The 2008 winner of the $100,000 Buckminster Fuller Challenge is John Todd with his Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World, a blueprint for a post coal era and carbon neutral economy in the coal land regions of Appalachia.

The plan includes
detoxifying the trillions of gallons of coal slurry with eco-machines designed to render the material harmless to the environment and local populations as well as to create beneficial products from the treated slurry solids

and
replacing Appalachian coal with renewable resources like Appalachian wind and woody biomass for power and products in a regional agro-forestry ecological land management system that includes all the various sectors of society.

The plan is replicable and scalable, designed to  be carbon neutral if not carbon (and methane) clearing through the use of basic ecological design principles.

John Todd was one of the founders of New Alchemy Institute and has been building eco machines and living structures for forty years.

On Monday, May 12, the U.S. Department of Energy released its long-awaited report on wind energy 20 Percent Wind Energy by 2030. Fortunately, two weeks ago the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) accepted my media credentials from epluribusmedia.org, allowing me to attend a special seminar and workshop in Des Moines, Iowa, on the supply chain problems and opportunities of an incipient boom in wind generated electricity.

Wind has the potential to meet most if not all of U.S. electricity needs within the next two to three decade, if - IF - we can surmount significant obstacles caused by the "post-industrial" neglect and withering of the U.S. manufacturing base.

 The stock market is up big today on two pieces of news.
  First of all, Freddie Mac only lost $151 million last quarter. This news has pushed their stocks up nearly 10%.
 The other piece of news was that consumer price inflation was only 0.2% higher last month.

 And if you believe these pieces of news then I have a bridge in New York City to sell you.

The economic and political imbalances of the past century (or so) are reverting. Supply-side economics, the 'trickle down theory,' has proven once again, as in the Gilded Age of robber baron monopolists, to be the conmen's diversion of attention away from their continuing enterprise, namely... 'siphon up.'

It seems the unraveling of the ability of the US to project influence and hegemony around the earth is already well under way.

Vinay Gupta, developer of the Hexayurt Project, a $200 shelter that can be built in about two hours, has a new idea:

The Global Swadeshi Network is a group of people examining infrastructure and technology from a "right-livlihood" perspective, based on Gandhi's concept of swadeshi - "self-reliance, or standing on your own two feet."

He wants to combine Gandhi's Goals with Fuller's Methods as he explained in his vision of the future, "The Unplugged":

Gandhi's model of "self-sufficiency" is the goal: the freedom that comes from owning your own life support system outright is immense. It allows us to disconnect from the national economy as a way of solving the problems of our planet one human at a time.

After reading the article in The Guardian: 'We're the guardians of the middle class' I was compelled to start a diary hoping for apt discussion of what the article misses.

Synopsis:  I consider myself an intelligent working-class Democrat.  The Bush tax cut has resulted in a suppressed Multiplier Effect, causing economic upheaval and loss of concern for moral hazard, so that today we stand on the brink of post-industrial collapse.

Last week I received my $600 tax rebate.  I spent it, since I have no debts or savings account at the bank.  The people that received that $600 also did something with that same amount of money.  By the third degree of transacting that money, it has been pretty much dissolved into the economy, yet very much active.

The repeated use of a given amount of money is called The Multiplier Effect- or just The Multiplier.  The speed at which the Multiplier is working is a measure of the effectiveness of the government’s Stimulus Plan, its productivity as an economic tool.  Although it is the basest measure of the society when simple money is used as the measure, the original idea was a simple one:  a more productive Multiplier means more economic activity, more jobs, etc.

Movement Conservatives worship wealth.  Is someone lacks wealth, they reason, he or she lacks virtue.

If someone has wealth, they reason, he or she is ipso facto virtuous.

Of course, it just ain't so, but that belief guides their policies.

"Down in the manhole with Barney" is an expression my ex-husband invented after coming out of an every other weekender with our daughter. I'm in the middle of one now. It's a four day one-on-one stint with our near two year old, no assistance.

At her age, I'm a slave to her whims (all 384/hr), one of which is that Barney MUST be on at all times when we're in the house. We could be back in my bedroom jumping on the bed with the Baby Mozart blaring, and she'd hear the "I Love You" ending song (I'm pretty sure it'll be playing during the apocalypse), and would stop whatever she was doing and run out there to demand the DVD be restarted. "Bah-eey! nnnnBah-eey!"

A Windfall Profits Tax will not increase the cost of gasoline at the pump or decrease the supply of oil.  And such a tax with a combination "stimulus" type rebate program is the proper address to the current problems and dislocations caused by high gasoline prices.  The Windfall Profits (sur)Tax  of 50% of profits so long as the per barrel price of oil exceeds $80 would provide a minimum of $40 per month to the two earner family (probably more like $50).  Please recall that the stimulus rebates phase out at higher incomes and that is part of the design of a proper stimulus.

From Tennessee:

Gov. Phil Bredesen said Wednesday that state tax collections have been "deteriorating dramatically" in recent months, and it will be necessary to make another $468 million in budget cuts.

He said that will necessitate cutting 5 percent of state jobs - or 2,011.

This post represents a change (hence the title change) in that it's not addressing myths so much as setting out information.  Bink brought up the question of how Barack Obama would deal with the nation's economy.  I thought that would make a good topic for this installment of BCFUTSOO.  Skip on down past the jump to see more, and as always, thanks for reading!  (And thanks to bink for the idea.)

(Part One is here, Part Two is here.)

"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
  - Sir Isaac Newton's Third Law

 Two people were shot to death by police in Mogadishu when starving Somalians rioted over rising food prices. Starving Haitians are eating "mud biscuits" because they can no longer afford to eat real food. The United Nations Food Agency sees civil war breaking out in "sub-Saharan, African and also in Asia and Latin America" because of the rising price of food, fuel, and basic commodities.

hey all go to john cusack at my space to learn more about war inc.
i never been on this site before..it's preety  great!

THAT WAS FUN.  Just got done spending $3 trillion.  Try it yourself – it's a lot harder
than you might think.  Honestly, it would have been a whole lot easier just to follow the President's example and blow it all on one illegal occupation of Iraq.

$3 trillion is the projected cost of the Iraq War according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes.  That's a whole lot of zeroes, but what does it really amount to?  How many homes would it buy for Americans who've fallen victim to the subprime meltdown?  How many debts would it pay off for developing nations?  As it turns out, one whole hell of a lot of all of those things combined.

Just a quick note to point out that if this country really wants the savings that they thought they might have gotten from a gas tax holiday, they could save even more by driving the speed limit. The US could, as trucking companies have been forced by the bottom line to discover, realize enormous savings of cost of fuel, volume of fuel and pollution, simply by breaking the speed limit by less than they currently do. With that said, on with some more info on saving money, after the jump.

We all know that someone should have a long hard chat with HRC and point out to her that there is no chance that she is going to win the nomination and maybe she should just face reality.

Of course the same thing could be said for the entire country as my less than favorite columnist pointed out the other day:

We are not as powerful as we used to be because over the past three decades, the Asian values of our parents’ generation — work hard, study, save, invest, live within your means — have given way to subprime values: "You can have the American dream — a house — with no money down and no payments for two years."

When I arrived at JFK November of 1999, I was in some respects the classical immigrant. I was certainly tired. I was quite poor. And after a six hour flight, I was most definitely a huddled mass yearning to breathe free. And I spent a time in this country acting as many immigrants do - working hard, keeping my head down, and not making any trouble. Even when you are perfectly legal, married to a citizen, speak the language, and have a decent job, it pays not to make waves around here.

In the time since then I have done much to assimilate myself into the American culture. I have visited all 50 states. I am addicted to baseball, both as a spectator and a player. I have become something of a historian of Brooklyn, my adopted home. But I have remained disengaged from the political process, even as the government of this country has become still more corrupt and self serving than I could have imagined. It's time I made an effort. And this post is my starting point.

These are interesting times, to say the least, and to overcome the rancorous divide that characterizes partisan interactions today, we need new and bold solutions.