BP Lied, Wildlife Died

One holdout in the ever-shrinking cohort of Obama Kool-aid drinkers is Juan Williams of FOX and NPR News. Recently, Sean Hannity had him on his radio and cable show on the same day to talk about the oil spill. Williams made two arguments in defense of Obama’s dithering and lack of leadership.

Hannity pointed out that several countries have offered to help get the gushing oil out of the water, via fleets of ships, oil containment booms and equipment to skim the oil from the water before reaching the shores. Offers to help from various foreign sources and a large company in Texas were made early on, yet Obama refused all help. The alleged reason: Obama needed to have studies done to assess the potential impact on the environment before acting. He needed to have smart people in various agencies approve the efforts before he could act — ditto on Louisiana governor, Bobby Jindal’s request to immediately begin proactive measures, including building barriers.

In short, besides attacking and vilifying British Petroleum and getting his lawyers ready to sue, Obama did nothing.

Mr. Obama’s “environmental impact studies” reasoning took place in context of millions of gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico non-stop. Therefore, Williams’ argument that Obama reasonably waited two months for studies, commissions and recommendations made his argument laughable the second the words left his mouth. In other words, common sense made Obama and his supporter look rather silly. An unprecedented amount of oil is headed towards various shores and is set to cause a national and international environmental catastrophe and Obama needs to wait for “studies.”

That argument is so ridiculous that it refutes itself. But Williams’ second argument was not completely refuted and it needs to be examined. Williams argued that BP initially lied to the administration about the seriousness of the leak and how much oil was gushing into the sea. Sound familiar? BP lied. The wildlife died.

Sean Hannity’s response to that argument was that as soon as BP realized the enormity of the leakage, the company made its findings known and asked for help. Though that response is true, even a better response should come to mind: The federal government had a responsibility to find out for itself the exact nature of the oil leak as soon as the accident occurred.

After all, we are talking about an oil rig explosion in which 11 people died. The explosion was so damaging that it produced an oil slick that could be seen from space by NASA’s Terra satellite on April 29. Regardless of anything else, everyone, including Obama, knew that a whole lot of toxic crude oil was gushing unrestrained into the Gulf 24/7.

With the narrative of the far left, which paints oil companies as big, bad and evil, why on earth would Obama trust BP estimates to tell him how much oil was escaping in the first place? Why, those evil oil executives were probably secretly hoping to kill fish and wildlife and pollute the Gulf.

I’m being facetious of course, but the point is that Obama had the entire power of the U.S. Military and Coast Guard at his disposal to stop the black gusher. He could have and should have found out for himself just how much oil was pouring out — beginning day one.

But have you noticed that liberals and Marxists tend to avoid federal responsibility in areas in which the Constitution grants authority, like enforcing border security and protecting the country via the power of the military? And have you noticed that they tend to rush headlong into areas in which they have no authority, like healthcare “reform” and “spreading the wealth around” for votes?

Reuters has a piece out titled, “Obama fights critics on oil spill response.” Obama is quoted as saying:

Some of the same folks who have been hollering and saying ‘Do something’ are the same folks who, just two or three months ago, were suggesting that government needs to stop doing so much.

If not for the seriousness of the subject matter, that presidential statement would be downright laughable.

Are we to believe that Obama really cannot distinguish between a national / international environmental catastrophe that originated in deep federal waters (because liberals won’t let us drill in Alaska or closer to shore) and a manufactured insurance crisis followed by a partisan federal takeover of our healthcare system against the will of the people?

I guess not, because Obama went on to say :

Some of the same people who are saying the president needs to show leadership and solve this problem are some of the same folks who, just a few months ago, were saying this guy is trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government that is going to restrict our freedoms.

For those who think like their Dear Leader, let’s go through this one slowly. Yes, the president should have shown leadership and done something — like implement every federal resource to stop the leak and clean up the mess. Such an executive decision would have enjoyed bipartisan and constitutional support.

Memo to President: It is not inconsistent to say the federal government should “stop doing so much,” when it is exceeding its constitutional limits (like ramming healthcare “reform” down our throats) while also saying the federal government should “do something” when it is failing to carry out its constitutional responsibilities.

Let’s be clear: If Obama were to use every federal resource to stop a catastrophic oil spill that threatens national and international coastlines, no one would accuse “this guy” of “trying to engineer a takeover of our society through the federal government.”

This may be hard to understand for Marxists, but there is a vast difference between cleaning up an oil spill in federal waters and imposing socialism on the country.

But then again, it doesn’t matter because BP lied.

Monte Kuligowski is an attorney who can be reached at montekuligowski@gmail.com.

The CJS Forum seeks to promote an open exchange of ideas about the relationship between faith, culture, law and public policy. While all the articles are original and written especially for the CJS Forum, they do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for a Just Society.

Picture above from flickr user International Bird Rescue Research Center licensed under Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 License. .