I Know! Let's Drill on the Moon!

Eggheads and pundits are verbally sparring on a daily basis about the terrible BP oil fiasco. Each of them comes up with a new argument d’jour or a spiffy cleaned-up version of their former argument for the talk show they are on that night. Every one of them is missing the point. The Obama administration was quick to blame BP for the explosion. Of course, this is coming from the same Obama administration that awarded the same exact rig a “Safety Award for Excellence,” or SAFE, award. The award was given for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance.” Did Obama’s people actually inspect that particular ‘Deepwater Horizon’ rig before granting them the prestigious award, or did he simply ask his minions to put them in the spotlight for donating over one million dollars to his campaign? You know, you rub my back and I’ll rub yours… Who knows? It is all beside the point. The question we should be asking is; why the hell are we drilling fifty miles off the coast in a mile of water? Why would a private company pay six-hundred million dollars to purchase a rig that can drill at those depths? Right here in the good ‘ole U S of A, our federal government owns thirty percent of all land. Interestingly, a vast majority of that federally owned land is in the western half of our country. In fact, if you overlay a map of the super-massive continental oil deposits in the United States with the federally owned land, you will find a startling correlation. There are roughly two trillion barrels of recoverable oil in the Green River Valley Formation of Northwestern Colorado alone. Most experts claim that the United States has more continental oil than any other country in the world. The federal government owns that land, and they refuse to give ‘the people,’ who are supposed to decide such matters, the privilege to drill in this area. At current market rates, the two trillion barrels of recoverable oil, were it drilled, would be worth approximately $140,000,000,000,000, or one-hundred and forty trillion dollars. This money could certainly help an economy that has $109,000,000,000,000, or one-hundred and nine trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities. But it is illegal for BP to drill in the Green River Formation. So here we are. The federal government of the United States has forced companies to go fifty miles offshore and one mile under water to drill for oil that is in a basin which actually lies over six miles below sea-level. They must pay hundreds of millions, if not billions, simply to operate an oil rig in that location. For complying with these laws, they receive safety awards from the government. But what happens when it all goes wrong? God bless the families of the men and women whose lives were lost on that oil rig. I feel it is my responsibility as an American citizen to pose the suggestion that it is not entirely British Petroleum’s fault for operating in such difficult conditions. They were forced to do so. Now, instead of sailing every Naval ship we can spare into the Gulf of Mexico and cleaning the sea up to fix the problem they have helped create, the federal government is writing ex-post-facto laws to punish British Petroleum, who had no choice but to risk the lives of their employees on a daily basis due to the government restrictions placed on them. We already know that the United States is not a land ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ anymore. The House of Representatives represents the President now, not the people. On the day Obamacare was passed, RealClearPolitics showed that approximately 63% of Americans did not want the bill passed. The President told key ‘Blue-Dog Democrats’ that he would not campaign for them in the fall if they failed to pass the bill. Who did they listen to? Not the people. The ‘One.’ But if our voices are loud enough and our message is clear enough, maybe we, the people, can take back our Republic. There is a remarkably clear solution to the horrible debt crisis we are experiencing. It is right here in front of our collective faces: the people’s faces, that is. But industry cannot operate under the incredible tax burdens and administrative regulations of the Titanic bureaucracy that is the federal government. Remember, “When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”