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Alt-fuel stations growing, without subsidies or regulations

Without much fanfare, the number of fueling stations offering an alternative to gasoline has passed the 20,000 mark, according to the federal government’s Clean Cities program. The number of gasoline fueling stations, according to the American Petroleum Institute, is 153,000.

The figure shows that alternative infrastructure is gaining ground even as the number of alternative vehicles sold in the U.S. has slowed of late, an obvious result of falling oil prices. On the other hand, the sale of alternative vehicles has actually accelerated in Europe. China is also giving indications of a big push that will attempt to make it the leading market of alternative vehicles in the world.

Clean Cities is a 1993 initiative of the Department of Energy that has picked up steam in recent years. Its efforts to reduce gasoline consumption include 1) replacing petroleum with alternative and renewable fuels; 2) reducing petroleum consumption through smarter driving practices and fuel economy improvements; and 3) eliminating petroleum use through idle reduction and other fuel-saving technologies and practices. The goal is to reduce gasoline consumption by 2.5 billion gallons every year through 2020. The program claims to have already reduced consumption by 6 billion gallons since its inaugural.

In order to carry out its mission, Clean Cities has formed coalitions with nearly 100 major cities covering 82 percent of the population of the United States. Coalitions are comprised of local businesses, fuel providers, vehicle fleets, state and local government agencies, and community organizations. These stakeholders come together to share information and resources, educate the public, help craft public policy, and collaborate on projects that reduce petroleum use. There are networking opportunities with fleets and industry partners, technical training workshops and webinars, plus information on alternative fuels, advanced vehicles, idle reduction, and other technologies that reduce petroleum use. There are also funding opportunities from the Department of Energy.

Probably Clean Cities’ biggest initiative, however, has been a map of alternative fueling stations across the country. The Station Locator has now grown to a list of 20,000. These include: 12,334 electric recharging stations, 3292 propane stations, 2,956 gas stations that offer E85 (up to 85 percent ethanol), 1,549 compressed natural gas (CNG) outlets, 729 biodiesel pumps, 115 liquid natural gas (LNG) outlets and 41 hydrogen stations.

Dennis Smith, director of the Clean Cities program, says that both plug-in electrics and propane vehicles are becoming increasingly popular. “Plug-in electric vehicle sales for consumers have passed more than 300,000 since they were introduced in 2010, and an increasing number of fleets are using propane,” he told AgriMarketing.com. The growth of these stations is most likely in response to a need from these drivers. In addition, both propane and EV stations are less expensive to purchase and install than those for many other fuels.” Smith also said that the number of CNG and LNG stations understates their impact, since they tend to service heavy-duty trucks along interstate highway routes.

While the sale of alternative vehicles may have leveled off of late in the United States, they are burgeoning in Europe, despite the drop in world oil prices. Alternative fuel vehicle registrations rose 17.4 percent across Europe in the second quarter of 2015, and 24.6 percent over the first half of the year. There are now nearly 300,000 registered vehicles, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association. The United Kingdom led the pack in major markets with an increase of 62.4 percent registrations in the second quarter. Norway led the entire continent, however, with 77 percent of all 11,614 newly registered vehicles being electrically powered. The country has offered huge incentives to alternative fuel owners as its oil production from the North Sea begins to taper off.

Meanwhile, in China, the Beijing city government is considering investing tens of billions in a plan to make the Middle Kingdom the world’s largest manufacturer of alternative vehicles. China now has 18,000 EVs on the road, 10,133 public passenger vehicles and 8,360 owned by individuals and organizations.

To cut down on traffic, Beijing has a unique system in which cars with certain license plate numbers are forbidden from being within the city’s fifth-ring road from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Monday through Friday. And it’s not automatic that a new car can receive a license plate. But electric vehicles are much easier to register and will be allowed to drive within the city at any hour, giving them a distinct advantage. BAIC, the principal maker of EVs, has become China’s largest automobile manufacturer, controlling 22.5 percent of the market.

So the initiative to cut down on imported oil is universal. In Europe, it comes from heavy-handed government subsidies and regulations. In China, it comes from government favoritism and outright prohibition. In the U.S., however, volunteer organizations, led by government initiative, seem to be achieving similar results.

Why aren’t we using methanol?

The more you look at the contemporary scene with gasoline and imported oil, the more you have to wonder why we’re not switching some of our fuel needs to methanol.

Look at what’s happening: Oil has become so plentiful that we’re reverting to the old situation of the 1950s, when the big concern among oil people was that some new discovery was going to be made in some far corner of the world and there would be a new “glut” that would cause the bottom to fall out of the market. It was during this era that we placed a 20 percent cap on our oil imports. The concern was that there was so much cheap oil in the world that the American oil industry would be decimated.

All that changed in 1970 when American production finally leveled off — right about the time geoscientist M. King Hubbert had predicted “Hubbert’s Peak” would occur. The import ban proved easy to circumvent, and before we knew, it we were importing 36 percent of our oil, most of it from the Persian Gulf. OPEC, first convened in Baghdad by Saddam Hussein in 1960, suddenly became more than a debating society and realized it had real market leverage. Instead of begging the oil companies for higher royalties, the OPEC nations suddenly realized they could raise their price and even withhold supplies. The era of the Energy Crisis had begun.

Congress did all the wrong things in responding. It extended President Nixon’s price controls on one commodity, oil, creating a domestic shortage — too much consumption, not enough production. We made up for this by importing more oil, in which the price controls didn’t apply. While President Carter mandated a “moral equivalent of war” and wore cardigan sweaters, the price controls had the exact opposite effect: Our imports swelled from 36 percent to 50 percent in 1980, and we were sitting ducks when the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War suddenly cut short supplies. The result was the Second Gas Shortage.

President Reagan put an end to all this by striking down the oil-price controls his first week in office. Drillers went wild in Texas, and the Saudis flooded the market in trying to maintain market share. Soon prices had collapsed back to 1972 levels, and the “oil shortage” was pretty much forgotten.

Meanwhile, similar developments were taking place in natural gas. This commodity had been subject to federal price controls since the 1930s. Basically, it was an attempt by the Northern consuming states to rob Texas and Louisiana of their natural resources. In 1977 we actually experienced a “natural gas shortage” that caused factories and schools all over the North to close down in mid-winter, while Texas and Louisiana were burning natural gas for electricity — then considered horribly wasteful — because the price controls did not apply intrastate. This “crisis” was solved more slowly as natural-gas price controls were not phased out until 1988. Once again, supplies gushed forth. (We did learn a lesson. Nobody has talked about price controls on oil and natural gas since.)

Even with the market freely operating, however, the natural supplies of both oil and natural gas seemed to be diminishing, so that by 2005 we were running short of gas and back to importing more than half our oil. Then George Mitchell’s fracking revolution began. Suddenly, America was the world’s leading producer and oil and gas were once again in abundance.

Yet as far as freeing ourselves from further dependence on foreign oil, the results have been disappointing. Even though we are again producing 10 million barrels of oil a day, we are still dependent on imports for 30 percent of our oil, about one-quarter of this from the Persian Gulf. Low prices have stimulated consumption. People are going back to buying bigger cars and our gasoline use is hitting new records. Sales of electric cars and other alternative vehicles have nearly collapsed. Whatever impulse there is toward conservation is highly dependent on price.

Anything that requires a new infrastructure — electric cars, hydrogen vehicles, compressed natural gas and propane — will have trouble getting beyond a niche market. It’s simply too troublesome and expensive to get people to convert. But corn ethanol and methanol both slot easily into our current system of gas pumps and can compete.

The trouble with corn ethanol is that we are rapidly exhausting the potential supplies. We now use 40 percent of the corn crop to replace 3 percent of our gasoline. Cellulosic ethanol may expand supplies, but it is still basically experimental.

That leaves one fuel that could potentially replace vast amounts of our imported oil — methanol made from natural gas. We have enough natural gas supplies from fracking to make this a game-changer.

The great irony is that China sees this opportunity and is already seizing it. The Chinese are busy constructing two huge methanol conversion plants in Texas and Louisiana in order to take advantage of the abundant supplies coming out of the region. The Chinese have a million methanol cars on the road and will be carrying these supplies back to China to power their growing transport sector.

Yet the EPA continues to refuse to allow methanol to be used in car engines, mainly because of the reputation earned as a poisonous “wood alcohol” during Prohibition.

As Anne Korin of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security once said: “I think methanol fares poorly in Washington precisely because it doesn’t need any subsidies or government assistance in making it economical. For that reason you have no big constituency behind it and no member of Congress crusading on its behalf.” The entire farm belt is working to support ethanol, but there is no “methanol state” or corresponding congressman working in its favor. For that reason it languishes.

For almost 50 years the Indianapolis 500 cars have run on methanol. Yet it is still forbidden in our commercial transport sector. Isn’t it time that somebody considered the general good and started crusading on behalf of methanol?

(Photo by Vivid Racing, posted to Flickr)

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Sacramento flex-fuel drivers, you can’t pass up this deal

We did some quick math here at Fuel Freedom Foundation, and we can say, without hesitation, that there are thousands of flex-fuel vehicles on the road in Sacramento and its environs.

Attention soccer moms in your GMC Yukons, and dads in your Chevy Silverados and Ford F-150s! This is a deal you can’t afford to miss.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, Aug. 12, five gas stations in the Sacramento area will sell E85 ethanol fuel for 85 cents a gallon, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. See what they did there? E85 all over the place!

Here are the five participating stations:

  • Shell: 5103 Fair Oaks Blvd., Carmichael, CA 95608
  • Shell: 730 29th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816
  • Shell: 3721 Truxel Road, Sacramento, CA 95834
  • Shell: 800 Ikea Court, West Sacramento, CA 95691
  • Oliver Gas: 1009 Oliver Road, Fairfield, CA 94534

Our friends at San Diego-based Pearson Fuels are sponsoring the promo. The five stations are the newest outlets for E85 in a network that spans California. (We wrote about Pearson and its business model a couple months back.) Check out Pearson’s release for more information.

There are some 1 million flex-fuel vehicles in California, built to run on E85, a cheaper, cleaner-burning fuel than gasoline that also emits fewer toxic pollutants that foul the air and fewer greenhouse-gas emissions that warm the planet. Since there are about 2.1 million people living in the Sacramento metro area, 5.4 percent of the state’s population, we can extrapolate that there are roughly 54,000 FFVs in the area.

So get thee to the pump, and tell your FFV-driving friends!

Even after Wednesday, when E85 resets to its usual price, consumers will still see a benefit. It’s usually 25 to 30 percent cheaper than regular 87 octane.

Even if you don’t own an FFV, you can enter our contest to raise awareness about the benefits of E85. You could win a $50 Amazon gift card!

Support fuel choice for a chance to win a $50 gift card

Pearson Fuels is a big believer in the power of drivers like you choosing better alternatives, and they’re celebrating new contracts with five stations in the Sacramento area by offering E85 for 85 cents per gallon on Wednesday August 12 from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

If you have a flex-fuel vehicle, you can save big by filling up at one of the Pearson-affiliated stations listed below.

Even if you don’t have an FFV, you can still enter our contest to help raise awareness about the need for more alternative fuel stations.

It’s easy. While you’re at the station, snap a photo of yourself at the pump and post it on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook along with the hashtag #flexfuel4all for a chance to win a $50 gift card from Amazon.

PearsonGreg

The participating stations are:

  • Shell: 5103 Fair Oaks Blvd., Carmichael, CA 95608
  • Shell: 730 29th Street, Sacramento, CA 95816
  • Shell: 3721 Truxel Road, Sacramento, CA 95834
  • Shell: 800 Ikea Court, West Sacramento, CA 95691
  • Oliver Gas: 1009 Oliver Road, Fairfield, CA 94534

Full contest rules here.

Good luck!

Rauch smacks down ‘corrosive’ argument about ethanol

One of the most often-repeated attacks on ethanol we hear is that “It hurts my engine.” We hear it from people who buy into the oil companies’ misinformation; from people who are (reasonably) concerned about using a new fuel type after 100 years of using the same gasoline tank after tank; and even from car people who insist that it’s the small portion of ethanol — not the dirtier gasoline — that is responsible for engine deposits and wear on fuel systems.

Here’s the truth: Some older vehicles should not use any ethanol blend above E10, which is up to 10 percent ethanol and what virtually all of us use as regular gasoline. Higher ethanol blends also aren’t approved for motorcycles, boats and yard equipment. But E15 is approved for all vehicles model year 2001 and newer, and there are more than 17 million cars, trucks and SUVs on the road in the U.S. that are flex-fuel vehicles — built to run on E85, which is between 51 percent and 83 percent ethanol.

What happens if a non-FFV uses E85? As many of our supporters on social media have noted, nothing. No engine damage, no corrosion of parts, no locusts descending, nothing bad at all. All that happens is that they pay less at the pump, and go to sleep at night knowing that they’ve made the world a tiny bit better place, because they’ve used an American-made fuel that emits fewer toxic pollutants than gasoline.

In a post last week on Green Car Reports, writer John Voelcker mentioned research promoted by the Urban Air Initiative showing that ethanol-free gasoline (E0) is more corrosive than E10. But Voelcker then takes a swipe at higher ethanol blends:

Ethanol in its purer forms, specifically E85, is long accepted as more corrosive to rubber and other engine components than gasoline.

That’s why carmakers have to develop “Flex-Fuel” engines specifically designed to withstand the effects of fuel that contains a majority of ethanol.

I e-mailed Voelcker’s post to Marc Rauch, executive vice president and co-editor of The Auto Channel (and one of the breakout stars of our 2014 documentary PUMP), and he called me right away. Weary over the persistent “corrosive” debate point, Rauch asked whether ethanol — which is also called ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol or “moonshine” — ate away at the plastic bottles that hold such booze at the liquor store. The answer is no.

“What people don’t get is, everything is corrosive,” he said. “You have to find a material that is not as susceptible to corrosion.”

Rauch then went to the comments section of the Green Car Reports post to elaborate:

Ethanol opponents trump up mythical ethanol mandate predictions and horrific false stories of ethanol-caused damage to frighten consumers. The boating community is a prime example. If boat owners want to hear some truthful comments about ethanol blends they should watch the Vernon Barfield ethanol boating videos on YouTube and listen to the Mercury Marine “Myths of Ethanol and Fuel Care” webinar from August 2011.

… In fact, water is corrosive; wind is corrosive; air is corrosive; gasoline is corrosive; solar rays are corrosive; moving parts are corrosive; human interaction with seating and flooring materials is corrosive.

The reality is that auto manufacturers have had to develop “specially designed” containers to hold water for automatic window washing. That’s right, if they used most metals to hold the water it would rust and/or corrode. Manufacturers had to develop “specially designed” coatings or parts to prevent chassis and fenders and bumpers from water corrosion. Manufacturers had to develop “specially designed” body paint and rubber to prevent solar corrosion. And, over the years auto manufacturers had to develop “specially designed” engine parts, rubber, and body paint that was resistant to the corrosive characteristics of gasoline and diesel.

In other words, if auto manufacturers had to make some alterations to accommodate ethanol, so what? It’s not even worth a serious discussion, and it certainly doesn’t befit a person like you who is supposed to know something about automobiles and industrial engineering.

There’s more good stuff there. Take a look.

If you’d like to see Rauch bat away that and other myths about ethanol one by one, or ask him a question yourself, he’s going to be taking part in a special Twitter conversation with @fuelfreedomnow on Wednesday at 12 noon. Follow the hashtag #FuelChat.

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Some drivers are blending their own ‘premium fuel’

This week I wrote about the sudden, inexplicable rise in gasoline prices in Southern California, and how much lower prices for E85 ethanol blend is.

E85 is meant to be used in flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs), or vehicles that have been converted from gasoline-only to run on higher ethanol blends. But we’ve been hearing from drivers around the country who use E85 even if they don’t have an FFV. Although E85 isn’t approved for these vehicles, some consumers, enticed by the many benefits of E85 — the price point, the fact that it’s cleaner and made in America — are happily using it anyway.

Older cars might not be able to use higher ethanol blends (what we call regular gas is E10, meaning it has up to 10 percent ethanol) and run efficiently. There’s a potential for damage to engine parts of some older cars. But some pro-ethanol drivers, especially those who own newer vehicles with sophisticated on-board diagnostics (OBD) computers, have reported no problems.

“Both of my gasoline vehicles use E85 and perform flawlessly,” Jeffrey Matthews of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, wrote in a comment to a lively FFF Facebook post this week. “And both pass the annual emissions test with flying colors.”

Cheryl Near, who with her husband Phil co-owns two fueling stations in Wichita, Kansas, that sell both E10 and E85, says some customers fill up with E85, regardless of their make and model.

“We had a lady that had an older model car, before 2001,” Near, who also appears with Phil in our documentary film PUMP, wrote on Facebook. “I went out to ask her if she knew that she was filling with E85. She told me that she did and that she loves it. Her son logged her mileage for her and they found that her car got BETTER gas mileage on E85. Our pumps are clearly marked so if I see somebody filling with E85 in a non FFV, I will go talk to them. They all know and choose to fill with E85.”

Of course, not everyone has easy access to a station that sells E85. (There are 2,639 such stations in the U.S., according to the Alternative Fuels Data Center’s locator, which you can access through our Fuels 101 section.) There needs to be more stations, that’s one of our goals as a foundation.

Even among those who can find the fuel, what if you wanted to use more ethanol than just puny E10, but weren’t prepared to go full bore with E85?

Some drivers “splash blend” E10 with E85; the sensors in the OBD can determine the properties of the fuel in the tank and adjust the oxygen intake accordingly.

“I use 30-50% E85 no problem,” Jason Fritsche wrote on Facebook.

John Brackett, an automotive engineer who also appears in PUMP, wrote in an e-mail: “Since most E85 actually tests as E70-75, and all other gasoline is E10, the blend is usually about E35-E40. This is a great way to make your own ‘premium fuel.’ ”

E85 is technically any concentration between 51 percent and 83 percent ethanol, depending on the season and the part of the country where it’s sold. Because ethanol has less energy content than pure gasoline, drivers might see anywhere from a 15 to 35 percent dropoff in mpg using E85 compared with E10. Which means you’d have to fill up an extra time every couple weeks.

To achieve a certain target level of ethanol blend, you can use one of several smartphone apps to perform the calculations: E85 Mix Calculator is available on both iTunes and the Google Play store for Android. Another is E85 Calculator on Google.

7 ways our oil addiction is hurting the economy

We spend billions of dollars every year on oil that could be spent on cleaner, cheaper, American-made fuels. The impact of this addiction can be seen throughout our economy in a cycle of job and money loss:

  1. AMERICAN JOBS: When oil prices fluctuate, all levels of the economy are affected. When businesses have to pay more to ship their products because of a spike in fuel prices, they have to cut those costs elsewhere, leading to job loss.
  2. RECESSIONS: Of the 11 recessions in the U.S. since World War II, 10 were preceded by an oil-price spike. By breaking our oil addiction and investing in fuel choice, we can break this cycle.
  3. RELIANCE ON IMPORTS: The U.S. imports about 40 percent of its oil, sending money abroad that could have helped our economy at home. Building up the domestic infrastructure of alternative fuels would spur economic activity, instead of siphoning away billions that flow overseas.
  4. HOUSING: High gas prices hit close to home. As gas prices rise, the value of homes farther away from big cities, according to economist Joe Cortright, begin to devalue as the cost of commuting rises.
  5. WALL STREET: In July 2008, the price of oil hit $147 a barrel, and two months later Wall Street followed suit. In one day, the DOW Jones Industrial Average fell 777 points, ushering in the financial crisis.
  6. FLUCTUATING PRICES:  When gas and oil costs go up, the cost of other products follows. Suddenly, consumers have to pay more for everyday goods that require gasoline or diesel to be shipped. And when we’re spending more on our everyday necessities, we’re spending less on other things we need — delaying big purchases.
  7. LIMITED CHOICES: With no other options (unless you’re driving a flex-fuel or an electric car), the fluctuation of gas prices leaves the average consumer a sitting duck — unable to pay the price, but unable to purchase any other fuel. That’s why bringing fuel choice to the pump is so important.

The U.S. is at the mercy of oil companies as prices fluctuate, impacting our economy, including day-to-day prices for consumers and the overall job market. It’s time to break this cycle of dependence by bringing fuel choice to the pump.

Join the movement: http://www.fuelfreedom.org/take-action/

Former Shell Oil chief: U.S. must become more oil independent

Just in time for the Fourth of July weekend: Our very own John Hofmeister speaking words of wisdom about the need for the United States to wean itself off oil as its dominant transportation fuel.

“It’s incumbent upon the United States of America to become more oil independent,” Hofmeister said at a security conference in Israel in June. “Because it still relies on nearly 7 million barrels a day of imports, and in a nation that uses 18 and a half to 19 million barrels of oil per day, the loss or the risk of 7 million barrels a day of imports puts that nation at about two-thirds of independence, and that’s not enough for the world’s largest economy.

“So there remains an interdependence, until the U.S. can find independence, and it has every right and every responsibility to pursue independence. As does every other nation.”

Watch Hofmeister’s full talk at the Herzliya Conference in Tel Aviv:

Hofmeister knows of what he speaks: He was the president of Shell Oil Co., the American subsidiary of oil giant Royal Dutch Shell, from 2005 to 2008. The author of “Why We Hate the Oil Companies” now travels the world talking about the need for alternatives to oil. He’s not only on the board of directors and advisors at Fuel Freedom, he founded a nonprofit called Citizens for Affordable Energy.

U.S. crude prices closed at $56.96 a barrel Wednesday, down $2.51 or 4 percent, the biggest one-day drop since April 8. Compare that to last summer, when the price was above $100. But the market remains volatile, and Hofmeister said having oil at an affordable price long-term is necessary for national security.

“If you’re not taking care of yourself, no one else will,” Hofmeister said.  “And so nations should look to their security — not just to their defense forces, but to their energy supplies — which in the United States, is why I’m almost entirely focused now on transitioning natural gas to transportation fuels, as well as biofuels, as well as electricity for transportation. Because the future of oil is simply limited. We’re not running out. It won’t disappear. But it simply won’t be available at this price for an indefinite future.”

Hofmeister expanded on another of his major themes: that natural gas, which is cheap and plentiful in the United States, could help the U.S. and other nations reduce oil consumption. Natural gas is used as a fuel in its gaseous, compressed form — as CNG and LNG — and it can also be processed into liquid alcohol fuel, ethanol or methanol.

“Over the next decade, nations like the United States, or like Israel, or like much of Europe if not the whole of Europe, that are not transitioning at least a third of their oil demand away from oil and toward natural gas will only look back in regret.”

(Photo credit: Poet Biorefining plant in Macon, Missouri. From FarmProgress.com)

Declare your independence from oil with Fuels 101

Fuel Freedom has something new this Fourth of July to help Americans declare their independence from oil and its monopoly on the U.S. transportation fuels market.

This week we launched Fuels 101, a set of tools you can use to learn about alternative fuels. The pages include:

  • Check Your Car. An interactive feature that allows you to determine whether your car, truck or SUV is a flex-fuel vehicle, and thus can run on any combination of gasoline and ethanol, up to E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline).
  • Fuel Types. A guide to the different transportation fuels, including ethanol and methanol. All facts, no myths.
  • Find a Fueling Station. We’re using the Alternative Fuels Data Center’s cool interactive map, which helps you find not only E85 stations, but CNG and others.

Consider Fuels 101 an introductory course in all the alternatives to fuel. Although they come from different sources (ethanol, for instance, can be made from a variety of starchy plants, not just corn) and are made in different ways, their commonality is that they burn cleaner than petroleum-based fuels, reducing toxic pollutants that befoul our air and water. Domestically produced fuels also create American jobs and strengthen our national security.

Give Fuels 101 a spin. Don’t worry, none of it will be on the final.

Fuels 101 is the kickstart to what we’re calling Fuel Freedom Month. Our goal is to raise awareness coast to coast about ways we can all help create a genuinely competitive fuels market for the first time in America.

To learn more about how you can help, visit our Take Action page. And while you’ve got some down time between barbecues and fireworks displays this weekend, watch our all-American documentary film, PUMP the Movie, starring Jason Bateman.

You can also get regular updates on social media by following Fuel Freedom’s Facebook page and Twitter feed. PUMP has cool content as well (it has an independent streak of its own), so check it out on Facebook and Twitter as well.

Happy Independence Day, America!

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