Jindal Blocks bill to make oil records public

[punked]

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Gov. Bobby Jindal rejected a bill Friday that would have required him to make public and to preserve all his office's documents involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

In his veto letter, the governor said the legislation would have hurt the state's position in future litigation against BP PLC, the oil giant that leased the rig which exploded April 20 in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and causing the disaster.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/25/1701472/jindal-vetoes-bill-to-open-oil.html

The NYT has an article talking about how Jindal is handling the oil spill. It looks like it is worse then Obama.

Mr. Jindal, a Republican like all but one of the other gulf state governors, has been alone among them for his publicly critical stance toward the federal agencies in the response.

But experts said such antagonism could actually slow down that response.

"You can ask for the moon and say you didn’t get it, but I don’t think that’s going to add anything to the response capabilities," said Doug Lentsch, who was chief of the Coast Guard’s Pollution Response Branch in Washington, D. C., during the Exxon Valdez disaster and helped develop the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. "When that stuff happens, you actually take away the ability of the unified command to get their job done."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/politics/26jindal.html?hp

CBS has covered the Story about how Obama approved the use of the National Guard and how Mr. Jindal just wont call them in.

All along the Gulf coast, local officials have been demanding more help from the federal government to fight the spill, yet the Gulf states have deployed just a fraction of the National Guard troops the Pentagon has made available, CBS News Chief Investigative Correspondent Armen Keteyian reports.

That's a particular problem for the state of Louisiana, where the Republican governor has been the most vocal about using all resources.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/06/24/eveningnews/main6615414.shtml

The facts are this really:

1) The state's oil spill coordinator's office has had its budget slashed by 50% over the last decade.

2) Last year, Jindal cut funding from the state's oil spill research program.

3) The state's oil spill contingency plan's include "pages of blank charts that are supposed to detail available supplies of equipment like oil-skimming vessels." A plan for a worst-case scenario was labeled "to be developed."

4)Before Jindal decided to attack the Federal response, state officials signed off on all Coast Guard response plans.

5)Jindal, who raged at the Federal government for not having enough boom, requested three times as much boom as the state's plan had called for -- and 50% more boom than existed in the entire nation.

Fact is before you kill the Democrats for this mess take a look at what the Republicans are doing and know it isn't very good.

Edited June 27, 2010 by punked

[bud]

another US politician balls deep in lobbyist donation money.

[eyeball]

another US politician balls deep in lobbyist donation money.

Tar balls deep.

In a democracy this is just as much the people's fault as it is BP's.

[Jack Weber]

Tar balls deep.

In a democracy this is just as much the people's fault as it is BP's.

Very true...

We're all complicit by not paying atention while we allowed our public officials to be corrupted and usurped by corporate powers.

Uncle Milty and Freddy Von Hayek must be laughing both their a$$es off at the con they've duped everyone with...