Environmental Disaster – National Disgrace
Most of the criticism and bad feelings have so far been aimed at BP which is understandable because they erred on the side of profit instead of safety. Several warning signs that started hours before the explosion and fire were ignored by the rig bosses despite warnings from various members of the crew.
This should be of no surprise to anyone. All you have to do is remember the crooks at Enron and the fraud that Halliburton perpetrated on the taxpayers in the Iraq war. Which by the way Halliburton got away with because of tight connections at the highest levels in the Bush administration. Enron took advantage of power deregulation by the government to rip off it’s customers big time. Enron is gone but Halliburton is still around, but they have moved a large part of there operations overseas.
The point being, if left on there own big corporations will almost always in one way or another do whatever they can get away with, from doing something on the cheap or as in the case of Enron and Halliburton commit out and out fraud to fatten the big wigs wallets. See No Backup System Installed On Deep Water Horizon and Time For Criminal Sanctions
This brings us to the national disgrace part in the title of this piece.
Norway has offshore drilling also as do a lot of other countries. In Norway safety is a top priority and the Norwegian´s are much more likely to install the most protective energy technology. You see in Norway the state can impose public values on oil producers without fighting off lobbyists and crooked politicians, because it owns and controls the resources. Rather then Halliburton style corporate management controlling the government and blocking environmental improvement. Nordic environmentalists say it is not perfect, but the results are much better then ours.
The national disgrace is that we the people let these lobbyists, corrupt politicians and there cronies in regulatory agencies get away with this crap.
As far as deregulation goes it should never be allowed to happen, in fact we probably need more regulation and not back down from demanding it.
The Brass Monkey Blog .Net urges everyone to vote out all incumbents in Washington when there reelection time comes up. The whole bunch of them are responsible along with there big business buddies for the shape this country is in now.
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For the most part the author is right. Ultimately blame does lie with all of us. Here, written in the sticky black sands of the Gulf coast, is the true cost of our lifestyles. Perhaps it’s a good thing that we’ve at last been forced to take a long hard look at it, though I doubt we’ll learn its lesson.