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Editorial: Speech Has Grain of Truth
Besides Ethanol Mention, Rest of Address Nonsense
There is reason to congratulate President Bush for part of the State of the Union address he delivered on Jan. 31 even though the bulk of it deserves criticism. By raising the issue of ethanol (grain alcohol) as a substitute for gasoline, he has entered into a field that offers the major solution to the energy crisis, and one that has been endorsed by this newspaper, as well as a host of advanced thinkers, for many years.
Mr. Bush mistakenly says that the government must fund “additional research” in “cutting-edge methods of producing ethanol.”
Wrong. The use of ethanol in gasoline—at the ratio of 15 percent gas to 85 percent ethanol—would at one stroke eliminate this country’s dangerous dependence on petroleum. This is a fact. And not one dollar needs to be spent on research; all the research has been done already in Brazil, for instance. That country has mandated the use of ethanol as a fuel for internal combustion engines since 1939.
Why Mr. Bush’s speechwriters did not focus on the incredible boost that domestic ethanol production would give to American farmers and the rural areas of America we cannot say. A strong ethanol policy would bring the greatest boom to farmers in American history.
INTERNATIONAL INSANITY
Unfortunately, Mr. Bush’s fervent endorsement of American intervention into the affairs of other nations, complete with his tiresome messianic preaching about the alleged benefits of what he calls “democracy” as the cure for the ills of the world, continues to display his amazing intellectual childishness, inexperience and ignorance of history. And his determination that American taxpayers must pay for such nonsense is outrageous.
Does it escape him that only the military-industrial-banker complex profits from it?
Bush happily rejects “the false comfort of isolationism.” By this he means that the American lives that have been needlessly lost in criminal wars we have been led into by the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt and himself have brought a better world. If you are in the military or are a war profiteer or banker you may be excused for loving needless war, but no sane patriot can agree.
Another president named George—America’s first and greatest president—set this nation’s course on the right path by advising this young nation to carefully avoid any unnecessary and/or permanent intercourse with other nations. Coincidentally, a rule passed in 1901 in the Senate says that every Feb. 22, a senator must honor George Washington’s birthday by reading his 1796 Farewell Address to that body.
Washington also counseled economy and solvency in government and numerous other policies, which are honored by their breach. In the Feb. 27 edition, this newspaper will reprint Washington’s Farewell Address as the best possible antidote for the irresponsible policy poison advocated by our boy president.
FISCAL INSANITY
Thanks to his avoidance of common sense, Bush has now maneuvered this nation into debt to the bankers of over $8 trillion (costing some $400 billion in annual interest) and this year the federal government will incur a deficit of nearly $400 billion. And yet he can dare to say that the economic health of America is sound.
But what would one expect from a man who lied about the Oklahoma City
bombing during its 10th anniversary on April 19, 2005, lied about the 9-11 attacks and lied the country into attacking Iraq?
Or from his claim that the American worker, with an average wage of approximately $20 per hour, somehow competes successfully against Chinese workers who earn about one-twentieth of this? Only a free trade fanatic, his mind closed to reason, would say that.
This paper has often printed facts about the Bush administration which must be faced. The questions we and our columnists raise remain as vital and unanswered after George Bush’s address as before. We renew our support of the Committee to Impeach Bush & Cheney.
(Issue #7, February 23, 2006)
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