Civic Responsibility Keeping the American Dream Alive

1. Civic Responsibility Keeping the American Dream Alive Richard F. Stoisits September 2011

2. Introduction • I will discuss how to use the internet to obtain information on Legislation. This is relatively straightforward and not time consuming • First I would like to spend some time talking about why it is more important now than ever to be informed and to communicate your position on legislation and key issues to your elected representatives. • My personal ephiany most likely is similar to yours • My concept of civic responsibility was limited to reading about issues, candidates and voting. • I was a little dismayed at voter apathy particularly at the local and state level. This directly affects our daily life and is where politicians gain experience to go on to national office. • I became alarmed in late 2008 and early 2009 at the: financial crisis, the bailout of too big to fail financial institutions and corporations, the economic slump, unsustainable deficits and virtual national bankruptcy. • I began to realize the American Dream, the idea the long term trend of improvement in the life of the current and future generations was in jeopardy. • This transformed my idea of civic responsibility to include influencing legislation. In essence becoming a citizen lobbyist. • Key issues that need to be addressed are: government spending, taxation, economic growth and border security.

3. Introduction • We citizens need to generate a local and national dialogue on issues, candidates, and legislation with: family, friends, co-workers. • We won’t get everyone we know to join the political party reform movement; however, we can influence how they vote. • We need to inform our elected representatives of our position on issues and legislation through, email, phone calls, letters, town hall meetings, and office visits. • We can also work on candidate campaigns, financially support candidates, join organizations that express our positions, and work at the polls.

4. Spending and Taxation • The federal deficits are unsustainable. • Standard and Poors has recently downgraded U.S. debt. • This is a direct result of the failure of the federal government to develop a credible plan to control federal spending. • U.S. debt is starting to take on some of the characteristics of junk bond status. • Besides trillion+ $ deficits for at least the next 10 yrs(CBO estimate with current policy) and the current national debt of 14+ trillion $ the unfunded liability of the federal government is 104 trillion $. This is according to a public statement in 2010 by the Richard Fisher the head of the Dallas Federal Reserve Bank. 89 trillion of this unfunded liability is attributable to the medicare and medicade programs. • The president’s bi-partisan national commission on fiscal responsibility and reform lead by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson in 2010 concluded the entitlement programs of social security, medicare and medicade are unsustainable in the current form. Erskine Bowles stated that failure to control the deficit will destroy the country from within. • Paul Ryan’s budget bill is the first serious effort at addressing this problem. It includes: • Medicade block grants to be administered by the states. • Medicare individual insurance premium vouchers • Paul Ryan’s budget passed the house but was defeated in the Senate.

5. Spending and Taxation • Obama’s budget did not contain any reform of medicade, medicare or social security, although reform was recommended by his select commission on fiscal responsibility and reform. It was defeated in the Senate 99-0, 1 abstention. • Ryan’s budget in effect ends the federal government virtual blank check to the health care industry. • The federal tax take of GDP since WWII has ranged between 19-26% • Currently we are at the high end of this range. • High tax take removes too much resource from the private sector and tends to reduce growth. • In January 2011 Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster told the House Budget Committee that he has more confidence in the Ryan plan bringing down costs and saving Medicare from bankruptcy than he does in the Obama Care law’s ability to do so. (Investors Business Daily 6/20/2011). • AARP dropped it’s opposition to cutting Social Security benefits. AARP has come to the conclusion that tax increases alone cannot maintain the solvency of Social Security (Wall St Journal 6/17/2011). • Americans favor cutting spending and reducing the federal deficit 79%-18% as the best way to revive the economy (IBD 6/7/2011). • Americans favor cutting taxes to boost the economy 54%-40% (IBD 6/7/2011). • Raising taxes is not the way to expand the economy , expand government revenue, fund entitlements, expand employment and reduce the deficit. • Controlling spending, eliminating federal government “blank checks”, and growing the private sector economy is the way to keep the American Dream Alive.

6. Growth • The U.S. trade deficit is an indication the U.S. does not produce enough. • The two biggest components of the deficit are: energy imports and the trade imbalance with China. • U.S. oil production is approximately 5.5 million barrels of oil per day (American Petroleum Institute, Apr 2011). Oil imports are approximately 11.3 million barrels of oil per day (API, Apr 2011). Refiners paid on average $89.4 per barrel (DOE, Feb 2011). At $89.4/barrel that’s 1.01 billion$ per day, .37 trillion$ per year. At a healthy economy economic multiplier (velocity of money in the economy) of 7, that’s 2.59 trillion$ per year. At a depressed economy multiplier of 4 (current condition) that’s 1.48 trillion$ per year. Producing our own oil would be a huge economic stimulus. These would be real private sector jobs. This would also yield a tremendous expansion of the tax revenueswithout increasing the tax rate or adding new taxes. • Money is leaving the country and going to many nations that don’t like Americans and some nations who support violence against Americans. • Does the U.S. have the fossil fuel resources to significantly reduce or eliminate imports? • Much of the areas which contain known oil and gas resources are off-limits • Offshore California • Eastern Gulf of Mexico

7. Growth • Offshore Alaska • Arctic National Wildlife Reserve • Outer continental shelf of the West and East coasts. • Shell Oil had extreme difficulty and waited years to get permits to drill exploration wells in their Chukchi Sea offshore Alaska leases for which they gave the government 3.5 billion$ in leasing fees. • The estimated recoverable oil from the Chukchi Sea is approximately 15 billion barrels. The oil in shallow water and can be developed with offshore structures (no subsea wells). • Oil would be transported through the existing trans Alaska oil pipeline which has plenty of spare capacity. The trans Alaska pipeline once transported approximately 2.2 million barrel of oil per day. Today the rate is down to approximately 650 thousand barrels of oil per day. • The Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) has huge potential. Other north slope of Alaska fields such as Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk have been developed responsibly. The habitat of the caribou, bear, arctic fox and waterfowl have been preserved in these fields, so why is ANWR off limits? • Offshore California 1969 oil spill in the Santa Barbara Channel stopped development and exploration. Companies can’t even obtain permits to drill wells from existing platforms.

8. Growth • In the Gulf of Mexico companies have great difficulty obtaining permits for existing discoveries. • The Eastern Gulf of Mexico is off limits; however, Cuba will be drilling within 90 miles of Florida. • The U.S. outer continental shelf is off limits to exploration; however, the U.S. president recently visited Brazil and promised to back loan guarantees to help Brazil develop their outer continental shelf oil. • In 1980 Brazil imported virtually all their oil. The Brazilian government established a goal to be energy independent. Brazil has been developing their offshore fields for several decades and are now energy independent. They recently discovered a huge deepwater trend (multiple fields). The fields in this trend will be expensive and challenging to develop; however, they will be developed and Brazil is poised to become a major exported of oil. • Brazil is a third world developing nation and they achieved this through a consistent energy policy. • The U.S. invented the oil business and U.S. oil companies are employed all around the world to discover and produce oil because of their superior technology and project execution skills; however, they are not allowed to explore or develop the U.S. outer continental shelf.

9. Growth • Safety in the oil industry • Despite the 2010 Macondo subsea well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico the U.S. oil industry safety record is substantially better than most industries. • The industry has drilled 14,000 subsea wells in deep water without such a catastrophe as Macondo. The bottom line is when properly qualified personnel conform to industry best practice standards and their equipment operates as designed, disasters like Macondo do not happen. • In addition the U.S. oil industry has established a joint effort which has built subsea blowout well capping equipment, which is ready to be deployed immediately in case of a subsea well blowout. Work is in progress to build an oil collection and containment system, which will be on call to collect oil from a subsea well blowout in case the well is damaged to the extent that the capping equipment cannot be used to stop the oil flow. • Does the current administration have an anti-oil bias? • The current interior secretary Ken Salazar when he was a senator from Colorado went on public record stating there should be no offshore drilling in the U.S. even if gasoline is $10 per barrel. • The current energy secretary Chu went on public record after his appointment stating that the U.S. must find a way to get gasoline prices up to the cost of gasoline in Europe. At the time he made this statement gasoline in the U.S. was approximately $2 per gallon and approximately $8 per gallon in Europe.

10. Growth • Concerning the EPA. The U.S. needs good conservationists in the EPA. We currently the EPA is staffed with pro-wilderness pantheists. • Consider what the EPA did to farmers in California in the San Joaquin Valley. The EPA determined that the delta smelt was an endanger species and to preserve this fish species they ruled irrigation should be significantly reduced to allow more water in the streams flowing to the Pacific Ocean so the delta smelt could more easily migrate. After 3 years of this the delta smelt is no better off; however, farm output in the valley was substantially reduced. • The EPA has determined that carbon dioxide is a dangerous green house gas pollutant. • Some other green house gases are: methane, carbon monoxide, fluorocarbons, and water vapor. Water vapor is approximately 70% of the green house gases. Carbon dioxide is approximately .0385% of the atmosphere. And if carbon dioxide declines to .0127% all plant life will cease to exist, because carbon dioxide is required for photosynthesis. A carbon dioxide concentration of 5% in the atmosphere will kill humans. The carbon dioxide concentration is much closer to the lower limit where all plant and consequently all animal and therefore human life will cease to exist. • Scientists at the Heinrich von Thunen Institute in Germany have studied growing barley in carbon dioxide concentrations of .0375% and .055%. The higher concentration of carbon dioxide resulted in an increase in conversion efficiency of absorbed radiation into dry plant matter greater than 10% (increased grain yields).

11. Growth • Concerning the carbon dioxide global warming effect. The environmental scientists at Britain’s East Anglia University, who have significant influence on the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) policy, are major proponents of the idea that carbon dioxide has a significant impact on global warming. These scientist were caught manipulating data to support their hypothesis and suppressing publication of evidence contrary to their opinion. • In fact global temperature variations due to slight changes in radiation from the sun have been observed for centuries. • More recently the earth went through a cooling period from the 1950’s to the 1970’s. The growing season in Britain was observed to have declined by two weeks. In the late 1970’s Newsweek ran an article about the coming ice age. Environmental scientists were advocating government programs to coat the polar ice caps with black soot to absorb more energy from the sun. • The earth entered a warming period and in the 1990’s Newsweek ran articles about global warming. • Why are politicians pushing global warming? Any one minute sound-bite where they can claim to be “green” pro-environment can get them votes. In addition it presents an opportunity to tax and regulate any business that produces carbon dioxide by burning fuels. Apparently politicians are more interested in an easy way to garner votes and taxes than they are in representing reality to the public.

12. Growth • In addition to abundant conventional oil and gas, the U.S. has abundant unconventional oil and gas. • Shale gas was considered uneconomic, but with advances in fracture stimulation and horizontal drilling U.S. gas reserves in the past decade have increased from approximately 20 to 100 year supply. • Back in the early part of the 2000’s spot market natural gas prices in California during the winter hit $15 per MBTU. Today natural gas in the U.S. is approximately $4.5 per MBTU. • Fracture stimulation of wells began in the 1940’s. Advances in fracturing technology combined with advances in horizontal drilling technology have unlocked huge resources here in the U.S. and around the world. • Now that this technology has been highly successful and driven down natural gas prices, environmentalists want to stop fracture stimulation, which is a technology that has been used for more than half a century. • What are the dangerous fracture stimulation fluids? Water thickened with polysaccharides (polymerized sugar). The fracture fluids used to fracture the rock and transport ceramic beads that keep the fracture open is sugar water. In addition if the fracture goes into a water zone the well will be uneconomic. Companies that perform fracture stimulation have an environmental and economic incentive not to fracture into water zones. • Environmentalists overblow reaction to fracture stimulation betrays the fact that they are pro-wilderness extremists not environmental conservationists.

13. Growth • In addition to fracture stimulation combined with horizontal drilling in gas bearing shale, this technique is being applied to oil bearing shale. Currently one of the most economically attractive shale oil plays in the world is the Eagle-Ford shale in Texas, which trends from Houston toward San Antonio and down to Mexico. This year approximately 3000 wells will be drilled in the Eagle-Ford Shale trend. By 2020 production from the Eagle-Ford is forecast to be approximately 3 million barrels per day. • Another unconventional source of oil and gas is coal liquefaction and coal gasification. This technology has been around for almost a century. The U.S. has more than a 400 year supply of coal. • Oil bearing shale in the Green River Canyon Basin (NW Colorado, SW Wyoming, E Utah) contains estimated recoverable reserves of 880 billion barrels of oil. The current technology required to produce this oil is mining and retorting. Some oil companies have research efforts to develop in-situ techniques. The federal government controls this land and isn’t encouraging oil companies to develop this huge resource. • If you think the current technology of mining and retorting is too far fetched, remember oil companies are economically developing the Canadian oil sands. The process requires mining and processing the sands to recover the oil. The U.S. is importing oil produced from the Canadian oil sands.

14. Free Trade - Chinese Trade Imbalance • We want free trade; however, trade isn’t free when your trading partner manipulates their currency to keep it abnormally low. • How artificially low is the Chinese currency? The CIA economic statistics on China indicate their currency purchasing power is almost double the official exchange rate. • This has the effect of drawing manufacturing capacity, jobs and capital out of the U.S. economy. • Everything the U.S. buys from China should actually be double the price and U.S. goods in China would be half the current price. • Proper currency evaluation would tend to correct the current trade imbalance, raise U.S. production and jobs. • If China was a U.S. corporation they would have an anti-trust lawsuit against them. • Why do our politicians allow China to do this? • Chinese lobbyists are active in Washington D.C. • The Chinese official party line is they are not ready to transform their economy from export driven to consumer driven. Beijing claims this even though China produces more cars and household appliances than the U.S. • The Chinese government gives campaign contributions to U.S. politicians. • Hillary Clinton’s campaign got caught accepting $800,000 of illegal Chinese contributions.

15. Free Trade - Chinese Trade Imbalance • In 1996, Senator Kerry met with Liu Chao-Ying and Johnny Chung. Liu was vice president of China Aerospace Technologies. Bank records subpoenaed by the FBI showed that a chunk of Kerry’s campaign stash came from $300,000 in wire transfers routed through Liu’s foreign bank account. • U.S. corporations have business interests in China. GM makes more cars in their Chinese partnerships than they do in North America. • It is widely recognized the Chinese are causing a major economic distortion in the world economy. • The G20, IMF, and countries such as Brazil have told the Chinese to let their currency float.

16. Border Security – Illegal Immigration • Controlling the Mexican border is necessary to: • stop the Mexican drug cartels from conduct their criminal activities, • stop terrorists from entering the country, • help control state’s budget deficits, • stop destroying the U.S. working wage. • Approximately 30% of the U.S. prison population are illegal immigrants. • 2006 FBI crime statistic indicate: • approximately 50% of all burglaries and 70% of car-jackings in border states are committed by illegal aliens. • More than 80% of the outstanding murder warrants in Los Angles and Phoenix were for illegal aliens. • Mexican drug cartels corrupt some of the most vulnerable U.S. citizens, inner city youth. • Mexican drug cartels engage in human trafficking, which is tantamount to indentured servitude. In return for transport illegal aliens must “work-off” their debt to criminal elements. In some cases this means young women are forced into prostitution. • The border patrol is increasingly intercepting illegal aliens from the Middle East. The porous Mexican border is a relatively easy way for people hostile to Americans to enter the country.

17. Border Security – Illegal Immigration • Illegals working in the U.S. consume services such as education, welfare and medical care without substantially contributing taxes to pay for these services. • The U.S. economy is not generating enough jobs to employ working age Americans and American youth who are coming of working age, let alone a multitude of people who are in the U.S. illegally. • The current official unemployment rate is more than 9%. This only counts people in their first 26 weeks of unemployment. • Government statics that count people who are unemployed longer than 26 weeks and people working part-time looking for full time jobs is over 16%. • A Gallup poll released in the spring of 2011 put unemployment at 19%. • A recent Wall Street Journal Poll put unemployment at 20%. • A recent Investor’s Business Daily Poll put unemployment at 24%. • Many unscrupulous employers would rather employ illegal aliens because they will: • work for less pay than American citizens • they are afraid to report abusive working conditions. • Why do politicians allow this to continue? • They want cheap labor. • They want the legal and illegal Hispanic vote.

18. Border Security – Illegal Immigration • Even if open border advocates are altruistic in their motivations in reality they are: • Enabling the Mexican drug cartels to commit criminal activity on both sides of the border. • They are forcing many Mexicans into virtual indentured servitude including underage prostitution. • Straining border state’s budgets. • Destroying the working wage for American citizens • Keeping the real U.S. unemployment rate at depression levels. • Enabling terrorists to enter the country. • The Texas state governor (Rick Perry) and the Texas agriculture commissioner (Todd Staples) have made statements advocating deploying U.S. military on the border. • Violence from the Mexican drug cartels make the border an extremely dangerous place. • Drug cartel members are heavily armed and many are have military training. • The U.S. border patrol is clearly out matched. • Some towns on the Mexican side of the border are openly controlled by the drug cartels and have no government law enforcement. • In many cases the Mexican government law enforcement personnel are on the drug cartel payroll.

19. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • Information on national legislation can be obtained from the library of congress thomas database: http://thomas.loc.gov/

20. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • From the home page click on senate, legislation & records, and expand active legislation. A page will be displayed with links to current legislation where bill summary, full text of the bill, and bill status can be found.

21. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • Clicking on a link to a particular bill will display a summary of that legislation.

22. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • From the home page click on house of representative. A page will be displayed with the schedule in the house.

23. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • From the thomas home page click on state legislature websites. A page will be displayed with a map of the nation.

24. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • From the thomas home page click on state legislature websites. A page will be displayed with a map of the nation. Select the state of texas. The texas state legislature website will be displayed.

25. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • Clicking on the login botton will display a login panel which will allow you to create you personal login account. You can customize you account to track bills and generate automatic notifications.

26. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • Information, training and networking for citizen lobbyists can be found on the website: http://citizenlobbyist.net/

27. Civic Responsibility – Citizen Lobbyist • I may have done a little preaching to the choir; however, I hope I’ve provided you with some information that will motivate you to push the envelop on what you considered your civic responsibility. • Getting informed and voting in every election is important • Be a citizen lobbyist. Keep in touch with your elected representatives and let them know your position on issues and legislation via email, phone, letters, town hall meetings, office visits. • Joining organizations that represent your political viewpoint. • Contributing to political campaigns. • Working on political campaigns. • Be a candidate and run for public office. • This is your country, keep the American Dream Alive. • God bless you and God bless America.