We missed this one last week, wrapped up as we were with the awful CLEAR Act’s passage in the House, but C.B. Forgotston was spot on with this bit of smartassery in noting the oil pipeline spill in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan:
In keeping with the cautious decision by the Feds decision to stop all deep water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, all pipelines of 30 inches or larger criss-crossing the U.S. should be closed temporarily until the appropriate Federal agencies have a chance to inspect every pipeline in America.
It might cause a little inconvenience for for the people in America who depend on natural gas for cooking, heating and electricity. I’m sure that everyone can temporarily switch over to other forms of energy such as propane or coal.
Anyone put out of work temporarily can just draw Unemployment Compensation.
I doubt that the price of gasoline will get much above $10 per gallon temporarily while we depend on 18-wheel tank trucks to deliver gasoline from the refineries to the retailers around the country. The price of gasoline could rise higher depending on how many supertankers it will take to bring the foreign oil to the refineries in America.
A pipeline moratorium is the least that our government can do. Why should Louisiana be the only state protected from oil spills.
It’s of a piece with what we’ve said on this site, for certain. Except that C.B. hits on something a little too close to home; namely, that the 18-wheelers carrying the oil in place of the pipelines would be, in many cases, driven by members of the Teamsters Union. And since the Teamsters are (1) major supporters of the Obama administration, and (2) in desperate need of a bailout for their raided and underfunded pension fund, necessitating (3) lots of fresh victims partner companies, something like this actually might attract supporters within the Obama administration.
Forgotston’s crack is funny, because it’s true – the logic of the Obamoratorium would necessitate a closing of the pipelines. But it’s also not funny because it might be true.
We’re in a lot of trouble.
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