Between A Rock And A Slippery Place

[Confederate Kahanist]

http://www.personalliberty.com/john-myers/between-a-rock-and-a-slipperyplace/





It’s taken the biggest environmental crisis in American history to drive home a simple point—Washington’s energy policy has been reckless and could yet be the ruination of this once great United States.

The latest polls show that 38 percent of Americans approve of President Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil crisis. Which makes one wonder, what would it take for these people not to support the President?

Of course there is the latest success that appears to be working almost seamlessly above the Deep Horizon oil well 5,000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico. The containment dome is now trapping more than 15,000 barrels per day of spewing oil, up from just 6,000 barrels per day when it was first placed over the ruptured hole. That’s amazing; the Obama administration said that the ruptured well was only leaking 5,000 barrels per day to begin with!

The President has promised that the U.S. will bounce back from this cataclysm. “We will get through this crisis,” said the President, echoing the words of President Carter who declared that he would bring the American hostages home from Iran, even as the daily calendar on that catastrophe clicked forward endlessly. Will this one reach day 100, day 150, perhaps even day 200?

Better Than Ever
Last week Obama said that the people of the Gulf coast "are going to need help from the entire country," but that he is determined to see that the region will be restored to a condition better than it was before the BP well blew up.

Better? That is like saying Vietnam is better after being raked with Agent Orange?

It is estimated that BP is on the hook for $14 billion but that will never make things better. Not for them (The BP brand has been tarnished for decades); not for the wildlife and certainly not for the people along the coast that make their living from those waters. And that is if we don’t get another “incident.”

But wait! The Deepwater Horizon is not the only well spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico. According to a Federal document a nearby drilling rig, the Ocean Saratoga, has been leaking since at least April 30. While much smaller than the BP spill it has nevertheless produced a 10-mile-long slick that can be seen on satellite images. Diamond Offshore, which owns the drilling rig, said that they could not comment on the ongoing spill but it appears as if a boat is putting dispersants on the slick.

It all adds up to one thing—even after BP antes up billions you can bet the Federal government is going to be on the hook for a substantial part of the tab. The President promises that he is going to squeeze every penny for the cost of this problem out of BP but Obama has a pretty poor record when it comes to holding companies accountable for their mistakes. Just ask bank executives who threw the economy into a tailspin then collected billions in bailouts and then gave themselves millions in bonuses.

Regardless of the cost, the Gulf of Mexico is not the real problem. The 2 million barrels of crude oil that will have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is a symptom of a much bigger problem; one that is getting progressively worse. I am talking about America’s unrequited addiction to oil which has been drilled dry within our borders.

The U.S. is now pumping less than 5 million barrels of oil per day. We pumped almost twice that much oil 30 years ago during the first Iranian crisis.

That leaves the U.S. dependent on harvesting petroleum wherever it can, including 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico. It also leaves the U.S. importing more than two out of every three barrels we burn, much of that from countries that hate us.