I submitted the following to Change.Gov:
I am a grandson. I was raised by my grandfather and great aunt, both survivors of Depression 1.0. We are now headed into Depression 2.0, or something close enough to at least be called Depression 1.5. They instilled some hard-life values, because they knew that despite the assurances of everyone in power, that it CAN happen again. Because they were told before it happened that it WASN’T going to happen, and then it did and was worse than anyone could have imagined. It almost destroyed our great nation.
We need: to legalize hemp. No, NOT marijuana (though arguably legalizing marijuana would save billions in crime-fighting money that could be spent chasing murderers and the tax revenues of legalized sales would, in California alone, add up to about $2 billion annualy).
Hemp. George Washing grew it. Many colonialsts and founding fathers grew it. It grows wild in middle America. You’d have to smoke enough to kill yourself from lack of oxygen to get high, and that would mostly be from lack of oxygen.
Hemp. You can make clothes from it. It doesn’t destroy the earth like cotton does. Cotton robs the earth of nutrients. Hemp grows like a weed and can make do with very poor soil conditions.
It makes the best natural fiber rope. You can make paper from it. The seeds can make bio-fuel OR can be eaten by humans, supplying needed Omega-3 fatty oils. Being a health-enthusiast such as you are, you can see the benefits of this.
North or South Dakotan (I forgot which, read the NYTimes article last year) farmers are BEGGING the federal government to allow hemp to be grown, because their usual crops are being wiped out by diseases they can’t control, and hemp is utterly untouchable by those diseases, AND is a very, very valuable natural resource.
The coming age is going to be the carbon age. Nanotubes, fibers, bio-engineering, you name it. Whatever isn’t used from the hemp plant for fiber or oils can be used to make carbon, or composted down into fertilizer.
Idea #2. Invest in hydroponics. Ultra-farming. Please help our farmers upgrade and out-compete the rest of the world. It doesn’t have to be greenhouse based, though that will allow for year-round cropping in places where it’s normally too cold to crop in the winter. It will allow inner-city cropping, putting healthy food resources near those who need them most. Teach it in schools, so more families can learn how to grow their own, which would help feed millions of Americans in the face of whatever unthinkable tragedy that might interrupt the normal supply of foods from farms to cities. It will discourage the importing of food from other countries, which has proven time and again to be a somewhat dicey proposition.
#3. Don’t waste money on things people are afraid of right now, like the financial wizardry of Wall Street. Greed and living beyond our means (millionaires living like billionaires) got us into this mess. Feeding that demon of greed will not get us back out. It is time to transform our great nation into America 2.0, the high-tech capital of earth. Take those billions of dollars and pour it into ventures like the Aptera car (www.aptera.com) – arguably the car of the future that the biggest automakers in our country will maybe never make, but at least not for 5-15 years – Aptera has the cars ready to roll this year. And that is with a few hundred million in seed money. Imagine what they might be able to innovate (and thus export to other countries who want our toys, the best toys on earth) if they had a billion or two dollars in seed money. But they don’t get any bail out money because they haven’t totally ruined their businesses and potentially the lives of the people they employ. No, their business will only potentially get ruined by the Big 3 automakers crushing them with the money they’ve gotten for free by ruining their own businesses. GM had an electric car in the 90s, and threw it away because gas guzzlers were short-term mega profitable. Ten years later, they are on the verge of bankruptcy. These are not the kind of people you want to support.
#4 A more sensible approach to crime and criminals. My car was recently stolen and stripped. To get it back, it cost me nearly $200, which went to the towing company. To have had it fingerprinted, the police informed me I would have to leave it overnight at the towing company, costing me another $40. The criminals who stole it have a high likely hood of being on government aid of some sort, so I’m already paying for them to live. If I go through the rigmarole of trying to put them in jail, I will be paying EVEN MORE for them to have 3 free meals a day and access to health care I DON’T QUALIFY FOR because I am a honest, law abiding citizen who is not on welfare or any other government aid. As if it weren’t bad enough to have to spend several thousand dollars putting my car back together so I am able to hold a decent job and go on living, putting the thieves in jail just raises my tax burden while they are being even more unproductive. I’m not advocating any kind of cruel or unusual punishment, I’m advocating the worst kind of punishment for an unemployed thief: work. I don’t care if it’s government enforced, prison-factory, whatever, that can be left up to rehabilitation experts. I just want thieves forced to work for their keep and then not have anything to show for it when they’re done, which is the same boat their victims end up in. Guy is a car thief? Train him to be a mechanic or how to build carbon-fiber parts. Sure, that would make him a better thief, but he’ll get caught again, and then back to fixing or building cars for free just so he can eat and get medical care. Eventually he’ll be a productive citizen, either getting a real job on the outside or just staying in jail working for room and board. Either way, everyone wins.
Please consider these words kindly, even though they have little chance of success on the national stage.
I respect Mr. Obama’s forward-thinking policies. Whatever happens, please choose wisely of the *best* available technology, and don’t just keep businesses on life-support because they employ people. Getting those people out of industrial-era jobs and into the high-tech workforce will be the best thing we can do for them, whether they see it that way or not.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Botto-Benavidez
Electron Microscopist