This is cross-posted at my blog, It Begs the Question.
We'd pay either way, with taxes or at the pump, so why all the hand-wringing over Be the One? In fact, if you think about it this could be the best thing ever to happen for Barack Obama. Read on and you'll see how he could use this opportunity.
BTW, just suggested this to Sen Harkin's office and they are really interested in it.
This will bring plenty of derision my way because it's only right that BP clean up the Gulf, and in a perfect world I'd agree. But it's not a perfect world and there's millions of gallons of BP crude in the Gulf, much that will be driven ashore during hurricane season. These wetlands and estuaries are crucial for our continued existence, and while we're bickering we're losing one of our most precious natural resources.
Do I hate BP? It's hard to hate a non-human entity, but I despise their practices and believe their executives have hearts as black as the oil they covet. They should be jailed, never to see the light of day again, but that's irrelevant. It won't restore the Gulf, and isn't that what we want? It begs the question, does it really matter who pays for the cleanup?
There's an advocacy group called Be the One urging people to sign their petition demanding the government do something to clean up the Gulf. Sources indicate that a front group, American Wetlands Federation, whose sponsors include Shell, Chevron, BP, American Petroleum Institute, Citgo and others in the oil industry are behind the effort. Does this shock anybody? It's also sponsored by a group called Women of the Storm, a nonpartisan organization that was formed in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in an attempt to rebuild the city of New Orleans. The claim is the first group intentionally and the second group unknowingly is trying to get the government to take responsibility for the cleanup and the Gulf of Mexico.
I just have one question; who did you think was going to pay for it? Was there ever really any doubt? To be as kind as I can, if you truly thought that BP or any other oil company was going to pay for this cleanup then and you don't deserve to be taken seriously. (Oh man, Larry, that's HARSH, you're just an asshole!) We were going to pay for it all along, whether we wanted to or not. If you have any doubts whether major corporations are ever held responsible for their own messes in a timely fashion, I would simply refer you to the Union Carbide incident in Bhopal, India for your answer. Once you get past that little fact then you're ready to recognize the upside and all of this, and there is an upside.
First of all BP was going to do a shit job, of that there's no doubt. Trusting BP to handle the cleanup would be like putting a 16-year-old boy in charge of your porn collection, just about the stupidest thing you could ever do. So now we have high horsepower celebrities on a video asking people to sign a petition demanding that the Gulf be restored to its previous condition. Millions of Americans, including most Gulf Coast residents, will sign, and that's what we commonly refer to as a mandate.
I mentioned back on June 29 in my post, My 100%, Certifiably, Whole-Hog, Batsh!t Crazy Conspiracy Theory, that Barack Obama would use this disaster as a pretense for creating the largest public works project since the WPA. With Republicans fighting them tooth and nail on every conceivable jobs creation program that he proposed, nothing short of a catastrophic disaster or a war was going to vest him with the directive necessary to put millions of people back to work. Here's the list of senators from the five Gulf Coast states:
Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Richard C. Shelby (D,R-AL) George S. LeMieux (R-FL) Clarence William (Bill) Nelson (D-FL) Roger F. Wicker (R-MS) Thad Cochran (R-MS) David Vitter (R-LA) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-LA) John Cornyn (R-LA)
Seven Republicans, another Republican that used to be a Democrat, one Democrat that should be a Republican, and one Democrat, Bill Nelson of Florida, the only vote in the bunch Obama's can count on. Imagine if Obama puts forward a jobs bill to clean up the Gulf that would employ more than 1 million people and any of these Republicans or Mary Landrieu votes against it. If they lived they would never get re-elected. It's a jobs bill guaranteed to pass, but there's more.
The dam at Lake Delhi, Iowa ruptured on Saturday, July 24, 2010 as a result of torrential rains. It is yet another indication of the abysmal state of our infrastructure. Here in Des Moines, the Des Moines River is dammed up just a few miles northwest of town forming Saylorville Lake, and should that dam rupture more than half the city would be wiped out. Local residents and people all across the country have to be wondering about the state of the dams in their areas. Obama could attach a giant infrastructure projects to the Gulf cleanup bill putting literally millions of people back to work, and there's nothing the Republicans could do to stop him.
We were going to pay for this all along, so I don't see why all the fuss. The larger and more demanding the mandate the sooner President Obama can ramrod through legislation creating millions of jobs. It's like they say, never let a perfectly good disaster go to waste. Go sign the petition now.