Federal Government's Most Basic Function

[anddave]

Federal Government's Most Basic Function is to provide for the common defense.

We are nearing 40 years since the 73 arab oil embargo. and more dependent than ever on oil from places from which time and again people have sallied forth intending to do us harm and occasionally succeeded. It is self-evident that if we had no foreign oil interest nor military presence to protect it, we would be better protected at home with more military closer at hand and less reason for people to object to our presence in their lands.

Every administration has babbled about energy independence. Every President on both sides of the aisle has had the capability with nothing more than an executive order to mandate that all future federal vehicles must run on natural gas, of which we have ample supplies for a couple of centuries and are finding new domestic sources every day. State and muni governments could easily follow and in the span of perhaps a couple decades we could have a thriving natural gas infrastructure and drastically reduce our dependence upon, vulnerability to, and hemmoraging national wealth into the pockets of, dangerous people and places.

There are environmental problems with natural gas as with any fuel. As we are the ones who need the energy, so are we the ones who have to learn to use what we have here as cleanly as we can. It is just not sensible to depend upon, nor to feel entitled to, someone else's underground concentrated ancient solar energy when we could be using our own.

In the name of providing for the common defense, our federal government should have begun this transition long ago. They should do so now. Any president bold enough could make it happen.

[Supplicated Velvet Thunder]

it's unfortunate that the shield our federal government should be has instead turned into worse than a mockery of the concept, it's become the opposite, whether simply a sword or, more like a swinging-blind target. i distinctly remember lil bush promising us hydro cars in five years or some similar lie in one of his state of the union addresses.... it was around that time that i took my interest in observing national politics (which had been an obsession that led to a degree) and directed it... elsewhere.

because it (politics) really is mostly just some perception, mixed with some egos ballsy enough to lie at those magnitudes. most of us, left screwed, who shudder at the thought of it all, are waiting for the ONE PERSON who should be able to stand strong to do something about it and STAND (we have had some very heroic men in that oval office!) but he is in an office that has been relatively stripped of power (most of the branches have been, shit, we all have been) by the pressures of the corporate economy and mass media, to name a few of the obvious.

why don't we have other solutions to the energy crisis? special interests, money, whatever, that's probably not even the half of it. the thing is, once the politicians allow science to REALLY BRING THE ENERGY ISSUE TO THE PUBLIC there are a LOT OF PEOPLE who are going to be REALLY PISSED that certain technologies beyond any type of mineral gas (i doubt the planet enjoys having her blood sucked out, ya know?) have been around for a pretty stupidly long amount of time and should have been available to us to use economically by now (because it sure seems like the technology to make it available has been around long enough) ... but just like the QWERTY keyboard i'm typing on proves, there seems to be a lot of resistance to accepting a better way just because it's BETTER, when so many people are COMFORTABLE with the old way.... comfortable indeed..... ha. my bank account is not comfortable with gas prices lately.

I regularly refrain from posting in this section of the forums, but I've been thinking about what you posted about a lot, and when I saw it was posted about here, I had to say something.

after all, times, they are a changing.

[lookyloo]

Federal Government's Most Basic Function is to provide for the common defense.

We are nearing 40 years since the 73 arab oil embargo. and more dependent than ever on oil from places from which time and again people have sallied forth intending to do us harm and occasionally succeeded. It is self-evident that if we had no foreign oil interest nor military presence to protect it, we would be better protected at home with more military closer at hand and less reason for people to object to our presence in their lands.

Every administration has babbled about energy independence. Every President on both sides of the aisle has had the capability with nothing more than an executive order to mandate that all future federal vehicles must run on natural gas, of which we have ample supplies for a couple of centuries and are finding new domestic sources every day. State and muni governments could easily follow and in the span of perhaps a couple decades we could have a thriving natural gas infrastructure and drastically reduce our dependence upon, vulnerability to, and hemmoraging national wealth into the pockets of, dangerous people and places.

There are environmental problems with natural gas as with any fuel. As we are the ones who need the energy, so are we the ones who have to learn to use what we have here as cleanly as we can. It is just not sensible to depend upon, nor to feel entitled to, someone else's underground concentrated ancient solar energy when we could be using our own.

In the name of providing for the common defense, our federal government should have begun this transition long ago. They should do so now. Any president bold enough could make it happen.

Well said Brother