Serving Proudly As The Voice Of Valley County Since 1913

Dear Congress

If This Sounds Disrespectful, It's Intentional

I remember a phrase we had to type over and over in Mr. Shaw’s typing class. “Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their party.” Remember that one? If you are under 50 years old you most likely don’t, but anyway ...

That line should read “come to the aid of their “country,” but it seems you folks who are hired/elected to run this country (at a paltry $174,000 per year) have deserted us in favor of overseas interests.

I just received a whopping 1.5% increase in my Social Security, which puts me way up into the under $8,000 a year bracket. When it runs, I drive a 1988 Ford half-ton 4x4 pickup that on a good day gets maybe 14 mpg. I’m trailer trash living in a 45-year-old home-on-wheels, with drafty windows and little insulation.

I resole a pair of boots now and then and carve the occasional belt. That activity puts another $800 dollars a year in my pocket. Living high on the hog, for sure.

My point is this: You clowns in Washington, District of Corruption – who make the laws, make big bucks, live in million dollar homes, drive nice cars, have college educations, and spend more money on a three martini lunch than I make in a month – just can’t understand that America’s needs should comes first.

Even someone as food deprived, trailer-trashy, uneducated, mechanically inept and socially unacceptable as I am can figure out that taxpayer money should be used right here in the U S of A ... first.

My 9.3 readers are probably wondering, “Who put the burr under his blanket?” Well, you fellers and fellerettes in Congress did – when you allocated some 671 million American taxpayers dollars to build a super oil refinery in … wait for it … Turkey. See, that’s a country over there very close to Russia and on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

It’s a country where 99% of the population is of the same religion.

Keep in mind now, it is my belief that the current president of the United States started out as a Muslim, and some national surveys in recent years have shown that an estimated 11 percent to 18 of Americans believe that he is one. Do you recall when he bowed his head to a Muslim head of state? Now, would you like to take a stab at guessing the predominant religion of Turkey?

But religion aside, I’m still piqued at the money youse guys are sending to an Islamic nation rather than spending it right here among your own people.

Now is the time to do something positive for your country gentlemen and gentlewomen. Wow, what a concept, eh?

The first thing you need to do, above all and very decisively, is to castrate the EPA. Those anti-America, anti-business tree huggers are the reason it takes 10 to 15 years of expensive, exasperating paperwork and environmental impact statements before a company can even think of building something here. (Such documents, by design, are made so difficult to understand that I’d say the people who wrote them count on those trying to comply to just throw their hands up in the air and give up before the lawyers bankrupt them.)

There are four refineries in the Anacortes/Bellingham area of Washington state. Because of EPA regulations and restrictions, none have the capabilities to “crack” crude oil into gas as efficiently as Japanese refineries, so consequently most of America’s Alaska North Slope oil goes from the “Land of the Midnight Sun” to the “Land of the Rising Sun” to get refined.

If the EPA would back off and allow the U.S. refineries to refit or better yet, build a new one, we could be paying $2.50 a gallon, or less, for a better quality of gasoline than our refineries are capable of producing. And more efficiently, as well.

One of the “spins” I’ve heard you people putting on this deal with Turkey is that the Turkey refinery will be built with Made in America material. That’s a pure unadulterated pile of road apples and you know it.

If you people would allot that kind of money right here in America, Americans could build the refinery with American material and American labor. It would refine American oil into gasoline for America’s cars and trucks, plastics for everything we use in our daily lives, airplane fuel, heating oil and a myriad other uses.

Next, you have to put the kibosh on the unions. Pay a fair wage but throw out the Davis Bacon Act with the bathwater. It’s a bogus, typical waste of government money.

If you people have an ounce of common sense, use it now. No money to Turkey.

If some of this diatribe sounds disrespectful towards Congress, it’s purely intentional.

That’s it for now folks. Thanks for listening.

 

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