Gulfing for Par

Excuse the witty but obvious pun.

It is currently day 70-something of the BP Oil Spill, or as it is also called, the "Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill" (bit more innocuous), and very little has been made in the way of progress towards ending it. It has become the worst oil spill in human history, and will likely become the worst, if not one of the worst, ecological disasters this planet has ever seen outside of the ice ages. So, the burning question on everyone's mind is likely "Who burns at the stake for this?"

First, BP. During congressional hearings, BP employees testified that parts supplied by subsidiary companies such as Halliburton were to blame (as if Halliburton didn't cause enough grief to this world already); Halliburton shunted the blame elsewhere, and, in the end, no one carried the brunt of the blame. Still, there is confusion as to where, what, and at whom to point fingers.

Obviously, BP is largely at fault. They committed over 200+ safety violations over the past 3 years, all of which were allowed to pass by the MMS (Minerals Management Service). Members of the MMS, if I remember correctly, received over 1,000,000$ in campaign funds and other miscellaneous contributions from oil companies. In fact, there are stories that members of the MMS and directors on the boards of oil companies went out and had parties with cocaine and prostitutes. So, what is the punishment for this mismanagement of power? As quoted on the MMS website, "Secretarial Order 3302, issued June 18, 2010 renames the Minerals Management Service to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE). The name change is effective immediately." Hey, it's a good tactic in some ways; you can't blame an agency that doesn't technically exist anymore. Either that, or coke is a hell of a drug.

There will be some people who blame Obama for such reasons as authorizing the oil spill to "promote green energies" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l9U6Cjodho), or those who blame George Bush, Bill Clinton, Reagan, etc. While each of those names does share a portion of the blame for this crisis, the ultimately culpable person is the American electorate. As a whole, we elected incompetent, immoral men without fact-checking, are relatively dispassionate about serious developments in clean fuel, and allow people who seem knowledgeable to sway our opinions on any subject. Wake up call? Maybe. Call to action? Probably not.

The American electorate is classically apathetic in all matters of politics. Maybe if we paid more attention to politics than to, say, Justin Bieber and his entire life, this disaster could have been averted. Now, in the words of Peter Griffin...


That's all for now,
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