The Bush Administartion's recent tax giveaway to the richest citizens of
this country have left progressives scrambling for an alternative way to
stimulate the economy. Simply opposing Bush's plan is not enough. The
answer may be found in the Apollo Project, which not only promises to create
two million manufacturing jobs, but also promotes environmental
sustainability and strenthgens our national security.
The Apollo Project was recently released by the Apollo Alliance, a
colalition that aims to reduce our dependece on foreign oil by developoing
alternative sources of energy. The plan they have developed invovles
spending $300 billion over a period of ten years to meet these goals. Their
ten point plan invovles the development of hybrid cars, investment in
engergy effiecient factories, smart urban growth, and improving options for
transportation. In the process this would create between one and three
million new jobs. High paying manufacturing jobs, which for decades have
been sent overseas to exploit cheap foreign labor, will bring relief to
working class familes, whose wages and job opportunities have been in
decline for over thirty years. The project wold halt decades of roll back
from union breaking corporations that have cut wages and living conditions
for the lower and middle class. It is for this reason that the Apollo
Project has earned the historically unlikely support of both organized labor and environmentalists. The two have often
been pit against one another by economists who say environmental regulation
costs jobs. The project has also been getting a condiserable amount of buzz
on the liberal internet PAC Moveon.org. Becuase of this webgroup's
affiliation with the Democratic Presidential nominees, it has also earned
much of thier support as well.
Because of the Apollo Project's focus on national security issues it also
has the ability to co opt much of the Republican Right's preoccupation with
threats from the Middle East, sometimes real but often fabricated.
Reducing our nations dependence on oil from the Middle East will cut off
large amounts of revenue for dicatorships and fundementalist oligarhcies
that are undeserving of our financial aid. Reducing oil dependence can
make our world safer in ways that bombing and occupation cannot. It will
also lessen the incentive for energy motivated imperialsim ie Operation
Iraqi Freedom. Cut off from its largest support base, it will aid in the
removal of oil rich tyrants by revolutionary democratic leaders.
In the 1960's and 70's Neoconservatives gained a support base not by
moderation but by drifting to its right wing roots. To regain power and
influence progressives can follow this model by proposing measures that
appeal not only to swing voters and moderate liberals but also the leftist
elements of the voter base.
The Apollo Project, if implemented, can biring long overdue job relief to
working familes, without lining the pockets of corporate predators and rich
investors. It woudl cut off funding to coporate puppets who opress their
populations in the name of oil profiteering. Politically it will also bring
together environmentalists, organized labor, and moederate voters, who
solidarity has often been ruptured. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt
created a project called The New Deal, which revitalized our nations
economy, not by enriching the filthy rich, but by creating jobs for the
workers most affected by the economic downturn.
www.apolloalliance.org