An Open Letter to the President of These United States

4/29/13   Dear President Obama:

With all due respect,  I would like to share some humble opinions from the hinterlands.   My feeling is that you are too much in touch with the power brokers,  the revolving door swingers and the like,  with not enough "input" from the trenches and back roads.   This is from a BLOG written in farmland,  it will also be published in the "Hay River Review"   in Prairie Farm, Wisconsin.  

Although I have never held public office I have an enormous amount of respect for what you and the Vice President do,  including and especially the part that has to do with vital memory,  applying thought to problem solving and the like;  extrapolation,  crucial in times like ours.  With that in mind I am going to start with your latest trips to Boston and Texas.   Part chaplain,  part cheerleader with the weight of your office behind you,   you become, willy nilly, a publicist for terrorists and a mourner for victims and a mourner and  celebrator of  first responders .  What often gets lost are the meanings attendant to issues like the fertilizer plant (the lack of inspections there - 5,  10 years,  the violations involved by the plant -- eg. the huge amount of anhydrous ammonia stored there (270 tons/54,000 pounds), adjacent to a school,  senior citizen housing,  and houses!  Nothing said about this,  the focus was put on the loss of the first responders and their families.

With the XL Pipeline on deck we have next to no response by the White House to the Mayflower, Arkansas tragedy.  It is as if it this Pegasus Pipeline is a "sacrifice zone,"  a not to be talked about precursor of the mammoth XL in the West.   The same goes for the behemoth Shell Kulick oil rig in the Artic.  Hardly mentioned in the media,  it as if the weather conditions which have been described in great detail up there just have no bearing on what is done or not.  Corporate energy power is almost sacrosanct,  and you needn't dial back far to discover that there is plenty of BP oil on the shores of the Gulf;   and Williwas in the Artic are  considered just a figment of indigenous imagination,  or  cries of leftist weather wimps. 

Weather and the response of corporate and governmental power to it.  Mother Nature has lashed back with unbelievable fury,  the bills paid in part for Katy are instructive,  the earlier ones in New Orleans and the South are by  now assumed,  but are unfinished,  incomplete, as well.    Part of the deal,  as we  know too well out here in farmland, is that continual droughts and challenging weather condi- tions take a tremendous toll on agriculture,  and how much is that mentioned in Washington (?).  The latest absurdity there was that you signed the spending bill with a very dangerous Monsanto rider in it,  something that will unleash a huge amount of genetic engineering mischief with  alfalfa crops. Can it be that Mr. Vilsack missed providing you with information about this outrage (?),  or are his and the USDA's ties to giant agribusiness such that it was a fait accompli.

In order to make all this work  Air Force One has to be a "frequent flier,"  which means that our very fragile atmosphere  (ozone layer) takes a beating as yet another assumption.   Again, little or nothing said, a lot assumed.  We are doing our best out here and it isn't good enough.  It was only a week or so ago that we had a lot snow on the ground,  now that soil seems to be as "dry as dust,"  as I heard someone say yesterday  ...  and the temperature today was in the seventies.  You are doing a lot of praying,  Mr. President,  don't forget the farmers and growers,  and Mother Nature.    Thank you.

Respectfully,   Don Roberts  -  in Otter Creek