I am about to get very politically incorrect, but am I the only one who is getting fed up with the whining from Bobby Jindal, Jim Carville, all of the parish presidents in Louisiana and a bunch of other folks down there about what a terrible job the Federal governmetn is doing handling the BP spill? After decades of benefitting richly from the petrochemical industry, don't they share some measure of blame for apparently taking no precautions to protect themselves and the Gulf from disaster?
Don't get me wrong - BP designed it, built it and drilled it. They are 100% responsible for what happened there, and should pay every nickel of expense to stop the spill, clean up the mess, and reimburse the people of the Gulf for their losses. Those losses are profound and may last for more than a lifetime, and BP should bear the total responsibility for what it has caused.
But in the last few weeks, I have heard lots of trash talk from folks in Louisiana, trying to pin the blame on President Obama and the Federal government for not responding quickly enough. Of course, a lot of that is the first shot of the Bobby Jindal for President campaign, but I have to say that I wish someone would put a sock in Jim Carville's mouth too.
Having said all of that, I am moved to ask everyone who lives in Louisiana and along the Gulf Coast: where have you been for the last 60 years? I have spent time along the Gulf Coast (Texas, near Houston) and the coastline is dotted with oil platforms for hundreds of miles there. Hasn't it occurred to any of the local inhabitants that they might have wanted to get some booms and skimmers of their own to protect their shoreline and estuaries? They remind me of Claude Rains in "Casablanca," saying he was "shocked, shocked," to learn there was gambling going on in Rick's Cafe. This was an accident waiting to happen -- in fact, on a smaller scale, it has happened -- and it is clear that the people in the area apparently took few precautions to protect themselves or their environment.
I am particularly angered by the upset yesterday, widely broadcast on CNN, about the 6-month ban on new deep water drilling. CNN (starting with John King last night and continuing through John Roberts this morning) featured Carville (again) and numerous other locals, complaining about the desperate straits the moratorium has put on their livelihood -- literally minutes after announcing that the spill was twice as bad a previously feared.
So why, my friends, did the President put a 6 month ban in place? Because the Gulf is dying and after decades of drilling, apparently no one can figure out to prevent a repeat performance, that's why! And apparently because none of the locals, who get their paychecks from drilling or processing oil, or fishing in the Gulf, bothered to take precautions to protect themselves, or to make sure that outfits like BP weren't going to drive their lives into the ground. How can these people be villifying Obama and the Federal governmetn for letting this happen in the first place, and the slow response afterwards, and then -- in almost the same breath -- argue that it should be resumed immediately, before any lessons have been learned and the actual causes (and cures) have been identified?
Okay, so here's my deal -- if the people of Lousisana are so desperate to resume their ways, without any attempt to learn from this catastrophe, then the rest of the country should say "Fine, have your wells. But from here on, you are totally on your own, and do not ask the rest of us for any help if you have another problem." I think that would be a fair deal.
What do you think?