Adele Ferguson

ITEM—The Pentagon has started a program to develop and buy replacement Air Force One aircraft for presidential use after 2022. The first phase, costing $757 million for Air Force One and $1.84 million for a new helicopter, will focus on completing a market analysis and performance requirements, including whether to buy sole-source from Boeing, maker of the current Air Force One plane and helicopter or put it out to bid. The memo for the program does not specify the number of planes that may be purchased.

COMMENT—If Barack Obama is reelected, the Pentagon would be wise to step up the date by which the new planes will be needed because the current ones must be almost worn out. Few days go by without our reading in the papers of another fundraiser he’s attending, to the point the plane is getting about as much use as the average school bus. Yes, I know he wouldn’t be needing fundraisers in a second term but I have the feeling he and/or the First Lady and their daughters will take advantage of taxpayer-funded transportation to visit all the places they have yet to see before they go back home.

ITEM—Initiative 502 to legalize, tax and regulate marijuana in Washington was estimated by the Office of Financial Management to raise up to $1.9 billion in new tax revenue over five years, or nothing at all. It depends on whether the feds target licensed growers and retailers here as they have threatened to do in California if that state legalizes MJ. If 1-502 passes in November, the revenue is earmarked for the state’s basic health plan and drug research, intervention and treatment.

COMMENT—I have become convinced by friends in law enforcement that making marijuana legal and available would be for many users the threshold to going to stronger drugs such as cocaine and heroin, all of which would still have to be purchased. I would expect an increase in burglaries and confrontations where users go to what they believe to be the home of a source and attack them for drugs or non payment for drugs.

ITEM—A prolonged drought in the Midwest farm belt is expected to drive up food prices, especially corn which crop is shared by consumers, livestock and drivers because of the mandate that a percentage of corn ethanol be blended into the gasoline supply. For the first time ever, more corn, four out of every 10 bushels last year, is going to fuel than to feeding livestock. Some governors have asked for a waiver of the mandate but were denied by the president who, it’s said, does not want to damage his standing with voters in Iowa, a big ethanol producing state important to an electoral college majority.

COMMENT—Ethanol was mandated to make the US energy independent and reduce carbon dioxide emissions. But recent studies, says the Institute for Global Economic Growth in the Washington Times, show that the total emissions from growing, harvesting, processing and burning corn as ethanol are much greater than those from oil and gas production and use. It reduces gas mileage in cars and causes more wear and tear on engines. And without subsidies, it is more costly than oil and gas. We should let the corn go where it does the most good, feeding livestock and making tortillas and the like that benefit the poor.

ITEM—Howard Dean, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, groused on television about Republicans having Swiss bank accounts.

COMMENT—I suspect a lot of Democrats also have Swiss bank accounts because every taxpayer wants to store his money where he can pay the least amount of taxes. I propose that every member of Congress be required to state whether he/she has money stashed in Switzerland or the Caymans, Not amounts, just existence.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.)