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Title: Obama’s oil spill “panel” lacks technical expertise but is quite adept at talking publicly about “America’s addiction to oil”
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URL Source: http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2 ... out-americas-addiction-to-oil/
Published: Jun 21, 2010
Author: fireandreamitchell
Post Date: 2010-06-21 09:47:19 by no gnu taxes
Keywords: None
Views: 314
Comments: 3
What a shock! Well, not really Obama’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill “panel” lacks technical expertise to deal with the oil cleanup, but has plenty of political talking points talking about “America’s addiction to oil.” According to Yahoo/AP Only one of the seven commissioners, the dean of Harvard’s engineering and applied sciences school, has a prominent engineering background — but it’s in optics and physics. Another is an environmental scientist with expertise in coastal areas and the after-effects of oil spills. Both are praised by other scientists. The five other commissioners are experts in policy and management. -- The White House said the commission will focus on the government’s “too cozy” relationship with the oil industry. A presidential spokesman said panel members will “consult the best minds and subject matter experts” as they do their work. The commission has yet to meet, yet some panel members had made their views known. Environmental activist Frances Beinecke on May 27 blogged: “We can blame BP for the disaster and we should. We can blame lack of adequate government oversight for the disaster and we should. But in the end, we also must place the blame where it originated: America’s addiction to oil.” And on June 3, May 27, May 22, May 18, May 4, she called for bans on drilling offshore and the Arctic. “Even as questions persist, there is one thing I know for certain: the Gulf oil spill isn’t just an accident. It’s the result of a failed energy policy,” Beinecke wrote on May 20. Two other commissioners also have gone public to urge bans on drilling. Co-chairman Bob Graham, a Democrat who was Florida governor and later a senator, led efforts to prevent drilling off his state’s coast. Commissioner Donald Boesch of the University of Maryland wrote in a Washington Post blog that the federal government had planned to allow oil drilling off the Virginia coast and “that probably will and should be delayed.” Boesch, who has made scientific assessments of oil spills’ effects on the ecosystem, said usually oil spills are small. But he added, “The impacts of the oil and gas extraction industry (both coastal and offshore) on Gulf Coast wetlands represent an environmental catastrophe of massive and underappreciated proportions.” An expert not on the commission, Granger Morgan, head of the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University and an Obama campaign contributor, said the panel should have included more technical expertise and “folks who aren’t sort of already staked out” on oil issues. Jerry Taylor of the libertarian Cato Institute described the investigation as “an exercise in political theater where the findings are preordained by the people put on the commission.” When the White House announced the commission, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and others made compared it with the one that investigated the 1986 Challenger accident. This one, however, doesn’t have as many technical experts. The 13-member board that looked into the first shuttle accident had seven engineering and aviation experts and three other scientists. The 2003 board that looked into the Columbia shuttle disaster also had more than half of the panel with expertise in engineering and aviation. Iraj Ersahaghi, who heads the petroleum engineering program the University of Southern California, reviewed the names of oil spill commissioners and asked, “What do they know about petroleum?” Ersahaghi said the panel needed to include someone like Bob Bea, a prominent petroleum engineering professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who’s an expert in offshore drilling and the management causes of manmade disasters.
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
GOP to BP: "We're sorry that Obama is being so mean to you. Give us MORE money and when we get in we'll make sure The Big Dick Cheney oversees you!!!!"""
#67. To: war (#48) Keep hiding behind the bozo, bozo. (laughing) You've always been a world class pussy. Badeye posted on 2010-01-14 16:12:48 ET Reply Trace I'm biased, obviously, given the shit I'm subjected to daily here from the anti groupie. Badeye posted on 2010-06-10 11:34:31 ET Reply Trace Private Reply
The job is basically 'crisis management' and we are seeing the cost of electing somebody thats never in their life had to perform in such a role previously. We're paying a helluva price for this empty suit in the Whitehouse.
Just 10 days prior to the explosion, the Obama administration’s regulators gave the oil rig a pass, and last year the Obama administration granted BP a National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) exemption for its drilling operation.
We're paying a helluva price for this empty suit in the Whitehouse. The price we've been paying since 12122000. ;} As I've said here many times before, no one that I know writing today is making the kinds of profound connections that Arthur Silber makes, year after year: drawing out the deeper implications of the operations of power on every level of our lives, from the global scope of high politics to the still, dark night of the individual psyche. His latest post is a masterpiece of his insightful art. He uncovers the (literally) deadly dynamic by which the ruling elites not only enforce their ravenous and ravaging will -- but also how they make their victims "become collaborators in their own destruction." Go there now, or as soon as you can, and read the piece in its entirety. Don't cheat yourself of a rare draught of wisdom when it's offered. " One aspect of the profoundly evil system that has been destroying us for over a hundred years -- and make no mistake, it is deeply evil in design, intent and effect, if by evil we designate those actions which destroy the very possibility of thriving life -- is especially awful. The authoritarian-corporatist-militarist system victimizes untold millions of individual human beings, as well as many other forms of life as we see again today, both here and abroad. That would be a momentous evil in itself, but this particular evil is unsatisfied with only this first form of destruction. Thus, the victims are targeted a second time, and they are forced to become collaborators in their own destruction. http://powerofnarrative.blogspot.com/2010/06/memo-to-victims-you-yourselves-will-pay.html It's the Planet Killing Corporations or the people. U' Pic'em. ;}
#2. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
#3. To: Badeye (#2)
The job is basically 'crisis management' and we are seeing the cost of electing somebody thats never in their life had to perform in such a role previously.
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