To the Editor:
As has everyone else, I’ve been following the Oil Spill issue. 
Recently, I received an email from a concerned person who expressed her deepest sadness for all of the Gulf  human residents and the  Gulf water residents and expressed her distaste for BP’s  total disregard for  their lack of conscience in this entire matter.  Of course, I agree with her when it comes to BP and I don’t think there is a one of us who doesn’t get the picture when it comes to the safety slashing, money making, corner cutting,  arm twisting,  lying voices of BP. 
However, where I do disagree with the e-mailer is the blame she lays on the independent, single operator, small business gas station owner who, she seems to feel, is just as culpable as the  BP Corporation. To me, that’s like saying, “Hey, there was a fire at the local pizza parlor.  They think it was arson so we need to blame all the other pizza parlor owners and boycott their businesses because they are just as much to blame as the PPC (Pizza Parlor Corp.).”
 The day I laid my eyes on Barack Obama years ago on the Oprah show was the day I knew that if he ever got into the job of the President of the United States that would be the day we would encounter troubles.
The spill is the doing of BP and it also may be the undoing of BP.
 But the day it leaked was the day we should have had every single solitary available method, technique, boat, vessel, ship, skimmer, barrier, sponge, cargo, new ideas, new oil clean-up innovations of every single smart minded, caring minded persons who called and called and called the White House and BP to tell them of their ideas and their wares and their equipment and their offers to help so the very day this spill ran rapid would also be the very day we could have and should have began the clean up  and then we would have continued to track it and follow it and gather it up as quickly as it came. And the sad part is, we had those tools and we still have those tools and we have those resources and we still have those but we also have a President who is elementary and undecisive and he certainly does not care about the people as a whole let alone a bird.  And, by the way, the bird has a much better grasp on how things should be done than he will ever have.
Blaming BP is one thing. Protecting people and property is Constitutional. That is the job of the President.
Don’t put the onus on the independent BP station owner or manager.  Just because he pumps the gas and changes the tires and does the oil changes does not mean he blew up the oil rig in the Gulf.
 We cannot un-ring a bell.  The BP spill bell rang and we cannot undo that.  But, what we could have done and should have done and still can do is get all of the aforementioned resources out into the Gulf and get it done. Just get out there and do the job and get it done with every bit of equipment and offers of help we have.
 I can guarantee that if I were in the shoes of that President and knew my family, friends, neighbors, pets, birds, whales  and livelihood and property were about to face  what I knew was coming , I would not have denied permits, help, boats, skimmers  and manpower and I would not have made a token visit  and  a pathetic speech.  What I would have done is taken my little pontoon boat  and my kitchen sink sponge  and I would have gone to work and I would have invited the BP station owners to go along with  me.
 
Terry Vahila
Malvern, OH
 

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