Tea Party Coordination
Thanks to Instapundit hints I was able to locate a coordination site for the Tea Party movement. They are currently featuring The Contract From America.
Welcome to the Contract From America initiative, where you can join your fellow Americans in a collaborative grassroots effort to create a document that offers real change in Washington, D.C. and the state capitals. This website provides you with the opportunity to offer your innovative free market, limited government solutions to our nation’s pressing problems and to vote and comment on the ideas of others. We believe that the result of this grassroots-generated marketplace of ideas will be a document that not only represents the will of the American people, but promotes unique ideas that will breathe new life into the economic conservative movement. We will have a Contract From America for which we are all responsible and in which we feel a sense of ownership. And politicians will have a stark choice: accept and therefore be held accountable to the terms of the Contract From America, or face loss of their seat in 2010.I signed up.
Naturally I'm plugging small fusion as my first suggestion. And just in case you didn't know (what are the odds?) I'm a Polywell Fusion supporter. Scroll down on this page and vote up Support Small Fusion.
You can learn the basics of fusion energy by reading Principles of Fusion Energy: An Introduction to Fusion Energy for Students of Science and Engineering
Polywell is a little more complicated. You can learn more about Polywell and its potential at: Bussard's IEC Fusion Technology (Polywell Fusion) Explained
The American Thinker has a good article up with the basics.
And the best part? We Will Know In Two Years or less.
Cross Posted at Classical Values
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8 comments:
Naturally I'm plugging small fusion as my first suggestion.
With all due respect, Simon, don't you think this kind of special-interest pleading ought to be kept out of such a document? We all have our own little hobby-horses to ride. That's the problem with the government we've got now.
Our government is already spending on the order of $200 million a year on ITER. A project that will NEVER yield a commercial fusion power plant.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to spend an extra $50 million a year on small fusion and then cancel ITER if one of the alternative designs works out?
I see it as a chance to cut the budget and get results decades quicker. Not special pleading.
Besides. For now Polywell is adequately funded.
It may very well be a great idea--I just would rather see a document focused one or two levels up from there in priorities. Our government is failing because the old system was all about bribing various special-interest groups to support the Democrat party, and the Republicans more or less went along with that. That system has now failed--the health care debate was a perfect illustration of the fact that it's no longer economically possible to pay off all the special interests in a way that advances the national interest. I'd like to see the document take a sledgehammer to the system that enshrines this dysfunction.
If that's not reasonable, then maybe something that addresses more than just the one particular topic. Such as "shift funding for research priorities towards smaller, more focused topics with definite goals and no-go criteria."
OK. Why not put up your idea?
I'll support it.
Hmmm, somehow I'm not finding the category for "everybody just stop putting so many ideas up!" ;)
If the gop wins big in 2010, it needs to start making noises about a balanced budget amendment in 2012.
Then we need to start threshing out such an amendment now.
The appropriations and authorization process is broken, we need to figure out how to fix it, and then such fixes can be institutionalized by an amendment.
Step one is to set a limit on how much the Federal Government causes to be spent. (i.e., the cap has to include mandates, if mandates aren't outlawed entirely.)
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
I like simplicity.
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