New Year

I started tyoing this morning around elven and this is what came out...

Oddly enough, while Washington and Copenhagen push towards more stringent environmental standards, Corporate America resists these pressures in order to continue controlling production costs and consequently improving returns on their foreign direct investment in places like China. So again, the corporatism of the industrialised nations is failing to serve their fundamental moral societal responsibilities at the expense of improving quartely earnings.

But the US will again be left in the dust while we allow the free markets (at least that what CNN and FOX call them) to dictate the continued demise of the wages and standards of living in this country, countries like China (albeit an oppressive communist regime that happens to also be at the top of our list of most favored nations) will pursue alternative energy with vigor and the United States continues to languish and our economy continues to produce less and less and serve more and more.

It looks like a strong alternative energy idustrial base will be passing this economy by. I recall being at a conference a few years ago in Bellevue and one of the venture capitalists stated that of the twenty top wind and solar companies in the world, only one is based in the United States; the reason she gave was the lack of consistent regulatory code to ensure stable governmental policies going forward - not necessarily tax credits and government funding, but the mere consistency of these policies and regulations applied in a predictable and cosistent way so companies could better forecast beyond a few years. One example is the biodiesel belenders credit. now I am not indicating that I am for or against this tax credit, but how in the world can anyone plan a business if our Congress cannot act upon something as significant as this that will lead to the success or demise of an antire industry? (All this while our hugely inefficient and increasingly privatised, although sickly profitable, military continues to receive huge taxpayer subsidies with virtually no accountability.) It is sad that we scrutinixe fundamental items necessary to grwoth of an entire economy, while we (even the deficit hawks) refuse to handle contrlling our crippling military budget expense.

Fortunately (As per the Department of Labor's site) we will see robust job growth in such highly lucrative jobs such as retail , food service and health care aides. It looks like the US will forego the benefits of green jobs.

Happy New Year.