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Priests for Life
PO Box 141172
Staten Island, NY 10314

 

 

    b.  ensure all USA citizens within 100 miles of the border are allowed to obtain, should they desire:
         - ‘concealed carry’ permits & weapons
         - heavier caliber home/ranch-defense weapons … (the heavier cal probably wouldn’t be concealed …),
         - all other defense means & methods that can match the ferocity of weapons & tactics employed by illegal immigrants, smugglers, & drug cartels in/near our borders

    c.  the Catholic Church states a grave duty, not a mere right, to national self defense:
         - "... governments cannot be denied the right to legitimate defense ... Therefore, government authorities and others who share public responsibility have the duty to protect the welfare of the people entrusted to their care and to conduct such grave matters soberly."
         - source: 2nd Vatican Council Document "The Church Today" [Chapter 5 "The Fostering of Peace ...", section 79, paragraph 5]

Something's been bothering me for about a decade, and irritating me for some years before then. Now, retired, I can speak freely. 

I charge:
  - my fellow citizens, who I spent 20 years defending, to consider the logic I lay out below, and inform their elected leaders about conclusions based off this logic and any subsequent research.

  - politicians, who I spent 20 years obeying, to find some speaking nuggets here.  I hope they do indeed take an overpowering stand for energy sense... there should be something good they can do with the logic below.

I'm one of the apparent 80% of Americans fed up with the status quo. And I indeed want 'change'.

But my part of the 80% is the kind opposed to change that goes further in the liberal-socialist direction.
  - I have lived in 9 states and in DC, spanning from the Potomac to the Pacific Coast, from Texas to Minnesota. I've traveled extensively in 30-some other states. I have a good random sampling of conditions across the USA. In the USA we can have smog-haze, in addition to normal meteorological 'inversion' conditions. But at it's worst, whether a natural inversion or man-made smog layer, I could always at least find a brighter spot in the sky, and know where the sun was. Very few days were 'at its worst'.
  - I also lived in the Far East for two years, and traveled among various countries in Europe, Central America, and the Middle East. I have seen pollution. I have seen Chinese & Korean pollution so thick that I couldn't find the sun on a cloudless day... too many days to count, in just two years. Never seen that pure-white sky anyplace in the USA. I've never gone jogging in the USA, and afterwards felt like I'd just smoked two packs of cigarettes. I've felt that in Korea.
- I'm 44 years old. I have a memory. I use my memory. I've sampled some 16,000 days thus far in my life; about 12,000 days since achieving an age of reason. That should be statistically significant for any eyewitness.
- I can verify that the USA has absolutely no pollution problem, especially compared to other countries; current USA environmental regulation is over-achieving.
- As a friend of many liberals, I know the most radical of the environmentalists are grinning with glee at high petroleum prices, and want those prices to keep going up. That's their part of the 80%, not my part.  Rather, I say we have absolutely no need for even more government restriction.

I dare to assess, with a memory of the days I've seen, that we even have some room to relax a bit.

I want government out of the way.
- I'm fed up with ever bigger government. I can balance my budget, but my state and my Fed cannot.
- I'm not affiliated with any oil company, but I know oil companies procure, process, and provide all manner of historically stupendously efficient petroleum energy. Government does not produce natural gas, gasoline, nor any other product. Yet I witnessed federal legislators assuming a self-declared righteous position, grilling oil executives. The congress members behaved as pathetic buffoons. I know well that oil companies make only 2/3rds the profits that government makes in taxing that hard work.

In general, I'm fed up with government that assumes an elitist air, and dares to challenge the hippie song: "He can't even run his own life, I'll be damned if he'll run mine!" Ironic. That song is now a legitimate charge against amok liberalism.

I'm part of that 80% that wants a government to stand up for common sense and logic, over emotive hype and half-baked half-truths. A few simple points suffice:
- We drilled & pipelined Prudhoe Bay with 1970s technology, and Alaska has not suffered. ANWR, with even 1990s technology, should be a no-brainer.  Same conclusion for offshore drilling, just like China is doing off our very shores just on the other side of our oceanic boundary with another country's territorial waters!
- And I cannot comprehend who could seriously push for petroleum-produced food to be converted, with more petroleum, into a petroleum substitute.
- Again, I have a memory. I know full well that Impending Ice Age was the scare a generation ago. I know full well that global warming began before mankind began the Industrial Revolution.

In the real world, cause must precede effect. Yet state & federal government actions regarding all the above, and energy policy generally, is not short of ludicrous. A link could be made to our founding documents:  "When in the course of human events ... " But at the least, a quote from the comedian Gallagher definitely applies to current government over-intervention in American liberties and the general welfare in pursuit of happiness. As Gallagher once said, ironically, about government-run schools: "It makes no sense!"

I want government to wake up to reality, to stand firm against environmentalists, against their wacky pseudo-science, and against various earmark and other end-around pressures. I want government to get out of the way of current-technology oil drilling, pipelining, shipping, refining, and distribution. I want, indeed: "drill here, drill now, pay less". That's the most sense I've heard from any politician in about a decade!

Stop the madness of 'cap & trade'. Cease the Warner-Lieberman style of idiocy, and all state-level equivalents.

In this essay, I've focused on petroleum. And it's for good reason:  petroleum has been to energy what penicillin was to medicine. But similar can (and should) be said about nuclear energy. One might also, after hearing what geologists like Apollo-17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt have to say, become a lot more serious and urgent about nuclear fusion, and moon-mining operations to get this wonderful fuel. But nuclear fusion is at least several years away; we don't even any more have hardware that can get man and mining to the moon. However, we do have nuclear fission, and all manner of petroleum-based energy, that are technologically mature & 'immediately' available.

Bottom line:
1. Government, in general, get out of the way!
2. Government, specifically, loosen the reigns on American energy!
3. Government, eliminate regulations & laws, now!