Dear Editor:

According to recovery.gov, the government website that provides data relative to last year's 787 billion dollar stimulus package, the fund had a balance of nearly 300 billion dollars as of July 16. No one would argue that one of the primary issues negatively affecting the U.S. economy is the high rate of unemployment. Our legislators need to get past the partisan bickering and mutually take up the challenge of facilitating the creation of jobs to replace those lost to technology and foreign labor.It's estimated that we import 65 percent of the oil we use in this country. Google search Abu-Dhabi or Dubai and you'll see images of the monuments the oil rich sheiks have been building to themselves in those places and others where our oil dollars are sent. Meanwhile, there are areas of our own country, Pensylvania among them, awash in natural gas. The technology for using compressed natural gas to power internal combustion engines has been available for decades.With a boost from the stimulus fund and some uncharacteristic bi-partisan cooperation the building and maintaining of an infrastructure to use nat gas as a motor fuel would create tens of thousands of jobs. Auto manufacturers would no doubt welcome the use of CNG in some of their vehicles as a means to help them achieve stricter emissions standards while retaining some larger and more profitable models. Electric powered cars are a great idea and they will eventually gain market share but, for now, there are some problems associated with their use. For example, there is the so called "accidental grid" that has been randomly expanded as needed over the previous hundred years causing as much as 50 percent of generated power to be lost through resistance in the transmission process.There are 746 watts per horsepower. Even the smallest gasoline powered car now requires the equivalent of 100 horsepower to provide adequate acceleration and speeds. In an environment where radio announcers ask us to adjust thermostats on summer days to prevent overloading the system it is unreasonable to expect that system to bear the additional gigawatt load of a few million charging auto batteries. Another opportunity for job creation in large numbers presents itself in the form of upgrading and replacing the existing electrical grid with a more organized and efficicient system. These are projects that could become reality if the people we've elected to lead could put the prosperity of their constituants above their disdain for their foes on the other side of the aisle.Joe KilleenJim Thorpe