Who Would Oppose Arizona Clean Elections?

The Arizona Clean Elections Law is neither clean nor fair. It is just one more example of how the best of intentions in law making often end up with unforeseen consequences.

When voters passed the Clean Elections initiative in 1998 most of the general public was unaware of what they were passing. Since the initiative was called “Arizona Clean Elections,” most people only knew that they would like to have fair elections that weren’t overly influenced by “big money” donations and that would give candidates a “level playing field” when it came to campaign donations and spending. Most did not know that it appropriated state funds to go directly to political candidates, and that a more honest name for the initiative would be “Arizona Financing of Candidates from State Funds” initiative. Currently, at a time when we can’t balance the budget, 15 million dollars are appropriated for this purpose.

The funding for this comes from various state sources. Some of the money comes from the voluntary check-off donations on state income tax forms, and some comes from the required $5 donations raised by the candidates, though these are a relatively small portion of their funding. A larger portion comes from surcharges on court fines. The remainder comes from the State General Fund, which comes primarily from various state taxes. So with the exception of the tax form donations, it is funded with money appropriated from the public through fees and taxes.

It gives a powerful advantage to “Clean Elections” candidates over those who wish to run a traditional campaign without public money. Once a state legislative candidate is qualified for clean elections funding, they receive a check from the state for $12,000 to be used for their campaign. If one candidate is running a non-state funded campaign against two other candidates he or she is allowed to raise $12,000 through their own fundraising efforts. Thereafter for every dollar raised by the non-state funded candidate, each of his opponents receive one dollar. So the traditional candidate must spend time fundraising, while the state-subsidized candidates are getting a free ride. Worse is that the distribution of these public funds to government-created “political parasites” is based on the gross receipts of donations. So if a traditional candidate puts on a fund raising event that includes entertainment and dinner which costs $5,000 dollars, and has a “gate” of $10,000 he has $5,000 to use in his campaign, but each of his opponents will get a “matching” check for $10,000. So they each make twice as much money from his fund raising as he does. That means he has raised $5,000 dollars of funds while the state awards his competition $20,000 to campaign against him. Sure sounds fair to me (not).

It also makes campaign finance a requirement to even run in an election; to qualify for “clean elections” a candidate must submit to the Secretary of State not only the required number of valid petition signatures, but must also raise 200 five dollar donations within a certain window of time. So if you had a candidate who wanted to campaign by personally meeting people using no donations or expenditures, that candidate would not qualify for clean elections certification. In this case, Clean Elections is having the opposite effect from what the voters would expect. Furthermore these donations can come from outside the candidate’s district, and they can come from non-citizen residents.

Some might ask, “Why would a candidate go to all the trouble of running a traditional campaign, when they could get a free ride from the Clean Elections?” There are good reasons, some, certainly not all, are listed below:

· The candidate entered the race too late to qualify for Clean Elections funding. This can happen if a candidate drops out for health reasons, death, call to active duty, etc., necessitating a replacement candidate.

· The Candidate runs as a write-in. They are already at a terrible disadvantage; Clean Elections almost guarantees that they never have a chance to win.

· Principal: The candidate is opposed to spending public money on personal campaigns of candidates. Most Constitution-based candidates and fiscal conservatives do not approve of this practice.

On March 9, 2009 the alternative newspaper (read liberal) Phoenix New Times, ran an exposé of clean elections spending of tax-payer money, in which candidates can legally purchase computers, office equipment, video equipment, other electronics, lavish dinners, and other extravagant spending, and keep the booty when the elections are over. All purchased with state money. It further mentions that the Arizona Clean Elections Commission is paying lobbyists to lobby our legislators to support their state-funded department, to give them more power and more state money. They also are paying for advertising campaigns to promote themselves to the public, with state funds.

Since Clean Elections went into effect over ten years ago, it has not reduced the number or the power of special interests and lobbyist. Look at our politicians during the last decade; nothing has changed, they are the same kind of politicians, some good, some bad, as always. All Clean Elections has given us is more state government, more lobbyists, increased costs, a new source for abusing tax money, a new kind of corruption, and a self-serving department that promotes itself with public dollars. As usual, creating more government is not a remedy, but an additional problem.

Gary Hubell on Barack Obama

Barack Obama has awakened a sleeping nation

Gary Hubbell

Aspen Times Weekly February 2010

Barack Obama is the best thing that has happened to America in the last 100 years. Truly, he is the savior of America’s future. He is the best thing ever.

Despite the fact that he has some of the lowest approval ratings among recent presidents, history will see Barack Obama as the source of America’s resurrection. Barack Obama has plunged the country into levels of debt that we could not have previously imagined; his efforts to nationalize health care have been met with fierce resistance nationwide; TARP bailouts and stimulus spending have shown little positive effect on the national economy; unemployment is unacceptably high and looks to remain that way for most of a decade; legacy entitlement programs have ballooned to unsustainable levels, and there is a seething anger in the populace.

That's why Barack Obama is such a good thing for America.

Obama is the symbol of a creeping liberalism that has infected our society like a cancer for the last 100 years. Just as Hitler is the face of fascism, Obama will go down in history as the face of unchecked liberalism. The cancer metastasized to the point where it could no longer be ignored.

Average Americans who have quietly gone about their lives, earning a paycheck, contributing to their favorite charities, going to high school football games on Friday night, spending their weekends at the beach or on hunting trips - they've gotten off the fence. They've woken up. There is a level of political activism in this country that we haven't seen since the American Revolution, and Barack Obama has been the catalyst that has sparked a restructuring of the American political and social consciousness.

Think of the crap we've slowly learned to tolerate over the past 50 years as liberalism sought to re-structure the America that was the symbol of freedom and liberty to all the people of the world. Immigration laws were ignored on the basis of compassion. Welfare policies encouraged irresponsibility, the fracturing of families, and a cycle of generations of dependency. Debt was regarded as a tonic to lubricate the economy. Our children left school having been taught that they are exceptional and special, while great numbers of them cannot perform basic functions of mathematics and literacy. Legislators decided that people could not be trusted to defend their own homes, and stripped citizens of their rights to own firearms. Productive members of society have been penalized with a heavy burden of taxes in order to support legions of do-nothings who loll around, reveling in their addictions, obesity, indolence, ignorance and "disabilities." Criminals have been arrested and re-arrested, coddled and set free to pillage the citizenry yet again. Lawyers routinely extort fortunes from doctors, contractors and business people with dubious torts.

We slowly learned to tolerate these outrages, shaking our heads in disbelief, and we went on with our lives.

But Barack Obama has ripped the lid off a seething cauldron of dissatisfaction and unrest.

In the time of Barack Obama, Black Panther members stand outside polling places in black commando uniforms, slapping truncheons into their palms. ACORN - a taxpayer-supported organization - is given a role in taking the census, even after its members were caught on tape offering advice to set up child prostitution rings. A former Communist is given a paid government position in the White House as an advisor to the president. Auto companies are taken over by the government, and the auto workers' union - whose contracts are completely insupportable in any economic sense - is rewarded with a stake in the company. Government bails out Wall Street investment bankers and insurance companies, who pay their executives outrageous bonuses as thanks for the public support. Terrorists are read their Miranda rights and given free lawyers. And, despite overwhelming public disapproval, Barack Obama has pushed forward with a health care plan that would re-structure one-sixth of the American economy.

I don't know about you, but the other day I was at the courthouse doing some business, and I stepped into the court clerk's office and changed my voter affiliation from "Independent" to "Republican." I am under no illusion that the Republican party is perfect, but at least they're starting to awaken to the fact that we cannot sustain massive levels of debt; we cannot afford to hand out billions of dollars in corporate subsidies; we have to somehow trim our massive entitlement programs; we can no longer be the world's policeman and dole out billions in aid to countries whose citizens seek to harm us.

Literally millions of Americans have had enough. They're organizing, they're studying the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, they're reading history and case law, they're showing up at rallies and meetings, and a slew of conservative candidates are throwing their hats into the ring. Is there a revolution brewing? Yes, in the sense that there is a keen awareness that our priorities and sensibilities must be radically re-structured. Will it be a violent revolution? No. It will be done through the interpretation of the original document that has guided us for 220 years - the Constitution. Just as the pendulum swung to embrace political correctness and liberalism, there will be a backlash, a complete repudiation of a hundred years of nonsense. A hundred years from now, history will perceive the year 2010 as the time when America got back on the right track. And for that, we can thank Barack Hussein Obama.

Gary Hubbell is a hunter, rancher, and former hunting and fly-fishing guide. Gary works as a Colorado ranch real estate broker. He can be reached through his website,aspenranchrealestate.com

The Arizona primary elections will be interesting, at least for Republicans. Every incumbent on the ballot, including long time favorite John McCain should be concerned. The right is generating a powerful backlash against those in, or who support, the Obama administration. There is also a strong undercurrent of dissatisfaction with Republicans who have been ineffective in Washington, often because they were willing to “reach across the aisle” on issues on which the grass root constituency are not willing to compromise.

On the other hand the general election will likely be very kind to Republicans who survive the primary. Some of the Democrats have wisely chosen to stay in the background on the immigration issue, trying not to raise the ire of their base liberal voters, nor offend the large Independent swing voters, without whom most cannot be elected. There are just under 1 million Democrats, about 1.1 million Republicans, and about 0.8 million Independents in Arizona. Polls are showing that of Hispanic voters (approximately 250,000) only about 20% support the Republican position of getting tough on illegal immigration and securing the border. That means the Democrats will retain 80% of their traditionally Democrat Hispanic votes; but it is still approximately a five or ten percent reduction in support. The real danger to Democrats comes from the much larger change in the critical Independent voters, who are shown in polls as leaning conservative by about 60%. The remaining parties, such as Green, and Libertarian, generally have little effect on the outcome of elections in Arizona because their numbers are few. Greens have around 4,000 votes and lacking a candidate will vote democrat, and Libertarians, around 20,000, and lacking a candidate will likely vote Republican.

Registered Republicans are much more activated than ever so almost all of them will vote for the Republican candidates. In a state-wide election, all they need from Independents, Libertarians, and Democrats is a total of 379, 000 votes. Polls also show that there are many disaffected Democrats, upset with immigration, upset with Democrats like Grijalva, and upset with Obama and the behavior of the current congress, so if the Democrat party runs its slate of incumbents, they may see significant loss of support from within their own party. Even without such defections at the poll, the Democrats must win at least 479,000 votes from other parties; this now seems like an impossible number with the current state of the total voter opinion.

So as John Q. Liberal looks at this, he asks the question, “How did this calamity happen?” It happened because the vast majority of Americans do not support the liberal platform of the Democrats, they didn’t even support it when Obama was elected, but they were so enraged at politics in general. This especially included the Republicans and the Bush administration for behaving like Democrats, for not making the changes in government that could have been made during the first Bush administration, for participating in the social engineering that led up to the subprime collapse, and for dumping billions into bail-outs. Many conservatives stayed away from the polls or voted for third party candidates. Independents, voted for “change”, even if they didn’t put much stock in the “hope” part of the slogan, because they were sick of the status quo and McCain was seen as status quo. On the other hand, the left, and the people who voted by race, overwhelmingly supported Obama. Those who voted by race were primarily three groups, Africa-Americans who voted about 90% for Obama, uninformed students and young adults, and progressives from across the political spectrum, all of whom were thrilled with the idea of electing the first black president, no matter what his qualifications were.

The result has been an administration that has ignored or reversed virtually every campaign promise, repeatedly made blunder upon gaffe, quadrupled the national debt, created and prolonged the deepest and longest period of both unemployment and recession in decades, has grossly mishandled international affairs, embarrassed the nation with lack of protocol, and apologized to tyrants and enemies. The disillusioned are turning against the Democrats, the swing votes are swinging right, and the silent majority has been awakened. This year’s elections will be very interesting.

This article is pasted directly from another site:

Jewish World Review May 17, 2010/ 4 Sivan 5770

‘Los’ Suns: Stuck on Stupido

By Arnold Ahlert

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/ "What if the owners of the Suns discovered that hordes of people were sneaking into Suns' games without paying? What if the owners had a good idea as to who the gate-crashers are, but the ushers and security personnel were not allowed to ask these folks to produce their ticket stubs, thus non-paying attendees couldn't be ejected. Furthermore, what if Suns' ownership was expected to provide those who sneaked in with complimentary eats and drink? And what if, on those days when a gate-crasher became ill or injured, the Suns had to provide free medical care and shelter?"--Phil Mushnik, NY Post, May 16th, 2010

Nothing illuminates the bankruptcy of liberalism better than liberalism itself. The above quote was a composite of fan responses to Phoenix Sun owner Robert Sarver's idea that his team wear "Los Suns" jerseys to protest the new Arizona immigration law. Is there any doubt how Mr. Sarver would react if what he claims to believe in were directly applied to his interests? How about his players? How many of them would take a salary cut so that "undocumented attendees" whose "only crime" was a desire to see an NBA basketball game could attend one?

There is a reason the expression "limousine liberal" came into being. It aptly describes those who fervently believe in the theory of liberalism--as long as they remain largely immune from its practical application. It is the cabal of self-righteous souls who are positive that Arizonans are racist, xenophobic bigots--but would never stand for illegal aliens sneaking across their property in the middle of the night. It is the same people who encourage family-destroying, welfare dependency--as long as the socially dysfunctional stay in their own neighborhoods. It is those who support all manner of alternative energy--as long as it doesn't despoil their ocean view.

It is those who bemoan the deplorable condition of public schools--even as they send their own children to private ones. It is those who champion financial "reform"--because they already have their wealth, and they don't want any competition. It is those who applaud government-run health care--because they have lifetime access to the best hospitals and doctors in the world, and will never spend a minute in any emergency room rubbing elbows with the great unwashed. It is those who wax poetic about the innumerable shortcomings of the country--from the tenured safety of a college campus.

There are none so enlightened as those for whom "do as I say, not as I do" underlies the totality of their worldview. Unabashed hypocrisy is the foundation of modern-day liberalism. It is the ideology of people who consciences are completely assuaged by the idea of "throwing money" at every problem they encounter--as long as it's other people's money, and someone else is doing the heavy lifting.

How about it, Mr. Sarver? How about allowing free admission to one of your remaining playoff games? How about serving free refreshments? Certainly such a magnanimous gesture is doable. Perhaps you could persuade your players, concessionaires, parking lot attendants, etc., to take a one game pay cut as well--or you could simply pay them and take the hit personally. And since you're apparently comfortable with illegals remaining a permanent part of the Arizona landscape, perhaps the occasional "Free Game and Refreshment Night" could become an equally permanent part of the Phoenix Suns schedule.

And why stop there? Maybe it's time to start replacing some of our mainstream media personnel with undocumented workers. After all, who would be more effective blasting Arizonans and other Americans for their "racist" attitudes than those who have had personal experience with them? Who would make a more effective advocate for "comprehensive immigration reform" than someone who would directly benefit from it?

That is not to say working in the media is one of those jobs "Americans refuse to do," but why should illegals be limited to such work? If we're going to make millions of border-busters part of America, shouldn't some upper-echelon jobs be included in the mix? Isn't that what liberals mean when they talk about "fairness" or "social justice?" Doesn't "spreading the wealth around" apply to everyone? Shouldn't all neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, businesses, etc., experience the "richness of unassimilated multiculturalism" that liberals demand of Arizonans?

Shouldn't everyone walk a mile in someone else's shoes?

Talk is cheap. And no one makes it cheaper than the American left, for whom "feeling good" is all about them feeling good at someone else's expense. There isn't a scintilla of doubt in my mind what the reaction of most liberals would be if millions of stock brokers, journalists, celebrities, college professors, et al, were sneaking across the border and demanding that America "accommodate" their needs and desires.

The late Leona Helmsley once said that "only little people pay taxes." Liberalism has precisely the same price tag: only "little people" pay for the excesses of the self-anointed. Phoenix is the kidnap capital of the United States? I don't live there, but I'm sure Arizonans are racist. Arizona rancher Robert Krentz gets killed on his own property in an area officials already know is an illegal "smuggling corridor?" I didn't get killed and it's not my ranch, and Arizonans have no right to protect their lives and their property if it conflicts with my ideology.

Modern day liberalism is a cancer. It is fascism being sold as progressive thinking by elitists for whom all things counter-culture have become the traditional. It is a knee-jerk contempt for everything that makes this country the envy of the world. Only liberals could believe that importing millions of illegal, low-skill, under-educated people "enriches" America. Only liberals could conclude that "celebrating our differences"--differences which precisely separate Third World nations from First World nations--are "no better or worse" than expecting immigrants to adopt our culture and our values.

Only liberals can lump illegal and legal immigrants into one philosophical package in order to brand those who make the crucial distinction between the two xenophobic bigots.

And only a contemptible media would be such a willing accomplice to such obvious mischaracterizations, misinformation and outright lying perpetrated by the American left. And that's by commission. Here's a statement by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder speaking to the House Judiciary Committee that's been virtually ignored by the MSM:

"I have not had a chance to, I've glanced at it. I have not read it. .. I have not really, I have not been briefed yet. I've only made, made the comments that I've made on the basis of things that I've been able to glean by reading newspaper accounts, obviously, looking at television, talking to people who are on the review panel, on the review team that are looking at the law. "

To what was Holder referring? The Arizona immigration bill, which is all of ten pages long.

Think Holder's the only one? Of course not. Liberal outrage isn't about informed opinion. It's all about uninformed emotion whipped up by those with an agenda--including an Attorney General who ought to be thoroughly ashamed and embarrassed by his ineptitude and his bias, but most assuredly isn't. The Arizona law feels wrong? That's good enough for liberals.

We'll see how good liberals feel in November.

Is Social Justice a Christian Doctrine?

Many people today have taken to saying that if Jesus of Nazareth were in his pre-resurrection ministry in contemporary America (maybe from Nazareth, Texas?) he would be a socialist, a conservative, a revolutionary, a protestor, a militia member, and on and on. I don’t think he would be any such thing.

Was Jesus a proponent of “social justice?” To understand this issue you must look at Jesus’ ministry in context of that era. The society he was in was Jerusalem/Judea as a conquered servant-state of Rome. The Judean government was a puppet government of Rome, but was also notably corrupt, filled with self-serving politicians and appointed office holders. Those who were Roman citizens had considerable human rights, but none of the rest of society did.

At least two types of legal servitude were common in Jerusalem at the time of Christ: captive slaves, who were owned by their masters or by the empire, and indentured servants. A slave was owned, had no civil rights, and was completely at the mercy of their master. An indentured servant was in every respect a slave to their master, and could be beaten or used in any way that the master chose to use them, as long as no Jewish or Roman law was broken. There were various ways in which a person could become indentured, two of the more common being, 1) voluntary for a specified time for specified benefits and or payment, or 2) bound, in which the master paid the debt and/or bought the person from prison and set a covenant with the magistrate for the terms of the indenturement. The term for a bound servant was determined by the cost and an expectation of reasonable profit for the master, so could be for many years.

Normally a voluntary indenturement was for three to ten years, and included room and board, and some kind of payment at the end of the agreement. Fairly commonly, the term also included training the servant in a specified trade or skill. (Indentured servants have been used as far back as recorded history, and the practice was very common in Colonial America where it’s estimated that half the white immigrants came as indentured servants.) In Judea, terms of voluntary servitude ranged typically from three to seven years, but could be longer. While most masters were humane in their treatment of indentured servants, some were cruel and abusive.

Jesus never preached against any of these social or government institutions, and in fact, there are several references in the New Testament where church members are told to be obedient to their master. He told both master and slave to live righteously and be obedient to God. He did not tell slaves to resist or protest, nor masters to give up their slaves. (Some will say that Christ said to “sell all you have and come follow me,” but he was talking to a specific individual not all followers.)

The Jews were heavily burdened by the Roman Empire with oppressive laws and taxes. They were convinced that when the Messiah came, he would come as a military conqueror throwing off the shackles of Rome and ending the excessive tribute she extracted from them. Instead Christ told them to obey the Roman law, and pay taxes to Caesar; to worry about their own sins, spirituality, and morality. The people of Judea despised this attitude, and when given a chance chose the militant Barabbas be set free rather the kindly, healing Jesus of Nazareth.

Some point to His driving the money changers from the temple as His dislike of commerce; but this is untrue. He was upset that they were profaning the house of God, making it a marketplace rather than a place of worship. The message here is that giving respect to God is more important that your livelihood or anything else.

Jesus was not anti-military; he welcomed Jewish temple guards and Roman soldiers into his fold. He never told them to abandon their professions. He did warn against violence begetting violence when Peter cut off the ear of a guard coming to arrest Jesus. But being military or an officer of the law was never criticized. The same is true of hated public officials such as tax collectors and publicans, Christ ministered to them; He condemned hypocrisy among them, but welcomed them to join with Him.

Christ never preached “social justice” as some would have us believe. He preached that no matter what your circumstances in life, each person must live life righteously and kindly, serving God and man, while meeting your legal obligations to the government.

The point is not that forced servitude, slavery, corrupt government, or unfair practices are alright, because they are not. The point is that Christ planted a spark in one individual after another to be good, just, kind, and moral, and it grew to encompass and improve billions of lives. Not by social action, activism, or politics but by touching the heart and soul of one person at a time.

So these activist ministers who believe the Gospel of Christ should be administered by force, coercion, politics, demonstration, or “civil disobedience” are not following in the footsteps of Christ. His was a ministry to the inner goodness of the individual, not to politics, law, or civil justice. Those who justify their politics as Christian activism don’t understand His message.

Spending Like a Drunken Sailor? Not Really.

I recently saw a response to a letter to the editor in the Arizona Republic to a statement that Obama was “spending like a drunken sailor.” The responded said, “I was a drunken sailor, and the difference between me and Obama is that when I ran out of money I stopped spending.” Look at the deficit spending chart (below) comparing the Bush & Obama administration to understand this statement.

The Bush administration deficit is shown in grey on the left; the Obama administration deficit is shown in the red and pink bars in the column to the right. CBO: Congressional Budget Office, this is the “accounting department” for the US Congress. They study bills that are passed and project the costs per year that each bill will generate and the revenue that each bill will generate; they then subtract the total costs from the total revenue to show either a surplus of revenue as in 2000 & 2001, or a deficit as shown in every other year since, and projected for the next nine years. The figures are not released by the CBO until congress has reviewed and approved them, so they were basically authorized by the controlling democrats in both houses of congress. The pink bars are the amounts that the Obama white house admits to. You will notice that their figures are consistently less than CBO figures, but not by much.

Bush and the Republican controlled congress did well in balancing the budget for the first two years, even generating surpluses. On September 9, 2001 terrorists attacked New York, throwing the economy into a devastating downward plunge, due to costs of physical rescue and recovery efforts, business failures, insurance settlements, and other such costs, resulting in a great loss of tax revenue causing 2002 to go into deficit. The following years saw increased spending primarily for the Afghan and Iraqi wars, as well as increased intelligence and security spending. War time deficits are historically normal. The big dip at the end of the Bush administration was avoidable and only happened because the president and president-elect in consultation with congress decided it was necessary to “bail out” AIG.

The Obama administration has committed our future generations to enormous debt by quadrupling deficit spending in his first year in office and into the future. If this were the state of your personal budget, you would be hopelessly bankrupt. This is not spending like a drunken sailor, it is spending like a professional credit card thief; no limit to what he spends, he won’t have to pay it.

Time For Chicken Little to Make an Appearance

How bad is the oil leak off the coast of Louisiana? Pretty bad, some say much worse than the infamous Exxon Valdez. So we are now hearing great alarm from the environmental religion, using this as a cause célèbre for attacking off-shore drilling for petroleum.

In May 2009 researchers with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of California, Santa Barbara released a study that found that natural leaks of sub-oceanic petroleum off the coast of Santa Barbara release as much crude oil into the ocean as up to 80 Exxon Valdez disasters. Each day the natural seafloor seeps near Santa Barbara, California release 20-25 tons of oil, and have done so for several hundred thousand years.

Not only do seeps such as these occur naturally throughout the oceans, but there are scores of other similar phenomena on both land and sea. These include land seeps of crude oil and tar, oceanic asphalt volcanoes, natural gas seeps, and land-bound tar sands. Some of the natural gas bubbles so change the density of the water, that ships sailing into them immediately sink; this is known to happen off the coast of Indonesia, and is thought to happen the Sargasso Sea (mid-Atlantic), which could account for mysterious disappearance of ships in the “Bermuda Triangle".

Taken together, these leaks amount to many times the volume of all human produced petroleum, gas, and refinery by-product “releases” into the environment. So while environmentalists decry the petroleum industry, their residue is only a drop in the ocean compared to natural geophysical releases. Amazingly enough nature has figured out how to take care of this problem. Bacteria and other sea and land life forms eat it, starting it up the food chain.

So from a temporary, cosmetic relatively small area (few thousand miles), this can legitimately be viewed an environmental problem. But the real disaster is the loss of human life, highly technical, highly expensive equipment, and the oil itself. With or without man, nature would take care of the spill to its liking, whether man likes it or acknowledges the fact. If it makes it to shore, it will be more serious, because it affects fishing and other livelihood activities, and usually really stinks, besides being harmful to wildlife.

Man is part of nature. We do what we do and nature takes advantage of our castoffs in its own way and time. Most of the religion (not science) of environmentalism that is rampant today does not understand this. Man’s concern should be with conservation of resources and not messing up our own nest. If we do this nature will be happy.