Brian Greenspun yields the floor to a friend with an opposing view on economic solutions

By Brian Greenspun and Don Gilberg

Sunday, June 29, 2008 | 2:02 a.m.

My friend Don Gilberg is a consistent and conscientious reader and responder to my Where I Stand columns.

I am publishing his latest effort in this space for two reasons. First, to prove that friends can disagree and remain friends — in this case one friend can show even greater respect by giving up his column space. And second, Don’s ideas are not completely unfounded and display a deep sense of frustration shared by most Americans.

As for my desire to have successful Nevadans invest in our own infrastructure needs — schools, roads, parks, etc. — I am still convinced that is the right course and the only way to get everyone who does well in Nevada committed to the idea that we should create opportunity for those who follow us to do well.

In short, we tell others there is no free lunch, so we shouldn’t expect one from those who can barely afford their own.

Don Gilberg

For those of you loyal Sun readers waiting to either nod your head in agreement with Brian Greenspun’s weekly commentary or gnash your teeth at the same column, Brian has allowed me the privilege of filling in this Sunday, as I both nod my head and gnash my teeth week in and week out reading his columns.

Let me start by observing that whether Brian is right or wrong in this space most weeks is not as important as the fact that, like the commentator who preceded him and started “Where I Stand,” his dad, Hank, I know Brian to be thoughtful, generous and inclined to try to be a problem solver, even with suggestions that sometimes I believe are dead wrong.

Loyal Sun readers know that Brian believes we should all pay our fair share of taxes to support the work of our government. Brian is half-right. What we really need is to hold our elected officials accountable for the money they waste, the pork they dole, and the obligation most politicians soon forget that they owe to the folks who employ them — we the people. Reds and Blues, D’s and R’s, remember those most sacred words. All elected officials work for us — the forgotten bums in the bleachers.

Times are real tough for “we the people.” We are paying way more than the average family can afford for staples like food, fuel, and, dare I say, taxes. Oil has hit a new high, pain at the pump a new high, and ditto for home foreclosures.

Against this drumbeat of daily bad news, the average Joe and Jane are watching their hard-earned savings evaporate as hedge funds play games on Wall Street — using their 401(k)s and IRAs — with the new funny money du jour: oil futures speculation.

So what do the folks who work for us suggest to help the struggling folks who employ them? Well, sorry to say, not much. We hear debates about whether we can “drill our way out” of the energy crisis or invest in renewable, sustainable, “green” energy.

Maybe I am missing something here. Is there a reason we can’t harvest all of the domestic oil we can, right now, in a safe and high-tech manner, while at the same time launch all of the heft of the mightiest nation in the history of the world (that would be the good ole USA — a fact often lost on the chicken little, the sky is falling politicians and media observers) to create more jobs and clean renewable energy sources that we not only can consume right here but export to others?

This brings me back to my dear friend Brian’s clarion call for higher taxes for the rich. (Am I the only one who reads these columns and feels less rich every week?) The answer is to slash the hideous waste that is accepted as politics as usual in our nation’s capital.

After more than three decades of living in the D.C. area, I continue to be amazed by the performance of our political employees and their ever-evolving “governmentspeak.”

Only in Washington is a 5 percent hike in spending viewed as a cut in spending because some unaccountable politician requested an 8 percent rise in spending. Only in Washington can our “public servants” rail about “pain at the pump,” while each and every member of the House of Representatives has a vehicle allowance and fuel paid for by his or her bosses — we the people.

And only in Washington can folks welcome the bestowal of due process rights on enemy combatants at GITMO as an achievement, as the true heroes, our children in uniform, get much less protection than the nut jobs trying to kill you and me and our progeny, under The Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Washington is a city run amok with power-hungry politicians so far removed from the trials and travails of we the people that giving them more of our hard-earned greenbacks to fritter away is not the answer.

We need to find big-thinking men and women who truly are beholden to no special interests, always remember whom they work for, and think big thoughts as the framers of this great democracy did, and, in the process, created the most powerful, innovative, generous and compassionate nation in the history of mankind.

I will start the process of debating big ideas on how to dig ourselves out of the mess our politician employees have handed us. We should explore every source of domestic fuel, including crude oil, natural gas, biofuels and coal, and launch a Manhattan Project unleashing our greatest thinkers and doers on how to truly make us free of dependence on foreign thugs who hold us hostage with their multitrillion-dollar “cartels.”

At the same time I would like a leader, any leader — George Bush, Barack Obama, John McCain, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi — to stand up to the financiers of worldwide terrorism, who also happen to have you and me literally over their barrels, and say something like, “OPEC, you say that the price of a barrel of oil is $140. That’s fine. The price of a bushel of grain grown in the United States is $140. Oh, and did I tell you that it’s the same price for a bushel of corn, soybeans, or anything else we grow here?”

Is there no politician who works for us who will stand up to our hostage-takers in the Middle East and say, “Let them eat oil”? Probably not. They would have to debate the implications under NAFTA, environmental implications, the concerns of the “international community,” and try “more diplomacy.”

And we the people will remain the victims of this nonsense.

Don Gilberg, an attorney and computer security expert, is vice president of strategic development of  NetWitness.