The Cumberland Post

The Cumberland Post
My Backyard, Six Miles from the Cumberland River

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Ox Is In the Ditch, Let's Get to Work

Did you ever hear this expression? The President at the college where I worked liked to use this phrase when we faced a big problem that would entail a tremendous amount of work.

The Wiktionary says that the phrase's use is idiomatic, chiefly southern and alludes to the New Testament reason for working on Sunday. They cite a quotation which indicates that President Lyndon Johnson "always announced the onset of catastrophe with the statement: 'The ox is in the ditch!'"

It's clear to me and most other Americans that we are in one of "ox is in the ditch" times and have been for at least a year now. The job situation is dire. The mortgage problem for banks has not been ameliorated by the "stimulus." We face enormous debt. And on and on. The problems mount and our spirit seems spent.

What we need now is a President who will step into the breach, someone who has the courage to let the private sector do what it does best, someone who will put to full use the vast resources we have at our disposal.

In regard to the latter idea of fully utilizing our resources, there's this from Daniel Whitten for Bloomberg:

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Restrictions on oil and gas drilling will cost the U.S. economy $2.36 trillion through 2029, according to a study requested by state utility regulators and paid for in part by industry-sponsored groups.


Drilling restrictions in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and off the U.S. coastline are blocking access to about nine years’ worth of U.S. oil and gas consumption, according to the report. Among sponsors are the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners and the industry-funded Gas Technology Institute, of Des Plaines, Illinois.

If we truly want to get ourselves out of this mess and get the ox out of the ditch, I think this is where we should start.

1 comment:

  1. Identification is a must at this point. When you can identify "who" has been responsible for the "ox being in the ditch" then and only then can you start to identify how to "get it out". For, you see, this ox has been in the ditch for 50 plus years! And those responsible have undertaken a most calculated and diabolical process to put it there. A process which is almost at its end...

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