Good luck!

"So many of us expect things to go back to the way they were: an economy based on cheap oil and unbridled consumption."

Cheap oil is gone for now, perhaps for good. I am suspect of the predictions that prices are going to "level off" soon. In the short run, it depends on whether the middle east countries, many of them at war with themselves, can stabilize -- unlikely.

Consumption will be "bridled" by the lack of disposable income with more and more people in meet necessities only mode.

You have no say in the economy because of
Outsourcing Citizenship
In the war against the middle-class the government has been outsourcing jobs for decades. Now the government is going one step further. They are outsourcing citizenship to bring corporate citizens into their constituency, and give them the rights that go with it. This country started with an agreement between citizens and leaders. Over time we have evolved into shareholders (all shareholders are not equal) and owners. Our Constitutional rights as citizens have been stripped away while the Constitutional rights of corporations have grown. Today, a corporation has the same value as a natural citizen and made the law-of-the-land by the Supreme Court. This corporate citizen acts like a natural citizen. It looks to the government for the conditions to be productive so it can continue to grow.

Corporate citizens have become a weapon in the war against the middle-class. They can be used to take away the power of the vote form the middle-class. Corporate citizens can get congressman to listen to them and ignore the voice of the voter. This is why all polls in America show the government completely out of step with the majority of its natural citizens in every sector in society. On healthcare, education, taxes, war, environment and a host of others the people and the government are not on the same page. It’s not the government following the will of the people. Instead, it’s the government doing the bidding of its corporate citizens by writing legislation to legalize the assault on unions and teachers.

But, the needs of a citizen and the needs of a corporation are not the same. Natural citizens need and want opportunity and means to be successful and happy. They want government to provide a level playing field for all. Corporate citizens want and need control of the market to maximize profits. The natural citizen wants to live the American Dream and retire while the corporate citizen will be struggle to grow into an empire- builder. Natural citizens used to say their thanks with a handshake. The corporate citizen says thanks with a cash contribution.

The only weapon of the natural citizen is being taken away. He’s being disarmed. But, it’s not his guns he’s losing. What is being taken away is his VOTE. Given to those with citizenship, by the Constitution. The vote – the most effective weapon of the citizen to force the government to listen to him, is being given to corporations. Today their votes are meaningless. They have been made meaningless by a political system driven by money. Who can own the most government? A citizen’s vote has no political value to a congressman, he can’t put it in his war chest. In the battle between the natural citizens and the corporate citizens you only have to look at D.C. and see who represents who. There are thousands and thousands of these corporate citizens. The lobbyists and the think tanks and the media are grafting themselves onto the three branches of the government. It’s Ike’s worst nightmare.

Presidents throughout my lifetime have initiated foreign wars without the approval of the Congress. So why doesn’t Congress take back its power? Since all wars are now political the Congress would rather the White House start the war. The Congress will manage them. With war so profitable for corporate citizens why would they ever want to limit such a money making product? They wouldn’t. That’s why war is no longer a few pages every couple of hundred pages in history books. War is a part of our daily lives.
The government doesn’t have to be afraid. Votes don’t matter anymore.
Hoa binh

Cheap oil is gone?? BS! Just like there is no oil in the lower 48 states that can be gotten to easily. BS!

Take a drive in West Texas at night and notice all the drilling rigs operating. Across the whole horizen they are drilling. FYI, I noticed that when oil hit $40/barrel they started drilling in Arkansas and Mississippi. Bet you never knew they were oil states. I sure didn't but it seems that when they get the price they want oil magically appears where no one knew it existed.

I am in favor or solato generate electricity and to heat water, wind to generate electricity, and the use of tax subsidies to have older home super insulated and building codes to have all new homes super insulated along with much better fuel efficency for cars and trucks but this talk by the oil men and some environmentalists(not sure what their gig is) that we are out of oil is BS. Get the price they want and the oil men find easily recovered oil. You can check it out yourself if you don't believe me. Travel at night in West Texas and see the lights of the rigs. They stretch from horizon to horizon. You really think it is NOT in the interest of the oil men to play up an oil shortage?? Come on now. Laws of supply and demand or the percieved shortage of something works in the financial interest of the seller.

GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
http://www.gp.org/committees/platform/2010/index.php

Monetary Reform (Greening the Dollar)

The crisis in our financial system makes it imperative that we restructure our monetary system. The present mis-structured system of privatized control has resulted in the misdirection of our resources to speculation, toxic loans, and phony financial instruments that create huge profits for the few but no real wealth or jobs. It is both possible and necessary for our government to take back its special money creation privilege and spend this money into circulation through a carefully controlled policy of directing funds, through community banks and interest-free loans, to local and state government entities to be used for infrastructure, health, education, and the arts This would add millions of good jobs, enrich our communities, and go a long ways toward ending the current deep recession.

To reverse the privatization of control over the money issuing process of our nation‚s monetary system; to reverse its resulting obscene and undeserved concentration of wealth and income; to place it within a more equitable public system of governmental checks and balances; and to end the regular recurrence of severe and disruptive banking crises such as the ongoing financial crisis which threatens the livelihood of millions; the Green Party supports the following interconnected,

a. Nationalize the Federal Reserve Banks, reconstituting them and the Federal Reserve Systems Washington Board of Governors under a new Monetary Authority Board within the U.S. Treasury. The private creation of money or credit, which substitutes for money, will cease and with it the reckless and fraudulent practices that have led to the present financial and economic crisis.

b. The Monetary Authority, with assistance from the FDIC, the SEC, the U.S. Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, and others will redefine bank lending rules and procedures to end the privilege banks now have to create money when they extend their credit, by ending what‚s known as the fractional reserve system in an elegant, non disruptive manner. Banks will be encouraged to continue as profit making companies, extending loans of real money at interest; acting as intermediaries between those clients seeking a return on their savings and those clients ready and able to pay for borrowing the money; but banks will no longer be creators of what we are using for money.

c. The new money that must be regularly added to an improving system as population and commerce grow will be created and spent into circulation by the U. S. Government for infrastructure, including the "human infrastructure" of education and health care. This begins with the $2.2 trillion the American Society of Civil Engineers warns us is needed to bring existing infrastructure to safe levels over the next 5 years. Per capita guidelines will assure a fair distribution of such expenditures across the United States, creating good jobs, re-invigorating the local economies and re-funding government at all levels. As this money is paid out to various contractors, they in turn pay their suppliers and laborers who in turn pay for their living expenses and ultimately this money gets deposited into banks, which are then in a position to make loans of this money, according to the new regulations.

Rebellion won't work. The only way to punish the Big Banks which caused this depression is for all of us to stop paying on our Big Bank credit cards, student loans and all other unsecured debts. That will hit the Wall Street people where it hurts.

Rightwingers tout the 'meritocracy', where only the hard-working brown-noser gets to vote on its future (ie corporatocracy, ie fascism). Perhaps leftwingers should begin touting the 'commonocracy', where only those who put their efforts into the commonocracies values gets to vote on its future. Shop at commonocracy stores, buy from commonocracy farms, use commonocracy energy and technologies, take care of commonocracy values, and you get to vote on just what your 'commonocracy' constitutes. Yes, it is a form of 'gated community', but not based on wealth but on shared values. Is it just the same 'gated community' the rightwingers want? Well, I would just say its realistic: it recognizes that the current economy is broken, that all trust is vaporized, and that the pleasant face sitting next to you may easily be a 24/7 faux news tea partier, with a gas guzzler at home and a hatred of 'global warming'. But what these poor saps have been taught, essentially, is to love selfishness. Any market system based, fundamentally, on greed, is doomed to failure. In rightwinger 'heaven' the more money you have, the more you matter. How ridiculous is this idea? The amount of 'credit money' (essentially IOUs) in the economy is now 300-500 times the amount of 'actual money' in the economy. By the time it gets done crashing, ALL money will be worthless. After that it will just be about relationships. But a 'commonocracy' builds relationships, and little else. Hence, 'after the crash', liberals will be better placed to survive the dark times than 'libertarian' rightwingers, because they identified a support network of common values, the commonocracy, ahead of time.

Many liberals have spent their entire lives trying to convince America that, if we just all thought first about the commons, the country would do better. Well, they weren't listening, to a profound degree. Which leaves what? Within the larger, withered, society, its time for like-minded liberals to come together, create their own relationships, their own markets, their own lending systems, their own economic systems, which, when followed, give liberals to opportunity to have a say in what the commons should look like. Liberals need to know that conservatives have been anarchists on America for 30 years, lighting fire after fire. Guess what? the country is burning. The 'shock doctrine' outcome of conservative anarchy is that liberals will burn first. Liberals need to come together, form commonocracies, and take care to stand together, or the country created by conservatives will surely burn them, first, individually.

I agree with the writer, it is terrible that the people that who caused the crash are still there. Furthermore, I don't think that we should have bailed them out. Now any change that would have come from removing the old guard is going to take longer. I also applaud the writer and her friends on what they are trying to do to change the 'economy'. (personally i would call that 'community building'). I thought about what I would do. I'm not very good at community building as I prefer solitude and as long as I am not a leader. Economically, I would probaby do the same things- shop locally if possible. I would also want to see flexible businesses- ones that respond to their customers. I would like to see businesses that are creative and innovative.