I guess this gives the "just plug the damn hole" comment new meaning.

y'know... I work for a gov contractor, and a big 'un... and we are explicitly forbidden from giving anyone, ANYTHING... when we go out to lunch with our gov counterparts, everyone pays their own way.

This idea is hammered into you over, and over, and over...

I could imagine some less ethical people will always grease palms, or accept being greased, but this still seems systemic. When it is proven, business should be pulled, end of story.

I'm not sure how corruption within the Minerals Management Service is the fault of the Obama Administration. Some people interpret this incident as an indictment of the oil companies - others, of offshore drilling (Sarah Palin may still think that onshore drilling is a great idea).

Folks on this list would probably agree with Palin, being somewhat pro-fossil-fuel.

And the porn and the corruption is still separate issue from both the loss of life (the workers) and the environmental disaster itself. Do any of you see that as a tragedy? Anyone here who makes a livelihood off of that area's natural resources?

vi said "the porn and the corruption is still separate issue from both the loss of life (the workers) and the environmental disaster itself."

Actually, it's not a separate issue -- the corruption ran so deep that in many cases the oil rigs were allowed to do their OWN safety inspections, writing their reports in pencil, with the designated "inspectors" later writing over them in ink and turning them in. There was NO oversight in much of this, and many a blind eye was turned to egregious (and ultimately lethal) misconduct. Agency officials often inquired about jobs with the oil companies, and then continued their putative "oversight" activities while actively courting their future employers. The report points to at least one case in which an inspector found sixteen problems prior to beginning these negotiations, and then, during the remainder of her term as an inspector (i.e., before she went over to the oil company as a highly-compensated employee), found NO violations.

Let's blame Obama because this has never happened before (*cough*)Connecticut Yankee(*cough*).

Government is corrupt because those who are corruptible pursue power without merit. Hiring regulators and giving them no public oversight is a recipe for disaster.

"Anyone here who makes a livelihood off of that area's natural resources?"

I do, and this is devastating for my business (tourism), and this accident was entirely preventable. BP has a long history of lax safety and willful negligence for the sake of pure greed. I attended a meeting last night, sponsored by a law firm that has sued BP Oil for many failures like this. It was only a matter of time, as they consistently put profit ahead of safety and no one was properly regulating them.

And I support oil drilling. I mean, it's hypocritical not to, as we all depend on it, yet, of course, no one wants it in their backyard.

But it needs to be safe, and these oil companies are in bed with our government. It doesn't matter which administration. The attorney said he'd been fighting them for over 30 years, and he doesn't see any difference whatever administration is in. The oil companies have so much power and political clout it doesn't matter.

Thanks, Amy. I agree with that. We've all kind of been blindsided because the PR message has been so reassuring that it's "safe, clean, efficient" energy, etc. None of us knew how poorly our government was regulating safety.

We have no oil yet, and hopefully we won't. The media doom and gloom has aready impacted business though.

"Hiring regulators and giving them no public oversight is a recipe for disaster."

Just who among the public is educated enough to understand the issues of some industry? I'm having a helluva time just getting an answer to the question, "How do you tell the difference between fact and fiction?" on an online forum I frequent.

For instance: at work, we are about to spend huge money "upgrading" the D/3 operating system on Digital VAX to DeltaV, an Emerson program on XP. The tasks have not changed; the field equipment is not being changed. Only the desktops, 20-year-old 60MHz 386's from DEC, are being changed. Yet the cheap answer, installing VAX on any two modern (cheap) PCs at 2+ GHz, is not even an option. We must spend the money, somehow.

And, if you let the programmers being paid to do this make their presentation, you'll see just how inevitable it is.

You've probably been told all sorts of things without a clue you were being had. How do you stop that?

Rather than comment directly on this story I'd like to pull back to a birdseye view and make a general comment . . .

Throughout my life I've had countless public sector lifers tell me with the greatest of sincerity that:

- Most everyone who works in the private sector does so out of greed and that the only reason they do their jobs competently is to avoid being fired.

- Most everyone who works in the public sector does so strictly out of altruism and the reason they do their jobs competently is because they're working for the greater good.

If a person's mind has convinced itself that either/both of these statements are true, is there ever any point in arguing with such a person?

I was listening to talk radio and a few rig workers were calling telling how the MMS teams would show up on the rigs on the "steak" or "seafood" nights for the crews, but would basically never go inspect the unmanned rigs.