Blackmail Petroleum
Is the $20 billion settlement between BP and President Obama the be-all end-all to the rule of law and the beginning of the rule of Men? When did the Executive Branch become less about enforcing laws and more about making up the rules as they go along? Is this the end of the Constitution? Will the election of freedom-loving conservatives reverse course, or will they seize and feast upon the new power the liberals have handed to them? If the Bush Administration took government power from one to ten, and the Obama Administration took the ten and made it a hundred, will the new administration make it a thousand? Is a hundred good enough? How about ten? What will it take to get there?
It took health care and BP to bring it from a hundred to a thousand. BP CEO Tony Hayward just handed the golden opportunity to our runaway federal government. If the feds are talking the $20 billion as a “down payment”, then we aren’t starving the feds. We’re giving them carte blanche at the all-you-can-eat buffet, and then drinking excessively on the house – the tab being ours – and then they get the women to boot.
I thought political hecklers aren’t supposed to get attention. I just saw an article on Yahoo showing a woman covered in oil screaming at the Congressional hearing. What a bunch of contrived theater. Then again, so is the idea of Congress grilling someone to give the citizens a show. It’s a media lions den.
BP got in bed with the federal government, and the government seduction was complete. What’s with the $75 million limited liability clause allowed to oil companies for oil spills; especially after the Exxon Valdez scandal wore off? Why did the feds disallow a shallower well when Louisiana allowed it? Why did Obama reject the Louisiana governor’s pleas to build dunes to block the oil spill for so long? Why doesn’t Obama plug the damn hole, so to speak?
Now people are mad, and rightfully so. I just wish we had the foresight to know we don’t think clearly when mad. The federal government knows, and refuses to let the crisis go to waste in a blatant power grab.
I’m sorry about supporting the Patriot Act at one time. I trusted Bush, despite the screaming from those who pleaded to watch the government power grab. I didn’t listen. One would think that after our trust was betrayed by one President, that we would watch the next one like a hawk. It turns out that the ones who warned us were right, but much fewer in number than I hoped. The liberal media picked up on it, and flew with it. Now Obama is making a ten into a hundred, and people have turned a blind eye.
The power levels have to be so intoxicating, that anyone, no matter their intentions, will lust after keeping the power after getting several tastes. It’s what made the 1994 Republican Congress blow it for everyone. Even if the 2010 Congress was as conservative as the voters allowed it, with all the new power government has, will they have the willpower to turn back what the Class of 1994 couldn’t with such a meeker opponent? What confidence do we have that any human being can take the Rule of Men and turn it back to the Rule of Law? Even if any human being/s could do that, what safeguards would be in place to ensure the line isn’t crossed again? If the safeguards take the form of words, as the law typically does, what’s to stop anyone’s disregard for those words as our current government does for the Constitution?
The $20 billion is yet another example about it being all about the money. Money that will go wherever the government wants it to go, so the company presidents can line up the campaign coffers in time for the next election. It’s why the “Porkulus Plan” was such a disaster. It’s why there’s no real job recovery – because the Census isn’t permanent, and Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling killed even more jobs.
George Soros has upended small countries’ economies singlehandedly just by pulling out of stocks and funds here and there. His volume is the name of the game. Now is he pulling Obama’s strings, as Glenn Beck and Jim Quinn have alleged for several years now, but I was hoping I wouldn’t have to confront and believe? Why is Brazil allowed to expand their offshore drilling, then? Soros has his pockets in Brazil oil, and Obama is handing him the capital. So if Soros is that powerful, and wants to exert that power toward transforming America into a system that is the socialist ash to capitalism’s fire? When did our flame go out?
It hasn’t. The Tea Party knows it (not the Republican cover up parties, by the way), the Campaign For Liberty folks know it, and even if many of us don’t know it, we suspect it, or know something just isn’t right. We all joke about how politicians are corrupt almost automatically, but that doesn’t mean we just have to accept it and take it up the rear end in the name of not making waves or appearing crazy to folks.
Those in power are playing with fire. The world hangs at an edge of a cliff. We’re not off it yet, but the conditions are becoming more prevalent. The Titanic sinks while we arrange the furniture.
In America, there should be no such thing as helplessness.