Anybody remember the "Deepwater Horizon?" You should, they made a movie about it and everything. The oil drilling rig disaster killed 11 workers and dumped millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It also killed the Gulf coast tourism and fishing industry for years.
After the Deepwater Horizon accident, some serious studies were done, and surprise, they found that the deep water oil drilling industry was run about as efficiently as a street corner 3 card monte game. Regulations were lax to begin with, and what regulations there were had a habit of being regularly ignored or circumvented. Newer, tighter safety and prevention regulations were put into place, and for once they were enforced.
Happy endings all around, right? well, no, not reaslly. The Deepwater Horizon occurred back in 2010. The increased safety regulations were Obama administration regulations. And His Lowness is taking a damp cloth to the national Presidential whiteboard, desperately trying to erase every speck of Obama ink. The way he's going, I'm just glad that Obama didn't directly order anything be done in Flint, Michigan, or Trump would have the EPA putting the original lead pipes back in.
You guessed it. Earlier this year, Trump ordered his Interior Secretary, Ryan Zinke, to take a closer look at all of those pesky rules and regulations, which protected stupid stuff like shellfish and wetlands instead of important things like Exxon's profits. The Interior Department just came out with several proposed changes to the current regulations. Why am I not surprised?
For example, one of the changes would no longer require that drilling companies certify through a third party that their safety devic es are properly installed and functioning. I mean, come on already! Like we can't trust them to know what they're doing? The last time was just a bad break. If these changes go through, the only things we have to look forward to is the loss of more revenue to Gulf Coast states, and another crappy movie about a drilling accident. Seems like a fair trade off to me.
Here's the really sad thing. The changes would only save the drilling industry about $228 million over the next 10 years. Let's see, 228 divided by 10 is $22.8 million a year. Spread that evenly among the ten largest oil producers, and you get $2.8 million a year per company. Sweet Jesus, that won't even cover the upkeep on the executive golf course, and the fuel for the corporate jets every year! Just another prime example of the obliteration of every singlt thing associated in any way with Obama being worth the loss of not only lives, but the livelihoods of tens of thousands of people.
Think of the Trump administration as a carnival magic act. Trump is the bright shiny object in one hand, it mesmerizes your attention to it while the other hand is quickly an quietly putting the rabbit into the hat. For all of his clownish buffoonery, Trump is causing serious and lasting damage to everything from international relations, to the environment, to civli rights and more. But it's not getting enough attention, because nobody ever notices the guy with the shovel and the broom as long as the clown is capering around.
It’s here! The moment you’ve been dreading looking forward to. My new e-book President Evil. A common man looks at Trump and the 2016 primaries. You can get it now on Amazon.