Professor Emeritus Pete Bagnolo   

I have a suggestion for the President. This time around why not bail out the working class in which at least one spouse is now unemployed and which families have a net worth of under $150,000? If we grant these people about $5,000 each, they would spend or invest it and that would heat-up the economy. I said give not lend.

However, then Lend those with gross net worth of under $1.5 million up to $15,000. Combine the loans and grants with tax credits and other grants for the below.

Step two? Homes are inhabited 24/7/365, cars only a few hours a day. Therefore why not a Federal law requiring all new construction to consist of R-30 in 8” walls and R-50 in ceilings. It would also give grants/tax credits to buyer for that and for Geothermal and for Solar shingles or metal roofs. More Tax credits to buyers for remodeling older homes using as close as possible to those energy savers R-30 Walls and R-50 ceilings. Combine that with grants/tax credits for when going to new HVAC, use of space packs in older buildings, with geothermal or at the very least Hot Water Heat and metal roofs, and perhaps roof windmills. Do this and the economy is off and running.

Combine that with the throwing away of money, $1 million per day per man at arms plus support armament and ordinance, for 150,000 armed troops, comes to about $1.8 trillion a year. That is twice what a Medicare addition of the entire population would cost over ten years and still more than the entire population would cost for 20 years. How many students would that educate? All students US now living through college and graduate school at Harvard or Princeton.

These changes would become a beacon for the world. Money doing good instead of evil. A president minding his own business and thinking creatively for the best thing for his people and the world, instead of following a path to Hell, like the previous president has done. Mr. Bush has sealed his fate, wasting his life on white collar crime, in the largest bank and treasury robbery of all time and doing it all for those already rich beyond belief. We haven’t had a Creative Mind in the White House since the death of FDR in 1945. FDR in his 13 years as president carried out more, by leaps and bounds of the Philosophies of the man Jesus and the Sermon on The Mount than any national leader in the history of Planet Earth. The rest of the national or world leaders took various turns doing various kinds and degrees of evil. Try doing some good for the world for a change. All of us who voted for, both black and white, wanted a Big change. What we got was probably a tad more than we would have gotten from McCain. I suggest that instead of looking 32 months ahead to the lifetime of glory of celebrity of becoming the First Black President, look now ahead to becoming, instead, the Second FDR.

Shame congress into acting on more Progressive actions with Executive Orders and fire Rahm Emanuel in the process. Instead of listening to him, listen to the still, the quiet voice of the Lord of The Universe. It is a voice buried deep and hard to notice among politicians who are full of good health. For one who suffered like FDR, the voice of God boomed in his psyche and he heard it.

Bailing out Financial criminals as you have been doing was ill-advised unless your ultimate goal is working for one of them when your one term lease on the White House ends in 2012. If you do as I suggest, you may have a chance to win in 2012. If you keep listening to your present voices, you will surely lose more than the election, you will lose your soul, sir.

These architectural and energy saving, to energy free homes would seriously reduce the import of oil and would eventually drop energy use to a virtual Zero. They would also result in millions of new jobs.