Juan Williams challenged Dana Perino's defense of big oil when she was talking about how many American jobs would be lost if drilling is not allowed off of our shores and her willingness like other conservatives to support the drilling but go screaming about the government when they're not capable of cleaning up their mess. Perino shoots back that she's "not blaming anyone!" and then goes on to blame American car drivers.
You know what Dana, if the price of gas actually had to reflect the price that big oil has shoved onto the tax payers and the people that their industry has harmed into the price of a gallon of gasoline, maybe Americans would have been demanding our industries and our government did more to support other forms of transportation that don't rely on oil. Unfortunately the little guy doesn't always have that much to say about decisions made by huge multi-national corporations.
Unfortunately she's right that our lax attitudes about our oil dependence and the public not demanding more change from our elected representatives until it hits people's pocket books, or until you see something as horrid as this disaster in the Gulf is to blame for the mess we're in. That said, blaming the public rather than the big money interests that are happy to keep the status quo and buy off our politicians like her former boss seems more than a bit disingenuous to me coming from a former White House Press Secretary who worked for two big oil men.
She's also right about the jobs lost, but doesn't seem to have much concern for the other jobs and sectors of our economy that are going to be devastated by the damage this rig failure caused. Perino also claims that the oil industry is going to be willing to accept new regulations. I guess she didn't watch the interview with oil industry flack Rayola Dougher who was basically saying that if they had new regulations imposed on them, they'd move to other countries just as Perino is saying they'd do here because of the mixed signals on drilling offshore from the Obama administration.
Perino: And that’s why I think that the oil spill actually hurts… there’s 9.2 million jobs I believe it is, are in the American petroleum industry. That’s how many Americans work in the industry. And if we send signals that shallow water drilling is going to be off limits, oh no it’s on limits, back on again, in 24 hours they had three different statements out of the administration. And these are capital intensive projects where you have to spend a lot of money and if they’re not convinced that they are going to be able to do those projects, they will go else where and it won’t be in America and those jobs won’t come back.
Williams: What’s incredible to me is that the right in this country on one hand says “oh yeah, we need more drilling” and then wants to blame people when you have drilling that results in this terrible…
Perino: I’m not blaming anybody but it’s true!
Williams: …you said historic oil spill.
Perino: But it isn’t…
Williams: Well then okay then, but you’re going to have to take that into account. You want drilling that will potentially create ecological disasters.
Perino: Well… (sputters) but… are you going to stop driving? It’s interesting to me that anyone who might support production is the villain and anybody who’s the consumer is the angel.
Williams: No, it’s just you have to at some point say that big business and big oil has to be held accountable…
Perino: They are and I think that they were willing… and they’re willing to have more regulations.
