You Vill Pay Up and Love It

Posted on 02/06/2014 by Grumpa Joe

harbin_china

Imagine a terrible stink in your house. What would you do to get rid of it? If it were my house I would open the windows and turn on a fan to move the stinky air out. When I get into my car, which has sat in the hot sun, I always open the windows and the sun roof to get the hot air out. What do you do when there is pollution in the atmosphere of your town? You pray for a rain storm or a strong wind to blow the pollution away. What do you do if you are asthmatic? If you own your own home and have the money, you install a filter to clean the air in the house. What happens if you are asthmatic, have a very good air-filter and leave the windows open? You suffer because there is no filter available that will clean the air coming into your house fast enough to keep it pure.
Our president drinks the cool-aid provided him by the EPA and his Liberal clean air gurus that the way to clear the air in America is to eliminate coal-burning power plants by taxing them out of business. There is one huge fault in their logic: America is not a closed system like a house. Our boundaries do not keep people from crossing into our country nor do they keep dirty air from entering. There is no bubble surrounding America to keep our pure air contained.
North America is just a tiny fraction of the surface area of Planet Earth. The layer of air between Earth and the stratosphere moves constantly within the country, and the jet stream moves it out.
The brainless scientists who promote the carbon tax scheme to clean the air of America and the world are nothing more than charlatans who are anxious to reach into our pockets to steal money. Even if we eliminate coal-burning power plants over-night and convert our transportation to solar-powered cars, trucks, buses, trains, boats, and airplanes, our air will never be very pure. Why? Because the jet stream will move our pure air to another continent and dirty air from China or India will move in. We will be taxing our power plants unfairly to clear the air of the entire planet. In the mean time, countries like China and India, who are more worried about feeding billions of people, will continue to use dirty coal, and any other form of cheap energy to run their factories. Those factories will pollute the air (as we see in photos of China where people wear face masks to avoid breathing the foul air) while the jet stream moves their crappy air over the Pacific to North America. Our EPA will measure the dirty air and continue to blame it on our power plants and cars.
There is no EPA in China to regulate the socialist government into bankruptcy like we have in America. The citizens of China have no voice in the way things run, the government tells them how to run their lives. At this point, the people in China are happy to eat and improve their condition with food, electronics and cars, and are not concerned by the purity of their air. The government is more concerned with providing jobs to the hundreds of thousands of people coming to town for work than they are about regulating their industry. It will be decades before these undeveloped countries are ready for pure air, but our EPA will continue to harass us to get cleaner to compensate.
Be happy Liberals and cough up the money for all that clean energy you will buy to power your phones, cars, and air-conditioners.

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Did Obama Change Altgeld Gardens?

Posted on 29/10/2008 by Grumpa Joe
My Flag Flies Everyday

My Flag Flies Everyday

Altgeld Gardens is a housing project in the Chicago area. It has been home to many poor black people for many years. Barack Obama writes about the “Gardens” in “Dreams From My Father.” He describes it as a project that was built in the middle of a cess pool. Granted there  is a sewage treatment plant immediately to the north of it, and polluted Lake Calumet to the Northeast. The lake is also a huge landfill. I grew up in a neighborhood called “Burnside” about three miles to the north of Altgeld Gardens. I learned of the place while I was in high school during the nineteen fifties. Barack arrived there after he finished college in the eighties. It was his first assignment as a community organizer.

When Altgeld Gardens was built, the area was rural. Lake Calumet was not polluted. People went to the lake for boating and to fish. A man from my neighborhood kept his seaplane there. He gave people rides for a fee. The neighborhoods in every direction from Altgeld Gardens were filled with industry. Immediately to the West was Acme Steel, to the North it was the Ford Assembly plant (still there). Sherwin Williams paint company was a short distance to the South. The towns of Riverdale, Harvey, Blue Island, all within a short bus ride were teeming with industry. The Southeast side of Chicago had steel mills lined up end to end along the shores of Lake Michigan. My point is that the Gardens were situated in a nice rural area located centrally between an abundance of jobs. The perfect location for low income housing.

Between the time, I learned of the Gardens and the time Barack went there to work, many things happened. Much of it was created by the Chicago Machine in the name of progress. Lake Calumet became a part of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It needed to be filled in order to make a deep channel harbor. Coincidentally, Chicago needed a place to dispose of it’s garbage. The machine built a huge incinerator a couple of miles from Altgeld, on the edge of Lake Calumet. It spewed out tons of toxic smoke, and was shut down for environmental reasons. The incinerator property became a landfill. Chicago was growing and needed larger sewage treatment facilities. Again, the Chicago Metropolitan Sanitary District built a new one near Altgeld  Gardens. The steel mills closed because of competition from Korea, and Japan. The same thing happened with much of the industry in the towns around Altgeld Gardens. The people who were satisfied working at jobs that didn’t require schooling  remained, and became dependent. 

The reason I speak of this, is that Barack Obama painted a picture of Altgeld gardens as a place that was deliberately sited in the middle of all these polluted facilities. He makes it sound like the people of Altgeld Gardens were placed there by the whites to get them out of the way. The bottom line is that the people, for what ever reason, chose to stand put when the jobs left. Many of them chose not to educate themselves to take on new jobs. I’m sure the smart ones did leave toward new work. The empty apartments of Altgeld were filled by people who were less ambitious. 

If Barack Obama was truly interested in effecting change that “I can Believe In,” he should have worked with the Chicago political machine to change things at Altgeld Gardens. He had opportunity to do so after his law degree. Instead he chose to affiliate himself with some questionable people. He had even more opportunity to change things at Altgeld after he became State Senator. He couldn’t effect change in a neighborhood, but he wants to change the best country in the world.

BO wants to make “Change We Can Believe In” by redistributing the wealth of fat cats to those who are less fortunate, like the people of Altgeld Gardens. He will give them a cash handout. Will a small cash handout  really change the lives of these unfortunate people? Will it appease three hundred years of oppression? Will it change the attitude a white man has of a black or vice versa? Will it build his self esteem? Will it make him more responsible? Will it buy him an education that is better than the free one he currently scorns?

 I don’t think so.

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