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From the Phila. Inquirer
Dear Mr. Renwick:

In your letter in today's Inquirer, you ask where are the other countries,
now that we have a disaster. Do yourself a favor and research the facts
before listening to Obama's self-serving excuses and finger-pointing.

Many nations with experience in cleaning up oil spills offered help
immediately after the accident. A couple of days after the rig explosion,
Holland offered to send surface skimmer vessels and other pollution-control
technology. Each of these vessels can remove 20,000 TONS of crude from the
surface each day. The Obama administration churlishly spurned this generous
offer.

On May 5 the Obama admin. announced that 13 other nations had offered help,
both with manpower, vessels and technology, including skimmers and surface
suction (vacuum) vessels. The skimmers and suction vessels separate the
crude from the seawater, and return the latter to the ocean. If all these
resources had been deployed, plus a total commitment by all domestic
departments involved, the oil could have been contained before reaching the
coasts. What happened? The admin. said "decisions on what help will be
accepted will be made on a case-by-case basis," and they would "respond in
one or two days." Two weeks later they said that they saw "no reason to
accept any of the offers."

Why?

Enter the Jones Act. Almost nobody knows what this 1920s act is. The
Merchant Marine Act of 1920 (P.L. 66-261) is a United States Federal statute
that regulates maritime commerce in U.S. waters and between U.S. ports.
Section 27, also known as the Jones Act, deals with cabotage (i.e., coastal
shipping) and requires that all goods transported by water between U.S.
ports be carried in U.S.-flag ships, constructed in the United States, owned
by U.S. citizens, and crewed by U.S. citizens and U.S. permanent residents.
This was passed as a sop to the maritime unions, and Obama will bend over
forwards, holding a jar of Vaseline, for the unions.

The administration has been dithering for weeks whether to allow a waiver of
the Jones Act. This is just another example of the total ineptitude of
Obama, who has no administrative, executive or managerial experience - he
hasn't run as much as a corner 7-11 store - and his bungling administration,
who were chosen not for their experience or competence but for their extreme
left-wing ideology. Obama says that waivers of the Jones Act "will be
considered on a case-by-case basis." That's right, let's set up a
committee. Study it. Appoint a commission. Issue a report in, say, 2012.
When Hurricane Katrina struck, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael
Chertoff issued an immediate General Waiver. But the unions hate the
waivers. Another example of Obama's pitiful incompetence; he allowed the US
Coastguard to reject offers of assistance by other nations because they "do
not meet the operational requirements of the Unified Area Command."

Obama pandered to the extreme environmentalists, even though surface burning
was approved by the NOAA! To burn successfully, you have to contain the oil
immediately it reaches the surface, which has been done for many years by
deploying "boom ships." These are specially-constructed vessels that can
surround the oil and ignite it. Problem: You need a fleet of these, and the
wonderful EPA, and its subsidiary departments, that cost us billions of
dollars per year and give work to tens of thousands of drones, had only one
boom ship, and it was not immediately serviceable. (But don't worry, the
EPA has now declared CO2 - a natural gas that is essential for life on this
planet - a pollutant).

That at least is not Obama's fault alone; it's the fault of successive
administrations. As is the cozy relationship that allowed BP to essentially
examine itself and pronounce itself fine. (Although one might note that the
biggest recipient of BP money in 2008 was - Obama). But to reject offers
from other nations, including boom ships!

Several companies making containment booms also contacted the
administration. One of them, Packgen, had 16 miles of booms ready, and
could, on demand, produce another 126 miles per week. Another company,
Allegience Capital Corp., offered 12 skimmer ships. Both offers were
refused.
Obama cries crocodile tears about the devastation in the Gulf, but is
secretly pleased. Now he can push his loony Cap & Trade (Cap & Tax) bill,
which had looked doubtful in this Congress, emphasizing the evils of fossil
fuels. His dithering and total lack of executive action simply show - if
any more evidence were needed - that this pathetic nobody was elected solely
because of his ability to make speeches (with teleprompters). What we
needed in the Gulf was a Harry Truman; what we got was Elmer Fudd.

Luckily, this twerp will be gone in 30 months, and we will be able to say of
him, quoting Shakespeare: "He is like a poor actor who struts and frets his
hour upon the stage, and is heard no more."

Sincerely,
Nick O'Dell

This is Anne Wortham. She is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University


and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.



She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.

She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

This article by her is really, really something.






Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University 's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. God Help Us all.