Time to update my blog

It has been several months since I posted to my blog so
here goes some more personal thoughts.

First, about global warming and our winter weather. I am
assuming we are supposed to have a warm winter since I
understand that is part of global warming. The weather here in
western South Dakota this winter belies that assumption. This
has been one of our worst winters in quite a number of years.

My wife Annie is fully recovered from her total hip replacement
and she is about as close to being back to normal as is possible.

My wife and I were able to see our grandchildren and great
grandchildren at Christmas time. For the first time I felt very
close to all three of our great grandchildren. I got to hold
Hudson, age three months at Christmas time, several times including
one time for more than an hour. He is so heavy my arm went to
sleep.

Now to some personal thoughts about the state of our economy.
There is not the slightest doubt in my mind the prsent condition
of our economy has been caused by three factors. I think I already
stated these but I am not certain so will state them again.

First, is the energy crisis, since that started the earliest. The
roots of our energy crisis began in 1965. Congress was controlled
overwhelmingly by the demoncrats. They pushed through a law to establish
new regulations concerning the construction of new oil refineries and
nuclear plants. President Johnson, a democrat, signed the bill into
law. Those regulations were so strict, not a single new refinery
plant nor nuclear plant has been started since that bill was signed
into law. Construction of nuclear plants would have greatly reduced the
need to use oil to fire our newer electrical plants. New refineries
would have prevented the shortage of, among other oil products, diesel
fuel, the price of which has skyrocked because of a shortage of the ability
for oil refineries to produce enough diesel to meet our needs.

In 1995 the republican controlled congress passed, and sent to President
Clinton, an all incompassing energy bill which would have, among other
things, greatly relaxed the regulations concerning the construction of
both oil refineries and nuclear plants. Since that was nearly fourteen
years ago, that would have been ample time for those needs to have been
met. The bill was broadbased enough to encompass the entire energy
field. President Clinton vetoed the bill and there were not enough
democrats to side with the republicans to override his veto.

In 2001 one of President Bush's first actions was to propose a broadbased
energy bill to address nearly all the negatives in our energy situation.
It included most, if not all, the provisions which Clinton has vetoed, but
was even broader in it's scope. The proposal was introduced in the House
of Representatives, controlled by the republicans. It sailed through the
house with a large number of democratis supporting it. It was then sent
the Senate where it landed on the Senate Majority Leader's desk. The Senate
Majority Leader was Tom Daschle, a democrat from my own state of South
Dakota. It is the job of the Senate Majority Leader to forward copies of
those bills which land on his desk to the various committies which would
have jurisdicion over that particular bill. But, he did not do this. He
filed the bill away and that is where it stayed to the end of that session
of congress.
In January, 2002, 2003 and 2004, the same actions were followed, each time
Tom Daschle taking it on himself to prevent any action on the bill by the Senate.
He apparently was convinced it would sail through the Senate each year as it
had done in the House of Representatives.
Finally, in 1965, against great resistance from the democrats in congress,
both houses, by now controlled by republicans were successful in passing
a watered down version of the the energy bills passed the House of
Reprentatives in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. President Bush signed the bill
into law. Unfortunately there has not been enough time for most of the
provisions in that law to have had much of an effect on the energy shortages
and prices. True, the price of both oil and gasoline have come down considerably
but most of that was not due to any provisions in the energy bill signed
into law by President Bush. People just slowed down and stared driving less,
thus reducing the demand for both gasoline and oil.

Since this blog posting has become very long, I am going to postpone the
rest of my thoughts on our present economic crisis until tomorrow.

In tomorrow's blog I will also include some new internet home businesses for
you to consider.

Merle