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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (75829)	5/24/2010 3:12:38 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Respond to of 149317

A koan clone hears reality, again. Jetblast on May 24, 2010 - 1:03pm From the New York Times Blog in reference to what they should do if the Top Kill fails: Here’s the legal reality. At the Natural Resources Defense Council Switchboard blog, a staff attorney, David Pettit, has posted language in the Clean Water Act, which was amended through the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, that appears clearly to vest the president with both the authority and the obligation to take the reins in a major oil spill where private actions have failed: (A) If a discharge, or a substantial threat of a discharge, of oil or a hazardous substance from a vessel, offshore facility, or onshore facility is of such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States (including but not limited to fish, shellfish, wildlife, other natural resources, and the public and private beaches and shorelines of the United States), the President shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge or to mitigate or prevent the threat of the discharge. (the rest of the Switchboard post) There’s no doubt. The responsibility to run the effort to stanch the oil flow lies with the White House. It was pretty clear on May 14 and is clearer now: Move over, BP. [new] Cog on May 24, 2010 - 1:18pm @Jetblast I understand your frustration at the pace of which BP is mitigating this disaster. But which branch of the federal government would you nominate as the most experienced in closing in a well? I understand the Coast Guard is very experienced in the cleanup aspect but to my knowledge the only people who can get an out of control oil well under control is by nature an oil company or a company like Wild Well Inc. For better or worse, BP will have the responsibility to close this well in either with the top kill or the relief well in a couple of months. [new] ROCKMAN on May 24, 2010 - 1:35pm And to add to your point Cog: while BP is in charge of managing the situation very few of the folks in the field doing the actual day-to-day work are BP employees. For instance, the two rigs drilling the relief wells may not have a single BP employee on either one of them at this stage. When they get close to intersecting the blow out they may get a couple of BP hands on each rig. Most of the technical areas of drilling and oil spill recover are conducted by consultants and service company personnel. Long ago the companies gave up trying to maintain such staffs. I've made the analogy of a volunteer fire dept vs. a well trained and full time profession firefighting crew: who would you prefer protecting your home and family. I've spent most of the last 15 years of my career handling well site activities on a consulting basis because the operators lack experience staff to handle those jobs. But the sad part is that you might have the best trained hands on the job but if management overrides their recommendations then you can be truly screwed. And no doubt BP is truly screwed...along with the rest of us. theoildrum.com

To: ChinuSFO who wrote (75829)	5/24/2010 3:41:27 PM
From: SiouxPal	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 149317

(sorry) Yes, Mr. President, It Was Your Katrina - Three Weeks Ago. Now it May Be Your Chernobyl by Robert Redick Published on Monday, May 24, 2010 by CommonDreams.org Dear Mr President, You’re a man of vision, intelligence, stamina and nerve. And you’re blowing it. A hemorrhage of poison is sickening the Gulf of Mexico. And has been, for a month. What action have you taken? What direct response have you made? Friends, enemies, drillers’ families, fishing families, anyone and everyone who has been appalled by the ecological horror show: we are all asking you this question. At first you gave us a rhetorical performance, a promise to be tough, while BP invested as much effort in limiting information and liability as it did in limiting the extent of the spill, and coast guard vessels continued to monitor plankton drift on the far side of the Gulf. We don’t deserve the insult of your obfuscation. No law allows you to intervene? Rubbish. Did that ever stop a president from pursuing his notion of national security? Did it ever stop you? And if a crippling blow to the Gulf ecosystem and economy doesn’t constitute a national security threat, what does? You have every freedom to act. The heartbreaker is that you’ve chosen not to. Maybe your usually-flawless political senses told you this was a losing bet. Maybe you were overworked, overtired. Maybe your daily briefings from the Gulf produced a spike of denial--“it can’t be as bad as they say.” I don’t know, or deeply care. I couldn’t do you job. But you, Mr President, spent eighteen months and countless millions of dollars telling us you could. What you did not do was soberly and responsibly decide to leave BP in charge of the disaster response. Of that I’m certain, because no such sober, responsible conclusion could possibly be reached. A child (or a fiction writer) could have told you that BP had long ago--weeks ago--proven themselves duplicitous and inept. They are naked, and so is your failure. We have cringed before this farce, even as we cringe before the sight of oiled beaches, dying birds and fish, dying hope for a way of life. Every day hundreds of thousands of gallons are belched from that open wound on the sea floor. This is a vast, underwater chemical burn, a massive trauma incident, a body blow to America. You’re treating it like a tickle in the throat. You offer stern words and stoic looks and a carousel of indignant underlings on the talk shows. Today it’s a blue-ribbon commission. Bipartisan, of course. The better to protect you and your circle, if nothing much else. The insults accumulate. The denial marches on. This isn’t about spin or power or next fall’s elections or the predictable sleaze of a largely-above-the-law behemoth like BP. It’s not about you or your legacy--though the latter may well be written on the poisoned waters of a marsh. IT’S ABOUT THE GULF OF MEXICO. Period. It can’t wait. You cannot, must not wait. Don’t let another day go by.