For nearly 50 years, it has been an article of faith and dogma that Reagan’s words were the truth: “The 9 most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’ ”

Well, those days are gone. We live in an age when private industry has been handed dominion over our environment — for jobs! — and the result…well, let Bill Maher lay it out for you:

You know, it’s Washington gospel that jobs in the private sector are better than government jobs. You even hear Democrats saying it.

But oil jobs are private, and look at the toil this industry takes: cooking the planet, enslaving us to Saudi Arabia, killing animals…

Yes, the oil industry creates jobs. So does the kiddie porn industry.

I mean, can you imagine someone making this argument: that business must be allowed to dump toxic waste right into our waterways, because treating it is expensive, and that will cost jobs and growth. Well, is that really so different from someone on CNBC talking about the need for continued deep water drilling?

This week, [Louisiana Senator David Vitter] finally found a place to draw a line in the now shit-brown flammable sand of his home state. He told President Obama, you must not stop drilling, because it would affect jobs and growth. Yes, David Vitter says a moratorium on more drilling could potentially be devastating for Louisiana. Only a Republican can look at a dead ocean and say, “Boy, I sure hope Big Government doesn’t turn this into something bad!”

You know, maybe your job needs to go when it starts killing things.

You want solutions? He’s even got a few of those:

If the government hired away all the 58,000 oil workers who work now in the state of Louisiana, and paid them their same salary to work repairing infrastructure and building solar panels, it would cost us $5.5 billion, which the Pentagon loses every day in the couch. Wouldn’t that be worth it?

Watch it — he starts up at 2:00 into the video: