Have the GOP and klannish come up with any solutions to the oil spill?

Discussion in 'Politics' started by OPTIONAL777, May 29, 2010.

  1. zaitoichi

    zaitoichi

    I don't expect Obamao to don SCUBA and personally stick a cork in the damn pipe; I do expect him and his administration to be much more involved and to lead on resolving this national disaster. There is so much more that the POTUS could and should be doing to try to stop this catastrophe. I thought Barry was going to be our national savior. I am SOOOO disappointed. (yuck yuck)
     
    #11     May 30, 2010
  2. Funny, of course it's not obamas fault. He's only the president.

    It's not like he has any say in the affairs of the United States.





     
    #12     May 30, 2010
  3. I don't think I count as "Klannish" because I am not a Democrat/Donkey

    (''Historian Eric Foner observed: In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party", "Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilante organization which launched a reign of terror against blacks and Republicans during Reconstruction in the South.)


    I'm also not GOP. However, I have a solution- Have southern states and anyone who'd like to go with them secede! That way the rest of the union wouldn't have to worry about it...
     
    #13     May 30, 2010
  4. Please, provide specifics about what Obama should be doing.

     
    #14     May 30, 2010
  5. Tea Party darling and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul spoke last week like the political novice he is -- revealing unfiltered GOP "truths."

    First he informed MSNBC talk show host Rachel Maddow that government should not be able to force businesses to serve black people. Corporate desire to discriminate should trump the civil rights of black people, Muslims, Jews, Catholics, and pants-wearing women, according to this Republican candidate, who has since rushed to assure everyone that he personally is not a bigot.

    Rand Paul followed up the assertion of corporate-privilege-over-human-rights with two more Republican tenet revelations. First he called the Obama administration "un-American" for holding the corporation BP accountable for the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that killed 11 workers and devastated the ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. Then Rand Paul added that society should refrain from the "blame game" in the case of another corporation, Massey Energy, the owner of the West Virginia mine that blew up killing 29 workers. "We had a mining accident that was very tragic," he said, "Then we come in, and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

    The Republican candidate who openly espoused these views was embraced last Saturday by U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell at a rally in Frankfort, Ky. And during the primary, former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Republican senators Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Jim Bunning of Kentucky actively supported Rand Paul. He simply said what Republicans believe -- that this country should focus on promoting corporations and those corporations should have privileges, but not responsibilities. To the GOP, the U.S.A. should be a country of corporations, by corporations, for corporations.

    People, by contrast, are trifling to the GOP. In the past couple of weeks, the GOP has made its position on humans clear by trying to end an emergency fund that will create 186,000 subsidized jobs this year for poor people and by blocking an extension of unemployment insurance for those thrown out of work during the worst recession since the Great Depression, a downturn caused by reckless Wall Street corporations. Following the lead of Bunning, who delayed an extension in February, Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire said the unemployed shouldn't receive the insurance because it "encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment."

    While attempting to deny relief to the desperate, Republicans have also blocked efforts to force oil corporations to assume full liability for catastrophic spills -- like the BP disaster in the Gulf. If the oil corporations -- which vehemently oppose an increase in their liability -- don't pay for environmental clean up, then taxpayers -- including the unemployed - will get the bill. Still, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio opposed raising the laughably-low liability cap of $75 million, and Republicans James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have blocked efforts to lift the cap in the Senate.

    Like Rand Paul, Boehner didn't want to assign culpability to BP. Boehner said, "I think it's important that we get to the bottom, get to the facts, before we begin to point fingers."

    Murkowski and Inhofe have a financial interest in kissing up to Big Oil. Those corporations have handed them buckets of bucks. According to the nonpartisan OpenSecrets.org, the oil and gas lobby has given Inhofe $433,950 over the past five years. That lobby gave Markowski $240,326 in just the past year. That is 15 times what she got from oil and gas just two years ago, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. A Murkowski spokesman said the senator's connection to oil and gas corporations is "the same relationship she has to all constituents."

    So, to Republican Murkowski, oil and gas corporations are constituents, exactly like the actual humans who live in her district. That characterization of corporations is consistent with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, written by its Republican-selected, right-wing majority, giving corporations the same rights as humans under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, a ruling that will enable corporations to spend virtually unlimited money to influence elections.

    Usually such rights come with responsibilities. But Republicans, by impeding an increase in the liability cap, have made clear their opposition to oil and gas corporations bearing the responsibility of paying all costs when their errors kill workers and destroy the environment. Not only that, under the guise of government downsizing, they have thwarted enforcement of regulations intended to prevent deaths and catastrophes. The Bush administration, for example, cut funds for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

    Also during the Bush administration, according to a Department of Interior inspector general report released this week, federal regulators responsible for oversight of drilling in the Gulf of Mexico allowed corporate officials to fill out inspection reports in pencil, then traced over those marks in pen and submitted them. That "self-regulation" is consistent with the Republican contention that the "invisible hand" of the market will adequately smack down bad corporate behavior.

    Rand Paul reiterated the Republican policy on government during his rally with McConnell last Saturday. He said, "What unifies Republicans is a belief that the Constitution restrains the size and scope of government." Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who Republicans chose to respond in February, 2009 to President Obama's first address to a joint session of Congress, told that national TV audience he opposed "big government," like all good Republicans do.

    Also in that speech, Jindal joined the Republican chorus of "Drill Baby Drill," calling for increased domestic oil and gas drilling. Now he's got the ugly results of drilling-gone-wrong coating his coast.

    Since the spill, Jindal has petitioned the federal government -- yes, the very government Republicans want to shrivel -- to solve his state's problems. He asked Obama to pay for 6,000 National Guardsmen for 90 days to help clean up. He wants the U.S. Department of Commerce to provide financial help to fishermen, the Environmental Protection Agency to test air quality, and the U.S. Business Administration to suspend loan repayments for small businesses affected by the gushing oil.

    The Republican policy, apparently, is "Drill Baby Drill;" taxpayers can always clean the "accidental" spill. In the Republican world, corporations have the right to do anything they want, but no responsibility to do it right or restore what they wreck. Republicans hold the unemployed accountable -- but not corporations.
     
    #15     May 30, 2010
  6. I think the American eagle would fly a lot better with its Right Wing clipped.
     
    #16     May 30, 2010
  7. The US Govt are as involved in this as much as they can be although I reckon if BP don't plug it soon then it will be a joint agency takeover of the situation. Free enterprise in any western nation must correct their own mistakes and clean up the mess unless of course it gets out of hand and how many barrels of spill is out of hand? Seems like some folk want a nanny state that will step in any time they f*ck up.
     
    #17     May 30, 2010
  8. Mercor

    Mercor

    All your HuffKos garbage is wrong factually or by philosophy.
    Just to address the last point.
    ___________________________________
    Louisiana Gov. Jindal to Obama: Give Us More Power on Oil Spill
    May 30, 2010 8:56 AM


    The President met with Jindal and other state and local leaders on Friday. After that meeting, in a Sunday show exclusive, Jindal told 'This Week' anchor Jake Tapper that he was direct with the President: “We need more local decision-making authority.”
    Jindal recounted to 'This Week' host Jake Tapper one instance where BP and federal government bureaucracy got in the way of the cleanup.

    "Terrebonne Parish…submitted a plan for 180,000 feet of hard boom. The Coast Guard approved them for 90,000 feet. A week ago Friday, they didn't even have 90,000 feet. They didn't have that much boom, hard boom, in the parish…”

    Tapper asked the governor what happened next.

    “Well, in that case, they literally had hard boom sitting on the dock and they didn't deploy it,” Jindal said. “There was no excuse. The BP contractor said BP told them not to do it until the oil was coming. NOAA projections showed for days, and we saw the oil ourselves.”

    "When government grows too big, it doesn't do its core functions properly,” he said. “Absolutely, I believe in a limited government that is effective and competent in what it does. We need federal government exactly -- we need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis.”
     
    #18     May 30, 2010
  9. So now Jindal changes his tune when it becomes politically expedient...

    Typical klannish...

     
    #19     May 30, 2010
  10. Jindal is Indian, how can he be klannish?

    Anyway, Obama is on holiday
     
    #20     May 30, 2010