Tried to watch at least part of the congressional jeerings with BP today. I mean hearings. Really, shades of Toyota, Goldman Sachs, and GM -- simply a chance for congressmen to bully people. Congress believes it makes them look effective. But it just conjures up bad memories of dodging those kids in high school who used to make farting sounds in study hall.
BP CEO Tony What's-His-Face just sort of nodded and agreed. What else can he do, really? (Well, he could have made farting sounds, I guess. It would have livened things up.)
The highlight of the whole show was a Texas congressman named Barton, who apologized to BP for the federal "shake-down." Of course, then Barton later apologized for apologizing. And then I believe he issued a statement even later in which he apologized for apologizing for apologizing.
So let's walk this back. Let's begin with oil exploration and drilling being a very dirty and dangerous business. I mean, it is. Did you ever try to wash that crap off your hands? It also burns pretty quickly and easily.
So then we also have a bunch of rudderless youth in the USA (or worse, but I'm assuming their sincerity here) who want nothing more but to stand on a hilltop and hold hands with people. Preferably a hilltop wooded with ancient forests. They probably don't mind the idea of living in a cabin in the woods with no electricity. Very few have ever tried it, and they strike me as the type that couldn't survive 20 minutes without a cell phone and a Starbuck's, but they really like the idea of living in a cabin with no electricity.
Beside that, don't you care about the planet? (We need some Pazzo-Pelosi crocodile tears here and a few lonely notes from a violin. Or no, whale song.)
So if oil is a dirty and dangerous business, let's all hold hands on the hilltop and whine to our daddies and congresscritters about it. I know, let's force oil companies to drill 60 miles out to sea in water a mile deep!
That doesn't make oil drilling any more safe or clean. That only gives loony tree-huggers a sense of satisfaction that they've accomplished something with their relatively useless lives. Gives them a sense of purpose and something to believe it, similar to the way they attached themselves to the Comrade.
Oh, but let's also institute a bunch of incoherent and probably self-contradictory regulations for oil drilling while we're at it. That should fix it. But that depends on the regulations.
Show of hands: Ever read any government specs for ANY kind of job or work or product? The government doesn't write specs so much as it creates wish lists. "Gee, it would be nice if we could have a machine to generate all the electricity we might ever need, and it must include: no charge whatsoever; no odor, visual nightmares, harsh sounds, or any kind of any instrusiveness at all into anyone's life, or any animal's life; it must in no way involve carbon or carbon derivatives; no voter in the USA, or any potential immigrants, legal or otherwise, can ever take any offense to it whatsoever." Actually, that kinda sounds like the socialized medicine bill.
I worked at a place once where one of the engineer's sole job was trying to make sense of government specs for aircraft cleaning equipment. He told me that in one case, the interior measurements for one ordered machine were larger than the exterior messurements. Sorta like Dr. Who's phone box.
And even if you do write some barely-rational regulations, if your regulators are sharing porn and body fluids with oil industry lobbyists, the regulations just might not mean very much to anyone. I mean, hey, poring over documents that feature quadratic equations and all that crap isn't half as much fun as a lap dance in the bowels of some federal agency, is it?
Toss in the Comrade, who regards his duties as Chief Executive of the USA as being uncannily similar to those of a Cowboys cheerleader, assuming Chairman Mao is the quarterback, and voila! We have the most destructive industrial accident in history.
Congress makes me sick, and they seem to be deliberately working toward that goal. But BP hasn't been much more effective. However, it is "British" Petroleum, isn't it? They know exactly how to function in a socialist political environment, which is to say -- sidestep the rules, buy off the regulators with X-rated vids and the occasional blow job. Then smile in everyone's face and tell them "I don't know." And why develop a disaster plan for the Gulf of Mexico when the plan used in Alaska fills just as many pages? No one's going to bother to look at it anyway.
And so what is the answer from the blockheads in congress and in the White House? Regulation has failed! What we need is regulation!
To borrow from Dr. Phil: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
What we need is people with some intellectual capacity and boots-on-the-ground experience. None of the above-mentioned need apply.
And exactly why the hell are people waiting for government approvals on things? Just do it, you know? Got an idea to help the clean-up? Just do it. You certainly can't made a bigger mess.
Save the republic.
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