Thursday, May 27, 2010

On liberal oil spill rants

In response to a liberal rant on Obama's inaction and the innate evil of BP (and their alleged inaction, being far to busy rampaging in a Scrooge McDuck-like vault to actually respond the Gulf oil spill).

For good or ill, regulations are seldom *ever* forward looking.

They most often are formulated in a post-disaster/post-political embarrassment environment where "looking busy and important" does more for a politicians chances of re-election or a bureaucrats chances of advancement than "Let's sit down, think this through, and after a detailed analysis of what we could do better next time, examine all the worst case scenarios we can imagine, and *based in reason and on evidence* develop a set of precautions, reaction procedures, and oversight abilities that give us a better bet against this kind of disaster, or barring that, cleaning up the next one"

"Let's just do something, dammit!" feels good, but can and often does lead to making things worse. And frankly, the last thing the experts on the scene need (the BP folks who *do this for a living and for whom making it work is a livelihood*) is the nightmare of a presidential visit with all the security drama, distractions, and strains on already stressed resources. (ed., not to mention that if the frontline oil folks screw up, they are ALSO at the front of the line to get suddenly dead in the event of a rig accident...it seems reasonably to suspect a certain enthusiasm for care, caution, and safety.)

I may not like or support Obama, but staying away is the best thing he can do in this instance. A Presidential visit isn't always a beneficial thing.

1 comment:

Justin Buist said...

"ed., not to mention that if the frontline oil folks screw up, they are ALSO at the front of the line to get suddenly dead in the event of a rig accident...it seems reasonably to suspect a certain enthusiasm for care, caution, and safety."

I was reading today that 11 hours before the accident those guys were telling the higher ups that there was a problem. They were over-ruled and now some of them are dead.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704717004575268302434395796.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news