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Wingin' it.
Author: Raine    Date: 05/13/2010 12:56:28

I cannot write today about the latest events at Deepwater Horizon Spill. I have no desire to write about Supreme court nominee Elena Kagan. I've said all I can say about Arizona and it's racist laws. The Teabaggers are still ruling the days' headlines. My feelings have been made known about these subjects. So what do I write about after a week of heartache?

I don't know. I guess I'll wing it today. It's working so well for BP, isn't it? How could I could do much worse?

Maybe it's time to look at things that aren't making the top headlines because they are sensational enough, but are important nonetheless. Did you know that the administration recovered 2.5 Billion dollars in medicare fraud last year?
The government says it recovered $2.5 billion in overpayments for the Medicare trust fund last year as the Obama administration focused attention on fraud enforcement efforts in the health care industry.

Investigators have new tools this year to help crack down on health care fraud, with the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services Department working cooperatively to police companies. The newly enacted Affordable Care Act is designed to lengthen prison sentences in criminal cases and the new law provides an additional $300 million over the next 10 years for stronger enforcement. It also gives the government new authority to step up oversight of companies participating in Medicare and Medicaid.
I doubt you will hear more about this from our so called news media.

Yesterday morning, the big news that the GOP was touting was that the Health care reform bill was going to cost 115 Billion dollars more than expected. Only problem is-- it's not true. I doubt the GOP and the naysayers will make a retraction. It wouldn't be politically prudent or intellectually honest.

What is true however, is that while politicians on Washington express outrage over the disaster -- and at this point that word doesn't even begin to describe what is happening there, House GOP members attended an Oil Industry Fundraiser
This morning, executives including BP’s chairman Lamar McKay, Transocean CEO Steve Newman, and Halliburton’s Timothy Probert appeared before a hearing in the House Energy and Commerce Committee to dodge responsibility for their respective roles in the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Coast oil spill. About an hour before the investigation began, however, House Republicans gathered a few blocks away for an “oil and gas breakfast” fundraiser with the oil and gas industry to benefit Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX). View a screenshot of the invitation from the Political Party Time blog below:
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/bradybreakfast.JPG
There is video at the link. Meanwhile, the President has done a few things to assist with this disaster. One, he sent a Bill to congress for a supplemental to help people in the region affected. From CNN:
President Obama on Wednesday proposed a package of measures that would provide at least $58 million in additional funding for oil spill relief efforts and raise the tax that oil companies pay to maintain an emergency fund.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi requesting congressional approval of the package, Obama said oil giant BP -- which owns the leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico -- was responsible for all clean-up costs. In addition, Obama said, the government would seek full compensation for all damages from BP.

"We cannot allow the potentially protracted pursuit of claims to prevent us from swift action to help those harmed by this spill," Obama said in the letter.
And More importantly, the administration fed up with the lack of progress from the Companies that caused this disaster seems to be slowly taking over the disaster.
Obama administration recruits outside experts to help BP
[...] The two secretaries also recruited a team of high-level experts to inject what Chu described as outside “intellectual firepower” into the mission. Chu said the scientists, some of whom come from prestigious universities, will assist BP and government officials in looking for solutions and trying to correct future problems.

The experts were identified as Dr. Tom Hunter, director of the Department of Energy's Sandia National Labs; Dr. George A. Cooper, an expert in materials science who's retired from the University of California at Berkeley; Richard Lawrence Garwin, a physicist, Dr. Jonathan I. Katz, a professor of physics at Washington University, and Dr. Alexander H. Slocum, a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The question now, is time. Will we have enough time to save the gulf and its entire eco-system? Many people are sure that this oil can be turned off by drilling a second well, but reports are that it will take us -now- well into August and well into hurricane season. Obama is said to be beyond livid at BP:
about his government's own inability to contain and mitigate what he realizes is an environmental catastrophe of near unimaginable proportions. Says an official: "It gnaws at him." If you want to get as angry as POTUS, read this series of articles by Brentin Mock of TheLensNola. Problem is: there's really not much the administration can do, because its technical capacity is limited -- the tragedy is that big. In the near term, expect more money and more people. Note: Rep. Henry Waxman hinted on MSNBC tonight that BP "may not survive" the combined financial/PR crisis that has resulted. ...
Check out those links and you'll see why.

In the mean time, Does anyone know if Dick Cheney is still in Saudi Arabia?

and
Raine


 

30 comments (Latest Comment: 05/13/2010 23:08:22 by trojanrabbit)
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