MySpace a place for friends

USE-PAC: What Can We Do?

What is the U.S. Energy PAC? We are a non-profit 527 organization that has come together for the purpose of promoting public policies that will move the United States toward true energy independence over the coming decade.

You don’t need an organization to tell you what is going on with energy in the marketplace these days, or its effect on the American economy. Just the opposite: you are starkly reminded of it every time you pull up to a gas pump.

We are not the first nor by any means the largest organization seeking the goals of increased production, public education, reasonable public policy towards oil and ultimately the elimination of any American dependence on foreign sources of energy.

However, we are the first and, to our knowledge, only group that seeks to achieve these goals through the time tested methods of direct political action within the context of an election.

Let’s face it. The obstacles to true energy independence for our nation are largely political and ideological in nature.

• There is no shortage of oil on the world market!
• Oil remains the cheapest and most readily available source of energy in the world today.
• Alternative fuels (which we do not oppose) will not become readily available or affordable in the near future.
• The diversion of food stuffs to fuel production is causing sticker shock at the grocery store and food riots in Central America.
• The sharp increase in the price of commodities used for subsidized fuel production has put marginal land back under the plow and damaged vast tracts of wildlife habitat.
• We live in a world, not just a nation, which is oil dependent in so many ways they are almost impossible to count!

When a problem in a republic such as ours is created largely through political action and ideological pressure, then the most direct route to a solution is also through political action.

USE – PAC was created to provide that sort of direct action through the use of independent expenditures to defeat or change the attitudes of elected officials who are standing in the way of increased oil production and a commitment, as a matter of public policy, to USE our own resources to achieve the consensus goal of true energy independence.

To those who would strive to block these efforts we ask this question: Would you really want to solve the perceived problem of despoiling our ecological landscape by blithely wrecking the ecology of other peoples? That hardly seems either fair or moral.

You can help achieve these goals by giving a financial contribution of $25, or what you can afford in these difficult economic times, to cover our costs of materials and efforts to recycle the “Water Boys” out of office.

This site will also help keep you informed by tracking federal legislation which affects oil production in this country and the arguments both for and against those efforts. (Forewarned is forearmed.)

We are also posting regularly updated lists of members of Congress and the kind and amount of financial support they are receiving from two key special interest groups which are dedicated to blocking all efforts at domestic oil production.

Effective and environmentally friendly domestic oil production is easily done, except for onerous regulatory burdens and outright bans.

We have vast reserves of oil right here in the U.S., and we are discovering new fields for production on a regular basis. (The latest being the Bakken Formation in North Dakota which rivals Saudi Arabia for proven reserves.)

Help us lay the ground work for a nation with true energy independence – one that need not worry about the availability of oil on the world market, or the prices driven by that market.

USE-PAC: About USE

We are the American people, and we are the greatest, most self-reliant, most generous people on earth.

What does that have to do with energy? A great deal, actually.

We turn on the TV or radio. We pick up our newspaper every day. What do we see? A debate over our economic crisis: a crisis that centers on energy and energy production.

In this volatile election year we have an on-going debate over our involvement in Iraq, and that too gets caught up in the debate over energy

Oil is at the center of the energy debate. No matter how much we may dote on alternative fuel sources, they are still in a more limited supply and are more expensive to produce than oil.

The experts argue about whether or not we are technically in a recession. Meanwhile we go to the pump, pay $4.00 per gallon for gas, and, for the first time in our lifetimes, calculate the price of gas in deciding when and where to vacation, plow our fields and heat our homes.

We go to the grocery store and are shocked by the rising price of our weekly food bill.

And this too is part of the energy question. In the pursuit of energy self-reliance we are turning our food stuffs into fuel, thus creating rising prices at home and riots abroad over the cost of tortillas made from corn grown in the United States.

In the midst of all this we continue to debate whether we should be drilling for oil.

Energy independence? It really isn’t a problem. We have vast oil fields in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). We have vast oil fields in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota. We have vast shale oil reserves in the Green River Basin of the Western U.S. We have oil off the cost of California. We have oil in the Gulf of Mexico, currently being mined by Cuba with the help of China.

So why aren't we tapping into these resources? Mostly because of decades-old laws passed at the behest of organizations like the Sierra Club who want to protect our “pristine places.” Their approach is not based on scientific or ecological facts, but on a fundamentalist environmental ideology that ignores modern drilling technology and deems any oil production here to be destructive to the earth’s ecology.

We have not put a new drill in the ground in 30 years. We have not built a new refinery in 35 years. Yet we wonder at the price of gas?

Our forbearers came from all over the world. Finding an American culture that they could contribute to, taking what worked and changing what didn’t within the context of their own experience.

These people came to make a new life. They came to build a future. And they succeeded. As a result, we are a sympathetic and generous people. When our military might is needed to fight tyranny, we're there. And when disaster strikes others - even in China - we're there.

We can also be energy-independent. Do we need oil? Let’s go get it here at home. Do we want to feed the world? We can do it.

Do we want to make these things affordable? We can do it.

We have the resources. Let’s USE them. We don’t have to be at the mercy of others. We can set our own prices on our own commodities.

It’s time for America to rise up once again and show the rest of the world it can be done.