Yesterday, the Trump Administration declared there will be no drilling for oil offshore Florida’s huge coastline. It reversed President Trump’s policy of opening offshore oil drilling in an effort to make the U.S. energy self-sufficient. It happened five days after Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke had announced an ambitious offshore oil drilling plan for U.S. coastlines. Florida’s Republican Governor Rick Scott had demanded this exemption for Florida.
Level-headed, Democratic Florida Senator Bill Nelson said of this decision, “I have spent my entire life fighting to keep oil rigs away from our coasts. But now, suddenly, Secretary Zinke announces plans to drill off Florida’s coast and [five] days later agrees to ‘take Florida off the table’ I don’t believe it. We shouldn’t be playing politics with the future of Florida.”
Yet no such declaration was made for the western U.S. coastlines of California, Oregon, and Washington. The reason is obvious: President Trump barely won the important Florida vote in the presidential election last year, and the three West Coast states voted solidly Democrat and thus against him. What pitiful partisan politics is this! Zinke defended his decision by saying, “Florida is obviously unique.”
Oh yeah! So is California if not the entire western coastline. It’s things like this that could cause California to initiate procedures–including lawsuits against the federal government, like the cannabis issue, that could cause California–the seventh largest economy in the world in comparison to all nations–to secede from the United States of America. If that happened, would our country have to change its name?
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