Time to Get Tough Read Online Free PDF Page A

them because they hack birds to pieces and create “visual pollution” (about this, I agree!). They love ethanol, then they don’t anymore because it eats up vast amounts of farm land and sparks food riots in Africa when the price of corn goes up. They like electric cars, then they don’t because they realize that half of electricity comes from coal, and they hate coal. On and on, back and forth it goes. Meanwhile, our country’s economy is sinking like a stone.

    What people need to know is what the great conservative economist and writer Thomas Sowell taught us: in the world of economics, there are no such things as “solutions,” only tradeoffs. Every action has a consequence. Every decision has an upside and a downside. So you make smart decisions that minimize harm and maximize freedom. One of the many reasons why I’m a conservative is because I believe in the so-called Law of Unintended Consequences—the idea that, no matter how good government’s intentions, when you start social engineering or messing around with the free market, more often than not you open a Pandora’s box of negatives you didn’t see coming.
    So, in terms of energy, we need to be exploring and developing numerous approaches ... and I also include in that drilling for oil right here at home. We have oil all over the place in America. It’s incredible how much oil is right under our own land and water. But the Obama administration refuses to get tough with the environmental lobby and liberate our oil companies to drill for domestic oil.
    Yes, the BP oil spill was bad, but it was no reason to put tighter clamps on domestic drilling. That showed no leadership at all. What it showed was that the Obama administration is driven more by hysteria than facts.
    You want some facts? Here’s one that anyone who has ever studied oceanic oil supplies already knows: “Tens of millions of gallons of crude oil leak into the ocean every day. Naturally, from the sea floor,” as David Ropeik from Harvard University, hardly a rightwing institution, has written. 19 I also read from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences that the ocean itself is to blame for contributing “the highest amount of oil to the marine
environment.” 20 So if the extreme environmental crazies have a beef to pick with anyone, perhaps it should be with Mother Earth herself.
    The real issue, of course, is that those who oppose drilling in the United States simply don’t want the drilling to occur in their own backyard. What they ignore is the fact that the holes are going to get drilled into the planet anyway. We should drill them on our soil and create our own jobs and keep the revenue here instead of exporting it to the Middle East. Remember when Obama gave his 2008 speech at the Democratic National Convention and said that he would “invest” $150 billion in renewable energy over the next ten years and create “five million new jobs?” How did that turn out? He spent $80 billion of your and my money and, by his own Council of Economic Advisors’ admission, “created or saved” just 225,000 jobs. Now run those numbers: that’s $335,000 for each so-called “green collar” job we created or “saved,” whatever that means. 21
    Sadly, when it comes to using the energy industry to create American jobs, Obama has been a total disaster. And that’s a shame, because he’s missing a huge opportunity that could give a lot of people good quality jobs while helping get our country back on solid economic footing. Just look at how he’s mismanaged offshore oil drilling. Here at home, he’s kept in place the bans on drilling off our coasts. But he goes to Brazil, gives them $2 billion through the U.S. Export-Import Bank, and brags that he’s proud and excited to make America one of Brazil’s “best customers.” Pull it up on YouTube and watch it for yourself,