Jim Stillman
Nevar
Mr. President, grab the chance to be great.
June 15th 2010 17:00
Our last several presidents, Democrat and Republican, have spoken about America’s “addiction to oil”. We use the stuff to fuel our inefficient gas guzzlers, buy military sized Hummers to drop the kids off at soccer practice or go to the supermarket to pick up a bottle of milk and complain when the price of gas increases and flirts with the $3 or $4 per gallon neighborhood.
Some 35 years ago, the United States had what we felt was a gas crisis. The oil producers (OPEC, remember them?) held the west, and the United States in particular, hostage. The producing countries turned the gas spigot off and on, at will, and we complained, and bitched; we did not, however, change our habits.
In the years that followed, more and more American foreign policy has been driven by our overwhelming thirst for oil. We cater to “friends” in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia and that country funds organization that attack us! Our alleged friends have an educational system that breeds hatred for the West and for most of the world! The Report by Freedom House is illustrative and worth study. [http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/48.pdf] These folks are not friends of Americans.
The Saudi educational system is founded on beliefs that we would consider abhorrent. From the Freedom House study, our “friends”,
continue to promote an ideology of hatred that teaches bigotry and deplores tolerance. These texts continue to instruct students to hold a dualistic worldview in which there exist two incompatible realms – one consisting of true believers in Islam, the believers in “monotheism” and the other the unbelievers – realms that can never coexist in peace. Students are being taught that Christians and Jews and other Muslims are “enemies” of the true believer, and to befriend and show respect only to other true believers, such as the Wahhabis. These Saudi state textbooks propound a belief that Christians and Jews and other unbelievers have united in a war against Islam that will ultimately end in the complete destruction of such Infidels. Like the statements of Osama bin Laden, they advance the belief that the Crusades never ended and continue today in various forms.
And these are our friends! These are the people some Americans consider the moral and ethical equivalent of Israel.
Saudi Arabia isn’t our only problem. In 2008 the United States imported oil from 10 countries currently on the State Department’s Travel Warning List, which lists countries that have “long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable.” These nations include, along with Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. Our reliance on oil from these countries could have serious implications for our national security, economy, and environment. We are placing our very welfare and that of our citizens in the hands of the “dangerous or unstable”!
In 1962, President John Kennedy delivered an inspirational speech. He set a 10-year goal of landing a man on the moon, a task that would demand great commitment.
In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, President Bush had an opportunity to mobilize the country in addressing terrorism. He could have started on the road of energy independence, could have demanded universal sacrifice and imposed a “patriot tax” to pay for the conflicts that were to come. Instead, President Bush adhered to the GOP philosophy of minimal taxes regardless of the circumstances, directed that a small minority, a relative handful of Americans, go to war; the rest of us were instructed to go shopping.
The collapse of the BP drilling platform, the explosion, fire and resulting catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given President Obama to seize an historical opportunity.
President Obama must grasp his “Kennedy moment”. The president should announce a determination to end dependence on foreign and domestic oil. He should tie this to research and development of alternative fuels. (Joan and I recently visited several islands in the Netherland Antilles. We noticed homes and developments powered by windmills where surplus electricity is sold back to the communities.) Just as John Kennedy spoke of metals and alloys that had not yet been invented, so Barack Obama must have the vision to imagine products and procedures that are yet to be designed.
This will not be done overnight; it will take a decade at least. But the point is that the process must be begun.
The development of alternative energy sources will not be cheap and one can be sure that Big Oil and many corporate interests will place roadblocks. How will the bill be paid? The President should call upon Congress to enact a “patriot” tax of $2.00 per gallon of fuel. This would make our price for gas not out of line with that paid by the rest of the world.
Of course there will be those who will accuse the President and his party of “tax and spend” liberals and attempt to frighten the electorate; many of the opposition will continue their empty slogan, “Drill, baby, drill” to which I would reply, “Spill, baby, spill.”
President Obama, to his credit, risked political capital in pushing for health care reform. He did that he felt was the right thing. He now must repeat the courage.
Some 35 years ago, the United States had what we felt was a gas crisis. The oil producers (OPEC, remember them?) held the west, and the United States in particular, hostage. The producing countries turned the gas spigot off and on, at will, and we complained, and bitched; we did not, however, change our habits.
In the years that followed, more and more American foreign policy has been driven by our overwhelming thirst for oil. We cater to “friends” in the Middle East, namely Saudi Arabia and that country funds organization that attack us! Our alleged friends have an educational system that breeds hatred for the West and for most of the world! The Report by Freedom House is illustrative and worth study. [http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/48.pdf] These folks are not friends of Americans.
The Saudi educational system is founded on beliefs that we would consider abhorrent. From the Freedom House study, our “friends”,
continue to promote an ideology of hatred that teaches bigotry and deplores tolerance. These texts continue to instruct students to hold a dualistic worldview in which there exist two incompatible realms – one consisting of true believers in Islam, the believers in “monotheism” and the other the unbelievers – realms that can never coexist in peace. Students are being taught that Christians and Jews and other Muslims are “enemies” of the true believer, and to befriend and show respect only to other true believers, such as the Wahhabis. These Saudi state textbooks propound a belief that Christians and Jews and other unbelievers have united in a war against Islam that will ultimately end in the complete destruction of such Infidels. Like the statements of Osama bin Laden, they advance the belief that the Crusades never ended and continue today in various forms.
Saudi Arabia isn’t our only problem. In 2008 the United States imported oil from 10 countries currently on the State Department’s Travel Warning List, which lists countries that have “long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable.” These nations include, along with Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Chad, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Pakistan and Syria. Our reliance on oil from these countries could have serious implications for our national security, economy, and environment. We are placing our very welfare and that of our citizens in the hands of the “dangerous or unstable”!
In 1962, President John Kennedy delivered an inspirational speech. He set a 10-year goal of landing a man on the moon, a task that would demand great commitment.
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
******To be sure, all this costs us all a good deal of money. This year's space budget is three times what it was in January 1961, and it is greater than the space budget of the previous eight years combined. That budget now stands at $5,400 million a year--a staggering sum, though somewhat less than we pay for cigarettes and cigars every year. Space expenditures will soon rise some more, from 40 cents per person per week to more than 50 cents a week for every man, woman and child in the United States, for we have given this program a high national priority--even though I realize that this is in some measure an act of faith and vision, for we do not now know what benefits await us. But if I were to say, my fellow citizens, that we shall send to the moon, 240,000 miles away from the control station in Houston, a giant rocket more than 300 feet tall, the length of this football field, made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented, capable of standing heat and stresses several times more than have ever been experienced, fitted together with a precision better than the finest watch, carrying all the equipment needed for propulsion, guidance, control, communications, food and survival, on an untried mission, to an unknown celestial body, and then return it safely to earth, re-entering the atmosphere at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour, causing heat about half that of the temperature of the sun--almost as hot as it is here today--and do all this, and do it right, and do it first before this decade is out--then we must be bold.
***** However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the Sixties.
***** However, I think we're going to do it, and I think that we must pay what needs to be paid. I don't think we ought to waste any money, but I think we ought to do the job. And this will be done in the decade of the Sixties.
In the immediate aftermath of the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York, President Bush had an opportunity to mobilize the country in addressing terrorism. He could have started on the road of energy independence, could have demanded universal sacrifice and imposed a “patriot tax” to pay for the conflicts that were to come. Instead, President Bush adhered to the GOP philosophy of minimal taxes regardless of the circumstances, directed that a small minority, a relative handful of Americans, go to war; the rest of us were instructed to go shopping.
The collapse of the BP drilling platform, the explosion, fire and resulting catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has given President Obama to seize an historical opportunity.
President Obama must grasp his “Kennedy moment”. The president should announce a determination to end dependence on foreign and domestic oil. He should tie this to research and development of alternative fuels. (Joan and I recently visited several islands in the Netherland Antilles. We noticed homes and developments powered by windmills where surplus electricity is sold back to the communities.) Just as John Kennedy spoke of metals and alloys that had not yet been invented, so Barack Obama must have the vision to imagine products and procedures that are yet to be designed.
This will not be done overnight; it will take a decade at least. But the point is that the process must be begun.
The development of alternative energy sources will not be cheap and one can be sure that Big Oil and many corporate interests will place roadblocks. How will the bill be paid? The President should call upon Congress to enact a “patriot” tax of $2.00 per gallon of fuel. This would make our price for gas not out of line with that paid by the rest of the world.
Of course there will be those who will accuse the President and his party of “tax and spend” liberals and attempt to frighten the electorate; many of the opposition will continue their empty slogan, “Drill, baby, drill” to which I would reply, “Spill, baby, spill.”
President Obama, to his credit, risked political capital in pushing for health care reform. He did that he felt was the right thing. He now must repeat the courage.
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Comment by RickB_GA
Out of curiosity, how do you think all those folks in their ultra high end coastal homes from Clearwater down through Sarasota are going to take to having a wind turbine on their beach? Somehow I suspect they are going to want the benefit but they are going to want the machine in someone elses back yard. I bet the environmentalist will have a fit also.
This Congress is going to be gone in 2010 and Obama will be close behind in 2012. The folks that work for a living and actually pay taxes are getting pretty well fed up with the shenanagans in Washington and temporarily taxpayers are still in the majority. Unfortunately I do not think this current administration is planning on leaving peacefully regardless of how the elections turn out.
And we still have to face a Lame Duck Congress after the 2010 elections. They can do a lot of damage in a very short period of time while they are doing whatever favors necessary to line up their millions of dollars per year jobs for the post Congress years. They all cannot become community organizers.
I do agree with the idea of wind farms if we can find a place to locate them that will satisfy the environmentalist. I would love to have solar panels on my roof and plan on investigating that possibility and I do not really care what the environmentalists think. I also think it is fine to drill in the Bakken Formation in North Dakota but the environmentalist have succeeded in blocking that. I wonder if they think the forcing of risky deep water drilling instead of a more controllable land based drilling was really worth it now? Obama's slow reaction to the BP spill is politically motivated to help him sell cap and trade. He did not have to risk any political capital, he sacraficed a few red states instead.
Comment by S.L.
The Political Brief
Jim, windmills are a great idea, they aren't going to work, though, as a replacement for oil. Solar panels, same thing. On a private scale, lots of us can make them work beautifully, unfortunately, they aren't adaptable to large scale operations. Also, you can't imagine all the things (that you use every day) which are made from oil or its bi-products.
It's easy for those of us who can afford an extra $2.00 for every gallon of gasoline to say what a great idea it is. But how about those who can barely afford to get to and from work now? An extra 2 bucks per gallon will do them nothing but harm. It reminds me of B.O. (B.S.) and his cavalier attitude about the cost of energy "necessarily skyrocket"ing. Didn't bother him a bit.
Didn't democrats used to be the party of the "little guy"? Boy, has that changed since the elitist-in-chief took over!
Comment by RickB_GA
Let us hope the people really in charge, whomever that might be, can get the job done for the gulf coast. Again, big government and the maze of conflicting beauracracies it produced has failed to do the job.
Lead, follow or get out of the way ... Obama is down to the last option and when the 2012 elections are over, let's hope he goes peaceably.