I would suspect that just about everyone in the US has heard about the massive oil spill threatening the Gulf Coast…..the people are angry and are demanding restitution, they are demanding that the company makes everything whole again….but is that a realistic hope? And so the Ballet begins!
There have been some that suggest that the Obama Admin may have been at fault for the disaster, not as deeply involved as BP, but still should share some of the blame as an accomplice…..
A May 11, 2009 legal brief written on behalf of Obama’s secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, requested that the Washington, DC federal court of appeals overturn or amend an earlier decision blocking new drilling in the Gulf of Mexico’s outer continental shelf. The petition referred specifically in several instances to site “206”—the same area where the Deepwater Horizon would explode in a blowout less than one year later.
“Salazar approved BP’s exploration plan without any environmental analysis on April 6, 2009, knowing that the lease could get struck down by an active lawsuit,” said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity. “When it was struck down 11 days later, he went back to court to get the BP exploration drilling (and other areas) removed from the vacature. His success in this legal maneuver allowed BP’s exploration drilling to take place, resulting in the April 20, 2010 catastrophic disaster.”
Even since the explosion on the rig, the Obama administration has continued to grant “categorical exemptions” for deep sea oil drilling—27 in all, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
If this research done by Tom Eley of wsws.org is true then Obama and the boyz are and should be blamed for this disaster, or at least held accountable…the way they keep saying that BP will be held accountable.
Now the CEOs of BP, Halliburton and Transocean are on the Hill testifying at what happened and what is to be done. But the game got to the inevitable point of blame.
BP America President Lamar McKay stressed the failure of the blowout preventer owned by rig operator Transocean. “The systems are intended to fail-close and be fail-safe,” McKay said. “Sadly and for reasons we do not yet understand, in this case, they were not.”
But Transocean chief executive Steven Newman said the blowout preventers “were clearly not the root cause of the explosion.” He said they might have been damaged by debris made of cement and steel casing material blown upward because of other failures.
Halliburton’s Tim Probert also tried to deflect blame, saying, “We understand that the drilling contractor . . . proceeded to displace the riser with seawater prior to the planned placement of the final cement plug.” That plug was designed to keep the oil and gas in the well, a final step before pulling the drilling rig away from the well. Probert said that the final cement plug was never set. (Thanx to WaPo for the excerpts)
This was a predictable thing….NO one is to blame, especially those with an interest on the rig. The media will run amok with the hearing transcripts; they will show the CEOs in the most unflattering light, but I would bet my last dollar that the report from the Center of Biological Diversity will get little to no play in the media……..any bets?
BP IS too blame….Transocean IS to blame…..Halliburton IS to blame…..and yes politicians are too blame, especially the Obama Admin……I am sure there will be a plausible explanation to why the Admin pushed deep sea drilling without the proper documentation…….but I want them all to take RESPONSIBILITY for the disaster that they alone have created.
Are Americans looking for revenge (to BLAME someone) as seems normal these days (and fairly pointless too, but that’s people for you – again, these days), are they looking for compnsation and correction of the situation?
If the immediate problem is that they want the problem fixed (or as near fixed as is possible in the short term), then the answer is simple… all of the above mention companies were working on behalf of and contracted to BP, so BP should take the can and then THEY can sue the others for restitution!
Don’t bother to tell me if that’s not how the law works because that’s how it f*cking well SHOULD work – end of – and the Obama administration could simply say, “Accept the responsibility, or no more drilling – EVER!”
Either the President is in charge, or he isn’t!
I mean, Agent Jack Bauer and President Palmer wouldn’t stand for this!
The biggest prob is the tourism and the seafood industry…..those could be effected for as many as 10 years….and how do you put a price tag on something that far in the future…..and 55% of the American people still want off shore drilling……but they do not live here…..
Well, that’s majority rule at its most basic, stark and savage.
However, these things CAN be done safely – it just costs money!
But then that has always been my argument against legislation – if you try to dot the “I’s” and cross the “T’s” then you are doomed to failure because lawyers and accountants will ALWAYS be able to find a way round ANY law and they are generally cheaper than following the rules! If the law is simple and INTERPRETED with common sense in individual cases, then a judge is free to say, “That’s just plain STUPID! NO!”
The law is a game played by lawyers, just as politics is a game played by politicians – the currency used as chips in both cases is ordinary people’s lives – and it STINKS, but it’s still a fact!
There is the rub…it costs money…….as you probably have read about the Valdez and the Supreme Court…..they were let off the hook and the Bay in Alaska is still fucked up….so the court gave them a pass on their responsibility……I HATE LAWYERS!….had to throw that in, huh?
Yes, of course I know – as you say – but that’s my point…
It doesn’t help much in this instance, but it will never change until we change the nature of legislation – no complx legislation, no loopholes, no lawyers and judges can make rational individual decisions.
Of course, you need to employ sensible, educated and largely unbiased judges, but at the moment you’re looking for those qualities in EVERYONE connected to government, bureaucracy and corporations – so you’ve got NO f*cking chance, have you?
Simplify it all and power starts to return to the people!
To do as you say we would need to eliminate lawyers, which we both agree is a necessity, but since most politicians are lawyers how can we do it? The people just do not seem to be capable of eliminating them at the ballot box. And the Shakespeare thing is out of the question….how can we do it?
Incidentally, if something is described as “fail safe” and it fails and doesn’t go safe, whether it’s hit by a lump of concrete or just has a bad day, then it ISN’T “fail safe”!