U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman did his best to help out the Obama administration, but the president seems determined to go down in flames, or at least to wander aimlessly on a tar ball. Feldman’s decision to overturn Obama’s ill-considered six month ban on deepwater drilling in the gulf offered the president a convenient escape route from the corner he backed himself into. He could have – should have – used the court’s decision as a means to restore at least some measure of respect for his administration among the people of the gulf states who viewed the drilling moratorium as the second half of a one-two punch that threatens their way of life. With each passing day, the perception that the president has been hesitant, ineffective and unwilling to cut through bureaucratic red tape to fight the spill has grown. That perception is not going to change anytime soon. What might have changed is the view that Obama panicked and over-reacted by imposing a drilling moratorium in the midst of a crippling recession. Alas, the administration’s immediate and predictable reaction to Feldman’s decision – to have Interior Secretary Ken Salazar crank out a new version of the moratorium – demonstrated once again just how out of touch this particular collection of the ruling elite occupying the White House is.
“The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is an unprecedented, sad, ugly and inhuman disaster,” Feldman wrote in his opinion. “What seems clear is that the federal government has been pressed by what happened on the Deepwater Horizon into an otherwise sweeping confirmation that all Gulf deepwater drilling activities put us all in a universal threat of irreparable harm.”
Feldman thus firmly rejected Obama’s proposition that one accident, no matter how tragic, should indict an entire industry. A moratorium punishes the innocent for a disaster involving a single rig, a disaster that may have been caused by neglect or stupidity, or that may have been a result of a unique, unfortunate and unforeseeable chain of events. We can speculate, but no one actually knows exactly what chain of events led to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and we won’t know for quite some time. If you’re Barack Obama, your reaction to such an absence of certainty is to shove an entire industry safely under a bushel basket until government can make everything all better. If you live along the gulf and if you understand that the petrochemical industry is pretty darn important to maintaining prosperity in your section of the country, you probably look at things a bit differently. To put a point on it, most of the people who live in the gulf states understand that the one thing that could possibly hurt them more than an massive oil spill would be for the federal government to over-react to the disaster and punish tens of thousands of innocents over the alleged negligence of a potentially guilty few.
Thank You For A breath Of Common Sense
The scope of the BP oil spill disaster may increase to that of an unprecented cataclysm. Front Page Magazine should devote more coverage to it.
The crisis presents another opportunity for the administration to push a segment of the population onto the public dole. Socialism is hiding just around the corner.
We also need to consider the proposition that Obama and crew are deliberately attempting to inflict damage on the United States. Over the last 18 months, it appears that every decision points that way. The deliberate falsification of the document which resulted in the drilling moratorium is a clear case in point.
Yeah, you'd like to think that an American President would act in the best interests of the United States, but this administration seems to be headed in the opposite direction.
Remember in November!
As long as Republicans keep sticking up for BP as the real "victim" in this, I do hope we all "Remember in November."
Good point, LeChat. I have a hard time believing that any adult person who is not mentally ill could demonstrate such a staggering level of incompetence.
BP announced early after the spill that it would pay all justifiable claims resulting from the disastrous oil spill. It opened 25 claims offices. As of June 15, BP approved initial payments that amounted to $63 million, expected to rise to $85 million by the end of the week, to businesses claiming $5,000 or more in damages. Why did the President insist that his own personal organization take over the job of paying claims? After all, supervising reparations is a judicial function, not an executive function. BP created its own fund and appointed its administrator and determined how it will be staffed with a view to ensuring only qualified persons, businesses, and governments would be reimbursed for its losses. Now those decisions will be made politically by unethical people interested only in social justice not justice – and BP is their deep pockets to loot.
It's all about power, my friend. The President and his fellow travelers want it and will do anything to seize it. The question is whether our fellow countrymen have the grit and resolve to fight his efforts.
"Retreat, hell, I just got here!"
POTUS probably wants to make sure that the appropriate amount* of withholding taxes are taken out.
* that being 100%
Hussein is just making sure those claims go to the 'right' (read "left") claimants. It's a $20 billion dollar slush fund to fortify friends of the dp.
Again, I sincerely hope your representatives run on the "We should have left it to BP" platform you espouse.
Can Anyone, ANYONE at all, after watching the actions and decisions and non-decisions of this fool we have in the WH believe he has any idea of what he is doing. Hummmm, maybe he does have an idea. Maybe THIS is the CHANGE he campaigned on. The CHANGE to destroy the America we have known and loved for decades. Maybe this is how the left can get its way. Much to the detriment of our nation.
Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
"We can speculate, but no one actually knows exactly what chain of events led to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe and we won’t know for quite some time."
That's sort of the point, If we don't know what casued it, how do we at least mitigate the "risk" of it happening again? In my book, the "risk" of this happeing again, since we don't know what actually happened, trumps the "reward" of gas prices being 2-3 cents lower.
I feel for those who will be out of work (they can file suit aginst BP), but they too took the "reward" of working in the oil industry over the "risk" that a spill might force them out of a job.
I live in southern Louisana and upon watching this tragedy unfold, I can come to no other conclusion than that obama and his liberal goons are literally ALLOWING this oil spill to consume our wetlands, wildlife, and way of life for no other purpose than to implement their idiotic, pie-in-the-sky environmetalist agenda. Will America survive this arrogant, evil, communist and his regime until 2012?
Funny you say that, Cindy. I live in Florida, and I was asking myself that same question. I was also thinking that the wealthy will soon snap up cheap beachfront property.
uh ….it's pretty clear now , what caused the disaster . Sorry , it was the "gov'ment ." Flaunting federal regulations , cronyism between those federal regulators , judges , oil companies , ignoring their own industry standards , poo-pooing the warnings from highly credible engineers , ignoring the warnings of their own employees , ignoring the physical indications that their own equiptment was failing , fudging pressure tests and ignoring the ominous results .
Anyone who is still mystified or "suspeeecious " about the cause , will be scratching their heads for a long , long time .
As for WHO administrates the payouts that BP is most justifyably LIABLE for ? It should be OUR government , because it was OUR SEAS AND LAND that is being devastated by BP's greed .
Or would we rather repeat the Exxon Valdez disaster , which Exxon ,out of their corporate "generosity " weazled out of , by paying up , only 1/500th of the damages it caused . lol…and they've showed the highest profits of any corporation in US history almost every year since .
Assuming negligence caused the accident, you are confusing "but for" causation, which is not actual causation, i.e., the "proximate" cause of the accident.
and , I'll add , it wasn't any "liberal goons who allowed the wetlands to be ravaged , the government who many here have complained are "over-involved " and always has "an evil " agenda , it simply not in the oil spill cleanup buisiness . THAT was the responsibilty of the oil companies who LIED [just as in Valdez } that they were prepared for any scenario . Decades of oil companies lobbying BOTH SIDE OF THE ISLE , insured that they would in fact NOT BE PREPARED for disasters lioke this ….or evn smaller ones for that matter .
Many here forget , or maybe choose to not remember the Texas City BP Refinery Explosion in 2005 which killed 17 and injured 170 . Again almost 750 violations , flaunting of rules .
Any body recognize a pattern here ? Did thed "liberal goons " cause that one ?
Regulations are based in a good rationale …without them people can and do run amuck and wreak havoc …..leave the responsibility to the oil companies themselves and what you get are disasters .
The Texas City Explosion was 100 % avoidable , just like this present disaster . take off your conspiracy goggles , this is based in unmitigated greed and avarice .
BP did , by their own greed , what monster hurricanes could not .
The hard facts are that no new permits have been issued by the feds for ANY offshore drilling at ANY depth since the April 20, Deepwater Horizon disaster. The Department of the Interior is sitting on a plethora of shallow water drilling requests thus creating a defacto ban on all Gulf drilling activities. They are destroying the local economy and peoples lives simply because they can. Why? There will always be individuals within the cocoon of corporate businesses that are unethical and ruthless in their pusuit of profit and power. It is the business of the people via the government to limit the actions of these individuals, it is not to place blanket indicments on an entire industry that is producing a necessary commodity. Regulations are absolutely necessary but they must be created intelligently and enforced with wisdom; at present both seem to be absent from this entire process.
We have a cap on offshore drilling in California. Shell oil operates one of the few off shore operations on the Southern California border just South of Santa Barbara. There has always been a degree of oil in the water there. You can smell it, you can see the blue gas like tint in the water. The other thing I noticed, fishing off the pier, is that you pretty much only catch bottom feeders such as Sand sharks. Along Malibu, where the water is pristine, I've seen dolphins surfing the waves – they certainly know where the clean water is!
The Gulf of Mexico is surrounded by all GOP states — Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida. These people have created jobs through oil where as California has an economy base otherwise.
Long story short: — when the hurricanes come larger than normal due to global warming and sucks that oil into the fierce inner circle of those storms and lightning strikes and catches that oil of fire with 100 mph winds, we are going to have a GOP winnie roast and therefore some our country's problems will be solved!!! lol
You're aware that there's lots and lots of natural oil seeps on the ocean floor off Santa Barbara, right? That have seeped oil for hundreds and maybe thousands of years naturally? Therefore, you will naturally see slicks, plumes and tar balls sometimes.
Go to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution website at http://www.whoi.edu and search on "santa barbara oil seep" and you'll see plenty of research and pictures about this topic.
I for one, will be pleased as Punch when California is completely bankrupt and overrun by Mexico; don't bother coming north looking for a friend: Our lifeboat's full and we're well armed !
…and if anyone thinks that paying liabilities to the victims in the Gulf , should be left to the "benevolence " of BP…just listen to what those very same people, your fellow Americans are saying , and HOW they are being paid …some at only 10% of their losses .
yea , leave it to BP USMCsniper , they're reeeeeeaaaaal ethical and just . gimme a break pally .
Obama is just using this crisis to shut down drilling everywhere and to punish the gulf states into supporting his liberal left-wing agendas. He wants economic pain for this region and is going to inflict as much as he can get away with. Support the judges attempts to save the region against the Obama supporters death threats. What a bunch of Stalinist crooks – they committed fraud to make critical changes to a report presented in Court after it had been signed off. Fortunately the Judge saw this immediately. Too bad he didn't hold the Obama administration in contempt of Court and charge them with perjury.
"Too bad he didn't hold the Obama administration in contempt of Court and charge them with perjury"
What's too bad is that boneheads like you whine incessantly about impeachment and other such moronic blather just to vent your widdle emotional outbursts–but you don't seem to know a single lawyer or investigator who wants to take the case. Oh, wah, wah, wah!!!
Yea , I'll bet the judge's got shares of BP .Shut down drilling "everywhere " ? Get a grip on yourself pyeatte . Just before BP BROKE THE LAW , by it's flagrant flaunting of Federal Regulations , it's OWN INDUSTRY'S STANDARDS , ignoriong warnings from engineers and it's own employees and making itself GUILTY of malfeasance in the most egregious way , causing the worst disaster in US history , Obama was approving drilling in areas which were in the past restricted .
Stalinist crooks ? Uncle Joe would had everyone involved executed or sent to the Gulag by now .
If the Federal Judges down there would have been doing their jobs , this disaster would have been prevented . To let BP get away with fudged pressure tests , 700 or so violations , and after BP blew up it's Texas City refinery out of sheer greed killing 17 Americans and injuring 172 , you're attempting to transfer blame and infer ridiculous comparisons, and make ludicrous accusations ?This seems more a case of BP "punishing " the American Coast and it's people .
It's nothing less than common sense to call a moratorium on DEEP WATER WELLS , to assess whether or not they are in compliance lest we be faced with a second blowout . If pressure testing and other issues were "fudged " on the BP rig , by the regulators , and violations ignored by judges , if the equiptment meant to prevent this was substandard or simply doesn' t work , why is it unreasonable to assume the possibility that the same is not the case with others ?
It should be obvious by now that Fed Regulators were being either bribed , bought off with favors , or involved in a cozy cronyism with all parties involved .
And if there were in fact any "death threats " issued to anyone inviolved , WHY do you assume its from Obama supporters ?
and p.s. I didn't vote for him , in fact I didn't vote at all because once Romney was out , it didn't matter to me which idiot got elected .
"I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country."
"Under a separation of state and economics, especially with laissez-faire capitalism, the state no longer has a role to play in protecting the people and assuring their happiness. Laissez-faire means capitalism is outside the regulatory control of the state and that the people are entirely at the mercy of the capitalists."
Name the communist bastard who said these things.
Fool, it was Thomas Jefferson; and no one of us believes in utterly lawless capitalism any more than we believe in the lawless Obamaroid! PULL YER HEAD OUT!
You are sooo stupid one can only sigh and shake his head after seeing post after post from you advertising that you are definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
I don't know Jim , but I kinda think it might have been a famous American . Either way it certainly describes whats going on in places like the Gulf ,as it relates to the oil companies .
It raises an interesting question though …..should capitalism supercede patriotism ? Is the Constitution trumped by the profit motive ?