The Bill of Wrongs: One Nation Under God('s Jackboot)

In 1996, one Miss Laura Schubert Pearson of Cooley, Texas was made the victim of violent abuse while being held captive by an organized group of individuals attempting to promote a ludicrous social agenda. She, being age 17, was held against her will and without the permission or consent of her parents (who were out of town), during which time she was pinned down and restrained by members of the accused group, pummeled and beaten repeatedly, and intimidated by chants and songs which were designed to produce in her feelings of fear, guilt, and submission. During this grotesque ordeal she pleaded to be released. Finally, after two days of this violation, the group wearied of their efforts and released her.

No police charges were pressed and every member of this group not only remains free, but has never suffered any lawful punishment for their actions at all.

In the years following the ordeal, Laura suffered from what can unmistakably be identified as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; she developed agoraphobia and became housebound due to overwhelming feelings of anxiety, dropped out of school, and began mutilating herself, all of this after she had been perfectly healthy prior to her captivity and had shown no signs of any sort of psychological illness. Her parents, in an attempt to seek justice for their little girl, proceeded to sue the perverse and sadistic group that assaulted their daughter, claiming false imprisonment, assault, and physical, emotional, and mental abuse. The case was finally presented to a jury in 2002 and Laura was awarded the meager restitution of $300,000 for damages, pain and suffering, loss of earning capacity, and medical expenses. The 2nd Court of Appeals in Fort Worth later reduced the verdict to $188,000. While this paltry sum can hardly be taken as an adequate extension of justice to these depraved individuals, at that point it could at least be said that Laura's abuse was not to go completely unavenged.

However, this isn't the end of Laura's story. Now, after six years of appeals of the lower courts' verdicts, the Texas Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, has thrown the case out entirely, claiming that any attempt by the courts to punish those that kidnapped, physically assaulted, and emotionally intimidated Laura would violate the First Amendment of our Constitution.

You see, the members of the group that perpetrated these deplorable crimes were part of a church's congregation attempting to perform an exorcism on Laura against her will.

(Source 1, Source 2)

It is in situations such as these, friends, that our Bill of Rights is transformed into the Bill of Wrongs by those who would exploit them through malicious sophistry and intentional misunderstanding. Indeed, if any of the six justices-- whose job it is to interpret our Constitution based on the words written right in front of them-- that voted in favor of sanctioning the depraved zealotry of the vile members of the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church has ever so much as given a passing glance to our founding document, they should be immediately removed from their capacity in the courts due to either the inability to perform their duties due to outside bias, or their obvious and disqualifying ignorance and inability to read and understand plain English.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Thus reads our First Amendment. It is composed of a scant, but revolutionary, 45 words, the most important of which, in the case of Laura, is the word “exercise.” As can be deduced by context and through even the most rudimentary understanding of the English language, the word “exercise” in this case can be said to fall under all of the following definitions:

1. to put (one's faculties, rights, etc.) into action, practice, or use. Ex: to exercise freedom of speech.

2. to use or display in one's action or procedure. Ex: to exercise judgment.

3. to make use of (one's privileges, powers, etc.). Ex: to exercise one's constitutional rights.

Now, for those of you that, contrary to the apparent abilities of six Texas Supreme Court justices, have even a tenuous grasp of the form of English as a language, the implication of the above definitions is apparent and unmistakable-- to “exercise” in the sense that the word is used in our First Amendment refers to a singular individual choosing to make use of personal faculties, rights, and beliefs. This is all well and good, and you will find no debate from me or from any other champions of liberty concerning this reading-- the ability to exercise influence and choice over one's own life without outside interference is the very backbone of freedom. However, once an individual's choice to “exercise” any belief or right has infringed upon the the beliefs or rights of a secondary individual (in this case, Laura's right to believe, quite correctly, that exorcism is a sickening relic from the sado-masochistic origins of a foolish system of beliefs built upon the detestable notions of fear, unworthiness, and the contradictory interplay of conceit and self pity), it is the secondary party whom has had their First Amendment rights violated, not the other way around, leaving the primary party's actions unconstitutional and, as a consequence, deserving neither the protection nor the succor of our Bill of Rights. To read this situation in any other manner can only be viewed as intentional distortion of constitutional law or, perhaps worse, gross negligence on the part of men and women too ignorant, servile, and slavish to superstition to hold any public office at all, let alone the office of justice on a state's Supreme Court.

If you are as yet unconvinced, let us simply apply this line of thinking to a similar set of circumstances and see if they hold up any sort of notion concerning liberty and justice. Using this ruling as a basis, it is not at all a reach for one to declare that Timothy McVeigh was well within his constitutional rights by claiming the lives of 168 men, women, and children when he blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma. He was simply exercising his right to free speech by way of inflicting his beliefs on those he saw as part of the “problem” and not the “solution” as revenge for the government's actions at Waco and Ruby Ridge. The fact that the rights of those innocents were infringed upon is, according to two-thirds of the Texas Supreme Court, irrelevant. By their standard, any attempt to punish McVeigh, whom has since been executed for his crimes, would be an assault on his First Amendment rights.

But then again, we were speaking of freedom of religion, not free speech, weren't we? Well, this is all the better, as we've an even more expansive pool of examples from which to draw. Let us say nothing of the tortures of the Holy Inquisition, the blind and generational bloodletting of The Troubles and the “Long War”, the mass genocides of the Kosovo War, or even the unavoidable parallels to be found in the events of September, 2001. Instead, let's keep our discourse strictly confined to fundamentalist, American protestants. Again, applying the constitutional interpretation of two-thirds of the Texas Supreme Court, to say that the lynchings of black Christians and other ethnicities by the Ku Klux Klan members that chose to follow Christian Reconstructionism as a religious ideology were deplorable and worthy of the swiftest retribution would be out of line. Any call to punish such actions or to even attempt to prevent further instances of them occurring would be to undercut the constitutional protections afford by the First Amendment.

At this point, this horse, if not beaten to the point of death, is at the very least in mortal danger of becoming so. I shall not belabor the point any further.

It remains baffling as to how such easily recognized and understandable situations can have their obvious resolutions so skirted by our judicial system. John F. Kennedy once said, in referencing an event in which forty-nine Nobel Prize winners were invited to the White House:

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent and of human knowledge that has ever been gathered together at the White House — with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

Thomas Jefferson was, of course, the primary and most influential author of our founding documents. Is it so far out of the question for those that are charged with the interpretation of our Constitution to acknowledge that the unconstitutional status and treatment of any “exercising” of rights that in itself infringes upon the rights and protections of other unwilling individuals is the sine qua non on which Jefferson and others built the foundation of our free nation? Is it just barely possible that the reason words such as “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or allowing for the exercise thereof to unduly infringe upon the liberty or physical well being of unwilling participants;” do not appear in full in our First Amendment is because it is a basic requirement so essential that its omission would render the entire document useless, and therefore it need not be written? And, is it marginally plausible that intentional misreadings and misunderstandings of our Constitution have as their motivation the furthering of the agenda of the religious superstition which our lawmakers blindly follow, going so far as to refer to themselves and their peers as “sheep” in a “flock” with pride instead of disgrace? It is in the case of the latter most query and its implications that the true intention of our First Amendment can be found if only one has the strength of intellect and personal character to read and understand plain English, and to shuck off the hobnailed boot that so many would have placed upon our necks in the name of God.

Small Minds and Big Oil: The Truth Concerning Prices at the Pump and America's Energy Crisis - Part 1

Living in an age such as our own has quite a many advantages. The most complete compendium of the world's knowledge is quite literally at our fingertips thanks to the ever present Internet, a double dozen twenty-four hour news stations inhabit our televisions to beam breaking news and “hard hitting political analysis” into our living rooms within moments of an event occurring, and there exists a veritable deluge of talk and opinion programming that inhabits all forms of media, providing nearly everyone with some sort of a megaphone through which their own philosophies, political or not, have the ability to be voiced, amplified, and trumped for all that care to hear them. For all of this, though, we live in an age that is hemorrhaging internally due to one particular flaw: bad information and its consequent ill informed opinions spread just as quickly (and often with more associated fervor) as accurate information, giving rise to a sort of authoritative ignorance that tends to satiate the less informed masses with a feeling of “Oh, I know ALL about that!” when they've only fallen prey to inaccurate information or twisted half truth. It is onto this wound of our otherwise grand and astounding information age that I intend to, in my own fashion, apply a bandage in the form of this article.

Despite the importance of issues surrounding fuel costs, alternative technologies, et cetera, and no doubt as a corollary to the empty headed hot air being spewed from both sides of the political spectrum, there exists an immense amount of misconception and ignorance concerning the topics at hand. In this lays the intent and hopeful accomplishment of the purpose of this writing. I wish to address and either dispel or confirm the major points of contention concerning these issues, and to combat the tide of ignorance that is so hampering the efforts to find viable solutions.

ASSERTION: WE ARE BEING ROBBED AT THE PUMP BECAUSE “BIG OIL” IS GREEDY, CORRUPT, AND IN CONGRESS WITH THE DEVIL

You'll have to excuse the title a bit... since I first heard the phrase in my youth, I've always wanted to incorporate the phrase “In congress with the devil” into an intellectual discussion. Deus volent, this shan't be the last time. But moving on...

I have chosen to place this myth at the top of the list not only because it seems to have become a general consensus, but because of it's utter, unblinking stupidity.

To begin, let's take a look at the profit margins (or the percentage of the total sale price of a given commodity-- in this case, a barrel of oil-- that is pocketed by the producing entity as profit) of some given businesses:

Health care facilities: 48%

Publishing, periodicals, and magazines: 34%

Information delivery services: 23%

Application software industry: 22%

Tobacco products: 19%

Drug manufacturers: 17%

Insurance brokers: 16%

Long distance carriers: 15.8%

Beverages, wineries, distilleries: 15%

Hotel/motels: 10.6%

Asset management: 10.5%

Resorts and casinos: 10.5%

With the publishing industry making 34 cents on every dollar that they invest in their products and distilleries that require only yeast, sugar, some sort of grain or corn, and a heating apparatus running at half that figure, one would imagine that a complex and international entity such as BIG OIL must be running somewhere around 85%, right?

Try one tenth of that.

BIG OIL operates, on average, at an 8.5% profit margin. For balance, I include below the margins of some of the most profitable BIG OIL companies, as “on average” can sometimes be a deceiving statement. However, I doubt that the highest figure involved will make anyone blink when they realize it's only one cent above the profit margin of your local Motel 6:

(Figures as of 2007)

Exxon Mobile: 11.65%

Chevron: 9.49%

Total SA: 8.87%

BP: 8.09%

While I feel as if little argument is left following such figures, I cannot resist the temptation, given the prevalence of this nonsense, to press the issue further. Below I am going to demonstrate some math that proves these figures, so as to assure that any such fool that cries “right wing propaganda” will be doing so in the face of figures that cannot be fooled. This is an accounting of the “anatomy” of a gallon of gasoline, in that it dissects how much money and/or cost is related to the final price at the pump and outlines where that money goes:

(Figures taken from CNNMoney.com, calculated when oil was $110 per barrel and the price at the pump was $3.27 per gallon of gasoline on average. All figures rounded to the national average where applicable, or the industry average.)

Producers of Crude Oil: $2.07

Refiners: $.26 cents

Transportation: $.24 cents

State and Government Taxes: $.40 cents

Gas Station Profit: $.10

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

Total Cost: $3.07

Oil Company Profit: $.20

Profit Margin (Profit divided by Cost of Commodity, or .20/3.27 ): 06%

Well, at the very least we can conclusively say that this particular gallon of gasoline was not purchased from Exxon, Chevron, Total SA, or BP.

Mathematics is amazing, nyet?

Before departing this issue for good, I wish to address one other fact that seems to slip under the rug when discussing the apparent evil of BIG OIL... income taxes.

In 2006, ExxonMobile's EBT (earnings before tax) was approximately 67.4 billion. Of that figure, Exxon paid out $27.9 billion, or around 41% of their total income for the year. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Very nearly half of ExxonMobile's total income was paid out in taxes. But of course, it's the evil corporation that's in congress with the devil (I told you it wouldn't be the last time!) that are gouging us at the pump.

If you wish to see the largest drop in gas prices in the history of petroleum, simply write to your congressman and ask him to repeal all taxes on gasoline. Next, you may as well ask that he persuade the tides to roll back at his behest, as one is about as likely as the other.

At this, I shall rest. I can only hope that for those reading these words, the myth of BIG OIL being the source of all of our woes is finally dispelled.

But let us endure with the topic of taxes...

ASSERTION: WE SHOULD TAX “BIG OIL” TO PUNISH THEM FOR THEIR GREED

This entry, in contrast to that which precedes it, shall be short, as both falsehoods in the statement have already been properly identified and disproved.

BIG OIL is not greedy, or at least no more so than the owner of your average hotel chain. As seen above in two languages (English and mathematics) taxes will not only do nothing to lower the price at the pump, it will raise that price higher than it would be otherwise, as the effect of any ancillary taxes will be passed on to the consumer, not absorbed by the corporations. The only way that this sort of narrow minded foolishness could possibly work would be to tax BIG OIL so heavily that the price at the pump reached towards the $20-$30 per gallon range, forcing the public to buy bicycles or use public transportation and effectively making gasoline and other petroleum a commodity too expensive to be used and exploited by any but the super rich and therefore essentially unprofitable. I refuse to extrapolate all of the negative effects that this course of action could have, and utterly refuse to discuss why this would be a death nail for our country and our economy. If you, Dear Reader, need such things explained to you, then you're beyond my ability to help you.

ASSERTION: SPECULATORS ARE AS GREEDY AS BIG OIL AND THE CAUSE OF HIGH PRICES AT THE PUMP

Let us begin with as concise a definition of speculation as can be made: speculation, essentially, is the act of buying amounts of a given commodity (in this case, oil) at the “today” price with the sole intention of turning around and selling it for a profit at a later date. In other words, if I suspected that cheese (remember the cheese, it'll be important later) was going to suddenly become scarce, I would buy cheese today at, say, $2 a pound, then, if my “speculation” was correct, the price of cheese would go up-- say, to $3 a pound-- and I would sell it off to a buyer, netting a profit of $1 for every pound of cheese. As simple as this definition sounds, the whole process can become extremely complicated (such as the distinction between buying “futures” as opposed to buying the actual product, but we'll get to that in a moment), but for the purposes of this writing it shall suffice.

The above definition, when applied to oil, leads to the common misconception (common not just among Joe Consumer, but among most on Capitol Hill) that oil speculators are creating artificial demand-- read: driving up oil prices-- through their speculation, in that it would appear that they're buying up massive amounts of oil at today's prices and therefore making it unavailable for consumers. Sadly, and most importantly, nothing could be further from the truth. You see, speculators are not buying up actual oil. Oh, no. Rarely if ever will a speculator take a delivery of a single shipment of oil.

What they are doing is known as engaging in “futures trading,” an oil future being an agreement between a buyer (Mr. John Q. Speculator) and a seller (BIG OIL) to deliver a set amount of oil at a specific price on a specific date. Contrary to common knowledge, however, the value of that contract can rise or fall all the way up until the delivery. For example, if John Speculator were to sign a contract today (Monday, July 14th) to receive 1,000 barrels of oil priced at $170 a barrel from BIG OIL on December 5th, 2008, he would be bound by the contract even if the price per barrel world wide had dipped down to $150 per barrel by the time the contract was due. In other words, it's a gamble on the part of the speculator as to if the price at which he has agreed to purchase the commodity in his “future” will have risen or fallen. Now, if a whole slew of speculators get together and make a run on the oil market all at once, buying up massive amounts of the commodity, IN THEORY, the price of oil will spike due to the fact that the supply will have suddenly decreased without the market having had time to react on the demand side of the economic equation, causing as a consequence a huge rise in price. This is the accusation that so many have leveled at speculators, which has resulted in the huge outcry as to their blame in our high prices at the pump. Unfortunately for those looking for a scapegoat, this outcry is utterly unmerited.

You see, as stated previously, speculators rarely if ever actually receive the oil on which they have made their “bet.” It is a rare instance indeed that any speculator even has the ability to house such a commodity were they to take such a delivery. Instead, they tend to sell off their oil futures to a third party (commonly other corporate entities that consume vast amounts of fuel, such as airlines or shipping institutions) a few days before it comes due. An understanding of this fact is absolutely essential in understanding the falsity in the statement that speculators are creating artificial demand, in that it is IMPOSSIBLE for any entity to create an artificial demand for a commodity WITHOUT taking it off the market. But you don't have to take my word for it. Instead I offer to you the words of energy markets expert and finance professor at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business, Craig Pirrong:

“For speculators to be propping up the price of oil, they somehow have to be taking physical oil off the market.”

Professor Pirrong also goes on to analogize the government's attempt to bolster the price of cheese (I told you to remember the cheese) in the 1970's to the current situation. At that time, the government did so by purchasing massive warehouses full of cheese and intentionally keeping them off the market. In reference to the idiotic assertion that today's oil speculation is similar to this instance of creating artificial demand, he says:

“Well, where's the cheese now? Where's all the oil that the speculators have held off the market?”

It doesn't exist, Friend, nor does any real amount of blame to lay upon the well clothed shoulders of speculators.

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE TO PART TWO OF THIS ARTICLE

Small Minds and Big Oil: The Truth Concerning Prices at the Pump and America's Energy Crisis - Part 2

ASSERTION: DRILLING FOR NEW OIL NOW WILL DO NOTHING TO HELP FUEL COSTS FOR AT LEAST 5-7 YEARS

This assertion, contrary to those before it, does indeed hold a not insubstantial grain of truth, which is that, while any action aimed at the expanding of America's oil enterprises will have a small but measurable effect on the commodity's market, the idea that new drilling will solve all of our problems is utterly fanciful. However, the importance of that truth is dwarfed by the importance of a larger truth: there exists absolutely no policy or course of action that can or will have a dramatic, immediate (immediate in terms of the next 6 months) impact on the price at the pump in the foreseeable future.

There seems to be three schools of thought concerning the question of if we should expand oil drilling operations: the (A) “Hell, if we just get the damn oil going it'll fix itself” crowd, the (B) “When in danger or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout” crowd, and the (C) “It took us a while to dig this hole, it'll take a while to fill it back up” crowd.

Group A operates on the assumption that our current high cost of fuel is a direct and exclusive result of a weakening supply of oil, and that any sort of action to further increase oil supplies will have immediate and dramatic effects on the supply side of energy economics, driving down the cost. This, I'm sad to say, is simple hope wishing-- more than hope wishing, it is false at its core; there exists no shortage of oil in our country, or across the world. While any sort of action that shows an intent of expanding the U.S.'s domestic oil supply will cause some amount of stir among foreign suppliers and speculators, such a stir will be negligible at best. (As an aside to the inclusion of the role of speculation in this argument, one can't help but find it particularly amusing that many of those who make the same contention as I have stated above, concerning the minimal role of speculators in driving up the cost of fuel, have a tendency to ignore this in their next breath, exaggerating the role that speculators would play in driving DOWN the cost of fuel. In both cases, speculation is a factor, but one that is merely deserving of minute consideration, not deserving of zealous blame or messianic praise.)

Group A, however, is correct in their calls for more drilling in spite of the fact that they are correct for an entirely different reason than they suspect. It took many years of poor decisions and mismanagement for us to find ourselves in our present situation, and those that would demand or indeed expect an immediate resolution are living in the sort of dreamworld inhabited by those whom believe that passing legislation to make pi equal to 3.0 would be enough to make it true, or that a law against hatred is enough to put an end to prejudice. It will take much effort and many changes of policy before we can expect to see a dramatic and lasting effect on our fuel prices, and a big part of that course of action must inevitably include breaking or, at the very least, reducing by a large magnitude our dependence on foreign oil. The most effective way of accomplishing this, as one might imagine, is to expand domestic oil supplies by opening up new operations.

Group B, on the other hand, seems hell bent on shunning and ignoring the oil problem at any cost, letting the the issue fester and rot like an open wound, and simply focusing on courses of action that leave oil and other fossil fuels out of the equation entirely. While one must applaud any sort of forward thinking in terms of focusing on allowing future technologies to create a simpler and more efficient world, this is hope wishing of the same sort as seen in Group A, save that it runs in the opposite direction. For better or worse, the growth and success of our nation and of all other industrialized nations of the world are unavoidably tied to oil. While one can hope and endeavor for a world in which this isn't a truth, this state of affairs is currently inexorable and not up for debate. Beyond this, while innovations of all sorts can certainly have immediate positive impacts, the sort of technology that would allow for a massive shifting of the energy paradigm on a global scale, as moving away from oil being humanity's most prolific fuel source would be, is decades, if not generations away. Improving fuel efficiency, developing alternative fuels and/or more effective ways of harnessing them, and all other sorts of forward thinking modes of progress should certainly be at the forefront of our efforts, but to imagine that such steps forward will completely solve our current problems is to put the cart before the horse. Advances in technology and the advent of new fuels will certainly help to ease the burden, but they will not do so within the next few years, and in the mean time, grocery trucks still have to roll, employees still must travel, and people still need to get to work. Which brings us to Group C...

Group C, as you will imagine, embodies the voice of those who believe that a marriage of the better parts of each group is the correct way to tackle the issue. It is a mistake to assume that an answer to these issues can be had in short order, just as it is a mistake to believe that a future devoid of serious advances in the craft and technology of procuring and using our fuel sources will be a desirable one. It did indeed take us quite a while to dig ourselves this hole, and it will take a while to fill it back up, but, if I may permitted a cliché from the musings of Confucius, “The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” America's dependence on foreign oil is a travesty that must be corrected, and lucky for us, there exists many large organizations that are willing to spend their own money to fix the problem for us... we know them as Exxon, BP, et cetera. The private sector will also play a role in developing the technology that will enable us (or more likely, our children and grandchildren) the chance to live in a world in which oil is not the prime mover and shaker so far as energy is concerned, and that role can be augmented by bolstering private researchers with grants driven towards the desired goal. If we wish to bequeath such a world to future generations and, if we're lucky, to ourselves a decade or two down the road, we must focus on that future without hindering ourselves today, and that means greatly expanded drilling across all American lands while giving as much assistance to the geniuses inhabiting our universities and laboratories as is humanly possible.

ASSERTION: BIG OIL HAS CLAIM TO VAST AMOUNTS OF LAND THAT THEY AREN'T DRILLING, SO OPENING UP NEW RESERVES FOR THEM IS JUST FEEDING THEIR GREED

Here again exists a myth that is founded on telling just enough of the truth, then stopping when the purpose is served.

BIG OIL does indeed have lease on huge tracts of land that they are not currently drilling. However, the idea that they're refraining from drilling because they're greedy and attempting to drive up the price of oil is a farce, as is the implication that opening up ANWAR and our coasts for drilling would be feeding that nonexistent greed.

Much, if not all, of the land that this myth concerns is land that either has not been surveyed as to if it holds any oil at all, or has been surveyed but holds insubstantial amounts of oil or oil that would be cost prohibitive to drill. The thought that supposedly evil and greed driven BIG OIL would leave oil in the ground during an era that is personified by the biggest bubble in the history of the production of energy is laughable at best, misleading at worst, and ludicrous in fact. The difference between these untapped areas and areas such as ANWAR or the sites just off of our coasts lays in the fact that it is a quantifiable fact that oil is there to be had, and to be taken out in an efficient and cost effective manner. This is why oil companies are practically on their knees and begging for the chance to drill such areas as opposed to other areas-- the resources and the ability to extract them are both known variables, as opposed to other areas that could lead to millions of dollars wasted and nothing to show for it.

This is, as most of these myths tend to be, an attempt to vilify BIG OIL instead of loading the responsibility on those that deserve it, namely our politicians and ourselves. But sticking with ANWAR and our coasts...

ASSERTION: DRILLING IN ANWAR OR JUST OFF OF OUR COASTS WILL HAVE A SEVERE IMPACT ON TOURISM AND ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

This we shall take in two separate parts, effects on tourism and effects on ecological systems.

In short, the idea that big, ugly oil rigs off the coasts of Florida and elsewhere would ruin the view and ruin tourism is simply absurd. To the best of my knowledge, all of the proposed coastal drilling sites are fifty miles or more away from any beach. At that distance even the use of binoculars would not put the platforms in view. This is simply an argument that is voiced by those who are against drilling for purely political reasons as opposed to valid reasons, and deserves a quick dismissal.

Concerning the ecological effect, the largest claim that is heard is that of the inevitable damage that some sort of spill or accident will incur, causing the sort of mess viewed by the world when the infamous Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef and dumped 10.8 million gallons of crude into the water. Only a fool would downplay how awful the aforementioned event happened to be, but it takes both a coward and a fool to base all future decisions on an example of a disaster that could have been prevented and has no reason to repeat itself. The Valdez spill is not something to be expected on a regular basis, as evidenced by the fact that, at least concerning American oil operations, nothing even near the same order of magnitude of the Valdez disaster has occurred. Safeguards exist, but human stupidity and negligence will at times lead to terrible events. However, this is no reason to assume that such things will happen in every circumstance, and if such thinking had been prevalent in our ancestors we would all still be cooking our food outdoors, not daring to risk that our dwelling should catch fire due to a malfunctioning stove.

ANWAR deserves special consideration on the ecological side, if for no other reason than it is a wildlife reserve. However, the extent of the effects an oil operation would have on ANWAR is one of the biggest exaggerations in the history of politics. To demonstrate this, I ask you to please open a magazine, or find a printed memo, or anything else of similar dimensions with words printed on it. In the case of a standard piece of printer paper being a representation of the total size of ANWAR, one period (.) printed on it in 12 point Times New Roman font is a fairly accurate representation of the size of ANWAR that would be used for drilling. In this case, as in the others, the myth has its roots in attempting to exaggerate the evil of BIG OIL to no identifiable end, save to endeavor to advance a nonsensical political or social agenda.

ASSERTION: WE ALREADY HAVE THE ANSWER IN THE FORM OF ETHANOL, BUT BIG OIL, REPUBLICANS, AND OTHER LOBBYISTS ARE HOLDING IT BACK

This myth goes beyond simply falsehood and crosses into the territory of blatant, malicious manipulation.

You see, contrary to popular belief, ethanol not only isn't helping the situation, it's making it exponentially worse. As of this writing, it costs approximately $1.25 to produce every $1 worth of ethanol fuel. This occurs because (1) all of the machinery used to plant, grow, and harvest products used to produce ethanol run on oil, (2) those products, before being distilled into ethanol, must be shipped, usually on trucks that burn oil, and (3) ethanol, for all of its clean burning goodness, just isn't that efficient of a fuel. All of this would be well and good (let people waste their own money any way they please) if it weren't for two factors: there are government mandates in place that force us to use ethanol as a petroleum additive, meaning that this silly product can't just fail in the way that any other cost prohibitive substance would, and, most importantly, the substances used to produce ethanol (most notably corn) are being taken away from our food market and being put into a failing energy market, causing the price of our food supply to rise.

Corn in and of itself is a staple product, but its use goes far beyond being covered in butter and devoured at cookouts. It is used as the primary source of feed for all livestock and poultry, meaning that as its price increases, the price of nearly every other product we find in a supermarket, from meat to eggs to dairy products, increases.

Again, beyond simply being a non-solution, the belief that ethanol is our savior and that its market and use should be expanded is a solution that's worse than the problem.

CONCLUSION:

Sadly, our fuel and energy crisis has become yet another platform on which politicians stand and beat their chests and point their fingers, worried more about who takes the blame for the crisis as opposed to dealing with it at all. In this, we, the consuming public, are at fault. We continue to wring the same tired trash through our political system, yet are surprised when we get the same old nonsense as before. Thankfully, there is an answer to be found, and it lays in refusing to play the blame game, or to hide behind authoritative ignorance when it comes time to roll up our sleeves and get to work. The key to this exists in taking the time to understand an issue in its entirety as opposed to just trying to understand the sides of an issue that pertain to preconceived notions. It is in this that I hope this article has served some good.

To protect and to serve whom? Certainly not the citizenry.

Today I, your friendly and neighborly iconoclast, bring you yet another example our dubiously indulged, overly praised police departments betraying their true values and their lacking sense of responsibility in dealing with the public that writes their checks:

Sarasota Police Storm McDonald's To Catch Drug Suspect
By ANTHONY CORMIER

Sarasota Herald-Tribune
Published: July 12, 2008

SARASOTA — Undercover police officers stormed a McDonald's restaurant and ordered diners and employees to the ground as they tried to catch a suspected cocaine dealer Thursday.

The Sarasota police officers were dressed in black, carried rifles and wore masks when they ran into the restaurant on the corner of Beneva and Fruitville roads. They burst through the door at dinner time, yelled for patrons to hide under tables and chased a 24-year-old man who hid in a bathroom.

It was a drug sting that went bad because of a milkshake.

Police say the arrest would have gone smoother if the suspect, Juan T. Dixon, had not stopped at the door of the restaurant to go back and grab his shake from the counter.

...With the squad cars zooming into the parking lot, Dixon turned around to get his drink from the counter.

When he got back to the door, he saw the cars waiting for him and, realizing he was about to be arrested, he ran for the bathroom.

(Click here for the full, original story)

After fighting back the urge to chuckle at the image of a drug trafficker bolting for a bathroom with a Big Mac and Triple Thick Shake in tow (as well as an ounce of cocaine and 100 pills of Ecstasy that he had agreed to purchase from an undercover narcotics officer in the McDonald's), one cannot help but wonder what sort of dire potential for violence or otherwise foreboding circumstances could have possibly led to a drug sting being organized and set in a public place full of innocent people, ultimately leading to a Hollywood-esque standoff composed of masked, rifle carrying police officers bursting into a public restaurant and screaming for all present to “Get down!” in true Point Break style.

The answer is much simpler, and much more dreadful, than one would think. The police had planned it that way for their own safety:

[Sarasota Police Chief Peter] Abbott said it is common for undercover detectives to conduct stings and drug surveillance in public places because they do not want to raise a suspect's suspicions and place officers in greater jeopardy by requesting more remote locations.

Oh, gee golly, Mr. Chief of Police, I understand. It only makes sense to endanger the lives and well being of innocent citizens trying to enjoy a meal as opposed to ensuring that those that make a profession of police work and are, as a consequence, armed with rifles and body armor are the only people in danger.

If this is nobility, then a rapist is a simple romantic.

One should hardly find it surprising that, as stated in the full article, the department was unwilling to stipulate as to whom-- the department or the suspect-- determined that a McDonald's was the optimum meeting place for this debacle. The more cynical of us find this to be an answer in itself, and to speak volumes as to all those involved knowing that this sort of practice is not only selfish and deplorable, but unethical to the extreme.

I am consistently the first to point out the fact that the Supreme Court has ruled (twice in fact) that police do not have a constitutional duty to protect us, which leaves the tired slogan of “To protect and to serve” null and void in any case. But if law enforcement officers insist on this illusion (and they do), is it too much to ask that, if they're under no obligation to protect us from anything, they at the very least avoid endangering us?

What if, as all citizens should, one or two of the patrons in the restaurant had been carrying weapons to protect themselves?

A customer, a woman who did not want her name used, ducked under a table and worried that the masked men were robbers, not police.

"I thought it was a gang," she said. "I mean, they had masks and guns and I never heard anyone say, 'police.' I thought these guys were coming to rob us."

Imagine, if you will, you and your family-- your children, if you have any-- munching away at tasty victuals in your local McDonald's, when masked men clad in black kick in the door and scream for everyone to get down, and do nothing to identify themselves as police officers. Again, we cannot rely on the police for protection, so if you're in any way a responsible citizen with an interest in the protection of one's self and one's family, you're armed. What is your response?

I feel I do not need to belabor the point, other to say that my own personal reaction would lead, at the best, to one dead police officer and me rotting in a jail cell for the remainder of my life for the crime of protecting my family from men in masks.

Friends, if ever there has been an example of exactly how much value law enforcement places on your lives and well being, it lays before you.

To protect and serve... and to fail on both points.

A Letter to One Mr. Jay Rockefeller

As is no news to anyone possessing any form of media, today marks a day when yet another nail in the coffin that holds our Constitution was driven in with maniacal glee by those whom value an illusion of safety above a dangerous, uncertain, yet LIBERATED reality. With FISA passing in a disconcertingly one sided vote, we as Americans find ourselves facing the real threat of seeing our liberty legislated away from us-- which is infinitely more frightening than having it ripped from us physically, as the form that this disease is taking means that not only are we gradually being disenfranchised, it's being done all legal and proper, with the patience and calculation of a murderer whom carries out his ends over the course of months, if not years, as opposed to committing a crime on a whim.

In the face of such issues, I find myself almost unable to write concerning them-- most of what I can say in a broad sweeping stroke can and has already been said thousands if not millions of times all over the Internet and other forms of media. All I would be doing is assembling the arguments in a slightly different order. However, what I can share with you is a letter I've just recently finished to one Mr. Jay Rockefeller. When looking at the vote tallies (which anyone can do by simply visiting the Senate's website) I found that only one of my home state of West Virginia's elected officials had disgraced himself by yelling "Yea" when his time came to vote. While I have, admittedly, been too lazy to look into how many WV natives in the House had voted for this bill, it is the Senate much more than the House that I trust to be the "last rampart" that keeps the barbarians at bay. In finding that one of my own had assigned himself to supporting this awful legislation, I did something I have never done before... I wrote my congressman. Below is, in full, my letter to Mr. Rockefeller. Fellow West Virginians, I urge you, if you are as outraged as I am that one of our own would willingly comply with the systematic destruction of our Bill of Rights, write him as well. While one letter is unlikely to make a difference, a mountain of them, which to him will be viewed as a mountain of lost votes come this November, may well be enough to, if nothing else, force him to realize that such actions will not go unpunished, even if the punishment comes only at the polling booths as opposed to the hands of justice.

---

Mr. Rockefeller:

Salutations, sir. My name is Aaron Chambers and I am a 23 year old native son of West Virginia. Such introductions can be redundant, I know only too well, and in this case, they're fairly unnecessary. You see, we once had the mutual pleasure of sharing our company in a setting in which the unity and solidarity of West Virginia's native sons and daughters was paramount. It was during the memorial event for the deceased miners of Aracoma in my home town of Logan that I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance. That you would remember me is a possibility I do not indulge, and I mention our encounter only to address the duress under which I write this correspondence.

You see, despite the fact that, politically, neither you nor your colleague Mr. Byrd are in any way particularly in line with my own set of thoughts and philosophies, my encounters-- both privately, as in Logan, and through your discourse in the public forum-- have always left me with the honest impression that, despite whatever differences we may hold as to our politics on certain issues, you and Mr. Byrd, at the very least, hold the well being of the citizens of our state and country as your highest concern. In an uncertain world that is rotted with weakness of both character and intellect, and rife with charlatans willing to exploit this rot, that was quite enough reason for me to lend both of you my support, and though I was too young (by a mere matter of months) to lend you my vote in the 2002 election, I actively spoke out for you at the time, and until today, had been intending to lend you my vote this coming November.

What a difference a day can make.

Sir, I possess neither the arrogance nor the audacity to make the assumption that, concerning H.R. 6304 (FISA), you lack facts, perspective, or adequate intellect, which would otherwise explain your voting "Yea" for a bill that undermines that which is most sacred in our nation-- the guarantee that no man or woman, without do cause and process (both of which would be bound by the chains of utter accountability), shall have their lives invaded by any authority, be it public or private. In lending your stamp to this nonsense, you have quite markedly placed your name amongst the myriad of other cowards that will gladly relinquish the ideologies on which our nation was founded and dance upon the graves of patriots who were willing to soak American soil and the soil of innumerable foreign lands with their own blood in order to serve and protect the rights of the American citizenry.

To believe that wiretaps and other such spying and invasions of privacy have not or would not occur without such poisonous legislation is a stipulation that I shall leave to the more naive of my compatriots. However, at the very least and in the face of the knowledge that such clandestine and unconstitutional offenses can and will always occur, it was at least a comfort to know that, should such villainy be discovered, it would bare the full brunt of accountability and thus the accountable would be punished. Now, however, you have given credence to a measure that, while not the worst of such legislation, does much in its own right to crumble our Constitution and our way of life. You have essentially provided immunity to those who would comply to such dastardly ends, and have given a free license to all who would see any attempts at corrupting the foundation of America in the name of fear and of ignorance much room to see their ends come to fruition.

Mr. Rockefeller, I doubt very seriously that you will read this, and I doubt even more fully that if you should happen to read it, you will make it this far. But if you have, let me again reiterate the fact that, in my past experience with you, I found you to be nothing but humble, kind, and compassionate. Perhaps this is why your supporting this debacle, this treasonous attack on American values, has caught me so square. I, and many other West Virginians, have trusted you with the responsibility of safeguarding us from the greatest threat a citizenry can face: their governing body. And now, it is plain for us to see that our trust has been misplaced. You have failed us, Senator. Every time you're willing to shuck off such objections as you hear from me now, every time you're willing to simply wave away those who would call to task you and the rest of the government for forgetting that your job as a politician is to protect our LIBERTY as well as our physical well being, and every muttered defense you produce for this bill and for other like minded policies is a sign of your capitulation to ignorance, as well as your ineptness at maintaining the seat of power you now hold.

It is an unavoidable truth that the political system of our nation has been hijacked in the name of partisan politics, in the name of special interest, in the name of half measures and half truths, and especially in the name of small concessions to disinterested Americans who would rather bend the knee to a tyrant, be he foreign or (more likely) of our own making, than assume the full weight of the responsibility that accompanies freedom. Such men and women, Mr. Rockefeller, are neither my equals nor my compatriots. And now, to my great regret, I find that you have thrown in with them in throwing away that which is most important. For this, you should be ashamed.

-Aaron Chambers