Ending The Campaign

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My fellow Floridians, I am officially announcing that I am ending my run for Congress at this time.  The truth is that I have no chance of beating the incumbent.  Elections should be all about who gets the most votes, but there are a lot more complex factors behind running a successful campaign, the least of which is money.  There are cases of candidates winning elections having collected fewer donations than their opponent, but they still raised a lot of money.

What typically happens is that the GOP has "their candidate" who gets the full support of the Party as far as fund raising and other resources.  If you aren't "their candidate" and it looks like you might beat them in the primary, they will suddenly pour a lot of money into their campaign and use every other trick in the book to ensure that you lose.

I do plan to run in the future.  My plan for this future campaign is to be in a financial position to fund my own campaign without donations from sources that potentially will expect you to push their agenda, even if it conflicts with your own agenda.  Lobbyists are very powerful and if you take their money they will ensure your success or drown you based on how well you support their efforts.  Special interest groups will often write their own bills and expect you to push it through as the sponsor.  I want to ensure I am free from any of that outside influence.

Once elected, the real challenge begins.  Freshmen Congresspersons discover quickly that they either have to toe the party line, or face consequences, such as being stripped of committee membership.  The Speaker of the House controls what bills get introduced for a vote and thus have the potential to become law.

Our current Representative has very few bills that he has sponsored himself which have made it into law, with the majority of those involving the renaming of post offices.  He admits that the only way he is successful at getting anything meaningful passed is to attach an amendment to a bill that is being pushed to the floor for a vote.

The real success comes from the work accomplished by the committees.  Here on the Space Coast, it makes perfect sense that one of the committees should be the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, of which our current Representative is a member.  It would be my intent to be on that committee as well as the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.  Here is the reason why:

There are many arguments about climate change and whether or not it is man made.  I say it doesn't matter!  Whether CO2 is responsible for any changes to our environment or not is a ridiculous argument.  When you lift the lid on the argument, you really find it's a war between those who are profiting from the big oil companies and those who are profiting from the "green" energy market.  The bottom line is - it's all about money!  It seems both sides of that war are against nuclear fission energy.  Why?  Because it's more cost effective per Megawatt Hour produced than all other sources of energy.  Therefore the profits aren't as great.  It would be a hell of a crusade to change the thinking on this matter, but that's a challenge I intend to take head on.

Current Nuclear Reactors use Plutonium that is enriched into Uranium to provide the fuel rods for the fission reaction.  If we switched to Thorium, it can be enriched into Plutonium that is at a lower elemental number than the Plutonium currently used.  That means the half life of the radioactive waste is significantly less (hundreds of years vs. thousands).  Furthermore, Thorium cannot be enriched into weapons grade Plutonium, thus it cannot be weaponized.  The United States is the second largest source of Thorium in the world, with India being the largest.

Molten Salt Reactors can be used to provide an extremely safe method of producing nuclear energy.  In the event of an emergency, the water can be drained from the reactor and the entire fission reaction gets shut down.  There is no chance of a nuclear core meltdown.  An unusually beneficial byproduct of Molten Salt Reactors is that they can also be used to convert sea water into safe drinking water.