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Independent Candidate for President
Misteradiant:
New Orleans:
Southern Louisiana is the fastest-disappearing land mass in the world. Restoration of New Orleans and the Southern Louisiana coast would be the greatest public works project ever undertaken by mankind. In my vision of America, this project is successfully undertaken and a region that is important for its energy, agriculture, fishing, shipping, art and history will be saved.
The Southern Louisiana region is home to the four largest refineries in the Western Hemisphere. They will be important for decades to come, regardless of the biofuel industry. The land these refineries sit on is washing away. America must do something about it. As President, I will begin the monumental task to save Louisiana wetlands and the city of New Orleans.
New Orleans has sunk 15 feet since 1878. In one hundred years, she will sink another eight feet. If nothing is done for a city that supports the two largest ports in America, handling one third of the nation's seafood and more than one quarter of its oil and natural gas, the day will come when New Orleans will be claimed by the ocean forever. The way to save New Orleans is not by bigger levees, it is by restoring the wetlands south and east of the city.
Channeling the Mississippi River behind giant levees has jeopardized one of the world's great wetlands systems and left New Orleans and other communities more exposed to hurricanes. To combat this problem, I envision a pipeline system to carry no less than 70 million cubic yards of silt yearly from the Mississippi River to the bayou. I want to create this new Mississippi River channel by diverting as much as one-third of the river's flow along a new riverbed starting about 60 miles west of New Orleans and draining south to the Gulf of Mexico. I see this project creating sediment to combine with native plants, shrubs and crops that will rebuild vast areas of wetlands lost to the ever-advancing Gulf of Mexico. Many square miles a year could be added to coastal Louisiana with this delta.
The new branch of America's most important river would deliver massive amounts of sediment to create new delta wetlands the way nature has always done it. It is time to work with the earth, not against it.
A National Academy of Sciences study concluded that full restoration of Louisiana's coastal wetlands "will not be possible." Still, it found that this plan "could more than offset" future losses.
I have drilled home my position of "world domination with biofuel," and it is related to saving New Orleans. Let me tell you how. While the crux of the argument is to legalize hemp for biodiesel, there is another crop that is even easier to turn into fuel; rice.
Hemp will not grow in the bayou, but rice will. Bringing silt down from the Mississippi River to build up islands and then planting rice upon them will help secure the ground against bad weather. It will protect New Orleans from storms and the new industry will be a source of income to the state, from farming to biodiesel sales. This income will help offset the cost of coastal restoration.
If America does nothing, there will be no swampland to protect New Orleans and Southern Louisiana from the next Category 5 storm. It's coming. Between 20 and 40 square miles of coastal land is lost each year. For every 2.7 miles of wetlands between the Gulf and solid land, a hurricane's storm surge is lowered by one foot. My plan will add 20 times that much land every year, "more than offsetting" the Gulf's take. We can stop the loss of coastal Louisiana but we must start restoring these lands now. The America I see in my dreams is vibrant and hard-working, where New Orleans and Southern Louisiana are alive and profitable for a thousand years.
The cost of the Iraq War:
One month at war in Iraq would pay in its entirety the greatest public works project ever undertaken by mankind. It would create new deltas in coastal Louisiana, saving the City and the Port of New Orleans.
I ask you, fellow Americans, what is a better return on your money; never-ending war or saving an American treasure in energy, agriculture, fishing, shipping and history?
Parks and Bridges:
The government will institute a program to update, upgrade and repair all facilities in every National Park, from roads to lavatories. The same program will set out to repair every major bridge in the nation as well as create a fund for states to use to upgrade smaller bridges to safely handle the traffic they currently hold.
In the America I see, communities rally together to create neighborhood parks in unused urban lands. Cities donate these empty spaces and forward-thinking corporations donate money and supplies. I will call upon America to make their neighborhoods cleaner and safer for themselves and for their children.
Billboards:
I have a vision for America. What I see isn't billboards a hundred feet high alongside a city freeway. In the America I dream of, there are no billboards. No more hideous exclamations for more excess at the expense of the view of a particularly beautiful skyline or a sunrise. Billboards
will be outlawed. Only outlaws will have billboards. Ever been to Honolulu? There are no billboards. It matters. I will press the states to only allow billboards from corporations who donate at least 15% of their local net profit to art and literacy programs in the community where a billboard is placed. None for cigarettes, drugs or alcohol.
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If you have something to add, please email me at
. Let me know what concerns you.
I promise you will receive a personal response and that your opinion will make my bid for President of the United States a more inclusive candidacy than any out-of-touch multi-millionaire opponent and his corporate conglomerate backers could pay to fabricate. |
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