By RUSS PERRINE -The writer, of Monroe Twp, was an on-air news editor at New York’s former 97.9 FM and graduate of the CW Post Campus at Long Island University. He can be reached at Rperrine@aol.com
Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida was built by Marjorie Merriweather Post alongside her second husband, financier Edward F. Hutton. The couple had one daughter who became better known as actress Dina Merrill. Marjorie Merriweather was the only daughter of Charles W. Post who, in 1895, founded Postum Cereal Company — among their products Grape-Nuts and Post Toasties. In 1964 daughter Marjorie legally retained the Post last name for the remainder of her famous life, which included being married four times.
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, recently included an edit that this lavish estate on Palm Beach Island was purchased by businessman Donald Trump in 1985 who, as of January 2017, is President of the United States.
During the Thanksgiving holiday just passed, the Trump presidential team in charge of selecting a cabinet for our new POTUS spent much time working at Mar-a-Lago on this process.
The selection process of these individuals is not open to public scrutiny – nor is it expected to be. But if the public is interested, there is a wealth of information available to “the common man” (or woman) to satisfy the most robust curiosity.
I offer two examples.
On the Chief Executive’s own webpage under the heading of “An America First Energy Plan” there appears a series red dot DJT vision energy points. One reads, “Unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped oil and natural gas reserves, plus hundreds of years in clean coal reserves.”
The very next point reads, “Become, and stay, totally independent of any need to import energy from the OPEC cartel or any nations hostile to our interests.”
At this point it may be worthwhile to remind every reader here of the factoid this nation currently has a $19,500,000,000,000 national debt on our books. On November 17, 2016 USA TODAY Network published a news account of the “largest continuous oil and gas deposit ever found in the United States”.
On DJT’s webpage he cited $50 trillion in untapped reserves; the current U.S. debt stands at $19.5 trillion. Is it entirely reckless to believe these two figures cannot one day become reconciled?
Back in December, two news stories emerged that invited a small amount of attention to this situation. The first was a mention on Fox Business (FBN) that the USA TODAY story of the large Texas energy find went almost unnoticed…as in very little press reporting.
The other story was the intense news reporting about how OPEC was about to announce a record breaking oil drilling production cut in an eleventh hour last ditch effort to raise the world price of crude oil. The highest record price of world crude oil (WTI) was $146.00 per barrel. Decades of paying $4.00 per gallon gasoline for the privilege of driving our cars to and from work have left an indelible mark on U.S. driver memories.
The United States of America has never been a member of OPEC. Nor will it ever need to be.