How To Fix Our Economy Now

It would be great if this is the time to solve our problems at the cause, and not get lost dealing with the effects.

I think the first things President Obama could do to help us fix our economy are: empower the information age with an upgrade in broadband access and speed (the US is 15th for broadband); and have the courage to let nature be nature by ending hemp prohibition, like what FDR did with alcohol,

restoring the will of the people. In the recent election, hemp won in 9 out of ten states where it was on the ballot. There are many other benefits to hemp like effective medicine, safe food source, strong building material, etc. that would help us heal our economy, environment and health empowerment systems.
Here’s a 7 point economic strategy that is easy to do with short and long term benefits.
1. Help move the population deeper into the Information Age.
2. Continue to clean up government of unbridled greed.
3. Make toxic environmental pollution illegal.
4. Shift from health care to health empowerment.
5. Re-legalize wisdom.
6. End the war on drugs, which is really a war on the people.
7. Change the monetary/tax system to be in alignment with the information age.
Here’s more detail.
1. Help move the population deeper into the Information Age.
Create a smarter work and business force with a school system based on line with accreditation, Pre k - Masters - open it up to the world, i.e. MIT offers a free education on line .
Encourage senior citizens and others with income issues to start on line businesses selling other’s products and services while making technology more affordable. Wire senior citizen and community centers like the public library. Offer folks the skills to survive in this brave new world where second hand information is the new slavery.
For those without bank accounts or ID, restore “Uncle Sam,” who can provide low to no cost accounts and earning alerts, i.e. government work programs, federal contracts that can be filled by individuals, etc.
Give every citizen a voting account in place by 2012, with a security equal to or better than on line banking. That would end long lines and corruption in voting.
2. Continue to clean up government of unbridled greed, i.e. tell America’s leading poverty pimp, Congressman Charlie Rangel to let some low income people have his rent controlled apartments. The best thing to do for the poor is get the poverty pimps to leave. Speaker Pelosi is working on it, but I suspect she could use some support on this professional ethics violator.
Reference: Rangel to Hire Forensic Accountant - Washington, D.C. (Sept. 17, 2008) My father use to say that if all the people in Harlem actually got the money spent on Harlem, that 45 block area would be full of millionaires. Too bad poverty pimps need poverty to pimp or else they are out of jobs.
3. Make toxic environmental pollution illegal. Not legal with tax, but a flat out a crime to pollute with severe financial penalties. Just shift because the ancillary costs in health, lost work days, reduced income, etc., exceeds the benefit.
Hemp, solar, wind (turbines could be smaller), hydro , electric (Faraday) and magnetic (DePalma) can fill the void left by toxic and dangerous energy. They are low cost (if greed does not slip in) and effective.
Consider that our system of grid delivered electricity, which is contrary to what Tesla wanted to do, is outdated. Smaller self contained energy units should be placed at the sites (homes, office buildings, etc.) to generate clean power.
Most of what has to happen to make a car run is turning the transmission. Attach a non-polluting power source (cup shaped device that attaches on the transmission’s input shaft to turn it using DePalma's N Machine with a Faraday motor, or hemp biofuel, or hydro, etc.) and we don't need toxic energy to run cars, trucks, rockets and planes. There are many better ways to turn a transmission that what we're doing now.
If we use hemp biofuel in flex-fuel cars, then we have the added benefit of hemp scrubbing the air of excess CO2 as it grows, thereby removing the cause of global warming. For more on hemp and the environment please check out HEMP FOR VICTORY: A GLOBAL WARMING SOLUTION by Richard M. Davis.
Create green public works projects.
4. Shift from health care to health empowerment.
Key to solving our economic crisis is solving our health crisis, i.e. medical bankruptcies. Of course the stress reliever hemp can help here.
A great way to be healthy is to be healthy. We need to re-evaluate our society for ways we are killing ourselves and encourage positive change: i.e. cover the 5 open sewers surrounding Harlem; instead of reopening, clean up the toxic oil field in Carson, CA; secure the existing nuclear power plants, like the one outside of Detroit in Ohio.
We need to clean up our food supply if we are to become a healthy, empowered nation of at least inwardly happy people. The food additives and genetic modifications must be re-examined for how they are impacting on our cancer rates. Hydrotherapy, clean water and peaceful minds would provide what Willie and Amy Nelson call A PEACEFUL SOLUTION. Dealing with disease at its cause can save billions.
One more thing on health. There is a 5,000 plus year old effective medicine that is natural, grows wild and is illegal. This simple plant attacks disease at it’s root, stress, and heals as nourishing foods not on the genetically modified list. We should be free to use the hemp plant to acquire and/or maintain optimal health and vitality for those who find benefits in the plant.
5. Re-legalize wisdom. From stem cell research to teaching the children left behind, when someone has an idea for making the world better, "Uncle Sam" should be able to help them sort it out.
I took a patented ergonomic idea , that my brother/friend Bernie Hirschenson (producer/camera on the first KEEP AMERICA BEAUTIFUL spot with Iron Eyes Cody) and I invented to the Department of Labor in 1993. I was told ‘we’re not interested in the solution, only in documenting the problems because they get paid from fines.’
Let the Patent Office re-open its disclosure document program so poor inventors can have a chance to create products that will develop jobs and business opportunities for the future. Sherwood Akuna, inventor of the Akuna Brass Catcher that catches spent brass as expelled, was one of the last of that program and said he could not have done the provisional patent application were it not for the two years protection while he was developing the idea. The system needs to stop discriminating against broke inventors. The invention process is so expensive and hard on one’s health (lack of food, high stress) we need to find ways to encourage constructive thought.
Let the Department of Agricultural have a farmer’s bureau to help establish and/or encourage family farms, unlike what happened in the 1980's and beyond. Not lip service but real service. Help family farmers return to or find ways to stay on their farms. Pay farmers a supplement at planting time to grow crops. Encourage adding the hemp plant to crop rotation and to restore burnt land with hemp's 6 foot root system that aerates/cleans soil.
6. End the war on drugs, which is really a war on the people. Use the saved funds for resettling, housing, roads and environmental empowerment instead of prisons for non-violent folks.
See Tommy Chong’s new documentary a/k/a Tommy Chong, A Documentary by Josh Gilbert, one of the greatest documentaries ever. The movie is a brilliant cry for sanity in our justice system. It should be required viewing for anyone involved in the criminal justice system, which the way things were going, would be all of us. Oh Lawd, let this "change" be real.
Remove all restrictions from hemp save a fair tax on industrial and medical grades with a 20% tax on recreational grades (unless we use a flat tax).
Use industrial hemp as a low cost resource material for buildings, concrete, plastic, energy, land restoration, etc.
Reference
TOWARDS A GREEN ECONOMY by Lynn Osborne
USA HEMP MUSEUM,
JACK HERER,
CHRIS CONRAD,
7. Change the monetary/tax system to be in alignment with the information age. Our money is based on lack. That should change. An abundance of money can translate into an abundance of positive opportunities.
If the government would print the money, take what it needs to run the country first, and distribute the rest, tax “problems” would be a mute point, stress reduced.
In this the age of electronic money, why is there a money shortage, crisis, anyway? I know the money is based on confidence but whose confidence game is this and isn’t he the one who messed up the economy in the first place? Let’s find an optimist and use their confidence. Instead of bailing out the elite, give a bail up to the people.
If that’s too radical, here’s an idea from the ’80 from the late Bernard Block, a trailblazer in fiber optics and the theatre (Radio City Music Hall). He proposed that instead of a plethora of taxes, a flat 2-5% transaction tax every time a dollar changes hands could generate a lot of revenue too. 5% would mean that the two (buyer/seller) participants in the transaction would each give the government 2.5 cents of every dollar for using the currency.
We are limited only by our imaginations, which are vast.
JOY!!!