In a Saturday, July 12, 2008 story, the Associated Press tells us that President Bush has “tried to pin the blame on Congress for soaring energy prices,” urging that Congress needs to lift long-standing restrictions on drilling for oil in ANWR and in the U.S. offshore, areas that are believed to contain huge reserves of oil and gas.
President Bush is quoted as saying, “It’s time for members of Congress to address the pain that high gas (sic) prices are causing our citizens… Every extra dollar that American families spend because of high gas (sic) prices is one less dollar they can use to put food on the table or send a child to college. The American people deserve better.”
He didn’t say, as he should have, that, “it is time for Democrats to stop blocking development of domestic energy supplies.” One could infer from what he said that Republicans and Democrats are equally to blame.
The AP went on to say, “With gasoline prices above $4 a gallon, Bush and his Republican allies think Americans are less reluctant to allow drilling offshore and in an Alaska
wildlife refuge that environmentalists have fought successfully for decades to protect… Nearly half the people surveyed by the Pew Research Center in late June said they now consider energy exploration and drilling more important than conservation, compared with a little over a third who felt that way only five months ago. The sharpest shift in attitude came among (surprise, surprise) political liberals.”
Pardon me, but I’ve been under the impression for some sixty-five years now that the Founding Fathers gave us a republic for a reason. Aren’t members of Congress elected to do what is in the national interest, even though some of the things they do may be unpopular in some quarters? In a republic, our elected officials are supposed to make good decisions on their own, without our coaching, and then be in a position to defend them at the ballot box.
It might be expected that men and women elected under the banner of the Democrat Party might be inclined to legislate as if we are a democracy… as if decisions should be made by a majority vote of the people, most of them dreadfully uninformed. As we know from many years of painful experience, that’s precisely how Democrats govern.
Conversely, one might think that men and women elected under the banner of the Republican Party might actually try to govern as republicans… but that’s not the case. Most Republicans in Congress are every bit as attuned to public opinion polls as their Democrat counterparts.
This president went into office thinking, naively, that he could work with Democrats in DC as he had in Austin, which makes him nearly eight years late in telling the people who’s to blame for high energy prices, while his Republican colleagues in Congress are about thirty-five years late.
They apparently labor under the misapprehension that it might be in the best interests of the people for them to be indistinguishable from Democrats. The people may not have gasoline for their cars or heating oil for their homes, but everyone should be happy because the bad decisions that created all that misery have at least been made “democratically.”
Unfortunately, the decision not to drill in ANWR and in the offshore regions was made because environmentalists feared, wrongly, that offshore drilling would despoil our beaches. Democrats traded away economic security and energy independence in exchange for environmentalist votes and campaign cash, while Republicans were afraid to challenge them for fear of being branded as “anti-environment.”
A comprehensive Smithsonian Institution presentation, titled “Ocean Planet,” tells us that oil pollution in the oceans comes from a variety of sources. And while radical environmentalists would have us believe that the greatest threat to our beaches comes from offshore drilling, the exact opposite is true. By far the greatest amount of oil pollution in our oceans comes from discarded engine oil. When Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have the oil changed in their SUVs, some of that used oil ends up in our oceans. The Smithsonian study tells us that 59.1% of beach pollution, some 363,000,000 gallons per year, comes from that source.
Routine maintenance on ocean-going vessels accounts for another 137,000,000 gallons per year (22.3%), natural seeps from fissures in the ocean floor account for some 62,000,000 gallons per year (10.1%), major oil-handling mishaps account for approximately 37,000,000 gallons (6.0%), and spills related to offshore oil production account for some 15,000,000 gallons per year, or just slightly more than 2.4% of the total.
According to the Minerals Management Service (MMS) of the U.S. Department of the Interior, a single seepage area in the Santa Barbara Channel accounts for as much as 160 barrels (6,720 gallons) per day. Yet, as Barbra Streisand and her liberal pals parade up and down the beaches, getting sticky globs of tar on their toes, the first thing they do is call their congressmen to insist that they vote against offshore drilling.
The MMS tells us that, since 1980, oil companies have produced some 4,700,000,000 barrels of oil in the U.S. outer continental shelf. And in spite of the presence of more than 3,900 offshore production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, there has not been a single spill larger than 1,000 barrels in the past 15 years.
Those are the facts. One might have expected that three successive Republican presidents and four Republican-led congresses might have gotten a bit of truth through to the people… but they didn’t. They waited around until the Democrats’ anti-energy policies caused some real economic pain before they allowed the people to get out front and lead, while they fell in behind.
