"Obama Boom" and Roughnecks in Texas

President Obama is credited with advances in our health care system. The advances have been called "Obama Care." The recent changes in our health-care system were not designed by the President but rather by your representatives and mine and voted into law by them. President Obama can talk about such change form his "bully pulpit," but his main responsibility and power is to enforce the laws our Congress has chosen to make. However, because the changes came about on "his watch," we choose to give him credit for them.

Now, on his watch, there is an oil boom in certain parts of the country. We may call this new flow of oil, gas, capital, and jobs "Obama Oil." We may say Obama Oil even though we know that oil is found, drilled,, and piped into the economy by "oil men."  Obama made neither the laws nor the culture that support oil men in their efforts to get oil through world markets. The President does support those laws and does see that they are enforced in this country and around the world.


I just took a look at the part of the boom that is taking place in West Texas. It is a real boom; a real oil boom. Some new technologies are being used, I saw one Texas sized billboard announcing Flex-Fracking. I also lots of trucks hauling large out of this world looking equipment.


It seems that gas extraction is booming along much of the US side of the Canadian boarder and people are active in oil in the Dakotas. This boom in west Texas seems to run in a strip south of San Antonio king of parallel of tto the Rio Grad River Valley, Roughly, it is about 100 miles long and 50 miles wide. Many men are working in that area and more are wanted. There is a shortage of motel rooms there and workers are not finding places to live. There is a mini-boom in moil and modular homes there. I enjoyed asking the young women behind the the motel office counters why there were no rooms, so that I could here the flutter in their voices when they said, "It's the oil boom." Could the fact that the boom was bringing lots of healthy young men with great paying jobs to the area that was putting that flutter in the women's voices?

I saw lots of muddy white pickups with men in muddy boots in them. Even with all the new technology the young of the white pickups will still be working in the Texas sun and dust enough to roughen their necks.


Friends of the Administration can say oil boomed on this president's watch and the new young workers of the boom will enjoy the benefits of Obama Care.