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Health & Fitness

Drill Baby, Drill!

View from a Swampy Shanty. An irreverent look at all things considered.

I am sure you remember this incessant war cry issued by the “Palin Crazies” at the 2008 Grand Old Poobah National Convention. (It was enough to make a hungry man “ralph.")  I thought that we had heard the last of that nonsense when the news behind the causes of the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf Coast began to ooze out. News story after news story told the tale of the historical recklessness of BP and other drillers and the lax regulation by federal authorities. The Gulf Spill wasn’t just an accident it was a disaster waiting to happen.

While you and I remember all this, the Poobahs in Congress seem to have selective memories. They had the gall to propose a bill that would have allowed more coastal oil and gas exploration and to speed the issuance of drilling permits to oil companies without the necessary environmental safeguards.

The bill passed the House but was defeated in the Senate with five Republicans voting no — Sens. Jim DeMint, Mike Lee, Richard Shelby, Olympia Snowe and David Vitter. (You may notice that Scott Brown was not among them.)

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The White House — like it did with the House bill — opposed the Senate bill, charging it would undercut new environmental and safety standards the administration implemented as a result of the BP spill. The Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental group, called the bill a "misguided attempt to expand drilling and weaken safety and environmental oversight."

“This reckless bill would allow drilling in sensitive coastal areas even though current safety and oversight laws have been deemed to be inadequate to prevent a repeat of the gulf disaster,” said Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey. Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois said, “You would think that the BP spill never happened.”

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The Poobahs argued that this was a necessary action in the time of escalating gas prices. While this seems to be intuitively appealing, any economist would tell you that it just doesn’t work that way. The price of gasoline at the pump is a function of the international price of oil and a few more wells in the Gulf would have no appreciable effect on the international market. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54678.html

But all was not lost for the Senatorial Poobahs. They killed a bill which would have eliminated the massive tax breaks Big Oil receives. They must have believed ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva who issued a news release that derided Democratic legislation repealing oil and gas tax breaks as "unAmerican."  http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0511/54842.html

One cannot be “un-American," you know - economically naïve, perhaps, but not “un-American." But economic naiveté is not foreign to the Poobahs. The have been preaching naïve economic theory for decades. (See my previous post, “Trickle Down Economics is a myth.”)

Doesn’t James Mulva remind you of General Bullmoose? Remember that old Al Capp character who used to say: “What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the country.”

Some people have no shame.

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