OPINION:
President Obama’s Oval Office address to the nation was little more than what has become meaningless “O-blah-blah-blah-ma” talk - this time promoting the administration’s “never let a crisis go to waste” mantra to further his economy-busting green-energy plan by telling us to alter our ways. Yet he is exacerbating the Gulf oil-leak crisis.
Mr. Obama said nothing about waiving the Jones Act to attract all the outside help we can get to clean up and control the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. And nothing was Nor did he say anything about using the underground nuclear option the Russians have used to seal similar uncontrolled gushers. The intention appears to be to demonize BP and big oil while riding out the growing calamity on environmental rhetoric and saddling the nation with energy legislation and the regulatory whip of the Environmental Protection Agency.
If the president and Congress blindly pursue green energy at the expense of suppressed domestic oil production and refineries, our reliance on imported oil - which has doubled from 30 percent of our total supply in 1972 to 60 percent today - will continue to increase along with the price of gas. Indeed, instead of calling on the nation to alter its ways, President Obama must alter his, lest we all suffer the long-term consequences.
DANIEL B. JEFFS
Apple Valley, Calif.
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