A Bush-Pickens-Rogers Plan for oil, water and wind

COLUMBUS: Gas is $3.61 here today. That’s about fifty cents less than a week or two ago when Mr. Bush made his little announcement about off shore drilling. It just goes to show what a President can accomplish when he don’t care what Congress says.

Now if he’ll add all of Alaska and the oil in the Rockies, why he could get it down to $3.00 and our tourists may yet squeeze in a summer trip. They’ve been sitting at home just waiting and hoping. Every Sunday afternoon Dad backs the van out of the garage, Mom makes sandwiches and packs some cold drinks, and the whole family sits there in the driveway watching a travel movie for two hours on the DVD player. Then Dad pulls back in the garage, content with expanding his kids’ horizon on a pint of gas.

Have you seen T. Boone Pickens? I don’t know how you could miss him; he’s been on television so much lately, second only to Senator Obama. He says we’re spending too much overseas for energy, and that we need to produce our own and keep the money.

Now, Mr. Pickens has another good plan; he’s preparing to sell Dallas all the water they can use from his vast land holdings in the Texas Panhandle. I don’t know if he will dig a canal to transport water like California, or lay a big pipeline. Either way, Oklahoma’s for it, because they’ll get to keep what little water they have without fear of Dallas siphoning it off.

I think I’ll hook up with old T. Boone. Call it the Pickens-Rogers Plan. He’ll provide the oil and water, I’ll bring the wind.

Historic quote from Will Rogers:

   “President Hoover (wants) to give all the lands belonging to the United States back to the Individual States. But he recommends that the Federal Government hold all the Oil and Mineral rights. Well, that’s just like offering a hungry man a meal and reserving the rights to issue him no food. You give him a plate and knife and fork, and you put him in a position to eat in case something shows up.
.   ..About all you can do with this public land is make a park out of it, and you have to make roads into it if it’s a park, and that costs you more than you can make out of the Soda Pop and Hot Dogs that the Tourists will buy on their way through it.
I tell you a Tourist is one of the worst, if not the worst investment there is. He knocks everything and buys nothing. He don’t know where he is going only that he wants to get away from his own home. He is sore at his wife and family that are in the car and he takes it out on your part of the Country. A tourist contributes nothing but empty tin cans and profanity to the up building of your State.” WA #352, September 22, 1929