Adding Fuel to a Wildfire

If you spend anytime on this blog, you know that, from a political standpoint, I'm what is called a leftist. I am no fan of the capitalist system and tend to favor democratic socialism. I believe that one of the great downfalls of our current society is that multinational corporations wield too much power (while accepting little of the risk and cost) and that public ownership via the government is the way to go.

While that remains my theoretical basis, I must admit that I've been doing a lot of soul-searching lately. The reason? Big Brother -- regardless of who mans the helm -- seems to exemplify one cover-up after another. Progressives decried the deplorable manner in which the Bush administration botched the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Candidate Obama swept into office on the pledge that science would trump politics and yet, it is readily apparent that the "man of hope" is managing the BP oil spill no better than his predecessor!

According to an article in The Guardian,

The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian has learned.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has come under attack in Congress and from independent scientists for allowing BP to spray almost 2m gallons of the dispersant Corexit on to the slick and, even more controversially, into the leak site 5,000ft below the sea. Now it emerges that EPA's own experts have been raising similar concerns within the agency.

Jeff Ruch, the executive director of the whistleblower support group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said he had heard from five scientists and two other officials who had expressed concerns to their superiors about the use of dispersants.

"There was one toxicologist who was very concerned about the underwater application particularly," he said. "The concern was the agency appeared to be flying blind and not consulting its own specialists and even the literature that was available."

Veterans of the Exxon Valdez spill questioned the wisdom of trying to break up the oil in the deep water at the same time as trying to skim it on the surface. Other EPA experts raised alarm about the effect of dispersants on seafood.

Ruch said EPA experts were being excluded from decision-making on the spill. "Other than a few people in the united command, there is no involvement from the rest of the agency," he said. EPA scientists would not go public for fear of retaliation, he added.

Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who introduced a ban on dispersants pending further testing in an oil spill bill passed by the House of Representatives last week, said the EPA had failed in its duty to protect the environment...

I know my leftist kin will say that the problem is the compromised individuals we elect to office. If we could elect a true social democrat, things wouldn't be so bad. There would be more transparency and science actually would trump politics.

This sounds nice and I would love to believe it, but I don't think I do anymore. Power wants to maintain power. Individuals and groups that occupy the top rungs want to stay there. It doesn't matter if those groups are Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Communists or Monarchs. And the best way to stay there is to manipulate reality so that the bad doesn't appear so bad and the good looks ten times better than it is.

In the present case, Obama merely has pulled a page directly out of the Dubya playbook. It's becoming very clear that his administration has side-stepped their own scientists to present the American public with a sanitized version of the truth. We're being informed -- via the mainstream media -- that everything is a-ok when, in fact, it's not.

All this effort has really done is add fuel to the wildfire known as the Tea Party movement. Teabaggers distrust the government and, while I don't prescribe to most of their political perspectives, this leftist is about as distrustful of our government as they are!