8.8 million jobs have been lost in the last two years in the United States. National unemployment figures rose this past week to 6%.

Hello? Is anybody in Washington paying attention?

I'm not the president or a presidential candidate (and I don't play one on television) but it seems to me to create new jobs, this country needs to create new industries. A tax cut to maintain the current status quo is just not going to change anything. If the demand for existing products isn't there now, why should the demand increase with a tax cut? How many new cars and television sets can any one person buy? Americans just can't keep buying more of what we already have. We've got to get a move on.

How do we get moving?

There is an entirely new industry this country could develop and export world wide. It's one that's been sitting under our noses since the 1970's. Just about every dis-incentive imaginable has been put in the way to prevent it from emerging, growing, and creating new jobs. It's a no-brainer friends. It's the alternative energy industry.

Take just one form: solar energy. To get solar energy into mainstream use it needs research and development: jobs for designers and engineers. New ideas need the manufacturing sector to see those designs become reality: jobs in assembly and production. Products need to reach wholesale and retail outlets: jobs in the transportation sector for shipping and delivery. Units need to be installed: projects for contractors who in turn give jobs to electrical and construction workers. New products need to be marketed: jobs in advertising and more jobs for the outlets that carry those ads.

Small businesses will need to develop to handle maintenance contracts. New architecture and design standards will need to be invented to incorporate the new technology. Colleges, schools and universities will need classes and teachers to educate how the technology can be utilized. Banks will need to provide loans to help businesses and homeowners to stretch out the costs of purchase and installation. Entire new businesses will be needed just to deal with retrofitting existing buildings and homes.

When new industries emerge, inventors and entrepreneurs find new ways to exploit the new technology. It's American capitalism at its finest. Commonly used products evolve, reinvented as new and improved. Ingenuity imagines new demand for solar cell phone chargers, portable solar radios and televisions, solar powered picnic coolers that stay cool, travel mugs that stay warm. Go wild, and why not - a mailbox in winter could have a solar de-icer, a chilly morning car could have a solar seat warmer. The possibilities are endless because so little has yet to be imagined, invented, and created.

We need jobs. We need new jobs. And a tax cut to hang on to old jobs that no longer exist just isn't going to cut it. We need to move forward and quit standing still.

In the 1700's, we had wood to heat our homes. The 1800's gave us coal as the fuel of choice. The 1900's were the boom of the oil industry. It's the 2000's now and it's time we had new energy that matched our new century.

So let's skip the tax cut and put that money into creating a new industry. Let's invest in our future and let's do it today. Oil is so yesterday.

Besides, we need the jobs.

Good for the environment too. How come you didn't mention it?

As a right-winger, I'll be the first to tell you that if you can create a clean-burning fuel that will run my SUV or any of my gasoline burning vehicles with the same performance level as gasoline at a lower cost, not increase my maintanence costs, not decrease my payload factor, and not increase my insurance costs, I'm with you. It would also need to be as easy or easier to introduce into the vehicle than gasoline when one fills their tank. The converter kit required to convert my gasoline burning vehicles to the new source would need to be cheap enough to have paid for itself in fuel-cost savings over the course of, let's say, 6 months to a year.

You can take your big tax write off for your SUV as a business vehicle to cover any additional cost of conversion, why are you so stingy with public air but not public money? I am so sick of the pervasive selfishness of right wing ideas. Aren't you guys supposed to be Christian shepherds for the meek. God is supposed to strike down upon you with great vengeance if you do not look out for the welfare of your brothers.. haven't you seen Pulp Fiction or read Ezekiel in the right wing bible? I wish for once that stupid fundamentalists would follow their own damn religion and love their brothers. That could be a new job, teaching Christians Christianity. How can you do anything selfish or destructive and still hope for salvation? Jesus surely didn't die for your SUV. He never died for the overly indulgent, only for the meek. Meek. A word that does not go with right winger.

mymicz, I'm sorry but I really don't know what to say to you except, how did you get to be so fucking stupid? I mean really, do you honestly believe that all "right-wingers" are born again Christians? Or that we all drive SUV? Your every post betrays how utterly clueless you are. I'm sure you're a real nice girl, but for God's sake, you need to be muzzled.

We don't need tax cuts. We do need jobs. And to get new jobs we need new businesses. And right now Washington is doing everything it can to squash the biggest technological advance that's coming down the road this century. And YES, it is Alternative Energy.

All the politicians pass it off as some lame attempt at being personally responsible. Hell no. It has nothing to do with being green, good for the environment, etc. This is a major industrial revolution that if the US does not seize and develop now, will put this country technologically behind other nations. We'll be the losers. Big time.

Washington is blowing the chance to deliver millions of jobs to Americans so they can control a bunch of foreign oil that eventually is just not going to be there anymore.

"Jesus...never died for the overly indulgent, only for the meek."

He died for EVERYBODY.

"You can take your big tax write off for your SUV as a business vehicle to cover any additional cost of conversion..."

What's a tax write-off got to do with anything? If under the current system I'm writing off $50, and under a new system I'm writing off $100, I'm still spending $50 more under the new system. It's not a matter of write offs, it's a matter of saving me money.

Develop a new fuel system where instead of writing off $50, I write off $30. I save $20. Now you're doing me a favor.

to get solar, wind, wave, etc. into the mainstream is for oil price to double or quadruple. this, at least, puts alter's onto the playing field and the investment could carry it further.

another way is to heavily tax oil, but thats not good for the economy and we mite endup in a rec/depression. Maybe large tax incentives for altenergy would swing things? or a techno breakthru?