The Spill, the Scandal, and the President

President Obama in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, May 28, 2010.

This is an article well worth reading about how the Obama administration is partially to blame for the oil disaster.

On May 27th, more than a month into the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, Barack Obama strode to the podium in the East Room of the White House. For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. "They have the technical expertise to plug the hole," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. "It is their responsibility." The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. "If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?" a reporter asked. "No," Gibbs replied.

Read the rest at Rolling Stone.

See the video below in which Democracy Now interviews the author of the article "The Spill, the Scandal, and the President," Jim Dickinson.