Politics come into play for any national catastrophe — sad but true. The current conjecture is President Obama wanted the Oil Spill to Happen. From an excerpt of The Progress Report (www.americanprogressaction.org), "Yesterday, former Bush-appointed FEMA director Michael Brown — infamous for severely mismanaging the federal response to Hurricane Katrina — accused the Obama administration of playing politics with the oil spill."
I ask: Why would the President would want a top 5 economically contributing state, during a "recession", crash during their administration? Florida’s tax base depends on tourism and fisheries, and of course, construction. Since the latter is basically obsolete, the main two economic drivers would crash the entire state. The accusation obviously does not hold water.
But with the push for a Clean Energy Bill — and I mean clean, one without new plans for oil drilling — the political fires are fueled. Rush Limbaugh has commented "…literally millions of birds that will get chopped up in windmills that liberals are going to build for power because they don't like electricity." So do you really think environmentalists would push for clean energy at the sake of sacrificing birds? (Do I even need to ask if that's an asinine comment by Limbaugh?)
This article appears in May 13-19, 2010.