Viva James!

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Your Mail: Stop the leak now

yourmail@thetowntalk.com • June 27, 2010

Recently I saw on "Anderson Cooper 360" where nationally respected and recognized presidential campaign coordinator, commentator and Louisiana native James Carville was the very first to point out the thoughts of thousands in our state by telling the millions of viewers that if this monumental catastrophe had hit the sandy shores of Nantucket Sound, the Emerald Coast of Florida or beautiful beaches of Hawaii (President Obama's home state) action to cap the oil leak and stop its landfall would have been swift and dramatic. I think Mr. Carville hit a bullseye with that analogy considering the federal government just sees most of the Louisiana coastline as dirty, overgrown weeds of wetlands and heavily shrub-infested marshes that people can't put their lawn chairs and umbrellas on and can't run out for a dip in the clear blue surf.

It is a very disturbing theory but then again you don't have wealthy peoples' summer homes and livelihoods residing on the South Louisiana coastline unlike the shores of Cape Cod, the Florida Panhandle or Hawaiian beaches.

I worked and lived on Cape Cod for three years and its beaches were the "bread and butter" of its tourist industry and any notion of even a tiny oil leak coming from a tanker offshore would have put the Coast Guard, state of Massachusetts and its governor on high-alert with measures to react and remedy within 24-hours.

Not here. Two months later and millions of dollars of damage to tourism, our precious wildlife, clean water, beautiful marshlands and seafood industry we're still waiting for answers and for a remedy.

It's a horrific and toxic combination when Washington politics sleep with "Big Oil" resulting in this continuing catastrophe.

All I can do is thank people like James Carville for his "no bars" hot-tempered passionate stand on TV. He's so right!

Evan Davidson
Alexandria

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