Modee on Spilling Oil

BP and the U.S. government have blown it on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Obama’s complete and blind faith in the free enterprise system, and the pressure he feels from Republicans to prove that at every moment, and the sharp criticism he took for Bush’s Wall Street bailouts, and the effects of Sarah Palin’s mantra, “Drill, baby drill,” led Obama to believe that BP should be fully responsible for the mess they made; you know, the price of doing business. Yes, BP should be paying the bill for the cleanup and full compensation to the millions of people personally affected by this disaster for possibly decades to come. But the federal government should be leading the effort to respond to the crisis, not BP, since there seems to be some confusion about that in Obama’s mind. That’s not to say BP shouldn’t be involved with any assistance it can offer, but BP, worried about its public image, shouldn’t be leading the way. The government should have been ready for this, and probably wasn’t because of past government funding and priorities. It has to get ready now. If you’re going to drill in sensitive areas, like the ocean in hurricane territory, you better be ready for this and more to come.

And to Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski, who wants to excuse BP from having to pay fully for their mess, and to bill the American taxpayer for almost all of it, I say, “Get out of BP’s back pocket, and be an American.”