New York City and Washington DC

I Don't Care What They Do

Do these people understand anything about the other 200 million people (counting unlawful immigrants) that don’t live in the metropolitan Northeast or a large coastal city? 

I doubt it.  Nothing that happens there is important to rest of us.  It’s not our financial center.  It’s not the cultural or social center of anything that matters, even occasionally, to most of us.

Nor, should we let Northeast Media personalities (TV, Newspaper, magazine and Internet) tell us what to believe, feel, think or do, and for whom we should vote or why.  

I don’t think so and here’s why.  They are not the reason for anything important to our inland citizens.  Those people have almost nothing in common with the rest of American’s residents.  Most of us don’t share their dreams or hold their same values, or live their kinds of lives, or care what celebrities think or do, don’t find anything remotely interesting or amusing about New York City, or think everything worth seeing is within walking distance of our flat, whatever that is.

For instance, personal vehicular travel in the inland west; some county seats are more than 150 miles from our homes.  Some families live 50 miles from the closest paved road.  Many technicians must drive hundreds of miles each day to get to work sites.  Most have never been to New York City and have no reason to ever go, and never will; and have no interest in Washington DC aside from visiting monuments and museums.  And don’t care what New Yorkers think, do or want.  Many wouldn’t go to a Broadway Play if they were there and it was free.  About half have never been on mass transit.  Most will live their entire life having never taken a train to and from work, and wouldn’t give up their truck, car, motorcycle, boat, plane, bicycle, or horse even if there was a subway station within hundreds of miles.  

In my case we live in the middle of a desert, so everything must be brought or collected from great distances; food, clothing, medicine, all consumer products by truck, car, train, or plane.  The closest mass transit station is 105 miles away, the closest airport 90 miles away, and our county seat is 94 miles away.  My county is roughly the size of the whole State of Delaware.  It is 150 miles to Las Vegas or Los Angeles.  Every commodity requires fueled delivery, even our gasoline and diesel fuel are mostly delivered by trucks.  There is no subway station, no mass transit, no park and ride; personal transportation, our own trucks and cars are essential.  Annual driving of more than 24,000 miles is required for the most conservative life styles.  Shopping for goods, tools or appliances, or medical care can easily involve a 300 mile round trip.  A special lunch date or a movie, can easily reach 200 miles, or 500 miles on a weekend for entertainment, amusement or sporting events.   

In my little town, homeless people and transients don’t urinate and defecate in our doorways.  Whores don’t work our street corners.  Big time drug dealers and violent street crime are rare.  Bribery, corruption and extortion rarely occur.  Crimes occur, but police brutality hasn’t been alleged in decades.  Two homicides in the same year, it must certainly have been transients.  We straddle what must be the nation’s busiest Interstate highway with more than 55 million vehicles per year and most of our crime comes to us on their way elsewhere.

Abundant, low priced fuel is essential.  Start drilling and pumping our nations abundant fuels, and stop taxing the life blood out of our inland towns and rural citizens.

And someday, when there is an efficient, practical alternative to the current fossil fuels, we’ll buy it, without subsidy, tax or tariff.

In the mean time, stop acting like everyone in the country lives and thinks like New York social celebrities and a few thousand of their closest friends, or would ever want to.