Nothing upsets me more than unfairness, and this time I feel that our government was truly unfair in their "punishment" of offshore drilling. Yes, there have been fatalities. Yes there has been an oil spill and YES IT IS TRULY DEVASTATING! Nothing takes away from that. My issue with this case is that every "disciplinarian" (in this case, the US Government) should have at least a consistent "punishment" (stop what you are doing until we are sure it is safe and policies are in place). If one child is grounded for doing something wrong and then their sibling is yelled at but still goes unpunished, that eventually will bring about a lot of issues and resentment later. This moratorium will bring issues later with voters, for sure with me, mostly because this "punishment" hasn't been used in other industries. Don't you think this response with other industries could have saved lives? I'll state one prime example: According to the Associated Press on May 25: "The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that from 2000 to mid-May, it had received more than 6,200 complaints involving sudden acceleration in Toyota vehicles. The reports include 89 deaths and 57 injuries over the same period." As of June 2 if I wanted to buy a Toyota I could merrily drive down the street and purchase a brand new Toyota. At 89 deaths, 57 injuries, 6,200 complaints and counting NO ONE has thought of putting a moratorium on Toyota sales until the problem is fixed. And people keep dying! How many 911 phone calls of people crying out for help and suddenly crashing to their deaths do we have to hear over YouTube before someone tells Toyota, "You know... maybe you shouldn't sell any more of these until we have the problem solved." And, if you look again, you'll realize they've had complaints about sudden acceleration for 10 YEARS! Do you know how many lives could have been saved had the government paid as much attention to Toyota as they have BP and all the other offshore operators that have absolutely nothing to do with this tragedy? And BP is not alone. The government didn't cut NASA any slack. When both the Challenger and Columbia exploded there was a period of research without scheduled flights. Both NASA and offshore drilling have one thing in common: They are unexplored frontiers. They are risks. With risk comes great rewards and horrible tragedies. This has been true since the beginning of mankind! Again, I'm not saying BP should not be held responsible and that proper precautions and measures should not be taken, but why cut Toyota slack? Just my US $.02 worth.
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