Yesterday marked the first anniversary of the disastrous BP oil spill. Remembrance of the fateful months after the spill was followed by strict criticism from several politicians across the country. Gov. Bobby Jindal appeared on television this morning offering praise towards the residents of Louisiana and neighboring states for a resilient and speedy recovery. While the speed of the recovery is reason enough to celebrate, Jindal’s message took a more somber tone, focusing on the “one-size-fits-all moratorium” that was placed on the Gulf States following the spill.

With the stigma of the spill remaining clear in the minds of many Americans, tourism in the Gulf has taken a significant hit. Several Governors are attempting to reel visitors back into their states, but the policies introduced following the spill are only further crippling economic recovery in the Gulf. It is no secret that the price of oil continues to rise at an out-of-control pace. The average price of gas has risen by nearly a dollar since the spill and production has been stunted by nearly a third. Gov. Jindal, and others, argues that increasing offshore drilling would only alleviate some of the economic burden that all Americans face.

As this infographic demonstrates, the administration’s disastrous energy policies have had a hand in nearly all of the deleterious long-term effects of the Gulf spill crisis (click to enlarge).

Safe drilling remains at the forefront of the administrations mind, but the continuation of this moratorium has only hurt small business and added to the already high unemployment rate. The rising price at the pump has spurred increase support for off-shore drilling. A recent CNN poll shows that Americans are beginning to learn towards increased drilling. The survey showed that 69 percent of Americans favor increased offshore drilling, with just over three in ten opposed. That 69 percent is up 20 points from last June, while the oil spill was still in progress, and is back to the level of support seen in the summer of 2008.

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With summer drawing to a close and most people having already taken or planned their vacations for this summer, this latest lame attempt by Obama to give the illusion he actually cares about the US Gulf coast, the people, and their businesses falls flat.  After taking serious heat in July for a vacation to Maine and Michelle’s lavish vacation to Spain, this 27-hour quickie (no worries, The One will take a real 10-day vacation to Martha’s Vineyard next week) will be seen for what it is by America–a token drive by.

If Obama truly wanted to help the Gulf residents and the tourism industry, then he would have planned his weekend getaway at the Gulf instead of Maine and people would have had a month and a half to plan a trip there.  With schools already in session in some districts and most others starting at August’s end, families are gearing up for back to school at this point.  The Gulf states could have benefited greatly the same way Maine saw a boost to its economy.

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In a visit to Washington, D.C., yesterday, a group of about fifty energy industry workers and representatives from the Gulf of Mexico area told lawmakers, reporters and bloggers that if the Obama administration and Congress are serious about creating and saving jobs, they will lift the moratorium on energy exploration in the Gulf.

The workers were joined by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and former Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.), outspoken opponents of both the moratorium and tax changes proposed by Democrats that opponents charge would hammer the energy industry.

Thomas Pyle, President of the American Energy Alliance, a group focused on maintaining energy industry jobs in the Gulf area said in a statement, “In an economy like this, the President and Congress should be looking for ways to strengthen U.S. businesses, not weaken them.”

Several of those who traveled to the Hill for meetings with members of Congress say they are suffering financially in the wake of the moratorium’s imposition, and that layoffs and business closures will be unavoidable should it remain in effect.

“My job matters,” said Thomas Clements, co-owner of Oilfield CNC Machining in Broussard, Louisiana. “So I’ve come to Washington to find somebody to hear me, to see my hopelessness, my no-man’s-land that I’m in because of these proposed tax changes to the energy industry and the moratorium.”  Clements elaborated, saying that he had planned to hire more workers this year, but the six-month moratorium on drilling has halted those plans.  All orders for new metal parts used in drilling have been canceled and no new orders are anticipated, said the small businessman, who questioned how his business could survive for the full six months of the moratorium during a lunch attended by Washington, D.C.-based reporters and bloggers.

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The Hill  reports the latest attempt by the Democrats to deflect the outrage of the American people by blame shifting the cause of the Gulf oil spill disaster to former VP Dick Cheney and the Bush administration:

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee traded partisan blows Tuesday over whether the Obama administration or the former Bush administration deserves more blame for the catastrophic Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Senior Democrats on the panel — Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) — used a hearing on the Interior Department’s role to trace the disaster back to former Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy policy task force.

Waxman said that task force — which was assembled early in the Bush administration — set the stage for policies that pushed drilling at the expense of tough safety oversight of rigs and review of environmental risks.

“The cop on the beat was off-duty for nearly a decade and this gave rise to a dangerous culture of permissiveness,” Waxman said. “In many ways this history begins with Vice President Cheney’s secretive energy task force.”

Waxman said that under the Bush-era Interior Department, “the priority was more drilling first and safety second,” although he added that the current administration was also too hands-off before the spill.

Seriously?   Waxman and Markey obviously did not have access to this outstanding timeline and writeup by Kevin McCullough, which details the events dating back to February 13, 2010:

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The United States never was intended to be a democracy, but rather a compound republic delegating clearly enumerated powers to the federal government and creating a masterfully designed system of checks and balances amongst its three branches meant to limit Washington’s intrusions on the sovereignties of the several states and the liberties of their peoples.

As attentive students of the New Deal know, however, any brake that the federal judiciary might think of applying to the expansion of the central government’s powers was undermined by FDR’s proposal to “pack” the Supreme Court after his landslide reelection to the White House in 1936. Although it failed to become law, the court-packing plan nevertheless soon was followed by the famous “switch in time that saved nine”, thereby ushering in a period of judicial deference to the executive and legislative branches that fulfilled the president’s intent, namely securing a working majority of justices willing to clear the path of constitutional objections to the Social Security Act, the Wagner Labor Relations Act, minimum wages and other legislative monuments to his “progressive” agenda. More than any other consequence of FDR’s politically-motivated meddling, the Commerce Clause thereafter became a dead letter, as Ms. Kagan candidly admitted during her recent confirmation hearings.

Mr. Obama apparently has as little respect for the third branch of government as FDR had. Twice rebuffed in tests of the moratorium he imposed on offshore deepwater drilling by the federal courts, issued by executive order on May 27, the president responded by ordering a new ban on exploratory drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet, effective until November 30.

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It is Day 79 of the BP oil spill, and just this weekend tar balls from the spill washed up on Texas beaches.  Over a hundred million gallons of oil have been released into our waters.  And yet where is our President?  He spent the 4^th of July playing golf and hosting a barbeque on the White House lawn.  Apparently some people want the new “normal” to be an oil-ridden Gulf.

But we at The Heritage Foundation are not satisfied with this new norm.  So this week we are sending a team of respected energy, environment, homeland security and response experts to the Gulf region to investigate what is and is not working and what more needs to be done (or in many cases, where the federal government should simply step out of the way) to get the Gulf cleaned up.

Since the explosion on April 20, the outflow of oil has gotten worse, goals have been missed, and attention has waned on this horrible situation.  When the president last took questions from the press at the G20, not a single reporter asked him an oil spill related question.  It seems the mainstream media is more concerned with blaming BP for the spill than actually cleaning it up.  And while BP should not escape blame for the spill or their less-than-promised skimming abilities, the federal government should also be held to task for their less-than-efficient clean up operation.

Five years ago, the bureaucracy of state, local, and federal governments made the disaster after Hurricane Katrina worse.  And that bureaucracy is at work again, hindering the clean up efforts of the oil spill.

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It has been almost three months since the oil spill in the gulf. However, there has been little attention given to the health effects of exposure to the various components present in the spill or the chemical used to disperse the oil.

The contents of the oils spill contain several components. Each has the potential to cause health risks to those who are exposed to them. These are some facts of some of the most toxic substances:

1.  Benzene

Is a colorless liquid that has a somewhat sweet odor. It evaporates in air quickly and can dissolve into water. Therefore, it can be present in rain water carried distances and can have an effect on the ground a distance from the original source. Reports from the EPA have put the amount of Benzene measured near the Gulf of Mexico at 3,000-4,000 parts per billion (normal 0-4ppb). The EPA has set the minimum benzene exposure in drinking water at 5 ppb and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has placed safe exposure of benzene at 1part per million parts of workplace air for 8 hour shifts in a 40 hour work week. The EPA considers it a carcinogen at 1,000 ppb. Exposure to benzene vapors can cause a myriad of symptoms from headaches, nausea, dizziness, and drowsiness to rashes, respiratory difficulty. It has also beenlinked to leukemia and lymphoma. More Benzene Facts

2.  Hydrogen Sulfide

This is a colorless flammable gas that is highly toxic that has a characteristic  “rotten egg” odor.It is 20% heavier than air, and therefore will accumulate on the ground and in confined spaces. At concentrations above 100 ppm the olfactory nerve (the nerve that controls the sense of smell) is affected and the person can no longer detect the foul smell. However, if the person has a prolonged exposure to a low concentration the ability to detect the smell will also be lost. Exposure to the gas at low concentrations (0-10 ppm) can cause eye, nose and throat irritation. At moderate concentrations (10-50 ppm) it can cause headache, dizziness, nausea and vomiting and cough. Respiratory difficulty; and at high concentrations (50-200 ppm) it can cause convulsions, coma and death. The EPA has measured the level of hydrogen sulfide gas in the gulf at 1000 ppm (the normal is 5-10 ppb).Most countries put a safe legal limit in the work environment of 10 ppm. In addition, protective equipment such as air respirators is mandated.More Safety Facts

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I recently released a new web video challenging President Obama to focus on the American people’s priorities after the release of yet another disappointing jobs report. Last Friday we learned that our economy lost 125,000 jobs in the month of June, yet another example of how the President’s trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ has failed to deliver the jobs he promised.  The video, entitled “What About The Country, Mr. President?,” features questions that I posed to the President regarding jobs, spending, the financial meltdown, and the Gulf oil spill.

SCRIPT: “WHAT ABOUT THE COUNTRY, MR. PRESIDENT?”

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Although President Obama’s executive order imposing a six-month moratorium on drilling for crude oil and natural gas in ultra-deep waters within the 200-mile territorial limit recognized by international law has at least temporarily been suspended by a federal district judge, offshore drilling will not come to a screeching halt even if that precipitous action ultimately is determined to be within his constitutional powers.

As reported in the Wall Street Journal on Friday. July 2, Respol YPF SA, a Spanish company, has announced that next year it will begin drilling exploratory wells off the northern coast of Cuba, just 60 miles south of Key West. Industry experts as well as the U.S. Geological Survey seem confident that substantial deposits of crude oil and natural gas are there for the taking.

America’s oil companies cannot participate in exploiting those deposits because of our long-standing and counterproductive trade embargo against Cuba. (Can anyone identify a benefit flowing from that embargo offsetting the heavy costs imposed on me and other smokers of cigars? I doubt it.)

The point is that if the United States commits to bypassing offshore drilling at depths greater than 500 feet, we will be cutting off our collective noses to spite our collective face. Spain, China, Venezuela and other nations will continue to exploit potential reserves of fossil fuels, wherever they may be found. As a result, more of the world’s supply of crude oil and natural gas will fall into the hands of unfriendly nations.

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I sat chuckling all through Obama’s immigration speech Thursday. Forgive me, but that has been my recent response whenever I listen to Obama’s speechifying. I am somewhat surprised at my recent response to his outlandish rhetoric, but he makes such a mockery of his very words, of America, and of capitalism, that he is, invariably, comical.

He recited Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus,” which is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty, yet he has disparaged American exceptionalism and prides himself on being post-American. How can you not bust a gut?

So I listened to his speech on immigration and chuckled as he lectured us, yet again, on what America is — as if he had a clue about what America is. His contempt for us is so palpable. As if he had any respect for what makes America great – free speech, individual rights, entrepreneurship, and privacy rights. As if he had a clue as to why legal immigrants come here — to escape tyrants and would-be tyrants like him.

I understand why he must ram immigration through now. And why he is taking this issue on now after destroying the American healthcare system. He has no shot of re-election without a base of amnestied illegal immigrants voting for Democrats. It is his only motive — but I digress.

What about the Gulf? This is a catastrophe of unfathomable proportions, the decades-long repercussions of which have not yet begun to be understood or calculated. What about those people, those communities? Whole swaths of coastline, entire towns, even entire counties may face evacuation.

Why isn’t the President of the United States working on the problem 24/7? I want to know why the nation’s Chief Executive has not been holed up in a war room, 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the past 72 days, working with the world’s finest scientific minds and oceanographic and energy experts to solve the oil spill crisis.

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If President Obama’s Oval Office speech made one thing clear, it is that his administration and the activists who back it view the Gulf oil spill as simply an opportunity to advance their pre-existing agenda—which has nothing to do with cleaning up the Gulf, protecting the fragile coastal environment or fostering the region’s economy.

Although now overruled for the time being by a federal judge, the Obama administration’s May 27 order to stop all deep-water exploratory drilling in U.S. waters of the Gulf of Mexico for six months, pending the report of a commission investigating the causes of BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident, is a case in point.

Public and political reaction to the devastating oil release in the Gulf has revitalized a coalition of environmental and anti-energy lobbies that oppose not only deep-water drilling, but all offshore oil production and, in some cases, all use of fossil fuels. As usual, political opportunists have been quick to seize the moment.

“You don’t want to let a good crisis get away,” declares Athan Manuel, director of lands protection in the Sierra Club’s legislative office. The organization is urging a permanent moratorium on new offshore drilling.

Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, disputes industry claims that shallow-water drilling is much safer than deep-water drilling. The center wants the existing six-month moratorium extended to all offshore drilling.

Such lobbying already has born fruit. On June 8, the administration issued new safety standards for shallow-water drilling. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “as many as 50 shallow-water drilling rigs that employ about 5,000 workers may need new permits in the next six weeks under the administration’s new review.”

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As the saying goes, this would be funny, if it was not so serious.  As each day of the Obama Administration wears on, the disconnect between reality and the Administration, between America and Washington, just keeps growing.  Consider these examples among many:

The Bank Bill:  Does it bother anyone that the same Congress that is giving us $1.5 trillion deficits as far as the eye can see is writing a 2000 page bill telling banks how to balance their books?  Unfortunately, by almost all accounts but Congress’ – this bill will make lending more difficult, and therefore prolong our recession, at the same time it exposes America to more bailouts for lack of leverage reform.

Russia Spies:  According to a Justice Department official the charges are “’the tip of the iceberg’ of a Russian intelligence conspiracy against the United States.”  Obama knew about the charges prior to a meeting with the Russian President but there is no word on whether he brought it up let alone scolded the Russians.  To the contrary, according to the State Department: “the arrests merely show that the two countries have not yet reached the level of “trust and cooperation” where they can be completely open with one another” and Obama “had no “personal reaction” to the case and that the arrests should not hurt the administration’s attempts to mend fences with Moscow. “I do not believe that this will affect the reset of our relationship with Russia,” according to White House Spokesman Gibbs.  I am certain Putin (and Iran, the Taliban, and anyone else fighting the US) are so very relieved.

The Oil Spill.  Government regulations push oil drilling farther and farther offshore thereby making it a riskier undertaking.  BP takes even more risks and together we get an enormous spill.  Obama says he is in charge of the clean-up – literally – yet day after day after day (70 to be exact) Obama stopped skilled, foreign parties from helping and allowed the damage to increase well and way beyond what should have been the case.  Obama wants BP’s shareholders (they own BP and they are the people paying the price) to pay for it all but shouldn’t BP’s shareholders wonder why the US government made the problem worse and, therefore, demand what lawyers call a finding of comparative fault? – thereby making the US government (you and me) pay for some of the damage?

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The president’s recent disappointing oval office speech elicited a chorus of criticism from across the political spectrum.  For some reason the speech seems to have put a spotlight on the president as a leader, whereas other misjudgments in which he was directly involved in making policy had not.  The oil spill, which was certainly no fault of Mr. Obama, seems to have finally caused the public and many of his cheerleaders among the pundits to focus on the president’s substance and not his style.  That has been the unspoken, elephant-in- the-room, concern throughout his presidency, his aptitude for leadership.  We are reminded of the lead-in lyrics to the signature song Ethel Merman belts out in Gypsy… “Curtain up…light the lights…you either got it…or you ain’t.”

President Obama seems to have the curtain up, light the lights part down pat.  The dramatic campaign and convention stage sets, his world photo-op tours, his big oval-office backdrop to his little oval-office speech, and his ever-masterful use of the teleprompter have all produced a “strike-up-the-band” expectation whenever and wherever he appears. It’s the “you either got it, or you ain’t” part that seems finally to have focused the public on the president’s aptitude for leadership.

The befouling glob that threatens hundreds of miles of coast or, as Peggy Noonan put it recently so aptly in the Wall Street Journal, “the monster from under the sea,” seems to be a metaphor for the president’s inability to shape the world as he wants it to be.  Speeches are not a substitute for coherent policy.  The president, with the entire world watching his prime time speech, essentially punted.  He pulled from the presidential duck-and-cover arsenal the time-tested, yawn producer of presidents bereft of solutions to all manner of problems…the formation of a new blue-ribbon commission.  This was the cornerstone of his “battle plan” to face down the “siege” of big oil’s attack on our Gulf coast.

There is nothing more to be said about the quality of Mr. Obama’s oval-office speech debut.  It seems as if all the commentators from Chris Mathews, Keith Olberman and Jon Stewart on the left, to Mark Steyn, Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove on the right have already done that.  Besides, there is something much more revealing that is apparent here.  It isn’t about the delivery by the man who gave the speech; it is, rather, about the man who delivered the speech.  The disappointing oval-office moment was more than just a lack of writing skill by some wordsmith presidential speechwriter; it focused the attention of the American people on the man himself and on what they hoped just wasn’t so; an apparent lack of the leadership aptitude which a president must possess if he or she is to succeed.

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With the passing of West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd, the defining narrative among politicos will — after a few hours’ decorum — emerge as does Byrd = Kennedy? That is to say that, while so many West Virginians would never vote against Byrd, now that he’s gone there are plenty of the same Blue State voters who would vote against a non-Byrd Democrat in this Age of Obama.

I don’t follow West Virginia politics closely but assume their version of Scott Brown would be Rep. Shelley Moore Capito. His or her identity, as well as whether the same phenomenon would play out, likely depend on if the election is held this fall, vs. 2012: there are some murky legal issues to sort through involving how long a placeholder would hold the seat. Still I’m pretty sure it will be someone staunchly anti-cap-and-trade (in both parties, in fact; the last West Virginia politician to show insufficient zeal against the scheme, Rep. Alan Mollohan (D), recently lost in a primary).

Cap-and-trade of course is the vehicle by which the president vowed to cause your electricity prices to “necessarily skyrocket” as part of his effort to “bankrupt” the coal industry and anyone who sought to continue burning coal for that one-half of our electricity that it provides. Incidentally, today’s Wall Street Journal also notes how Obama’s anti-coal jihad just cost about 1,000 jobs in Wisconsin; West Virginia needs no such reminders yet as they pile up they also cannot help but be relevant.

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In the wake of the BP oil spill, efforts have been afoot on the part of the Obama administration to ban drilling off the U.S. coast outright, ostensibly to stop future disasters like that which continues to unfold in the Gulf.

Part of the rationale for such a proposed moratorium is the notion that BP’s practices were not uniquely bad among industry actors, but rather typical and common—a conclusion that appears to be reinforced by a cursory glance at records obtained from the Department of the Interior, as written up by Greenwire today:

To look at the safety records of the offshore drilling companies before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank on April 20, there was little difference between BP America Inc. and its peers in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

But in a revelation that Big Government readers are unlikely to find surprising, sources tell Capitol Confidential that a broader review of relevant governmental data demonstrates that in fact, BP had a far worse record on safety matters than other oil companies.

Indeed, by one measure, BP’s practices were exponentially less safe than those of environmentalists’ favorite oil industry bogeyman— Exxon-Mobil—a conclusion BP opponents say may support the proposition that a lighter touch regulatory approach, which does not punish companies with good safety records and standards, is more appropriate than a ban.

According to Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) data compiled and detailed to Capitol Confidential, two refineries owned by BP accounted for an astonishing 97 percent of the most serious violations flagged by government inspectors in the last three years.

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A federal judge has, for the moment, spared already-suffering Gulf state residents from the brunt of President Obama’s most recent anti-energy Power Grab. It has enjoined the administration from implementing its moratorium on deepwater drilling. The Order is here, and the Opinion here.

The administration has vowed to appeal. Regardless of the outcome, this victory is temporary. As I detail in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, Obama and his administration are committed to strangling domestic energy production. At the same time they promise to also clamp down on the cost of consumption, all in a way that makes our last energy-poverty president, Jimmy Carter, appear a free-market pioneer.

This was telegraphed immediately after Obama’s inauguration by his by administration revoking massive tracts of public land from possible lease for domestic energy production, even to the point of suspending lease agreements already struck.

None of this is either accident or coincidence, but affirmed as a deliberate plan by Obama’s concurrent clamp-down on families’ access to energy with a cap-and-trade scheme he vowed would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”. Though he dared not speak the scheme’s name, Obama renewed his support for it in his Oval Office speech last Tuesday by praising the House-passed bill.

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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…

Last week Barack Obama told Politico that the BP oil spill was like 9-11–
But, it’s been over 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and he’s only sent 20 of 2,000 US oil skimmer boats to the coast of Florida.

Senator George LeMieux of Florida told the Shark Tank that there are only 20 skimmer boats off the coast of Florida out of 2,000 available skimmer boats in the United States. Lemieux says that Obama is afraid to move them to Florida because there won’t be any in place in case there is an oil leak somewhere else.

…That sounds like Obama.

Via the Shark Tank:

Senator Lemieux is keeping a count on the number of skimmer boats the adminstration has working off the Florida coast on his website:

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Recent reports of Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, inspecting the beaches of Miami seem to be more of a photo oops than anything else.   Obviously, I’m sure he’s concerned with his state, the revenue lost from canceled vacations, and the impending negative effects environmental disaster from the BP oil spill, it remains curious, though, why he hasn’t been back to the Gulf coast since early June.   Instead he has recently traveled to Miami and Disney World–in central Florida–to address the spill.  Yes, he’s touting that Florida’s hot spots are safe, but more attention needs to be paid by the governor to the Gulf coast.

Meanwhile, the Florida beach report states:

The beaches and waters at tourist hot spots like Destin, Fort Walton Beach and Okaloosa Island are open, according to the Emerald Coast Convention and Visitors Bureau, which represents the three destinations.

“The air here is also still fresh and clean, with no smell of oil whatsoever,” the bureau’s website said.

This beaches may very well be open, but the conditions of the beaches are debatable.  Swimmers I have interviewed at Destin have reported being covered in a gloss of oil after swimming in the Gulf, the water is not clear, and piles of oil-soaked dead seaweed have washed up on the shore.

Additionally, this is what the Destin shore looks on June 17, 2010.  This picture is not algea, it is of oil-soaked seaweed washing up on the beaches in large quantities.

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On his first day in office, January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a statement on the White House Web site promising Gulf Coast residents that his administration would not fail them like he accused his predecessor President George W. Bush.

Eighteen months later, those arrogant words are coming back to haunt Obama as the Gulf Coast is facing the third month of failure by Obama to marshall sufficient resources to protect the region from the massive BP oil spill.

“President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”

Politico reported the statement the day it was posted to a White House page titled “Additional Issues.”

Since then, the White House has edited the comment to remove the personal insult to President Bush so that it now reads:

“President Obama will keep the broken promises to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur. Within weeks of his inauguration, he made a renewed commitment to partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.”

Based on the Politico report, the White House also edited out verbiage bragging about Obama’s post-Katrina trips to the region:

The site also points out that Obama “visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region” and worked with the Congressional Black Caucus to help rebuild in the aftermath of Katrina.

The Obama administration has left a destructive trail of catastrophic failures in its wake over the BP oil spill, beginning with its failure to ensure that an adequate disaster plan was in place for BP’s Deepwater Horizon well to its failure to secure enough skimmers and booms to prevent the spill from reaching the shores of the Gulf states.

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