By Alan Caruba
The only person who has been fired in the midst of the oil spill fiasco has been the former head of the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior.
According to a June 17 editorial in The Wall Street Journal, it is now clear that both the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, and the White House energy “czar”, Carol Browner, both lied to the nation regarding the recommendations by drilling experts, alleging that they had agreed to a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf.
Browner, citing the falsified recommendation to impose a moratorium, inserted after the memorandum had been received, said, “No one’s been deceived or misrepresented.” She lied.
From the beginning of the oil spill, the administration has failed to respond in a timely fashion.
In an article in Human Events the following lack of action by the administration was cited:
It failed to accept help offered by the Netherlands to help with skimming booms and plans to create barriers.
It failed to suspend the Jones Act in order to allow foreign vessels into American waters.
It failed to suspend the Davis-Bacon wage laws to allow rapid deployment of new workers to help the containment efforts.
It failed to suspend FEMA contracting and bidding rules.
It failed to allow coastal governors to immediately begin dredging to create barrier islands.
Failure on this scale requires that those involved should lose their jobs. We cannot “fire” the President, but his administration is shot through with people from the highest level to those below that exacerbated the Gulf oil spill.
The Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, has barely been heard from. The Secretary of the Interior has been silenced since his comment that he would keep his “boot on the neck of BP.”
It took nearly two months before the President met with officials from BP.
The President has been soundly criticized for his lack of competence in office while he devoted himself to passing the hated Obamacare legislation and drove the national debt to levels unseen in the history of the nation.
What the President has offered is a “commission” to study the event. He continues to advocate “a clean energy future” filled with solar and wind farms. Neither can even begin to meet the needs of a small city, let alone the nation. All must be backed up by coal-fired, natural gas, and nuclear plants.
Waiting in the Senate for a vote is the infamous “Cap-and-Trade Act”, renamed several times now to mask the fact that it would impose a massive tax on all energy use by Americans and cede to the Environmental Protection Agency powers based on the entirely false assertion that carbon dioxide is responsible for “global warming.” There is no global warming. It is a lie.
A recent vote by the Democrat-controlled Senate opened the door to this eventuality even if the Cap-and-Trade Act is not enacted.
The Secretary of the Interior should be fired. Carol Browner, the President’s energy advisor should be fired. The Secretary of Energy should be fired. They won’t be.
In November the midterm elections will permit Americans to replace every member of the Senate and House up for re-election whose votes have been responsible for the nation’s unsustainable debt level, for the failed “stimulus” bill, for their failure to address the nation’s immigration crisis, for their vote to pass Obamacare and for their failure to extend the Bush administration tax cuts.
In 2012, we can cast out Barack Obama, his endless “czars”, and an administration that has consistently worked to destroy America.
© Alan Caruba, 2010
Allen:
ReplyDeleteThe American People may attempt to throw the bums out this November. In fact, if I were a betting man I'd give anyone good odds that the GOP becomes the majority party in both Houses of Congress come January, 2011 -
However, Obama will continue to hold the power of veto and continue the march to Socialism by means of Presidential Orders, unelected Czars and a willing federal bureaucracy of several million.
What will happen when the American People understand that redress by ballot won't happen?
Cheers, Ronbo
Corruption has become manifest in our federal bureaucracies, just about all of them. From my professional experience, in both government and private industry, corruption must at least have approval from, if not begin at, the very top. This corruption didn't, by any means, begin with the Obama administration, but Obama (more Obama's handlers) has certainly taken full advantage of it.
ReplyDeleteRepublics deteriorate into democracies, and democracies deteriorate into dictatorships, as a natural course. Few people realize that there were 2 revolutions in Russia in 1917. The first was to establish democracy, and it did, but a very weak democratic government, ready for quick failure. The second resulted in communism . . . for a short while. Then when Lenin, a dedicated communist, met his fate, the dictator Stalin took over.
Stalin never once said that the USSR was a communist government under his rule. What he did proclaim was that for communism to be successful, first capitalism had to be completely destroyed. There was a pretense of a Politburo, but in reality, Stalin ruled with terror.
Since 1964 (LBJ's election), capitalism has been being replaced in the USA by socialism, with communism as the final objective. But first, as Stalin said, capitalism has to be destroyed completely.
Dictatorship is the real goal of the powers behind the Democrat party leaders, IMHO.
Larry:
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you mention the Russian Revolution(s) of 1917 in regards to our current situation.
I see many ominous parallels as well with Russia in 1917 with Obama as a repeat of Lenin; he certainly has the Communist dogma down chapter and verse, but more importantly, he has the same psychopathic personality of Lenin.
Where will this lead? If Russian history is a teacher, it leads directly to civil war and dictatorship of either the Left or Right.
I think the old republic is a dead letter. Glenn Beck and the Tea Partiers talk of a restoration of the republic. However, as you point out, corruption of Americans is well advanced and this fact alone makes a restoration highly unlikely.
In fact, a betting man would put his money on dictatorship at this point in time. The only question is do we get Augustus or Caligula?
Obama clearly has the destruction of corporate America as we know it in mind, so it's certainly no surprise that he's let this situation in the gulf spiral out of control. Inaction serves several purposes for him....
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, it allows him to thoroughly demonize the oil companies and big business in general. The public is already being whipped into an anti-BP frenzy. When that hysteria is combined with all the other anti-bank, anti-insurance, and anti-wall street hype we've been blasted with in the past year, the result will be the kind of anti-big-business sentiment that liberals can only dream of. It will be a powerful tool in his push for the destruction of capitalism and the Socialization of America.
Secondly, as the spill reaches massive proportions and causes widespread chaos in the gulf, it will become the type of crisis that allows him to "do things we normally wouldn't be able to do" ... namely, to levy huge taxes and fines and seize massive chunks of power and regulatory authority for the federal government. As this spill progresses, everything from global warming to cancer will be blamed on the oil companies and all those corrupt, evil big businesses. After a few months of that, the pitifully ignorant public will be happy to see them all fleeced into bankruptcy and government control in the name of "saving the country".
And, as if all that isn't enough, we still have to wonder if Obama isn't simply glad to see a huge portion of the United States ruined by the oil. Based on all the apologetic speeches he's given, we certainly deserve it don't we?
There simply isn't a day that goes by when he doesn't say or do something to call his loyalties into question. I only hope someone who actually cares about this country steps in and takes action before it's too late.