Learning as we go...

On Tuesday night, President Barack Obama will speak to the American people about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico – nearly two months after BP’s Deepwater Horizon blew-up unleashing the worst ecological disaster in U.S. history.

According to the NY Times, “President Obama will use his first Oval Office speech Tuesday night to outline a plan to legally compel BP to create an escrow account to compensate businesses and individuals for their losses from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, administration officials said on Sunday.”

Here comes the speech - nearly two months later...

“President Barack Obama's upcoming schedule makes clear he is almost entirely focused on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, but the president is forging ahead with a full legislative agenda,” according to a report by The Hill. “Aides to the president say Obama is able to "chew gum and walk at the same time," but the spill has clearly become the top issue at the White House as Obama will spend two days in the Gulf this week before addressing the nation on Tuesday and meeting with BP officials on Wednesday. To be sure, the president has given a few talks to the people and the press, but this will be the first speech of this magnitude – nearly two months after the disaster began.”

Deepwater Horizon - nearly two months ago...

During the nearly two months since the catastrophe ensued, we’ve learned a great deal about what has and hasn’t been done – mostly what hasn’t:

As essayist David Warren points out, “We learned a simple thing this week: that the BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So while, for instance, the U.S. Coast Guard can accept such help as three kilometres of containment boom from Canada, they can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand. This is amusing, in a way: a memorable illustration of … the sort of stuff I keep going on about. Which is to say, the law of unintended consequences, which pertains with especial virulence to all acts of government regulation.”

• We know that administration officials got tough with BP, “[ripping] ripped up BP's plans for increasing the amount of oil being captured from the leaking well, saying they were insufficient. The company was given a 48-hour deadline, due to expire last night, to come up with plans that would capture more of the oil, which is still leaking at a rate of 30,000 barrels a day.” (Just so you know, the deadline came and went…)
• We learned that all of this is really someone else’s fault.
• We found out that “according to the Center for Responsive Politics and financial disclosures, over the last twenty years of oil-giant BP’s political action committee, the largest recipient has been President Obama.”
• We’ve learned that when it comes to the opinions of celebrities, media and assorted hacks, the overriding tack is, “Hear no evil, speak no evil…”
• We know Interior Secretary Ken Salazar falsified a report by experts in order to have a moratorium on offshore drilling put in place.

The tragedy continues to unfold...

• We learned that despite the situation, despite the fact that soldiers are dying in foreign lands and one of the largest ecological disasters in human history is worsening on a daily basis, “President Barack Obama [managed to spend] four hours on the golf course Sunday.” (If you’re keeping score, I believe that’s his 38^th round since inauguration day.)

Closing quote: "Even though I'm president of the United States, my power is not limitless. So I can't dive down there and plug the hole. I can't suck it up with a straw." -- President Obama, quoted by the Washington Post, on the BP oil spill in the Gulf.

Weekend Wrap-Up: "Business As Usual"

Once again, The Bliss Index©, dutifully provides a weekend wrap-up of news…

So much for "keeping big money out of politics" – Apparently, $5,000 gets you an hour-long breakfast (aka: healthcare shakedown) with Nancy Pelosi…

You know, $5,ooo isn't all that much to pay someone to carry a big hammer around...

And that promise about keeping your own health insurance: Um, yeah, not so much. According to Investor’s Business Daily, “Internal White House documents reveal that 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage by 2013 due to ObamaCare. That numbers soars to 66% for small-business employers.” Now is that the Hope™ or the Change® we were told about?

To be expected: From Politico, “Enviros give Obama a pass on spill - As the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history has played out on Obama’s watch, the environmental movement has essentially given him a pass — all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance.”

Remember when the oil clean-up folks said they didn’t know about the oil booms that company in Maine has/offered? Yeah, um, not so much. (They knew back on May 21…)

The president visits the Gulf (looking for some ___ to kick?)...

Add Gulf oil spill fib: According to Powerline, “The administration has decreed a six-month moratorium on exploratory drilling in the Gulf, based on a report that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar wrote for President Obama. Salazar claimed that a panel of seven experts selected by the National Academy of Engineering had peer reviewed his report. It turns out, though, that the seven experts never saw the recommendation for a moratorium, and in fact oppose it.” This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Salazar for what he is…

Last add Gulf oil spill fib: Remember when clean-up authorities promised that"the media will have uninhibited access?" Um, yeah, not so much – Press photo flyovers prohibited; photos in public areas (namely beaches) are verboten; media boats kept away from spill areas; journalists harassed and threatened with arrest. I guess that’s just the administration’s policies on transparency at work.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar: at least he's getting "thumbs-up" from someone...

Add Obama Administration’s media relations: – After almost a year and a half in office, this administration has surpassed all previous presidencies in going after “leakers.” Hiding something?

I guess they were absent the day they taught about this in Econ 101: “Pension Plans Go Broke as Public Payrolls Expand.” Gee, who’d a thunk it?

From the “putting a (D) after your name doesn’t make bigotry OK” dept.: According to Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire, South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford (D) was quoted by the Charleston Post and Courier as saying, “No white folks have an 'e' on the end of Green. The blacks after they left the plantation couldn't spell, and they threw an 'e' on the end." Ford, a Democrat, was trying to explain his view that race could have played a role in Alvin Greene's (D) surprise victory in the primary elections since he was the only black candidate in a primary with a majority of black voters.

Add bigotry/idiocy: Looks like former-California governor/hopes-to-be-governor-again Jerry Brown really stuck his jogging shoe in his mouth. Seems Brown and KCBS-AM 740 reporter Doug Sovern bumped into each other while they were out exercising and Brown let loose about his opponent, GOPer Meg Whitman. From Sovern’s Sovern Nation blog – “Brown boasted about his legendary frugality. "I've only spent $200,000 so far. I have 20 million in the bank. I'm saving up for her." It's true - his stay-on-the-sidelines, bare-bones primary run cost him almost nothing, at least in California political terms. But he also fretted about the impact of all those eBay dollars in Whitman's very deep pockets. "You know, by the time she's done with me, two months from now, I'll be a child-molesting..." He let the line trail off. "She'll have people believing whatever she wants about me." Then he went off on a riff I didn't expect. "It's like Goebbels," referring to Hitler's notorious Minister of Propaganda. "Goebbels invented this kind of propaganda. He took control of the whole world. She wants to be president. That's her ambition, the first woman president. That's what this is all about." It’s one thing to oppose your political opponent, it’s entirely another (and intellectually lazy) to compare political rhetoric with the evils of Nazism.

Jerry Brown: what will he say next?

Another reason why the private sector is often a much better choice than the public (government): Costs (duh). According to the Wall Street Journal, “It costs about $12 more per hour to employ a state or local government worker. Meanwhile, a breakout of private workers showed that it cost more to employ union workers than nonunion employees. The largest share of the costs comes from wages and salaries for both sets of workers: 70.6% for private employees and 65.9% for government workers. The rest of the payment comes in the form of benefits. It costs state and local governments $3.16 per hour to pay for employees’ retirement and savings plans, compared to 96 cents for private workers. Another $4.52 goes to health insurance for public workers, compared to $2.08 for private workers. And governments spend $3 per hour for its workers’ paid leave, compared to $1.88 for private workers. Compensation for union workers cost $37.16 per hour compared to $26.67 for non-union workers.” Dear California, now do you understand?

Will this be business as usual? - Because we’ve officially got World Cup fever here at The Bliss Index©, we’ll tip our caps to the U.S. soccer (er, football) squad as it walks away from Game 1 of pool play against the Brits. It wasn’t the prettiest game and the Yanks got lucky with a ball that shouldn’t have found England’s goal - but we’ll take it. Next opponent: Slovenia (June 18).

Cleaning up another mess...

Since the explosion, sinking and massive oil spill resulting from British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster more than a month ago, BP and the federal government have been struggling to find a solution to what could become the largest man made disaster – ever.

During the period since the horror first erupted in the Gulf of Mexico, we’ve seen the spill expand to beaches throughout the Gulf. We’ve seen BP downplay the severity – time and again. And we’ve watched the current administration present its biggest example yet that it is a presidency best characterized as “learning on the job.”


Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and President Barack Obama...

For BP’s part, it’s difficult to imagine that a company this big and this experienced did not plan (better) for a “worst-case scenario.” While they’ve continued to bumble on the PR front, their engineers (God love ‘em) have been trying everything and anything to find a “magic bullet.” The first containment dome failed…froze-up. The “big straw” – an effort to suck spewing oil up to nearby ships – didn’t make a dent. “Top kill,” pumping heavy mud into the wellhead in an effort to seal it, didn’t do it. The “junk shot” – trying to stuff debris (including golf balls and old tires) into the hole – worked about as good as you’d imagine something called a “junk shot” would.
While BP has at least been trying every trick in the book – and some that aren’t – the feds have been doing bupkis. (OK, the Coast Guard has been doing their usual stellar job but the administration’s response has been, um, lacking.)

My friend and colleague, Tunku Varadarajan (writing for The Daily Beast), however, feels that it’s wrong to blame Barack Obama: “Writers have been free with their superlatives of calamity, the most common being a likening of the spill to Hurricane Katrina: ‘Obama’s Katrina,’ many have written, glibly judgmental. And going one step further up the ladder of shrillness, Thomas Friedman, the Emperor of Glib, has been imperiously judgmental, calling the spill ‘Obama’s 9/11.’ The oil spill is none of the above. It is not even ‘Obama’s oil spill,’ if by saying so we mean to ascribe culpability to the president. He didn’t run the rigs, or oversee the plans, or grant the licenses to drill, or write the rules that govern the granting of those licenses. He was just president when the bloody thing happened (cf. Bush, 9/11). Not one iota of this sticky mess is Obama’s doing, by any rational calculus of causation.”




Obviously, I agree with Tunku, in that the explosion wasn’t the cause of Obama (or his team), but I also agree with the president’s recent declaration that he’s in charge and, echoing Harry S. Truman, “the buck stops” with him.

Whether it’s now or after the spill is quelled, one of the steps Obama can take to make things better is to cut loose his Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar. It would be unreasonable to expect the president to take blame for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but during Salazar’s time at the helm of Interior (which has been otherwise unremarkable), the Minerals Management Service (MMS) – the federal agency overseeing offshore oil and natural-gas exploration in the Gulf of Mexico – “has been cited again for ‘ethical lapses’ that included allowing rig inspectors and others to receive gifts from oil companies.”


The scapegoat, Elizabeth Birnbaum. Acknowledged as a "smart and hardworking administrator," Birnbaum took charge of the MMS two months after the department, part of the Department of the Interior (Ken Salazar, secretary), had already OK'd Deepwater Horizon's operations.

What’s more, Salazar (likely under orders from Rahm “The Godfather” Emanuel) – in an effort to produce a scalp for Congress – dumped one of his own, Elizabeth Birnbaum. According to The Washington Post, “Salazar, a politically savvy former senator from Colorado, responded that he had lost confidence in Elizabeth Birnbaum, the director of the Minerals Management Service, adding that he would soon be making changes. The next morning, Salazar and his deputy secretary David Hayes knocked on Birnbaum's office door and told her they planned to move her to another job; she resigned instead.”


The president checks out oil on a beach pre-cleaned by BP...

According to a report by Sharyl Attkison at CBSNews.com, “Birnbaum's departure was first reported as a "firing." Later, a "resignation." When asked for clarity, President Obama told the press corps today he had no idea.

CBS White House Correspondent Chip Reid: "Did she resign? Was she fired? Was she forced out? And if so, why?"

Obama: "I found out about her resignation today,so I don't know the circumstances in which this occurred."

The incredulous press corps followed up.

Reporter: "How is it that you didn't know about Ms. Birnbaum's resignation/firing before?"

Obama: "Well, you're assuming it was a firing. If it was a resignation, then she would have submitted a letter to Mr. Salazar this morning at a time when I had a whole bunch of other stuff going on... Come on, I don't know. I'm telling you I found out about it this morning. So I don't yet know the circumstances, and Ken Salazar has been in testimony on the Hill."

The Post article goes on to say that “Birnbaum's abrupt departure, coming just 10 months after she had taken the agency's helm, says more about the Obama administration's inability to improve MMS and the industry it regulates than Birnbaum herself. Facing a historically troubled agency, Salazar and his top deputies focused first on promoting easy-to-achieve changes…rather than conducting a broad agency overhaul.”


The mess gets worse...

Finally, when he had a chance to show some form of leadership, Salazar impressed no one as he toured affected areas of the Gulf coast with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and a group of U.S. senators, bragging to reporters that, "We will keep our boot on their [BP’s] neck until the job gets done.” That’s some fine work there, Kenny.

Let’s remember, that for all of Salazar’s big boot pronouncements and subordinate axing, he’s long been a friend of Big Oil. A story in The Nation reminds us that, “Salazar certainly believes in offshore oil drilling, but whether he can be trusted to regulate it is another matter. One wouldn't know it from his recent public statements, but Ken Salazar has long been one of the strongest advocates of offshore oil drilling in Washington. In 2008, as a Democratic Senator from Colorado, he criticized the Bush-Cheney administration for not doing enough to promote offshore drilling. In 2006, Sen. Salazar was the architect of the Gulf of Mexico Economic Security Act, which opened eight million acres of the Gulf to drilling. In 2009, as Interior Secretary, Salazar oversaw his department's lease of 55 million acres of the Gulf for oil and gas drilling.”

The author (no Big Oil-loving conservative) finishes with this viewpoint: “If Obama truly wants to chart a new course in dealing with the BP disaster and accelerating America's transition to a clean energy future, he should start by requesting Ken Salazar's resignation.”

Yes, that’s another way Obama could begin cleaning up this mess.