Editor,
I’m confused. Everyone knows that Social Security will run out of money some day. But the United States Senate refused to pass an amendment prohibiting illegal aliens from collecting benefits if they paid into the system using a fake, false or stolen Social Security number.
The U.S. Senate passed a bill making English the “official” language of the country, except where multiple languages are already required, such as ballots. But to vote, don’t you have to be a U.S. citizen? And isn’t the reading and speaking of English required for anyone becoming a citizen.
Everyone wants the “government” (that’s us folks) to do something about the high cost of gasoline and heating oil. But we can’t build nuclear power plants, drill for oil in our own territory, put up new dams to provide hydroelectric generating plants, and, of course, we must tear down dams that are used for generating electricity to allow fish and now ells to migrate up the rivers, and we can’t ruin the view of a very limited few by having wind generators on the sides of mountains or several miles off the coast. We can’t build new refining capacity due to regulations. We have to have ethanol in the fuel to replace MTBE although the amount required far exceeds the capacity to produce it in this country so we have to import a lot and, of course, there is a tax of around $.54 per gallon of imported ethanol.
And we have to have different blends of fuel in many different parts of the country to keep air pollution down which creates added costs to the refiners to satisfy all the individual needs. But let’s tax the excess profits of the oil companies because their profit of, say, $.10 a gallon is a drop in the bucket compared to the federal, state and sometimes local taxes per gallon to say nothing of income taxes and property taxes big oil already pays. So where does big oil get the money to pay the excess profits tax? They increase the cost of their product.
The “immigration” bill being gummed to death in the U.S. Senate has a provision to apply Davis-Bacon wages even on non-federally funded projects to all of these illegal aliens. That puts their wages above those of legal workers, including U.S. citizens! And they will only allow a few hundred thousand in each year and only to do work that U.S. citizens won’t do for low wages. A new Wal-Mart opened outside of Chicago with less than 500 jobs and 25,000 legal residents and citizens applied for those jobs. Where’s the shortage? Where is the lack of desire to work?
Is madness overtaking Washington, D.C. and the rest of the country?
I don’t have the answers other than to throw everyone in Washington and Augusta out of office when they come to us asking to be re-elected.
Does anyone else have any answers?
Bob Jones
Raymond
Send questions/comments to the editors.
