It certainly is one plum of a pickleRand Paul may have stumbled on a genuinely honest statement about the BP oil spill: "accidents happen" and we shouldn't play the "blame game".
At first blush it sounds appallingly dismissive of an evironmental and economic disaster. And it also overlooks the admittedly preliminary evidence that BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Federal regulators were all turning a blind eye to short cuts that caused this spill. Certainly there should be a criminal as well as civil investigation, but there probably won't be. And BP will probably pay the cost of clean up, but not nearly all the actual costs of the spill. There is no hope for justice when so much money is involved. Remember the consequences for Exxon after their now quaint-seeming mishap in Alaska.
But none of this is really the point. No matter how many safety regulations the fed actually enforces, as Paul says, "accidents happen". It is inevitable that off-shore drilling will involve some catastrophes of this kind. And what would justice really amount to in this situation? What amount of money would "make whole" the people whose livelihood depends on the Gulf?
We may be spending a lot on the clean up, but how much are tax payers going to spend on unemployment and other social services for Gulf fisherman, and tourism business owners and staff; how much wealth evaporated in lost real estate value? Not just now, but for decades, possibly a century, this will have a depressive effect on the economy of the Gulf states. How could anyone shoulder that cost? The people of the Gulf states and every US citizen are gong to find out.
But Paul doesn't like the "blame game", and he is right. It doesn't matter who we blame; it matters what we do about it. Obama and Congress's role isn't to catharticly channel our collective anger, their job is to enact policies that have practical benefits to our country.
"Pro-drillers" like Sarah Plain, Rand Paul and the President argue that off-shore oil drilling is an economic imperative. Any real economic evaluation of the price of oil needs to include all these costs. In comparison, an enormous investment in green energy seems like a deal.
At first blush it sounds appallingly dismissive of an evironmental and economic disaster. And it also overlooks the admittedly preliminary evidence that BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Federal regulators were all turning a blind eye to short cuts that caused this spill. Certainly there should be a criminal as well as civil investigation, but there probably won't be. And BP will probably pay the cost of clean up, but not nearly all the actual costs of the spill. There is no hope for justice when so much money is involved. Remember the consequences for Exxon after their now quaint-seeming mishap in Alaska.
But none of this is really the point. No matter how many safety regulations the fed actually enforces, as Paul says, "accidents happen". It is inevitable that off-shore drilling will involve some catastrophes of this kind. And what would justice really amount to in this situation? What amount of money would "make whole" the people whose livelihood depends on the Gulf?
We may be spending a lot on the clean up, but how much are tax payers going to spend on unemployment and other social services for Gulf fisherman, and tourism business owners and staff; how much wealth evaporated in lost real estate value? Not just now, but for decades, possibly a century, this will have a depressive effect on the economy of the Gulf states. How could anyone shoulder that cost? The people of the Gulf states and every US citizen are gong to find out.
But Paul doesn't like the "blame game", and he is right. It doesn't matter who we blame; it matters what we do about it. Obama and Congress's role isn't to catharticly channel our collective anger, their job is to enact policies that have practical benefits to our country.
"Pro-drillers" like Sarah Plain, Rand Paul and the President argue that off-shore oil drilling is an economic imperative. Any real economic evaluation of the price of oil needs to include all these costs. In comparison, an enormous investment in green energy seems like a deal.
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