Three academics, two environmentalists and two politicians get appointed to a commission. Unfortunately that's not the beginning of a joke; it's the group that President Barack Obama has appointed to his BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Commission. Given the lack of anyone with real world, oil industry experience and the fact that at least two of his appointees have already publicly stated their conclusions on the issue, perhaps it is a joke after all.

Continued...

The seven members of the commission established by executive order to investigate the oil disaster are:

Former US Senator Bob Graham (D-Florida), co-chairman

Former Environmental Protection Agency administrator William Reilly (R), co-chairman

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council

Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for
Environmental Sciences

Terry Garcia, executive vice president for mission programs for the National Geographic Society

Cherry Murray, dean of the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Frances Ulmer, chancellor of the University of Alaska-Anchorage.

In his statement announcing the last five appointments (the co-chairs were announced earlier), President Obama declared, "These individuals bring tremendous expertise and experience to the critical work of this commission. I am grateful they have agreed to serve as we work to determine the causes of this catastrophe and implement the safety and environmental protections we need to prevent a similar disaster from happening again." (source)

While the president has set a December 31, 2010 deadline for the commission to submit a report on their findings, at least Ms. Beinecke and Mr. Boesch evidently don't need any more time to reach their conclusions.

Before her appointment to the commission, Ms. Beinecke's Natural Resources Defense Council publicly supported the moratorium on offshore drilling instituted by the Obama administration as well as the cancellation of pending leases in Alaska stating, In an interview on the subject she stated, "Our focus was on how do we figure out what happened, how to ensure we do take a pause and reverse direction of government policy that was sort of heading down a very different road." (source)

Before he was appointed, Mr. Boesch wrote in an opinion piece for the Washington Post, "We should be redoubling our efforts to get off oil. I hope for Earth's sake, that the winds will blow Congress out of its long winded debate...toward the direction of passage of comprehensive energy legislation that will accomplish this redoubling of effort." (source) Obviously Mr. Boesch doesn't need to serve on a commission for 6 months to make his recommendation.

In defense of these obviously biased appointments, some might point to Ms. Ulmer, a Democrat who during her 2002 campaign for governor halfheartedly claimed to be in favor of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. But taking that position did not help her and she lost to Republican Frank Murkowski by 15 points. And while Mr. Wiley did serve as EPA Administrator under former President George H. W. Bush and has been on the board of at least one industry corporation, he spent much more of his career before and after his government service as president of The Conservation Foundation (which eventually merged with the World Wildlife Fund).

And so these environmentalists, academics and politicians will spend the next 6 months pretending to consider all the issues as they ignore those who actually understand and work with the relavent technology. They will then submit a report which contains the pre-determined recommendations that President Obama all but assured with these appointments.

Especially disconcerting is the timing involved. The December due-date for the report falls between the November elections and the predicted result of those elections - the loss of President Obama's rubber stamp Congress in January. In other words, a perfect window of opportunity for another federal power grab giving government more control over private industry and ramming though more far-left legislation.