Capitalism

-By Dan Scott

President Obama during his news conference took great pains to impress upon the public and notably the MSM that he was in charge and was so since day one. He proclaimed on the very first day he had put together a special situational awareness group just to track the progress of the oil spill. So let’s take President Obama at his word that he was in charge since day one and that the buck stopped with him. Let’s look at three of his decisions since the major oil leak turned into an ecological catastrophe of historic proportions.

The government for some years now had worked out a contingency plan for just such an oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. The well-researched protocol called for a burn off of the fresh crude oil reaching the water’s surface to prevent it from dispersing and drifting to the Gulf Coast. In the event of a massive spill there were only two alternatives, burn it off OR disperse it. The problem with dispersants and why ships in port normally ban its use is it contaminates the water column making it potentially poisonous to all marine life. This is on top of the potential poisonous nature of the dispersant itself. Once the magnitude of the spill became clear, only a few days were available to burn off the crude before it dispersed too widely for an effective burn off. President Obama, the man who claims to be in charge in essence made the fateful decision to disregard the oil spill protocol and dither thus forcing the use of dispersant to mitigate the damage to the estuaries. You may want to defend him to say, people in the various agencies made these decisions such as the EPA, NOAA, USCG, Army Corps of Engineers and MMS. However, as the man in charge, the buck stops with him and as such not only is he responsible for their actions because he hand picked most of the department heads, he was fully apprised every step of the way. The insight here is President Obama’s management style of decision by committee, where he, the President gets the credit for all the correct decisions and anytime a wrong decision is made someone gets thrown under the bus. Hence Elizabeth Birnbaum (hand picked by Obama) of MMS falls on her sword, resigning because she was responsible for the lack of monthly inspections of the oilrig that never took place while Obama was in office. Yes apparently inspections didn’t occur under George W Bush’s watch either, however, missing 15 months worth is still way too many to claim Bush did it when Obama’s hand picked leader was running the show.
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Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way”