Does our government, now or in the future, get it when it comes to energy?

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Noticed the price of gasoline, lately? Of course you have. That begs the question: now what?

Will this almost cratering of the price at the pump end our fervor for energy independence?

Will this again cause us to take our eye off the prize, energy self-sufficiency?

Will this cause us to close our eyes to increased drilling off our shores as part of a long term, strategic energy plan?

Democrat leadership has proven themselves unalterably tone deaf on this issue. Our President-Elect has already made noises that he will revoke President Bush’s Executive Order lifting the executive ban on offshore drilling. Further, democrats demand a so-called “Windfall Profit Tax.” (I refer to it as “so-called” because any tax increase passed would just be passed along to and paid for by us…. The end user.)

Any energy strategy must include increased drilling.

Here locally, we see the impacts of failing to keep up our transportation infrastructure. And even when government begins to address the matter, they seem to allow personal and social beliefs to interfere with practical and cost-effective solutions to the issues confronting us.

Thus, we here locally are confronted with a colossal waste of $4 Billion scarce transportation dollars… all in the name of light rail. The completed project will do absolutely nothing to address either congestion or freight mobility. Besides safety, those two purposes should amount to the ONLY reasons for new construction.

I point to this sorry episode, which has already wasted $93 million on studies for a pre-ordained outcome (anyone breathing knew these clowns would only accept a new bridge with light rail; why play games that cost us $93 million wasted dollars to get us where everyone knew where we were going anyway?) as an indicator of how out of touch and genuinely foolish government can be when their true purpose is social engineering designed to enrich the very few at the expense of the very many.

Comprehensive energy policies must be based on what truly is; not on things planners wished were the reality of our situation.

Mr. Obama has an opportunity to govern in a realistic manner from the very start. NO energy source, petroleum-based or nuclear, should be off the table or rejected out of hand. Mr. Obama and the democrats must avoid the traps of the Kyoto Treaty and its economically crippling requirements that restrict developed economies for the furtherance of third-world economies, who will not be constrained to follow the same laws concerning pollution.

Can this wholly-unequipped and inexperienced man govern with vision? Or are the leftist philosophies that he used to hose the fringe-left, moveon.org-Kos element the philosophies that will rule the day?

Only time will tell. But I am not confident in the competence of either our current administration, nor the one that will replace it when it comes to this Nation’s energy future.
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