Do you have a job?

Do you drive to work?

Do you have a brain?

Why should you feel guilty if we use some of the resources Gods given us to make things better for ourselves and our fellow man?

 General Motors Corp Vice Chairman Bob Lutz has defended remarks he made dismissing global warming as a "total crock of s---," saying his views had no bearing on GM's commitment to build environmentally friendly vehicles.

Lutz, GM's outspoken product development chief, has been under fire from Internet bloggers since last month when he was quoted as making the remark to reporters in Texas.

In a posting on his GM blog on Thursday, Lutz said those "spewing virtual vitriol" at him for minimizing the threat of climate change were "missing the big picture."

"What they should be doing in earnest is forming opinions, not about me but about GM and what this company is doing that is ... hugely beneficial to the causes they so enthusiastically claim to support," he said in a posting titled, "Talk About a Crock."

GM, the largest U.S. automaker by sales and market share, has been trying to change its image after taking years of heat for relying too much on sales of large sport-utility vehicles like the Hummer and not moving faster on fuel-saving hybrid technology.

"My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors," he wrote.

Lutz said GM was continuing development of the battery-powered, plug-in Chevy Volt and other alternatives to traditional internal combustion engines.

GM is racing against Toyota Motor Corp to be first to market a plug-in hybrid car that can be recharged at a standard electric outlet.

Lutz has previously said GM made a mistake by allowing Toyota to seize "the mantle of green respectability and technology leadership" with its market-leading Prius hybrid.

A 40-year auto industry veteran who joined GM earlier in the decade with a mandate to shake up its vehicle line-up, Lutz is no stranger to controversy.

As part of a campaign against higher fuel economy standards, Lutz wrote in a 2006 blog posting that forcing automakers to sell smaller cars would be "like trying to address the obesity problem in this country by forcing clothing manufacturers to sell smaller, tighter sizes."

Automakers ended their opposition to higher fuel standards in 2007 when it became clear that proposed changes would become law with or without their support.

In December, President George W. Bush signed a law mandating a 40 percent increase in fleetwide fuel economy by 2020, the first substantial change in three decades.

DETROIT (Reuters) -(Reporting by Kevin Krolicki, editing by Toni Reinhold)

Energy: A refinery burns in Texas while politicians fiddle in Washington. As oil goes over $100 a barrel, we don't have to worry about Hugo Chavez restricting supply. We have the Democrats in Congress to do that.

Suppose you had a ton of money sitting in your bank account but you decided to max out your credit cards anyway. That's the energy policy of the United States as fashioned by the Democrat-controlled Senate.

At these prices, we have a trillion dollars worth of oil sitting under a section of frozen tundra the size of Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C. We could go get it. Instead we prefer to shovel billions of our dollars to thugs like Chavez while the same politicians who lock up our domestic energy praise him when he offers "cheap" home heating oil to states in the Northeast.

Chavez has said he's changed his mind about cutting off supplies to the U.S., but it's because he'd have a hard time selling Venezuela's heavy crude — which requires special refining — anywhere else. He's not doing us any favors. Unfortunately, neither is the U.S. Senate.

Oil futures closed above $100 for the first time Tuesday after Monday's explosion at Alon USA's refinery in Big Spring, Texas. It could be shuttered for two months. Yet NIMBYs won't let new refineries be built, and the greenies won't let the domestic oil be refined.

The heads-in-the-tundra crowd is led by Hillary Clinton. She has voted no fewer than nine times to block drilling in a tiny, frozen part of ANWR. Her husband first blocked ANWR development in 1995. After Hurricane Katrina disabled offshore oil platforms, revealing our energy vulnerability, Mrs. Clinton said: "It makes no sense to respond to a disaster in the Gulf by making a disaster in Alaska."

Never mind that the caribou and other critters have thrived despite drilling in Prudhoe Bay, which recently delivered its 15 billionth barrel of oil through the Alaska pipeline. Oil from ANWR could meet all of New York's petroleum needs for 34 years, yet the state's junior senator opposes getting it.

"ANWR would supply every drop of petroleum for Florida for 29 years," said former Interior Secretary Gale Norton, "New York for 34 years, California for 16 years or New Hampshire for 315 years." It could also supply Washington, D.C., a place where there's no shortage of hot air, for 1,710 years.

In 2005, the Senate voted twice by narrow margins on amendments authorizing ANWR drilling to a budget resolution bill (March 16) and a budget reconciliation bill (Nov. 3). Forty-one Democrats voted against both. Twenty-three of them were around to have voted against ANWR in 1995.

Barack Obama, who has voted twice against drilling in ANWR, has noted that a "large portion of the $800 million we spend on foreign oil every day goes to some of the world's most volatile regimes." Still, he says that "we cannot drill our way out of the problem." Call this the audacity of helplessness.

In his book "The Audacity of Hope," Obama writes: "Instead of subsidizing the oil industry, we should end every single tax break the industry currently receives and demand that 1% of the revenues from oil companies with over $1 billion in quarterly profits go toward financing alternative energy research and infrastructure."

Yet he'd subsidize the ethanol industry, which contributes to rising food prices and hurts the environment through increased agricultural runoff. He would feed the world, but he'd have us put ears of corn in our cars.

We are not against alternative energy. America is going to need all the energy it can produce — from all sources. We just don't like leaving energy in the ground.

After watching the political candidates, and the news coverage of them I began to understand that politician are trying to pit the American People against the people that run our private organizations. These attacks are more that the usual class envy card played by populist of the past. They are mean and hateful rants against people that have helped to make this country and other Americans more prosperous that any people the world has ever seen.

For every Global Crossing and Enron there are millions of bright industrious people working hard to deliver goods and services we depend upon, make payrolls for their employees so they can may mortgages and educate their children, and increase shareholder value so your 401K and mutual funds grow so we can eventually retire. The American C.E.O.‘s and their drive to make their company’s bigger and better makes our country and the world a better place to live and do business.

C.E.O.’s earn their pay. They may have started in a neighborhood garage tinkering with a hobby that they felt so passionately about it turned into a thriving business or worked their way through an Ivy League business school. However they became successful C.E.O’s were tested by the “Free Market”, their customers, their employees, their shareholders, governmental regulators, partners, and bankers. They found a way to deliver the goods to all of us while paying high taxes, adhering to governmental regulations, encouraging coworkers to improve and creating a good place to work.

Chief Executive Officers are not villains, but they are portrayed as money loving thieves in the media. Many businessmen serve on boards of charities, universities and hospitals. They don’t seek social approval or applause for their works; they work to improve the systems and society for the leaders that will follow in future generations.

If the “change” politicians speak of includes punishing C.E.O.’s for being successful we will surely loose the drive that made our country great, and that will hurt us all. I pray that God blesses our business leaders; it’s the wise and selfish to do.

Dean Philpot

www.bigoilfields.com

Pruis, Pious