Author Topic: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”  (Read 1714 times)

Danny

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http://www.politicususa.com/en/deregulation-blame-cheney

Evidence is mounting up that the oil spill in the Gulf is the result of a tragic sequence of equipment failures – but ultimately, all of them should have and could have been caught, had the rig been regulated properly. It turns out that tens of thousands of offshore rigs are barely regulated, a result of Dick Cheney’s private energy meetings and interference with the Department of Minerals Management Services, which regulates the off shore drilling. The MMS is also responsible for collecting the billions in royalties from the oil companies and is the same agency that was investigated and found to be doing cocaine and having sex with oil executives. Their judgment regarding the necessity of regulations was clearly not impartial.

NPR reports:

‘Wednesday’s hearings by congressional and administration panels in Washington and in Louisiana laid out a checklist of unseen breakdowns on largely unregulated aspects of well safety that appear to have contributed to the April 20 blowout: a leaky cement job, a loose hydraulic fitting, a dead battery.

The trail of problems highlights the reality that, even as the U.S. does more deep water offshore drilling in a quest for domestic oil, some key safety components are left almost entirely to the discretion of the companies doing the work.”

In the hours leading up to the spill, Halliburton was pumping cement into the well, which was supposed to block any oil or natural gas from surging out through the drill piping. They then capped with the (now infamous Halliburton) cement plugs, which are designed to stop gas or oil surge inside the pipe. The last plug was still missing just before 10 p.m. on the 20th when the oil began its now fateful surge through the pipes.

NPR reports that according to MMS spokesman David Smith, there are NO federal standards for the makeup of the cement filler. The government has been working to publish new guidelines later this year, but they are not mandates.

It’s important to note that in other industries, such as the housing industry, there are strict regulations and inspections at every step of the process. It is appalling that off shore regulations are not even equal to the housing industry, where cement footings have to be inspected before framing can proceed. While this may seem shocking, one needs only to ask themselves if the small business building industry had friends like Cheney or indeed, if Cheney was a stock holder of your small business home builder to understand why the standards are different.

Remember this the next time Republicans talk about how deregulation is good for the little guy, the mom and pop business owner. That is a fallacy, used to sell a corporatist agenda to the Main Streeters. Deregulation lines the pockets of the wealthy. Only the super wealthy can afford to buy off officials and buy off responsibility once the pseudo investigations begin. Your small business owner would be crushed under the weight of the lawsuits filed against him or her if he or she failed to regulate him or herself and caused so much destruction. Reasonable regulations actually HELP businesses, provided they are implemented and overseen. The only folks who benefit from no regulation are those who can afford to get the government to bail them out when they fail due to deregulation.

So, again, the next time a modern day Conservative justifies this sort of tragedy by saying you can’t regulate a free market or stop all “accidents”, remind them that this is NOT a free market. The government is bailing out all of the sectors that the Republicans deregulated. That is not a free market, it is literally socializing the downside of business. In a free market, those companies would be left to fail. As for the argument that you can’t stop all “accidents”, this was not an accident. This was preventable, at many stages along the way, before it became a tragedy. An accident is something you have no control over and can not prepare for. This was not an accident.

Here’s an example from Reuters of how Republicans are spinning this:

“Representative Joe Barton, the top Republican on the subcommittee’s full Energy and Commerce Committee, urged lawmakers not to restrict offshore drilling but still blasted the companies involved in the accident.

“We’ve had an accident. It is not an act of God,” Barton said. “It is something that could have been and should have been contained. The facts that we’ve uncovered … show that there was in all probability shoddy maintenance.”"

So, while Barton admits this could have been prevented with maintenance but it was not, he still doesn’t think offshore drilling needs to be stopped until regulations are in place? Interesting how he changed the goal post from their usual argument that accidents will happen. Now, it’s accidents will happen but don’t stop drilling. It’s amazing that they can make these arguments with a straight face. They are still trying to sell us that the oil companies will and should police themselves. Just how long do we have to keep on giving this failed notion the benefit of the doubt?

And yet, as NPR reported: “… industry officials acknowledged a fistful of regulatory and operational gaps: There is no government standard for design or installation of blowout preventives. The federal government doesn’t routinely inspect them before they are installed. Their emergency systems usually go untested once they are set on the seafloor at the mouth of the well. The federal government doesn’t require a backup.

In one telling exchange Wednesday at a hearing of the Coast Guard and MMS in Kenner, La., Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen asked a regional supervisor of the federal regulatory agency a question about blowout preventives: “It’s my understanding that it’s designed to industry standard and it’s manufactured by the industry, installed by the industry, with no government witnessing or oversight of the construction or installation. Is that correct?”

“That is correct,” replied Michael Saucier, the MMS field supervisor for the Gulf.”

Regulation and oversight were clearly MIA in this story. Dick Cheney’s secret energy meetings, the MMS suddenly deciding under Bush that they would not continue with the recommendations to update the regulations of the oil companies as began under Clinton (it should be noted that the regulations have not been updated since 1996 – this is how deeply the oil companies have infiltrated our government), the government allowing the MMS to both collect royalties and police the off shore drilling (which is akin to the rating agencies on Wall Street which take money from the companies they “rate”) – all of this is both predictable and profoundly shocking at the same time.

The question at this point is what will the Obama administration do about this, if anything? In other words, just how complicit were the Democrats in helping Dick carry out his Destroy America Plan? I have to ask myself why it always comes down to this: the moment when we all turn to the Democrats and scold them for allowing the Republicans to be the greedy, lawless monsters they have been for the last ten years. Perhaps this is like turning to the abused woman to ask her why she didn’t protect her children from the abusive man. Perhaps it’s our frustration with the lack of accountability in Washington that causes us to settle on the Dems, waiting for them to DO something to rein the cowboys in. Maybe it isn’t something they can do, maybe it isn’t something they want to do.

Maybe we’re stuck voting on social issues and the rest of it is a one big corporatacracy. The rage, powerlessness and helplessness we all felt during Katrina never went away. The Gulf Spill is just being added to the list. We wanted blood, but we couldn’t get rid of Bush or punish Cheney or Rove. And it looks like we are going to have to swallow another major injustice against humanity and the environment, all because the oilmen have more money than we do. Meanwhile, Cheney is filthy rich, Bush is all done playing cowboy now and can just hang with the elites, and Rove is happy on Fox News spewing his deceptions. They’re all free.

When you’re seething with rage, remind yourself that THIS is the America some people are dying to take us back to. What would be left, after another four years of Republican rule? What industry is still standing? What life still manages to eek by? It’s absolutely reprehensible what Republicans did in the name of free market capitalism. They’ve bastardized the meaning of their own ideology to such an extent that it can only be received with scorn until they man up and take responsibility for the consequences of their choices.

And I’m not holding my breath on that one.
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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #1 on: May 13, 2010, 09:16:59 PM »
Bush/Cheney may have done the shit that allowed this - BUT -

Obama had 15 months in office to reverse and change it.  it's his fault these policies were still in place.  He reversed some bush moves - why not tighten oil safety drilling regulations?

Danny

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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2010, 09:24:57 PM »
Bush/Cheney may have done the shit that allowed this - BUT -

Obama had 15 months in office to reverse and change it.  it's his fault these policies were still in place.  He reversed some bush moves - why not tighten oil safety drilling regulations?

Good question, I was asking myself the same thing..who knows, I'm sure it's not as black and white as some are trying to make it look?? That doesn't change the fact during 8 years of Cheney deregulation of these fuckers was in full swing.

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Danny

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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #3 on: May 13, 2010, 09:32:30 PM »
 I was reading some stuff and stumbled upon this article ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/13/us/politics/13rules.html?pagewanted=1

With Obama, Regulations Are Back in Fashion

WASHINGTON — In a burst of rule-making, federal agencies have toughened or proposed new standards to protect Americans from tainted eggs, safeguard construction workers from crane accidents, prevent injuries from baby walkers and even protect polar bears from extinction.

 
Over the last year, the Obama administration has pressed forward on hundreds of new mandates, while also stepping up enforcement of rules by increasing the ranks of inspectors and imposing higher fines for violations.

A new age of regulation is well under way in Washington, a fact somewhat obscured by the high-profile debates over the health care overhaul and financial oversight system and by fresh calls for greater federal vigilance spurred by the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the deaths of coal miners in West Virginia.

The surge in rule-making has resulted from an unusual confluence of factors, from repeated outbreaks of food-borne illnesses to workplace disasters. Some industry groups, wanting foreign competitors to adhere to the same standards they must meet, have backed new federal mandates. The push for some of the measures began at the end of the Bush administration, a tacit acknowledgment that its deregulatory agenda had gone too far.

Still, the new aggressiveness reflects the new cops on the beat, and the contrast with the Bush administration is an intentionally sharp one. While the Bush administration mostly favored voluntary compliance by industry, senior Obama administration officials argue that carefully crafted regulation can be a positive force.

“We start from the perspective that we all want a cleaner environment, longer lives, improved safety,” said Peter R. Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, which reviews major regulations. “Smart regulation can make people’s lives better off.”

But complaints from industry leaders are intensifying. Manufacturers, home builders, toymakers and others say that Washington has been overzealous about imposing new requirements, and they warn of serious consequences for businesses and consumers.

“I am all for clean water, but this really isn’t helping,” said Bobby Bowling IV, president of the Tropicana Building Corporation in El Paso, who objects to rules adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency last year requiring larger construction sites to prevent turbid storm-water runoff. “All this is one more obstacle to development,” Mr. Bowling said.

The National Association of Manufacturers made a similar complaint about the cost of many of the new proposed mandates. “Dollars spent on compliance with cumbersome regulations are dollars not spent on hiring new employees,” said Erin Streeter, a spokeswoman for the group.

Obama administration officials reject the criticism, saying that the benefits associated with the dozens of major rules adopted between President Obama’s inauguration and the end of 2009 outweigh the costs by an estimated $3.1 billion, a savings they assert is greater than that attributed to new regulations in the first years of the Clinton and Bush administrations.

They arrived at that figure by factoring in upfront costs — like the price of stronger brake systems being mandated in new tractor-trailers — with the estimated long-term savings — like reduced property damage and an estimated 227 fewer highway deaths each year.

“I don’t want to put anyone out of business,” said Inez Tenenbaum, chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, who was appointed by Mr. Obama. “But if anything will help the marketplace, it is to make sure that people have confidence in the products that they buy.”

The Environmental Protection Agency is perhaps the most aggressive advocate of the new regulatory philosophy in Washington. It has moved quickly to reverse or strengthen Bush administration policies on power plant pollution, lead paint and toxic chemical discharges.

Last month, along with the Transportation Department, the agency mandated that automakers significantly cut greenhouse-gas emissions while increasing fuel economy standards, an issue the Bush administration had put on hold, citing the industry’s weakened financial condition. The car companies pronounced themselves happy with the result because it eliminated the possibility of even stricter regulation by California and about a dozen other states.

The agency’s administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, has made clear that she would prefer to have Congress tackle climate change through broad legislation in what would be one of the largest regulatory actions in American history. But if Congress fails to pass a law, she has already started the process of mandating standards on her own.

The shift is also evident at major agencies charged with policing worker safety, health and consumer products. Many of the rules those agencies have adopted or are now pushing to impose — including a requirement that farmers refrigerate eggs and kill rodents to combat salmonella contamination on eggshells, which sickens 79,000 people a year — languished during previous administrations.

Now, a newly muscular Food and Drug Administration will have more authority, money and staff for greater scrutiny of products. Since bottoming out at 1,309 inspectors in the 2007 fiscal year, the agency now has 1,800 inspectors with 150 more on the way. Inspections rose 5 percent in 2009 after years of declines and are expected to increase steadily in coming years.
David Michaels, who became head of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in December, has asked Congress to allow the agency to impose much larger fines and criminal penalties on employers that knowingly leave their workers at risk. The agency also is adding dozens of inspectors.

“Fourteen workers die every day in preventable events all across the country,” Dr. Michaels said. “We have to turn up the volume to make it very clear that OSHA is on the job.”

Dr. Michaels typifies the new breed of regulator installed by the Obama administration. Many are former academics, government officials, union leaders or consumer advocates, a contrast with the many former industry officials appointed by the Bush administration.

An epidemiologist, Dr. Michaels published a book in 2008 titled “Doubt Is Their Product: How Industry’s Assault on Science Threatens Your Health.” It argues that “corporate interest successfully infiltrated the federal government from top to bottom” during the Bush administration and concluded that federal regulatory agencies “are intimated and outgunned, and quiescent.”

Some of the regulatory changes have drawn cheers from consumers, like a rule put into effect last month by the Department of Transportation that imposes fines of up to $27,500 per passenger on airlines for holding domestic flights on the tarmac for more than three hours.

But other recent proposals have provoked strong protests. For example, the F.D.A. announced in October that it intended to ban the sale of raw, untreated oysters harvested from the Gulf of Mexico in warm months. Fifteen deaths a year are attributed to eating oysters with a cholera-like bacteria.

Oyster farmers, restaurateurs and members of Congress campaigned to block the rule. Within a month, the F.D.A. announced that it was reconsidering, a move consumer advocates condemned. “This political victory for the Gulf Coast oyster industry is a health tragedy for their consumers,” said David Plunkett, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

Executives at coal mining and offshore oil rig companies have also protested proposed expansions of federal regulations or a significant increase in fines — although those complaints have become decidedly more muted after last month’s catastrophes at a West Virginia coal mine and on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico left dozens of workers dead.

Toymakers are also vigorously challenging rules imposed as part of a 2008 law that Mr. Obama helped push while he was still in the Senate that effectively bans lead in all children’s products and then requires follow-up testing.

Anne M. Northup, a former Republican congresswoman from Kentucky whom Mr. Obama appointed to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said an excessive number of new mandates was harming the toy market.

“Companies who put products on store shelves that consumers want should not be treated like the enemy,” she said in a statement explaining her vote in March against new agency guidelines for imposing larger fines. “I want the agency to be perceived by consumers as protecting them and by industry as a fair cop — not as a mindlessly punitive bureaucracy.”

Other conservative critics have assailed the administration as creating a big-government nanny state that threatens the nation’s global competitiveness. James L. Gattuso, an expert on regulatory policy at the Heritage Foundation, said the Obama administration was most likely inflating the cost savings and other benefits associated with many of its rule changes, disguising the negative impact they are having on the economy.

“The agencies that prepare these estimates are the same ones that proposed the new rules,” said Mr. Gattuso, who released a report in 2008, “Red Tape Rising,” on the rising cost of federal regulation.

Mr. Orszag defended the administration, saying if each new regulation is based on good science, and drafted to maximize the benefit while minimizing the costs, the country will be better off.

“If the assertion is that we are more willing to adopt policies that have benefits far in excess than cost, rather than being motivated by dogmatic opposition even when it generates huge benefits, then sure, guilty as charged,” Mr. Orszag said.
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gcb

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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #4 on: May 13, 2010, 09:49:37 PM »
...but, but, we don't need any regulations ::) - let's deregulate everything and watch everything go to shit.

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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #5 on: May 14, 2010, 04:12:32 AM »
But yesterday people were saying bp did not follow existing regulations.

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Re: Dick Cheney’s Deregulation to Blame for “Obama’s Katrina”
« Reply #6 on: May 14, 2010, 05:23:18 AM »
But yesterday people were saying bp did not follow existing regulations.

Exactly....

You clowns have to realize that creating more bureaucracy, more worthless jobs, more paperwork etc will do nothing if existing regulations are being ignored/rubber stamped/bribed away.

The the S.E.C. and Congress before/during our financial crisis.