Paradise Lost: For The Gulf Coast And The United States
June 30, 2010 by John Myers
“So many and so various laws are giv’n;
So many laws argue so many sins.” –Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1667
In the epic poem Paradise Lost, Adam and Eve have taken the forbidden fruit and God is asking Adam why. As in Genesis, Adam is passing the buck, telling God that this woman whom He made gave him the fruit. Adam asks God how such evil could have ever been expected from one so lovely.
God tells Adam that the mistake is Adam’s not Eve’s; that Adam was to look out for Eve. God points out that just before Eve met the serpent Adam had told her that they should stick together because the Archangel Raphael had warned them of the serpent. Yet Adam let Eve stray away to meet her fate, the consequences of which changed the world.
And in the end God holds Adam accountable for the loss of paradise.
Obama’s Blame Game
Just as Adam did with Eve, President Barack Obama is shifting as much blame as he can onto BP.
According to The Daily Telegraph, BP CEO Tony Hayward’s grilling looked like a kangaroo court. He had to listen to a litany of accusations from United States lawmakers before he was able to say a single word in his own defense: “As far as the members were concerned, he was there to take the blame, whether or not there were mitigating circumstances, or companies other than BP should be sharing culpability. It was as though, in a criminal trial, the victim’s statements were being read out before the verdict had been passed, although that was a foregone conclusion—a resounding ‘guilty.’ A kangaroo court would have offered a fairer hearing.”
What The Daily Telegraph doesn’t understand is that the Congressional inquisition of BP and Big Oil was never intended to be fair. The goal was to keep the elected elites in office and increase their influence.
Just as Adam thought Eve was a perfect foil, so too, does President Obama think that of BP. And he is right. Last week White House spokesman Bill Burton mocked BP’s CEO and all-around English twit Hayward for attending a luxury yacht race on crystal waters while the Gulf of Mexico is turning into the Black Sea.
Burton opined that Hayward should take part in the cleanup operations in the Gulf of Mexico with the $400,000 yacht he co-owns.
"You know, look, if Tony Hayward wants to put a skimmer on that yacht and bring it down to the Gulf, we’d be happy to have his help," Burton said to a chorus of yuck-yucks in the White House briefing room.
It is almost beyond my comprehension that BP could have such bad PR, from Hayward saying he “wants his life back,” to BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg calling the people of the Gulf Coast, “small people.” But it seems the people of the Gulf are small people, not just to BP but to Obama as well.
The same weekend that Hayward was skipping his yacht, Obama was walking the links. Even as tar balls washed up on Destin, Fort Walton and Panama City Beach, Obama was busy hitting golf balls.
Just as Adam was quick to condemn Eve, the Obama White House sees no hypocrisy in pointing out BP’s sins while denying their own.
Caught Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea
One estimate reported by CNN says the catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon platform spill could cost just the Florida Gulf Coast alone 200,000 jobs before it is all over. Yet the cost on all of us is only starting to climb. Seafood is becoming more expensive and oil prices have resumed their climb towards $80 per barrel.
It is important to note that before the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, the Gulf of Mexico was producing about 1.6 million barrels of oil per day. That is almost a third of domestic production.
If the Obama administration follows through with an overall ban on offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and further tightens the screws on exploration in Alaska, the consequences of this crisis will have a devastating affect on our oil needs.
Last week a New Orleans Federal judge lifted the six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling imposed by the President, saying: “The court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium.”
However Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar responded that he will issue a new order on deepwater offshore oil drilling.
“We see clear evidence every day, as oil spills from BP’s well, of the need for a pause on deepwater drilling,” Salazar said. “Based on this ever-growing evidence, I will issue a new order in the coming days that eliminates any doubt that a moratorium is needed, appropriate, and within our authorities.”
Expect the White House to throw its full weight behind suspension of deep water drilling. And that is bad news for the nation which desperately needs oil from the Gulf of Mexico. Without it we will be left begging OPEC.
Does BO Have A Backdoor Deal With BP?
Meanwhile BP has kicked in $20 billion to pay for their mistake. That led Congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas) to apologize to BP saying that the $20 billion escrow fund was a “shakedown” by the White House.
I think Barton was not only ignorant of the political winds but was dead wrong. I believe that BP and the White House made a deal for the Federal government to funnel that money back to BP in the back door. One of just a handful of ways for this to work would be to give BP sweet deals on future leases.
In the end it will cost the taxpayers more than it will cost BP. Still, Obama probably considers the price tag a bargain if it can turn the nation Green.
“The motivation for allowing the well to blow and prolonging the crisis isn’t merely financial, it’s political too,” writes Prison Planet. “The motto for the people who pull the strings inside the Obama administration, people like Rahm Emanuel and Hillary Clinton is to ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’—and Obama himself has certainly taken that to heart over the course of the last two months.”
Prison Planet speculates that Obama and BP are joined at the hip: “The Obama administration has aggressively exploited the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to manufacture an artificial urgency in an effort to speed the passage of cap and trade in pursuit of a ‘green economy,’ an agenda firmly supported by the transnational oil corporations Obama is claiming to be reigning in. British Petroleum is one of the founding members of the cap and trade lobby, and has consistently lobbied for greenhouse gas restraints… and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and bio-fuels.”
Prison Planet concludes that BP stands to profit to the tune of billions.
Unfortunately what is good for BP is not good for the U.S. Some economic studies have indicated that going Green costs 2.2 jobs for every new job created.
In the Gulf, not only are shores being infected with a killer sludge, but now the Federal government is putting a moratorium on drilling. At stake are hundreds of thousands of jobs for people who have neither the time nor the money to go to yacht races or country clubs. It is their, and even our, paradise lost.
Yours for real wealth and good health,
John Myers
Myers’ Energy and Gold Report
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