A LIBERAL VIEW OF THINGS: The will and the way

Some preliminary work has been done with developing and implementing an intelligent grid network of electrical energy supply to every home, shop, mine, factory and school in America. This concept is intended to replace the hodgepodge of state and local networks connected to one another in a variety of ways.

The problem is efficiency is low and the service security is at high risk while we continue to expand national electrical needs. Visionaries and engineers see a common, integrated electrical grid system from the point of generation to the energy-efficient bulb in your bedside lamp.

Some also see our current grid as vulnerable to terrorists, anarchists or other disruptive forces that would bring our nation to a screeching halt if key interruptions occurred at critical places and times. Since there is no coherent system of redundancy that would make up for local grid failures, a rolling shutdown likely would result.

Obviously, this is no small project, and that’s where the problem with implementing an intelligent grid network becomes most difficult.

A recent MSNBC report featuring Rachel Maddow triggered this piece when she stood before Hoover Dam and said an entire nation was required to produce such a successful project. The Hoover Dam project was completed in the mid-1930s when our country was in the midst of a deep economic depression. Today, even as its innermost concrete still is curing, the dam supplies the entire Southwest United States with reliable electricity produced by falling water. How did this happen?

It happened because we decided it would happen and went and built it. That was the will to do great things. Our government, strapped for cash at the time, borrowed money and funded the project for hundreds of private contractors. The U.S. government does not own and operate a dam-building entity. The Hoover Dam project employed thousands of men and women for several years of work who would have otherwise been unemployed and on the government dole. We gathered our best resources and put them to work. That was the way we did it.

Projects such as Hoover Dam exemplify American greatness — when we were great and exceptional. The intelligent grid idea is as necessary today as Hoover Dam was in the middle of the last century. To questions like, “Do we have the technology and the know-how to do this,” the answer is, “Yes.” The technology is not that sophisticated. New links between power sources that are adjusted to a standardized quality and operated by modern computers is almost off-the-shelf. So, what are we waiting for?

Our political and social situation shows we lack the will to do great things. Short-term profiteering, one of the worst political environments in our history and a fundamental lack of visionary leadership all contribute to our inability to do exceptional things. Instead of putting people to work on infrastructure projects such as the intelligent grid, we sell fighter planes to Iraq. Instead of analyzing how we spend our money on educating our children, we cut the funding so we can balance budgets without asking the wealthiest and the profiteers to pay their fair share of revenues.

In short, we have lost our ability to be great. We have willfully given in to the god of profit at the expense of those things that made us the greatest nation on Earth.

The corruption that corporate/banking America has fostered in government and foisted on the American people while sitting on trillions of dollars of uncommitted capital continues to cloud any vision for doing what is right for the working people in this country. While the two major political parties hurl brickbats at one another and act like spoiled children, our children go wanting for knowledge.

While so-called leaders commit all their energy to ousting a president, our nation’s infrastructure crumbles.

Will private, free-market enterprise come to the rescue of political gridlock and execute necessary projects like the intelligent grid, or will the hoarding of capital and divisiveness of our citizenry be the watchword for the next 20 years? Who will understand that educating our children as the rest of the world does will at least put us back to the level of First World nations?

Turner is a retired teacher and industrial engineer who lives near Marble Falls. He is an independent columnist, not a staff member, and his views do not necessarily reflect those of The Tribune or its parent company. "The Voter’s Guide to National Salvation" is a newly published e-book from Turner. You can find it at www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooks. He can be reached by email at vtgolf@zeecon.com.