Read the plan, Mr. President

In an inter­view with Politico last week, Pres­i­dent Obama said the following:

I think it’s fair to say, if six months ago, before this spill had hap­pened, I had gone up to Con­gress and I had said we need to crack down a lot harder on oil com­pa­nies and we need to spend more money on tech­nol­ogy to respond in case of a cat­a­strophic spill, there are folks up there, who will not be named, who would have said this is clas­sic, big-government over­reg­u­la­tion and waste­ful spending.

Not so.  There are already laws on the books that allow for reg­u­la­tion of the oil indus­try and there is already a con­tin­gency plan in place for oil spills.  It would be a good idea if our fear­less leader, who is a Har­vard grad­u­ate after all, reads it.

He also said:

Some of the same folks who have been hol­ler­ing and say­ing ‘do some­thing’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were sug­gest­ing that gov­ern­ment needs to stop doing so much…Some of the same peo­ple who are say­ing the pres­i­dent needs to show lead­er­ship and solve this prob­lem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were say­ing this guy is try­ing to engi­neer a takeover of our soci­ety through the fed­eral gov­ern­ment that is going to restrict our freedoms.

How bla­tantly false and disin­gen­u­ous.  Again, those who are say­ing “Do some­thing” are those who are say­ing, “Imple­ment the plan.”  But instead, Obama is con­tent with allow­ing the pri­vate com­pany who is ulti­mately respon­si­ble for the spill to over­see every facet of it, with lit­tle or no input from the gov­ern­ment.  And don’t for­get:  It was the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion who gave BP a waiver on the envi­ron­men­tal impact study they were sup­posed to draft prior to drilling the exploratory well.  The fed­eral gov­ern­ment also dithered in their response to the spill.  It took the pres­i­dent two full weeks to make his first trip to the area, and he still hasn’t called for the imple­men­ta­tion of the national response plan.  Mean­while, mil­lions and mil­lions of gal­lons of oil are con­tin­u­ing to spill out, destroying the ecosys­tem and econ­omy the entire Gulf Coast relies on.  Every effort that BP has under­taken to halt or slow the flow of oil has failed.

Last night I caught some of the Huck­abee show on Fox News Chan­nel.  He had sev­eral guests on there that have and were devel­op­ing meth­ods to absorb the oil.  Some of them looked extremely viable, and with a com­bi­na­tion of sev­eral meth­ods I’m sure the entre­peneur­ship these indi­vid­u­als are show­ing can put a seri­ous dent in the oil in the Gulf.  I hope the government/EPA/BP review these meth­ods and imple­ment them.

Although oil has not directly impacted Mississippi’s beaches yet, the oil has come ashore on two of our bar­rier islands — Petit Bois and Horn Islands.  The local fish­ing and shrimp­ing indus­try is com­pletely halted.  Tourism and busi­ness is down 50–60%.  Seafood restau­rants are tak­ing a beat­ing in busi­ness.  How­ever, I want to tell every­one that the Mis­sis­sippi Gulf Coast has plenty of golf courses and casi­nos for your enjoy­ment.  I invite all every­one to come down and help sup­port our local econ­omy.  We do need your help.

Related Posts:

• Mis­sis­sippi Moxie
• Sun­set on the Gulf