Petition For Adjustment On Water Bill: Fill & Download for Free

Insofar as people even know his name today, Buchanan is remembered as a man who watched passively as the nation slid into Civil War. But this characterization fails to appreciate just how consequential his presidency was.Follow me. We are going to navigate through some very turbulent waters.The year was 1856. The Kansas-Nebraska Act had been passed 2 years before, over the objections of the North, leading to the implosion of the Whig Party, as its Northern and Southern factions discovered that they were irreconcilably divided over the issue of slavery. The Republican Party was in the process of absorbing the Know-Nothings, and establishing its dominance in the North.James Buchanan was from Pennsylvania. He had defeated Stephen Douglas for the Democratic Party nomination. He ran on a platform of popular sovereignty, the idea that whether to allow slavery somewhere should be decided by the local population. Democrats denounced Republicans as a sectional party of extremists intent upon bringing about civil war.Republicans had nominated the Pathfinder: John C. Fremont. He had earned his nickname for having led several exploratory expeditions into the American West. During the Mexican War, stationed in California, he had without orders assisted American settlers in seizing the region and proclaiming independence from Mexico. He was also squarely on the side of the antislavery forces in Kansas. He had a lot of passionate supporters, especially among young people in the North. They paraded and chanted: "Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Men, Fremont!"In the South, most of the Whig Party had been absorbed into the Democratic Party. Southern Whigs fused with Know-Nothings to nominate former president Millard Fillmore. He would end up winning 22% of the popular vote, but only the state of Maryland.Democrats had a very effective strategy:Brand Republicans as extremists whose election would cause the South to secede. As Buchanan stated: “The Black Republicans must be, as they can be with justice, boldly assailed as disunionists and this charge must be reiterated again and again.”Appeal to the racism of the electorate. The term “Black Republican” was meant to imply that Republicans were for—gasp!—racial equality. Republicans were accused of wanting “to elevate the African race in this country to complete equality of political and economic condition with the white man.” In Indiana a parade of young women dressed in all-white was organized. One of their banners read: “Fathers, save us from nigger husbands!” A Democratic Party pamphlet said that Republicans had “a wild and fanatical sentimentality toward the black race.”It worked. Northerners decided that they wanted to abolish slavery less than they wanted to preserve the Union. And Buchanan won several states in the North.Buchanan had won. He would have to deal with the mess that was Kansas. He would do so largely by acquiescing to the wishes of his Southern caucus, who could read the map as well as anyone else and knew that he had only won because of Southern support.In 1856, Kansas was still bleeding. There was a two-to-one free-soiler majority. Popular sovereignty meant that the state would vote against slavery. A constitutional convention was to be called before the territory could be admitted as a state. A pro-slavery legislature had been elected in the early days, before the influx of Northern settlers. This legislature proceeded to rig the constitutional convention by entrusting pro-slavery sheriffs with registration and pro-slavery judges with certification. The convention bill also stipulated that the constitution drawn up by the convention would not need to be approved by a referendum before going into effect. Governor Geary had been appointed by then-president Pierce, and had started out as pro-slavery but was shocked by the explicitly anti-democratic nature of this process. He vetoed the bill. The legislature promptly overrode his veto. Appealing for support to the outgoing Pierce Administration but finding no support, he resigned in March 1857, on the day of James Buchanan’s inauguration.Buchanan appointed Robert Walker as governor. Walker was a Southerner who acknowledged that the free-soilers had a majority. He urged them to participate in the vote for the constitutional convention. The free-soilers, who saw this election as a farce, largely refused to participate. Pro-slavery delegates therefore won all the seats to the convention, which met in September 1857 and enacted, unsurprisingly, a pro-slavery constitution. Walker demanded that a referendum be held after the convention, which the pro-slavery forces opposed. He took his case to President Buchanan, who consulted his cabinet. All Southern cabinet-members were opposed to the referendum. Many Southerners again throughout the country threatened secession. Buchanan succumbed to the pressure. There would be no referendum.Before the constitutional convention met, another election for the state legislature was scheduled. There was clear evidence of ballot-stuffing on the part of Democrats when two districts with 130 voters reported more than 2800 ballots. Governor Walker threw out the excess ballots and confirmed a free-soiler victory. Southerners furiously accused him of cheating.At last the convention met in Lecompton, KS. They drafted a constitution that stated: “the right of property is before and higher than any constitutional sanction, and the right of the owner of a slave to such slave and its increase is the same and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever.”This was novel indeed. Popular sovereignty was no longer enough. The right to own slaves must be accepted as inviolable.Congress was controlled by Democrats, whose fortunes had rebounded with the 1856 election. The convention decided to petition for statehood with the constitution as drafted. Northern Democrats balked and demanded a referendum. So, the convention came up with a brilliant idea. Rather than submitting the whole constitution to the vagaries of the popular will, they would give voters two choices:Constitution as written with slavery.Constitution as written, without slavery.Only, even if voters chose the second option, “the right of property in slaves now in this Territory shall in no manner be interfered with.” That is, people who already had slaves in Kansas could keep them. Anti-slavery forces cried foul and named this the Great Swindle. What was clear to everyone on both sides is that once slavery was made legal for current slaves, nothing could stop any slave owner from bringing in additional slaves and stating that they had been there before the prohibition on the importation of new slaves.Surely, everyone knew that this was not fair. Surely, everyone could see that the popular will had been subverted. Surely, Mr. President, you will not accept such a fraud, will you? … will you?Stephen A. Douglas was not happy. Sure, he had been the man behind the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Sure, he was for appeasing the South in order to keep the Union together. Sure, he was for popular sovereignty. But this? This was a disgrace. Douglas warned that accepting this fraud would be fatal to Northern Democrats, but Buchanan had already agreed to accede to Southern demands.Free-soilers in Kansas boycotted the referendum. Instead, they held a rival constitutional convention and drafted an anti-slavery constitution. They held their own referendum, which was boycotted by pro-slavery settlers. Now, there were two rival constitutions.What would Southerners do? If you were a betting person, would you bet that they would threaten secession unless the pro-slavery constitution were adopted? If you did, you would be right!For Republicans, the choice was easy. They would oppose the Lecompton constitution. For Democrats, the fight threatened to destroy their party, as the 1854 fight had destroyed the Whigs. Southerners saw Douglas as a traitor. He had pretended to be their friend while it was convenient, but now he was showing what he had always been, an enemy of all things Southern.The Senate approved the measure, but there were enough Northern Democrats in the House to block its approval. Kansas would not be admitted as a slave state. Buchanan had another trick up his sleeve. Normally, states would be given a land grant upon admission to the Union. Buchanan decided to use a referendum on an adjustment to the size of this land grant to resubmit the Lecompton constitution to a referendum, with the stipulation that Kansas forfeit the right of admission to the Union for 2 years, should there be a no vote.Kansas voted no. The mini civil-war resumed. Pro-slavery border ruffians and anti-slavery Jayhawkers resumed their massacres and counter-massacres. Kansas resumed its bleeding. In 1859, a new constitutional convention would be called, dominated by free soilers. It would adopt an anti-slavery constitution, and Kansas would be admitted in early 1861 as a free state. By this time, several Southern states had declared secession.In 1857–1858, there was a financial panic. This is what we would call a recession or a depression. Many in the North decided that they wanted a two-pronged program:Higher tariffs to keep out foreign goods. This would enable local manufactures to increase their profitability and boost domestic employment with the proceeds.A program of land-grants:For settlers who wanted to move West and establish farms. This would help farmers who had lost money during the panic.For agricultural and mechanical universities. This would allow would-be farmers to learn how to improve the yields of their farms. It would also allow people to send their children to college.For the building of a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. This would give jobs to the unemployed and make it easier to travel to California.The South had no interest in any of this.Their economy imported finished goods and exported raw materials. They saw no benefit in making manufactured products more expensive for themselves.They saw the land-grants as benefiting primarily Northerners. It was primarily Northerners who would move West. You could count on them to oppose the expansion of slavery there. Southern literacy rates were lower. If colleges were established, there would primarily be filled by Northerners. And if a railroad was going to be built to the Pacific, then its Eastern terminus needed to be in the South!In 1858, Republicans were able to campaign against Democrats on these issues, on Kansas, and on the Dred Scott decision. Democrats lost their majority in the House. But when a homestead (land grant to settlers) act reached Buchanan’s desk, he vetoed it. Northerners did not have enough votes to overturn his veto, so all these measures would languish until the South seceded.But these measures were extremely popular in the North. By vetoing the homestead act, Buchanan was forfeiting the North to the Republican Party. It is not clear that any human being could have bridged the divide between Northern and Southern Democrats at this point, but he did not even try.The issue of what to do about slavery was a festering wound for the Democrats. As the 1860 election approached, their Northern and Southern wings were hopelessly divided. It was well known, even after the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, that even if slavery was legal de jure, a state or territory could in effect abolish it by refusing to enforce it. The South therefore supported a federal law that would enforce slavery even in territories where a majority of the population rejected it. The North found this idea revolting. When it came time to nominate a Democratic candidate for the 1860 election, the Northern wing would nominate Douglas and the Southern wing John C Breckinridge.This ensured that Republicans would win. The South was swept by a wave of mass hysteria. There were reports of Northerners coming south and starting slave insurrections. There were even reports of Yankees committing acts of rape and arson, all without substantiation. Southern secessionists were thrilled. They had been trying to push for secession for a generation. Finally, the rest of the South was with them. They announced, even before the election, that they would secede in case of a Republican victory.The North had heard threats of secession so many times at this point that they didn’t care. 4 years earlier, they had been cowed into voting for a Democratic president. They would not be browbeaten this time. If the South wanted a fight, the South was going to get a fight.It also did not help Democrats that the Buchanan administration was notoriously corrupt, embezzling public funds and directing them into the coffers of the Democratic Party. The Republicans would show their own venality once they achieved absolute power, but that was in the future. For now, all that mattered was that Republicans had never held the White House. And their criticisms of Democratic corruption stuck.The election came November and the Republican Party won, its opponents having failed to unite.A month later, South Carolina’s legislature voted for secession.Over January and February, it was quickly followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas.Buchanan started speaking out against secession in December 1860, in his final address to Congress. He did not accept a right to secession, which amounted to a right to anarchy. But, because a new president had already been elected, he did not feel it was his job to do anything very forceful. Besides, he did not believe the Federal government had any power “to coerce a State into submission which is attempting to withdraw.”William Henry Seward’s reply to this was brutal.The President has conclusively proved two things: (1) That no State has the right to secede unless it wishes to; and (2) that it is the President's duty to enforce the laws unless somebody opposes him."Comical as this was, there was little Republicans could do. Buchanan would remain president until March 1861. Southerners were already leaving Congress to join their own states. The new Congress that had been voted in would not meet until late 1861.And so the country waited with bated breath to see what Lincoln would do once in office.Buchanan tried to save the Union, as best he could. The South was threatening to secede, so he opted for appeasement. This appeasement worked for a time, but it led to a fracturing of the Democratic Party and ensured the election of a Republican to the White House. Perhaps he should have pushed back a bit more aggressively. But what if he had? Isn’t it possible that secession could have come in 1858 instead of 1860? And with a president who did not believe in war at the helm, it is likely that the South would have obtained a peaceful settlement. By 1860, secession would have been a fait accompli, and there was nothing the Republican Party could have done about it.So, perhaps we shouldn’t be too harsh on this man. He had not read the future history books. He did not know that the South would secede in spite of his best efforts. And with only a few months left in office, it is not entirely surprising that he opted against a military course of action. He was not a great leader, but he did what he thought was best to preserve peace. These were trying times, and most of us would have failed as well, had we been in his shoes.

You can use ethanol-free gas in any gasoline engine without any problems (other than octane level) since it’s the same gasoline that was sold before ethanol came into widespread use by replacing MTBE for adjusting octane levels. Refiners stopped using MTBE after a slew of lawsuits on how it made water in aquifers taste nasty when gasoline leaked out of underground storage tanks. Then some states started banning the sale of gas with MTBE so the refiners used ethanol instead since it was available in bulk as an alternative fuel subsidized by the Federal Government. The refiners petitioned the Federal Courts for relief of any liability from leaky storage tanks that weren’t under their control and were denied, so they dropped MTBE for ethanol since it was their only alternative octane adjuster at the time and being produced in sufficient amounts where there was enough for certain markets while the refiners got busy building new distilleries to produce more for the rest of the country.You’ll notice that ethanol-free gas is primarily sold were large bodies of water are present for use in marine engines. That’s because MTBE quickly evaporates when gasoline is spilled into water so doesn’t affect its taste. The EPA considers MTBE to be perfectly safe which is why it’s still used here and abroad. The forced switch to ethanol was a Godsend for farmers which had been struggling with low corn prices for several years. It got their books and local economies back into the black. The refiners rather use MTBE since they produce it at the refineries and can ship it and MTBE gasoline thru pipelines. Ethanol is highly corrosive so it’s transported in special tankers to fuel terminals where it’s stored in special tanks until being metered into the gasoline filling the tanker trailers. All that extra handling increases the cost of gas at the pump.

Your vehicle will run just fine on the ethanol-free gasoline since the computer will make adjustments for the extra power it’ll provide. That alky-free gasoline is the same stuff everyone was using when cities, counties and states began suing the refiners for adding the EPA mandated MTBE as a replacement for lead anti-knock compounds. The unleaded gas was seeping out of old underground storage tanks and entering underground aquifers where the trapped MTBE made the water taste real nasty. It didn’t make people sick so the EPA ordered that all underground storage tanks over a certain age had to be replaced by a certain date. That costs a lot of money so a huge number of small gas stations went out of business after emptying their tanks just before the deadline. Then some states began banning the sale of MTBE laced unleaded inside their state lines so the refiners began using ethanol in the gasoline sold in those while petitioning the Federal Government for relief from lawsuits over MTBE since the vast majority of the leaky tanks were owned by independent station operators that the refiners had no control over. The Feds refused to grant the refiners relief so the refiners decided it was in their best interest to replace MTBE with Ethanol since it was their only alternative octane adjuster that just happened to be available in sufficient amounts as an alternative fuel (Thanks to Jimmy Carter) to meet the demands in the states where MTBE was banned while additional distilleries were built and the infrastructure set in place so gas-a-hol could be sold nationwide. The EPA allowed the refiners to sell their unleaded with MTBE to marinas and gas stations near large bodies of water for use in marine engines since the MTBE would quickly evaporate if any unleaded spilled into the water.The refiners rather use MTBE because they can make it at the refinery and ship it thru the pipelines to the terminals where it’s stored in standard tanks. Ethanol is highly corrosive so must be shipped to terminals in special tankers then stored in special tanks. The refiners still produce plenty of MTBE which is used in the gasoline that’s exported to foreign countries.The states banning the sale of MTBE unleaded did the American farmer and their communities a real big favor since they had been struggling with low corn prices for years. Anyone here remember Willie Nelson’s Farm Aid concerts? Those ended after the refiners’ sudden need for ethanol drove up corn prices and farming communities started seeing money rolling in as distilleries were built then put into operation with the workers and farmers spending more at stores, auto and farm equipment dealerships.I drive a 1988 Chevy G30 van that has a 5.7L TBI with a TH400 and 4:11 rear end. Bought in 1994 with 84K on the OD and it got 15 mpg on the highway doing 55 mph using 87 octane MTBE unleaded and dropped to 14 mpg when 87 E10 replaced it. It stayed at 14 mpg until a couple years ago when the engine began experiencing lower performance with the mpgs dropping to 13. It got worse a year ago so I tried a tank of 89 E10 which did provide some improvement in performance and mpg but not enough to justify the higher fuel cost. I only use top-tier gas so went from Valero to Shell to Chevron to Phillips to Exxon only to get the same results. Thought that the engine was worn out after 300K of use then on a whim I got a bottle of STP Octane Booster while at Walmart and added that before filling the van’s tank to see if it had any effect during my 32 mile highway drive back home. I did notice a difference after traveling 5 miles and a big difference 10 miles later where the road became hilly since the engine had more power going uphill. It still ran a bit sluggish so I added two bottles of the STP product with the next fill-up which brought the engine back to life and raised the mpgs back to 15. Each bottle is supposed to add 3 octane points to 22 gallons of gas so I figured 2 bottles in the van’s 30 gallon tank turns 87 E10 into very expensive 92–93 premium for a cost of $7. I have no desire to try the ethanol-free gas in the van since it costs as much as the E10 premiums.