Spill baby spill, slippery politics

@morell,

Quote:

BP may have been ignoring safety measures but it is clear that the malfeasance occured with the full knowledge of the MSM- the agency under Mr. Salazar.

Question: how far has that logic gotten the tobacco companies??

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@morell,

morell wrote:

BP may have been ignoring safety measures but it is clear that the malfeasance occured with the full knowledge of the MSM- the agency under Mr. Salazar.

So what?

If you commit fraud, and a crooked cop finds out about it, and doesn't bust you- does this mean you aren't responsible for fraud? Nobody would claim this.

Not only that, but Salazar has been on the job about a year; the MMS (not the MSM, nice slip lol) has been corrupt for my entire lifetime.

Cycloptichorn

3 Replies

@morell,

morell wrote:

BP may have been ignoring safety measures but it is clear that the malfeasance occured with the full knowledge of the MSM- the agency under Mr. Salazar.

Salazar Slytherin?

boy that Slytherin House has a lot to answer for, Voldemort, the BP Spill

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@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

the MMS has been corrupt for my entire lifetime.

But Cyclo, that says the corruption is institutionalised. In the other case you gave of the crooked cop it is only an incident. Isn't it? You've compared something normal, in the last analysis voted for by the American public, with something bizarre and not voted for.

However short the period of time Mr Salazar has been in the job, by taking the job, a voluntary act, he accepts the heat wherever it comes from.

You should be arguing with people a lot younger than we are.

1 Reply

@spendius,

Just how old do you think I am?

Cycloptichorn

1 Reply

@Cycloptichorn,

About 14?

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@Cycloptichorn,

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Not only that, but Salazar has been on the job about a year; the MMS (not the MSM, nice slip lol) has been corrupt for my entire lifetime.

Cycloptichorn

And during that year he (Salazar) recommended and president Obama appointed a new head of the MMS who cintinued the corruption and ineptitude of the previous administration. Are you seriously suggesting this absolves the current administration of blame? Who knows, perhaps it all started during the Clinton Administration? If so would you absolve the subsequent Bush administration along with the sainted Obama?

In my experience a very reliable sign of an inept leader who lacks the strength of character requirted of his responsibilities is one who, himself or through his hacks, complains that his difficulkties and challenges are the fault of his predecessor, or, frankly, any others.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

georgeob1 wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:

Not only that, but Salazar has been on the job about a year; the MMS (not the MSM, nice slip lol) has been corrupt for my entire lifetime.

Cycloptichorn

And during that year he (Salazar) recommended and president Obama appointed a new head of the MMS who continued the corruption and ineptitude of the previous administration. Are you seriously suggesting this absolves the current administration of blame? Who knows, perhaps it all started during the Clinton Administration? If so would you absolve the subsequent Bush administration along with the sainted Obama?

I don't believe any one particular president is responsible for everything that goes on in the government. Bush wasn't particularly responsible for the corruption in the MMS, but it's quite fair to say that the Conservative 'pro-business' viewpoint, of lax regulations and 'profits before safety' attitude are responsible for the problem.

Clinton was right there with Bush and others when it came to being pro-big business, so I don't know why you even bring him up. For the last 30 years, Washington as a whole has been in this mindset, and this is the result.

I'm not trying to absolve anyone of blame, mistakes were made all around. But let us not pretend that the lax regulations regularly championed by your political positions and allies result in anything but what we're seeing right now.

Quote:

In my experience a very reliable sign of an inept leader who lacks the strength of character requirted of his responsibilities is one who, himself or through his hacks, complains that his difficulkties and challenges are the fault of his predecessor, or, frankly, any others.

This is frankly weak, George. You pretend that we should all pretend that Bush wasn't a fuckup who caused many problems through the poor decisions he and his cronies made. This simply isn't the truth. And this is also the reason that the American public continually and across ALL polls places the past administration to blame for the majority of our current problems. You don't like this, but this doesn't change the reality of the situation.

Cycloptichorn

2 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

I don't believe any one particular president is responsible for everything that goes on in the government.

this particular agency has been corrupt/ineffective for decades. And Congress is at fault too, it is their job to over see. And absolutely everyone is guilty of setting up an agency that was supposed to both regulate and extract revenue...a serious conflict of interest.

Furthermore, we know that it was Shrub who fucked the FAA and the USDA...they who were told to cooperate with the industry towards self regulation, a predictable disaster has followed. There is no reason not to believe that Bush for sure, and probably Clinton, were aware of what direction this agency was headed in....and fully approved.

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@hawkeye10,

hawkeye10 wrote:

Quote:
I don't believe any one particular president is responsible for everything that goes on in the government.
this particular agency has been corrupt/ineffective for decades. And Congress is at fault too, it is their job to over see. And absolutely everyone is guilty of setting up an agency that was supposed to both regulate and extract revenue...a serious conflict of interest.

Furthermore, we know that it was Shrub who fucked the FAA and the USDA...they who were told to cooperate with the industry towards self regulation, a predictable disaster has followed. There is no reason not to believe that Bush for sure, and probably Clinton, were aware of what direction this agency was headed in....and fully approved.

Yup

Cycloptichorn

0 Replies

@Cycloptichorn,

Quote:

'profits before safety' attitude are responsible for the problem.

Obviously. The alternative in unthinkable. You're just squeamish Cyclo while you consume your share without giving it a second thought. It's too late now to be squealing over this one.

Imagine how much safety $4 gas would buy. Imagine the votes for anybody who had suggested it. Get real. Oil is as strategic as defeating the Taliban.

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@hamburgboy,

Quote:

heard " somewhere " on the news last night that to clean the oil from the marshes , the missisippi river may have to be re-channelled ?

anyone else hear that or did i just have a nightmare ?

here you go.......

Quote:

All through May, the river's discharge past New Orleans increased as spring rains and melting snow from the center of the continent found their way into the river, rising to almost 1 million cubic feet per second. Like most coastal scientists familiar with the Mississippi River delta, I am convinced that this high spring discharge played an important role in keeping oil from penetrating deep into our marshes during the first full month of the spill.

Discharge from the famous "bird-foot" river mouth has helped keep the oil offshore and to the east. Similarly, outflows from both banks of the channel through the gates of the Davis Pond and Caernarvon diversions and other engineered openings have helped to keep oil out of adjacent marshes and in the open bays where it could be collected.

Louisiana's Gov. Bobby Jindal and his advisers showed good leadership in opening those diversions up to full bore as soon as the spill occurred, and that strategy appears to have paid off.

But since the beginning of June, the flow past New Orleans has dropped by a third due to seasonal changes in climate. Now, it is likely we could see more extensive oiling of our coastal wetlands. With less water coming out of the river, more of the oil arriving on high tides will get deeper into the marshes, where most cleanup techniques do more harm than good.

Can we keep river levels high for a little while longer, buying time for crews to attack the oil in open gulf and bay waters? Yes!

The Mississippi is falling fast, but the Atchafalaya, which sends water to the coast 150 miles west of the main oil impacts, remains well above normal, as it has been most of this year.

By closing some gates leading to the Atchafalaya, the Corps could send more water past New Orleans, out to those areas where the oil most threatens the marshes. These are the nursery grounds for most of the commercial fish and shrimp caught in the Gulf, and home to a wonderful variety of resident and migratory birds with declining populations.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/06/13/kemp.oil.river/index.html?hpt=C2

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@spendius,

You are applying a long discredited operating principle, spendius. In most applications the rewards of rigorous safety standards are greater reliability and lower net cost. In management speak, the indirect cost of non-compliance (with sound engineering and operating standards) is generally far greater than the direct costs of compliance.

The well in question wasn't the only deep well in the gulf, but it is the one that failed. BP may well be found to simply be the victim of an unusual and truly extraordinary event. However, much more likely (and far more common in such events) is the possibility that this event was the result of a related chain of failures and oversights, most links of which had been in place in BP drilling operations for some time - a defective, inadequately supervised system needing only one more failure to create a catastrophe. Certainly the recent BP safety record in their other U.S. operations strongly suggests this is true.

We, all of us, youself included, are dependant on many inherently risky systems in our daily lives. These include air, rail & road transportation systems for ourselves and the goods we consume; electrical power and fuel generation & distribution systems; satelite communication syatems, including launch vehicles; and many others. The fact that we eat, drink beer, watch television, use electric lights and heat our homes doesn't make us responsible for the occasional failures that beset these usually very reliable systems. Instead we demand reliable service and reward those who provide it and (primarily through the market) punish those who fail.

I'll readily agree that our government is behaving in an irresponsible and self-serving way in its reaction to the catastrophe. Blaming others and demonizing those who oppose or embarass it are, sadly, its normal mode of operation.

2 Replies

@georgeob1,

Never fail to get a dig in eh George?
The main problem was one of sealing and grouting an overpressured system. Apparently BP's sub didnt know the way to do it. Also when they were gonna capture the oil and gas mix with that oversized outhouse, I was part of a group of oil patch guys who sent BP some communications that it wouldnt work due to the "triple point" of that particular system . Nobody was giving BP and its subs any guidance. They were, as it was said, Building the fire engine while the house was burning. If you wanna state politics, the MM problem sits happily at the doorstep of "Saint Ronald" and "Blessed GHW" and, to "William Jefferson". I hope all the woprk of deregulation will quietly and authoritatively swept away with the realization that , AS IVE SAID in one of my threads'INDUSTRY will never do the right thing unless carefully watched over"

Try to prove me wrong on that.

Only within the last 15 to 20 years have the economic incentives caught up with the responsibilities ofenvironmental stewardship. Its only recently become cool to be green. COME with me to the mines sir. I will show you disasters in waiting and tragedies yet unhappened.

1 Reply

The problems with MMS were in existence when Obama took office. See:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/27/politics/main6523948.shtml

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@farmerman,

I believe the only element of regulation that can be demonstrated to have been consistently effective is enforced rules that require the industry to clean up & compensate those injured by mishaps. That is what creates rigorous design of aircraft and what has caused industry to apply preventive measures in areas ranging from environmental to finance.

Attempts at command regulation and "oversight" of ongoing operations have been far less effective. Examples abound, from the SEC and Bernie Madoff, to the coal mines of West Virginia, the design of low GHG vehicles, and the operations of the Interior Department's MMS. None of these agencies lacked or lack the legal authority to intercept the dangers and hazards that resulted, though, when things go wrong, they can be relied on to ask for more money and authority. Moreover, as we have seen, their political masters are almost always unwilling to accept responsibility for their failures.

If the management of BP was unwilling to even consider serious technical advice (or even questions) concerning questions relating to the triple point of a gas/liquid mix in an extraordinarily deep well, then there was no saving them or us from the consequences.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Mot of the agencies youve been exampling were those that had their missions trimmed by previous administartions (Including Willie Clinton who continued stripping the EPA s missions in air, haz wastes and mine wastes). Before these agencies it was even worse. Then there was a brief period which Ive called the "Regulazoic" in which many new initiatives were beginning to show some results. Since the EPA has been stripped in the 90's, weve gone farther backward in the 15 years since Clinton and Bush Jr had allowed "self regulation" to thrive. We are now going to have to catch up, since self regulation will never work. Bernie MAdoff was NOT an example of too much regulation.

1 Reply

@georgeob1,

Quote:

You are applying a long discredited operating principle, spendius. In most applications the rewards of rigorous safety standards are greater reliability and lower net cost. In management speak, the indirect cost of non-compliance (with sound engineering and operating standards) is generally far greater than the direct costs of compliance.

As a principle I don't accept that for one moment. The specific case of American court decisions, and our's, are artificial and humane. It's a luxury permitted by increasingly efficient mechanisation. It hardly applies in China and the American consumer benefits from cheap goods from there as a result. And from other places. Bolivian tin. The products of the Bhopal factory which I feel sure the locals had little use for.

At least Cyclo's sophistries are born of innocence.

The argument is that the needs of the better off Americans to show off and compare themselves invidiously with their fellow man is the sole cause of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is irrefutable. The nice goofers off in Chad have had no hand in the matter. At the risk of being criticised for tautologies of expression-none whatsoever.

Quote:

The well in question wasn't the only deep well in the gulf,

I didn't say it was. I asked you how many of the nearly 4,000 other rigs are working at that depth. You only need one other to be safe with your remark.

It won't do George.

Quote:

I'll readily agree that our government is behaving in an irresponsible and self-serving way in its reaction to the catastrophe. Blaming others and demonizing those who oppose or embarass it are, sadly, its normal mode of operation.

Your post suggests to me that it is not only your government which indulges in such self-serving nonsense. I daresay the members of your yacht club are just as bad.

Punishing those which "fail" runs the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

One has to wonder what would be happening if the coasts of Mexico or Cuba were in the path of the slicks.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Bernie MAdoff was NOT an example of too much regulation.

I didn't say he was. I said that he was an example of the ineffectiveness of command type regulation. And that he surely was.

I don't agree with your assessment of the earlier years of EPA. Many of the regulations they were then proposing were both unenforced by them, and likely unenforcable by anyone. Many other regulations were merely asinine. remember the standard EPA mandated methodology for VOC contaminated groundwater ? Pump it to the surface and evaporate it into the air..... !!!

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@hawkeye10,

Yet, when regulations are mentioned, think of who demures. When it is pointed out the lobbyists damage the environment, business (through undue influence which limits competition) and democracy (by outyelling the people), the right stands up in arms.

1 Reply

Spill baby spill, slippery politics

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