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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (43729)	6/10/2010 10:25:45 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Re: [For example: how easy/successful would individual court actions be against BP, (a la the Exxon Valdez example!).] "The mere possibility of success is enough to provide an incentive to stop the leak." LOL!!!!!!!!!!!! 'Incentives' come in a VAST RANGE of SIZES. (Teeny/tiny... middling... big... mammoth, etc. :-) Saying that there is 'still an incentive' is not saying much of anything without knowing how LARGE it is. <GGG> The question at point here is is this particular incentive bigger or smaller then the incentives tied to all the OTHER POLICY OPTIONS and degrees of freedom in actions to be undertaken that BP has before them. Re: [For example: if the pressure in that one blow-out well would naturally exhaust itself in some 'reasonable' period of time --- might it not be CHEAPER to BP to simply do nothing (a la the Pinto example I gave)?] "Unless there is very little oil in the deposit, or unless you had a fantastic stroke of luck with the seismic activity doing exactly what you needed when you needed it to seal the leak, that isn't going to happen." You CAN'T say that with any authority because even BP doesn't know the answer to that particular question....

To: TimF who wrote (43729)	6/11/2010 11:07:08 PM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Obama Brings Nixonian Twist to Oil Spill Washington Examiner, Washington Examiner June 7, 2010 Nothing more fully reveals the essential character of a person or group than a crisis. Thus, the ecological and political catastrophe of the Gulf oil spill has exposed a breathtaking level of incompetence, political opportunism and mendacity at the heart of the Obama administration. Documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity make clear that the White House was told by the Coast Guard within 24 hours of the April 20 explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon platform that the equivalent of 8,000 barrels a day could escape into the ocean. Within three days, Obama and his senior aides were warned that the spill could exceed the in environmental damage caused by the Exxon Valdez wreck in 1989. Despite these warnings, over the next two months Obama attended Democratic fundraisers, played golf, hosted basketball and football teams at the White House and delivered commencement speeches. Two weeks passed before he could be bothered to go to Louisiana. On April 29, Louisiana Republican Gov. Bobby Jindahl declared a state of emergency as the oil spill covered 600 square miles and was only 16 miles from the coast. Jindahl begged federal officials for permission to build a massive network of sand berms to contain damage to beaches. Washington responded a month later but permission was only granted to build 2 percent of the berms requested. Meanwhile, as Obama dawdled and oil appeared off Florida's beaches, the president delivered a strident speech in Pittsburgh with a decidedly Nixonian twist. He should have been summoning political leaders across the spectrum to lay aside partisan concerns for the moment, but instead Obama asserted that Republicans believe that "If you're a Wall Street bank or an insurance company or an oil company, you pretty much get to play by your own rules, regardless of the consequences for everybody else." This libelous mischaracterization marks a new low even for a man so highly practiced in the ugly art of political demagoguery. Finally, as the thick black crude and natural gas continued to erupt into the Gulf waters and public exasperation with BP's futile attempts to stop it piled up one after another, Obama dispatched Attorney General Eric Holder to Louisiana to proclaim that "we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law anyone who has violated the law. We will not rest until justice is done." Shortly afterward, Obama blasted BP for "lawyering up" in response to the government's threats. As ill-timed as it was, Holder's announcement nevertheless clearly confirmed what was plainly suggested by Obama's Pittsburgh speech: His top priority is not to stop the spill, but to shift blame away from himself and to forever tar his opponents with responsibility for a catastrophe made far worse by his own spectacular mismanagement. Read more at the Washington Examiner: washingtonexaminer.com