Editor, The Herald:

One of the missions of the Department of Energy, established during the Carter Administration, was to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Today, some 35 years later, it is a department with a 26 billion dollar budget, and we are still dependent on foreign oil. If every president claims we need to end our dependency on foreign oil, why are we still dependent? I read where the oil at our finger tips, inland and offshore, amount to larger deposits than all the Middle Eastern deposits put together. However, touching them, even in a time of economic crisis, is taboo with this administration. Obama closes down, then wraps in unnecessary red tape, our drilling in the gulf, but sends two billion dollars to Brazil to help them drill off shore. He tells them we will be their best customer. He is willing to create jobs in Brazil but not in the United States.

His latest evidence of self-interest rather than concern for this country is the killing of the Keystone pipeline. Three studies lasting three years were undertaken and two of the three indicated the venture was acceptable. Don't forget that this is not the first pipeline to cross our country. There are hundreds, and many are already in places we call “America the Beautiful”. While Keystone would not end our dependence, only drilling here would do that, it would, however, mean that we got oil from a friend and not an enemy. I don't care how many treaties we have with the Arab countries, if they have the desire to bring us down and kill us..they are our enemies. To gamble the economic future of the United States on the hope that buying their products will make the Islamic world like us is like the chicken telling the fox that he is his friend. The fox knows that his “friend” is going to taste good. I don't know about others, but my house will do its best to fire the chicken in November.

Lewis Brandt

Dillwyn