Received from an e-mail correspondent:

Does anybody out there have any memory of the reason given for the establishment of the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY during the Carter Administration?

Anybody? Anything? No?

Bottom line … we’ve spent several hundred billion dollars in support of an agency …the reason for which virtually no one who reads this can remember.

Ready?

It was very simple…and at the time everybody thought it very appropriate…the ‘Department of Energy’ was instituted on 8-04-1977 TO LESSEN OUR DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL.

Hey, pretty effective, huh?

AND NOW IT’S 2009, 32 YEARS LATER …AND THE BUDGET FOR THIS “NECESSARY” DEPARTMENT IS AT $24.2 BILLION A YEAR IT HAS 16,000 FEDERAL EMPLOYEES AND APPROXIMATELY 100,000 CONTRACT EMPLOYEES AND LOOK AT THE JOB IT HAS DONE!

THIS IS WHERE YOU SLAP YOUR FOREHEAD AND SAY ‘WHAT WAS I THINKING?’

Ah, yes, good old bureaucracy… and NOW we are turning (or have turned) the banking system, health care & the auto Industry over to government…just in the name of “CHANGE”?

May God Help Us !!!