winsomebulldog Posted May 22, 2010 Group: Diamond Member Followers: 1 Topic Count: 20 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 732 Content Per Day: 0.14 Reputation: 113 Days Won: 5 Joined: 03/26/2010 Status: Offline Birthday: 04/30/1971 Share Posted May 22, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted May 23, 2010 Share Posted May 23, 2010 Praying! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorningGlory Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 1,022 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 39,193 Content Per Day: 6.07 Reputation: 9,977 Days Won: 78 Joined: 10/01/2006 Status: Offline Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Believer1997 Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Royal Member Followers: 1 Topic Count: 66 Topics Per Day: 0.01 Content Count: 6,363 Content Per Day: 1.12 Reputation: 119 Days Won: 9 Joined: 11/07/2008 Status: Offline Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. Wait a second, MG.... Are you saying that a mega corporation causing a major disaster would.... lie????? You mean that 4" straw they lowered down there that's draining 5,000 gallons a day of the 42,000 gallon a day spill is not ALL they could do???? I just am amazed .... lies, you say?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorningGlory Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 1,022 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 39,193 Content Per Day: 6.07 Reputation: 9,977 Days Won: 78 Joined: 10/01/2006 Status: Offline Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. Wait a second, MG.... Are you saying that a mega corporation causing a major disaster would.... lie????? You mean that 4" straw they lowered down there that's draining 5,000 gallons a day of the 42,000 gallon a day spill is not ALL they could do???? I just am amazed .... lies, you say?? Um...yeah. That's what I'm saying. I'm as amazed as you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winsomebulldog Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Diamond Member Followers: 1 Topic Count: 20 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 732 Content Per Day: 0.14 Reputation: 113 Days Won: 5 Joined: 03/26/2010 Status: Offline Birthday: 04/30/1971 Author Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. I wasn't suggesting that the government perform the maintenance. I was saying that if BP had done the required maintenance that this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. And the government may not have direct control over maintenance schedules, but they DO have control over licensing, inspections, penalties and fines. The US Interior Department oversees offshore oil drilling. They allowed BP to present a report 2 years ago claiming that the chance of a failure like what happened was unlikely. And they said, "Okey dokey!" and allowed BP to skip their detailed environmental impact analysis last year. Even better, they decided that $500,000 was just too much to require offshore rigs to spend for a "deadman's" switch that would have automatically sealed the well. Plus, the rigs already had so many systems in place anyway.... (Oil companies lobbied that the cost was too prohibitive and they don't work anyway! Despite the fact that Brazil and Norway require them on all wellheads.) And we don't need any government commission to tell us that. Nor do we need a commission to sit around debating about how to keep similar disasters from happening in the future. What we need is to penalize companies like BP and Transocean for dropping the ball, so to speak. I've seen more than one report about how multiple issues arose on the rig in the days before (and even the day of) the explosion. (This from one of the survivors who testified about an argument between Transocean and BP on the morning of the event where BP demanded that they rush through the process of installing the cement "plugs" that were supposed to help keep pressure in the well. This was especially dangerous in light of the fact that the Blowout Preventer was not working correctly and needed MAINTENANCE.) So, if they'd done the maintenance that was needed on the Blowout Preventer, then it could have done its job of preventing the blowout that caused the initial explosion and cost 11 men their lives and the largest oil leak disaster in history! How many BILLIONS of dollars of profit did BP make last year? And they were so greedy for more that the didn't want to take the time to either fix the broken equipment OR give the cement well plugs time to set up properly? I don't need a commission to tell me that these things are what caused the accident. Nor do I need a commission to tell me that had the regulatory departments that were supposed to be keeping an eye on the status of the rig done their job (meaning actually made sure there was no danger of an accident instead of just trusting that BP was telling them the truth about the safety and condition of the rig) then the accident might also have been avoided. There's plenty of blame to go around. This commission (like the countless others that have come before it) will just waste taxpayer money. The 911 commission told us what we already knew. We need better security. The Katrina commission told us what anyone with half a brain already knew. The disaster was handled badly and the levees should have been updated YEARS ago. The Challenger disaster commission brilliantly discovered that the o-rings that failed were crappy. Wow, what brilliance, especially since engineers had been issuing warnings about them for years. These commissions are pointless. They spend months doing heaven only knows what, then issue a report saying nothing that amounts to a hill of beans. The ultimate reason behind every disaster I can think of is GREED! No one wants to spend the money to do upgrades or repairs or even simple upkeep. From the government to corporations, the root cause is always a refusal to spend the money necessary to provide even basic upkeep! Worse, nothing changes after these commissions issue their reports. They mean nothing at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MorningGlory Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Royal Member Followers: 0 Topic Count: 1,022 Topics Per Day: 0.16 Content Count: 39,193 Content Per Day: 6.07 Reputation: 9,977 Days Won: 78 Joined: 10/01/2006 Status: Offline Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. I wasn't suggesting that the government perform the maintenance. I was saying that if BP had done the required maintenance that this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. And the government may not have direct control over maintenance schedules, but they DO have control over licensing, inspections, penalties and fines. The US Interior Department oversees offshore oil drilling. They allowed BP to present a report 2 years ago claiming that the chance of a failure like what happened was unlikely. And they said, "Okey dokey!" and allowed BP to skip their detailed environmental impact analysis last year. Even better, they decided that $500,000 was just too much to require offshore rigs to spend for a "deadman's" switch that would have automatically sealed the well. Plus, the rigs already had so many systems in place anyway.... (Oil companies lobbied that the cost was too prohibitive and they don't work anyway! Despite the fact that Brazil and Norway require them on all wellheads.) And we don't need any government commission to tell us that. Nor do we need a commission to sit around debating about how to keep similar disasters from happening in the future. What we need is to penalize companies like BP and Transocean for dropping the ball, so to speak. I've seen more than one report about how multiple issues arose on the rig in the days before (and even the day of) the explosion. (This from one of the survivors who testified about an argument between Transocean and BP on the morning of the event where BP demanded that they rush through the process of installing the cement "plugs" that were supposed to help keep pressure in the well. This was especially dangerous in light of the fact that the Blowout Preventer was not working correctly and needed MAINTENANCE.) So, if they'd done the maintenance that was needed on the Blowout Preventer, then it could have done its job of preventing the blowout that caused the initial explosion and cost 11 men their lives and the largest oil leak disaster in history! How many BILLIONS of dollars of profit did BP make last year? And they were so greedy for more that the didn't want to take the time to either fix the broken equipment OR give the cement well plugs time to set up properly? I don't need a commission to tell me that these things are what caused the accident. Nor do I need a commission to tell me that had the regulatory departments that were supposed to be keeping an eye on the status of the rig done their job (meaning actually made sure there was no danger of an accident instead of just trusting that BP was telling them the truth about the safety and condition of the rig) then the accident might also have been avoided. There's plenty of blame to go around. This commission (like the countless others that have come before it) will just waste taxpayer money. The 911 commission told us what we already knew. We need better security. The Katrina commission told us what anyone with half a brain already knew. The disaster was handled badly and the levees should have been updated YEARS ago. The Challenger disaster commission brilliantly discovered that the o-rings that failed were crappy. Wow, what brilliance, especially since engineers had been issuing warnings about them for years. These commissions are pointless. They spend months doing heaven only knows what, then issue a report saying nothing that amounts to a hill of beans. The ultimate reason behind every disaster I can think of is GREED! No one wants to spend the money to do upgrades or repairs or even simple upkeep. From the government to corporations, the root cause is always a refusal to spend the money necessary to provide even basic upkeep! Worse, nothing changes after these commissions issue their reports. They mean nothing at all. What other option does the U.S. government have? BP is lying through their teeth (and I'm sure they were negligent). Without assigning the blame for the disaster it's going to be harder to force BP (and maybe Halliburton) to pay up. Our government doesn't have the authority to go into a business and confiscate the till; it has to be done through legal channels because we are a nation of laws. This also an INTERNATIONAL problem. What would you consider to be a viable alternative here? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
winsomebulldog Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Diamond Member Followers: 1 Topic Count: 20 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 732 Content Per Day: 0.14 Reputation: 113 Days Won: 5 Joined: 03/26/2010 Status: Offline Birthday: 04/30/1971 Author Share Posted May 23, 2010 Great, another government commission that can spend copious amounts of money and waste countless hours of time doing absolutely nothing. President Obama has named former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, D-Florida, and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly to head a new bipartisan commission tasked with investigating how to prevent future oil spills. Lemme see.... how about we start with actually doing the required maintenance? ---- No committee or commission needed. Just good ol' common sense. And free of charge, too! CNN Report. Required maintenance? The government doesn't own the wells; in fact this one is owned by BP, a British company, and the government can't dictate maintenance schedules on private property. The reason they've called a commission is because BP has repeatedly lied about the extent of the spill and has left millions of gallons of remediator sitting on the docks in Houston for over a month now. Being called before Congress only resulted in Halliburton and BP blaming each other for the disaster (it's an OLD tactic; if everyone is suspect it's harder to find the real culprit). So how do they figure out how to avoid future disasters such a this one if they don't find the cause? The oil company is not being forthcoming at all. Btw, BP is being held accountable for the entire cost of clean up and damages. I wasn't suggesting that the government perform the maintenance. I was saying that if BP had done the required maintenance that this catastrophe wouldn't have happened. And the government may not have direct control over maintenance schedules, but they DO have control over licensing, inspections, penalties and fines. The US Interior Department oversees offshore oil drilling. They allowed BP to present a report 2 years ago claiming that the chance of a failure like what happened was unlikely. And they said, "Okey dokey!" and allowed BP to skip their detailed environmental impact analysis last year. Even better, they decided that $500,000 was just too much to require offshore rigs to spend for a "deadman's" switch that would have automatically sealed the well. Plus, the rigs already had so many systems in place anyway.... (Oil companies lobbied that the cost was too prohibitive and they don't work anyway! Despite the fact that Brazil and Norway require them on all wellheads.) And we don't need any government commission to tell us that. Nor do we need a commission to sit around debating about how to keep similar disasters from happening in the future. What we need is to penalize companies like BP and Transocean for dropping the ball, so to speak. I've seen more than one report about how multiple issues arose on the rig in the days before (and even the day of) the explosion. (This from one of the survivors who testified about an argument between Transocean and BP on the morning of the event where BP demanded that they rush through the process of installing the cement "plugs" that were supposed to help keep pressure in the well. This was especially dangerous in light of the fact that the Blowout Preventer was not working correctly and needed MAINTENANCE.) So, if they'd done the maintenance that was needed on the Blowout Preventer, then it could have done its job of preventing the blowout that caused the initial explosion and cost 11 men their lives and the largest oil leak disaster in history! How many BILLIONS of dollars of profit did BP make last year? And they were so greedy for more that the didn't want to take the time to either fix the broken equipment OR give the cement well plugs time to set up properly? I don't need a commission to tell me that these things are what caused the accident. Nor do I need a commission to tell me that had the regulatory departments that were supposed to be keeping an eye on the status of the rig done their job (meaning actually made sure there was no danger of an accident instead of just trusting that BP was telling them the truth about the safety and condition of the rig) then the accident might also have been avoided. There's plenty of blame to go around. This commission (like the countless others that have come before it) will just waste taxpayer money. The 911 commission told us what we already knew. We need better security. The Katrina commission told us what anyone with half a brain already knew. The disaster was handled badly and the levees should have been updated YEARS ago. The Challenger disaster commission brilliantly discovered that the o-rings that failed were crappy. Wow, what brilliance, especially since engineers had been issuing warnings about them for years. These commissions are pointless. They spend months doing heaven only knows what, then issue a report saying nothing that amounts to a hill of beans. The ultimate reason behind every disaster I can think of is GREED! No one wants to spend the money to do upgrades or repairs or even simple upkeep. From the government to corporations, the root cause is always a refusal to spend the money necessary to provide even basic upkeep! Worse, nothing changes after these commissions issue their reports. They mean nothing at all. What other option does the U.S. government have? BP is lying through their teeth (and I'm sure they were negligent). Without assigning the blame for the disaster it's going to be harder to force BP (and maybe Halliburton) to pay up. Our government doesn't have the authority to go into a business and confiscate the till; it has to be done through legal channels because we are a nation of laws. This also an INTERNATIONAL problem. What would you consider to be a viable alternative here? My original point was, and still is, that these commissions serve no useful purpose. It isn't going to magically give us the right to confiscate BP's (or anyone else's for that matter) profits. But if the regulatory department originally in charge of managing offshore oil rigs had done their job in the first place, maybe this whole mess could have been avoided. There's no point in sitting around arguing about it now. No commission is going to change anything at all. There was negligence on both sides. And this commission isn't just about "assigning the blame" for this particular disaster. It's supposed to determine how to keep the same thing from happening again on some other rig. This is the particular point I was most disgusted by and why I said in my original post that preventing a repeat of this mess is as simple as doing proper maintenance. That isn't something some government committee needs to spend months researching. We don't need to dump hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of taxpayer dollars into determining that preventative maintenance will keep similar accidents from happening. As for determining blame for this specific incident. We don't actually need a commission for that either. There are more than enough investigative departments within the government that could handle an investigation. There were survivors. I've already seen one of them on national TV talking about the mistakes that were made and the warnings that were flat out ignored. His testimony alone ought to be more than enough to determine that BP bears a great deal of the responsibility. I'm sure there are others who could confirm what he's said. It was simply shoddy planning and maintenance, as well as greed and that kind of thing isn't that hard to prove, especially since there are survivors who can say exactly what happened. Now, maybe there would be issues forcing BP and/or Halliburton to pay up. But one thing I do know is that the government could put them in one nightmare of a jam if it held up or revoked the countless permits and licenses they need to continue to operate their rigs. They don't just get to pick a spot out in the ocean and set up shop at a whim. There are all sorts of hoops they're supposed to jump through first. There's no reason at all that the govt. couldn't make those hoops a lot harder to reach. Honestly, I blame much of this whole mess on the way our government operates. Lobbying should be illegal. No massive corporation - or conglomerate of corporations - should be allowed to bribe lawmakers. And this is exactly what happens. BP lobbied to get the Deepwater Horizon approved, succeeded, then, just days before the disaster, was back lobbying to relax the regulations even further. How much would you be willing to bet that if this disaster hadn't happened they'd have won that lobby as well? This whole system is crooked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest yod Posted May 23, 2010 Share Posted May 23, 2010 The Commission is designed to make it look like something is being done and provide cover for BP from all the politicians in DC who have received BP money over many years...with Obama being the #1 recipient. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obama biggest recipient of BP cash By ERIKA LOVLEY | 5/5/10 5:05 AM EDT Updated: 5/5/10 5:37 PM EDT While the BP oil geyser pumps millions of gallons of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico, President Barack Obama and members of Congress may have to answer for the millions in campaign contributions they Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nagwalk Posted May 23, 2010 Group: Junior Member Followers: 1 Topic Count: 2 Topics Per Day: 0.00 Content Count: 115 Content Per Day: 0.02 Reputation: 5 Days Won: 0 Joined: 09/13/2003 Status: Offline Share Posted May 23, 2010 What is telling dear Yod, and what you failed to report is that 77% of BPs total contributions of $6.6million, went to Republicans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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