Land of the Free?

Bensblurb #590 1/31/11

Land of the free,
OR over-regulated to a tee (?)

Remember when we used to joke about those silly seat belts and the irrational restrictions on cigarette smoking? We’ve come a long way, alas.

Today, I replaced one of those new, so-called long lasting light bulbs--a spirally and costly thing that took a while when lit to light up adequately. If memory serves, I put it in about 6 months ago. I fully expect its old-fashioned replacement bulb to last longer. But perhaps not for really long, if some bureaucrat dictates otherwise. I disposed of the new spirally bulb in the trash. I feel certain I thus violated some regulation, for there are many concerning the danger of the bulbs, as dictated by some bureaucrat...

Now, according to the news, we won’t know what’s watt pretty soon, because the bulb sellers are going to have to rate their power in lumens. Look it up before I throw up.

Meanwhile, check out my selected head-shakers below:

(1.) Wall Street Journal: Bureaucracy has acted to prevent the next dairy farm oil slick. EPA has finalized a rule that subjects dairies to the Spill Prevention, Control and Countermeasure program--created in 1970 to prevent oil spillages in navigable waters or near shorelines. “But EPA has discovered that milk contains a percentage of animal fat (duh), which is non-petroleum oil.” USDA is now running a $3 million program “to help farmers and ranchers comply with on-farm oil spill regulations.” Oh for petes sake.
　
(2.) CFACT: “Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s Dec. 22 announcement directing the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to survey its vast holdings with a view towards determining which should be designated as “wild lands” has sent shock waves across the West.Salazar’s move is widely seen as the Obama administration’s way of dealing with a new Congress that is unlikely to create new wilderness areas legislatively. The administration is rebranding wilderness as wild lands so it can make millions of acres of public land off-limits to development through regulatory fiat.”　

(3.) Power Line: [Regarding where the stimulus went, T]he federal government borrowed funds that it mainly sent to households and to state and local governments. Only an immaterial amount was used for federal purchases of goods and services. The borrowed funds were mainly used by households and state and local governments to reduce their own borrowing. In effect, the increased net borrowing at the federal level was matched by reduced net borrowing by households and state and local governments.
So there was little if any net stimulus. The irony is that basic economic theory and practical experience predicted this would happen.

(4) Forbes, By MERRILL MATTHEWS:
"Am I the only one becoming increasingly concerned about the amount of power federal agencies have over every aspect of our lives?
Everywhere we turn it seems some agency is telling Americans what they can and can’t do, whether it’s the health care we need, the technology we use, the financial decisions we make, the food we eat or the air we breathe...Last week, pharmaceutical manufacturer Genentech asked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to reconsider its recent decision to revoke the anti-cancer drug Avastin’s approval for the treatment of breast cancer. Either way the drug will retain its approval for treating several other types of cancer.
The drug was initially given an accelerated approval because of its promise for treating breast cancer—not curing it, but by slowing its progression and giving the patient several additional months.
Two subsequent studies found Avastin to be less beneficial in treating breast cancer than originally predicted, though those findings have been disputed. It also has side effects, but so does death from breast cancer. Oh, and did I mention that it’s expensive, about $90,000 a year.
If the FDA upholds its decision, Medicare and Medicaid will likely stop paying for the drug for breast cancer, and health insurers will likely follow suit—indeed, some already are. That change would have a huge financial impact on the roughly 17,500 women who are prescribed Avastin each year, many of whom have publicly and repeatedly claimed that the drug is helping them...
Or take the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Obama administration, unable to get the elected members of Congress to pass new powers to control carbon emissions, is handing the job to the EPA, which has begun the process of drafting new emissions regulations.
“These are reasonable, common-sense steps,” said EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson last December, which wouldn’t place “an undue burden on businesses that make up the better part of our economy.”
...[EPA claims the regs] will only target the largest companies—13,661 of them—that are responsible for most of the emissions.
So a gas, carbon dioxide, which every living thing on earth must have, is considered a pollutant and the EPA will eagerly embrace the very expensive effort to reduce that gas, even as Congress refuses to pass enabling legislation. Apparently, these agencies don’t just rule citizens, they rule Congress as well...
There are so many agencies taking control of our lives that it’s hard to identify their number, their reach and their costs—both in money and in lives. And while the President and Congress frequently tussle over the balance of power between those two branches, both of them—and especially in the last two years—have purposely and willingly handed more and more power to the alphabet soup of federal agencies...”

--Ben Blankenship

##############

Internet, my savior

Bensblurb # 589 1/28/11

Internet, my savior

So I strolled haltingly down the stairs to where my PC sat waiting. Haltingly, for two reasons: As I reported here earlier in the fall when I fell down, missing the last step in the foyer, it did hurt and now my back is still giving me fits.

The second reason was that I had no earthly idea of what to write about in this column, which was due shortly.

Then, Shazzam! Ideas, via my email inbox containing over 20 fresh messages, started sprouting like weeds. Some were nothing more than weeds, to be sure. But enough of them got my juices to flowing that I just had to stop...and to again thank heavens, in behalf of all senior Americans who like to write and correspond but don‘t do much else, for the Internet and my loyal correspondents.

From corny to consequential, here’s a sampling from the morning’s supply of mail in my inbox:

# --Politician Newt Gingrich weighs in on a goofy new proposal he claims is “setting the stage for bankruptcy and a future bailout of the Post Office with taxpayer money.” All future stamps are to be the so-called forever stamps which may still be used even if postage rates rise.Gingrich then quotes Peter Schiff on the subject;“The Post Office will try to use any short-term increase in sales from these forever stamps to solve their immediate fiscal problems...[I]magine how difficult it will be...after inflation has pushed their costs up AND they are selling even fewer stamps because so many people already purchased them in the past.”
I’d say it’s just as likely the forever stamps might still be around after the PO itself expires.

#-- Friend Bob Harmon from out in Lake Arrrowhead forwards a note he received concerning winter’s blizzards: “Just got off the phone with a friend in Montana.He said that early this morning the snow is waist deep and still falling.The temperature has dropped below zero and the north wind is increasing. His wife has done nothing but look through the kitchen window all day long. He says that if it gets much worse, he may have to let her in.”#-- School buddy Jim Garner in Texas forwards a refreshing piece--although it’s been circulating on the Internet for a few years, about a school lesson. A mini-sermon we should all embrace. I’ll be happy to email The Mayonnaise Jar to you, on request to Benblanken@aol.com. Or simply Google it yourself.

#--I rechecked another email that arrived from Harmon a few days ago. It begins, “SO, do you still think that ‘we’ are all that important and REALLY influence the universe as we NOW know it? Sorta humbles one, hey?”

He was extolling the attachment, a full-color depiction of the earth’s relative size to the other planets and the sun itself. It shows that our hallowed ground is a grain of salt compared with the sun’s. Again, I can forward this awesome piece. Shoot me an email. Be assured: Your name won’t be added to any promotional list but will be deleted upon response. You’re welcome.

Ben Blankenship is a career journalist and a resident of Aquia Harbour. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com
##########

Obama Bombs Again

Bensblurb # 588 1/26/11

State of the Union...

A flop. Even for someone who enjoys the politics of Washington, the President’s speech last night was boring and off the mark. Yes, things might be slowly getting better, but not unemployment, the housing market, or the Afghanistan venture. He avoided the issues--like, for instance, a deadlocked Congress. Were your reactions similar?

Whatever, here’s a sampling of columnists’ reactions:

Robert Scheer, in Huffington Post: What nonsense to insist that low public school test scores hobbled our economy when it was the highest-achieving graduates of our elite colleges who designed and sold the financial gimmicks that created this crisis...A pioneer in the securitization of mortgage debt, as well as exporting jobs abroad, was one Jeffrey Immelt, the CEO of GE, whom Obama recently appointed to head his new job creation panel.
That the financial meltdown at the heart of our economic crisis was "avoidable" and not the result of long-run economic problems related to education and foreign competition is detailed in a sweeping report by the Democratic majority on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission to be released as a 576-page book on Thursday....the commission concluded: "The greatest tragedy would be to accept the refrain that no one could have seen this coming and thus nothing could have been done. If we accept this notion, it will happen again."
Just the warning that Obama has ignored by continually appointing the very people who engineered this crisis, mostly Clinton alums...

Ben Stein, in American Spectator-- My pal, a frequent Spectator contributor and a super smart guy, Aram Bakshian, summed it up perfectly after Barack Obama's State of the Union address.
"Obama does not seem like a leader anymore."
It is sadly true. This was painfully apparent in tonight's speech. It was as if the Bodysnatchers had gotten hold of Mr. Obama and put a sixth grader's brain in him. There were only a few glimpses of Obama the "intellectual" socialist on display tonight. Mostly, his speech sounded as if it could have been given by any 1958 Republican elementary school student. The problem is that this is not 1958 America.
This is a much changed America, and one that has put itself into a terribly confining box.
When Mr. Obama talks about reducing the deficit, it's almost comical. The changes he proposes are so minuscule in terms of their effect on the budget that it's as if he is saying he can throw a rock to the moon. This country's deficit is spectacularly beyond his control. Only really painful surgery -- drastic, draconian cuts in Social Security and in Medicare, and wildly higher taxes on upper income people -- will come even close to fixing the problem.
The GOP has succeeded in making the tax part of these off limits, which makes certain the problem will get even worse. Mr. Obama did not come within a mile of telling the truth about it. He has been completely boxed in by the GOP, to an extent he would find deeply upsetting if he ever admitted it to himself.
When Mr. Obama says he's going to reform American education by setting higher standards, he is just baying at the moon...
There were two glimpses of the old Obama -- when he slammed "subsidies" for oil companies, which of course do not get any subsidies, but have business deductions the way every other business does, he sounded every bit like the envious skinny Harvard man he once was. When he railed against tax breaks that he considered identical to government spending, that was outright socialism. That concept implies that all the income in the nation belongs to the state, and that if we let working people keep any of it, that is the same as a government expenditure. The opposite is true. The income belongs to the people, and they allow government to have some of it. But, of course, the servant has become the master now.
One final note: in its lack of eloquence, its complete absence of high points, its elementary school pedagogy, its complete absence of any interesting or memorable phrases, it was possibly the lamest SOTU speech I have ever heard.

Jonah Goldberg, in National Review...Yes, the mixed-seating of the audience definitely worked against him because the birds of a feather weren’t flocked together. But this simply wasn’t an inspiring speech. I don’t think his naked calls for what amounts to industrial policy excite anybody who won’t get a check if they’re enacted...I wouldn’t be surprised if he got a bump in the polls, but if I were a GOP strategist I’d take some solace in the fact that this is a guy who has, once again, misread the political moment.
As for Ryan, I thought he was really very good, particularly in the second half of his blessedly brief remarks. My only complaint is that he was a bit too un-threatening. We are in an awful mess, and a bit more passion would suit me better.

Mark Hemingway, in Washington Examiner:--Their egregious pomp and length have long made State of the Union Speeches a chore. Last night's longer than average speech did no one any favors, least of all the President. Or as a friend of mine and former presidential speechwriter put it, "How can we trust a man to cut spending when he can't even cut words from a bloated and boring speech?"
...This was supposed to mark his big turn to the center and while the whole thing wasn't terrible, it was just flat. Since he's been President, Obama has a history of needing to rise to the occasion and just not coming through (see underwear bomber, BP oil spill, Ft. Hood shooting etc).
--When the President spoke about "corporate profits" and other supposedly positive economic indicators being up early in the speech, he didn't really talk about how severe the unemployment problem is. As someone with a number of close family members looking for jobs...it was frankly angering that he did not acknowledge this problem more severely.

--Ben Blankenship
##############

Twisted energy policies

Bensblurb #587 1/22/11

Our twisted energy policies, as executed by the Obama administration: Nowhere are they more laughingly juxtaposed than (1) the clamping down on oil drilling in the Gulf, and the new abundance of oil ready and waiting elsewhere, and (2) the government’s promotion of corn for use in ethanol rather than food. Go figure.

We have lotsa oil

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Billionaire oilman Harold Hamm told North Dakota bankers on Thursday that government estimates of recoverable oil in the Bakken and Three Forks formations are too conservative.
Hamm, 64, chairman and chief executive officer of Continental Resources Inc., said the formations in North Dakota and Montana hold about 20 billion barrels of recoverable crude, or about five times the amount previously estimated by federal geologists. The formations also hold the natural gas equivalent of 4 billion barrels of oil, he said.
"This is something that is totally incredible," Hamm told about 200 bankers who had gathered in Bismarck for a conference. "Everywhere you look the Bakken is front and center."

Rising food prices: Thanks, ethanol

The global economy is getting back on its feet, but so too is an old enemy: food inflation. The United Nations benchmark index hit a record high last month, raising fears of shortages and higher prices that will hit poor countries hardest. So why is the United States, one of the world's biggest agricultural exporters, devoting more and more of its corn crop to . . . ethanol?--Wall Street Journal

And here’s Time on the subject:

Nearly two thirds of drivers could have more corn-based ethanol in their fuel tanks under a new Environmental Protection Agency edict. The agency said that 15 percent ethanol blended with gasoline is safe for cars and light-duty trucks manufactured between 2001 and 2006, expanding an October decision that the higher blend is safe for cars built since 2007. The maximum gasoline blend has been 10 percent ethanol. The fuel is popular in farm country because most ethanol comes from corn and other grains. It faces strong opposition, however, from the auto industry, environmentalists, cattle ranchers, food companies and a broad coalition of other groups. Those groups say that using corn to make ethanol makes animal feed more expensive, raises prices at the grocery store and tears up the land. There have already been several lawsuits filed against the EPA — including one filed by automakers, boat manufacturers and outdoor power equipment manufacturers — since the agency decided to allow the higher blends for newer cars in October.
Critics said the change could be frustrating for drivers of older cars who will have to figure out which service station pump to use. And they argue that many retailers will opt not to sell the higher blend because of the expense of adding new pumps and signs.
-------How wacky can Washington get?
--Ben Blankenship
#############

No people timebomb, but aging is big problem

Bensblurb # 586 1/20/11

Below are two depthy stories, one about population and the other about aging and our future. The first one came from the Internet and the second one was forwarded courtesy of friend Art Hart. I’m sending portions of them along so as to distract your attention from those name-calling stories from Tucson and from the House of Representatives’ repeal of Obamacare. These, in contrast, have meaning for our future. Enjoy...

The population timebomb is a myth

The doom-sayers are becoming more fashionable just as experts are coming to the view it has all been one giant false alarm. --Tuesday, 18 January 2011
The human hunger for bad news knows no bounds. That is why gossip is usually malicious and why, on a grander scale, prophets of doom are always guaranteed a credulous audience. Conversely, good news – however well attested – is generally squeezed in the margins of newspapers.
For example, The Independent buried in a few paragraphs a story with the headline “Population not a threat, say engineers". But at least The Independent found some space to cover the publication of a report last week by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers entitled Population: One Planet, Too Many People? – I could find nothing about it in other newspapers.
The reason for that distinct lack of column inches is that the institution answered its own question in the negative. No, there are not (and will never be) too many people for the planet to feed. As the report's lead author, Dr Tim Fox, pointed out, its verdict is not based on speculative guesses about the development of new processes as yet unknown: "We can meet the challenge of feeding a planet of 9 billion people through the application of existing technologies"..
Interestingly, another detailed report published last week by the French national agricultural and development research agencies came up with the same answer. The French scientists set themselves the goal of discovering whether a global population of 9 billion, the likely peak according to the UN, could readily have access to 3,000 calories a day, even as countries take measures to cut down on the use of fossil fuels and refrain from cutting down more forests: their answer was, you will be thrilled to know, "yes".
Some people will not be so thrilled. There is an increasingly noisy claque of Malthusians who insist that an "exploding" global population (as they put it) is going to lead to disaster – from Boris Johnson to Joanna Lumley, not to mention Jeremy Irons and Prince Charles....
One reason why the population doomsters have come out in force in recent weeks is that, according to the UN Population Division, this year will see the number of living inhabitants hit the figure of 7 billion....As a matter of fact the population doom-sayers among the media and show business are becoming more fashionable just as the experts are coming round to the view that it has all been one giant false alarm. This year National Geographic magazine is making population its theme; but its lengthy opening essay was notable for its lack of alarmism. It quoted Hania Zlotnik, the director of the UN's Population Division, saying: "We still don't understand why fertility has gone down so fast in so many societies, so many cultures and religions. It's just mind-boggling. At this moment, much as I want to say there's still a problem of high fertility rates, it's only about 16 per cent of the world's population, mostly in Africa."
The most fashionable of all arguments for some sort of global anti-natalist legislation comes in the form of professed concern for the atmosphere – too many people produce too much CO2, thus damaging the planet via climate change. The Malthusians have seized on this as grist to their mill, having been refuted on every other argument. Yet Joel Cohen, the professor of populations at Columbia University's Earth Institute, told National Geographic: "Those who say the whole problem is population are wrong. It's not even the dominant factor."
Apart from anything else, the developed world, which uses vastly more energy per capita than sub-Saharan Africa (the only part of the globe with high fertility rates), is going through a period of rapid demographic decline. As Matt Ridley, the author of The Rational Optimist, pointed out last week, the world's population is not "exploding" but growing at 1 per cent a year, and the actual number of people added to the figure each year has been dropping for more than 20 years... by Dominic Lawson
　
　
Global aging and the crises of the 2020s
by Neil Howe and Richard Jackson
“The risk of social and political upheaval could grow throughout the developing world—even as the developed world’s capacity to deal with such threats declines.”
From the fall of the Roman and the Mayan empires to the Black Death to the colonization of the New World and the youth-driven revolutions of the twentieth century, demographic trends have played a decisive role in many of the great invasions, political upheavals, migrations, and environmental catastrophes of history. By the 2020s, an ominous new conjuncture of demographic trends may once again threaten widespread disruption. We are talking about global aging, which is likely to have a profound effect on economic growth, living standards, and the shape of the world order.
For the world’s wealthy nations, the 2020s are set to be a decade of rapid population aging and population decline. The developed world has been aging for decades, due to falling birthrates and rising life expectancy. But in the 2020s, this aging will get an extra kick as large postwar baby boom generations move fully into retirement. According to the United Nations Population Division (whose projections are cited throughout this article), the median ages of Western Europe and Japan, which were 34 and 33 respectively as recently as 1980, will soar to 47 and 52 by 2030, assuming no increase in fertility. In Italy, Spain, and Japan, more than half of all adults will be older than the official retirement age—and there will be more people in their 70s than in their 20s.
Falling birthrates are not only transforming traditional population pyramids, leaving them top-heavy with elders, but are also ushering in a new era of workforce and population decline. The working-age population has already begun to contract in several large developed countries, including Germany and Japan. By 2030, it will be stagnant or contracting in nearly all developed countries, the only major exception being the United States. In a growing number of nations, total population will begin a gathering decline as well. Unless immigration or birthrates surge, Japan and some European nations are on track to lose nearly one-half of their total current populations by the end of the century.
These trends threaten to undermine the ability of today’s developed countries to maintain global security. To begin with, they directly affect population size and GDP size, and hence the manpower and economic resources that nations can deploy. This is what RAND scholar Brian Nichiporuk calls “the bucket of capabilities” perspective. But population aging and decline can also indirectly affect capabilities—or even alter national goals themselves...

--Ben Blankenship

##############

Driving No Fun Anymore

Bensblurb # 585 1/15/11

Driving around no fun anymore (and not of much interest except to locals in Va. Sorry, Texas)

Is there nothing we I-95 users can do to alleviate its virtually constant traffic jams in our area? Probably.

The consequences? Not only wasted, high-priced gasoline, but late or missed daytime appointments with physicians in Fredericksburg or Woodbridge, for example.

To wit, my wife’s physicians office she had been visiting for over a decade told her as 2011 began to find someone else, since she had been late for an appointment and then missed the next one altogether, simply because I-95 was choked--in mid-afternoon.

So we are shopping for another doc in North Stafford. There aren’t very many. Help may be on the way, with the opening last year of the Stafford Hospital not far down the road. Maybe I-95’s area jams are a reason why two new urgent care facilities have opened in recent months on Garrisonville Road, although we already had three of them there.

An answer that I-95 optimists might give for the perpetual gridlock would be the advertised coming Hot Lanes in the middle of the Interstate. It’s said they will extend down to Fredericksburg. Big deal. And how many entry points would be allocated to Stafford County interchanges? One if we’re lucky, I’d guess. And when? Best guess would be shortly after the Redskins win another Super Bowl.

Sarcastic? No, realistic. Things here would be much better now if several years ago that proposed I-95 bypass from the Stafford Airport interchange to west of Fredericksburg on Route 3 hadn’t been vetoed by NIMBY and local preservationist protestors. Overcome them and we’d see road progress. They’re why improvement of the Falmouth light intersection is taking so long.

Back when I-95 was 4-lanes young, and sleepy Stafford County was home to only 40,000 souls, commuting to D.C. was a breeze. It was like that when I first moved to sleepy Aquia Harbour in 1978. Our vanpool would leave the Harbour parking lot about 6:30 AM and reliably arrive at USDA’s South Building in less than an hour and a half. Those were the good old days.

Garrisonville road was only two lanes and one stoplight, at the U.S. 1 intersection. Now it’s beginning to resemble the backups typical of Route 3 around Central Park.

Trying to navigate a good, non-I-95 course down to Fredericksburg is fraught with danger, too. Driving down U.S. 1 can take even longer because of its many stoplights. Some pioneering souls take Sheldon Shop Road from Garrisonville Road and thence onto Mountain View, and thence...who knows? A similar spaghetti-like path from North Stafford east of I-95 might incorporate Brooke Road with a hookup to Route 3 east of Fredericksburg. Again, lots of luck.
　
If you live near Garrisonville Road, you can judge I-95 backups by crossing over the Jessica Cheney Bridge above I-95 and observing the situation. But caution: Southbound, a jam just beyond the bridge can be deceptive. It often clears before the Courthouse Road exit. Alas, “often” won’t do in case you must be somewhere on time.

Best advice: Move elsewhere, or retire--the latter of which has worked just fine for me.
　
Ben Blankenship is a career journalist and a resident of Aquia Harbour. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com".

Latest Media Circus

Bensblurb #584 1/11/11 -- How ‘bout them numbers!

The latest media circus
　
When Reagan was shot, the pundits blamed guns, not politics. When the mad Major killed Fort Hood troops, they blamed lax controls and oversight, not Islamists. And when the Tucson madman strikes, they blame guns and politics.

Here’s betting some folks tried to do something medically about the madman, maybe repeatedly, without success. You see, patients’ rights, especially in the mental health field, have gone overboard. Even getting a person voluntarily into a facility can be a hassle, since so many of them appear to be closing down. And getting someone committed takes a judge and I don’t know what all.

The patients-rights explosion reminds me of something similar. We have the capacity in medical science to handle the loonies, but not in confinement...that is so barbaric, don’t you see. Similarly, we have the know-how, the technology and plants in place to generate a huge amount of nuclear energy in this country. But that would be barbaric also, according to airhead environmentalists.

Granted, as you can tell, I don’t know much about either mental health policies and effective treatment or nuclear energy. But both seem to be blocked by too-powerful elites of a too-liberal persuasion and their media trumpeters.

The media do seem to go ape in such traumatic circumstances. Sarah Palin had better hide. Even so, “The establishment media...[are] perceived by an ever-greater percentage of Americans as simply an arm of the political-class Democratic Party. If you pay attention, they have power over you,” writes Glenn Reynolds in the Washington Examiner
Regardless, it’s true that ..”[Political violence has been rare in the United States in recent years... despite the disputed 2000 presidential election, the unpopular Iraq war and the election of the first black president...World Bank ranks America above the UK when it comes to “...absence of violence.”--James Pethokoukis, Reuters

This latest flareup will die down after everyone has milked it beyond its worth, as usual. Nothing will change. And we can return to such matters as the NFL payoffs, resuming soon.

Ben Blankenship
##############

It seems only yesterday...

Bensblurb #583 1/1/11

It seems only yesterday...
　
If you think today’s “lame duck” political squabbles in Washington are a disgraceful way to end the first decade of our 21st century, just remember that it initially dawned shortly after a huge month-long fight over who would become our President, Bush or Gore.

Then that contentious election had hardly subsided when the Islamic terrorists flew our airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon , and a field in Pennsylvania.

It still seems like yesterday, especially to someone who has already experienced several such momentous decades. One of which yielded World War II with its incredible devastation. So from my perspective, 9/11/01, while awful, was a piece of cake compared with Pearl Harbor. As were our recent battles, compared with the conquest of Germany and Japan--plus the atomic bomb.

It was deemed so awful in its devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that world leaders decided that nuclear war must be banned. However, all such horrible memories gradually subside. True, we still cannot imagine a nuclear blast leveling a major U.S. city. But from the perspective of several decades, it needn’t be the end. Indeed, a recent circulating email depicts stunning aerial views of modern-day Hiroshima compared with 65 years ago. Civilizations indeed survive despite all, even today’s bugaboo, global “warming.”

Thus, as we face a troubling new decade, remember that it’s just one of many, and we’ve done all right so far, ignoring (ahem) our nation’s crushing debt load.

In retrospect, closer to home I’d like to tip my hat to two local people, for both of them have made the end of this decade much happier for me.

In politics, bless Stafford supervisor Cord Sterling. Only months ago, his adopted compromise allowed Bill Hoyt’s SPCA pet shelter to proceed with development. And just the other day, he engineered another compromise that resulted in all his fellow supervisors approving the county’s controversial comprehensive plan. That is a big feather in his cap.

And personally, again just the other day, my family’s long-term friend and care giver was dining at Sam’s Pizza on 610 with Carole Lee, my wife, who has been mostly wheelchair bound for the past several years.

Fran Milligan noticed my wife was having trouble swallowing, which led to choking. She did the Heimlich maneuver, quickly permitting Carole Lee to breathe again. “She saved my life,” Carole Lee later exclaimed. God bless Fran.

Out in the county, it seems only yesterday--but nearly a decade ago--that the new airport finally won approval. That despite opposition from former resident, friend and long-time state senator, John Chichester. I teased him that we should name the airport after him. No way. Back then, the shameful failure of another Stafford project--to open the “northwest leg” of a proposed circumferential around Fredericksburg has kept I-95 travel grid-locked around here unnecessarily.

Remember too that a decade ago our nearby Aquia Towne Center was thriving. Gargoyles Coffee Shop and Fitness University were favorite places...gone. But the barbershop, led by Korean-born Sue Lantier, still thrives there despite being moved a few times by the crawling pace of the center’s promised renovation.

So bring on the next decade already.

--Ben Blankenship

#############