Open Letter to The Superintendent, Commandant of Cadets, and Dean at West Point

Date: 2021-06-08

Issue: Foreign Oil Addiction/Famine, The 4th Treason from West Point.

  1. The intent of this document is:
    1. Request actions to end foreign oil addiction and mitigate the coming Oil Famine.
    2. Document that eight Presidents called us to action to end for foreign oil addiction, a 1/3rd reduction in US consumption.
    3. Declare that subordinating the survival of America to foreign oil addiction is treason.
    4. Point to where you can research that oil is a finite resource and the oil-powered economy is collapsing. I have named this Oil Famine. 
    5. Document that the Constitution forbids the current Federal transportation monopoly and the foreign oil addiction that resulted from The Federal-Aid Highway Acts of 1916, …, 1956 (President Eisenhower), etc....
  1. Current state of Foreign Oil Addiction and the unfolding Oil Famine:
    1. Life requires energy. Less affordable energy, less life. (Disposable Energy).
    2. US oil imports are 6 million barrels per day (mb/d) with US production at 11 mb/d, 35%.
    3. US Oil Production has dropped by 2 million barrels per day in the last 15 months. Larger in scale than the 1973 Oil Embargo, this collapse has been hidden by the COVID demand drop. As the US economy tries to recover, it will run into this immediate crisis that is larger than the 1973 Oil Embargo. 
    4. Future US Oil Production is determined by the Rig Count - the number of rigs working to replace depleting oil wells. The Rig Count is 456. Approximately 1,000 rigs are needed to sustain US oil production. 
    5. The oil industry is in bankruptcy. Google "oil industry bankruptcy." If gas prices rise high enough to save the oil industry, it will be unaffordable by farmers, truckers, and vast numbers of ordinary Americans.
    6. Oil Famine, end of affordable oil, nearly occurred in Sept 2008. It was postponed by printing and borrowing $trillions against the value of the future labor of children.
    7. As US oil production drops, the value of the dollar may collapse and our ability to buy 6 million barrels of foreign oil a day may also collapse.
    8. Summary in the Joint Operating Environment with Forward by General Mattis. The Fracking Bubble delayed this assessment a decade.
  1. Presidents' Calls to Action to end foreign oil addiction (video link):
    1. President Obama, 2010, "For decades we have known that the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered..." [Foreign oil 49.2%]
    2. President W. Bush, 2006, “Keeping American competitive requires affordable energy. Here we have a serious problem. America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” [Foreign oil 59.9%]
    3. President Clinton, 1995, “The nation’s growing reliance on imports of oil…threatens the nation’s security…[we] will continue efforts to…enhance domestic energy production.” [Foreign oil 44.5%]
    4. President Bush, 1992, “There is no security for the United States in further dependence on foreign oil.” [Foreign oil 40.6%]
    5. President Reagan, 1981, “While conservation is worthy in itself, the best answer is to try to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest extent possible for our energy.” [Foreign oil  33.6%]
    6. President Carter, 1979, “This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our Nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our Nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.” [Foreign oil 43.1%]
    7. President Ford, 1975, “First, we must reduce oil imports by 1 million barrels per day by the end of this year and by 2 million barrels per day by the end of 1977. Second, we must end vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers by 1985.” [Foreign oil 35.8%]
    8. President Nixon, 1974, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need. We will hold our future in our hands alone.” [Foreign oil 30%]
    9. American soldiers have been buying time with blood to answer the calls to action of eight Presidents in perpetual oil-wars since 1991.
    10. West Point has done nothing substantial to exercise the self-discipline to be energy self-reliant. Examples:
      1. Cutting oil consumption by 1/3rd to within domestic production.
      2. Putting in a microgrid.
      3. Implementing the solution designed by cadets in 2011.
    11. West Point has done nothing substantial to honor the sacrifices of soldiers buying time with blood to end foreign oil addiction.
  1. West Point does a very poor job of teaching the Constitution:
    1. On our first day, we swore to defend that Constitution. This oath was more of a religious belief than of disciplined study of the Constitution's defects, strengths, and how to fulfill our oath.
    2. Thirty years after graduating, 2002, I patented solar-powered mobility networks to contribute to ending foreign oil addiction. It was at that time I ran in the Federal transportation monopoly blocking such innovation. This forced a deep study into how the courts declared the Federal communications monopoly unconstitutional. The plain text of the Constitution forbids the Federal Interstate Highways and the Civilization Killers created by Federal Infrastructure monopolies in energy and transportation. 
    3. Who eats lunch and who is lunch illustrates the violent nature of life. We grant governments sovereignty, a monopoly of violence, to minimize violence from war and crimes by coercing compliance with laws. Innovation is a compliance failure.
    4. The Constitution is an enumerated powers document. It limits coercion to allow liberty to innovate as clearly stated in the Federal mission statement, the Preamble, one mandate and one restriction:
      1. Mandated is to “provide” for the defense of liberty
      2. Restricted is to only “promote the general welfare”.
      3. Divided Sovereignty, divided the monopoly of violence between coercing two types of violence:
        1. Federal over issues of war and peace.
        2. States over issues of crimes and commercial disputes.
        3. People retaining all liberties not enumerated as sacrificed to obtain civil rights.
        4. The Preamble Divided Sovereignty is restated in Amendments 9, 10, and 14 of the Constitution.
    5. Federal taxing to build highways and canals beyond delivering letters in defense of free speech is forbidden:
      1. The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against the general government's transportation monopoly. To prevent rebuilding that path to war, states voted 8 to 3 on Sept 14, 1787, to forbid Federal taxing for highways and canals beyond "post Roads."
      2. Divided Sovereignty was clear to those ratifying the Constitution.
      3. 21 Presidential veto messages reinforce the clear text of the Constitution.
      4. Approximately 34 State Constitutions specifically forbid government monopolies.
    6. Liberty is denied by government monopolies, Federal Socialism. Liberty is the source of the “general welfare” as two aspects intertwine in a Darwinian crucible of creative destruction:
      1. Tolerance of disruptive minorities offering choices.
      2. Tolerance of the Wisdom of the Many sorting those choices in free markets and free speech.
    7. Federal infrastructure monopolies created a “needful majority” (Federalist #10), a Tyranny of the Majority willing to mortgage our children for $27 trillion more in Federal benefits than we are willing to pay in taxes. We tolerate Climate Change and resource depletion, depriving Posterity of Liberty and energy. 
  1. Treasons from West Point:
    1. Traitor to an enemy in war: Benedict Arnold
    2. Traitor to an oath and waging war on America: Robert E. Lee and the graduates who abandoned the Union to wage war against it in favor of slavery.
    3. Purposeful failure to defend the Constitutional obligation to defend Liberty for Posterity: Failure to integrate the officer corps after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments sacrificing the Liberty for the Posterity of formerly enslaved Americans to Jim Crow.
    4. Subordinating the survival of America to a foreign power and funding enemies to wage war on America: The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916 violates the Constitution's Preamble, "post Roads", and "No Preference" clauses, as well as the Preamble's restatement in Amendments 9 and 10. President Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 industrialized this violation to subordinate the survival of America to foreign oil addiction, funding terrorism with oil-dollars, mandating oil-wars since 1991, mortgaging children (Posterity) for $27 trillion to buy foreign oil, funding enemies to wage war with oil-dollars, risking Liberty for Posterity by tilting the balance of nature into Climate Change, and creating the unfolding Oil Famine. These defects are civilization killers.
  1. Requested Actions
    1. Adopt the 5X5 Standard as pending in the Massachusetts Legislature on military bases.
      1. Privately funded networks that are 5 times more efficient than government transport monopolies.
      2. Pay 5% of gross transportation revenues to use Public Ways.
      3. Regulated by the same standards as Disney’s monorail, ASTM F24.
    2. Implement Net Zero efforts at West Point as outlined by cadets in 2011, as needed by West Point’s Systems Engineering text, and discussed with Generals Jebb and Caslen on multiple occasions:
    3. I will take the personal obligation to raise the $120 million to build solar-powered mobility network and microgrid at West Point
    4. As background, I am a 1972 graduate. My US patent was filed in 2002 with the intent to end foreign oil addition:
      1. Networks of self-driving cars: “A method of controlling a transportation System for moving people, freight, and any combination thereof using a distributed network of intelligent devices without requiring the aid of a human driver.”
      2. Solar-powered mobility networks: “The method...providing...Solar and wind power generators integrated into the physical Structure of Said transportation System.”
      3. My invention improves on the Morgantown PRT, 1972. Congressional Study PB-244854, “Automated Guideway Transit, 1975” documents that Morgantown’s PRT is the solution to the hardships of the 1973 Oil Embargo and urban traffic congestion. It also documents that Federal regulations have blocked urban transportation innovation for “four to six decades.” Morgantown’s PRT has delivered 150 million passenger-miles with 2 minor injuries. In that same period, 1.8 million Americans died on the unconstitutional Federal highway monopoly, 1/3rd of a Holocaust.
      4. Similar systems being deployed by Elon Musk and Richard Barson. The digitization of transportation has already passed its tipping point.
      5. Red Bull TV documentary on the future of transportation.
      6. TEDx Atlanta presentation.
    5. Lead by example to end foreign oil addiction:
      1. By July 15, 2021, define oil consumption at West Point (including POVs).
      2. By Aug 15, 2021, cut oil consumption at West Point by 1/3rd (approximate zero foreign oil).
    6. Change the Army's Principles of War to meet the needs of a republic. As written by Von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, they are tailored for autocratic governments:
      1. Sustainability. The Army is dysfunctional without foreign oil to power its machines. To defend Liberty for Posterity requires we exercise self-discipline to be energy self-reliant. Solar-powered mobility is 10X less expensive than oil-powered mobility.
      2. Inclusive Institutions. The advantage republics have in competing with autocracies is the ability to excite voluntary contributions beyond what the state can extract by coercion. Inclusive Institutions maximize the number of individuals who are excited to contribute based on being a free, valued, and equal member of the society. The wagons of war are more effectively pulled by freemen who have much to lose than by slaves. Reference: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty and The Wisdom of Crowds.
      3. Introspection. In the 20th and 21st Centuries, the Army repeatedly engaged in wars that it failed to win. Von Clausewitz noted “Power is the will and ability to win applied to achieving an objective.”
        1. Without a declared and achievable objective, there is no power.
        2. Without the people rallying the “will to win” to a declared war, there is no power.
        3. Regardless of the valor and ability of soldiers, without the will to win and a clear objective, wars stalemate.
        4. West Point has failed to train cadets on the obligation to "resign in protest" if policymakers send the Army into a war without an achievable objective. Milgram compliance in institutions is natural. “Duty before career” is not natural and must be trained to be made a choice. By West Point training in this state, policymakers may be sobered to avoid undeclared wars:
        5. Instead of occupying Afghanistan, a 6-month 4 Division punitive raid might have expressed our outrage over 9/11 without the defects of a failed occupation.
        6. Instead of funding the 9/11 attacks with oil-dollars, we might have exercised the self-discipline to be energy self-reliant.
        7. Paths to War can take decades or centuries to build (Taxation without Representation, Slavery, Oil Famine). The Long Gray Line can guard the nation beyond the length of careers and lives by having each class, at each reunion, write history looking forward. Publish a "Premortem of the Paths to War" - An unclassified report to the citizens, from those no longer on active duty, about the risks/failures we see building paths to war. It is unlikely we will become better predictors of the future. But had we done this since 1802, we would have deep documentation of where introspection failed.
        8. Reference: How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, Great By Choice, and Good to Great

Background:

Syria provides a case study in Oil Famine. It is documented in an Open Letter to West Point Class of 1972 at our 45th Reunion. Referenced in this Letter are Dr. Hubbert (1956) and Admiral Rickover (1957) accurate estimate of US Peak Oil in 1970. As President Obama noted in 2010, "For decades we have known that the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered..."

America is facing Oil Famine -- our next domestic war. The facts are brutally simple. Life requires energy. Less affordable energy, less life. 

We can no longer avoid hardships, but we can mitigate the worst of them by changing our economic lifeblood from oil to ingenuity.