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THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Provided By: Rellis Smith
Posted: 10-27-11
Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter Administration?
The "Department of Energy" (DOE) was instituted on 08/04/77 to LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL…and now it's 2011, 34 years later and the budget for this necessary department is at $24.2 billion a year. It has 16,000 federal employees and approximately 100,000 contract employees.
Bottom line ..
- We've spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency ...
- It was a very simple purpose and at the time everybody thought it was very appropriate...
- And look at the job it has done!
This is where one slaps one's forehead and say, "what was I thinking"?
Ah, yes, good old bureaucracy and now we are going to turn The Banking System, Health Care & The Auto Industry over to government ALL IN THE NAME OF CHANGE?
May God Help Us !!!
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THE GREEN THING
Provided By: Rellis Smith
Posted: 10-27-11
Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment.
The woman apologized and explained, "We didn't have this green thing back in my earlier days."
The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."
She was right - our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we didn't have plastic bags, we use recyclable paper bag. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.
We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day.
Back then, we washed the baby's diapers because we the throw-away kind we used only on special occasions like for convenience for mom's on her first couple of week out of the hospital with newborns. Then it was the daily washing of diaper.
During warm-to-hot days, we dried clothes on a line and on cold-to-frigid days on clothes racks, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in our early days. Most kids got hand-me-down clothes many sewn by mom from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing. But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our day.
Back then we had one TV or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. Because there was poor-to-no reception, some of us didn't have TV until our teens or later and sat around the table and night, played games and talked to each other
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THE GREEN THING
Contineued From Column #2)
Provided By: Rellis Smith
Posted: 10-27-11
In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand baking and cooking foods because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us, i.e., microwaves.
In our youth, when we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Newspapers were used to dry windows washed with vinegar and water that by the way came squeaky-clean.
Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn nor grass blower to blow cut grass. We used a quiet push mower and racked leaves, cut grass and debris that ran on human power.
We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity. But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.
We drank from a water fountain, which with today's high-tech science could be converted to sanitary water. When we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.
We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then.
Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus, and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service.
We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.
But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then? Maybe, just maybe, for the green thing the environmentally conscious need to turn back the clock and REINSTATE WHAT WE DID FOR THE GREEN THING AND DIDN'T KNOW IT AND COMBINE IT WITH WHAT IS DONE AND KNOWN IN TODAY'S WORLD.
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