22 September 2008 Patriot Vol. 08 No. 39
FOR THE RECORD
“[T]he House of Representatives approved a bill to allow offshore oil drilling, but nearly all the Republicans voted against it... It isn’t a drilling bill, it’s an anti-drilling bill. If it becomes law, nearly all the oil and gas in the Outer Continental Shelf would be off-limits forever... This bill permanently bans all drilling within 50 miles of the US coast, which just happens to be where most of the recoverable oil and gas reserves are. It permits drilling between 50 and 100 miles out only if the adjoining states agree - which they won’t, since the bill denies them any share in the royalties the oil companies would have to pay, thereby eliminating any financial incentive for a state to say yes. Virtually all the oil off the California coast and beneath the Eastern Gulf of Mexico would be locked up for good. Don’t be fooled: The only offshore drilling this bill really opens the door to would have to be 100 miles or more out to sea, where the oil companies have no infrastructure... According to the Interior Department, the offshore areas where drilling is restricted contain more than 19 billion barrels—that’s equal to 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia. The bill would deny Americans access to as much as nine-tenths of that oil. A good deal? I don’t think so.” —Jeff Jacoby
LIBERTY
“The configuration of the financial hurricane will become clear soon enough. The sad thing is that the free market will likely get a disproportionate share of the blame, finding its wrists more tightly shackled if the bloodthirsty critics of free enterprise gain enough power in Washington. Whenever markets mess up, control freaks blame it on too much freedom, on undue latitude for plungers and gamblers and similar riff-raff, when the blame properly rests with the gambling instinct itself, which is a part of human nature. If it weren’t, and thanks goodness it is, the first man to peek outside the cave and see the possibilities of a home on the hillside would never have tried it. ‘Too much risk!’ he would have muttered (in caveman-ese). Nothing ever gets done without risk. Risk entails the possibility of failure, but also of growth and gain. If you don’t want growth, you shun risk. Fortunately, capitalists and entrepreneurs constantly seek growth. They gamble. They stick out their necks, sometimes fatally.” —William Murchison
GOVERNMENT
“With freedom comes responsibility. Those who would have self-government must, by definition, govern themselves. Self-government only works when people act responsibly and fulfill their obligations. When people abuse these freedoms to enrich themselves at the expense of others, then the public will demand the government to step in. That is how government grows, and how freedom is diminished. The prospect of government intervention should be terrifying to corporate leaders. For too long many of them viewed it as a safety net. ...[A]fter the recent federal bailouts, some corporate officers are likely considering seeking the same bailout. As my grandmother was fond of saying, if you reward bad behavior all you are going to get is more bad behavior. Reckless and irresponsible individuals like those at the companies mentioned above give decent corporate managers a bad name. When financial meltdowns occur, the public’s outrage drives government to take over part of the private sector. When the government does so, it replaces irresponsible executives with unaccountable bureaucrats. That takes us out of the frying pan and into the fire.” —Ken Blackwell
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