Why are
you looking at this page?
I'm a geoscientist, not a political scientist!
What would I know about politics?!
Besides, do you really want
to look to geologists
for your political leadership?
Look at their record!
President
Herbert Hoover - President of the United States (1929-1933) - his
name alone should send many of you clicking the backpage button!
Hoover majored in geology/mining
engineering at Stanford University and
was a practicing mining engineer in the Australian gold fields.
The economy was booming when he was elected, but took a turn for the
worse with the Stock Market
Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression
that followed. He advocated a program of tough love for a long
time, asking the
American people to just knuckle under and work harder. Then, after oh-me-oh-my-ing for a
while, he turned
around and dramatically raised taxes in order to
expand public works projects to try to provide jobs, but recovery from
the Great Depression took our country almost a decade.
General Colin
L. Powell - former
Secretary of State and a great soldier - a
geology major at City College of New York, I suspect he collected rock and
mineral specimens
from all around the world when he traveled at Secretary of State, but I
don't really know... That's what I would have tried to do,
anyway!
That would be great!!
He was certainly a big success as a
military leader. He visited Kutztown
University in March 2006 and reportedly boasted about his education in
geology, but he didn't visit with the geology students. He's a
busy guy, though, and had a tight schedule. (A real geologist would have made
time, so I think he's strayed from the path a bit)
Prof.
Dr Emil Constantinescu - President of Romania (1996-2000) - he was
a geology
professor before trying to lead Romania out of the ruins left by
dictator Nicolae
Ceauşescu. Certainly a big step up from Ceauşescu (who was a
really bad guy),
Contantinescu preached a tough love agenda of reform
that left a large portion of the population in extreme poverty.
Sure, they were in extreme poverty when Constantinescu started, but once again, don't count on a
geologist to lead you out of an economic
depression!
Actually, I do watch
politics carefully and try hard to sort the wheat
from the chaff (i.e., the stories from the spins). My main
concerns are the basics. I'm a big fan of this
old
playbook. I worry that individual citizens might be squeezed
out of our wonderful democracy by big money (e.g., Citizens
United
v. Federal Election Commission, No. 08-205). I believe we should have
separation of church and state, and that both church and state should
work toward our common good and not tell people how to live their
personal lives. My favorite founding fathers of our nation are
Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. I do believe we should
have a right to privacy. I believe that America's greatest
strength lies in our diversity, which should not only be preserved, but
encouraged to flourish. That's how nature works, and if it's good
enough for nature, then it's good enough for me.
I get very frustrated when I
hear
biased news reporting because I truly believe in the importance of the
news media for democracy to work well. For example,
- Example
of
biased
news reporting by National Public Radio (China Spans the Globe
Searching for New Energy Sources - NPR April 21, 2006)
- China uses 7 million
barrels of oil per day
- There are 1.3 Billion
people in China
- China is trying to buy oil
rights in Indonesia and Angola by influencing those governments with
large loans
- The interviewer and
interviewee complain that
China is willing to make deals with governments that are "not
democratic, do not have good human rights records, and west has
problems with"
- China's gasoline prices
is subsidized to be artificially low (note: interviewee
claims
$1.75/gal,
but
actual current price at the time of the interview was about $2.30/gal
-
the
same
as in the U.S.) - and points out that such
subsidies are an energy policy that encourage consumption and not
conservation
- My favorite quote in the
interview [remember, they're talking about China]: “Once you get a
population used to relatively low energy prices, it’s an extremely
difficult political process to raise those prices.”
- The article concludes that
if
the Chinese focused on becoming more energy efficient, then it would
take a lot of pressure off of the world oil market
- My personal thoughts on the story:
- I would not claim that our country
(i.e., the U.S.) only makes deals with clean,
wholesome
governments without attempting to exert any influence
on them
with loans, etc. Ask yourself, where
do
we
get our oil? where
does Exxon [see page 23 of their annual
report] and Chevron [map]
explore?
(note:
I personally like both
of those companies and
think it's great that they're out there looking!!)
- I would not claim that our country
that our energy policy
emphasizes conservation and that our culture abhors artificially low
gasoline prices and wasteful practices (see the DOE site,
another
DOE
site, and this CNN
site )
- I would not claim that
China's reduction of
their current 7
million barrels per day is likely to affect the oil market more than if
we tried
to
reduce
our 20 million
barrels per day (source: CIA)
(note: that means that China's per
capita usage is 0.2
gallons per person per day, whereas the average American uses 2.8
gallons per day - each American person uses more than 14 times
as much as one Chinese person!!)
There
are
exactly
12
times as many Chinese people in the photo on the right as
there are American people in the photo on the left - these represent
roughly equal users of oil
Most Chinese people earn money at a
rate of roughly one tenth that of an American (luckily, food costs are
correspondingly cheaper, too). That means they have a much weaker
buying power overall, though. A gallon of gas that costs $2.30
therefore impacts a Chinese person's wallet as if that gallon costed
$23.00. I wouldn't call that cheap gas!- If you need a relevant Bible quote,
please see Matthew 7:3.
So....
If that doesn't give
you enough of my political views, then: a) you must be really bored, b)
you're working for a government agency tasked with spying on American
citizens, and/or c) you're so
politically lost that you're looking for political ideas from an
amateur hack who doesn't know anything more than anyone else.
If you really want to
read a my political views, well, don't say that I did not warn you!
Clicking on the following link means:
- you acknowledge that we in America have the right to free speech,
- you understand that the views expressed are not
the official
views of Kutztown University,
- you know that I am just another voter in our democracy, and
- you promise NOT to
write, call, or contact me (being a professor
is a busy job - I don't have time to argue, etc. - my time is for my
students)
- If you've read and accept
those terms, then click
here.
(warning - you may not agree with
the ideas on the link - proceed at your own will)
