GOP The Party of BP

It has never been more obvious who Republicans represent. Throughout the gulf spill tragedy while President Obama and the Administration was worked tirelessly to try to protect the lives, the environment and the way of life of the residents of the gulf human and animal, the Republican's primary talking points are complaints about the temporary moratorium on such drilling that caused this great American tragedy.

The party of "drill baby drill" wants us to again believe this was an isolated incident and take the risk of additional such tragedies in order to protect the profits of the oil companies.

Yesterday President Obama in a remarkable sign of his strength and leadership got BP, a major corporation to put 20 billion dollars in a fund to be administrated by a third party to finally effectively and efficiently get financial help to those harmed by this corporate damage to America. How do the Republicans respond? One calls it a fleecing of BP, one calls it an unprecedented shakedown of a private corporation, another calls it a slush fund.

The President is doing what is right, to work to recover from the effects of this horrible corporate attack on America, to make sure that proper safeguards are in place to prevent it from happening again, and to make sure that the people whose very lives have been destroyed by that are helped financially. And the GOP? Wants us to stop picking on BP.

Seriously? Yes America, Vote Republican, Vote BP.

Perhaps when BP rebrands all their stations so people forget this tragedy they will change the name to GOP stations.

Frustration must be turned into action now

The Oil spill in the gulf of Mexico has been like watching someones slow painful death. Many wish something could be done yet but often we feel helpless because only the doctor has the ability to do anything. It is similar with the oil spill. Because it seems BP is the one organization that has the ability to stop the leak so many have had to sit back and watch. Perhaps it is limited on who has the resources and knowledge and ability to actually stop the leak but that is not true when it comes to cleaning up the oil that is already out there damaging the water, coasts and wetlands.

It is clear that it is time to stop worrying about how, when and the amount BP is going to pay for all this and go to all hands on deck. President Obama needs to take ownership of this crisis and put the management and resources in place now. There cannot be enough people on site doing the hard work of cleaning. There cannot be enough boats out there, laying and pulling up the devices to skim the oil. We have thousands of fishermen with boats that can be organized to get work done. We have the military, locals, and hundreds of thousands of environmental volunteers ready to take action. President Obama use them and use them now. Yes we need organization and that can be put in place quickly and forcefully. But there has to be someone in place to pull all the efforts together and cut any red tape to get the job done now.

After the fact the autopsy can be done and the bills paid by BP. But right now, as far as the clean up goes, Just Do it!

The Forgotten Definition of Freedom

When I was a child I was taught the simple definition that living in a Free Country means I can do anything I want, unless it causes harm to someone else.

It seems to me that both the far right and the far left have forgotten the second half of that definition. Yet it is the basis of our republic. The underlying purpose of our constitution and our government is to protect us from harm from others, and to define unacceptable trade offs in harms.

Our country has been widely successful in doing just this for 200 years. There are some exceptions of course, for example it is hard to say from a 21st century view point that the harm that came to Native Americans way of life and lands was acceptable. Yet, despite what happens in some neighborhoods in major cities, most of us leave our homes every morning with a realistic and accurate belief that we will very likely return home that night, rather then being killed by a bomb, being shot, injured in work place disaster, or dragged off to a secret prison by fascist police or government officials. Many places in the world do not have that sense of security, or at least less of it.

So for far right idealogues like Rand Paul to preach against any government rules that limit private business, like civil rights legislation, Occupational Safety and Health standards, and restrictions on private industry on off shore drilling, as an infringement on Freedom he has forgotten the "unless it causes harm to someone else" part of Freedom.

When the left tries to do things like ban full calorie soda are they making a stretch to claim that what kind of soda I drink causes harm to someone else?

When the right prevents gay marriage, are they not doing the opposite of what they preach, invading private relationships that have no effect on anyone else's freedom?

There are so many examples of government making laws and the Supreme Court determining in essence, the level of harm a law prevents or causes. After 143 women were killed in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 our Government determined that the risk of harm was significant enough that fire codes, building codes and occupational safety codes were necessary.

The Civil War was about determining which harm was worse, the harm of owning other human beings as property, or the damage to the economy of the south should slavery be abolished.

The fact we have building codes that tells private property owners how they must build to reduce likely harm from failure, or earthquake or other disaster is why an Earthquake of the magnitude of the Haiti earthquake destroyed an entire city with thousands of deaths, while the same magnitude in the United States would damage some buildings in a city and likely result in dozens of deaths rather then thousands. So does it cost the builders and the property owners more to build per code, yes. But reducing the harm risk has been determined worth that cost.

The Supreme Court and the Constitution has determined that the potential harm coming from most around us being allowed to own guns is acceptable risk, while the increased risk of harm by guns being owned by convicted felons is not.

Congress and the President has recently determined that the harm caused because too many Americans having lack of access to affordable health care is not acceptable and passed health care reform to fix it.

Currently the Congress is working on financial reform that protects our economy, jobs and financial well being from harm by adding regulations to financial institutions.

Clearly the harm caused by the oil spill in the gulf to livelihoods and the environment up until now has been treated as an acceptable risk to be able to obtain more oil and to allow oil companies to make bigger profits. Chances are that is about to change. Yet people like Rand Paul say, the criticism of BP over their actions or lack of is "anti-business"

We will be debating some time whether any potential harm prevented by Arizona law officials profiling people and asking for their papers, is worth harm caused to those profiled that are citizens.


In short, government involvement is not by definition socialist, communist, or unconstitutional as the tea baggers, the 10thers, the Rand Pauls and the FAUX news mouths keep shouting. Responsible Government action for the purpose of keeping citizens from unacceptable harm by others is the very essence of America and what has kept our free country free.