William Larsen

Sylvia changes words used.

Sylvia changes many of the words I use. For example, I do not use “undocumented immigrants.” Anyone who knows me, knows I do not speak like that. I use “illegal immigrants.” Undocumented immigrants must be the politically correct term for illegal immigrant just as borrowing is the politically correct term for breaking and entering.

She writes, “Larsen said Souder is wrong to advocate the expansion of ethanol because it is too costly to produce.” I never say it is too costly to produce, but rather "it consumes more energy to make than the energy content contained in ethanol". It is energy inefficient to produce ethanol. I suppose you could interpret this to mean to costly in terms of energy to produce instead of dollars. Why does she change my words?

Sylvia also wrote “Larsen believes in eliminating Social Security, and Souder has “done nothing to address Social Security.” While I do support repeal of the Social Security OASI program, I at the same time support replacing it with a means tested benefit that pays $1,133 per month to each senior found to be in need based on assets. I guess she forgot that little tidbit. Why does she not want voters to know I want to help needy seniors?

Did Sylvia change words used by Souder? Sylvia wrote, “Souder said there are “no quick fixes” to the country’s energy problems and that it is important – especially for the northeast Indiana region’s manufacturing base – to have a reliable source of energy “even if it is more expensive.”

Souder agreed that alternative energy has to be subsidized, but “it’s probably going to give us more independence so they don’t have a chokehold on us, long term. That said, we also need to be drilling more. I’m not anti-oil, I just think we need things in additional to oil. I think we need coal. I think we need nuclear. I think we need wind. I think we need solar. We need water. We need oil and gas. We need all of it.”

I worked for ten years in the nuclear industry, five years dealing with high level radioactive nuclear waste. Souder has been in congress long enough to know or should know that Yucca Mountain has not opened. That every nuclear power plant in the U.S. will be shutting down due to reaching full core reserve in less than ten years. I wrote about this in 2002.

I worked in designing Dry storage, estimated costs for shipping casks, looking at leasing Indian land, extracting fuel rods and shredding the non fuel bearing components, thereby freeing up four spaces for every ten fuel assemblies in the spend fuel pool. I know how difficult and politically sensitive nuclear power is

The last nuclear power plant that was designed and built was 25 years ago. All the engineers who did this kind of work are have moved onto other lines of work or retired. The U.S. does not have the ability to build a nuclear reactor today. It would take years to bring the people together, design and build the next generation of nuclear reactor. Who are we trying to kid here? We need increased electrical capacity now, not five years from now.

Wind power is proven! It is one of the cheapest sources of electrical generation there is. We can begin installing wind power not a year from now, but today. It takes over ten years to build a 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant. It would take a few months to build two hundred 5-megawatt windmills. In less than two year’s you can have windmills producing electricity. It has been estimated that the potential wind power capacity of the United States is three times the current electrical capacity today. So why go for a more expensive, longer lead-time and not environmentally friendly source of energy such as Nuclear when Wind Power is cheaper, has a shorter lead time, is environmentally friendly and renewable now?

Modern day Coal fired plants are very clean, but still produce pollutants that lead to acid rain. Then there is the energy it takes to transport coal to the power plant. The problem is burning a fuel is not environmentally friendly.

Drilling more oil wells will help in the short term, but it is only a crutch. We need to move away from the millennia old process of burning a fuel to perform useful work. We need a 21st century energy source that is clean, reliable and cheap.

Prior to being a candidate for office I was naive in the belief that the newspaper media printed and presented the views of candidates. After being a candidate now in three primaries, I now know that this is far from the truth.

posted by William Larsen @ 11:48 PM