Paul Krugman:Sex & Drugs & the Spill

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/opinion/10krugman.html

“Obama’s Katrina”: that was the line from some pundits and news sources, as they tried to blame the current administration for the gulf oil spill. It was nonsense, of course. An Associated Press review of the Obama administration’s actions and statements as the disaster unfolded found “little resemblance” to the shambolic response to Katrina — and there has been nothing like those awful days when everyone in the world except the Bush inner circle seemed aware of the human catastrophe in New Orleans.

Yet there is a common thread running through Katrina and the gulf spill — namely, the collapse in government competence and effectiveness that took place during the Bush years.

The full story of the Deepwater Horizon blowout is still emerging. But it’s already obvious both that BP failed to take adequate precautions, and that federal regulators made no effort to ensure that such precautions were taken.

For years, the Minerals Management Service, the arm of the Interior Department that oversees drilling in the gulf, minimized the environmental risks of drilling. It failed to require a backup shutdown system that is standard in much of the rest of the world, even though its own staff declared such a system necessary. It exempted many offshore drillers from the requirement that they file plans to deal with major oil spills. And it specifically allowed BP to drill Deepwater Horizon without a detailed environmental analysis.

(snip)
For the Bush administration was, to a large degree, run by and for the extractive industries — and I’m not just talking about Dick Cheney’s energy task force. Crucially, management of Interior was turned over to lobbyists, most notably J. Steven Griles, a coal-industry lobbyist who became deputy secretary and effectively ran the department. (In 2007 Mr. Griles pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about his ties to Jack Abramoff.)

Given this history, it’s not surprising that the Minerals Management Service became subservient to the oil industry — although what actually happened is almost too lurid to believe. According to reports by Interior’s inspector general, abuses at the agency went beyond undue influence: there was “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” — cocaine, sexual relationships with industry representatives, and more. Protecting the environment was presumably the last thing on these government employees’ minds.

[lonestarnot]

1. They were allegedly party'n when the shit blew.

[depakid]

2. In retrospect, it's an agency that should have been far higher on the list of priorities

and on that point, the buck does move up the ladder to Salazar and the Commander in Chief.

[Bobbieo]

3. Somehow the Interior Dept is usually involved in these tragedies -

then Bush and now Salazar.

[amborin]

6. exactly

[lostnfound]

4. The tea party is the keeper of the "anti-government" meme

When the rest of the country is waking up from the nightmare of the Bush years, when the evidence of the disasters that occur from a lack of government are staring the rest of us plainly in the face, the tea party crowd will blindly continue to hold that 'anti-government' meme in their hearts, oblivious to the ironies and the logical inconsistencies of it all. Keeping that meme as the monasteries once carried some seeds (illuminated manuscripts) across the centuries (no offense intended to monasteries or what they carried), the tea parties will incubate it and release it again in the future like a plague escaping from a lab.

[snagglepuss]

5. Why aren't names and photos of these effing MMS bastards online?

These miserable shits should be named and shamed. :mad:

[Scuba]

7. Indictments necessary now!