It was inevitable. Those of you who have been wondering about so-called "chemtrails" need to read the December 11, 2012 article in Britain’s Daily Mail. The headline screams "Could we re-freeze the Arctic? Scientists suggest radical solution to global warming."

This miraculous feat of geo-engineering comes to us courtesy of Harvard Professor of Applied Physics David Keith, who has authored papers proposing the massive spraying of reflective particles over the Arctic Circle in the journals Nature Climate Change and Environmental Research Letters.

They call it "spraying," the street name is "chemtrails." They have been doing it for years. It is the use of chemicals sprayed from planes to alter the environment, create military antennas in the sky, to build fake clouds and a toxic reflective sunscreen for the planet. You have probably seen it happen with a long-lasting white trail streaking high in the sky behind one or more planes, sometimes making a criss-cross checkerboard design. And when you call your local news station to ask what’s going on, usually they send out the jolly local weatherman to tell you not to believe your lying eyes.

The new year begins with a bad hangover from 2012’s inane debate over the “fiscal cliff.” The furious debate focused only on how much damage would be done to the economy and who would pay the price, how much and what would be cut, who would pay higher taxes and who would suffer the most.

But this headache can’t define 2013, which must be a time to renew, not to ruin. Whatever final agreement comes out of the fiscal cliff will slow an economy already struggling to grow. The challenge is to turn to what can be done to rebuild, to put people to work, to boost, not cripple growth.

The challenges we face are great. Many neighborhoods in our cities are suffering unemployment rates of 40 percent. That is a recipe for disintegration. Chicago just mourned the 500th murder victim. Millions of homes are still underwater. Wages are still declining, not rising. Inequality, already at extreme levels, is rising, not falling.

We need a plan to rebuild America. We have a plan for Iraq. We have a plan on how to get our troops out of Afghanistan while helping to rebuild that nation — yet, we aren’t even talking about a plan to rebuild our own cities.

While this ‘dance’ of negotiations plays out over the next week, readers should consider that the entire ‘Fiscal Cliff’ charade could be resolved with one program, one proposal involving taxation on the wealthiest 1% of US households—i.e. those whose average annual income is about $1.5 million and whose effective and actual income tax rate today is not the nominal 35% but in fact only about 22.5%.

The very wealthy 1% actual income tax rate has never been the 35% top rate. In 1980 that top rate was 70% but the actual effective rate they paid was only 45%. Similarly, today the reported top rate is 35% but the actual rate on average 22.5%. Some hedge fund managers making billions a year actually pay less than 10%.

Note: This is Essay 7 in the series I have been writing on “Re-Examining Lucasville.” Two persons, one an experienced journalist and the other a prisoner at Lucasville in April 1993, have said the same thing. They believe the main idea that should tie our thoughts together is: THEY DON’T KNOW WHO DID IT!

That is, five men have been sentenced to death for murdering ten victims during the occupation of L-block, but the authorities (the State of Ohio, the Lucasville Special Prosecutor, the several Assistant Prosecutors, and the Ohio State Highway Patrol) do not know who actually committed the homicides.

Instead, the authorities have gone after the men who they believe were “leaders” of the eleven-day occupation of L-block. They have been able to get away with their claims because of the Ohio doctrine of “complicity,” which allows courts to sentence people to death if they were present at the scene of criminal conduct or were otherwise involved.