To the editor:

I both commend and second the “pertinent facts” submitted by Walt Hull and published in the March 22 Journal-World, an excellent summary of truths too few people know about, much less care about.

I’d like to add one more item of equal truth value to Hull’s list: a clip from an article in the March 22 Kansas City Star: “A statistical analysis of 36 years of monthly, inflation-adjusted prices and U.S. domestic oil production by the Associated Press shows no statistical correlation between how much oil comes out of U.S. wells and the price at the pump. If more domestic oil drilling worked as politicians say, you’d now be paying $2 a gallon for gasoline. Instead, you’re paying the highest prices ever for March.” (p. A7).  The simple truth is that the current status of stability vs. tensions in the Near and Middle East at any given time, compounded by speculation in the world oil market, influences prices at the pump many times more than any amount or lack of domestic U.S. production.

Hull did omit, however, the other side of the story about government “borrowing” from Social Security. It’s my understanding the Social Security law requires that taxpayers’ payments be invested to earn a return for the benefit of the taxpayers, but that same law permits such investments only in the safest possible vehicles in existence: i.e., U.S. government securities. So one man’s borrowing from Social Security is another man’s following the law in order to provide maximum protection for the taxpayers’ investments.