Previously, we saw Rush Limbaugh suggest the Gulf spill was caused by sabotage by environmentalists to stop drilling offshore (and to avoid major oil spills in the future). Then, Sarah Palin joined in to argue that indeed the oil spill was the fault of environmentalists and their laws protecting the oceans. Now, the theme is being picked up by candidates. This week, GOP candidate Bill Randall alleged possible collusion between the government and BP in causing the spill. Randall is running for the 13th Congressional District seat in North Carolina.
Randall’s comments came at a press conference to answer questions over his military record and educational background. He proceeded however to offer this gem:
“Maybe they wanted it to leak, but then it got beyond what was anticipated and we had an explosion and loss of life,” Randall said. “Is there a cover up going on? I’m not saying there necessarily is. But I think that there are enough facts on the table for people who really need to do so to do some investigative research and find out what went on with that.”
He is opposed by Bernie Reeves, who has challenged various claims by Randall, including that he has a MBA.
My only complaint is that other possible conspirators have been left out of this expanding investigation:
1. Beef producers trying to get the surf out of “surf and turf.”
2. California tourism companies.
3. Hugo Chavez because he is Hugo Chavez
4. Illegal immigrants from the ocean floor
5. Gay marriage advocates who want to direct attention away the end of the trial in California.
Receivership is what should be done to BP.
Screw the shareholders. They bought into a criminally negligent enterprise and that’s their problem for not doing due diligence.
“When BP finally goes out of business who do you think is going to pay? Everyone associated with the company from the COB to the lowliest stockholder.”
As it should be. But their needs to be certainty that their assets go to reparations and clean up instead of dividends and bloated CEO and Board pay for incompetent jackasses like Hayward.
“You don’t think that liability limitation had something to do with the calculus of drilling at that depth?”
Not a damn bit. It had everything to do with preserving profitability. And it was a limit they purchased with graft and that calculation was that it cost less to do the job in a substandard fashion and pay some pols off than to do it right the first time.
“There are plenty of proven technologies that have been used to clean up oil spills.”
And none to contain the blowout apparently. On a rig designed, built and run by “the experts”.
“WTF it means is that the government has no expertise in this type of thing and should have realized it and gotten out of the way and let the real experts handle it, the guys and gals with 30 or 40 years of experience. The petroleum engineers and geologists and people that do this type of thing for a living.”
And right now, the ones working for BP are doing an incompetent job. The bottom line is Byron is that BP (and every other deep water operations) are engaged in an enterprise for which they have no proper safety measures in place due to graft and private greed – like pre-drilled relief wells or properly designed and built blow out suppression systems. They also have no proper technology to deal with a blow out at those depths. The profits they are making from those operations are built on the risks of the public. That is unacceptable. When the “experts” can’t get the job done? There are no experts. When a serial safety violator has an accident? It’s not really an accident. It’s called negligence. They alone should bear the cost even if it bankrupts them but this does not mean they are fit to do the job of fixing their massive greed induced failure. This is a situation an “expert” would have planned for before the first deep water well was drilled. But no. That would have cut into BP profits to do this the right way from the start. If we’d tried to send man to the moon with the kind of logic BP uses? What we’d have gotten was a lot of dead astronauts and half-assed excuses.
TMAXpa:
“That claim makes no sense whatsoever. Failing to decrease is not the same as increasing. If you want to blame something on the government, please limit it at least to what the government did. Blaming government for what it hasn’t done is both illogical and counter-productive.”
Bobby Jindal has begged Washington to allow him to build berms in the gulf, he was not given permission by the Corps of Engineers and the EPA because of environmental considerations.
“Are you saying small government would be better? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? Seriously, you just proved Mespo’s point.”
WTF it means is that the government has no expertise in this type of thing and should have realized it and gotten out of the way and let the real experts handle it, the guys and gals with 30 or 40 years of experience. The petroleum engineers and geologists and people that do this type of thing for a living.
“Given the PRIVATE SECTOR’S failure to develop any of these wonderful ideas to the point they were at all economically feasible (or, hell, just tested in practice), I don’t see how this is a mark against government.”
There are plenty of proven technologies that have been used to clean up oil spills.
“In an unregulated market there wouldn’t be a single reason for them not to drill, since the oil they would get is worth more than the expense of drilling. And obviously there is no cost to destroying wetlands and sea life, in an unregulated market.”
How is there no cost in an unregulated market? They can still be sued. There is also the risk factor, business people don’t just go do something because there is a good deal of money to be made, that is the incentive but if the risk of failure is too great it doesn’t get done. One of the problems is that government limited liability to 75 million dollars and did not fully understand the technology when BP said “oh by the way, no problems we can do it”. They had really nothing to lose. You don’t think that liability limitation had something to do with the calculus of drilling at that depth?
“Now if only BP was a rational person, instead of a legal fiction that limits the liability of every rational person that benefits from BP’s actions…”
When BP finally goes out of business who do you think is going to pay? Everyone associated with the company from the COB to the lowliest stockholder.
I’m not saying that Mr. Randall is necessarily a complete moron. But I think there are enough facts on the table that people need to do some investigative research and find out the truth.
I was just gonna say that I don’t see why people aren’t saying “former GOP candidate Randall”. This guy’s goose is already cooked; not even in SC can you sound that paranoid in public and then get elected. It isn’t what he said, though; it is the crazy “I don’t know, I’m just saying” way he said it.
On the substance, I found I’ve gotta refer to Byron’s first comment.
“[…]there certainly has been a conspiracy of stupidity in trying to stop the leak.”
There has been a conspiracy of stupidity in the reporting. It was obvious (or should have been) from day one that the relief wells are the only way to stop the gusher, and any other efforts were essentially busy-work performed to pacify criticism. It’s simple physics.
Similarly, the reticence of the press to admit that the most environmentally-friendly clean-up method is to wait for a couple hurricanes illustrates the constraints our modern media is under. Nobody will say this, not because it is not true, but because it is politically unpalatable. Our technology MUST provide a way to both cap the well and mitigate the damage; even liberals go all-in on American Exceptionalism when the chips are down.
“From not building berms to leaving containment booms on the shelves, government has increased the impact.”
That claim makes no sense whatsoever. Failing to decrease is not the same as increasing. If you want to blame something on the government, please limit it at least to what the government did. Blaming government for what it hasn’t done is both illogical and counter-productive.
“There is no grand cabal but this is certainly an example of the ineffectiveness of big government to handle significant problems in an efficient manner.”
Are you saying small government would be better? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN? Seriously, you just proved Mespo’s point.
“There have been so many private sector ideas, from straw to hair, to various machines that separate oil and water and none have been used to this point. It is the same old same old-use dispersant and prayer and maybe it will go away.”
Given the PRIVATE SECTOR’S failure to develop any of these wonderful ideas to the point they were at all economically feasible (or, hell, just tested in practice), I don’t see how this is a mark against government.
“In an unregulated market where companies were not subsidized by the rest of us for failure, the chances of BP drilling in 5,000′ of water would be slim to none.”
In an unregulated market there wouldn’t be a single reason for them not to drill, since the oil they would get is worth more than the expense of drilling. And obviously there is no cost to destroying wetlands and sealife, in an unregulated market.
“Risk is a good thing because it makes people cautious and it makes them careful. At least it does with rational people.”
Now if only BP was a rational person, instead of a legal fiction that limits the liability of every rational person that benefits from BP’s actions…
As long as we’re looking for conspiracy theories to explain the rig explosion/leak, it wouldn’t be California. Think about it: the spill is going to pollute the beaches of the “redneck Riviera.” Those folks aren’t going to go to California instead.
No! They would go to the beaches of SOUTH CAROLINA!!! (Dum, dum, DUUUUMMMM!!!!)
In reality, this is clearly proof of “Hanlon’s Razor”:
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
And clearly the oil industry management, whose decisions caused this death and destruction, are pretty damn stupid. (What did G. W. Bush do prior to Baseball and Politics?)
It seems to me that we have two big problems with politics in the US currently.
1) Our political space is totally imbalanced. We span from slightly left of center to the far right wing. The far right wing likes to point to Rachel Maddow as some wacko ultra-leftist. In reality, she occupies about as far left a position as there is in US mainstream culture, but by the standards of Canadian, European or even Japanese or Korean politics, she is SLIGHTLY left of center. If we make the (dubious) assumption that people who call Obama a “Marxist” or a “Socialist” sort of know what those words mean, then that proves my point. Even looking at US politics over the last century, Obama straddles the center – he’s further to the right on many economic issues than Richard Nixon was! I have a friend of the family who is a life long Communist, now in his 70s. You can hear plenty of “free market” folks who represent the opposite end of the scale from his views on TV, radio and in newspapers. But you literally never find his end of the spectrum represented. Tea pariters think Obama is a Marxist because they literally have never heard a Marxist explain his/her approach. It’s as out of whack as a totally unregulated free market, but without a point of comparison, who would know that?
2) A huge part of the right wing in US politics is genuinely crazy. This guy above is hardly alone. I was doing some research on natural gas extraction in the area where a relative has his farm. A local lawyer wrote a column that was pretty balanced: pointing out that gas extraction was good for the local economy but that waste water spills and “fracking” could permanently damage the local environment and natural beauty. Here’s an excerpt from the first comment on his article:
“Mays is your typical liberal, progressive, godless communist. They want control over everything and everyone with their false premises of scarcity of resources, over population, man made global warming, cap and trade and environMENTALism! They want absolute power and control over everyone and everything! The summary or essence of Satanism is power and control over your brother! Ask a progressive what their real agenda is and they will lie about it. They dont believe man has any place in their deranged scheme of things. To their deranged minds man is an intruder upon nature and they think nature should always be pristine with man not deriving any of the benefits from the plentiful resources that we have in our country. They always lie about their real agenda and if they told people the truth they would be horrified!!! The Biblical view has man as the crowning, the central point of Creation, contrary to the humanist view of man, which has no place for man in their world view! God left these resources for our betterment to make our lives more comfortable and He left plenty of everything till the end of time! Mays and his progressive conspirators, whose God is Total Government, are always complaining everytime anyone drills a hole for gas or oil anywhere or here in Arkansas. The nation needs it’s own energy so we can be a stronger nation economically, strategically and be energy independent and we would be if it weren’t for the environMENTAL extrememists, the liberals, progressives and communist’s who don’t want us to drill for oil or gas anywhere at anytime!”
and it goes on from there. Seriously? Totally crazy. That stuff is the core of the Republican party today. When Republican members of Congress think about legislation dealing with “energy” (oil, coal), aid to Israel or anything having to do with education, they think about this guy, because he is their core voter. The Republican party created their “shadow media” of Fox et. al. to “shape opinion” based not on facts but pure propaganda. Now they’re stuck with the product of that propaganda machine.
How do we get the US out of this without going the route of Rawanda, Cambodia or the central-European-nation-whose-mid-20th-century-implosion-shall-not-be-named-on-the-internet?
Mr. Randall should move to South Carolina … he’s a perfect fit.
Which comes to/from the meme “time is money” which comes full circle to greed.
Dredd:
If what AY says is correct it is an accident caused by haste and a lack of attention to detail.
Hurry as fast as you can is a common theme in the private sector.
This guy is just a fool, he probably doesn’t even know what a meme is, but then there is some debate as to whether or not a meme is an actual concept with any validity.
When beliefs are long-held then something comes along to change all that, one must get into denial and morph the facts, or change the long-held belief instead.
Some folk simply cannot change their theory of the case because of strong local pressures from the local meme-complex.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/06/all-ecological-disasters-are-local.html
I vote #3.
And upping Randall’s dosage of risperidone.
The well was behind schedule and short cuts were taken. I heard a person talking yesterday that works in the oil industry and they were 40 days behind schedule, millions in cost over runs and BP executive management running yesterday. The rig manager/super did not want to start production until the reverter/converter split was properly in place. Haliburton was in control and did what the executive manager wanted and then “Boom.”
Foes this just not make your heart go flip flop.
How come nothing on Joe Barton this morning. He helped, the democrats more than anyone will ever know. I think the GOP thought they’d use the health care reform in the midterm elections. It will be a miracle if any Republican will win election or reelection after Joe’s statement about the BP. These folks in the Gulf get hungry too. Now it seems they can’t even fish for dinner.
“It isn’t limited government types you need worry about but people with a child like trust in the benevolence, beneficence and omniscience of big government.”
*****************
These folks aren’t “limited government” types, like Jefferson. They’re anarchists. They never met a government they liked, and never met a restraint on their licentiousness that wasn’t imposed upon them by a malevolent conspiracy of forces above them. To them, they are the “true” patriots advancing freedom and blithely caring not one whit about the serious responsibility that goes with it. It’s simplistic; it’s arrogant; it’s paranoia — and it sells.
mESPO:
re: Gleichschaltung
tobacco, sugar and trans-fats for starters. It isn’t limited government types you need worry about but people with a child like trust in the benevolence, beneficence and omniscience of big government.
It is funny that you use the German state as an example, I was reading something yesterday about administrative models and theory of governance.
here is the article:
http://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/facpub/18/
So long as we have a faction of reflexive anti-government know-nothings who erupt at the slightest mention of government conspiracies against the people based upon the sheerest of conjecture, we will have politicians who will pander to them. It’s a market effect, with the currency being votes and the motivations of the buyer being either fear or loathing. The problem is not the con man but the many willing to sample his wares. Welcome to the Wiemar. Hopefully we can avoid the Gleichschaltung , but signs are not hopeful.
I don’t think there was a conspiracy to make the well leak but there certainly has been a conspiracy of stupidity in trying to stop the leak.
From not building berms to leaving containment booms on the shelves, government has increased the impact. There is no grand cabal but this is certainly an example of the ineffectiveness of big government to handle significant problems in an efficient manner.
There have been so many private sector ideas, from straw to hair, to various machines that separate oil and water and none have been used to this point. It is the same old same old-use dispersant and prayer and maybe it will go away.
In an unregulated market where companies were not subsidized by the rest of us for failure, the chances of BP drilling in 5,000′ of water would be slim to none. Risk is a good thing because it makes people cautious and it makes them careful. At least it does with rational people.