Travel, thank you for posting the names and addresses.

I have been off line for some time and would like to share what we have done to our house in the Mid Hudson Valley of NY.

We heat our water with Solar Power that we installed about 22 years ago when they were still given tax credits for this. President Reagan discontinued the tax credit.

We had our electric company analyze our house to improve its efficiency. Followed all there suggestions and have kept up with the latest technology to keep our house efficient. We have lived here for 30 years and our electric bill has not gone up during that time, in fact it has gone down.

We have a Prius which keeps our gasoline bill down and has been suggested we combine quite a few tasks each time we go into town. Town is 10 miles away and that is where we do all our shopping, medical lab is there and other places we need to go to.

Prius - The first time we got a Prius there was a tax credit, this year when we got another Prius there was no tax credit.

Heating - our house is extremely well insulated and our heating bill this year will be over $4,000. There are no tax credits to help us with the cost of installing any solar installation such as putting in a Trombe Wall or other alternative solar powered alternatives. Once again, under President Reagan tax credits were discontinued as well as many of the programs associated with using all forms of alternative energy and thus increasing our dependence on oil.

There is solar powered air conditioning for cars and houses - last time I checked the cost was quite prohibitive for us.

There are alternatives to drilling for more oil, all we need is affordable access to them. They have been around for decades. I will let you decide why there hasn't been more publicity about them.

Since I am on a roll - what worries me the most and gives me the most concern are all the people who in the past had to make decisions about medicine or food. Now they will have another major concern - heat. Our oil bill has nearly doubled this year and we have done what we can to keep this bill as low as possible.

HB