By now everyone has heard of the oil disaster that is leaking in the gulf of Mexico, and the strew of adversities making the situation more comlicated than it should be. Besides the leak itself, British Petroleum (BP) the company ultimately responsible for the platform, has been worrying more about covering their own mess than cleaning up the spill. On the other end of this is the Obama administration which is being hesitant to truly crack the whip with BP, and instead is "overseeing" the mess.
This whole incident sounds vaguely familiar to something very newsworthy five years ago. It involved a president being sctrutinized over a lack of response to a disaster, a problem that effected many people, and millions of dollars that had to be spent fixing this problem. If you haven't figured it out by now, I'm describing Hurricane Katrina. Yes, I understand that one directly effected human lives more than the other, but why does Obama not get the same level of public backlash that President Bush did only five years ago? The Bush administration was slow, but when public outcry became larger than life, the Federal Government did step in. With this disaster, Obama's attitude has been more like "well, we'll pledge out support, but I trust BP to handle it". When this (paraphrased) statement wasn't enough, Obama passed down the job to the rear admiral of the US Coast guard. Then we hear a statement from a political figure of the New Orleans parish who had this to say about the Coast Guard's leadership:
"Thad Allen (US Coast Guard Admiral)should resign. He's done absolutely nothing. He's an embarrassment to this country."
So now we see ourselves stuck in a more bureaucratic mess than Katrina, and yet not much has been said against Obama. A double standard perhaps? Or maybe the situation just isn't that bad.
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