GULF OIL BLAME GAME

The Young Turks:



The same thing happens between drug companies and the FDA. Doctors have also been given vacations, fees, gifts, and more for writing prescriptions for certain medications. The safety and regulation of industry has been derailed in this country for a long time. Remember DES/Diethylstilbestrol, the first harmful drug that we know of which the FDA allowed on the market was first sold in the 1940s. There was research published in the 1950s which showed the drug did not work for the main purpose it was being marketed for, prevention of miscarriage. It was sold for prevention of miscarriage until 1971.

Chris Hayes:

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From the Times-Picayune:
By Jonathan Tilove

WASHINGTON -- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that he is splitting the Minerals Management Service so that its responsibility for ensuring the safety of offshore oil drilling is not compromised by its other mission to lease oil fields in the Outer Continental Shelf and collect the enormous government revenue they yield.

Oh, I think the oil companies can find enough money to compromise both agencies.



Salazar's announcement came on a day when the arcane but vital MMS found itself at the vortex of the investigation into the Deepwater Horizon oil spill now staining the Gulf. The service has long been the object of criticism for what the Interior Department's inspector general characterized as a "culture of ethical failure" and lax collection of royalties, suggesting improper relationships with the industry on one hand and incompetence on the other.
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"The real culprit in this villainy," Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, wrote on the Huffington Post in regard to the BP spill, "is a negligent industry, the festering ethics of the Bush administration and poor oversight by an agency corrupted by eight years of grotesque subservience to Big Oil."

This did not all start in the Bush administration, but certainly grew exponentially. Of course the Bush administration is the reason we are having to deal with chaos on every level in the U.S. When the president's agenda is not  the work at hand and the administration appoints 2nd rate people based on favors and loyalty rather than the best people for the job there is a huge mess for the next president to clean up. We have seen the same thing happen in Alaska with Sarah Palin. Of course the Obama administration did not create the problems and solving them are overwhelming. Knowing full well about these problems they decided to open up off shore drilling. That is in my opinion a bad idea, but especially bad when it is know the agency that regulates them is a dysfunctional corrupt mess. Was placation of the right more important than safeguarding our oceans, shores, wildlife, and seafood?

From the New York Times 
By John Broder, March 31, 2010

Mr. Obama, speaking at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, anticipated the reaction and tried to blunt the criticism.



“Ultimately, we need to move beyond the tired debates of the left and the right, between business leaders and environmentalists, between those who would claim drilling is a cure all and those who would claim it has no place,” he said. “Because this issue is just too important to allow our progress to languish while we fight the same old battles over and over again.”

This is not progess, this is going backwards. Of course we all realize we will have to rely on oil for a while, but green energy would be progess.


While Mr. Obama has staked out middle ground on other environmental matters — supporting nuclear power, for example — the sheer breadth of the offshore drilling decision took some of his supporters aback.

I was one of those people who was taken aback.

President Obama on off shore drilling in 2008: