You can all forget the line item veto. It was enacted some years ago and declared unconstitutional by the Supremes.
During the Bush 1 years if memory serves.
Now, as one who cut his working teeth on the Alyeska Pipeline some thirty years ago...
All the environmentalists cries of alarm were false. Great care was taken to protect the environment, which BTW looks absolutely nothing like the beautiful forested scenery you see on the news snippets.
There simply are no trees on the North Slope.
Propoganda, my friends.
Would you believe that most of the 800 mile project, access road and pipeline pad is underlaid with styrofoam?
I only knew of one worker who was not concerned with protecting the environment, but I never got to meet him as he was fired his first day for driving onto the unprotected tundra.
The oil was predicted to be gone in 20 years but we are still pumping some 30 years later.
The estimates on the ANWR reserves comes from the same data used to calculate the Pruhoe Bay reserves, soooo, there is probably more in ANWR than we think as well.
As someone mentioned, some oil DOES go overseas instead of here, but it has never been more than 7% of production. And none was sold overseas until '95.
I now work in a coal mine where incredible expense goes into reclaiming the mined land.
The coal I mine allows many of you to run you precious computers.
If they open ANWR, I plan to be there if possible.
I will make enough money to retire early and you who allow your children to drive their cars to school instead of riding the uncool bus will pay.
You who allow them to cruise main every night will pay.
Those who drive 4 blocks to their aerobics class will pay.
Those spouses who work to pay for the extra car they wouldn't need if they didn't work will pay.
And I, my friends, will spend it wisely.
The reason we need more oil isn't because we don't have enough.
It's because we are spoiled rotten by prosperity.
We are lazy and prideful.
Are so foolish with our energy and money that we will spend 20,000 dollars to buy a car that gets another ten MPG, not stopping to think for a minuty how much energy is used to produce that car or how much fuel we can buy with 20,000 bucks.
Did you know you could drive over 2,000 miles on the fuel used in manufacture and transport of a Toyota Camry to the dealers lot?
You could supply electricity to four people for a year with what it takes to manufacture that car.
Things are not a simplistic as we would sometimes like to believe.
MR
