Crucial offers to help clean up BP’s oil spill came “from Belgian, Dutch, and Norwegian firms that . . . possess some of the world’s most advanced oil skimming ships.” But the Obama administration didn’t accept their help, because doing so would require it to do something past presidents have routinely done: waive rules imposed by the Jones Act, a law backed by unions.
“The BP clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico is hampered by the Jones Act. This is a piece of 1920s protectionist legislation, that requires all vessels working in U.S. waters to be American-built, and American-crewed. So” the U.S. Coast Guard ”can’t accept, and therefore don’t ask for, the assistance of high-tech European vessels specifically designed for the task in hand.”
The law itself permits the president to waive these requirements, and such waivers were “granted, promptly, by the Bush administration,” in the aftermath of hurricanes and other emergencies. But Obama refused to do so after the spill, notes David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen. Instead, Obama rejected a Dutch offer to help clean up the spill, noted Voice of America News:
“The Obama administration declined the Dutch offer partly because of the Jones Act, which restricts foreign ships from certain activities in U.S. waters. During the Hurricane Katrina crisis five years ago, the Bush administration waived the Jones Act in order to facilitate some foreign assistance, but such a waiver was not given in this case.”
Gotta protect the unions, now. Read the rest of Hans Bader’s report on this nonsensical crap here.
WASHINGTON — President Obama has decided to use his executive power to order tougher fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, accelerating the fight against climate change without waiting for Congress, administration officials said Thursday.
Mr. Obama plans to announce on Friday that he is ordering the creation of a new national policy that will result in less pollution from medium- and heavy-duty trucks for the first time and will further reduce exhaust from cars and light-duty trucks beyond the requirements he has already put in place. [Read the rest of the palace decree here.]
So with one stroke of his mighty pen, the King will bypass Congress and save the whole planet from global warming. Do you think he might keep the sky from falling, too?
There are categorically no such thing as ‘death panels’ in the health care reform, we were told repeatedly. Sarah Palin was castigated for posting about this issue.
But there seems to be a little more openness about this issue now that the bill has been made into law. Listen.
I posted last week about the hypocrisy involved in the debate over the Stupak amendment to prohibit federal funding of abortions in Obamacare, because we already give the money to Planned Parenthood to kill babies. Obamacare won’t change that. I also pointed out that Bart Stupak was fairly spineless. Well, now I think he’s just plain stupid. Read this from LifeNews.Com:
Congressman Bart Stupak, who has been leading a coalition of pro-life Democrats against the pro-abortion Senate health care bill over its abortion funding, announced today he has reached an agreement with the White House for President Barack Obama to issue an executive order nullifying it. The executive order would reportedly make it so the Stupak amendment, which stopped abortion funding and promotion in the House version, would apply to the final law.
“I’m pleased to announce that we have an agreement — with the help of the president and the Speaker — we were able to come up with an agreement to protect the sanctity of life in health care reform,” Stupak said.
“Today the president announced he will be signing,” the executive order to “keep the principle” against funding of abortion.
Setting aside the ridiculous shenanigans that are being used to change a major portion of our economy without actually voting on it, let’s look at this. The President, who thinks killing babies is the right of every woman, and signed an executive order to fund overseas abortions right after he took office, has said he’ll sign another executive order to prevent that in the United States, if only Stupak and company will give him the rest of Obamacare.
Isn’t this a lot like the guy who says he’ll marry you, if only you’ll sleep with him now?
But maybe I’m selling Obama short. Maybe he really will sign an executive order. Maybe it really will prevent direct federal funding of abortions. And maybe no other executive order will ever change that.
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