BUY MORE FOREIGN OIL

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has rejected a Bush administration plan to open vast waters off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts to oil and gas drilling, promising "a new way forward" in offshore energy development including new wind projects.

Salazar at a news conference Tuesday (February 10) criticized “the midnight timetable” for new oil and gas development on the country's Outer Continental Shelf proposed by the Bush administration four days before President Barack Obama took office.

Yeah, that’s a smart way to add jobs to our economy. Build wind farms that nobody in the US knows how to.

Can you say — just in time for summer again — $4 a gallon?

Full story at Workboat.com

[Salazar, as a senator, has a mixed voting record on "environmental" issues. He seems to be rather sane with most of his opinions, although in other cases, he cancels himself out. A hard guy to read, which leads me to believe — based on his voting record — that he tried to vote with what was intellectually sensible and honest, rather than what was demanded by an ideology ... something that will never fly in DC. Why he's against inshore drilling — unless he's pro ANWR and Green River drilling — is beyond me.]

In a related hearing (i.e., the next day) enviros such as Phillipe Cousteau and Ted Danson, urged Congress to reinstate the drilling ban, while someone with actual knowledge and experience about and with offshore drilling — Jefferson Angers, president of the Center for Coastal Conservation in Louisiana — said “The fishing and oil and gas industries have coexisted in Louisiana for half a century and they've worked well together."

Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington, the House Resources Committee’s top Republican, noted that expanded offshore drilling is, “about creating good American jobs” and reducing the nation's dependence on foreign oil and the OPEC oil cartel.

I thought that was the purpose of the $3 trillion debt we’re about to assume, but I guess I was waaaaaay off base. Guess I’d better read those 1000+ pages of pesky "details" again.