I say drill

This is a letter I sent to Greta Van Susteren 11/27/10:

Dear Greta,


The way the guest you were hosting the evening of Thanksgiving day was expressing himself seemed to indicate that he was not only against drilling for oil in ANWAR but everywhere else in the U. S. and that we have the means right now to eschew any need to use oil for our energy needs. The most optimistic forecast I've heard about that day coming about is that it is still decades away.

I wish I could do more than just imagine how well off we'd be if we could get past the radical environmentalists and those that want to placate them.  If we could make use of the rich supply of oil we have in almost all areas of the U. S. and offshore until renewable sources are developed for our energy needs we could not only have what we need instead of being reliant on foreign hostile nations but would be competitors on the world market. For one thing, our debt to China could be paid off by this generation instead of passing it on to our children. By making the price attractive enough to be taking it from us they could be paying for it by crediting it to our debt. The down side to that of course, if it is a down side, is that the price of a barrel of oil would soon be back down to fifteen dollars a barrel instead of the current price of over eighty dollars.  But with the revival of the economy we'd be able to go the rest of the way paying them with hard currency.

A program I was watching not too long ago that might have been a National Geographic production indicated that not only are the caribous increasing in number in the Arctic but they are nesting along the raised pipelines that are bringing oil to the lower 48. They were showing a bear walking the pipeline like it was a more comfortable walkway for where he wanted to go.  I wonder if the most endangered among us are not the caribous and bear but the lifestyle of the U. S. homo sapien.

Mistakes of the Great Depression Repeated

The adage, "Those who do not learn from the mistakes in history are doomed to repeat them," is now being being played out once again. There's an excellent article written by the syndicated columnist, Amity Shlaes, in the Hillsdale College publication Imprimus, September 2010 issue, about all the mistakes that were being made in the depression of the "thirties" that are now being made once again.


Here is an excerpt from the article:

Regarding monetary policy, it is clear that there wasn't enough money in the early 1930s. So Roosevelt was not wrong in trying to reflate. But, though his general idea was right, the discretionary aspect of his policy was terrifying. As Henry Morgenthau reports in his diaries, prices were set by the president personally. FDR took the U. S. off the gold standard in April 1933 and by summer he was setting the gold price every morning from his bed. Morgenthau reports that at one point the president ordered the gold price up 21 cents. Why 21, Morgenthau asked. Roosevelt replied, because it's 3 x 7, and three is a lucky number. "If anyone knew how we set the gold price," Morgenthau wrote in his diary, "they would be frightened."

Discretionary policies aimed at cleaning up Wall Street were destructive as well. The New Dealers attacked the wealthy as "money changers" and "Princes of Property." In 1937, after his re-election, Roosevelt delivered an inaugural address in which he described government as an instrument of "unimagined power which should be used to "fashion a higher order of things." This caused business to freeze in its tracks. Companies went on what Roosevelt himself resentfully termed a "capital strike."

.....Consider the case of Alfred Lee Loomis, who had the kind of mind that could contribute significantly to Gross Domestic Product and job creation. During the First World War, he had improved the design of firearms for the U. S. Army. In the 1920s he became wealthy through his work in investment banking. He moved in a crowd that was developing a new form of utility company that might finally be able to marshal the capital to bring electricity to the American South. But when Loomis saw that the Roosevelt administration was hauling utilities executives down to Washington for hearings, he shut down his business, retreated to his Tudor house, and ran a kind of private think tank for his own benefit.

The link to the entire article:

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2010&month=09

Airport scanners

On Wednesday 11/17/10 a guest on the Glenn Beck program said that George Soros owns 11,000 shares of the stock in the company that manufactures the scanners that are now being used at the airports. Interesting - another example of how great it is to have friends in high places.

Lawyers???

An electronic letter I received:


From: theur4@netzero.com
Sent: 10/24/2010 7:51:28 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time
Subj: FW: Attorney Obama?

Your obedient servant
Pvt. A.C. Theurer

In GOD we trust &
One Nation under GOD
GOD bless America


---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Here's some interesting stuff. Check out the accuracy for yourself....

THE LAWYER OBAMA, WHAT A JOKE

[Ed. note on the Ed. note: this is from a former Chicago lawyer now practicing law in Tyler, TX]

[Ed. note: This is legit. I checked it out myself at https://www.iardc.org Stands for Illinois Attorney Registration And Disciplinary Committee. It�s the official arm of lawyer discipline in Illinois; and they are very strict and mean as hell. (Talk about irony!) Even I, at the advanced age of almost 65, maintain (at the cost of approximately $600/year) my law license that I worked so hard and long to earn.]


Big surprise !!!

Former Constitutional Law Lecturer and US President Makes Up Constitutional Quotes During State Of The Union (SOTU) Address.

Consider this:

1. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a �lawyer�. He surrendered his license back in 2008 in order to escape charges he lied on his bar application.

A �Voluntary Surrender� is not something where you decide �Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?� and forget to renew your license. No, a �Voluntary Surrender� is something you do when you�ve been accused of something, and you �voluntarily surrender� your license five seconds before the state suspends you.

2. Michelle Obama �voluntarily surrendered� her law license in 1993.

3. So, we have the first black President and First Lady � who don�t actually have licenses to practice law. Facts.

Source: http://jdlong.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/pres-barack-obama-editor-of-the-Harvard-law-review-has-no-law-license/

4. A senior lecturer is one thing... A fully ranked law professor is another. Barack Obama was NOT a Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago .

5. The University of Chicago released a statement in March, 2008 saying Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) �served as a professor� in the law school�but that is a title Obama, who taught courses there part-time, never held, a spokesman for the school confirmed in 2008.

6. �He did not hold the title of professor of law,� said Marsha Ferziger Nagorsky, an Assistant Dean for Communications and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago School of Law .

Source: http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/03/sweet_obama_did_hold_the_title.html ;

7. The former Constitutional senior lecturer cited the US Constitution the other night during his State of the Union Address. Unfortunately, the quote he cited was from the Declaration of Independence � not the Constitution.

8. The B-Cast posted the video: http://www.breitbart.tv/did-obama-confuse-the-constitution-with-the-declaration-of-independence/

9. Free Republic: In the State of the Union Address, President Obama said: �We find unity in our incredible diversity, drawing on the promise enshrined in our Constitution: the notion that we are all created equal�.

10. Um, wrong citing, wrong founding document there Champ, I mean Mr. President. By the way, the promises are not a notion, our founders named them unalienable rights. The document is our Declaration of Independence and it reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

11. And this is the same guy who lectured the Supreme Court moments later in the same speech???

When you are a phoney it's hard to keep facts straight.

Another excerpt

Another excerpt in this link entitled, "God, Guts and Sarah Palin:"

http://barbaricthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/08/alaskan-fisherman.html

For 30 years, Exxon held a lease to do exploratory drilling at a place called Point Thompson. They made excuses the entire time why they couldn’t start drilling. In truth they were holding it like an investment. No governor for 30 years could make them get started. This summer, she told them she was revoking their lease and kicking them out. They protested and threatened court action. She shrugged and reminded them that she knew the way to the court house. Alaska won again.

Sarah Palin by Dewey Whetsell

A synopsis of an article by Dewey Whetsell about Sarah Palin:

Democrats forget when Palin was the darling of the Democrats because as soon as Palin took the Governor's office away from a fellow Republican and tough SOB, Frank Murkowski, she tore into the Republican's "Corrupt Bastards Club" CBC and sent them packing. Many of them are now residing in State housing and wearing orange jump suits. The Democrats reacted by skipping around the yard, throwing confetti and singing, "La La La La" (well, you know how they are). Name another Governor in this country that has ever done anything similar.

The entire article:

http://barbaricthoughts.blogspot.com/2009/08/alaskan-fisherman.html

Unemployment Insurance Vs. Work

Unemployment Insurance Vs. Work


Coincidental with making a mental note for a post for my blogsite as I waited in a coffee shop for my flight to Newark at Frankfurt Airport 8/10/10, was to pick up that day's issue of the Wall Street Journal left on my table by someone and read an article that dealt with the very thing I was thinking about. It dealt with the firms that were struggling to hire and finding it difficult to fill vacancies. Many of the positions required specialized skills that the companies were willing to train new hirees for free of charge.

An excerpt from the article reads, "Since the economy bottomed out in mid 2009 the number of job openings has risen more than twice as fast as actual hires.... The disparity is most notable in manufacturing which has had among the highest increases in openings. But it is also appearing in other areas such as business services, education and health care.

"If the job market were working normally - that is, if openings were getting filled as they usually do - the U.S. should have about five million more gainfully employed people than it does, estimates David Altig, Research Director at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. That would correspond to an employment rate of 6.8% instead of 9.5%."

Would all this be happening if unemployment benefits that are now being offered for two years and will probably expand further under this current nanny administration if the people receiving them are content to stay on these "paid vacations" instead taking the jobs that are available???

There's a Dunkin' Donuts in my hometown who has had its "Now Hiring" shingle out for months. That job, of course, could not possibly compete with unemployment insurance. I've seen several trailer trucks on the road with signs on the back mentioning that the company is offering employment and that they are willing to train free of charge.

Entitlements, if not properly administered, can be like drugs. Everyone needs a "leg up" once in awhile but if help is too extravagant and to the point where people are disincentivized to take employment when it's available it can lead to the demise of the nation. Every Republic in history went under, primarily because its people became consumers rather than producers.

Don't Blame Bush

Don't blame Bush


October 5, 2010

The article this link leads to in the Washington Examiner is saying the very things I've been prodding the talk show commentators to get across to their listeners about from the first time I heard Obama blaming Bush for about the economy. Maybe we'll be getting an additional message out about something that is as equally important. Hasn't anyone paid any attention to what the assault on our economy - and the world's - the oil producing countries did in 2008 when they drove the price of their oil to the peak of $147 a barrel? This broke the budget of every household that was already living on the edge. It also put a strain on every industry - most directly the trucking and airline companies. Our economy was moving along very nicely until then. Who do we have to blame for not being energy independent when we could have been? Not the Republicans.

ht://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-shouldn_t-blame-Bush-for-recession-766732-102351574.html

Lifespan of a Republic

 This article was e-mailed to me and is on the Internet. I added commentary.

Lifespan of a Republic:

About the time our original 13 states adopted their new constitution, in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2,000 years prior:

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

"The average age of the worlds greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:

From bondage to spiritual faith;

From spiritual faith to great courage;

From courage to liberty;

From liberty to abundance;

From abundance to complacency;

From complacency to apathy;

From apathy to dependence;

From dependence back into bondage."

Professor Joseph Olson of Hamline University School of Law, St. Paul, Minnesota, points out some interesting facts concerning the 2000 Presidential election:

Population of counties won by: Gore: 127 million; Bush: 143 million;

Square miles of land won by: Gore: 580,000; Bush: 2,427,000

States won by: Gore: 19 Bush: 29

Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won by: Gore: 13.2 Bush: 2.1

Professor Olson adds: "In aggregate, the map of the territory Bush won was mostly the land owned by the tax-paying citizens of this great country. Gore's territory mostly encompassed those citizens living in government-owned tenements and living off government welfare..."

Olson believes the United States is now somewhere between the "complacency and apathy" phase of Professor Tyler's definition of democracy, with some 40 percent of the nation's population already having reached the "governmental dependency" phase.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reply to Margot

Hi Margot,

I'm replying to you through my blogsite because of its length.

Jack

Your concerns are well taken and mirror the worries I've had if impeachment was to come about. The sentiment for that is not strong enough at this time. But with the bent that Obama is on to bring about full blown Socialism or - perish the thought - Communism and despotism, that sentiment might grow with the electorate and the press.  Hopefully, they'll wake up before it's too late. 


While the video the below link brings up showing Obama telling an audience (before he knew what he shouldn't be saying) that he was born in Kenya would not likely to be useful in a court of law, it is powerful about convincing the court of public opinion. Sometimes that court has strong influence on the legal system. Keep in mind when you watch this video that it would not be an issue if he was born into a U. S. military family when he was born in Kenya.

We presently seem to be studying what our choice of poisons should be: to simply sweat out what a foreign agent is going to be doing to this country till 2012 or to work to send him back to Chicago to do community service and risk the chaos that would be brought about by his adoring disciples.

It's not only Obamacare and what it will do to the private health care system, but the formula he's following to destroy the economy and create the impression that only government can solve our problems. One of the largest skimmers in the world was still moored in Norfolk harbor as late as 6/28, over two months after the gulf oil spill as the oil washed onto the shores of Louisiana and Mississippi. And that's not because Obama is stupid. It's because he has an agenda. Rahm Emanuel's comment from the Karl Marx playbook that, "You never want a crisis to go to waste," was appropriately made use of on that occasion - milk the crisis for all it's worth.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8&feature=player_embedded

Obama born in Kenya

Obama says he was born in Kenya:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwhKuunp8D8&feature=player_embedded

This is something I wrote in March but never did post in my blogsite.  The national debt the pundits were forecasting at the time has already exceeded their expectations. 

3/28/10 3:40 PM


A thought:

The people who stand behind Obama in worshipping adulation, clapping, cheering and laughing as he wends his glib tongue, talking to a carefully selected audience, will one day find their cheers turning to jeers. Wait till they get the bill for the "Christmas gifts" they thought they got for nothing.

They were bought cheap - but not the nation. It's on track to go the way every other Republic has gone.......And right on schedule. A program on the History Channel a year or so ago indicated that no Republic in history has lasted much more than two hundred years. And they never did catch up with their indebtedness. The national debt for the United States will soon be twelve trillion dollars and by 2020 we're hearing that it is expected to be twenty trillion.

Who's responsible?

9/14/10

Another reminder - try this on for size and see, right from the "horses mouth," who did and who didn't want Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac regulated -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMnSp4qEXNM

Economy no inheritance

This is a note I sent to Megyn Kelly:

Here he goes again. I scoffed at the idea that Obama inherited this economy the first time he made the claim and I never stopped being irritated with his charge with every speech he ever makes. And he said it again today.


This was no inheritance. Election day of 2006 gave the Democrats a filibuster proof "House" and with the help of a RINO from Vermont, full control of the Senate.

Doesn't anyone ever think about the effect the economic war the oil producing countries waged on us throughout 2008 when they gradually raised the price of their oil to the peak of $147.00 a barrel? Nothing ever had a greater impact on the economy than that - not only here but worldwide. Their target may have been the U. S. but it hurt everyone else as well.  And, aside from Glenn Beck who did make some cursory mention of it on at least two occasions, I'm not aware of any of the political commentators mentioning it. The fault for us not being energy independent has to be laid right at the door of the Democrats.

The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 gave us 46 months of economic growth and an unemployment rate for most his term five percent or lower. As late as November of 2008 after the dampener the cost of energy products put on households and industry the unemployment rate was 6.5%.

Collective Salvation

 
George Washington:


"If once people become inattentive to public affairs, you and I and congress and assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”

Thomas Jefferson:

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and FROTHY ELOQUENCE neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have to show me.”

These quotes are sidebars to an article on the Internet. The article and the statements by Washington and Jefferson can be seen by Googling, POPE BENEDICT XVI - COLLECTIVE SALVATION.

Pope Benedict begins by saying, “Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.”

Pastor addresses Kansas Senate

This is a copy of an electronic letter I received:

This is absolutely Great!!!

A Pastor with GUTS!

Thought you might enjoy this interesting prayer given in Kansas at the session of their Senate. It seems
prayer still upsets some people.. When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:

Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask

your forgiveness and to seek your direction and

guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those

who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we

have done.

We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed

our values.

We have exploited the poor and called it

the lottery.

We have rewarded laziness and called it

welfare..

We have killed our unborn and called it

choice.

We have shot abortionists and called it

justifiable.

We have neglected to discipline our

children and called it building self esteem....

We have abused power and called it

politics.

We have coveted our neighbor's possessions

and called it ambition.

We have polluted the air with profanity and

pornography and called it freedom of expression.

We have ridiculed the time-honored values

of our forefathers and called it enlightenment.

Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts

today; cleanse us from every sin and set us free.

Amen!

The response was immediate. A number of

legislators walked out during the prayer in

protest. In 6 short weeks, Central Christian

Church, where Rev. Wright is pastor, logged more than

5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls

responding negatively. The church is now receiving

international requests for copies of this prayer

from India , Africa and Korea .

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on

his radio program, 'The Rest of the Story,'and

received a larger response to this program than any

other he has ever aired.

With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep

over our nation and wholeheartedly become our

desire so that we again can be called 'one nation

under God.'

 

If possible, please pass this prayer on to

your friends... 'If you don't stand for something,

you will fall for everything.'

Think about this: If you forward this

prayer to everyone on your

e-mail list, in less than 30 days it would be

heard by the world.

Good Era

When I see what's happening to our country today I can't help being forever thankful that I lived through the era that I did.

The people in power today that are calling themselves Democrats are not Democrats. Years ago, Norman Thomas, who was a six time candidate for president under the Socialist Party ticket, stopped seeking the office and said that he no longer found it necessary to campaign for the presidency because the Democrat Party had adopted all the things he stood for.

That is never more true than it is today. Never has it been more apparent than after the Obama team of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Rahm Emmanuel and other extreme leftists have taken over the reins of government than that there are so many people in this country that are attracted to Socialism and Communism. The enticements of these systems are that they appear to provide cradle-to-the-grave economic security. Those who are allured to their philosophies don’t have the foresight to see that their benevolence has a short life-span.

Unlike today’s socialists that are trying to purge the country of having any recognition of God, Thomas was not a Marxist. “Despite his membership in the Marxist SPA, Thomas himself was never an orthodox Marxist, instead favoring a Christian socialist orientation.” (The article subtitled Wikipidea .... in the Internet)

In a conversation I was having with “Terry” the technician that was doing a doppler examination of my legs at my doctor’s office, she said, “Well the younger people don’t have the benefit of being able to compare our times to theirs’.” This was in response to me saying, “I’m sure glad I came through the era I did.”

No one could have been a bigger fan of President John Kennedy than me. The life issues of abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research etc. had not yet become a topic of discussion in 1960.

Kennedy was not a socialist. When Kennedy, in his inauguration speech said, “Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country,“ he meant it. He was a great supporter of the free-market capitalist system and was the favorite of the working man and knew how to bring about recovery of a stagnant economy. He lowered the tax rate on highest income earners from 91 to 70 percent and lowest earners from 20 to 14 percent. It brought about a period of real economic growth and put a lot of the unemployed back on the payroll. Revenue that came in from the employers and the wage earners helped fill the government coffers. That tax system could not be locked in however and the economy was doomed to stagnate again. It was to last till the second year of President Reagan’s first term in office. Reagan, having the same mindset as Kennedy, put a hatchet to the burdensome taxing impositions and once again the economy had another life. Revenue again rained on the government.

These are the cycles our capitalist system goes through. As taxes gradually go up growth becomes stunted. Four presidents, two Democrats and two Republicans had the sense to revive the economy by having capital investment loosened by cutting taxes and the economy revived and revenue flowed into the treasury both from the businessmen and the people they employed. Of course if our illustrious leader has another agenda - to bring about a new world order modeled after the failed Socialist states in the rest of the world, the best way to do that is to create such chaos that people will believe that our only salvation is to turn ourselves over to a grand-master who knows how to manage our affairs better than we can do for ourselves.

Divine Love / Divine Tolerance

Reprint of an article in 5/24/10 issue of The Washington Times:

How much does God expect us to tolerate?

Liberals demand we tolerate lifestyles that violate our deeply held religious and moral values and contradict Holy Scripture. But should we tolerate them?

Divine Love/Divine Intolerance by Darrell J. Ahrens offers us Biblical, Historical and Sociological perspectives on Tolerance, how its meaning has been corrupted by secular-progressive liberalism, and its corrosive effects on Church, Government, Education and Society. God is profoundly merciful and forgiving, but He is not tolerant as liberals define tolerance, as this book clearly shows.

Scripture and the writings of the Founding Fathers and other historical figures make the situation clear--Our tolerance is drawing America away from its Judeo-Christian foundation and the values and vision for America our Founding Fathers insisted were crucial to the nation's welfare.

Can there be too much tolerance? Can we stop its harmful effects before we pass the point of no return? Ahrens book is essential reading for those of us wishing to halt America's decline.

Darrell J. Ahrens, author of Divine Love/Divine Tolerance, is a former Marine, Air Force fighter pilot, high school teacher, and pastor. He holds degrees from Chapman University, Boston University and Fuller Theological Seminary.

Divine Love/Divine Tolerance is available in soft cover at bookstores for $23.95.

Obama and oil

4/4/10

This is a note I sent Glenn Beck:

When I heard the radio broadcast on Wednesday morning of President Obama saying he was opening drilling for oil off the coast of Virginia I was thinking to myself, "He's finally doing something I'm wholeheartedly in agreement with. Maybe he's not trying to destroy the economy to drive us into Socialism after all." I was also thinking, "I hope this isn't another one of his smoke and mirrors promises." He has a habit of saying one thing and doing another. I would discover two days later that it truly was another one of Obama's acts of cunning.

Karl Rove, on Sean Hannity’s TV show Good Friday night, explained that in 2008 the United States Congress lifted the ban on offshore drilling off the East and West coasts and also Alaska. That agreement was repealed by the Obama administration. Karl Rove explained that what Obama did was act like he was expanding drilling but was actually narrowing the area that was opened in 2008 and he took Bristol Bay in Alaska out of the picture.

I've been exhorting the talk show commentators on radio and TV to get a drumbeat started to support drilling for oil ever since our foreign oil suppliers waged economic war on us in 2008 and gradually drove the price of their oil up to $147.00 a barrel. This was the real cause of why our economy and the whole world's was driven into the ground. Every household and every industry’s budget was affected when the price of a gallon of gas went to over four dollars and other energy costs skyrocketed. I can't understand why so little has been mentioned about it.

This country is awash with oil and natural gas. It defies common sense that we're not independent of foreign oil. We could have been filling up at the pump in 2008 for what gasoline cost in 1973 when we were paying 34 cents a gallon instead of paying over $4.00 because we were at the mercy of our foreign oil suppliers - and our economy wouldn't be in the state it's in today.

We send 700 billion dollars a year to other countries we’ve placed our dependence on for our oil needs when we have all we need right here. A program on the Biography channel last week showed that Rockefeller, in his heyday, in the last third of the 19th century had oil rigs in almost every state in the union. The Standard Oil Company, that he founded, was finally broken up by President Theodore Roosevelt and a number of other companies were formed. For those who want to demonize Rockefeller as one of the great "robber barons," and, of course, he was, there are other things they should keep in mind. While he became a multi-billionaire, he also gave ten percent of his income to charity and helped fill the government coffers with the revenues he generated. The building industry and economy in general also prospered. When our businessmen make money our government makes money.

Anyone interested can Google BAKKEN OIL FORMATION on the Internet and see the enormous hordes of oil that have been discovered in Montana and North Dakota. For people who are resistive to drilling for oil because of environmental concerns they must understand that, whether we like it or not, we are and will be dependent on oil for our energy needs for some time to come. We can use our own or make the Sheik of Araby rich using his. According to the most optimistic prognosticators that I’ve heard, we’re still decades away from when we’ll be able to place our reliance on solar, wind and other forms of renewable energy.

If environmentalists have a global interest in concerns about the environment, we have high-tech methods for going after our oil supplies while third world countries are not so careful. There’s a display on the Internet among the Bakken stories that shows how we use one oil rig to go after what’s underfoot as we send tentacles out underground like a giant octopus - and with horizontal drilling methods draw oil from distances as far as forty miles away. One oil rig takes the place of numerous rigs while people on the surface of the ground have no idea of what’s going on beneath them.

Not only could we draw down our national debt by being competitors selling oil to other countries on the world market but we’d be putting our own people to work. And when people work they pay taxes and their wealthy bosses become wealthier and they pay taxes. It’s been reported that the top three percent of earners pay 40% of the revenues that the government takes in.

It was reported by Brit Hume on Fox News during the week that the CBO has said that the national debt is now 12.6 trillion dollars and by 2020 it's expected to be 22 trillion. An illustration of what oil could do to draw down that debt was brought home by something that was said on an Ice Road Truckers program I was watching last summer. These are the truckers that traverse hazardous frozen mountain roads to bring equipment to an oil pumping station in northern Alaska. They said that the people of Alaska share in the revenues that are taken in by the state government and that in 2008 everyone in Alaska was given a check for $1000.

Our lack of independence for our oil needs also causes difficulties with our foreign affairs. The United States is currently trying to get China to go along with imposing sanctions on Iran to prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran is one of China’s main suppliers of oil. We could be China’s supplier and draw down our debt to them by letting them have our oil at an attractive enough price that they’d want to be buying it from us. We could supplant Iran for being the one to provide for China’s oil needs.

If the current administration wants to get serious about getting the oil flowing, there are rigs in place right now off the coast of California that were deactivated in 1991 by President George Bush Senior when he declared a moratorium on drilling. They could be made operative in a matter of months. Not drilling for that oil is more of an environmental hazard than going for it. That oil oozes out of the ground into the coastal waters and contaminates the beaches.

Oil tankers come to our ports from all parts of the world. The Internet lists 15 of our largest suppliers. In December 2009 a tanker from Yemen, of all places, was being kept a safe distance out of Boston harbor until it was given security clearance. It was carrying liquid nitrogen gas. LNG must be kept at a temperature of almost 300 degrees below zero to keep it in a liquid state. If the tanker was to be punctured it's hard to tell how far the gas would spread.

Entitlements and taxes

Talk radio 3/23/10: When President Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate from 70 to 28% those filthy rich people President Obama has such an animus for managed to put 21,000,000 unemployed people to work and revenues to the government doubled. Capital and employment go together - take it away from the free market and unemployment goes up.

President Kennedy did the same thing when he found that taxes had encroached to a very high level when he became President. He lowered the highest tax rate from 91% to a rate significantly lower and for lowest incomes from 20 to 14%. In each case unemployment went down and revenues to the government went up. It happened again when President Clinton adopted New Gingrich's Contract With America plan in 1994. President Bush's plan of cross-the-board lower taxes in 2003 brought about 46 months of economic growth and only slowed when the oil producing countries we placed our dependence on, instead of tapping our own vast natural resources, declared economic war on us in 2008. In spite of gradually driving the price of their oil up to $147 a barrel and putting a strain on every family budget and every industry unemployment in November 2008 was 6.5% - considerably lower than it is now.

It's not necessary to be an Ivy League scholar to know what works to revive the economy. All that's necessary is to look back at what worked to get there. But for those who would force us into Socialism, the way to do it is to deliberately destroy the economy and create the perception that only the government can be relied on to satisfy all our needs.

There's an old saying: "Money doesn't grow on trees." And neither does the money for the entitlements the Socialist politicians are so generously (?) bestowing on us - or are they just trying to create a dependency on them to feed their lust for power?

Entitlements can be like drugs. We glow in the elation of receiving them and then, like drugs, there are the after effects. With entitlements the after effects are that they have to be funded. And who is it that those funds come from? They have to be funded by the taxpayer that received the entitlement.

Some entitlements do make sense, such as unemployment insurance. But we can't be so heavily protected from every sling and arrow that come our way that we lose our incentive to go to work.

Bret Baier/President Obama interview

This is a letter I sent Fox News:

3/17/10

To:Fox News

From: Jack West
Fairfield, NJ

I thought Bret Baier did a masterful job under trying circumstances of interviewing the “Artful Dodger,” President Obama, this Saint Patrick’s Day afternoon. When Bret would try to get the President to get to the crux of the question he would answer with words which really meant, “Please let me continue with my filibuster.”

I was annoyed the first time I ever heard President Obama mention what he “inherited” regarding the economy and I get increasingly more agitated every time he says it - which is every time he gets on the air. This was no inheritance. It’s what these most radical left wingers, that managed to gain power, brought with them.

Who do we have to thank for leaving us wide open to have economic war being declared on us by the people we rely on to supply our oil needs? Who is it that stifles a more energetic effort for us go after our own vast resources of oil and natural gas? Until the countries that supply our oil gradually raised the price of their oil to $147 a barrel in 2008 this economy was humming along pretty good. The Bush tax cuts of 2003 brought about 46 months of economic growth and for the biggest part of that time the unemployment rate was under five percent. The economy would have continued to flourish the way it had been if we had been energy independent - and we could have been. The price of gas could have continued to be what it was in 1973 when it was 34 cents a gallon. There would not have been the stresses on family and industry budgets that came with the assault on our economy by our oil suppliers. One need only Google “Bakken oil formation” to see what kind of stores we have of oil and natural gas. Geologists indicate that in this area alone we sit on “the single largest oil deposit in the world.” We have deposits in many other parts of the country and offshore.

We are decades away from being able to be energy independent with “Green” sources. While that’s being developed we must rely on oil and natural gas. We can either send a trillion dollars every year and a half to foreign countries or we can make use of our own deposits and put our own people to work getting it. We could be competitors on the world market instead of prey. The Internet lists fifteen of our largest suppliers.
This information can be brought up by Googling, “Crude oil and total petroleum imports.”

Aside from some cursory comment by Glenn Beck, I don't remember any of the other political commentators talk about the effect the pricing of the imported oil was having on the economy in 2008. This was the primary cause of the breakdown of the economy.