Who's on first? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    Does anyone know who is in charge of running our government?? It clearly doesn't seem to be the guy we hired (elected) to take care of that.

    BP has an outrageous oil spill in the Gulf and who do we see "handling" it. Ken Salazar and Kathleen Sebelius, that's who. In all manner of TV news reports, they assured us they were in control of the cleanup - while at the same time handing the cleanup off to BP. The "head guy" was nowhere to be found.

    When the Gun Walking scandal was unearthed, we were told that it must have been ATF folks acting independently of the "Department" - as though as Eric Holder had nothing to do with it or even knew about it.. E-mails addressed to the Attorney General were allegedly not brought to his attention, so he was able to deny he knew anything of the travesty. Upon finding out that some of the guns that had disappeared across the border had been used to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent, the Attorney General was so upset that he seemingly couldn't bring himself to write to, or otherwise try to console, the family of the deceased agent. And now we hear that the DoJ has "sealed" their investigative file dealing with the death of the Border Patrol agent. All the while, the "head guy" was nowhere to be found. And this is the Administration that was going to show us new heights of transparency in the way they govern. Well, maybe they are succeeding. All their efforts to hide the truth from the American taxpayers certainly seem to have been transparent. Hmmm...

    We hear about the highly touted solar panel manufacturer, Solyndra, receiving a half a billion dollar loan guarantee independently approved by the Steven Chu (with no recourse to the "White House"). And then we hear that later the taxpayers' rights to recovery in case something untoward (like a bankruptcy) happens are subordinated to folks who have their own money invested in the company - again with no help from the White House. In (presumably) sworn testimony, Mr Chu tells us that everything the Energy Department did was on his say so. The White House had no involvement; never mind all the e-mails back and forth between big time campaign donors (and bundlers) and the White House. Just as with the Attorney General and Gun Walking, the anointed one knew nothing of the Solyndra deal. E-mails to and from White House staff allegedly were not brought to his attention. Of course Mr. Chu made the decisions with no "Help" from the White House.. Yes, of course he did. So where was the "big guy" when all this was going on?? Oh, I know.

    Oh yes. The anointed one was out beating the bushes in support of his latest "jobs" pitch. "Pass it now" was his most urgent plea. It is almost as though it is a recording. Enacting Obamacare couldn't wait - even though several "deadlines" came and went.. Passing the free trade treaties with Columbia, Panama and S. Korea, couldn't wait (after sitting on his desk for three years). His "jobs" pitch can't wait, Apparently nothing can wait - or can it??

    When faced with settling a disagreement between the Unions and the Environmentalists over an oil pipeline even though an EIS has been produced indicating only a nominal environmental impact, he suddenly isn't in such a hurry. Instead of deciding, he claims it is a State Department responsibility. The decision is delayed until 2013 (which just happens to be after the next election in case you weren't paying attention). Give me a break. The proposed pipeline runs from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and is designed to provide a lot of oil to the U.S. (thus decreasing the amount of Middle East and Venezuelan oil we would need to purchase.) Instead of biting the bullet and deciding in favor of the American public the decision is delayed. We are told that we need to continue to study the problem until a lot more of the environmental questions can be answered. When the proponent of the pipeline offers to reroute it around an aquifer in Kansas that seems to be the only major environmental bone of contention (at least at this point), the offer is met with silence. It would seem to be a safe bet that if we are going to wait until every "question" (i.e. environmental objection) is answered, it will never be built. Apparently that is a good thing. Extracting oil from the oil sands of Canada is hard on the environment. If we don't have a pipeline, the Canadians won't be able to deliver their oil; therefore we avoid the damage to the environment resulting from the oil extraction process. But wait. What if they sell it to China?? Same extraction process, same contribution to global warming. Perhaps even more. Think of oil tankers delivering it to China and then think of the care the Chinese take with the environment when they convert the crude to fuel and then use the fuel to produce electricity.. So who wins when all is said and done?? Canada breaks even (either way, they sell their oil). China wins - they get the oil. America loses. But take heart, we still will be able to buy the George Soros' Brazilian oil when it finally appears on the market. On the other hand, do you suppose there is any significance to the delay beyond the fact that making a firm decision (either way) would risk alienating either the unions or the environmental activists in an election year??

    We don't know who ultimately "wins", but we surely know who loses. The American taxpayers. For once, the anointed one had a truly "shovel ready" project. This project was going to be built by Americans (likely a lot of them union members) with mostly Canadian money, so what did he do?? He delays it; apparently another in a long line of his "present" votes. Sometime in 2013 ( if Canada hasn't committed their total production to the Chinese; if his administration is still in a position to make the decision (i.e. he doesn't get booted out); and if he is able to build up the gumption to allow Hillary to decide by then) we will know which of those two constituencies contributed the most to his reelection campaign - and we won't have to look at the campaign finance reports to figure it out. So it goes with the "crony capitalism" (or is it "crony socialism"??) we have learned to expect from this administration.

    And now the so called "super committee" has pronounced itself a failure. The chief community organizer established a committee, had the so called congressional "leadership" name the members of yet another of his "panels" (of which there has been no shortage), and then he left town. He claimed to be doing the country's business, but the trip sounded to a lot of folks like he was campaigning - but that's another subject for another day. After the Committee's admission of failure, we heard Sen. John Kerry tell us "This is not finger pointing. This is simply saying that we are stuck because we do not believe that the wealthiest people in America ought to get a huge tax cut when we are supposed to be doing tax cutting". This from one of the wealthiest folks in the Congress and yet one who tried his best to take his own tax cut by avoiding paying taxes on the $6 or 7M yacht he purchased a year or so ago. Don't tell me. Timothy Geithner is his tax preparer - or perhaps better yet, Jeff Immelt. We know that after his tax dodge became public, he promised to pay the tax on the yacht, but nobody seems to know if he ever did or not. A prime example of, "Don't do what I do, do what I say"?? I suppose that's one advantage of being a Patrician.

    We also heard talk of how the congress could wiggle out of the "trigger" mechanism that was put in place when the committee was formed. Suddenly the anointed one is on TV telling us that he will veto any such attempts by the congress. It was fairly clear to a whole lot of people quite a while ago that the committee was going no place fast. We are left to wonder why the anointed one didn't step up to his Bully Pulpit and lean on them to get off their partisan horses and get busy doing something good for the taxpayers. Another "present" vote??

    Give me a break... By now we should all have realized that he never decides anything controversial even though he seems quite willing to grab the flag and run to the front of the parade when someone else's decision (or non-decision - as with the Super Committee) looks as though it is going to turn out well or give him some kind of political advantage. In the meantime, he continues to vote "present". That makes it easy to lay the blame on someone else when things go "wrong". It is always someone else's doing. It's Eric Holder when we fail to pursue the Black Panthers (but his Department is able to find the time, resources, and chutzpah to go after Joe Arpaio). It's Ken Salazar when we stop drilling in the gulf etc. It's Steve Chu when we seem to randomly hand out taxpayer money to so called green companies. It's the Reps when the super committee fails. It's never the anointed one or any of his policies. Yeah, right...

    D'ya think??
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