Ten years

From our September 1973 editorial:

"We are disturbed by many signs of the times:

"Science and technology have become dirty words among parts of the young generation. So has the word business.

"The welfare budget for New York State alone is now bigger than the entire budget of NASA.

"Vast riches of oil in the US lie unexplored and untapped, while ever increasing amounts (already 25% of the total consumption) are being imported from unstable sheikdoms in the Middle East, making the US ever more vulnerable to political blackmail." [This, allow us to boast, was written more than two months before the Arab oil embargo.)

"Construction of modern, clean and safe electric power plants is being held up by environmentalist litigations while fossil-burning plants pollute the air...

"This newsletter knows where it stands. On matters of energy, this is our credo:

"The energy potentially available to us is for all practical purposes unlimited; but access to it is blocked. It is blocked, above all, by anti-technology sentiment, environmental paranoia, and interference in natural markets. Beyond these obstacles, there is little that science and technology cannot eventually overcome. We further believe that pollution and destruction of the environment are not essential by-products of technology; on the contrary, more science and better technology are needed to keep the environment clean."

In ten years, our credo has not changed. Nor, unfortunately, have the symptoms: The NYS welfare budget, as behooves any genuine cancer cell, has burgeoned, while the NASA budget has shrunk. But if we have not cured these sores, we have at least helped to make them a little more visible.

Our 1973 editorial continues:

"We are fiercely independent; we are beholden to nobody. We accept no advertising, no contributions, no subsidies, no charity. We accept only your subscription. If we do not provide the facts, you will not subscribe, and we will fold. It's that simple."

Well, we haven't folded. We celebrate our tenth anniversary, as you will see from the flyer enclosed with this issue, with the good wishes of the leading spokesmen of the healthy America, including Edward Teller and Ronald Reagan.

We have kept our pledge: we have accepted no advertising, and we have rejected, with thanks, the contributions offered us on several occasions. There is one thing more grotesque than a 200 HP Cadillac with a Go Solar Now bumpersticker, and that is a free marketeer who panhandles to promote the free market.

For the welfare bums do not just sit in the Government Departments for Alternative Lifestyles Among the Underprivileged; they also sit in the Washington mail order kitchens sending you pro-nuclear, pro-defense and other conservative mailings with phony opinion polls and other crude tricks designed to make you return their postage-prepaid envelope with a cash contribution.

On our tenth anniversary, we are above all proud of our subscribers: superior people who cherish the supreme value of truth.