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The New New Deal? Why the Apollo Project Can Help Us in Ways Bush's Tax Cut Cannot
by Ryan Mishler
July 16, 2003

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

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