A prudent proposal to save Louisiana's petrochemical industry

[TexasTowelie]

Editor’s note: This is a satirical piece written in the voice of the fictional Colonel Maynard Wellworthy, president of the fictional Stonewall Oil and Gas Association.

by Leo Lindner


I am president of the Stonewall Oil and Gas Association. You may recognize me from my many mellifluous and meticulously reasoned op-eds extolling the ideal constants of the free market and the oil industry. So, as you may imagine, my head literally erupted into a white-hot boil of moral outrage when President Biden issued a moratorium on new drilling leases on federal land for an eternity of 60 days to “allow the administration to conduct a comprehensive review of the federal leasing program.” Nothing fries my cracklin’ more than woke, socialist libs thinking about policy. Faith in the market and oil is all we need.

I am a supreme thinker. When it comes to intellectual cerebration, I would rank myself the equal of a John C. Calhoun or — forgive my audacity — perhaps even a Rep. Clay Higgins. While I’m assiduous in my logic, my sublime meditative organ continually alights upon only one conclusion: action! I am nothing if not a man of action. Action for its own sake, I say!

Now, I have set my magnificent mind-palace against this war of environmentalist aggression on the petrochemical industry. My cognitive machinery has divined the only solution to Louisiana’s woes. We all believe that government should be “run like a business.” Well it’s time to go one step further. We need business to run government!

There needs to be a consolidation of state and corporate power. We should move immediately to dissolve the state legislature and replace it with a state board of directors and replace the governor with a State CEO. Petrochemical CEOs could people this state board, and elect the state’s CEO, preferably a Company Executive Officer graced with a masculine jawline. An oil company executive would be perfect for the executive branch of government for our new Louisiana Petro-State. I humbly ask, who knows more about execution than the oil industry?

Read more: https://thelensnola.org/2021/04/01/a-prudent-proposal-to-save-louisianas-petrochemical-industry/