Please DU This Poll: Is Obama to Blame for Oil Spill

[Mike 03]

I have not ever asked DUers to DU a poll since I joined in 2003, but this one infuriated me by trying to suggest the Obama administration is more to blame for the spill than BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron.

http://www.wwl.com/

So many of these callers detested government help, were against food stamps (upon which their fishing industry is now depending), health care, medicare, social security. Now they are furious that the government can't help them fast enough, and they ignore the complicity of private industry in this spill.

It is ridiculous. Over 80% are blaming the government for not doing enough, and these callers are insane. These are the same morons who don't want government to have a role in their lives, period. And BP? Transocean? Halliburton? They don't even mention them.

This is hypocrisy at its pinnacle.

Thanks in advance.

[Nuclear Unicorn]

1. Where's the, "What a stupid question" option?

:shrug:

[emulatorloo]

2. Sane people realize he is not, no matter how many crackpots vote over and over in an online poll

[Ian David]

It doesn't say Obama. It says "Federal Government."

That includes the former Bushie that just resigned to spend more time polluting his family.

[arcane1]

5. Exactly

it's a completely different poll question than the one in the OP. Though I'm sure the results will be spun that way.

[Ian David]

7. Good point. They will spin the results to blame Obama. n/t

[boston bean]

3. this is the poll.

Are you having Katrina de ja vu? Has the federal government let us down again with the oil disaster?


It's not asking if Obama is responsible for the spill, but has the Federal Government let Louisians down again.

[LakeSamish706]

4. But thats not what the poll is asking either....

"Are you having Katrina de ja vu? Has the federal government let us down again with the oil disaster?"

yes/no

I would have to answer yes to this at this point. 30 days later and we still have BP in charge of stopping this flow and with no idea of WTF they are doing well the Government stays silent. You tell me.

[ixion]

6. Not to blame, but responsible for, in part

since he's the CiC, and it happened on his watch.

[Karenina]

8. IT'S ALL HIS FAULT!!! NEW YORK CITY??? (Somebody get me a rope...)

This is not salsa sauce (for those of you who get my ancient reference). FAULT and RESPONSIBILITY are two very different things.

[Saturday]

9. I voted but 20% to 80% is hard to change. nt

[rudy23]

10. Thanks for pointing towards that poll. I voted yes. Obama has done nothing to change W's policy

of zero oversight for offshore drilling (and everything else)

He's turned out to be a horrible disappointment, and yes, Obama's getting criticized just as Bush was for Katrina. As he should, if he wants to keep that ideology running smoothly.

[avaistheone1]

11. Obama admin/fed government does bear some responsibility for this disaster.

U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits


WASHINGTON — The federal Minerals Management Service gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf of Mexico without first getting required permits from another agency that assesses threats to endangered species — and despite strong warnings from that agency about the impact the drilling was likely to have on the gulf.

Those approvals, federal records show, include one for the well drilled by the Deepwater Horizon rig, which exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers and resulting in thousands of barrels of oil spilling into the gulf each day.

The Minerals Management Service, or M.M.S., also routinely overruled its staff biologists and engineers who raised concerns about the safety and the environmental impact of certain drilling proposals in the gulf and in Alaska, according to a half-dozen current and former agency scientists.

Those scientists said they were also regularly pressured by agency officials to change the findings of their internal studies if they predicted that an accident was likely to occur or if wildlife might be harmed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/14/us/14agency.html




Obama's keeping the same policies and team Bush had - has been a recipe for disaster so far.

[truedelphi]

12. I don't see this as hypocrisy. Not at all.

We the Public are afloat in regulations that cost us a lot, but still don't protect us. S just why shouldn't people who have been paying their taxes for the EPA and MMS, and now have their livelihoods wiped out by the oil spill, not at least receive a few food stamps back their way?

Yesterday the local paper "The Press Democrat" had a full one page story on how many different agencies are geared up and running to protect us from ourselves.

The article talked about toys and eggs facing fierce regulations.

And how we need to be kept safe from things that we can not really be kept safe from. Ex here: there are new regulations afloat that will basically BAN wildlife from farms. Wildlife BAD BAD BAD. (Hmm - maybe we could just have the oil spill extend into the nation's farmland and kill off everything there as well as everything in the sea.) And these regulatory actions are all part of an effort to keep the American populace from having food poisoning. But the real source of food poisoning is that people in restaurants and at home do not follow basic food safety practices such as washing their hands after using the rest room, and not letting chicken drippings ooze over the salad fixings, etc. (Maybe we should ban people?) It has gotten to the point that you almost expect to see a label on every baggie in the produce department - "Do not attempt to wear this over your head or suffocation will occur."

But when we REALLY need regulations, do we have them? No - the recent oil spill in which BP applied for and received an exemption is a prime example of how despite the vast costs of these regulatory agencies to the American public - what it really comes down to is that some drug store owner in Toledo Ohio will be fined if a small toy made in China is being sold there, but that BP can allow for 32.5 million units of oil to float around and kill of the oceans without so much as a word or penalty from MMS, EPA etc.

We have become this nitwit of a bureaucratic nation, and yet the bureaucracy is doing squat about what matters. When the Tea Baggers and others protest the Big Arm of Big Government, this is part of what they are upset about.

And in a sense, at least the Food Stamps are their tax dollars coming home to them. And it is rather sad that that is all we have to show for all this regulation - the fishermen and women who will be affected get Food Stamps, while the BP officials know that they will still be the executives running their firms and still have their nice end of the year bonuses.

[Mike 03]

13. Whoa, THANK YOU so much. You moved the percentage who disagree over 20%

Much appreciation!!

I know for some of you maybe this is a thin line, where you are thinking, "Yeah, maybe the government could have done better," but if you could have heard these callers.

Also, the question is so stilted to avoid placing responsibility on private oil industry, just tossing it all in Obama's lap, and ignoring so many facts about the time line between the explosion and the beginning of the leak.

Anyway, I just had to vent. This made me so angry. But thank you for helping shift the poll, it means a lot to me, and hopefully others who listen to this station and like our President and his administration.

[Bluebear]

14. The poll says "the Federal Government", not "Obama"

[IndianaGreen]

15. I went to website, but the question is worded differently from your OP

This is the question they have up now:

Are you having Katrina de ja vu? Has the federal government let us down again with the oil disaster?

[freddie mertz]

16. Here is the current wording, naming Obama.

President Obama pledged to do "whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to stop this (oil) crisis." Has he?
No
( 92% )
Yes
( 8% )

I don't really think he has done "whatever it takes".. in light of some of the recent news.

So I have to agree with the poll results, even though I decided not to vote.

[joeybee12]

17. Same with me...again, he seems afraid to take on the corporations...

...getting too much DLC advice from Rahm and the other idiots.

[pscot]

19. That's the one I saw

and I voted no. Two months ago it was drill, baby, drill. The administration was still rubber stamping permits after the spill started. There has been no move to halt drilling through the arctic ice. Obama is complicit, at the very least. He knew who and what Ken Salazar was when he made the appointment. And now they're allowing BP to control clean-up and information flow. I am beyond pissed.

[freddie mertz]

20. OK, I went back and voted now.

I had to vote honestly too.

[nRkiSt]

18. Keep your goddamned government hands

off our private enterprise oil leak.

Signed,

The Teabaggers

[SidDithers]

21. I don't think is going to go the way you want it to.

too many DU'ers will be voting "Yes" in that poll.

Sid