As I’ve been driving cross country and reading about the Oil Spill (and occasionally getting some information from various news or broadcast networks), a number of things have struck me, notably the number of federal regulations making it difficult for those ready and willing to help provide relief or stop the leak and contain its spread to do so.

We’ve read about the Jones Act which limits the ability of foreign-owned ships to help out.  Of course, a signature from the president could waive that in the present crisis. I’m sure our readers can quickly come up with other areas where regulation or bureaucratic inertia has delayed (or prevented) assistance from getting through.  

This morning, Glenn Reynolds linked a piece on Bureaucracy Standing In The Way Of Oil Spill Clean Up Efforts. This is where the energetic executive comes in.  The president should be doing what he can to cut through the bureaucracy, wiling to step on toes with the primary goal of stopping the leak and limiting its spread.  In short, it is executive action which is key at the present moment — not legislative initiatives.

And yet, President Obama saw fit to use this, um, well, “crisis” to push passage of Cap and Trade. That he would use his Oval Office Address to that end shows just how clueless he is, particularly about the power of his office.

He should be using the tools at his disposal to cut through bureaucracy instead of asking another branch of government to expand it.

In her Washington Examiner piece yesterday on the visit of Vice President Joe Biden to the daily White House press briefing, Julie Mason notes that the former six-term Delaware Senator was sharing “with us the details of ‘Recovery Summer,’ which will usher in the biggest frenzy of stimulus spending to date.”

Recovery Summer?  Biggest frenzy of stimulus spending to date?

So they’re saving it all for the summer before the mid-term elections in order to goose the economy in time for the mid-term elections?  Kind of like trying to use federal dollars to limit Democratic losses?

And despite all this infusion of federal cash into the economy, jobless claims are still rising.

Maybe Obama and his Democrats should have tried to bribe the private sector instead of siphoning the better part of the the funds to state governments so they wouldn’t have to make hard choices, cutting spending and reducing benefits to public employees (who join unions which help fund the Democratic Party).