you should be livid that Obama is giving way pollution rights to corporate polluters.

I'm not specifically apprised of what you're talking about. I'll look into it.

While I don't intend to be a reflexive apologist for the Obama administration, I do have some idea of the magnitude of what's involved in re-tooling an economy away from wholesale dependence on coal and petroleum.

To understate the case, it isn't something to be accomplished with a stroke of a pen- or even several strokes of a pen.

For better or worse, this country isn't Denmark.

#1 obstacle: the USA is bigger. A lot bigger. Largest economy in the world. Almost certainly too large to work optimally as a nation-state. But we're stuck with it. Honestly. Breaking up this nation would lead to even greater disaster than grappling with the status quo, as a unified country. However unwieldy.

It's plenty unwieldy, undeniably.

We can "get theyah from heah", but not all that easily or quickly. And we have to cope with the frustration of a mountain climber looking across a chasm at what seems to be an area not that far distant- but there's no way to get there but to descend, and wind back up to the top again. Knowing that we could have and should have started sooner. And paying the price for it.

Shortcuts and innovations are welcome. But Barack Obama can't just play the queen Of Hearts in Wonderland, decreeing "off with their heads."

There may be a more complacent- or even corrupt- dynamic there as well, on the part of the Obama administration, and what it's embedded in as the "American Establishment." But the practical considerations alone are quite daunting.

You bought a bicycle with your 2008 tax rebate. Good call.

A lot of other people simply used it to get out of credit card delinquency, so they could get current with their interest payments on their debt- from thence to be paid seemingly in perpetuity, at rates in excess of 20% annually.

And that's what's gotten to be considered "success" for many moderate and low income working people- that you don't faint from that pint of blood (or more) that you're chronically missing.

Year of Jubilee

I'm glad you mentioned that Biblical notion, I've been thinking of it.

Average Americans are just so screwed now, from Reagan's regressive taxation, to Clintonian Globalization, to Republican/Democratic deregulation of elites, to Bush's war debts, to Obama's stimulus-for-the-wealthy.

It seems like the elites owe us an economic reset, a do-over. Not fake jobs, but a redistribution of capital.

One of the interesting things about this country is that- notwithstanding impending decrepitude and some serious challenges, like how to cope with the sewage output of the tens of millions recently added to the population- it is quite well-developed in it's infrastructure.

Just consider all the vacant office space and mall space, for instance. More all the time. Really- just look at it. often, the lights are on all night long, while the buildings do nothing. Even in the daytime.

In terms of actual hard assets- not money and ownership issues, but physical stuff like "floor space" and heated interiors with running water"- this country has an enormous surplus. Enough to provide a plentitude of cheap live-work spaces, for instance. Or community classrooms, for circuit riding teachers, perhaps.

I'd like to see more mobilization of those assets.

I was in Wal-mart just the other day (lately, it's my 24-hour food market- and no, the stereotypes aren't true, it's full of beautiful people of all nationalities, where I live) and I was thinking how easily part of that massive space could be adapted for community and recreational activities- right alongside the shopping. Malls don't need to be merchandise-centered, they can do something else. The interior space is there. The climate control is there.

Even if part of what I was imagining is undoable fantasy- I don't think it's completely, totally insane. To me, what's insane is millions of square feet of vacant space, with electrical hookups, lights, plumbing, climate control...laying fallow. Often as not, burning up energy, in point of fact.

Who loses, if a small business if given an opportunity to start up in a bankrupt commercial space somewhere, without paying out the ears from the outset- for rent, leasing, mortgages? What about a co-housing project that makes use of a space like that, with an adjacent garden?

Before anyone simply rejects the idea in totality, out of hand- I encourage you, please: look through some of these vacant or half-vacant office parks and office buildings in the place where you live. Emptier than tombs. All dressed up, with no one to take them anywhere.