Launch an African Solar Project

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  Fubara David-West

  Launch an African Solar Project
  
  Big Question: Why is it that African countries, their universities and their private sectors are unable to put together, a project involving research and development in solar energy? I have just heard a story on NPR about a new scramble for Africa on the part of international consortia. This is a potentially huge industry for a market that should be worth trillions of dollars in 20 years. Why should Africa not be the biggest consumer and exporter of this industry? Africa should produce the energy-sector equivalent of Google, with headquarters in Africa. 
  
  I think Africa should redesign the power grid, and make the generation and distribution of energy more decentralized and dependent on solar panels. With the low overhead that production in Africa should contend with, powering up every home and business should employ all of the young unemployed, scattered all over the continent. It should also create enormous wealth and increase the size of the middle class tremendously. 
  
  If done properly, it would become the project that lays the groundwork for a truly integrated, continental economy. It should also lead to the tremendous democratization of technical skills in Africa and move the continent closer to the great Kwame Nkrumah's dream about what Black Power would mean in an African context.

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Another Nonsensical Case on Affirmative Action

There is a persistent myth in the United States, that every smart white person who is not admitted into a 

university is not, because a less qualified minority applicant (at most times it is assumed that the student is an African-American) took his or her place.  In fact in most cases, what we have are equally qualified students  

at the other end of the controversy, who differ in some minor detail with regard to the variables being considered: minor detail, which indeed tell us nothing about the academic abilities and potentials of the 

two sets of students in question.  In the end, what we have is a useful tool in the still enduring racial and 

class battles in the United States, to be used in the courts to beat down on minority students. 

The United States is once more within the grips of the nonsensical cases that get to the Supreme Court,  

having to do with Affirmative Action in admission to universities.  I say they are nonsensical, because at the  

core of these cases is the notion that any single applicant to a University can point to a single factor that  

explains why he or she is not granted an admission.  The notion is baseless, because unless everyone of these plaintiffs can assure the world that they are Einsteins, competing with mere mortals in the admission process

there is no single reason to believe that they are the most qualified applicants.

The Universities keep this alive, by putting together all sorts of complicated formulas for admitting students,  

which give the impression that at the end of the day, a formula will incontrovertibly identify the best  

candidates.  The fact is that no such formula is likely to exist, when we are dealing with human beings.  Meanwhile, all they do is to give an instrument with which any student can challenge the entire process in the 

courts as unfair, racially biased, and logically inconsistent.  

If the legislatures will allow it, all of these complex formulas should be thrown out, and admission decisions  

made in the spirit of academic freedom, by admission offices and their staff, with input from the heads of the 

various departments.  Intelligence, initiative, creativity, intellectual curiosity, community leadership: none of these crucial values at the roots of lifting up a student to becoming a valuable knowledge producer, worker

and citizen is captured by these formulas.

Should Netanyahu be Snubbed?

The politics of the United States, unfortunately, makes it virtually impossible to really snub the Israeli Prime Minister, even when he deserves to be snubbed.  Netanyahu's public displays of disapproval with regard to the US stance vis a vis an apparent hunger on the part of the Israeli Prime Minister to start a war with Iran, should actually be denounced by Senator John McCain and others in the United States.  What Netanyahu is doing is in effect, an attempt to force the United States to become an implicit partner in deciding to go to war, before the United States has determined that it is in its interest to do so.

After the experience with the Iraq War, which was started by President Bush, because some of his advisers, and the warriors in the Conservative intelligentia convinced him that Iraq posed a nuclear threat, Mr. Netanyahu should be sensible and sensitive enough to understand why the United States should not blindly go to war with Iran, over suspicions that it is developing nuclear weapons.  However, he has his own agenda, which he has every right to stick to.  There is no single reason why President Obama and the United States should go along, before the president and his team determine that it is indeed time for such a mission.

Israel remains a very important ally of the United States, but it should not dictate the security policies of the United States.  

Playing Clint Eastwood with Romney

The party conventions leading up to the US presidential elections are over.  Let the games begin.  To me the 

games began a few days ago, following the discouraging jobs' report.  As expected, the Republican  

candidate for president, Governor Romney jumped all over the numbers.  Very disappointing!  He declares.  However, there is a tiny bit of significant detail that is missing, and has been throughout the electoral

season: what will Romney do?  It is a tricky question for a Republican presidential candidate, who 

has bought into the myth that government is bad for the people.  The problem is that if one believes that 

government is the enemy and that the private sector and its values hold the keys to solving fiscal, economic and policy problems, there is no reason for the person to run for the highest government job in the country.

That sets up a great parody of the performance Clint Eastwood presented at the Republican convention.  

Governor Romney, you say that the president's economic policies have failed; and that the recent jobs report  

shows that the president's policies have not worked. What would you do differently?  Second question:  if you truly believe that the private sector and not government creates jobs (as Republicans like to say), why

are you running for president, at a time when you know that the country faces great challenges with regard to 

job creation?  

Third question:  you are elected in November.  The treasury department comes to you. and tells you that

credit is frozen all over the country.  We have just lost half a million jobs.  The automobile industry is on the brink of liquidation.  Cities across the country will be forced to eliminate jobs for teachers, fire fighters, and

the police.  Students will soon be unable to get college loans.  What would you do?  Nothing?  Ask the 

Congress to pass laws cutting taxes for "job creators"?  If you have a divided Congress that is unwilling to adopt your tax proposals, what else will you have to offer?

Obamacare Survives in the Court

The Supreme Court's ruling is a triumph, once again, of law as an institution that develops in the direction 

of the development of human knowledge, as Aquinas conceptualized it.  That approach to law is what 

strict constructionists often come up against, when they argue that anything that does not literally adhere 

to the letter of the constitution as written is unconstitutional.  

 

In rejecting the strict constructionist interpretation of the US constitution, once again, the Court did another  

remarkable thing, in an age of passionate partisanship that often threatens to impose the will of the rowdy   

minority on the majority.  It erred on the side of such Founding Fathers as James Madison, who sought to limit the exposure of the United States to the ever-present threat of mob rule in a constitutional democracy.

Romney's Voodoo Economics

Romney's voodoo Economics

By Fubara David-West

Governor Romney's posture on the U.S. economy qualifies as a case of voodoo economics,
because it is based on nothing but a myth: business knows best; and a creed, which says that the
entire program of governmental public policy can be reduced to a slogan, lower taxes on job creators! What the presumptive Republican nominee for the presidency has going for him is
is that there is a huge population of Americans, for whom the myth is an appealing
cultural song, and the creed, the stuff of religious doctrine.

That is why, in spite of the fact the last Republican President, George Bush basically sold the
same kind of program to Americans, with all of the bravado of a Texas cowboy, Romney is now self-assuredly promoting it. President Bush embarked on his program after taking
office with a booming U.S. economy, and with Federal budget surpluses that were
projected to last well into the future. By the time he left office, eight short years later, his treasury department was alerting him to the fact that the US economy was facing a complete
melt-down, with huge Federal budget deficits, an American automobile industry on its death-
bed, cities and school districts in dire fiscal straits, businesses facing a credit freeze, the economy shedding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month and with the housing industry in such a bad shape, that trillions of dollars in middle-class wealth had been wiped out.

Trust me, the Republican presidential candidate, Romney says, I know about business and how to create jobs. Trust my hackneyed slogans, because I am not Obama! The interesting thing is that many Americans are actually paying serious attention to him, because at this moment, he
is tied with the president in the polls.

President Obama: Be Bold, Surprise the Nation

If all we have heard and read about President Obama's upcoming speech are correct, this might be another missed

opportunity in the boldness-for-real-change department. What we have read and heard so far seems to indicate that

the president and his team are opting for a stimulus package redux after the pattern of the first $800b package, which

Republicans and the Tea Party folks have successfully sold to the public as a total failure.

I hope that the president would surprise us by coming out with a program that directly and massively attacks the two critical problems at the roots of the recession: the mortgage crisis, which has evaporated billions of dollars of wealth

in the middle class, and the high unemployment numbers, which have not budged due to the fact that corporate

America is sitting on billions of dollars in cash instead of using it to hire people, who will become active consumers and producers once again, of new products and services.

There are two items that must be in the president's new initiatives:

(1) A program to mop up the mortgage mess, by putting aside several billion dollars for directly buying up mortgages at the value of homes in today's market and refinancing at current rates for 30 years. The program should be run through

Fannie Mae and the housing departments of the states and the cities. The homes should be sold back to the current home owners.

(2) A program to give businesses large and small an incentive to hire people. Reducing the payroll tax to close to zero for 10 years is the kind of a bold program that is needed.

The first program would breathe financial life into the middle class all over the country, which has been devastated with .

lost property values. The second program would finally give private industry the kind of long-term certitude they have been calling for, as for as a condition to start putting their huge cash reserves to work in the marketplace. Both

programs, if implemented will increase the likelihood of a second term for President Obama. The question is whether the Republicans will be willing to stop such programs through the legislative process, even though they are essential for

a quick economic recovery, just to deny the president a second term.

Fubara David-West.