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Give ’em Hell, W! Call ’em back and let ’em sweat.

It’s August and if you think it’s hot and miserable here, you should go to Washington, D.C. If you’ve ever been in our nation’s capital in August you know. If you haven’t, take it from me it’s about the most miserable place in the country this time of year. Geographers can give you all of the reasons for Washington’s summer discomfort. I don’t really care about the particulars. Suffice to say that the heat and...

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Those working-at-the-car-wash blues.

At midnight Wednesday, base labor in America became worth 70 cents per hour more than it had been just one minute before. Just like that, an employee making $5.85 an hour began making $6.55 an hour, the new federal minimum wage. That’s an increase of twelve percent. Wow! Isn’t that great? If you have employees earning the minimum wage, they’re worth more today than they were when you went to work on Wednesday. A twelve...

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Congress: Lead (not likely) or get out of the way.

All the recent opinion polls say the same thing. The majority of Americans want action on high energy prices and they want action today. Right now. Citing just one poll, the Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken June 17 and 18, 76% of respondents favor more drilling for oil in the United States, 77 percent favor increased offshore drilling, 51 percent favor building more nuclear power plants and for the first time a majority – 53...

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Moses would have drilled.

I won’t often quote scripture in this space. But I’m going to this time because the scripture I’m about to quote is illuminating in today’s situation. I’m quoting Deuteronomy, the eighth chapter beginning with the seventh verse. Moses is speaking to the Israelites: For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs that flow out of valleys and hills; a land of...

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Call us the “Do Nothing Generation.”

Something I said on June 11 has been working on me since I first wrote it. In the story I did on the 1,400 mile Big Inch pipeline that was built from Longview, Texas to Linden, N.J. during World War II in only 54 weeks I said, “We Baby Boomers are the children of people who got things done. And we have been living off of those accomplishments ever since (without really having to put...

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Don’t wait ’til 2010! Raise your own taxes now!

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 20, 2008. I have some Democrat friends. I know, it doesn’t seem possible. But I do. They’re not extreme left wing-hate America-George Soros-Hollywood whack job Democrats. My Democrat friends are sane Democrats. They’re reasonable, thinking people. But sane as I give them credit for being, a Democrat is still a Democrat and this friend of mine and I...

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Our parents got things done and the Earth is still beautiful.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 13, 2008. I want to propose an ambitious capital project and I want your thoughts on the feasibility. In order to meet a strategic national need, we need to construct a pipeline nearly 1,500 miles from Texas to New York. We’re going to cross 95 counties and traverse all or part of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio,...

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Let’s have a picnic in the oil patch!

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, June 6, 2008. Please forgive me for again going on about oil prices and the need to change U.S. policy with respect to domestic exploration and production. I know I’ve been on that topic pretty relentlessly of late but I can’t help it. There are two factors dragging heavily on the economy right now. One is credit market turmoil...

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Are shareholders smarter than Congressmen? No contest.

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, May 30, 2008. There is a key similarity and there is key difference between being a shareholder in a publicly traded company and being a member of Congress. The similarity is that if you own shares in a publicly traded company or if you are a member of Congress, you get to vote at the meetings. The difference is...

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W: “You don’t approve of me? I’m outta here.”

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me on Newstalk 600 KTBB, Friday, May 23, 2008. I got an e-mail the other day from my friend Mike Tomlinson containing an imaginary resignation letter from a fed up President Bush. I like the premise but the letter needed a rewrite and I have given it one. Here it is. My fellow Americans, All available data shows that between seven and eight out of...

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How mad would Eddie Chiles be now?

Click here to listen to the broadcast of You Tell Me, Friday, May 16, 2008 on Newstalk 600 KTBB. (A quick closed circuit to Michael Carter. Your comment on last week’s piece is one of the best we have ever received. Thanks for listening and thanks for the response, Mr. Carter. It’s greatly appreciated. Click here to read Mr. Carter’s comment.) Back in the late 1970s, Eddie Chiles, the CEO of the Western Company of...

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Playing bad poker with the gas money.

“If, after the first twenty minutes, you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you. ” ~Author Unknown I have played a little bit of poker in my life. I’m not a great card player but I do understand the fundamentals of the game. The game is not about what cards you draw. The game is about how you play your cards against your opponent. Imagine yourself in a high stakes card...