OIL AND CAVEATS

So you've changed your mind about exploring for oil, have you, Mr. President.
Great!
Well, maybe!
Let's see. You proposed in your weekend address to open up more federal lands for oil exploration, including Alaska's north slope, while keeping Anwar off limits, where alone, there are enough known petroleum reserves to keep America's cars and industry running for a decade or more. Why? Don't want to rile those prickly environmentalists? Not to worry, Mr. President, they would never vote for a Republican anyway. So why not go for it and announce a REAL comprehensive plan for oil drilling.
But then there is that other little caveat to a REAL plan - the fraud and manipulation by Wall Street traders and speculators you want your erstwhile Attorney General Holder to root out first. Even if such banditry is being committed by Wall Street evildoers, how long will that take? After all, this is the same Attorney General who was handed a video tape two years ago of Black Panther thugs in front of a Philadelphia voting precinct brandishing billy clubs and verbally intimidating voters and news media, on which Holder still has not been able to spot criminality.
Then there is the other caveat you mentioned Saturday - forming an "interagency" commission to oversee drilling in Alaska and off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Is the Interior Department not doing its job? After all, overseeing oil exploration and issuing permits is the responsibility of the Interior Department's Bureau of Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE). If this agency is not doing its job than Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should fire the lot and hire experts who can expedite and oversee oil drilling. What we don't need is another government commission. Commission equals delay tactic, Mr. President.
It appears you are trying to get out in front of Republicans in the House who have already approved three bills mandating drilling off shore, on shore and in Anwar. Not to worry, Mr. President, the Democrat Senate will kill such nuisance bills.
Meanwhile, Americans continue to pay nearly four dollars a gallon, on average, for gasoline (over $4.00 in Indiana).
How about proposing a REAL plan, Mr. President, that mandates BOEMRE set a three to six month limit for evaluating and approving new drilling permits; provide tax incentives for American-owned and American-headquartered oil companies to apply for American leases; mandate all oil taken from American soil and off American coastlines be for use by Americans only and not sold on the world market under the auspices of OPEC; approve new refineries; establish one gasoline formula for the entire country instead of the nearly two-dozen such regional formulations now mandated, saving refining costs and about 25-cents a gallon at the pump; hire only native born or naturalized citizens to work in the newly created oil industry jobs.
And there would be thousands of such jobs created.
American oil for Americans now - that would be REAL plan, Mr. President.