Bipartisan Opposition to Obama's Stacked Oil Spill Commission

Obama's always pleading for bipartisanship. You think he will listen to this?

The White House Gets Drilled
Wall Street Journal
July 9, 2010

How ideologically stacked is President Obama's offshore drilling commission? So much that even many of his fellow Democrats can't support it.

Five Democrats on the Senate Energy Committee last week delivered an embarrassing rebuke to the White House, voting with Republicans to have Congress set up an "independent" commission to investigate the BP disaster, bypassing the President's appointees. Offered by Wyoming Republican John Barrasso to broader oil-spill legislation, the amendment that passed the committee on an 15-8 vote charges the Democratic and Republican leaderships with naming a 10-person commission. It emphasizes that appointees should have "technical expertise in offshore oil exploration, health and safety, and environmental protection." Mr. Obama gets to name only the chairman.

By contrast, the President's seven-member commission contains not a single expert on drilling or petroleum engineering and is instead loaded with such anti-oil and antidrilling activists as Natural Resources Defense Council President Frances Beinecke and former Florida Senator Bob Graham.

"I would suggest to my Democratic friends that if the shoe were on the other foot, and President Bush was the President and he had submitted a list of names like this to us and everyone was related to the defense of oil companies, we would say this is not fair," said Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu. "And I'm saying to my colleagues this is not fair." She was joined by Democrats Tim Johnson (South Dakota), Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas), Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire) and Mark Udall (Colorado).

Read the rest of that report here. A similar editorial was published in the Sunday edition of the New Orlean's Times Picayune.

It's clear that Obama is trying to stack the deck with opponents of oil drilling and produce a commission report which supports his political agenda which will decrease American's access to affordable and abundant energy. Like his fiscal commission which will be nothing more than a smokescreen for increased taxes, Obama's oil spill panel is a joke!

Day 83 and the Oil Continues to Gush and Destroy!

Workers clean the marsh grass in Louisiana on July 9 with paper towels. While Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) has repeatedly said the focus should be on fighting the oil before it reaches shore, this photograph paints a picture of an incompetent federal government which seems to care more about using this crisis for political purposes than they do in protecting the environment. But at least the clean up crew has the federally mandated racial and gender diversity which we all know is more important!

Giant Skimmer Sits Idle

Meanwhile, the giant skimming boat "A Whale" sits idle awaiting further tests before it can be used. This huge ship could have been in operation months ago if it wasn't for the Obama red tape, concerns over the Jones Act and idiotic environmental regulations that have kept it from doing the job of an entire fleet of smaller oil skimmers.

Every picture of people cleaning beaches or toweling marsh grass is a reminder of the failure of the Obama Administration to fulfill it's primary role, mandated by federal law, in containing and cleaning up the oil spill. And while BP will be held accountable for their part in this disaster, who is holding the Obama Administration accountable for their incompetence and stupidity?