On her Facebook page this week, Sarah Palin outlined a pretty solid case for tough government regulations against corporations. (By the way, none of the sentences ended with the word "also," nor did the entry read like a really bad local newspaper letter to the editor, so I assume it was ghost-written.)
Yes, seriously. Sarah Palin is in favor of the federal government planting its gigantic boot on the throats of energy companies. She put it in writing. Not only that but she even proposed that our socialist, anti-capitalist, wealth-redistributing president call her on the phone so she can describe to him specifically how to impose all kinds of big government regulations against BP and others.
It's about damn time.
I knew if we just continued to make the case for serious government regulation of corporations, we'd finally win some minds and hearts -- even minds as airy, and wolf-snipering hearts as hardened as Sarah Palin's.
Here's the centerpiece of what she wrote:
Unless government appropriately regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable, the public will not trust them to drill, baby, drill. And we must!
I can only assume she was suggesting that "we must!" regulate and drill. For the record, we're already drilling offshore, so enough of this hackish "drill, baby, drill" screeching. There are already 3,858 oil and gas platforms operating in the Gulf of Mexico alone, according to NOAA. Here's a convenient map with yellow dots indicating all of the locations where we're already, you know, drilling, baby, drilling:
I understand, however, that most Republicans aren't satisfied and want more drilling. They want the moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits to end, and they want new exploration for oil in heretofore untapped leases all along the entire coast of the United States. The problem is that it would take around 10 years to get platforms online and producing in the areas where there are untapped leases, and the deepwater platforms that are ready to drill now don't have the failsafe mechanisms -- and the regulations Sarah wants -- in place yet. So how about this compromise: we continue to drill with the existing offshore wells, but, as Sarah Palin suggests, we regulate the hell out of them? Once those regulations are in place, maybe we can talk about new offshore leases rather than drilling willy-nilly.
But that doesn't appear good enough for Sarah Palin's southern allies.
Rand Paul, who Sarah endorsed, doesn't want any regulation whatsoever.
Bobby Jindal, when he's not hyperventilating into a bag or begging for taxpayer wealth to be redistributed from elsewhere to Louisiana, is demanding that new deepwater oil platforms be allowed to immediately begin pumping before new regulations are put in place.
Haley Barbour, the real life Boss Hogg and one of the only Republicans who successfully makes Sarah Palin look like a genius, said the other day that the oil is just like "food mousse" and that it's non-toxic. Food mousse! Governor Barbour should probably call Sarah Palin so she can explain how the president desperately needs to take over the clean-up of all that mousse. Then again, Sarah would probably advise that Barbour shoot the "moose." Confusion over the difference between "mousse" and "moose" ensues.
Just about every Gulf coast politician, including Barbour, Jindal and both Republicans and Democrats alike, is desperate for the president to lift his moratorium on new deepwater drilling permits.
Their favorite line: we didn't stop running the space shuttle missions after the Challenger disaster, so why should we stop drilling in deep water? Well, in reality, we stopped running space shuttle missions for 32 months following the explosion. And the Challenger explosion didn't poison thousands of square miles of natural resources while potentially killing the entire coastal fishing industry from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle -- and potentially beyond.
Hell, Rep. Don Young, a Republican from Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska doesn't even think the largest environmental disaster in American history is a disaster at all.
"This is not an environmental disaster," Rep. Young said, "and I will say that again and again because it is a natural phenomenon." Call Sarah, Rep. Young. She'll explain it.
1 | 2
