From Russ Goldstein
Hutchinson

It seems these days the No. 1 topic of discussion is the high price of gasoline and the never-ending question, "How high will it get?"

Anyone watching or listening to the news has seen and heard plenty of discussion about the cause. One side says oil companies are greedy and driving up the cost for more profits. Others say the speculators are driving the price up. Another side says it is simple supply and demand. I side with the supply and demand argument. The world demand is greater than ever before mainly due to India and China, two economically growing nations with a total of more than 2 billion people.

For several years now we have heard the mantra that we need to end our dependence on foreign oil. It think we can all agree that buying oil from unfriendly nations is not good for the future of America. To that end we need to turn inward and look at opportunities right here on our soil and under the ocean on our outer continental shelf.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the reason we are not doing that right now is due to the environmentalists' control over Congress.

It's time to break the stranglehold of the environmentalists and harvest our domestic oil and natural gas. We hear numerous arguments that the oil will take years to get to market. To that defeatist attitude I say there is no time like the present to get started. It also takes years to get through high school and college but every year we see plenty of graduates.

We also hear that we should develop new forms of energy like wind, solar and ethanol. Fine with me — be an entrepreneur and develop it, make it affordable, mass produce it and I'll buy it. Just don't expect the taxpayers to subsidize it. We already have enough dependence on government. We don't need more. We need less.

Government must get out of the way
Government needs to get out of the way and let the free market work. For those of you that don't like the speculators making money gambling on oil prices the simple solution is produce more. When supply meets and exceeds demand, the price will go down and the speculators will lose but consumers (you and I) will win.

In April I attended a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Small Business Summit in Washington, D.C. U.S. Chamber President Tom Donahue said the price of oil will drop as soon as the president announces that we will drill on both outer continental shelves and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Wind, solar, ethanol and bio-diesel are not the solutions. At least not for now. We have waited long enough. Domestic drilling, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy are real solutions to a problem created by our elected officials listening too much to the environmentalists.

If you like the high price of gasoline and want it to go higher — do nothing. If you want the price of gasoline to go down I implore you to call U.S. Rep. Colin Peterson and U.S. Sens. Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar. Be polite but tell them in no uncertain terms that they need to support drilling and support it now. If they don't support drilling ask them how high gas needs to go before they will support deep-water drilling offshore and in Alaska.

I also ask that you call your State Rep. Ron Shimanski and Sen. Steve Dille and thank them for their support to end the moratorium that prohibits building new nuclear power plants in Minnesota. Please note that Sen. Dille has authored Senate Resolution 3209 that asks Congress to support expanding nuclear energy use and encourages the state to do the same. If applied, this would end the state's moratorium on new nuclear power plants.

Our economy is falling behind and we are all suffering financially because of failed legislative policy. Now is the time to act.

Please call today — they do listen to constituents. They want to get re-elected.
U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman: (202) 224-5641
U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar: (202) 224-3244
U.S. Rep. Colin Peterson: (202) 225-2165
State Sen. Steve Dille: (651) 296-4131
State Rep. Ron Shimanski: (320) 296-1534