Here's a story for you guys. One day, the police gets a tip that a crime has been committed, but that the criminal is still within vicinity. So, what does the police do? They go over to where the criminal resides, asks him to participate with the police, and to go back to the crime scene.
All of this sounds normal at first, but then there's the twist to the story--the police puts the criminal in charge of the press operations, data-collection of evidence from the crime scene, and orders the criminal to clean up any sort of blood stains at the crime scene. Meanwhile, the press relies on the criminal for any sort of information about the crime scene, the criminal lies about the evidence, hires and abuses contractors, and refuses to abide by environmental laws. And the criminal ignores the order from the police to stop using a toxic solvent in cleaning up the crime scene.
This is what our government is doing with BP. This is wrong, and liberals at the Center for American Progress have proposed a different path for our government to take with BP.
Now, what have the stupid liberals at the Center for American Progress proposed instead for the government to do? If you take a gander at the proposal right here, you can see what those stupid liberals are doing in demanding that a criminal like BP not be put in charge of cleaning up the crime scene:
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be in charge of onshore coastal recovery and disaster response, assisted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The National Guard should be fully deployed under the control of each state’s governor, with Army units if necessary. The EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should exercise relevant oversight. And any environmental and disaster response contractors working for BP should instead work directly for the federal government.
- The federal government should clearly be in charge of surface-water recovery and maritime disaster response. The Vessels of Opportunity and other maritime contractors now working for BP should be under contract with the federal government, including research vessels. The Coast Guard with the EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversight should manage dispersant use for cleanup.
- The Environmental Protection Agency should immediately bar BPfrom new federal contracts—including drilling in federally controlled oil fields—because of its repeated environmental crimes.
This one would be good because BP says that one of its drilling projects can proceed in Alaska since it doesn't fall under the moratorium. The government has confirmed that the BP drilling project would be able to go ahead once approval has been secured. At this point, it has not happened yet.
- The State Department should continue to reach out to other nations that have experience with disastrous oil spills to see if assistance and ideas are available. This should be a government-to-government effort, not one undertaken by private companies.
- Claims for damages and lost revenues should be put under the authority of the U.S. Coast Guard National Pollution Funds Center. The scope of this disaster far exceeds the NPFC’s traditional resources, and other federal, state, and local claims processing resources must therefore be brought to bear, particularly from the Coast Guard’s sister agency FEMA.
- The EPA, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other law enforcement branches of the federal, state, and local government should exercise subpoena authority to seize or monitor relevant communications and data collection, and assets if necessary.
- Federal agencies, not BP, should handle spill response hotlines for volunteers, technology ideas, affected wildlife, and others. Full call records need to be logged with incident reports and technology ideas presented publicly on dynamic websites.
Wow, these stupid liberals certainly are stupid in their proposal, aren't they? Actually demanding that BP not be in charge of data collection, clean-up operations, use of contractors, data monitoring, and claims processing---now that's chutzpah on their part. Also, note that these dirty fuckin' hippies aren't asking for the government to be put in charge of the underwater operations, but the data-collection, clean-up operations, etc....
And let's not forget that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 also empowers the government to step in case the responsible party has been ineffectual in their response to the disaster. I'd recommend you read more of the articles by Brad Johnson at Think Progress---he has been stellar in his reporting of BP's malfeasance in the oil spill disaster.