Who’s the Boss?

The frustration the American people, especially those in the Gulf coast region are experiencing as a result of the BP oil spill is evident every day. As each day passes with thousands of barrels of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, Americans are concerned with the health of wildlife, industry and humanity. BP says they are doing there best to contain the oil and stop anymore from releasing into our waters. I feel you would have to believe what they are saying. I don’t think it makes sense for them not to care. Oil is how they make money and its hard if all that oil is spewing into the Gulf and not into their tankers.

However, a new question has been unfolding lately: Where is the federal government? The Oil Pollution Act of 1990 gives them the ability to step in and take over the day to day operations of cleaning up this disaster, but could the government really do anything? The federal government spends it money on social security, medicare and the military for the most part. I am not aware of government programs for offshore drilling, but if they exist let me know. BP made this mess and they need to clean it up, and frankly they are really the only ones that have the equipment to do it. The Obama administration admits it does not have the technology and equipment BP has to stop the oil spill. The Coast Guard, Army Corp of Engineers and government scientist should be working with BP, as they are, but there is little that an entity that is in a different industry can do to fix this problem.

Who could possibly expecting the federal government to mess with private sector affairs? Radical socialist, marxist communists? No, it would be the neoconservative nutjob Sarah Palin and Republican governor of Lousiana Bobby Jindal.  If I remember correctly, two years ago Sarah Palin was chanting her motto “Drill, baby, drill”. Now it is the fault of the current administration that we were drilling in the Gulf:

“If this was President Bush or if this were a Republican in office who hadn’t received as much support even as President Obama has from BP and other oil companies, you know the mainstream media would be all over his case in terms of asking questions why the administration didn’t get in there, didn’t get in there and make sure that the regulatory agencies were doing what they were doing with the oversight to make sure that things like this don’t happen,” said Palin.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs all but said that Sarah Palin is crazy. He didn’t have to go that far because we all knew that already. Which one is it, government stays away from free market capitalism or it steps in a runs the show? The Bush Administration deregulated the stock market: what happened? And it deregulated the oil industry: what happened? Pick and choose, you either want free markets with no goverment interference which includes cleaning up your own messes or you want government regulating industry to help prevent this stuff from happening in the first place.