Peter Wang

Conservative underpinnings

Former GOP Precinct Chair, Harris County Precinct 651, Jun 18, 12.

Tagged with environment, sustainability, conservative, republican, gop

1. People, not Corporations, “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Therefore, the needs of 75000+ actual human people in Cy-Fair for immediate US290 relief outweigh the needs of General Growth Properties to be “bailed out” by WE THE PEOPLE and “realize value” in it’s Bridgeland holdings. Also, as we have seen with the Eversole case, the corrupting influences of developer contributions to get public money spent to generate value for particular private hands is a clear and present danger to democracy at the County level. Which Commissioner is going to jail next? Enough with “pay for play”.

2. Users pay - Judge Emmett has said “there is no asphalt fairy”. Wiser words were never spoken. We have to stop with activities that do not add value to society being subsidized at a loss. When some people say this, they target passenger rail, but I aim this attack without prejudice at every kind of non-value adding project. Whatever the infrastructure project, it should compete side-by-side on a cost-benefit basis with others… and we have to make sure that our value measures are not prejudiced. We also have to recognize that environmental liabilities do not show up on anyone’s balance sheet, but the losses are real, and have to go into the cost-benefit equation; ask anyone who used to run a fishing business on the Lousiana Coast before Macondo.

3. Global Warming - I’m OK with temporarily putting one type of pollutant aside so long as we focus like a laser beam on others, like ground-level ozone. Having family members with asthma, who have had to go to the ER, I know that the threat to human health is real and severe. Let’s focus obsessively on ozone… all other air pollutants can be expected to follow.

4. Whatever happened to conservation as being a conservative principle? Virtues like Thrift? (I guess it went the way of Chastity, Temperance, Reverence, and Modesty in the last 50 years). “A penny saved is a penny earned”. What about those values?

The (offshore) oil, gas, minerals, and all of the air and water of the USA belong to WE THE PEOPLE, if we run through them heedlessly and wastefully, who is going to bail us out with a spare America for us? With a spare Planet Earth? China going to bail us out on this one, like with our Federal debt? I think not.

I’m in the oil business, and I’ve read articles about shale being a “growth area for the next 20 years”. Oh really? I’ll only be 71 by the time that ends, my son will be 41, and I expect to have grandkids. What will we leave them to LIVE ON after we burn through the Bakken as quickly as we can? And for what… so we can cruise to get doughnuts in a 4,000 lb. vehicle? So we can drive on unwalkable roads to get to our obesity surgery? Does that kind of thinking and behavior honor God’s creation in any way? Including that most sublime creation of all; our incarnate physical selves?

I think the “Drill Baby Drill” people are just another manifestation of the Yuppie, Baby Boomer, “Do it if it feels good” “Me generation” “Enjoyment without consequences” crowd. Everyone born after 1945 is at risk of this type of thinking… especially if you turn your brain off and don’t bother to think.

If you really think you’re a conservative Republican, take your cues from one of the only manly men of the bunch, Teddy Roosevelt, who had enough vision and spent enough time in the wilds that he was inspired to establish the US National Parks. Nixon and Ford did a lot (while kicking and screaming) to help the environment. Nixon signed the Clean Air Act, after all. Back then, the political parties actually cooperated to solve National problems.

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