My hare-brained scheme to run a rolling news service on the Battle of Waterloo proved to be rather more tricky than I had first thought, and I apologise if it was somewhat less than professional. Also, it was far more time consuming than I had thought and so certain other topics went by the board. One of them was my increasing unease at Obama's demand that BP set up a $20bn fund to be administered by a man whom we were told was independent but who turns out to be a glove-puppet in the Obama polit-bureau. To be honest, I wasn't too sure how to voice my misgivings but happily Robert Eugene Simmons Jr. in the American Thinker has summed it all up and I shall rely on him.
The title to his essay says it all: "An Oil Spill Is Not a Licence to Suspend the Rule of Law". This fund has been set up with absolutely no rules and without Congressional oversight. It has become, in effect, a pot of gold for Obama's 'Central Committee' to dispense as it see fit. Simmons asks, pertinently:
Imagine you are a fisherman with a claim to 6 million in damages from the fund, but the government only wants to pay you 2 million. [...]
In America, we have a court system set up to provide rules of evidence, assess actual damages, estimate punitive damages, evaluate claims of complainants, and assign settlements or verdicts to those damaged. If you have a problem with the ruling, you can appeal that ruling. When you go to court, you will have to prove actual damages, not just imagined ones, and the defendant will have the ability to refute your claims. When millions of people filed for damages due to leaking silicone breast implants, the system worked. When millions filed for claims due to asbestos exposure, the system worked. The system is designed to be fair, impartial, and above all, apolitical. However, in the case of BP, the system was summarily replaced with a single pay czar with sole discretion over 20 billion dollars. In this case, the government can't even claim the commerce clause of the Constitution as legal basis because the commerce clause, even misinterpreted as it is, applies only to the legislature, not the executive branch.
Even more important is that there appears to be no guidelines laid down as to where the money should go or on what basis. Obama and his apparatchiks believe that part of the answer to this disaster is alternative energy, a field in which, I have read elsewhere, Al Gore and George Soros have large investments! Simmons imagines the following scenario is more than likely:
The end result of this BP oil cleanup fund is more likely to be fisherman without political connections being left hanging in the wind while their politically connected allies get big payouts. Money will go to alternative energy projects, well-connected businesses, and political interests while the actual people hurt by the spill are left out. Of course, we won't know that, because Feinberg will use "privacy" arguments to make sure the payouts are not public.
Go figure, as they say in Chicago!
Gangsterism.
Posted by: dearieme | Saturday, 19 June 2010 at 14:32
Well, 'DM', you can take the man out of Chicago but . . .
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 19 June 2010 at 15:09