Back on Track

I would like to get back on track here and in the campaign for President of the United States. I was going to opt for an image of a train heading down the track and that didn't seem quite fitting so then I downloaded one of a train going down one of four tracks winding through the hills. Still did not seem to fit.

It is a mess out there. It has been so long since we have stayed on track in a campaign that basically nobody really knows where the track is. Ergo my roller coaster image. I think this says it. Even Carl Rove admitted in an interview that while dirty politics work you can get to far off into lies and dirt that you lose the message (and hopefully the campaign) and he openly admitted McCain has gone into that no-man's land with his warm up act: Sarah Palin.

But there are some very important issues facing us these days (one major one of which is the economy) and if we don't address them it could spell the end for the United States of America as we know it. Alaska is not the only state where rumblings of separation from the US can be heard. The mountain west certainly feels often that it is short changed by Washington and only used an abused for nuclear waste disposal, toxic chemical dumps and exploitation of hydro-electric energy and mineral reserves.

I an not an economist. All I know about that is that my carefully laid aside retirement funds are gone. That what I was depending upon to augment my Social Security - Art - is going through a crash because people no longer have the money to spend anywhere but the pump or on groceries. So I am going to leave the economy for others and try to focus my next few blogs on issues important to my neck of the woods.

In the early days of this country there seemed more land then we knew what to do with. And when we wanted more we just moved on over the next ridge. And actually railroads and the robber barons that ran them was how we got effectively to the West Coast. Congress signed away huge right aways including 10 and 20 miles on either side of the track as incentive for the competing companies to keep clear cutting forests for ties, open pit mining of coal to fire the boilers, and damming streams to provide water for steam.

The robber barons today are the oil companies with their oil leases on "public lands" and the open seas off-shore. When people complained about the abuses of the railroads in their westward expansion they received the answer that it was good for our country. And now when we complain of oil exploration in our national parks or pristine sea coasts we are told it is good for America. Maybe, but an alternative source of energy would be better. And it is wise for the oil companies to realize that even the railroad barons realized the error of their ways and were behind the preservation of these pristine areas we now call the National Parks and which the oil companies want to decimate.

Why don't we reopen some of the thousands of capped off wells before we drill more? Yes, some of them were shut down because they were not economical to continue to pump when oil was below $50 a barrel. But guess what folks, it isn't anymore. Development of oil shale was explored and found not economical below $50 a barrel. But guess what? It is double that now.

Before we go off an authorize the raping of what we will never be able to replace let's take a reasoned view and explore the possibilities. This is the only planet we have that can sustain life as we know it at this moment. Even animals don't mess the nest they sleep in.

Let us pause and think before we get off on one of those side loops of track to nowhere but our own ruin.

It is All Blackmail

I am particularly fond of this image in juxtaposition with the frog below. Frogs you know are vanishing at a concerning rate. And those remaining on our troubled planet are showing deformities in large percentages to the population. Some scientists are calling frogs our canaries in the mine.

And yet GW and his oil buddies want us to suspend all environmental controls on oil refineries and exploration. When he was governor of the state of Texas he made it the most polluted of the 50 and from the day he took office as president of the United States he has wanted to row back all EPA controls.

I have a friend that works in the Environmental Protection Agency and he says GW has virtually gutted the agency. The super fund that was suppose to clean up the worst of the abandoned mines that are leaking contaminated water with heavy metals into the earth was totally suspended. In my neck of the woods alone there is two or three of these major offenders to clean water that cause humped back fish and sick people. Catch and release in western streams has taken on a totally different purpose. No longer let the big wild fish breed but don't eat contaminated fish.

We gave oil companies major tax incentives for exploration and upgrading of their facilities to meet clean air and water standards. Have they used that or any of the huge profits they are currently raking in to build modern refineries that meet EPA standards? Have they searched for alternative fuels? Have they figured out ways to get the oil out of shale? (Incidentally there was a huge oil shale project in Grand Junction, Colorado which was abandoned because it was too costly. At the time they said if oil reached $50 a barrel it would be doable. Are they doing it at twice that?)

No to all those questions. They just sit and rake in the profits while their elected official (we certainly never elected him) berates congress for not passing his bills that would allow the oil companies to ruin not merely our National Parks, but our air and our water just because they do not want to spend some of that money to do it responsibly.

I lived in El Paso, Texas when I was a kid. It had refineries. They dumped sulfuric gas into the air at an enormous rate. It changed the color of the land around it which seemed to grow nothing. And ultimately my family had to move because of the illnesses it caused with my brother and myself. When mother became pregnant with my sister she put her foot down. She did not care where we moved. Just away from there.

The EPA standards developed for oil refineries and coal generation plants and factories in general is so we can continue to breathe. So we still have frogs in ponds and fish we can catch in a mountain stream and eat. And if GW truly agrees that global warming is an issue then why is he fighting to put more carbon emissions into our atmosphere or cut the number of green, growing and living things down.

The oil companies have not built a refinery in 30 years because they were waiting for someone like GW to make it unnecessary for them to care about their neighborhood and the planet earth.