The BAHG for the U.S. that will get us "back in the saddle again"

Mr. President,

I’d like to share the following idea which I believe will spur job growth in our economy, rally our country around one common goal, and provide tangible results for our economic future;

Make the United States Energy Independent Within the Next 10 Years. Period.

Much like President Kennedy did with his goal to land a man on the moon within 10 years, this is a compelling vision that is a BAHG (big-ass, hairy goal), but is achievable, with profound positive results for our country - and the world. Benefits include the following five;

1-Getting America back to work. We have a desperate shortage of American engineers. We simply do not have enough American engineers to fill the job openings we have, yet we have 9+% - 17% unemployment depending upon how you slice the statistics. Where’s the disconnect? Frankly, this simply isn’t seen as a sexy career path. We are shown celebrities as heros (don’t get me wrong, I admire Tom Hanks as much as the next 50 year old regular Joe) but the odds of me becoming him or any of us becoming LeBron, Oprah, or Justin Beiber, etc. are one in a million – or more. Compare that to the odds of becoming a mechanical engineer for instance, and earning an average salary of $82,000 according to Indeed.com. And this is just one example. I suspect that there are other positions that are not considered glamorous where we have a labor shortage. We simply need to wrap our kids, parents, educational institutions, and US businesses (both large and small) around it and motivate the retraining of America. Use some of that TARP money that the large financial and auto companies have paid back to (dare I say) “stimulate this” if we have to.

2-Growing our economy. By creating more middle class jobs in the U.S. and creating job growth within the small business community we’ll create more consumer spending and we know what happens then.

3-Developing a new competitive differentiator that is desired by other countries and can be exported.

4-Creating additional leverage in international relationships with other countries. How can this not give us more options in making our country safe and secure and helping to create more peace in the world?

5-Protecting our environment. Assuming that a greater percentage of this energy will be clean based on current R&D trends.

I’m not going to go long and deep on this because frankly you and your team are a lot smarter than me, but frankly and with all due respect, since you didn't reach for this after the BP cluster f&*k (as the timing would have been great), and after you did such a great job capturing our attention again after the tragedy in Tucson, I think you can tee this up now and we can pull it off in fine bipartisan fashion. I think this is a no-brainer.

Your fellow citizen,

Howie Fertig