I was having dinner with an old friend the other night. He glanced down at the menu and looked up in disgust. “I can’t do it. I can’t do it anymore. I’m going to have to become a vegan. I can’t eat seafood or meat. We’ve fouled up our environment so much, none of it’s healthy.”

Now, normally, I like to prove my friend wrong, but not in this instance. I was in no mood to argue. Millions of gallons of oil had just spilled in America’s seafood basket; our Chesapeake Bay’s in horrible shape; and we treat our livestock so poorly, injecting them so much, it makes our food supply suspect.  We’ve made such a mess of our land and sea that beluga whales living in the Arctic Ocean are now getting breast cancer.

Everyone, on the left and on the right, seems to be angry at the most current environmental nightmare. There’s a circle of screaming going on, blaming all sorts of people including President Obama, former President Bush and BP.  The anger at BP is understandable.  After all, its brilliantly handled CEO uttered the now infamous words that will spell the end of his tenure (and possibly the end of one of the world’s largest companies), “I just want my life back.”

Well, Mr. Hayward, you can have your life back when we have our seafood-producing, animal-filled, vacation-destination Gulf back.

BP messed up, literally and figuratively, at every turn. They’ve handled this very badly. They should have announced they were bringing in the best people from across the globe; they were going to work with the U.S. government and engineers from every oil company and find a solution — fast. Now, everyone’s mad at BP, as they should be. But it seems no one’s mad at themselves They are taking out their frustrations on others.

Locally, John Phelps owns Carroll Independent Fuel, a third-generation oil and gas company. John and his family are great members of our community. His grandfather was good for the Jews and every other minority long before it was socially acceptable. They donate a lot of money to local charities, and the Phelps family is one of the hardest-working, most honest families I know. I am proud to call John a friend.

I went to get gas the other day and drove past his BP station and filled up at his Carroll Independent Fuel station. I called John on my cell to let him know the CIF had lines and his BP station was practically empty, though only a half-mile away. Drivers are boycotting BP stations.

“I know,” John answered me with concern. “It’s a real problem.”

People think BP owns those stations. It doesn’t; local owners do. The gas coming out of those pumps may or may not come from BP.  The profits go to people like the Phelps family, creating local jobs and paying local taxes.

Besides, which oil company would you prefer supply our local dealer? Exxon, which dumped millions of gallons of oil in Alaska and paid only $500 million in fines, Hugo Chavez’s Citgo, Texaco (now Chevron), which polluted the Amazon so badly children have birth defects and can’t get compensated? Or BP? Oil companies aren’t saints. It’s a dirty business to start with.

We need to stop blaming the oil companies and start blaming ourselves. We’re the ones driving the huge SUVs and living in McMansions.  Americans are 5 percent of the world’s population and account for 25 percent of the oil consumption. We vote for politicians who ensure we have cheap gas for our pickup trucks and our minivans. Oil companies are meeting our demand. Oil’s hard to find and hard to get out of the ground.

The Jewish community is shockingly silent on this issue. Because of supply and demand, we keep oil prices high, helping the Iranians and other terror-sponsoring countries—countries that threaten Israel’s very existence. Yet we think nothing of pumping cheap gas into our huge cars and homes. We scream at Obama, but we don’t let our government raise taxes on fuel to pay for alternative energy subsidies or pass a comprehensive energy bill.

Don’t just blame BP, don’t blame politicians and certainly don’t blame local gas station owners. Let’s blame ourselves and our own Jewish community for its lack of will or desire to do something about environmental disasters and funding terror with petro dollars.

While all of us to some degree bear responsibility for our insatiable appetite for oil, our President doesn’t get his share of the blame for this fiasco. It has now been over two months since this oil spill. Anyone with any leadership experience would have had a meeting of the people and leaders of countries with experience in this type of issue. That should have been done within a couple of days of the accident. This President dithered publicly and found plenty of time to play golf. Within 3 days of the disaster we had offers from the Dutch, the British and the Saudi’s in helping with this mess. All it required was suspension of the Jones Act allowing foreign ships in our territorial waters. Bush suspended the Jones act within a few days of Katrina. It has been over two months and this President still has not suspended the Jones act and allowed countries with much more experience in this type of problem to help us.

Why? It’s obvious. Suspension of the Jones Act means that ships with non-union workers would be helping with the clean. Anathema to the Democrats, to the President, and to his employers which only make of 7% of the US workforce - the unions.

This President cares more about unions then he does about our shoreline. He cares more about political expediency than he does about the worst environmental disaster in the history of our country. Of course he has tried to blame George Bush for this one too, but even that old canard is getting stale. This President and this administration is not only ideologically driven, the bottom line is that they are blatantly incompetent. They have shown on multiple occasions in the last 18 months that they do not know how to respond to anything close to crisis. And when they do, the consequences are disastrous.

You talk about the Jewish community and chastise us for the lack of will or desire to do something about environmental disasters. You could just as well ask our democrat liberal jewish community when they are going to stop toeing the party line, forgetting old affiliations, and start voting for politicians that have their best interests at heart. Ones that will support Israel. Ones that will support small businesses rather than tax them into oblivion. Ones that care about the common man rather than the Union Man. Just wondering - how many Jews in America are active union memebers?

It is high time the Jewish community changed their political affiliation. It’s easy once you get started. Instead of pulling the lever for O’Malley this year without thinking, go into the booth and really think about whether or not our state will be in a better position with Robert Ehrlich back as its leader. It’s time we stopped being sheep for the Democrat Party. They have taken us for granted for far too long. It’s time we sent all of Washington, DC a very loud message. Maybe they will start to listen.