Obama's disaster worsens

Bensblurb # 556 June 30, 2010

Obama’s oil disaster, pending further damage now threatened by nature’s hurricane

Here’s the Louisiana blog Bayou Buzz reporting on what’s really going on in the Gulf and the impact on jobs:
The social and economic consequences of President Obama’s offshore drilling moratorium are starting to manifest themselves and will rapidly worsen. News spread this week that eight of the 33 deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico had either left or were finalizing their plans to do so. Workers, businesses, lending institutions, and our state and local governments have started making plans for dealing with the economic disaster that is accompanying the ecological one in the Gulf.
Unfortunately, the myth that shallow-water drilling isn’t being affected by the deepwater moratorium is rapidly being exposed as a cruel hoax. Not a single federal permit for shallow-water activity has been granted since the April 20 disaster. Some 16 shallow-water rigs that were all engaged before the incident are now sitting idle. In 30 days, that total will grow to 34 rigs. Approximately 50 offshore marine service and supply vessels are already out of work and that number will expand to over a hundred very soon. Louisiana’s shipbuilding industry—a critical player in our state’s economy—is bracing for a potentially devastating drop in new business orders and the likely cancellation of some existing contracts...


And, check this rebuttal from Rabbit Ears---

Heritage Foundation reports that President Obama summoned a bipartisan group of senators to the White House to discuss his climate change legislation. When Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander suggested that any such energy meeting should include a focus on the oil spill and BP, Obama responded: “That‘s just your talking point” and refused to discuss the crisis...
When the president answered questions following the G20 conference, not one reporter asked him about the situation in the Gulf. Not one question. When attention is paid, it is focused on BP, which is only half the story — the other half being government incompetence or an ideological rigidity that prevents commonsense solutions.
We will highlight the top actions the federal government must take immediately to assist the citizens of the Gulf as they cope with this tragedy:

1. Waive the Jones Act: According to one source... European firms could complete the oil spill cleanup by themselves in just four months, and three months if they work with the United States, which is much faster than the estimated nine months it would take the Obama administration to go at it alone. The major stumbling block:...the Jones Act, which requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports be carried in U.S.-flagged ships, constructed in the United States, owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens..
2. Accept International Assistance: At least 30 countries and international organizations have offered equipment and experts so far...the White House has finally decided to accept help from twelve of these nations.
3. Lift the Moratorium: The Obama administration’s over-expansive ban on offshore energy development is killing jobs when they are needed most. And just how many innocent jobs is Obama’s oil ban killing? An earlier Times-Picayune report estimated the moratorium could cost Louisiana 7,590 jobs and $2.97 billion in revenue directly related to the oil industry.
4. Release the S.S. A-Whale: This skimmer is a converted oil tanker capable of cleaning 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Gulf waters. Currently, the largest skimmer being used in the clean-up efforts can handle 4,000 barrels a day, and the entire fleet our government has authorized for BP has only gathered 600,000 barrels, total in the 70 days since the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The ship embarked from Norfolk, VA, this week toward the Gulf, hoping to get federal approval to begin assisting the clean-up, but is facing bureaucratic resistance.
5. Remove State and Local Roadblocks: Local governments are not getting the assistance they need to help in the cleanup. For example, nearly two months ago, officials from Escambia County, Fla., requested permission from the Mobile Unified Command Center to use a sand skimmer, a device pulled behind a tractor that removes oil and tar from the top three feet of sand, to help clean up Pensacola’s beaches. County officials still haven’t heard anything back...
6. Allow Sand Berm Dredging: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has recently prevented Louisiana from dredging to build protective sand berms. Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser immediately sent a letter to President Obama requesting that the work continue....our government resource agencies, which are intended to protect us, are now leaving us vulnerable to the destruction of our coastline and marshes by the impending oil. Furthermore, with the threat of hurricanes or tropical storms, we are being put at an increased risk for devastation to our area from the intrusion of oil.
7. Waive or Suspend EPA Regulations: Because more water than oil is collected in skimming operations (85% to 90% is water according to Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen), operators need to discharge the filtered water back into the Gulf so they can continue to collect oil. The discharged water is vastly cleaner than when it was skimmed, but not sufficiently pure according to normal EPA regulations. If the water has to be kept in the vessel and taken back to shore for purification, it vastly multiples the resources and time needed, requiring cleanup ships to make extra round trips, transporting seven times as much water as the oil they collect.
8. Temporarily Loosen Coast Guard Inspections: In early June, sixteen barges that were vacuuming oil out of the Gulf were ordered to halt work. The Coast Guard had the clean-up vessels sit idle as they were inspected for fire extinguishers and life vests.
9. Stop Coast Guard Budget Cuts: Now is not the time to be cutting Coast Guard capabilities, but that is exactly what President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress are doing.
10. Halt Climate Change Legislation: President Obama has placed his focus to the oil spill on oil demand rather than oil in our water. Regardless of political views, now is not the time to be taking advantage of this crisis to further an unrelated piece of legislation that will kill jobs and, in the President’s own words, cause energy prices to “skyrocket.” ...

--Ben Blankenship

Fair and balanced?

Bensblurb #555 6/22/10

Fair and balanced?

Here’s some perspective on Obama‘s proclaimed “worst oil spill in history"
(from: www.gerrycharlottephelps.com, via "Horrible accident but we'll survive" by Norman Carter at heraldnet.com/)
“This is not the worst oil leak ever. The total effect of this oil leak will be like one one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a bathtub of water. The BP oil well leak into the Gulf of Mexico is...not the end of the world. The gulf is huge, covering 615,000 square miles and containing 660 quadrillion gallons of water. Assume the BP well is leaking 20,000 barrels per day and does so for 120 days (four months). That would be about 100.8 million divided by 660 quadrillion and would be one gallon of oil for every 6.6 billion gallons of water in the Gulf. That would be roughly equivalent to one-millionth of an ounce of oil in a typical bathtub of water.

Second, there has already been a worse oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We recovered. So did the Gulf. The Mexican Pemex (The Mexican government's oil monopoly) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 1979 was far worse than the BP well: 140 million gallons poured out of the Mexican well. After four months, an oil slick had covered about half of Texas’ 370-mile gulf shoreline, devastating tourism.

Finally, Saddam's deliberate oil spill of over 400 million gallons into the much-smaller Persian Gulf in...Desert Storm was much, much worse...Yet the environmentalists and international media did little to condemn Saddam in 1991 for his deliberate...spill at that time...”

Now, concerning Obama’s (illegal?) arm-twisting...
　
Here’s columnist Ben Stein: “The same [resort to extra-legal action by the White House] goes for Mr. Obama's demand that BP pay the lost wages of oil and gas workers suspended from work because of the moratorium on Gulf of Mexico underseas drilling. There simply was no legislation allowing this kind of specific demand. Mr. Obama's demand was in the nature of a threat, more than a Constitutional act. ... [T]o create specific enactments and actions without any authority -- now Mr. Obama's specialty -- is so at odds with the law of the land that it terrifies me. These are not the acts of a teacher on Constitutional law. These are the acts of a big city boss or a third world dictator."

Also, economist Thomas Sowell: “American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington...The president's poll numbers are going down because increasing numbers of people disagree with particular policies of his, but the damage being done to the fundamental structure of this nation goes far beyond particular counterproductive policies. Just where in the Constitution of the United States does it say that a president has the authority to extract vast sums of money from a private enterprise and distribute it as he sees fit to whomever he deems worthy of compensation? Nowhere. And yet that is precisely what is happening with a $20 billion fund to be provided by BP to compensate people harmed by their oil spill...”
　
--Ben Blankenship

Feds totally inept? No

Bensblurb # 554 6/16/10

Are Feds totally inept? no.

Let me tell you about what happened to me the other day, something I thought reaffirmed my conviction about our god-awful federal agencies.

After all, I used to work for one (most of the time) for some 35 years. Granted, the outfit I directed for two decades did some really neat things, but just down the hallway, you wouldn’t believe the waste, fraud and abuse and I don‘t know what all.

But I do know firsthand about some things people still gripe about even today. Like Larry Kudlow, the CNBC money guy who recently quoted his friend, an obvious expert: “...the U.S. has way too many bureaucrats, making way too much money...governments are all in fiscal trouble in part because of excessive pay for a bloated civil service.”

Of course, you already knew all that. My latest gripe arose when I was fixing to take a trip with my wife to our granddaughter’s wedding in Denver. So, to be on the safe side, lest those airport security thugs take all her vital pills away, I carefully sent a supply of them via Priority Mail from the Post Office, no less, to my daughter in Colorado. That was well before our departure date.

Then shortly before we left, I called her. No pills had arrived. Again at the last minute: Still no pills.

Let me tell you I was livid at those overpaid louts. And I don’t mean those nice folks at Mail & More there beside the 610 Wal-Mart. They have always been accurate and efficient.

Still, no pills, no parcel, nothing. In desperation, I hurriedly packed enough other vital pills in their original Rx bottles and lugged my bloated bag past security without incidence. (Later in Denver, a recession note: our nice big hotel had few guests.)

But what happened to my package? Less than a week later, upon our return to Stafford, lo and behold there it was, on our doorstep. Seems the Post Office had tried to deliver it, but failed, and so returned it.

Why? Well, ahem, in my rush to do things, it seems I scrambled two numbers in my daughter’s street address. Small matter. I then started to gripe that somebody could have at least looked up her name in the phonebook and...but no.

Shoot! It was nobody’s fault but mine. Much as I hate to admit it, in growing older, I’m not quite as razor sharp as you’d expect, given my obviously superior skills otherwise.

And admittedly, roundtrip time for my package was little more than a week. So for once I couldn’t blame my woes on a pokey bureaucracy.

Besides, I had plenty of other big gripes on that trip. We left in one of those so-called airbuses--an accurate moniker. Even better: cattle car. I had even picked our seats in advance from a diagram. It lied. The space was so tight I couldn’t even read a magazine.
Did I blame private industry? Truth to tell, I blamed everyone, except my beautiful grandbaby bride. I must be getting older.

Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com

Rabbit Ears Revisited

Bensblurb # 553 June 13, 2010
　
Rabbit ears revisited

Remember my earlier “rabbit ears” characterization of the president? Well, now here’s Maureen Dowd in NYT: “The former constitutional lawyer now in the White House understands that the press has a role in the democracy. But he is an elitist, too, as well as thin-skinned and controlling. .”
Depthier criticism follows:

Mark Steyn: “Many Americans are beginning to pick up the strange vibe that for Barack Obama, governing America is "an interesting sociological experiment", too. He would doubtless agree that the United States is "the place on Earth that, if I needed one, I would call home." But he doesn't, not really...He's the first president to give off the pronounced whiff that he's condescending to the job - that it's really too small for him, and he's just killing time until something more commensurate with his stature comes along.”

And Dorothy Rabinowitz in WSJ: “A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.”

Here’s more: According to Daniel Halper in the Weekly Standard: “...at an exclusive fundraiser in San Francisco for Senator Barbara Boxer, Obama [said]: ‘Let's face it, this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.’
This most revealing comment ... shows his self-absorption and utter lack of a sense of history. Sure, FDR had a tough ‘30s with the economy [and then Pearl Harbor]...And President Harry Truman really had an easy time ending World War II, and having to nuke the Japanese. President Dwight Eisenhower only had the Korean War to worry about – and who remembers that, anyway? JFK and LBJ had Vietnam.


Remember the good old days? There‘s a relevant think piece by John Chettle in The American Interest, which I discovered in Border bookstore while waiting for my shopping-addicted wife to finish her routine rounds:

“It is a great advantage to a President, and a major source of safety to the country, for him to know he is not a great man. When a man begins to feel that he is the only one that can lead in this republic, he is guilty of treason to the spirit of our institutions”--Calvin Coolidge...And, how Reagan viewed his own leadership: “...I have never thought of myself as a great man, just a man committed to great ideas. I’ve always believed that individuals should take priority over the state...” from conversation w/Peggy Noonan, his speechwriter.
Again, Coolidge: “It is difficult for men in high office to avoid the malady of self-delusion.”...”They are in grave danger of becoming careless and arrogant.”
I’ll say

FOREBODING:

A close friend has confided to me that this year is the first time he’s become afraid of our own government. I fear my sentiments are similar.

Minor bellwethers I‘ve collected:
---The [new] EPA rule requires that any renovation of any building built before 1978 affecting six or more square feet of paint must be overseen by a government-certified renovator and conducted by a government-certified renovation firm. Certification requires completion of an EPA-approved training course and payment of a fee to the agency. The rule applies to anybody -- including painters, electricians, plumbers, and carpenters, plus general contractors and property owners -- who "disturbs painting" in covered structures... --Washington Examiner

---Now there’s the work-slowdown rule on the oil-spill cleanup. OSHA is limiting cleanup workers in the hot and humid Gulf to laboring 20 minutes on the hour.Their hourly pay, however, presumably won't be affected. Geez.

---Politico, again: When the IRS made about $40 billion in tax credits available for small businesses in accordance with the health care overhaul, it sent out 4 million postcards informing likely participants about the credit. Now, Republicans are asking why a similar campaign isn’t in the works to inform tanning salons and customers that they’re about to get hit with a 10 percent tax on their services.
Now a long hot summer looms. Geez

--Ben Blankenship

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Double dip economy

Bensblurb # 552 June 10, 2010

Recession double dipping? And lots of targets for ass kicking:

The 2009-2010 rally that ended in April...may actually be the start of a great new bull market, one that will shake off the current "correction" and roar back to the market's old highs. On the other hand, it may yet also be another version of what happened in 1930 -- the start of another bear market that will take the market down for years... Henry Blodget, CEO, Business Insider

And here’s Robert Reich, in Huffington Post, saying we’re in for a double-dip recession:
“Why are we having such a hard time getting free of the Great Recession? Because consumers, who constitute 70 percent of the economy, don't have the dough. They can't any longer treat their homes as ATMs, as they did before the Great Recession.
Businesses won't rehire if there's not enough demand for their goods and services.
The only reason the economy isn't in a double-dip recession already is because of three temporary boosts: the federal stimulus (of which 75 percent has been spent), near-zero interest rates (which can't continue much longer without igniting speculative bubbles), and replacements (consumers have had to replace worn-out cars and appliances, and businesses had to replace worn-down inventories). Oh, and, yes, all those Census workers (who will be out on their ears in a month or so). But all these boosts will end soon. Then we're in the dip. Retail sales are already down.”

--If Reich is right, rather than his customary left, Dem representatives may as well begin packing their bags before next fall’s elections. They’re history, let's hope.

Recession note: In Denver weeks ago for my grand-daughter’s wedding, we stayed at a really nice big hotel. The place was virtually deserted.


Now, according to the news, Obama has many candidates for his planned ass kicking:

Here’s Byron York, in the Examiner:
“The Obama administration is at first slow to see the seriousness of the accident. Then, as the crisis becomes clear, the federal bureaucracy becomes entangled in itself trying to deal with the [oil spill]. ...For example, it took the Department of Homeland Security more than a week to classify the spill as an event calling for the highest level of federal action. And when state officials in Louisiana tried over and over to win federal permission to build sand barriers to protect fragile coastal wetlands from the oil, they got nowhere. ‘For three weeks, as the giant slick crept closer to shore,’ the Times reports, ‘officials from the White House, Coast Guard, Army Corps of Engineers, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Environmental Protection Agency debated the best approach.’ The bureaucracy wasn't bending to anyone's will. The direction from the top was not clear. And accountability? So far, the only head that has rolled during the Gulf crisis has been that of Minerals Management Service chief Elizabeth Birnbaum.

--Ben Blankenship

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Trouble from up north

Bensblurb 552 6/3/10


Trouble coming from Up North:

Up in Alexandria (Va), they’re installing residents’ recycling bins equipped with microchips to “...[A]llow the city to keep tabs on its bins and track resident participation in the city's recycling program,” reports the Washington Examiner.

It’s said the information will allow officials to target neighborhoods -- not individuals -- that lag in recycling. Oh yeah? Big Brother soon will be watching, even as you take out the trash.

The red light cameras were bad enough. Now, privacy will have been breeched even more, for the sake of environmentalists’ goals of loading green rules onto us all. Never mind that trash recycling already is running at 29 percent for the state. Virginia requires most localities to recycle 25 percent of their waste.

Why? Pressure. Otherwise, it’s goofy. Landfills have plenty capacity. More can be started. Rural America still accounts for some 95 percent of our land mass. Corporate giant Waste Management leads the way in building responsible dumps, a big one nearby in King George.
Potential dumps abound. If science can further de-stink them, leading candidates would include old gravel pits. There’s a huge one just off Garrisonville Road, as soon as Vulcan Materials gets done quarrying.

Meanwhile, I’m pestered to stop using those handy plastic bags for groceries. But they allow you to lug around a lot more stuff than the old paper bags, and they are good for many other things, too.

By now you can tell I’m no environmentalist. Nor a Neanderthal. Rather, a conservationist. Don’t laugh, it’s true.

While some neighbors use those awful, huge plastic bags to stuff their leaves into each fall and haul away, I crunch my leaves with a garden tractor and leave them be. They serve as natural fertilizer for the lawn and help prevent weeds among my azaleas. My yard’s leaf factories: over 40 mature trees, mostly beeches, maples, oaks and dogwoods--which incidentally combat global warming. (see the pic)

Neither do I mess with collecting grass clippings. Let ‘em fly and thus soon help feed my clipped lawn.

But do I also recycle the trash I put in the toter? No way. It’s my silent protest against total conformity--and a silent cry for freedom, liberty and all the good things we used to treasure before Washington took over.

True, it’s trendy to go with the green flow. Like, how terrible it is that Virginia has to import all that New York garbage that we howled about a decade or so ago. Never mind that it makes us money. Nevertheless, we really must recycle to be politically correct, you know.

Well, Winston Churchill once said something about such gospels: “No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism.”

Speaking of intolerance, writer John Tierney stirred a hornet’s nest of environmentalist rage when he wrote “Recycling is Garbage” in the New York Times Magazine back in 1996. The skeptic charged that recycling “...squanders money and good will, and doesn’t do much for the environment either.”

I’d say Alexandria’s newfangled, tell-all trash barrels will have the same effect and only benefit its bureaucracy in issuing edicts.

Ben Blankenship is an Aquia Harbour resident and career journalist. Reach him at Benblanken@aol.com.