I have a question: We've all been hearing about the ‘regulatory capture’ of the regulatory arms of government left over from the ravages of Bush years, (starting from the Reagan years, actually), why is no one talking about beefing up enforcement of existing regulations?
The Deepwater Horizon debacle and the majority of the MMS issues are derived from corrupt MMS employees not inspecting or following up on enforcement of the existing regulations, EPA studies, engineering studies, equipment and safety protocols, (as well as letting the oil companies cheat us out of the royalties that they owe for the oil and minerals that they extract from public lands).
It’s generally accepted that, starting with Reagan, the conservatives have been systematically starving the regulatory agencies in order to bypass their influence.
So why aren't we talking about un-starving them? Give them a significant boost in budget, have them hire and train new regulators, by the book, and get the agencies back on their feet and working for us instead of letting enforcement of existing regulations slide, as they have been, and paying corrupt regulators to essentially work for the companies they were supposed to be regulating instead of for us?
Am I missing something here? Isn’t it easier and more effective to fiddle with appropriations and selectively enlarge the staffs of the regulatory arms of departments like MMS, EPA and USDA, etc, than to pass new laws and regulations that may not be necessary?
How likely is it that lawmakers are just doing a sort of ‘legislator theater’ to distract us into thinking this is too hard to get pushed through. Or are they just caught up in things and not thinking clearly? It would create a bunch of new jobs, (which God knows we need anyway), bring in new blood and overwhelm the Bush moles.
Bring in people who would be trained from the outset to take the inspections and other responsibilities seriously. What’s the downside? We’d have new people, who know what the job market is like out there, working for us to overcome the corruption and regulatory capture that’s hamstrung our regulatory agencies past the point of ineffectiveness and well into counterproductivity.
We’re wasting salaries and benefits on too many federal employees who are essentially working for both sides. It’s past time to stop that cold.
And since there are systemic difficulties with just firing the non performers, dilute their influence with new people who are working for us. Dilute the influence of the Bush moles with fresh influx of people who know what’s been going on and are interested in fixing it and getting things back on track.
At least most of the regulations are there for good reason, (to say nothing of the royalties that are owed to all of us). Get the deficit hawks going on the arrears and fraud that could significantly impact the deficit. Claw back some of the literally boatloads of money that the oil companies and other extractive industries are stealing from us on a daily basis.
Small towns are famous, (or notorious), for filling their coffers with the proceeds from speed traps. It’s a tried and true method for raising money, so lets beef up enforcement, especially in areas where the big corporations have the biggest profits and the most egregious records of ignoring safety & responsibility and dodging out what they owe. Make cheating more expensive than following the rules.
The oil companies, in particular, have been cheating us out of royalty payments that they owe us for years; it’s time that we collect the royalties and the fines and interest and dump them into paying down the deficit.
The one bit of legislation that we may have to wrestle through would deal with the oil companies not being able to pass on the fruits of their deception/ misappropriation/etc, on to the consumer. Fines and arrears should come out of profits and not be allowed to be passed on to us.
They’ve been knowingly and systematically cheating the American people of what belongs to us. Whether it’s the actual oil, minerals and revenue, or our safely and the integrity of our environment, (through cavalier management of risks that have endangered so many of us), and so much of our collective resources.
Those were corporate decisions, they decided to cheat, they decided to cut corners to save money, they decided to ignore the risks, they and their shareholders should be responsible for the consequences, not the consumer.
Personal responsibility, right, Republicans? And while we're on about personal responsibility, you may remember Chris Oynes, the head of MMS for 12 years, slunk out and retired just as everything was starting to hit the fan. Haul him back before Congress, he was responsible for his agency and what happened under his watch, make him own it. Investigate his actions, (and non actions), and if appropriate, bring him up on charges of misfeasance, malfeasance, negligence, etc. Fine him, jail him, rescind his federal pension. Since he was working for the oil companies anyway, let them take care of him.
And as an aside, I’m glad that Ken Salazar is still swinging away at keeping the deep water drilling moratorium going, but couldn’t the legal issues regarding the moratorium be sidestepped by requiring that all rigs prove that they are currently in compliance with all regs before they resume drilling?
We have plenty of evidence to declare the projects to be not in compliance with regulations and suspend operations until their status has been reviewed to show that they are in compliance with all the regs, or at least the most significant of them. Shut’em down and make them walk back through and prove that everything’s copacetic before they can resume operations.
They’ve consistently acted in bad faith and the consequences are washing up on beaches all over the Gulf. Make them prove that they’re doing things right before they can pick up and get on with it.
We should put in place a new requirement that there has to be sufficient redundancy and cleanup resources to handle a new accident before they can resume drilling. Since all available resources are tied up with the BP spill, that would hobble the other projects until the current crisis is handled and resources become available.
The red tape involved with that alone ought to take at least six months and probably more, the fines would help with the deficit, and it would be a workable and reasonable rationale for halting operations, since the disaster would have been prevented by the Horizon rig being in compliance with regs in the first place.
We have discovered the appalling number of areas where the oil industry is not in compliance with current requirements, so if they’re not in compliance, pull their permits and make them resubmit them, that’d give us breathing room to start to get a handle on things.
Fine them for the glaring deficiencies in the current paperwork and punish them for the lies, machinations and various dodges that they’ve been using to get around complying with the regulations. The fines alone might pay for much of the expansion.
Why don’t we give the current laws and regulations a fair chance to work before we get into big fights about new ones? The corrupt MMS and other regulators can easily be cast as selfish and even unAmerican, if we chose to reclaim some of the memes that Republicans have misappropriated over the years.
The pocketed regulators chose to protect the interests of big business and oil companies, (and to personally benefit from those choices), over the interests of the American people.
We have gotten away from shaming people and holding them publicly responsible for their actions. We should probably resurrect a certain amount of public attention to white collar wrongdoing instead of letting them skulk away and take up anonymous positions elsewhere with no consequences for their actions.
Investigate them, demote them, bring in new people over their heads, lateralize them to places they can’t do any harm. In many ways encourage them to bail and go over to the oil companies’ payrolls in fact as well as in essence.
Write your congress critters and suggest that they appropriate money to expand enforcement and hire and train more regulator to oversee and collect what we’re owed… Release the Hounds!
House Appropriations Cmte Senate Appropriations Cmte Crossposted from Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.com)