Tag Archives: Emergency

MUST-READ: Coast Guard obstructing Bobby Jindal’s efforts to clean up the oil spill

Check this out:

From ABC News.

Excerpt:

Eight days ago, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal ordered barges to begin vacuuming crude oil out of his state’s oil-soaked waters. Today, against the governor’s wishes, those barges sat idle, even as more oil flowed toward the Louisiana shore.

“It’s the most frustrating thing,” the Republican governor said today in Buras, La. “Literally, yesterday morning we found out that they were halting all of these barges.”

Sixteen barges sat stationary today, although they were sucking up thousands of gallons of BP’s oil as recently as Tuesday. Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.

“These barges work. You’ve seen them work. You’ve seen them suck oil out of the water,” said Jindal.

[…]”The Coast Guard came and shut them down,” Jindal said. “You got men on the barges in the oil, and they have been told by the Coast Guard, ‘Cease and desist. Stop sucking up that oil.'”

[…]The governor said he didn’t have the authority to overrule the Coast Guard’s decision, though he said he tried to reach the White House to raise his concerns.

“They promised us they were going to get it done as quickly as possible,” he said. But “every time you talk to someone different at the Coast Guard, you get a different answer.”

Why? BECAUSE THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH LIFE JACKETS ON THE BARGES.

What about this news from Monday:

“We need the Coast Guard to deploy all the resources they have – using the military air traffic control assets if needed, or sentinel ships for water-based reconnaissance – but we must deploy every resource we have and not simply wait and hope for the best. Federal officials could also work to relax regulations to free up non-essential oil fighting resources, including skimmers and boom, from ports and refineries. We asked the President to consider this during his last visit and he said today that he was still looking into it.”

“I also asked that the President demand BP give us full access to their claims data so we can ensure Louisiana people and businesses are getting the payments they need to reimburse their losses related to this spill. As of the last report, 39 percent of claims had not been paid and we have no way to know the circumstances or details related to these claims.

“We again asked the President to increase the monitoring of our deepwater wells so they do not have to be closed down and cost tens of thousands of our people their jobs during a six-month or longer process by a government committee that hasn’t even been assembled yet.. Louisiana people should not have to lose their jobs because the federal government cannot do their job.

The governor has urged the Obama administration to lift the ban on the drilling moratorium citing unfortunate and unfair impact upon Louisiana.

Obama has played golf nearly 40 times in 8 weeks and held fundraisers for Democrat senator Barbara Boxer.

Wouldn’t it be great if Jindal solved this problem himself without any help from the federal government, and then explained his experiences to the American people during his presidential campaign in 2012? He could explain exactly what Obama did to help/hurt his efforts to clean the spill. Imagine the presidential debates when Jindal could explain everything that he did, and Obama could counter by explaining how well he can play golf, slash Louisiana jobs, pass the cap-and-trade energy tax, and point fingers at people who are trying to fix the problem.

Is illegal immigration helping to drive California bankrupt?

Story from the extremely left-wing LA Times. (H/T  commenter ECM)

Excerpt:

The largest costs to California’s budget from its illegal residents are in three areas:

* Education: The state has no official count of how many students are in the country illegally because school districts do not ask. But the state legislative analyst estimated, based on data from the Pew Hispanic Center, that the state’s 6.3 million public school students include about 300,000 illegal residents. At an annual cost of about $7,626 each, the total comes to nearly $2.3 billion.

* Prisons: In fiscal year 2009-10, California expects to spend about $834 million to incarcerate 19,000 illegal immigrants in the state’s prisons. In Los Angeles County, illegal immigrants add between $370 million and $550 million annually to criminal justice costs, including prosecution, defense, probation and jails, according to Supervisor Mike Antonovich.

* Healthcare: The expected state tab for healthcare in fiscal 2009-10 is $703 million for as many as 780,000 illegal immigrants. Of that, $486 million goes to emergency services. But low-income illegal residents are also eligible for some nonemergency health services, including prenatal and postpartum care, abortions, breast and cervical cancer treatment and certain types of long-term care, such as stays in nursing homes. Most of the nonemergency care for illegal immigrants was authorized by the Legislature in the 1980s.

The story was linked by Fausta’s blog and Fausta noted this:

In addition, the article states that 48,000 children in families headed by illegal immigrants receive a monthly average of $472.

Compassion sounds so wonderful until you have to pay for it during a recession. I am in favor of increased legal immigration and work permits. Anyone who can find a job, learn English and American civics, obey the law, and pay for their own education and health care for 5 years should get a green card. But there should be no pathway to a green card ever for anyone who entered the country illegally at any time.