Comments on: The Politics of the Oil Spill
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- y d601906 June 8, 2010 9:04 AM EDT
So where are all the "Save the Gulf" concerts? Where are the T.V. Benefits with celebrities & musicians giving heart felt speeches on the poor fisherman, wildlife, beaches, loss of income & sabotaged gulf economy? I find it rather strange how these people (including our own government) are so quick to help Haiti & other countries...but sit on their butts for this one.
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I was thinking that exact thing - Reply to this comment
- The Blamer-in-Chief took 45 days to seriously address the disaster and the rest of the time searching for a culprit (BP? Halliburton?), finger-pointing and assigning blame. The angry posturing for the cameras is too little, too late.
Pres. Obama could have made the Gulf oil disaster a top priority, instead he left BP at the helm with the sorry excuse that the company was best equipped to seal the pipe.
If BP wanted to stop the flow of oil, it would have dynamited the rig and sealed it with cement. It would have meant astronomical losses for BP and its investors.
50 million gallons and the worst environmental disaster in US history, all liberals can do is blame Bush. Good luck with that. - Reply to this comment
- So where are all the "Save the Gulf" concerts? Where are the T.V. Benefits with celebrities & musicians giving heart felt speeches on the poor fisherman, wildlife, beaches, loss of income & sabotaged gulf economy? I find it rather strange how these people (including our own government) are so quick to help Haiti & other countries...but sit on their butts for this one.
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- This disaster is the BUSH/CHENEY legacy; industry self policing will NOT work. As America returns to sanity, we'll continue to reject the TEA PARTY "only spend on what I want" idiocy. MORE regulation AND more spending on AMERICAN needs, not unnecessary wars, is the only way to stop the Katrina, SAGO MINE, & BP horrors.
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- has anyone seen the video of 2 farmers using hay to capture/collect the oil?????
It appears to be very effective !!!!!!
PLEASE if anyone has the ability to get this to the right people, PLEASE DO SO !!!!!! - Reply to this comment
- Hi, Perish.
It's easy to look at the situation today and conclude that anyone potentially involved -- whether BP or the government -- should have instantly responded as if it was a worst-case scenario. There's no argument that valuable time was lost by regarding this as a BP-only issue, that they have most of the expertise in control and clean-up, and rely on the common-sense approach that BP recognizes the potential severity of the problem and has already begun to address every aspect.
Clearly, in hindsight, such common sense was nowhere to be found. It's still being argued that common sense has been thrown out the window even now. I guess one lesson might be that EVERY such incident in the future MUST be treated as if it was a worst-case scenario within the first 24-hours of its occurrence, regardless of what any "experts" might be saying about it? Over-reacting (erring on the side of too much caution) is ALWAYS better than under-reacting (erring on the side of too little caution)?
Who are we going to count on for this? Is it government's job to mis-trust big business so much that government is always prepared for every mistake that big business makes? While we, the taxpayers, pay for that preparation, for that mis-trust? - Reply to this comment
- The fact is that for the first four weeks of this crisis very little was done. BP had no sense of urgency to cap this well. There was no giant call out for skimmers and buoys to control the spilled oil. The Coast Gaurd and BP were the only ones that knew of the real damage that was happening. We were told that a rig had burned down and that there was a spill but we weren't led to understand anywhere near how bad it was and how it needed such urgent attention. Along about the fourth week after the spill, the oil in the water became evident to all the fisherman and boaters and was starting to approach shorelines. Suddenly the reality of what was happening hit everyone and a massive outcry went out. People started hollering for response to this mess and things started getting done. BP got put front and center and forced into acting in an urgent manner. Volunteers and workers started getting involved and all kinds of methods to clean the oil from the water and beaches were used. The most important being the skimming of the oil in the water itself before it reaches the shore.
There is now no doubt that the oil in the water and the severity of the disaster was and is allowed to be much worse than it should have been. If the people that were aware of the flow of oil into the water would have acted with the urgency of the past few weeks, in the first four weeks, there would be far less oil in the water and the well might have been capped weeks earlier. NO doubt at all! BP is a giant oil company whose responsibility is to their bottom line. The government is the one whose responsibility is to us and our territory. The fact that the government trusted BP and told everyone that all was under control contributed greatly to the problem. They should always have treated this as a disaster emergency with all alarms sounded. - Reply to this comment
- vista:
I agree. I may not be on the front lines on this, but I do live on the water just miles from Pensacola. The beach doesn't make or break my living, but it certainly does break a significant part of my life. I spend probably more time on those beaches in a month than most folks do in their entire lives. We don't have gobs of oil yet, but the heartbreak will be beyond measure if we get oil in any significant quantity. - Reply to this comment
- Conservatives want President Obama to act like a Third World Big Man, someone who is expected to personally handle everything that happens in the country. I do not think so! We still have a government!
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, should be front and Center on the BP Oil Disaster response. FEMA was created to handle national emergencies.
Oh I forgot. Bush destroyed FEMA. Heck of a job Brownie.
Obama! Save the sea creatures! SAVE US! STOP THE OIL! - Reply to this comment
- The politicians fiddle while Rome burns. This is a really scary slow burn that is going to get bigger and last a long time. The media pays more attention to politics. The economic harm and human misery will be even bigger because of the lack of focus on the massive resources needed for cleanup. A President who wants to bark about BP paying does not get it. The massive resources and urgency of the clean up is what people want. The economics of the damage is easily $100 per day for every clean up $1 per day not spent.
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