Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, Aug. 8, 2008.

Did you call the president like I told you? I know some of you did because you called the station and asked again for the number. Get a pen and paper because I’m going to give the number out again.

If you missed last week, I urged everyone to call the White House and urge the president to exercise his constitutional authority to call the Congress back to Washington from the August recess and put them to work on, among other things, debating and voting on legislation aimed at increasing domestic supplies of energy and thus giving all of us some relief from the crippling price we’re paying at the pump and elsewhere.

I said all of this last Friday during this very slot. What I did not know while we were on the air was that the subject of energy was in the process of coming to a head on the House floor at very nearly that same moment.

A significant number of Democrats have crossed the aisle and are joining Republicans in support of a piece of legislation called the “American Energy Act.” According to its proponents in Congress it’s a kind of an “all-of-the-above” bill aimed at increasing domestic oil drilling, increasing funding for research on alternative energies and providing common-sense initiatives regarding conservation.

Democrats are crossing the aisle to support the bill because they have ears and they want to keep their jobs. And with their ears they’re hearing loud and clear from their constituents that opposing drilling offshore and in ANWR and in the western shale was one thing when gas was $2.10 a gallon. It’s something entirely different as you approach four bucks.

So last Friday morning, the Republicans were gaining ground when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sensing that she couldn’t afford to allow a full day of discussion on the American Energy Act to take place in front of the C-SPAN cameras, abruptly adjourned the House, killed the C-SPAN feed and turned off the lights in the House chamber.

Here’s how it sounded. Click here to listen.

With that, Congress went on vacation.

Except not entirely. A group of Republicans has either remained in Washington or returned to Washington and they’re on the House floor every day, speaking to tour groups in the gallery and whatever media is in the chamber on the subject of America’s energy needs. About 20 or 25 are on hand on any given day. About a hundred in total have taken part. One of those who is back in Washington is Louie Gohmert, our congressman from Tyler.

I spoke with Louie yesterday and he tells me that the House gallery has been full of ordinary citizens who are openly expressing their appreciation of the fact that someone in Washington is willing to suffer the suffocating heat and forego a vacation to stay there to fight for them, however symbolic the fight may be.

Hats of to Louie and his colleagues.

This piece is not about energy per se. It’s about arrogance.

If Nancy Pelosi truly believes that her approach to our energy problems is the right one, she should welcome an open debate and an up or down vote. Debating and voting is what we pay Congress to do.

Instead, Nancy Pelosi turns off the lights. This is the woman who, upon being elected Speaker of the House, promised the most open Congress in history and stated her belief that generally, all bills should come to the floor for fair and open debate and with an amendment process that offers the minority the chance to offer alternatives.

Congressmen are supposed to do two things. Debate and vote. The Speaker of the House, on one of the most pressing issues in a generation, is allowing neither.

The president needs to call her out by exercising his authority to re-convene the Congress. The number to call to urge him to do so is 202-456-1111.

In a country of 300 million, one person can be safely ignored. But when we all speak at once, even the most arrogant of politicians has no choice but to listen.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, Aug. 1, 2008.

It’s August and if you think it’s hot and miserable here, you should go to Washington, D.C. If you’ve ever been in our nation’s capital in August you know. If you haven’t, take it from me it’s about the most miserable place in the country this time of year. Geographers can give you all of the reasons for Washington’s summer discomfort. I don’t really care about the particulars. Suffice to say that the heat and the humidity are stifling.

Here in East Texas the weather in August saps your strength. In Washington, the August weather saps your courage.

For this reason, since early in the 20^th century, Congress has observed the August Recess. The recess serves a number of purposes, the first and original being the escape from D.C.’s stifling misery but also so that members could return to their states and districts, meet with constituents, maybe take a vacation without having to miss a vote and, every two years, do a little campaigning.

I plan to take a little August recess in a couple of weeks and go somewhere with more pleasant weather myself. And toward that end, I’m already working ahead so that the things that are expected of me won’t go undone while I’m gone.

Not so your representatives. They’re going on vacation and coming home to ask you to rehire them for two or six more years having accomplished astonishingly little and having left at least two vitally important pieces of your business completely undone.

The first job the Congress has left undone is its most basic function - funding the government. For the first time in 60 years, which is to say for the first time in my life, the Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill by the August recess to keep the government running. Not one. Having not done so, they will return to work in September and have less than a month to debate and pass 12 spending bills.

Mark my words and watch what happens, Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Nancy Pelosi will stuff all 12 appropriations into a single spending bill, cram that bill full of pork and bad policy and waste and noxious politics and present it to President Bush on a take it-or leave it basis. The president can either sign the bill and in so doing enact laws he would otherwise veto or veto the entire bill and shut the government down on Oct. 1.

The second thing Congress has left undone is deal with the price you’re paying at the pump. The majority of the country now says that it’s time to drill offshore and in the Midwest shale and in ANWR. Reid and Pelosi will not allow a single bill that provides for such exploration to even come to the floor for debate. The president lifted the executive order that banned offshore drilling and the price of oil dropped that day. Imagine the impact on prices if the Congress removed the legislative ban and actual exploration began. The Democrats always say they’re out to help the poor and downtrodden. But it’s the poor who suffer disproportionately when it costs more than $60 to fill up the average-sized car.

When the majority of us tell our representatives we want something, it’s their job to deliver it. That’s why they’re called representatives.

So what are we going to do? I have an idea and I need you to get a pen and paper ready. I’m going to be giving you a phone number in just a minute.

Article 2, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the president the power to screw up our esteemed solons’ vacations. It says, in part, “…he may on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses or either of them…” Put simply, the president has the constitutional authority to order the Congress to return to Washington. Harry Truman, citing the do-nothing Republicans, did it in 1948, earning him the nickname of “Give ‘em Hell Harry.” Truman was expected to lose the election in 1948. But instead we’ve all seen the victorious Truman holding up the front page headline, “Dewey Defeats Truman.” Just like in 1948, calling the Congress back into session so that the members can do their jobs is good policy and good politics.

So here’s the number: 202-456-1414.

Call the White House and ask for the comment line and urge the president to call the Congress back to Washington. I’m not leaving for vacation until the work I have to get done is done.

Neither should Congress.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, July 25, 2008

At midnight Wednesday, base labor in America became worth 70 cents per hour more than it had been just one minute before. Just like that, an employee making $5.85 an hour began making $6.55 an hour, the new federal minimum wage. That’s an increase of twelve percent.

Wow! Isn’t that great? If you have employees earning the minimum wage, they’re worth more today than they were when you went to work on Wednesday. A twelve percent gain in productivity from those employees couldn’t come at a better time.

What gain in productivity?

Well, the gain in productivity that would certainly be the precursor to a significant increase in compensation. This is America. You don’t just get a raise. You have to earn it.

No, not necessarily.

The federal minimum wage has little to do with the market for labor. The federal minimum wage was born of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Minimum wage was political then. It’s political now.

Franklin Roosevelt promoted the Fair Labor Standards Act as a way of getting around the fact that it was impossible to unionize the entire country without running afoul of either the law or deeply held anti-union sentiment in many states. It was a purely political move. Trying to shove unionization down the throats of states such as Texas would have touched off a firestorm. The Fair Labor Standards Act was an end-around for the benefit of the labor unions that supported FDR.

For 70 years we’ve had minimum wage and it’s not going away. But it is important to understand that minimum wage is not set by those engaged in the buying and selling of labor. It is not set by an employer’s offer of work at a specified wage and a worker’s concurrent acceptance. Minimum wage is set by Congress. The same Congress that specifically exempts itself from most of the provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act that established minimum wage in the first place.

And every time Congress raises the minimum wage, we get the news stories about how inadequate the new wage is. Just this past Wednesday, Christopher Rugaber of the Associated Press wrote of Walter Jasper, a car wash worker in Nashville, Tennessee.

“It [the increase in minimum wage] will help out a little,” says Jasper, who with his fiancée supports a family of seven. “I’d like to be on a job where I can at least get a car,” he says.

Well, good gosh, $262 a week isn’t going to get Mr. Jasper a car. Not if he wants to eat, feed the five kids and come in out of the rain. Neither will the $290 a week when minimum wage goes up again, this time to $7.25 an hour, 363 days from now.

So let’s raise the minimum wage to $25 an hour. That’s a thousand dollars a week or $52,000 a year. Out of that $1,000 in gross pay every week, Mr. Jasper would net about $780 or $3,380 a month. Out of that he could surely afford the rent in a decent place and a serviceable car and food for himself, his fiancée and the five kids (that obviously came from some union somewhere that is apparently not connected to an extant marriage).

But, Paul, I’m not sure what Mr. Jasper does at the car wash but it’s probably not worth $52K a year. If you raise the wage too high, instead of minimum wage he’ll get no wage.

Well that’s true and that’s the point. The car wash is going to try to get the work Mr. Jasper is doing done for as little as possible. Possessed of the knowledge that they would have to pay $5.85 an hour for the job Mr. Jasper holds, they offered employment and Mr. Jasper took it. If there had been no takers at that price, the car wash would have had to decide to either raise the wage offering or eliminate the position. And thus, with each increase in minimum wage, Mr. Jasper’s employment is further jeopardized.

Please understand that I’m not putting Mr. Jasper down. The fact that he has lived long enough to produce and/or have to feed five children and can still only command minimally compensated employment speaks to a very serious problem.

But thinking that Congress can solve the problems faced by the Walter Jaspers of the world by setting the base price of labor by fiat is delusional.

Education and experience are the essential variables in selling one’s labor to employers. Education can be obtained in America by just about anyone willing to put forth the effort. Experience is obtained by starting at the bottom of the ladder and working one’s way up.

Each increase in minimum wage risks raising the bottom rung of that ladder out of the reach of Walter Jasper.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, July 18, 2008.

All the recent opinion polls say the same thing. The majority of Americans want action on high energy prices and they want action today. Right now.

Citing just one poll, the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken June 17 and 18, 76% of respondents favor more drilling for oil in the United States, 77 percent favor increased offshore drilling, 51 percent favor building more nuclear power plants and for the first time a majority - 53 percent - favor drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

And yet, Congress obstructs.

The arrogance of the Congressional leadership with respect to America’s energy security and the clear desires of the American people is simply breathtaking.

Those in Congress who oppose increased oil exploration justify their objections by saying that the fruits of such efforts won’t be seen for five to ten years. They ignore the fact that President Bush put forth an energy proposal that called for increased oil and gas exploration, the construction of new refineries, the construction of new nuclear power plants and $10 billion in tax incentives to promote new energy technologies in June 2001, seven years ago. The Congress thwarted that plan and they have thwarted all administration proposals put forth since.

The Republicans say we need to drill for oil. The Democrats say we need to forget about oil in favor of alternative energy sources. But they don’t say what those alternative energy sources are. That’s because the sources don’t yet exist. Your car still needs gasoline. The truck that brings food to the Brookshire’s still needs diesel. The airplane that flies you to your business meeting or brings you your overnight package still needs kerosene.

The fact is if we are to prosper, we need to do it all. We need to drill for oil. We need to develop wind and solar power. We need to find a clean way to use coal. We need to build nuclear power plants. We need more refineries. We need to find a safe way to use natural gas to power vehicles. And we need to do it all now.

Former house speaker Newt Gingrich made a very powerful point earlier this week. He said that World War II proved that we could move with amazing speed on multiple tasks. And he cited the numbers.

In the 1,347 days between Pearl Harbor and the Japanese surrender, we built 102 aircraft carriers, one every 13 days, 5,626 merchant ships, one every five hours and 42 minutes and 273,882 aircraft, one every seven minutes and five seconds.

As I have said before, we are the offspring of people who got things done.

So in this time when we ourselves should be getting things done, what’s happening?

Well, here’s one example. British Petroleum (BP) obtained all necessary permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to expand an existing refinery in Whiting, Indiana. The expansion would allow the production of an additional 620 million gallons of gasoline each year. It will create 2,000 construction jobs and 80 additional permanent jobs.

You can bet that getting the permits from the state was no picnic. But with BP having complied with the law and standing ready to go to work, an environmental group called the National Resources Defense Council swooped in and filed a lawsuit in federal court to stop the project. Check back with me in five years and we’ll see if the project is even started.

Folks, we can no longer afford this. At the time of the Arab Oil Embargo we imported approximately 25 percent of the oil that we needed to fuel our economy. Today, that number is over 70 percent.

If Congress had acted on President Bush’s proposals in 2001, we would have accomplished much of the plan by now, we would have created thousands of American jobs, we’d be pumping millions of barrels of oil, we’d be producing millions of watts of environmentally clean electricity and we would be dramatically less dependent on the thugs in the Middle East.

And gas wouldn’t be $4.00 plus a gallon.

When the Democrats took over the Congress in 2007, oil was $50 a barrel and corn was $2 a bushel. Today, oil is over $130 a barrel and corn is $6.50 a bushel. What is the Democrat plan to deal with these unacceptable facts?

As we proved in World War II, we can get things done. The time has again come for us to do so. And step number one in our new plan of action is to demand that Congress get out of the way.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 11, 2008.

I won’t often quote scripture in this space. This is not a religious debate forum.

But I’m going to this time because the scripture I’m about to quote is illuminating in today’s situation. I’m quoting Deuteronomy, the eighth chapter beginning with the seventh verse. Moses is speaking to the Israelites:

‘For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey; a land in which you will eat bread without scarcity, in which you will lack nothing; a land whose stones are iron and out of whose hills you can dig copper. When you have eaten your fill you shall bless the LORD your God for the good land that He has given you.’

What was true coming from Moses 5,000 years ago in the Land of Israel is true today in America. We have been given by God a land that is rich in resources from which He intends that we live and prosper. We are obligated to respect that gift and to use it wisely. We are to be good stewards of the resources we have been given. But make no mistake, our abundant resources were given to be used.

It is said that Samuel Slater launched the Industrial Revolution in America in Pawtucket, Rhode Island in 1789. Slater used hydro-power from the Blackstone River to power the first mechanized textile mill and, in the process, became the first industrial polluter by discharging waste from the plant back into the river.

Slater was the first but by no means the last. As America industrialized, steel mills and manufacturing plants sprang up along lakes and rivers and waterways, discharging waste products into the water and particulates and toxic gases into the air. As just one example, in 1969, Lake Erie captured public attention when its tributary, the Cuyahoga River, became so polluted by petrochemical discharge that it actually caught fire spontaneously.

That was a needed wake up call and it led to the Clean Water Act of 1972 and, more important, focused our attention on the need to conduct our industry in ways less damaging to our natural resources. And we have done so. Today, Lake Erie, once pronounced “dead”, lives.

Today in America, air and water pollution are dramatically reduced compared to the early 1970s. Cleaner burning engines, better industrial practice and a widespread public ethic on environmental stewardship have all combined to make us more productive than ever with less negative impact on the environment.

This is true with respect to oil and gas production. Better technology together with workable government regulation has served to make American oil companies the cleanest oil producers in the world. One of the many perverse effects of the current obstruction to oil and gas production in the United States is that we are effectively exporting environmental damage by virtue of increased production in the Persian Gulf and in Siberia, two areas where the producers are much less fastidious about the environment than we are.

America led the world in improving its environmental stewardship because it was sufficiently prosperous so as to be able to do so. Our successful economy afforded us the means and the will to clean up our own environmental house. To imperil that prosperity now by choking off the energy that fuels our economy ultimately poses a threat to the very environment we hope to protect.

Being responsible about our environment is a good thing. Taking that responsibility to a ridiculous extreme - an extreme that becomes a substitute for concrete action in the face of adversity - is not.

We humans did not invade the earth. We were put here by the same God that led the people of Moses to the Promised Land. Like it says in the Desiderata, no less than the trees and the stars, we have a right to be here.

We were meant to live off the earth.

Drilling for oil in own land in a way that respects the environment is not only possible, it is, in light of our obligations to our own citizens and our role in the world, the only responsible thing to do.

FOLLOW UP: This article by Daniel Henninger in the July 3 edition of The Wall Street Journal amplifies some of the points made in the piece below.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 27, 2008.

Something I said on June 11 has been working on me since I first wrote it. In the story I did on the 1,400 mile Big Inch pipeline that was built from Longview, Texas to Linden, N.J. during World War II in only 54 weeks I said,

“We Baby Boomers are the children of people who got things done. And we have been living off of those accomplishments ever since (without really having to put ourselves out much).”

The truth of that statement is startling. Our parents and grandparents were doers. We have devolved into a bunch of talkers.

We Baby Boomers began taking the reins about 30 years ago. We inherited a nation that worked. The bridges, the highways, the refineries, the electric generating stations, the electric grid, the natural gas network, the telephone network, the hospitals, the military, the schools, the airports, the seaports, and the water treatment plants were all in place and functioning well. To the extent that we have provided any contribution to any of these things since, our contributions have been incremental.

By the time of our coming of age, our parents had created a world in which prosperity and lack of want had become the norm. Unlike those that went before us, we have never worried about getting enough to eat. In fact, we have to worry about eating too much. When we order something on Amazon, we get it one or two days later with the help of the Interstate Highway System — 46,000 miles of roads that network the entire nation — built by our parents.

We flip a switch and the lights come on. We pick up the phone and we’re connected to any phone of our choice out of tens of millions in seconds.

Our parents went from zero to walking on the moon in only ten years. Our parents freely took risks and we’ve been living off the rewards for the past 30 years.

And curiously, 30 years is a number that keeps coming up.

We all are unhappy with the high price of gasoline. Besides the high price of crude oil, one of the biggest factors in gasoline supplies is the lack of refining capacity. The last refinery built in America was built just over 30 years ago.

Many think we’re going to replace gasoline cars with electric cars. Not without more electric generating capacity we’re not. And guess when the last nuclear generating plant was licensed. That’s right, about 30 years ago.

We Baby Boomers, safely ensconced in the comfort provided by our parents, have refined our ability to talk and analyze and demagogue and litigate as a substitute for actually doing something. Construction on the World Trade Center began in 1966 and was completed in 1973, a total of seven years. It was just announced that the completion of the buildings to replace the World Trade Center has now been pushed back to at least 2013 with every likelihood that it will take even longer and cost even more than the latest revised estimates. Seven years for the originals. Twelve years and counting for the replacements.

We’re paying outrageous prices for gasoline because we’re not willing to run the risk of spilling some oil on the way from the well to the refinery. Our parents took that risk and gave us mobility - which is another word for freedom. We’re now unwilling to assume any of our own risk to keep that freedom.

Speaking of refineries, no one will build one today. Only the plaintiffs’ lawyers profit from the attempt to build a refinery. After the lawsuits are defended, there’s no profit left for the refiner.

Consider any major undertaking, such as those of our parents, and you are immediately confronted today by the omnipresence of environmentalists and their legion of attorneys.

It’s primarily environmentalists that stand in the way of increased oil drilling in the United States. Barack Obama defends that obstruction by saying that such drilling is pointless anyway because it won’t bear fruit for ten years. First, I don’t believe it will take ten years. Second, the fact that we became proactive would impact oil markets immediately. And third, that was the excuse ten years ago. Democrats talk about far-in-the-future energy technologies as an excuse for doing nothing about energy supplies today.

We’re at a tipping point. If we are to hand our kids a functioning, prosperous economy, we need to address our energy supply problem (along with many other problems too numerous for this column) and we need to address them now. We’ve been talking energy to death for 30 years. It’s now past the time to actually get something done.

Tom Brokaw wrote a great book about our parents called The Greatest Generation. If we don’t get to work and actually accomplish something before we’re too old, the book they write about us will be called, The Do Nothing Generation: How Baby Boomers Squandered Their Inheritance and Left Their Kids with Posturing Politicians, a Mountain of Debt and an Army of Plaintiffs’ Lawyers.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 20, 2008.

I have some Democrat friends. I know, it doesn’t seem possible. But I do. They’re not extreme left wing-hate America-George Soros-Hollywood whack job Democrats. My Democrat friends are sane Democrats. They’re reasonable, thinking people. But sane as I give them credit for being, a Democrat is still a Democrat and this friend of mine and I wound up talking a little policy at his house a couple of weeks ago.

“Paul,” he says, “with the kind of deficits the government’s running and this ridiculous war that never ends, there’s no way we can’t raise taxes. It’s just gotta happen.”

“Well, it’s gonna happen,” I said. “The Bush tax cuts expire on their own in 2010 without anyone doing a thing.”

“Well, that’s not all bad,” says he. “It’s just something we’re just gonna have to get used to.”

Now as you might imagine, I don’t think so. If we can’t afford to pay for gasoline, how can we afford to pay more in taxes?

Let’s say you’re a middle class married couple, one of the 48 million such couples the Democrats so eloquently say they want to help. You’re about to pay $3,000 more in taxes per year than you’re paying now.

What about old people? The average elderly taxpayer is looking at $2,200 more in taxes. Feeling guilty that the Bush tax cuts only “helped the rich”? Tell that to the poor. When the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010, a single mother with two kids and a $30,000 income will pay $1,600 more in federal income tax. (Imagine that poor woman and $4.00 a gallon gasoline.)

But that’s me. A significant number of people, including my good Democrat friend, believe that our taxes never should have been cut in the first place and that it’s OK for them to go back up.

So I’m saying to all of you folks, ‘What are you waiting for?’

Paul, what do you mean, what are we waiting for?

I mean, if you think that one of the problems facing the United States is the fact that our tax rates are too low, you can do your part right now. Today. Without an act of Congress or the operation of any law.

But, Paul, we don’t set the tax rates.

It doesn’t matter. You can create your very own do-it-yourself tax increase. All you have to do is write a check to the U.S. Treasury and send it to this address:

Gifts to the United States
U.S. Department of the Treasury
Credit Accounting Branch
3700 East-West Highway, Room 6D17
Hyattsville, MD 20782

According to the U.S. Treasury website, this account ‘was established in 1843 to accept gifts, such as bequests, from individuals wishing to express their patriotism to the United States. Money deposited into this account is for general use by the federal government and can be available for budget needs.’

So, if you truly believe that we should be paying more in taxes, why wait? Set up an automatic payment in your on-line bank account to send money to the Treasury every payday. The amount can be the difference between what you pay in federal withholding now and what you’ll be paying when the rates go back up in 2010. (Or to save time, just send them $3,000 right now.)

If you sell some stock and make a $1,000 profit, you’ll pay $150 in capital gains tax. So write a check to the Treasury for another $130 to make up the difference between the capital gains rate today and what it will be when the rates go back up. After all, the reduction in the capital gains tax was only to benefit the rich. So if you have a capital gains tax liability, you must, by definition, be rich. Pay up!

If you do this, you’ll be acting on your conviction that taxes are too low and we’ll all respect you as a person of principle.

But you’re not about to do it, are you? Of course you’re not. And that’s my point.

Unless you’re willing to voluntarily send your own money to the government based on what you earn, you have no standing to insist that the same amount of money be taken from me and your fellow citizens by force of law.

The Bush tax cuts were a singular triumph of domestic policy. The fact that the rates go back up in 2010 is going to hurt an economy that’s already in a lot of pain.

So act on your convictions. Either start sending money to the Treasury now or start making your voice heard on making the tax cuts permanent.

There’s not much time.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 13, 2008.

I want to propose an ambitious capital project and I want your thoughts on the feasibility.

In order to meet a strategic national need, we need to construct a pipeline nearly 1,500 miles from Texas to New York. We’re going to cross 95 counties and traverse all or part of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

We’re going to bury most of it in a three foot-wide, four foot-deep trench. We’ll be moving more than 3.1 million cubic yards of earth before we’re done. To complete this project, we’ll cross swamps and forests, go over or under 30 rivers and more than 200 creeks and lakes. We’ll be passing our pipeline under streets, railroad rights-of-way and a few private backyards.

We’re going to need more than 7,500 right-of-way grants or tenants’ consents.

Oh, and there’s just one more thing. We need to have this project completed in 54 weeks. Uh, huh. A year and a month. What do you think?

Well, Paul, I’m not so sure.

Why not?

Why not?! There are a lot of reasons but your time line is the biggest problem. You’ve got to be kidding with that 54 weeks. You’ll be darned lucky to have the environmental impact statements finished in less than five years. And then you’ll have to get the approvals. You’re talking some serious stuff here. Crossing forests and natural wetlands for example. You’re bound to be making an impact on quite a bit of natural habitat, some of which is bound to involve protected or endangered species.

And assuming you get the necessary approvals, which is going to take a long time assuming you get it done at all, don’t think you’re going to just start digging. You’d better budget some serious money and some serious time for the legal challenges. You can count on being sued repeatedly by any number of environmental groups. They’ll get restraining orders and injunctions to stop you or slow you down. You can count on it.

Really?

Yeah, really. I think you should forget about this one.

Well, you’re probably right.

Oh wait. Except for the fact that all of this has already happened. In 1942, in response to the need for massive quantities of oil necessary to prosecute World War II, they built this very pipeline. It starts in Longview and it goes all the way to Linden, New Jersey. And it was completed, start to finish, in 376 days. It’s called the Big Inch, in honor of the fact that it employed what was then revolutionary 24-inch diameter steel pipe.

Want to know the best part? It’s still in operation. It is, at this very moment, transporting natural gas from Longview to New York via that terminal in Linden, New Jersey.

I’m telling you this because oil has gone up about ten bucks a barrel since we spoke last Friday. And yet, members of Congress, and both presidential candidates, still refuse on largely environmental grounds to open up known fields of oil and gas to drilling and production.

We Baby Boomers are the children of people who got things done. And we have been living off of those accomplishments ever since (without really having to put ourselves out much). And to the extent that our parents damaged the earth while accomplishing what they did, they and we all learned from those mistakes and we take better care of the earth now. Show me any business — from the largest multi-national to your corner dry cleaner — that is wantonly damaging the environment today and getting away with it.

Up until now, had you ever heard of the Big Inch pipeline? Ever heard of any harm it has done to the environment? Any chance it could get built today in just over a year?

With the Big Inch in mind, let’s acknowledge that refusing to drill for oil that we know is there out of fear of damaging the environment is ludicrous.

But, Paul, we need to move past oil anyway.

Oh yeah, well that will take a couple of decades if we’re really lucky. And it won’t be the result of some massive government initiative such as the Manhattan Project.  The switch from oil to some other energy source will be market-driven. Energy is fungible. Atom bombs are not.

And guess what. Any alternate energy you find or develop will come from the earth. There is no other source. If you want energy, you will have to dig or drill or move or scratch or do something to the earth in order to get it.

All over East Texas there are oil wells that have been plugged and abandoned. Finding them today without specific detailed records would be next to impossible. The earth, by now, has fully reclaimed those old well sites.

And that’s because the earth is resilient and has what it takes to take care of itself.

The question is, with our way of life threatened by global oil market tyranny, do we have what it takes to care of ourselves?

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 6, 2008.

Please forgive me for again going on about oil prices and the need to change U.S. policy with respect to domestic exploration and production. I know I’ve been on that topic pretty relentlessly of late but I can’t help it. There are two factors dragging heavily on the economy right now. One is credit market turmoil and the other is high oil prices. The former will work itself out over time but the latter will only get worse unless we change course now.

I have a proposition. Let’s all get together and invite Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama and John McCain to East Texas. Talk about bipartisan. We’ll make history.

OK Paul. We’ll invite them. Why on earth would they come?

Simple. To eat ribs. Really good ribs. We’ll just get the four biggest names on the American political scene all together on a picnic lunch hosted by us and catered by the Country Tavern.

Why the Country Tavern?

Because it’s close to where we’re having the picnic and the ribs are really good. We’ll round up the Speaker of the House, the Senate Majority Leader and the two presidential candidates, all of whom oppose drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), spread out some blankets, break out the ribs (and the sauce — good Heavens, don’t forget the sauce!) and we’ll have a lovely afternoon at the site of the Daisy Bradford #3.

Now if you don’t know your East Texas history, the Daisy Bradford #3 is the oil well drilled by Dad Joiner in 1930 and bought (some legends say won in a poker game) by H.L. Hunt. It’s the well that put East Texas in the oil business. It’s still the largest oil field ever discovered on the North American continent and it’s the well that put H.L. Hunt on the way to being the richest man in the world for a good part of the 20th century.

The Daisy Bradford #3 has been producing oil for 78 years. So have wells all around it in the Woodbine formation of East Texas. Lots and lots of oil.

Now this is the part where you have to look at the pictures.

Treating our politician guests to a picnic next to an oil well that has been producing for nearly 80 years will serve to give them a real world lesson on the impact that oil production has on the environment.

Which is to say, next to none.

The land upon which the Daisy Bradford sits and the land all around it is without question some of the most beautiful in Texas. Don’t take my word for it. Look at the pictures. The Daisy Bradford is surrounded by towering trees. (No, Ms. Pelosi, they’re not giant Redwoods like you find in the Muir Woods outside of San Francisco. But they do block out the sun and create a canopy over the road and they really are pretty and we’re proud of them.)

The well itself sits on land covered by naturally-occurring grass. Perfect for our picnic. In fact, the land would make a beautiful rural home site.

Now Madame Speaker and Senators, feel free to wander around on the site. Look for the environmental damage. Oh, no, that’s OK. Take your time.

But when you’re through looking at least acknowledge the obvious. After nearly eight decades of producing oil, the land is as pretty as it was when Dad Joiner spudded the well.

Now that we’ve had a nice lunch, Madame Speaker and Senators, you can look at the land upon which you are sitting and explain to us again why we can’t drill ANWR. You can tell us again how producing oil in a tiny piece of a large tract of federal land will cause such grievous harm that it’s worth foregoing the positive impact that nearly 1.5 million barrels of additional oil per day from a domestic source would have on the price we pay for gasoline.

And you can try to back up your assertion by pointing to the site of the Daisy Bradford #3. The fact that the land is pastoral and suitable for a picnic lunch after nearly 80 years of producing oil shouldn’t dissuade you.

Lord knows, nothing else has.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, May 30, 2008.

There is a key similarity and there is key difference between being a shareholder in a publicly traded company and being a member of Congress.

The similarity is that if you own shares in a publicly traded company or if you are a member of Congress, you get to vote at the meetings.

The difference is that a shareholder of a company has to live with the consequences of his or her vote but a member of Congress too frequently does not.

I bring this up in the wake of the annual meeting of shareholders of Exxon Mobil Corporation held Wednesday, May 28, 2008 in Dallas.

You’d have to be living under a rock to not know that the subject of oil production has become ridiculously politicized. As gasoline prices have soared, the top executives of the top oil companies have been hauled before Senate and House committees that are “investigating” the companies’ roles in high fuel costs.

Except in very rare instances, Congressional investigations constitute the American version of Kabuki theater, the highly stylized and very overdrawn form of Japanese drama characterized by grossly exaggerated acting. The posturing of Congressional committee members and their often hostile questions directed at the oil company executives get good play on the evening newscasts and in the morning papers.

The fact that these Congressional hearings always conclude with no meaningful findings is never reported.

With this backdrop, let’s consider the Exxon Mobil shareholders meeting earlier this week in Dallas (Wed. May 28, 2008). At the meeting, chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson was called upon by dissident shareholders and activists (who had purchased shares for the sole purpose of attending the meeting) to defend the fact that the company does not invest heavily in so-called “environmentally friendly” fuels. In fact, various shareholders put forth a total of 17 environmental and social proposals, all of which failed when voted upon.

The proposals failed for a very good reason. And it’s not because Exxon Mobil doesn’t care about the environment and has no social conscience. The proposals failed because Exxon Mobil is not an eco-fuels venture capital start-up and the shareholders know it.

Exxon Mobil is an oil and gas company. And accordingly, the majority of shareholders recognize that it is not in their interest to send the company down rabbit trails away from the company’s core business of finding and producing oil and gas. To divert company resources away from oil and gas production during a period of high demand for oil and gas does not make economic sense. Doing so has little chance of enhancing shareholder value through growth in earnings and appreciation of the stock price.

Because of their investment, the shareholders must live with the consequences of their votes on Wednesday and they voted accordingly.

Congress is not so constricted. Members of Congress ride around in cars that are provided, insured and fueled at taxpayer expense. The fact that they own personal vehicles notwithstanding, having what amounts to a small fleet of company cars at one’s disposal blunts the impact of high fuel prices. If you ever go to Washington to visit your congressman, you’ll find that members of Congress have succeeded in creating what amounts to a small parallel universe in which they are able to cosset themselves and remain shielded from much of what you and I must deal with daily together with much of the consequence of the laws they enact.

And that’s why it’s no skin off their noses to block every rational attempt by U.S. oil companies to add to energy supplies while demanding that those same companies invest in “green” energy alternatives and subject themselves to “windfall profits” taxes in order to fund “new technologies” that will make us “energy independent.”

At $130 per barrel, oil is still the cheapest, most usable form of energy. If we as a nation incrementally deny it to ourselves, in the name of pursuing some far-in-the-future “new energy” technology, while other nations continue to consume it, everything we do will be at a competitive disadvantage and our economy and thus our way of life will suffer.

Exxon Mobil’s Rex Tillerson said it Wednesday.

“The world is going to have to use oil and gas whether people like it or not - that’s a fact. You can run and you can hide, but that’s what you’re going to be using 25 years from now.”

So it’s time to quit posturing and start drilling. Time for Reid, Pelosi, Clinton, Obama, McCain, nearly all the Democrats and way too many Republicans to stop demagogueing, shut up and get the U.S. government out of the way of developing and producing U.S. oil reserves that we know are there.

If demand for oil exceeds supply and Congress can do something about supply, to allow them to do otherwise is irresponsible.