You Bet Your BP

It has been 2.5 months since BP’s subcontracted deepwater, floating drilling unit exploded, discharging oil ever since. Public opinion says BP should be punished. And so they have.

President Obama extorted $20 billion from BP to distribute to the victims of this disaster by an “independent third party.’’ ‘Independent’ to the President is his personal czar, accountable only to him. Such dishonest chutzpah!

Obama also extorted another $100 million from BP to pay the salaries of the tens of thousands of workers who are being forced into unemployment by Obama due to his six-month drilling ban of such rigs. Although the experts assembled by Obama said shutting down the wells would increase the likelihood of another disaster, the Administration published a report, lying, saying the opposite! Hey when they have the press covering for them, they can get away with anything.

The reason this accident happened can be traced back to the government. They cut a deal with the oil companies after the1989 Exxon-Valdez tanker leak disaster.

In exchange for passing a law of a cap on the oil company’s liability to $75 million per disaster (conveniently ignored by Obama), the government got the right to tell the oil companies where they could drill.

So Congress passed a law prohibiting oil companies from drilling in shallow water off our coasts where the chance of such disasters would be minimal. No, they forced the oil companies to drill five miles below the surface of the water, making it much more costly and dangerous to extract. Of course the government said they would monitor these deep wells, of which they knew nothing.

Since the explosion, Obama has declined over 20 countries’ offer to help with technology and skimming barges because his union constituency doesn’t want any non-union sea craft working on the clean-up. Bush waived this union protectionist Jones Act for the Katrina clean-up.

Our government has only 20 of the USA’s 2,000 skimming barges deployed in the Gulf because, according to them, they might be needed elsewhere. It has been 20 years since we last had a major oil spill! The EPA refused the Dutch offer made three days after the disaster.

Obama’s Corp of Engineers refused to implement plans to dredge and build sand berms. They want to study it more before making a decision—while the oil hits the beaches. Governor Jindal finally gave up on Obama’s classic bureaucratic stalling, obstruction and confusion and started building the barriers last week.

For those of you boycotting BP gas stations, you are only hurting the Americans who own them, not BP. And if you are cheering the stock price drop of BP, you may be cheering the devaluation of your mutual or pension fund.

Yes the spill is BP’s responsibility, but Obama’s refusal to allow help for the cleanup and allow the states affected to take measures to protect their coasts is one the greatest demonstrations of presidential incompetence or just his purposeful plan to use this disaster to increase his takeover of the US economy.

James F. Davis is the president of Accuracy in Academia.