"It's Bush's fault!"
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) blamed any lack of oversight surrounding the Gulf Coast oil spill to the Bush administration during a press conference Thursday.
When she was asked by reporters if Democrats could have prevented or mitigated the disaster by closer monitoring of the oil industry, Pelosi had this to say,
“Many of the people appointed in the Bush administration are still burrowed in the agencies that are supposed to oversee the [oil] industry,”
(Of course.)
..... “the cozy relationships between the Bush administration’s agency leadership and the industry is clear.”
(Of course.)
....“I’ve heard no complaints from my members about the way the president has handled it,” Pelosi said.
(Of course not.)
Since Day One.
Pelosi’s remarks come in the wake of the resignation of Elizabeth Birnbaum as Director of Minerals Management Service [MMS], the agency that exercises regulatory authority over those companies involved in offshore shore drilling-like BP.
(Birnbaum was appointed head of MMS in July 2009.)
Meanwhile back in the Gulf.....
4 comments:
Poor performance by Pelosi. The first thing she should have said is, "This is on our watch now, and we obviously didn't identify this soon enough as a priority to clean house. Also, my colleagues in the senate didn't give sufficient advice or consider adequately whether to give consent to the appointment of the current director."
That said, she could have pointed out the tremendous pressure from most Republicans and not a few Democrats to open up drilling anywhere we could find oil, and stop tying up oil exploration with unnecessary regulation. In that context, yes, Bush should get a lot of the blame, as should Cheney, and Sarah Palin should be doing penance in a nunnery for a year or two.
Then she could say something about what the government will do, now that private enterprise has inflicted a huge tort on the people of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and who knows where else. Government's role is to step in and enforce a solution -- albeit, that's a matter of some technical complexity. Perhaps stuff fifty congressmen and oil executives into that hole?
Amen to that Siarly, especially the first and the last sentence.
Oh good. At least somewhere down the line, there is something that's not about that flotilla trying to reach Gaza. Doesn't anyone in the world have anything else to talk about???
Gary, I appreciate it when we find points of agreement, but when you take the thinnest crust of bread, and throw away the meat, its hardly a compliment to the chef who prepared the sandwich.
You're good at graphics. Let's see one of Palin in a Trappist nunnery.
Huh?
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