How bush, Barton, cheney and DeLay Caused the Gulf Oil Spill

[white cloud]

How bush, Barton, cheney and DeLay Caused the Gulf Oil Spill and Made Sure BP Will Never Be Held Accountable

http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/how-bush-barton-cheney-and-delay-caused-the-gulf-oil-spill-and-made-sure-bp-will-never-be-held-acc/blog-342675/

[sonias]

1. rolling stone article - very long read but good one too

Rolling Stone 6/24/10 issue
The Spill, The Scandal and the President
(snip)
During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service, the agency in the Interior Department charged with safeguarding the environment from the ravages of drilling, descended into rank criminality. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, MMS staffers were both literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry. When agency staffers weren't joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials. But it was American taxpayers and the environment that were getting screwed. MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil before tracing over them in pen.

"The oil companies were running MMS during those years," Bobby Maxwell, a former top auditor with the agency, told Rolling Stone last year. "Whatever they wanted, they got. Nothing was being enforced across the board at MMS."

Some are trying to lay this all on Obama's feet, but the truth is Dick Cheney and bushie are more responsible since they decimated regulation and regulation agencies for 8 years prior to this spill. They set the groundwork for our lack of effective regulation and response. :mad:

Obama being a real leader, is taking the "buck stops here" approach and taking responsibility. That's the difference. He's cleaned up MMS but it was too late to prevent this major screw up in the coast. bushie would have just slipped through the lamestream media accounts anyway. He's an oil slick of his own making.