Archive for May 31st, 2010

There can be no doubt the response from Washington to the Gulf oil well tragedy has been nothing but “blame Bush” from the Democrats. Instead of this Administration seeking to do the right things, it instead has to find someone or something to blame for this disastrous accident that is happening in the Gulf. Somehow if they can find the right person or entity to blame, their lack of responsibility will simply go away. That is an unacceptable response from Washington.

Accidents happen. I have born witness to that more times than I care to think about. Humans make mistakes and have since time was first recorded. Equipment fails and the operators of that equipment often times get too comfortable in its operation and they fail to head every safety warning ever given about its operation. Those are human responses.

Instead of “putting the boot” to BP’s throat as this Administration has claimed it is doing, it should instead be concentrating on 2 efforts- making sure BP has every asset it needs to stop the flow of oil from this well and secondly, to make sure every asset is utilized to recover and clean up from the oil spill.

So what has this Administrations response been? Blame Bush and form a Commission to study what happened. The last time I checked, at noon on January 20th, 2009, Barack Obama was sworn in as President and he made Cabinet level appointments for every single agency under his Administration. Forming Commissions is the response this Administration has to everything- U.S. Debt Commission, Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, Guantanamo Closure Commission, along with others I am sure of. The end result- we taxpayers spend millions to “study” the problems and end up with the same, tired, worn out, non-working solutions.

Even Rep. Corrine Brown has voiced her own reaction- Ban all Offshore Drilling for Oil and Gas in the form of a Bill introduced to do so. None of my opponents in this race have weighed in on this either. Either they are going to offer the same “politically correct” rhetoric, or their silence is simply an indication that they, too, offer the same Washington reactions as always offered from politicians.

My position and answer has been summed up in previous writings:

1. Stop the flow of oil and use every private and government asset to assure that happens quickly.
2. Assure that every possible effort to clean up the resulting spill in the Gulf is placed into action.
3. Determine the cause of this accident in order to minimize or eliminate this occurrence from happening again.

Drilling for oil and gas in the hostility of 5,000 feet of ocean is without a doubt going to filled with risk. To continue to “blame” and “point fingers” does nothing to improve the technology or safety needed to drill at those depths. Stop the calls for banning this exploration and start looking for ways to improve it. We as a nation will need to have methods to assure a cost-effective energy supply for decades to come and having the right technology to drill and extract that deep water energy will be vital to assuring that happens. The real culprit in this is humanity and our inability to stop blaming people when accidents happen.

Could it be that is the result of too much government trying to be all things to all people?