States Notes are simply US dollars issued into circulation by the Treasury instead of being lent into circulation by the Federal Reserve.
The United States Notes should be spent directly into circulation by state and local governments in every state suffering a budget deficit. Then, Congress must be ready to force the Federal Reserve to raise the cash reserves of local banks and raise the down-payment percentages on bank loans if the new debt free dollars start causing inflation.
Giving hundreds of billions more to failed banks that horde the credit during a recession is ridiculous because banks make credit available inversely proportionate to need.
The answer is to add debt free currency into the economy outside the control of the gatekeepers at the Fed and their failing banks who have been too long enriched by controlling and cannibalizing our nations means of production from behind closed doors.
That's my opinion and I welcome yours. see www.economy101.net
