Seals the Stuntman

After his gas pump stunt to try to buy votes snarled traffic, candidate for the 10th congressional Dan Seals owes the Lincolnshire police and nearby residents an apology.

And apparently he blindly continues to blame Rep. Mark Kirk for high gas prices, sending some email around which ignores the facts (kind of a habit of his):

Chicago and Cook County are gouging us through high gas taxes--10 levels of taxation, which CBS2 has documented.

Price gouging charges are a red herring, never found. Even sweet Lisa Madigan was unable to find evidence of it.

Democrats are blocking a sound energy policy for this country and have been for years! We need to increase domestic supply to bring the prices down, but Democrats have declared vast areas off limits for exploration. WSJ:

"The problem of access can be solved in this country by the same government that has prohibited it," said Shell's head of U.S. operations, John Hofmeister. "Congress could provide national policy to reverse the persistent decline of domestically secure natural resource development," and should set a goal of producing an additional two million to three million barrels a day with additional access, he said.

"If we did this, it would be unnecessary for our national leaders to ask the rulers of other sovereign nations to produce more oil for U.S. consumers and risk the discomfort of an unresponsive reply," Mr. Hofmeister told the committee.

If Congress did act to increase access -- particularly in the Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge -- the executives said, that could help reverse the upward trend for long-dated futures contracts.

It's incredibly frustrating, and other countries are taking advantage of us!!! NRO:

We’re not just talking about the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) — which Congress stupidly keeps off-limits even though proposed oil exploration there would only affect approximately 2,000 of its 19 million acres — though opening just that 0.01 percent of ANWR to oil and natural gas development could supply 5 percent of America’s oil per year for 12 years before it starts to decline, according to Energy Department estimates. The Outer Continental Shelf — also off-limits to drilling — likely contains billions of barrels of additional oil and natural gas reserves. While Fidel Castro’s Cuba saw no compunction about leasing its share of these waters to the Chinese, the U.S. continues to forbid oil and natural gas exploration in its share.

Drilling in ANWR would be a surgical endeavor--like a laparascopy through a belly button on an area of land the size of a golf course. It's ridiculous not to drill there--even the locals are in favor! And think about the destructive force of Katrina-- which caused short-term supply disruptions, but also note that offshore platforms, while sustaining minor damage, were essentially unscathed, capped off in advance so no oil was spilled.

We also have not built a new refinery in over 30 years--no wonder there are bottlenecks when aging refineries are under repair. We also have boutique gas mandates for Chicago which raise the price and scarcity of gasoline, but do little for air quality

--all these mandates are OUTDATED, COSTLY and COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.

Alternative energy is pie in the sky. The only medium term solution is to go nuclear. And we need to dump ethanol for good.

Does Dan Seals give us any real solutions? No, of course not. More at Flying Debris. He's just another Democrat demagogue making us pay through the nose for less. And looking for us to pay his salary. I can't imagine Northwestern will hire him on fulltime.

And what's with the mysterious envelope from ex-felon Dem Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, hmm?

"It's another week and we have more questions regarding Dan Seals and his ability to make sound judgments," said Illinois Republican Party spokesperson Lance Trover. "Dan Seals needs to address the troubling questions surrounding his accepting a questionable envelope from a convicted felon in front of his students."

Seals, who was hired as an instructor to facilitate ten night school classes this spring at Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies, invited Rostenkowski to teach students last Tuesday night. According to students in the class, after Rostenkowski's presentation, the convicted felon handed Seals an envelope and said he hoped the contents would help Seals' campaign.

Rostenkowski served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee before his 1994 indictment on federal corruption charges for his key role in the House post office scandal. Charges against Rostenkowski included keeping "ghost" employees on his payroll, using Congressional funds to buy gifts such as chairs and ashtrays for friends, and trading in officially purchased stamps for cash at the House post office. In 1996, he pleaded guilty to reduced charges of mail fraud and served 15 months of a 17-month sentence

"Dan Seals, along with his political stunts and questionable fund raising practices, is more of the Rod Blagojevich style of politics that we simply do not need in this state," added Trover.