The Oil on Water Question

07-02-10

THE WEEKLY INFORMATION RESOURCE FOR VETERANS AND ALL PATRIOTIC AMERICANS

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THE OIL ON WATER QUESTION By Dr. Edwin Vieira, Jr., Ph.D., J.D. NewsWithViews.com As readers of my commentaries are well aware, I have often pointed to the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as a prime example of how America’s present “homeland-security” regime—from the Department of Homeland Security itself, through FEMA, to many of the State and Local emergency-management and law-enforcement agencies that the DHS has coopted “from the top down”—falls woefully short of the mark, and why as a practical matter that whole top-heavy apparatus should be replaced as the Constitution requires with revitalized “Militia of the several States”, immediately if not sooner. Well, now, with the eruption of raw petroleum from BP’s well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, America is confronted with a disaster besides which Katrina may perhaps be remembered as little more than a few rainy days. A disaster that, unlike Katrina, will not blow away in a little while. A disaster that, unlike Katrina, will not leave behind only damage to property that can be repaired relatively quickly and easily. Rather, this disaster threatens to load upon the Gulf States—and probably upon all of the United States, in one way or another—a super- industrial-strength physical and environmental mess that will fester for a long time to come. If events unfold according to the estimates of the more pessimistic experts, the damage will be pervasive, extensive, intensive, and persistent in the Gulf States, and perhaps up the East Coast of the United States and even beyond. Obviously, if these dire prognostications are anywhere near accurate, America must deal with the flood of crude oil and its inevitable consequences, immediately and effectively, before things get entirely out of hand. The question is: “How?” Emergency assistance of all kinds for people in the Gulf States will be necessary—but who will provide it; and, perhaps more to the point, who will actually deliver it to the victims most in need? The
	clean-up will require a staggering amount of human effort—but where are sufficient “boots on the ground” to be found? And eventual return to a state of living approaching “normalcy” will demand massive short- and long-term readjustments, remediation, rebuilding, and even rethinking of the local economies in the affected regions—but in what way can America insure that the primary beneficiaries of this work will be the people in the region, not simply public officials, government employees and contractors, politicians, and assorted special-interest groups trying (as they always do) to gouge abusive political and monetary profits from human misfortune and misery? If proper constitutional Militia existed in the Gulf States, their citizens would know the answers to these questions already. Indeed, the necessary work would be well in hand. More than that, maybe—no, not just “maybe”, but almost surely—this catastrophe would have been averted, or at least mitigated, because the political power of the Militia in the States directly affected by the drilling of oil wells in the Gulf would have deterred incompetent public officials in the Disgrace of Columbia from allowing the petrobarons to conduct their operations without properly thought-out, proven, and	doubly, triply, or even quadruply redundant safety procedures. And had a major accident occurred anyway, the Militia would now be putting irresistible pressure on the General Government and BP to consult the best minds in the field—even if they happened to come from Russia. The Militia would have asked and would be asking hard questions. They would have demanded and would be demanding straight answers. And if those answers had not been or were not forthcoming, the Militia would have taken and would take corrective action on their own, rather than sitting idly by while their own communities were devastated, perhaps irreparably. But, of course, there were and are no proper constitutional Militia in the Gulf States (or in any of the several States, for that matter). And “homeland security” still depends, as it did during and after Katrina, upon the DHS and its appendages. Well, there is no use crying over milk spilt in the past, when crude oil pouring out of the ocean floor in the present is the problem. Now, America needs to smell the benzene, to wake up, to wise up, to get up off her rear end, and to use this mess as a reason and the context in which to revitalize the Militia in the affected States, and then in the country as a (continued on page 5)