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Title: Governor Palin Was Right On Drilling... And Still Is
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URL Source: http://www.conservatives4palin.com/ ... lin-was-right-on-drilling.html
Published: May 3, 2010
Author: conservatives4palin
Post Date: 2010-05-03 14:49:48 by no gnu taxes
Keywords: None
Views: 324
Comments: 2
We’ve all become accustomed to the notion that everything that happens in America is Governor Palin’s fault, and if it’s not her fault it probably is, and if it probably isn’t then it definitely is. Somehow the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is now her fault too. How did the LSM come to this conclusion? Governor Palin is the one who advocates “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Some in the media have called the Governor an idiot and a flip flopper. She’s an idiot because just recently at the SRLC she called for drilling here and now; and now only two weeks later we have this oil spill. Get this, the Governor is an idiot for not being a psychic. I guess that makes Obama an idiot too. On April 2, 2010, President Obama said: "I don’t agree with the notion that we shouldn’t do anything. It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don’t cause spills. They are technologically very advanced. Even during Katrina, the spills didn’t come from the oil rigs, they came from the refineries onshore." On the flip flop side, they cite the following. In her latest Facebook the governor wrote: In the coming days, there will be hearings to discover the cause of the explosion and the subsequent leak. Actions will be taken to increase oversight to prevent future accidents. Government can and must play an appropriate role here. If a company was lax in its prevention practices, it must be held accountable. It is inexcusable for any oil company to not invest in preventative measures. They must be held accountable or the public will forever distrust the industry. According to the LSM she flip flopped on two counts: first, they claim she flip-flopped on the issue of regulations/oversight because Governor Palin always argues against government intervention. Second, they claim they point to what she wrote in National Review last month: Today the president said he’ll “consider potential areas for development in the mid and south Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico, while studying and protecting sensitive areas in the Arctic.” As the former governor of one of America’s largest energy-producing states, a state oil and gas commissioner, and chair of the nation’s Interstate Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, I’ve seen plenty of such studies. What we need is action. Do you see a flip flop here? I don’t. The governor is right. Her dismissal of the need for more studying was NOT dismissing the need for oversight and regulation. She just viewed it as a stall tactic. Part of what they were "studying" was the amount of oil in these various offshore reserves. We know it's there. It was just a stall tactic. It has been well reported even in the liberal press and noted by the President himself that this was BP’s fault; in their report detailing a worst case scenario, they underestimated the response necessary to protect the rigs and the environment. MSNBC reported that there had been a pressure build-up related issue on the Deepwater Horizon which was ignored by BP. Yes, there have been plenty of studies, but those studies rely on companies doing it right and safely, but when a company is lax in its prevention practices they have to be held accountable. Governor Palin isn’t calling for the Government to take over the oil industry. She is calling for common sense. You screw up, you’re held accountable. This wasn’t a natural disaster; this wasn’t a simple accident; this could have been prevented had BP abided by the safety rules Governor Palin championed. Governor Palin prides herself on how she took on “Big Oil.” She has always been in favor of strict oversight of the oil industry. The Dan Fagans of Alaska accused her of "hating" big oil because she believed in holding them accountable. In her book “Going Rogue” the Governor writes of a letter she received from a particular oil company: "Go to hell, but resign first." That was the attitudes of the oil companies towards her. Governor Palin is pro-drilling but still wants to make sure the industry is heavily monitored. If BP was lax, she will be the first person to hold them accountable for it. If Governor Palin were president today, she wouldn’t have waited seven days to respond. She would have demanded on day one of the disaster that BP quadruple its efforts, and she would have been the first person to demand the company pay the victims every last penny. She's pro free market, but she's not pro-oil companies. If they screw up, they pay. While Governor she spoke out against Exxon's stalling tactics in compensating the victims of the Exxon-Valdez spill. She instructed the state attorney general to file an amicus brief in the law suit before the Supreme Court. Governor Palin is a pro-development and pro-environment conservative. She touts domestic energy development precisely because we have some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world. She wants it that way. She is more than willing to make regulations stricter if it is warranted to keep our environment safe. What bothers her in part by these events is that the public will lose confidence in the industry due to the industry's lax practices. The rationale for "drill here, drill now" is based on security, prosperity, and the environment. We have stricter environmental standards here. As she wrote in her National Review article: Those who oppose domestic drilling are motivated primarily by environmental considerations, but many of the countries we’re forced to import from have few if any environmental-protection laws, and those that do exist often go unenforced. In effect, American environmentalists are preventing responsible development here at home while supporting irresponsible development overseas. My home state of Alaska shows how it’s possible to be both pro-environment and pro-resource-development. Alaskans would never support anything that endangered our pristine air, clean water, and abundant wildlife (which, among other things, provides many of us with our livelihood). The state’s government has made safeguarding resources a priority; when I was governor, for instance, we created a petroleum-systems-integrity office to monitor our oil and gas infrastructure for any potential environmental risks. Far from being against regulation of the oil industry, she instituted more of it. She created the PSIO because of the BP pipeline that leaked in 2006. Have you ever read or heard anything to suggest that Palin is upset by the fact that all oil tankers coming and going from the Prince William Sound (PWS) are now required to be accompanied by two tugboats capable of moving a loaded oil tanker, that there is pre-positioned oil boom and clean up supplies strategically placed in the PWS, that they have significantly increased the preparedness and scope of what they can do, that they run regular spill drills, that the oil companies have to fund the PWS Regional Citizen's Advisory Council, etc.? Those measures are the result of the stricter regulations put in place following the Exxon-Valdez spill. Palin supports all of those measures. She likes the fact that we have strict regulations. She believes in giving oil companies open access to ANWR, the OCS, etc. but making them do it right and holding their feet to the fire if they screw up. The far-left environmentalists try to make it an issue of no drilling at all because they say that it can't be done safely or that it will slow down the move to alternative fuels. And if those arguments are unpersuasive, they’ll simply use the time-tested tactic of tying things up in court for decades with lawsuits or demands for additional studies to be conducted. How does that help us when we need oil and we know that we can drill for it more environmentally responsibly here? So what have we got here? We have the media using a tragedy to score some political points -- using this disaster to strip Governor Palin of one of her strong suits: energy. The latest meme is that Governor Palin will now have to scale down on her "drill, baby, drill" rhetoric. No, she does not. We can still drill here and drill now, if only oil executives will abide by the safety regulation guides. When a drunk driver causes a 10 car pileup, are we all banned from driving? After a disasterous plane crash are all aircrafts grounded? When the Challenger exploded on takeoff in 1986, did we call for an end to space travel? Of course not. In each incident the situations are investigated and the people responsible are held accountable. Where a systemic problem is found, adjustments are made, the problem is fixed, the system is made better, and life goes on. Yes, the Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a tragedy and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who perished. We are saddened by the fact that this has affected the livelihood of hundreds if not thousands of families. But by giving up on drilling we’ll be punishing the whole country. We’ll end up with higher energy prices which will be costly to every business and every person. Some economists have estimated that gas prices will go up to $5 a gallon. This will affect the economy and national security . As the Governor notes: We still believe in responsible development, which includes drilling to extract energy sources, because we know that there is an inherent link between energy and security, energy and prosperity, and energy and freedom. Production of our own resources means security for America and opportunities for American workers. We need oil, and if we don’t drill for it here, we have to purchase it from countries that not only do not like America and can use energy purchases as a weapon against us, but also do not have the oversight that America has. The oil spill serves as a reminder of the urgency to develop alternative sources of energy, but we’re still trying to figure out what that alternative is. As Governor Palin often reminds us, we need an all of the above approach. But we’re not there yet, and until we get there, we need oil -- without having to rely on countries that don’t like us very much. So, yes, we need to hold people accountable. Yes, we need to make sure it’s done safely. And, yes, we need to drill here and drill now. We just need the guts, like Governor Palin, to admit it. Update by Doug: I have watched with amusement the attempts by the Left to essentially blame Governor Palin for the explosion of BP's rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Some are now using this accident, apparently, to advocate the abandonment of offshore drilling altogether. Wonderful. If we can't drill onshore or off, where will we get our oil? The opponents of drilling are aware that we need oil, right? The opponents of a sensible energy policy will say, of course, that we can simply "invent" a new source of energy more palatable to their sensibilities. Yes, that's their "plan": we'll just pass a law and invent a new source of energy which will magically replace the energy sources upon which America relies. Do we plan to give up flying? I have yet to hear even Al Gore suggest that solar panels and windmills will get his private jet off the ground. The whole notion that we should ignore our rich endowment of oil, natural gas, and coal is ridiculous on its face. America is a prosperous country with the highest standards of living in human history. The ability and will to harness our abundant sources of energy are major reasons for this affluence. An energy policy that doesn't utilize our vast endowment of natural resources is no energy policy at all. Indeed it is nothing more than fantasy to suggest we can eschew these proven resources in lieu of some yet to be discovered magic resource which will allow us all to live happily ever after in a land of rainbows and unicorns. To take our proven reserves of conventional sources of energy off the table is tantamount to economic suicide. When the price of gasoline heads back north of $4.00 a gallon (as it must if we don't increase supply), not only will Americans pay higher personal transportation costs, but the price of everything else they purchase will rise as higher shipping costs are passed along to consumers. When this happens, Americans will not be happy, and they will certainly remember the one leader who has been consistently and unapologetically arguing for a common sense approach to energy policy. We need an all-of-the-above approach and we need to move on it yesterday. Drill, baby drill.
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
No, Palin offers the drunken Mexican a path to citizenship. And think of all the energy the 30-40 million illegals use.
What path is that? Can you give us a definitive explanation or are you just suffering another brain fart, Jose? Sneakypete, have you ever been married? Said things you later regretted?
When a drunk driver causes a 10 car pileup, are we all banned from driving?
#2. To: Moderate Mammal (#1)
Palin offers the drunken Mexican a path to citizenship.
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