One of my regular readers left a comment on a previous post, passing on an article by Ben Stein. My thanks to you Sneed, I could easily have missed this if you hadn’t pointed it out.
In “Our Caudillo President” Stein writes of the coercion of BP by Obama to set up a fund to pay all the people affected by the Gulf oil spill: “But the action of the President in demanding this immense transfer of the stockholders’ wealth without any legislation or court decision is extremely worrisome.”
Stein goes on to define what the president’s role is, and how Obama is exceeding that role, and his authority as defined by our Constitution. Don’t misunderstand me here. I fully believe that BP is responsible for this accident caused apparently by unsafe practices. The government has completely bungled its response. But let us not lose sight of the fact that BP’s money doesn’t belong just to a few “oil billionaires.” That money also belongs to people like you and me, shareholders. Many older people likely depend on their quarterly dividend check from BP and other companies for their income.
And we have a president who believes that he can just demand it and confiscate it.
Don’t miss this. Read the entire article here.
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More commentary on comrade zero and the congressional yokels by Dennis Gartman this time:
Finally, regarding BP, all we can say is that the Congress of the US embarrasses us all. Shame on these people for the display they put on yesterday. Further, has the Obama Administration no “adults” in the room to tell them that a six month moratorium on drilling will only serve to send the oil drilling platforms in the Gulf somewhere else around the world? Doesn’t the President understand that Brazil’s Petrobras will be and is an aggressive bidder for drilling rigs and platforms to drill its Tupi oil field off shore? Is our President that economically dense that he does not understand the signals he’s sending to the oil seeking world that the US is an unfriendly place? Where, we ask again, are the adults? We draw then everyone’s attention to a chart included here this morning on the page next that we’ve included before, of the complete and utter lack of private business experience that the Obama Administration’s Cabinet has compared to Cabinets of past Presidents. The sad reality is that there are no adults in this Administration; there is no one with real world experience. So when we ask, “Where are the adults,” the answer is, “There are none.” Be afraid; be very, very afraid.
I love Ben Stein. He is a brilliant man.
So many people didn’t understand that apology to BP, he wasn’t saying BP isn’t responsible, he was saying that doesn’t give the government the right to take money from a private organization without due process.
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