In his few public statements on the horrendous environmental disaster and human tragedy of the Gulf oil spill, Arizona's Sixth Congressional District's weaselly Rep. Jeff Flake has said nothing but place the blame elsewhere - mostly on the Obama administration.
This is typical of Flake, a fanatic laissez-faire corporate lackey whose million-dollar-plus campaign warchest has made him so invincible politically that he exudes arrogance on an hourly basis. The thousands upon thousands of dollars he has taken in from oil companies and related corporate PACs, combined with his outdated, unshaken faith in a dead ideology he gives more allegiance to than he does to his East Valley constituents, led to Flake's role in causing the BP oil spill.
In 2005, despite unfairly high oil prices and declarations from President Bush that no more incentives were needed to encourage more offshore drilling, Jeff Flake strongly supported reducing the cut of proceeds government could collect on oil and gas drilling in deep waters. (In this, of course, Flake added to the federal budget deficit he hypocritically claims to be so concerned about - at least when he's near a reporter or TV camera.)
At the same time that Jeff Flake called for new drilling incentives that even President Bush said were unnecessary, he fought to gut government oversight - in his crazy belief that no government is always better than any government. Seven times since his arrival in Congress in January 2003, Jeff Flake voted to reduce regulatory staffing levels by more than 15 percent - despite more complex deep-water operations and concerns voiced by the Interior Department.
It's not as if Jeff Flake didn't know the risks he was taking with people's lives and livelihoods and the Gulf ecosystem. Congress's own research arm repeatedly cited a 2004 Coast Guard study find that its "oil spill response personnel did not appear to have even a basic knowledge of the equipment required to support salvage or spill clean-up operations."
Nevertheless, Jeff Flake repeatedly - deliberately - failed to act to ensure adequate oversight of offshore drilling operations.
He cannot escape blame for this disaster. Yes, BP certainly was reckless, greedy and negligent, but the company couldn't have done it without the complicity of its congressional cheerleader Jeff Flake.
Now Congress needs to immediately pass legislation to direct all future royalties to the Treasury Department, thereby reducing the incentives for a venal career politician like Jeff Flake to use new proceeds as a piggy bank.
Also, Congress needs to mandate that in the future, any legislative action leading to an increase in oil production also creates a concomitant increase in regulatory oversight.
If he were a real man, Jeff Flake would step forward and admit his own role in undermining offshore safety and encouraging risky drilling - and then do something as a congressman to make sure disasters like the Gulf oil spill don't happen again.
Jeff Flake: Out of step. Out of control. Out of his fucking mind.
