Posted by
Always To The Right on Wednesday, June 16, 2010 1:58:47 AM
Why Obama Refused Help
from Other Countries
Folks, the Heritage Foundation
has released their perspective on just what Obama should be doing
and should've done all along with the oil spill. Now, if you look at
Obama's actions over the past 24 hours, you would think that Obama is
almost a member of the Heritage Foundation, been reading their
suggestions before taking them to heart. At least he has with respect
to providing some leadership and actually listening to local officials
in the several states that are really affected by all this. He's been
out there with Haley Barbour. Of course Bobby Jindal said, "To hell
with it, we're going to go ahead and build the berms." Did you see
that? He said, "To hell with it, we're going to go ahead and build our
berms, our sand traps."
Anyway, if you're online, Heritage
Foundation has a good explanation of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. It
authorizes the president to oversee the cleanup immediately, but it took
Bobby Jindal weeks to get the White House engaged. Heritage details
the offers of help that started coming in three days after the spill
started from 13 countries, but were turned away by our administration.
And, you know, it's not, folks, simply due to the paperwork. There's
another reason for it. Crucial offers to help clean up BP's oil spill
have come from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that possess some of
the world's most advanced oil skimming ships. But the Obama
administration would not accept the help because doing so would require
it to do something that past presidents have routinely done, and that is
waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, which is a law backed by unions.
The BP cleanup effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones
Act.
It's a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation that
requires all vessels working in US waters to be American built and
American crewed. And that's why Obama refused to let these other
nations help, because of the Jones Act. He was being loyal to the
unions. Presidents have routinely waived this. You know, we always
say, "Does anybody come to help us?" Yeah, we have received officers.
Belgium. The Dutch. The Norwegians. And because of the Jones Act,
we're not letting 'em in. Heritage details all of this. All the
rhetoric, all the blame.
And
one more thing. I think when it comes to all these offers of help from
foreign countries, one of the reasons that Obama turns it down is
because it would demonstrate to people how incompetent his response has
been, if there were people out there who could actually have started
working three days after this thing to clean it up with booms and so
forth and we couldn't. So once again, it's all about Obama. It's all
about Obama; it's all about his agenda; it's all about the unions. Make
no mistake about it. The reason he turned down this help is so he
wouldn't be shown up as incompetent and ineffective. He has put the
health of unions over the health of Gulf Coast by failing to waive the
Jones Act.