The Pump Don’t Work ‘Cuz The Vandals Took The Handles

A Post About The Oil Spill

Self-proclaimed patriot Michelle Bachmann does not like the government’s tyrannical treatment of a British Oil Company.

“The president just called for creating a [BP escrow] fund that would be administered by outsiders, which would be more of a redistribution-of-wealth fund,” said Bachmann. “And now it appears like we’ll be looking at one more gateway for more government control, more money to government.”

Also, David Weigel reports that Bachmann also said: “They have to lift the liability cap. But if I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there — ‘We’re not going to be chumps, and we’re not going to be fleeced.’ And they shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t have to be fleeced and make chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest — they’ve got to be legitimate claims.”

Happy Wednesday

When it’s the parent trying to get health care for her child, or the misled homeowner signing the adjustable rate mortgage, it becomes all about ‘personal responsibility’ and the ‘market.’  Basically, screw ’em. Yet when it comes to the poor, vulnerable multi-national energy companies, the political elite (particularly on the Right) fall all over themselves trying to protect the precious and actual gate-keepers of 21st century America.  

What people like Rand Paul, Michelle Bachmann and John Boehner believe in is not a free-market, level playing field. They believe in a system where corporate powerhouses reap the rewards of capitalism without being on the hook for any of risks associated with their behavior (except for campaign donations). Consolidate money and power. Privatize the gains and Socialize the losses. It was exemplified first with bailout for Wall St and a watered-down reform bill that looks to be a half-ass attempt on behalf of both the White House and the majority of Congressional Dems. It’s further magnified by the GOP’s response to the oil spill.

Let’s address 2 things…

1.  The primary cause of the Gulf Oil Spill is BP, and BP alone (with assists from Transocean and Halliburton – they can really dish it).

Like the recent West Virginia mine collapse, this is a simple case or sacrificing safety to increase profit margin. That’s it. They knew about faulty equipment for weeks and chose not to do anything about it.  Additional safeguards were dismissed because of cost. “BP violated safety regulations and protocols when they removed some very heavy safety fluid from the drilling pipe, fluid which was supposed to prevent exactly what happened. The removal of that fluid caused the pressure blast that sank the Deepwater Horizon and killed 11 people.”

 According to a “60 Minutes” interview [38] with a survivor, part of the blowout preventer’s seal broke during an accident [39] weeks before the explosion. A Transocean supervisor, when told of the problem, said it was “no big deal,” and operations continued despite several such equipment problems. 

The rig worker also told “60 Minutes” that BP and Transocean managers had been jostling over who was in charge in the hours before the spill, disagreeing on how to seal the well. One expert told “60 Minutes” that BP’s method—faster, but riskier [39]—may have set the stage for the blowout.  Halliburton was the subcontractor handling the cementing process on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which it completed shortly before the explosion [40].

2.  The secondary cause of the oil spill is the 30 year destruction of our regulatory system, first accelerated by the Reagan administration and perfected by the last Bush administration.

Anyone who has read Thomas Frank’s The Wrecking Crew knows the horrific details about the Right’s defunding, destruction and/or co-opting of America’s once-strong regulatory system on behalf of various industry interests. These interests run counter to almost every American not connected to K-Street, or to the plutocrats currently in charge. An overview…

The great fear that hung over the business community in the 1970s was death by regulation, and the great goal of the conservative movement, as it rose to triumph in the 1980s, was to remove that threat–to keep OSHA, the EPA, and the FTC from choking off entrepreneurship with their infernal meddling in the marketplace.

Defunding those agencies was one way to stop the killer bureaucrats; another was to stuff them full of business-friendly personnel who would go easy on regulated. The signature conservative regulatory idea became “voluntary enforcement”, because everyone now knew that efficient markets regulated themselves. Bad practices or tainted products drove away consumers; therefore firms had an incentive to behave, an incentive far more powerful than some top-down scheme in which big brother told them what to do.

Whether people ever truly believed this nonsense or not, its application over the years makes up the basic story of conservative governance as I tell it in my book, The Wrecking Crew. This is the philosophy by which conservatives gutted the EPA and the Labor Department, turned over the Interior Department and the FDA to the industries they were supposed to regulate, let the CEO of Enron advise the vice president on energy policy, and generally came to regard business, not the public, as government’s “customer” (a word that crops up with disturbing frequency in conservative regulatory history).

This can be seen in the recent actions of the MMS…

But in a hearing last week, one MMS official said the agency left it to oil companies to certify [47] that blowout preventers were working properly. The official said the agency “‘highly encouraged,’ but did not require,” companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency,” according to The Wall Street Journal. That led to this gem of an exchange [47]:

“Highly encourage? How does that translate to enforcement?” Coast Guard Capt. Hung Nguyen, who is co-chairing the investigation, asked at the hearings.

“There is no enforcement,” Mr. Saucier replied.

The MMS official also testified that in 2001, new rules were drafted to tighten monitoring of offshore drilling and lay out requirements for blowout preventers, but the rules were never approved by higher-ups in Washington [48].

The Minerals Management Service—an agency within the Department of the Interior—has a rather mixed record [49]. In 2008, the regulator was involved in a sex and drug scandal [50] with oil and gas company representatives. Since then, the agency has also been criticized for understating the risks of oil spills [51] in its plans to expand drilling off the coast of Alaska. A government investigation also concluded that an office at MMS withheld data on offshore drilling from environmental risk assessors in the agency [52].

 Idealistic notions about free market and deregulation all sound great in theory. And the GOP has spent decades hammering home the idea that the soul-less, nation-less market will take care of Americans, and government is only there to interfere and piss away the money of hard-working Americans.

While I acknowledge and detest government waste as much as the next guy, spending money on rebuilding our decrepit and outdated regulatory system is a necessity. We need more regulators, better regulators, and a divorce of government from industry in the regulatory context. Government should serve the public, not the multinationals.

Whether it’s a bridge collapse, e-coli outbreak, mine explosion, or whatever, it’s just a matter of time before the next ‘shocking’ tragedy occurs and can be traced back to a lapse in regulation. And when it happens, the politicians will all get up to holler indignantly about how the government failed to detect problem X.  Then they’ll sit back down and count the checks from whatever industry moneychanger that is funding the next campaign.  That’s too bad.

I Me Mine

No whores for oil

Many Southern GOP politicians’ place great political importance on railing against the federal government. Talking points like ‘states’ rights,’  ‘small government,’ and ‘get off my lawn,’ fall from their mouths like biscuit crumbs from Haley Barbour’s puffy jowls. This is of course, ‘Do as I say…’ rhetoric, because when the slick hits the fan, they need that public titty.  As Dana Milbank writes…

About 10:30 Monday morning, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), an ardent foe of big government, posted a blog item on his campaign Web site about the huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. “I strongly believe BP is spread too thin,” he wrote.

He thinks it would be a better arrangement if “federal and state officials” would do the dirty work of “protecting and cleaning up the coast” instead of BP.

This is, of course, “Diaper” David Vitter. The man who fights against pretty much every environmental regulatory effort that comes before the Senate.

About an hour later came word from the Pentagon that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi — all three governed by men who once considered themselves limited-government conservatives — want the federal government to mobilize (at taxpayer expense, of course) more National Guard troops to aid in the cleanup.

Aren’t they worried about the “clean-up gestapo?”

That followed an earlier request by the small-government governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal (R), who issued a statement saying he had called the Obama administration “to outline the state’s needs” and to ask “for additional resources.” Said Jindal: “These resources are critical.”

Bobby, do you remember your sad sad response to last year’s S.O.T.U.?

“There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and the enterprising spirit of our citizens. We are grateful for the support we have received from across the nation for the ongoing recovery efforts. This spirit got Louisiana through the hurricanes and this spirit will get our nation through the storms we face today.”

I’m sure your constituents appreciate your foresight in sponsoring the (defeated) Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2006?  Maybe instead of passing the buck to the federal government while simultaneously asking for federal bucks,  you can harness the amorphous cajun spirit of LA residents to stop the current oil leak.

About the time that Alabama, Florida and Mississippi were asking for more federal help, three small-government Republican senators, Richard Shelby and Jeff Sessions of Alabama and George LeMieux of Florida, were flying over the gulf on a U.S. government aircraft with small-government Republican Rep. Jeff Miller (Fla.).

Gotta say ‘what’s up’ to my cracker Slick Rick!  Alright, continue…

“We’re here to send the message that we’re going to do everything we can from a federal level to mitigate this,” Sessions said after the flight, “to protect the people and make sure when people are damaged that they’re made whole.”

Sessions, probably the Senate’s most ardent supporter of tort reform, found himself extolling the virtues of litigation — against BP. “They’re not limited in liability on damage, so if you’ve suffered a damage, they are the responsible party,” said Sessions, sounding very much like the trial lawyers he usually maligns.

All these limited-government guys expressed their belief that the British oil company would ultimately cover all the costs of the cleanup. “They’re not too big to fail,” Sessions said. “If they can’t pay and they’ve given it everything they’ve got, then they should cease to exist.” But if you believe that the federal government won’t be on the hook for a major part of the costs, perhaps you’d like to buy a leaky oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

It may have taken an ecological disaster, but the gulf-state conservatives’ newfound respect for the powers and purse of the federal government is a timely reminder for them. As conservatives in Washington complain about excessive federal spending, the ones who would suffer the most from spending cuts are their own constituents.

There’s nothing wrong with requesting federal assistance in a time of emergency. Dealing with emergenices should be a central part of the federal government’s role. And on a larger scale, it shouldn’t be a black+white choice between Big Government and Impotent Government. It should always be about common-sense, Effective  Government. But do you think these Good ‘Ol Boys will quit the government-hate rhetoric, especially with democrats currently in charge? Despite the clear benefits these thankless hacks enjoy on behalf of the federal government (and you + me), I would doubt it…

An analysis of data from the nonpartisan Tax Foundation by Washington Post database specialist Dan Keating found that people in states that voted Republican were by far the biggest beneficiaries of federal spending. In states that voted strongly Republican, people received an average of $1.50 back from the federal government for every dollar they paid in federal taxes. In moderately Republican states, the amount was $1.19. In moderately Democratic states, people received on average of 99 cents in federal funds for each dollar they paid in taxes. In strongly Democratic states, people got back just 86 cents on the tax dollar.

An accurate motto for the Southern States’ GOP?  Take, take, bitch.

If Sessions and Shelby succeed in shrinking government, their constituents in Alabama will be some of the biggest losers: They get $1.66 in federal benefits for every $1 they pay in taxes. If Louisiana’s Vitter succeeds in shrinking government, his constituents will lose some of the $1.78 in federal benefits they receive for every dollar in taxes they pay. In Mississippi, it’s $2.02.

That may explain why, as the oil slick hits the Gulf Coast, lawmakers from the region are willing to swallow their limited-government principles as they dangle federal aid before their constituents. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said he would “make sure the federal government is poised to assist in every way necessary.” His colleague Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) said he is making sure “the federal government is doing all it can” — even as he added his hope that “industry” would pay.

President Obama tried to remind the government-is-the-enemy crowd of this situation in a speech on Saturday. “Government is the police officers who are protecting our communities, and the servicemen and -women who are defending us abroad,” he said. “Government is the roads you drove in on and the speed limits that kept you safe. Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that caused them.”

But I thought government only stifles the benevolence of the deserving plutocrats?

For the moment, some of the conservatives have new appreciation for governmental powers. “We’re going to have the oil industry folks, the BP folks, in front of us on the Commerce Committee,” Florida’s LeMieux vowed in the news conference Monday. “We’re going to talk about these drilling issues.”

But not before the taxpayer sends some more big-government money down to the small-government politicians of the gulf.

Government always sucks when it’s time to pander to the party base and scare up some campaign cash. Regulatory efforts? Fuck that. Just an excuse to let government interfere with the all-mighty whore we call the “market,” and those purely American freedom-loving-tax-evading Multi-National Big Businesses.

But right now? Get some.