Obama Parties in Chicago While the Oil Spill Continues

Obama was late reacting to the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It took eight days for Obama to dispatch cabinet officials to Louisiana. Could the fact that Obama received the biggest donations from BP in 20 years? $77,051 in cash from BP. Or more likely because the British are socialist and work for the cause of socialism. Were they given preferential treatment from the Obama regime? Its clear now that the Obama regime simply wanted the problem to go away. It’s clear BP was given plenty of latitude that Shell or Exxon Mobil would not have been given.

No Safety Award this year for BP

Just imagine the political outrage in Washington if it had been an Exxon oil rig that was leaking millions of barrels of oil. It would have been front page news on every rag from coast to coast. Because it was a politically correct and connected oil company only now is the disaster becoming a national issue. A month after the fact for the main stream media. Same political thought that let’s Democrat Robert “KKK” Bird serve in the senate while Republican Trent Lott is stripped of his leadership because he complimented Strom Thurmond at a birthday party. The Ku Klux Klan Bird was in the correct party and Lott was not. BP is a supporter of a world government and Exxon does not. BP gets the favorable treatment in the press and by the Obama regime while Exxon is still vilified for its 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster.
This brings us to the next point. The federal government has been aware of oil spills and disasters for decades. In 1994 the federal government came up with a plan for a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Like the one we see today. Great right? Wrong. We are talking about government. Yes the federal government. The same government where federal workers were watching porn at the Security and Exchange Commission while things like the housing bubble and Bernie Madoff were unfolding before their eyes, well that is if they had taken there eyes off the two people screwing on their computer monitor.

11 Oil Workers Dead due to lax federal oversight and a cozy relationship between the federal government and industry

The same federal government where “The two-year, $5.3 million investigation by Interior’s inspector general found workers at the Minerals Management Service’s royalty collection office in Denver partying, having sex, using drugs and accepting gifts and ski trips and golf outings from energy company representatives with whom they did government business. The investigations exposed “a culture of ethical failure” and an agency rife with conflicts of interest, Inspector General Earl E. Devaney said.”
The same federal government that spends millions regulating off shore drilling but apparently our workers have four times the death rate and 23% greater chance of accident as foreign oil workers. Sooner or later there just comes a time where you have to throw in the towel and lay off all the useless slugs at the federal level. The oil industry would be much better off regulating itself and hiring private companies to inspect their work. I know it seems strange to some that private industry could regulate itself better but before government and the nanny state it was how things got done. With the coming collapse of the federal government maybe its time we went back to private industry regulating itself.
For those unfamiliar with this I will explain briefly. When a large building is built it requires a lot of dull, hot, boring inspection. Reading plans and counting rebar, piers, columns, beams, joist, concrete, air condition ducts, electrical and so forth. It’s not glamorous and tedious. Most building departments pass on the work because it involves work. Most government workers like to pretend to work but not really work.
Several private companies regulate the codes and materials involved. American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM) provides the standards for the materials that go into the building. The American Concrete Institute provides research and specifications for structural reinforcing. The American Welding Society provides standards for iron structural components and so forth. Private architects and engineers put the project together and private inspectors test and inspect the components. This was the process for centuries with limited government involvement. All private until very recently when local governments realized there was money to be made with building inspection and planning review of projects.
Now one would suspect contractors are villains looking to cheat. Of course some are as with any industry but most want the job done exactly as per plans. Why? If there are problems they want to blame the engineer or architect but the main reason is they do NOT want problems. They want to pass inspection and go to the next project.

In the end the federal government was delusional about both safety and the environment

Who pays for the private inspector? Sometimes the contractor but most likely the client. Private inspectors are VERY motivated to find problems in the early stages while the project in under constriction. At the early stages fixing problems are easy and cheap to fix. Every contractor knows this and wants tough and thorough inspections combined with quality control checks. $100 now or a few thousand latter. It’s pretty strait forward math. Contractors want and encourage inspectors to find any problem they can and discuss it much like a Peoples Court. Sometimes the inspector wins and sometimes the contractor wins. Usually the engineer of record is the deciding factor. The more problems found and resolved the less likelihood of huge problems down the road. It’s the EXACT situation BP is facing now.

It all looks good from a distance. Real inspectors sweat a lot and get up close and personal.

Unfortunately for BP they are in a political industry. Their executives have to bribe politicians and they have to play capitalist or socialist political games. They have the unfortunate situation there the federal government provides oversight. Government inspectors as reported in the Wall Street Journal tend to miss inspections, do sloppy inspections, fabricate investigations and generally perform like a bunch of overpaid federal employees. Because these inspectors work for the federal government contractors are hesitant to complain. If they do they could be inviting retaliatory harsh inspections with heavy civil fines for their insubordination. If it was a private inspector on a private job the construction superintended would call the inspection company president and tell them to replace the inspector for reason X, Y and Z. And that would be the end of it if the inspector was culpable. BP and others do not have this option so when inspections are missed or sloppy they do not complain. And now we see the results.
BP received a safety award last year from the federal government and was scheduled to receive awards for “outstanding safety and pollution prevention performance” before the April explosion and oil spill canceled the event. I have seen hundreds of government inspectors and for every good one there are 10 who like nice neat paperwork and check list done properly. In other words they are useless government hacks that act as parasites stuck to productive members of society. It’s time to change. When the federal government goes broke its past time the oil industry writes and enforce their own standards of conduct and safety.
This is a never ending repeating pattern for the federal government. They come into a industry like oil drilling, air transportation or financial regulation, spend millions regulating, observing and “reforming” and we end up with the same disasters again and again. Some through no fault of the federal government and some the federal government indirectly contributed to because of lax inspection and a false sense of safety and security.
When the biggest housing bubble in the history of man was exploding what were the SEC inspectors doing? Watching porn. When the 9-11 hijackers were boarding their planes what was the FBI doing? Watching prostitutes in New Orleans. When BP was building a cheaper oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico what was the Minerals Management Service employees doing? Screwing industry representatives, blowing off inspections and handing out safety awards. Anyone seeing a pattern? The federal government is useless in protecting the people, cost taxpayers huge amounts of wasted dollars and can cause more harm than good by giving people and industries a false sense of security.
Our president will be in Chicago this Memorial Day Weekend living it up with America’s equivalent of Marie Antoinette while Vice President Joe Biden honors our dead soldiers in Washington DC. The Republicans sold out again on financial regulation. When it’s time to clear the incompetents away from the feeding trough lets remember this incident in the Gulf and let private industry regulate private industry. For the sake of the children, seagulls, shrimp and all other life forms. The industry is too important and our Eco system is too important to rely on the federal government for assistance in helping preserve our habitat. Three strikes and your out.