Omnibus Terrorist Cutoff Bill

[Darkling]

Most of you know me as a pretty hard core right wing conservative guy, but I think this is something that we really need to look at to make us safer and more secure for the future.

Any way you slice it, practically all terror organizations out there, be it the Russian Mafia, Radical Islam, Nigerian Warlords and even pests like Hugo Chavez all get their money from one primary source, and that's Oil money. Whatever we can do to lower the value of oil, will have a HUGE impact on these organizations and effectively cut their funding by massive amounts, so here's what I propose that we do.

Oil Drilling

Let's face it folks, we have some of the biggest oil reserves in the world, and why we're not using our own is beyond me. Cheveron alone has found one of the biggest oil reserves in the world in the Gulf, we need to expedite the process on getting this stuff out of the ground and into our own refineries.

Natural Gas

It's estimated that the world has a MUCH larger supply of natural gas, than it does oil, and yet, when my house was built a couple of years ago, NG was not an option for me, since the city didn't pipe it in. I propose that we pass a bill to where the city or Developer MUST provide an NG pipeline to all new homes built, plus a certain percentage, say 2% a year or so of existing homes should be added every year. This alone would probably save me about $100.00 a month off my electric bill, and would insure that no oil was used in my cooking, water heating or clothes drying.

Solar Power

The first thing that needs to happen with respect to alternative energy is that utilities MUST buy all electricity generated from these sources at the same rates they pay other utilities when they buy their energy. The second is that some sort of credit needs to be given to the homeowner who is purchasing a home with Solar Panels installed.

When I bought this house, I was pretty much at the maximum of what I could finance, so if I decided that instead of Roof Tile, I wanted those new roof integrated tiles , the finance company wouldn't take into account my savings on electrical generation (about $250.00 a month), so this is something that definitely need to be considered as an added income.

In addition, I believe that Solar Power generation should be MANDATORY on all new homes on a sliding scale. They should start off with say 2% of a Builders Homes should be solar, then gradually increase every year. This would allow the manufacturers to ramp up production. If a small builder is building say 50 homes, then at least one of those need to be Solar. If they're building less than that, then they would be excluded, but later when the requirement is say 10%, then if they're only building say 10 homes, then at least one of those need to be solar. Lastly, when roofs are replaced on existing homes, they need to have at least some aspect of solar incorporated, even if it's only the water heater.

Wind Power

I was driving down the highway the other day and imagined to myself, hey, what if all these light poles had a Wind Generator mounted at the top of each one? In a way it would be a way to "recoup" some of the energy used to drive the cars on the highway. There should be some sort of requirement for a certain percentage of our energy coming from Wind. Possibly even a requirement that all homes sold in the US with a lot larger than say 6000 Sq. Ft., should be sold with a Wind Generator. I mean let's face it, even if everyone installed these tiny 400 watt Units, it's not a lot of power individually, but multiply that by millions and it could save millions upon millions of barrels of oil from being imported here. And these things are less than $1000.00 installed. Even the 900 watt unit, which is enough to power a Clothes Dryer, is less than $3000.00!

Cars

We should mandate that all vehicles sold in the US be of the Hybrid variety and EVERY ONE should come with an electric only option, so if you want to charge it at home you can. If you were to convert Electricity to a Gas pricing model, Electricity works out to about 90 cents per gallon or less. Not only would everyone save a TON of money, the Terrorists get a heck of a lot less cash. The Toyota Prius is sold around the world with an Electric only option, but they don't give it to us here in the US because Toyota is afraid that people will think they HAVE to plug in their cars, so instead people have to buy kits to convert the car to Electric Only mode. This law would eliminate stupidity like this.

SUV's

All SUV's sold in the US need to have either a Diesel or Hybrid option, and eventually be Diesel or Hybrid only. This one's a no brainer, I mean with the new quiet Diesel technology, the only reason people aren't buying diesel is because it's either not available in the vehicle they want, it's a "Special Order" situation, or people just don't know. In addition some of the smaller SUV's can easily be converted to a Hybrid like the Toyota Highlander. The only reason cars like this cost more is because they're produced in limited quantities, if they were mass produced like other vehicles, there would be no premium on them.

NIMBY's

Not In My Back Yard!

There are some NIMBY's worse than others, like Gas refineries, which haven't been built in ages, but I think there needs to be ONE uniform approval process for ALL NIMBY's and preferably have them all in ONE site. For example, let's say that I was going to put in a LandFill somewhere. I would need to find a site that could accomidate a Landfill, a Sewage Treatment plant, an Electric Generation plant, a Gas refinery, a Recycling Plant and some sort of Electric Recovery plant. I could either build all myself, or sell the rights for the rest to be built by other companies.

The reason for this would be multifaceted.

First, landfills and Electric Generation plants MUST be built, there's no getting around that, and once they're approved, then all the other NIMBY's will be approved as well.

Second, having all these guys together in one geographical area makes a lot of sense, because this way the Electric plant could possibly start buying Methane from both the Landfill AND the Sewage plant to generate more electricity.

Third, it makes it easier to use TCP Processes (Thermal Conversion) on trash, if refineries (which have similar plumbing to TCP), are right next to the Landfills.

Fourth, the utilization of more waste to energy and waste to recycling, will mean the landfill takes a much longer time to get filled up.

Finally, the more energy we can recover from our trash, means less oil imported into the US, and the more Gas refineries built around the US means lower prices on Gas, since there will be less supply problems.

Summary

The Left will oppose this plan because of the Oil Drilling and NIMBY issues. The Right will oppose this plan because of the "Freedom of Choice" issues, but I firmly believe that unless you drain their pockets of the cash they use to perform their ops, things are only going to get worse and worse and worse. Self reliance is what the US is all about, so let's be self reliant, shall we, let's not HAVE to rely on Nigeria and Argentina for Oil, when we can do things TODAY to start cutting that down. I'm not saying to do it overnight, but a 10 or even 20 year plan, I think, would be enough time to get all of these policies into place.

I'd like to know the communities response to this.

[Guest $iLk]

Eliminate Union & Corporate Campaign contributions. Then bills like this might be able to pass.

[Kalshion]

Sorry Darkling, but until our politicions realize that they SERVE the people and not themselves, this'll never happen.