A dear relative, who I just love to pieces, passed along an e-mail to me today.  While the intent of the original is well-meaning, I really and truly feel that a lot of people today jump in with both feet before they think about what they are proposing.  Here’s my response –  

I just have to jump in and put in my $.02 worth: 

The “original” e-mail is from a “West Coast Friend” – think about that for a minute.  Does this original e-mail sound like something someone who has run a business would be suggesting, or something that some hippy-dippy tree-hugging trust fund baby who has never owned a business thought would be a groovy idea? 

And where, exactly, are these “other” companies located?  America?  Or in countries run by crazy despots and tin pot dictators?  (Hint: They ain’t here – environmentalist do-gooders made sure of that) 

We currently have a President who is in direct contempt of a FEDERAL (one of the co-equal branches of government that the “Constitutional Scholar” has apparently forgotten about since law school) Judge’s Order to start issuing permits to allow American companies to resume deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.  Mind you, foreign companies NEVER had to stop drilling in American waters; only American subsidiaries.  Ask the folks along the Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas Gulf Coast how well the families that depend on the oil business for their livelihoods are doing – especially in light of a president who says his “primary focus” is “jobs, jobs, jobs”.

We have hundreds of thousands of acres of untapped oil reserves just waiting to be drilled – on land owned by the Federal government – and nothing is being done because people who have never run a business want “us” to “do better” by the land.  They are willing to waste billions of dollars to start up industries – wind and solar, which have a proven track record of failure and waste – just to make themselves feel better. 

And the man who sits in the Oval Office admitted BEFORE HE WON THE ELECTION (a national interview, BTW) that converting to these systems would “necessarily” mean that gasoline would cost at least $4 a gallon, but ideally it would run around $7-$8 a gallon so that “we” would see the wisdom in using these technologies, and change over as quickly as possible.  Never mind that the infrastructure to support these industries isn’t in place – in these peoples’ minds, wishing will make it so. 

You want to see the price of gasoline go down?  Put pressure on your elected representatives to loosen up drilling regulations.  Light a fire under the media and tell them to DO.THEIR.F***ING.JOB and actually do some investigating and reporting, rather than spitting back out the talking points which are being spoon-fed them by the very people who created the problem in the first place.  Put pressure on your President to follow the rule of law instead of acting like he is above it.  He is supposed to set an example – the example he is setting right now is that the laws don’t apply to those in power.

I’ll continue to purchase gas that is drilled and refined in this country, if it’s all the same to you guys.  I’m not willing to give any more of my country away to foreign interests.  I’m not willing to send American jobs overseas when our economy is in such bad shape.  Those “big oil” boogeymen are scapegoats set up by those who don’t appear to have this country’s best interests at heart.

November, 2012 can’t get here fast enough…..