In his Oct. 6 letter, (“Kuster and Hassan have done nothing”), Dave Dewitt charges that President Joe Biden”has taken America from energy independence to relying on hostile foreign governments to send us low-grade oil.”
According to statistics from the U. S. Energy Information Administration, in 2021, “The resulting total net petroleum imports (imports minus exports) were about (minus) .06 million b/d in 2021, which means that the United States was a net petroleum exporter of 0.06 million b/d in 2021.” It’s not quite energy independence, but neither are we dependent on foreign oil.
Dewitt goes on to claim that America’s “most-beautiful and vibrant cities” are being turned into “war zones.” The only visible “American war zone” in the past two years was Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. As for actual statistics, the most-recent national crime report from the FBI (for those who still trust the FBI) for 2021 read: “The new report estimates an overall decline in violent crime by 1 percent from 2020, driven largely by reductions in the robbery rate, which declined by 8.9 percent. The agency also reported a 4.3 percent increase in homicides between 2020 and 2021.”
Yes, homicides did increase 4.3 percent, but the overall crime statistics themselves have leveled off or declined from the 30 percent increase after the onset of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020.
To take Dewitt’s final salvo, what will Don Bolduc and Bob Burns do to support our Constitutional rights? Will they protect a woman’s right to control her own body? Will they protect the right of all Americans to vote by absentee ballot just as our military personnel have always done? We may be sure that U.S. Rep. Ann Kuster and Sen. Maggie Hassan will defend those rights.
David Simpson
Rindge