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President Obama floated this proposal during his press conference. Right now, all of the assets for fighting oil leaks resides in the private sector, and oil companies are responsible for contracting for and using such assets to combat such disasters. The federal government does not have such assets operating under a federal agency. President Obama floated the idea of requiring oil companies to pay a fee to an agency with the assets and expertise to respond to such incidents.
Of course, no one is covering this proposal or really suggesting that the federal government should have the assets and expertise to combat oil spills. The criticism is raised that the federal government should be doing more, but there is no movement to enable to the federal government to do more to regulate the oil companies. Heck, the Republicans have been successfully blocking any effort to raise liability cap for oil spills, and the media is refusing to cover this.
Coincidence? The result of millions in PR by oil companies?
Does the media have an agenda to protect private industry from regulation, thus by focusing on the actions of the federal government, which has limited assets to combat the leak, we are ironically taking responsibility off of BP, which is supposed to have the assets and responsibility to combat the leak. Worse, we ensure that the oil companies continue to be in charge of future disasters, because there is no effort to give the federal government the assets to directly take over and combat such spills.
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