E. Barry Bruyea
2010-06-16 19:10:56 UTC
On Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:31:36 +0000 (UTC), "Leroy N. Soetoro"
attitude' toward security was responsible for 9/11?
http://www.pollingreport.com/
by Matthew Yglesias Info
Matthew Yglesias
The GOP rushed to brand the Gulf Coast disaster "Obama's Katrina." But new
reports make clear the Bush administration's lax attitude toward
regulation deserves much of the blame.
Why is that the democrats never bought the line that Clinton's 'laxby Matthew Yglesias Info
Matthew Yglesias
The GOP rushed to brand the Gulf Coast disaster "Obama's Katrina." But new
reports make clear the Bush administration's lax attitude toward
regulation deserves much of the blame.
attitude' toward security was responsible for 9/11?
Ever since the great oil price spike of 2008, conservatives have been
riding a tide of pro-drilling sentiment to shore up their message on
energy issues. Environmentalists had done a decent job in earlier years of
framing their concerns about fossil-fuel use in part in terms of energy
"independence" and "security," rhetoric that was turned on its head by
efforts like Newt Gingrich's "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" slogan. The
push was so successful that the Obama administration somewhat reluctantly
came around to the pro-drilling viewpoint, just in time for the largest
oil spill in human history to hit the Gulf of Mexicopushing public
support for drilling down for the first time in years. This left the hard-
core drillers of the right like Gingrich and Karl Rove to grasp for the
argument that the spill is somehow "Obama's Katrina"a charge so absurd
that even Fox News hosts won't buy it. Meanwhile, new revelations in
Friday's New York Times reveal that something closer to the reverse is the
truththe Deepwater Horizon fiasco is yet another consequence of George W.
Bush's corruption and incompetence.
The dysfunctional attitude of MMS managers reflected problems that were
deeply ingrained under the previous administration.
The key to the puzzle is an obscure agency known as the Minerals
Management Service, which manages energy resources on federal land and the
outer continental shelf. The mission of the agency is supposed to be to
ensure that these resources are used responsibly and that taxpayers get a
fair share of the revenue associated with their exploitation. But under
the Bush administration, it, like so many agencies, was turned into a
plaything of industry leading to numerous ecological catastrophes.
The key facts have been in the press, but the political implications and
the timeline are still not well understood. For starters, as Juliet
Eilperin reported, back on April 6, 2009, the MMS chose to give the
Deepwater Horizon project a "categorical exclusion" from the National
Environmental Policy Act's requirement for a detailed examination of
possible environmental impacts. What's more, as Ian Urbina reported in the
Times Thursday, MMS also simply ignored warnings from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Association and MMS' own scientists that the drilling
represented a threat to endangered species. Specifically, a September 2009
letter from NOAA "accused the minerals agency of a pattern of understating
the likelihood and potential consequences of a major spill in the Gulf and
understating the frequency of spills that have already occurred there."
Urbina reported that a half-dozen current or former MMS scientists told
him that "managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists
whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling."
Christopher Brownfield: Nuke the Oil Spill
View Our Gallery of the Gulf of Mexico Oil SpillBy 2009, of course,
Barack Obama was already in the White House. But it takes time to staff an
administration and take charge of an agency. Current MMS director Liz
Birnbaum didn't take office until July 2009, months after the exclusion
was granted. More to the point, the dysfunctional attitude of MMS managers
reflected problems that were deeply ingrained under the previous
administration.
Consider, for example, the fiasco of the Royalty in Kind program. The saga
starts back in 1997 when, under Bill Clinton, the government cared about
doing things properly. At this point in time, MMS responded to evidence
that energy interests were underpaying royalties to the federal government
by proposing a more stringent rule to collect Royalties in Value (RIV),
i.e., money from drillers and miners. Industry didn't like that and
countered instead with a proposal to pay Royalties in Kind (RIK), i.e.,
oil or gas that they thought would be cheaper. The Clinton administration
agreed to an RIK pilot program, but soon found itself out of office. Then
along came the Bush administration and Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force,
which was urged by the American Petroleum Institute to aggressively expand
the program. Starting in 2003, the Government Accountability Office
repeatedly issued criticisms of the RIK program on a nearly annual basis
saying it lacked "clear strategic objectives linked to statutory
requirements" and shouldn't be expanded.
But it was steadily expanded each and every year of the Bush
administration because statutory requirements aside, RIK was great at
achieving the president's objective of letting oil companies make more
money. By September 2009, a new team was in charge and Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar announced the program would be terminated.
The RIK scam, of course, was not the cause of the oil spill any more than
failure to consult NOAA about endangered species implications did the
deed. Both incidents, however, reflect the existence of a culture of
indifference to the substantive missions of government agencies. This, of
course, was the very essence of the Bush administration approach to
government. When a regulator could be staffed by shills for the industry
it was supposed to oversee, it was. When no industry particularly wanted
to own an agency, like FEMA, it was handed over to a random crony. The
results were disastrous and we're still paying the price today.
riding a tide of pro-drilling sentiment to shore up their message on
energy issues. Environmentalists had done a decent job in earlier years of
framing their concerns about fossil-fuel use in part in terms of energy
"independence" and "security," rhetoric that was turned on its head by
efforts like Newt Gingrich's "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" slogan. The
push was so successful that the Obama administration somewhat reluctantly
came around to the pro-drilling viewpoint, just in time for the largest
oil spill in human history to hit the Gulf of Mexicopushing public
support for drilling down for the first time in years. This left the hard-
core drillers of the right like Gingrich and Karl Rove to grasp for the
argument that the spill is somehow "Obama's Katrina"a charge so absurd
that even Fox News hosts won't buy it. Meanwhile, new revelations in
Friday's New York Times reveal that something closer to the reverse is the
truththe Deepwater Horizon fiasco is yet another consequence of George W.
Bush's corruption and incompetence.
The dysfunctional attitude of MMS managers reflected problems that were
deeply ingrained under the previous administration.
The key to the puzzle is an obscure agency known as the Minerals
Management Service, which manages energy resources on federal land and the
outer continental shelf. The mission of the agency is supposed to be to
ensure that these resources are used responsibly and that taxpayers get a
fair share of the revenue associated with their exploitation. But under
the Bush administration, it, like so many agencies, was turned into a
plaything of industry leading to numerous ecological catastrophes.
The key facts have been in the press, but the political implications and
the timeline are still not well understood. For starters, as Juliet
Eilperin reported, back on April 6, 2009, the MMS chose to give the
Deepwater Horizon project a "categorical exclusion" from the National
Environmental Policy Act's requirement for a detailed examination of
possible environmental impacts. What's more, as Ian Urbina reported in the
Times Thursday, MMS also simply ignored warnings from the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Association and MMS' own scientists that the drilling
represented a threat to endangered species. Specifically, a September 2009
letter from NOAA "accused the minerals agency of a pattern of understating
the likelihood and potential consequences of a major spill in the Gulf and
understating the frequency of spills that have already occurred there."
Urbina reported that a half-dozen current or former MMS scientists told
him that "managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists
whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling."
Christopher Brownfield: Nuke the Oil Spill
View Our Gallery of the Gulf of Mexico Oil SpillBy 2009, of course,
Barack Obama was already in the White House. But it takes time to staff an
administration and take charge of an agency. Current MMS director Liz
Birnbaum didn't take office until July 2009, months after the exclusion
was granted. More to the point, the dysfunctional attitude of MMS managers
reflected problems that were deeply ingrained under the previous
administration.
Consider, for example, the fiasco of the Royalty in Kind program. The saga
starts back in 1997 when, under Bill Clinton, the government cared about
doing things properly. At this point in time, MMS responded to evidence
that energy interests were underpaying royalties to the federal government
by proposing a more stringent rule to collect Royalties in Value (RIV),
i.e., money from drillers and miners. Industry didn't like that and
countered instead with a proposal to pay Royalties in Kind (RIK), i.e.,
oil or gas that they thought would be cheaper. The Clinton administration
agreed to an RIK pilot program, but soon found itself out of office. Then
along came the Bush administration and Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force,
which was urged by the American Petroleum Institute to aggressively expand
the program. Starting in 2003, the Government Accountability Office
repeatedly issued criticisms of the RIK program on a nearly annual basis
saying it lacked "clear strategic objectives linked to statutory
requirements" and shouldn't be expanded.
But it was steadily expanded each and every year of the Bush
administration because statutory requirements aside, RIK was great at
achieving the president's objective of letting oil companies make more
money. By September 2009, a new team was in charge and Secretary of the
Interior Ken Salazar announced the program would be terminated.
The RIK scam, of course, was not the cause of the oil spill any more than
failure to consult NOAA about endangered species implications did the
deed. Both incidents, however, reflect the existence of a culture of
indifference to the substantive missions of government agencies. This, of
course, was the very essence of the Bush administration approach to
government. When a regulator could be staffed by shills for the industry
it was supposed to oversee, it was. When no industry particularly wanted
to own an agency, like FEMA, it was handed over to a random crony. The
results were disastrous and we're still paying the price today.