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Jewish World Review May 30, 2010 / 18 Sivan 5770 Sloth in charge By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | We live in an Alice in Wonderland world when Sarah (drill, baby, drill!) Palin credibly can accuse President Barack Obama of being in bed with Big Oil. But some liberals suspect this may be so. "People are begging, crying for you (Mr. Obama) to get down here, to get involved. We're dying down here," Democratic consultant James Carville, who is from Louisiana, literally screamed Wednesday during an appearance on ABC's "Good Morning, America" program. To forestall more such criticism, President Obama visited the Gulf coast Friday to see for himself the oil lapping up from the explosion April 20 that destroyed British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. I suspect he spent as little time as he possibly could with Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who is furious with the feds for stalling his requests for action. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, who is coordinating the federal response (such as it has been), said the administration has deferred to BP to plug the leak -- which is in 5,000 feet of water 50 miles off the Louisiana coast -- because the government lacks the expertise and equipment to do the job. This is, alas, true. But Gov. Jindal wonders why the feds have dithered on his request for permission to build 80 miles of sand berms to keep the oil out of Louisiana's wetlands. Plugging a leak in 5,000 feet of water is technologically difficult. Building a sand berm is not. BP's latest effort to plug the leak seems to be working. But far less oil would be lapping up on Gulf Coast beaches if the feds had followed through on the interagency response plan for a major spill that was completed in 1994. It called for burning the oil in place with fire booms. Ron Gouguet, who as the spill response coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had helped write the plan, told the Mobile Press-Register fire booms could have captured 95 percent of the oil that spilled from the well. But when Deepwater Horizon blew, neither the federal government nor BP had a fire boom on hand. One was hastily ordered from a manufacturer in Illinois, but the feds waited eight days before conducting a test burn. Why? "Certain environmental groups have long opposed the 1994 federal response plan ... that called for burning any oil spill right away," wrote John Fund of The Wall Street Journal. "(Coast Guard) Rear Adm. Mary Landry (who preceded Adm. Allen as response coordinator) told reporters that burning the oil mean a 'black plume of smoke' that could affect birds and mammals." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said May 2 "this was a situation that was treated as a possible catastrophic failure from Day One." But nine days elapsed before Ms. Napolitano took the bureaucratic steps necessary to permit the Department of Defense to assist. Liberals believe the oil spill was caused by inadequate regulation. Responding to that belief, Mr. Obama announced additional regulations Thursday. But the evidence suggests the problem is inadequate regulators. "Federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed industry officials several years ago to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil -- and then turned them over to regulators, who then traced over them in pen before submitting the reports to the agency, according to an inspector general's report," The New York Times reported Monday. No reasonable person could expect Mr. Obama personally to make sure the feds had fire booms on hand, or to check up on the bureaucrats at the Minerals Management Service. But a more proactive president wouldn't have waited nine days before saying anything about the crisis or 12 days before visiting the region. When Mr. Obama did speak, it was mostly to insist BP pay the costs of cleanup. That's nice. But Americans are more interested in containing the damage than in who will pay for it afterwards. Mr. Obama has worked harder to avoid blame for the oil spill than to clean it up. That is not the leadership we expect from a president. "I was led to believe that a powerful and active federal government would be good for society at large," said lawyer/blogger Pejman Yousefzadeh. "But unfortunately the federal government's ability to be powerful and active is not as pronounced as its ability to be meddlesome when its help is not wanted and slothful when its help is actually needed."
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
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