They told me if I voted for John McCain, the special relationship with the Britain would deteriorate. Man, the Brits aren’t happy.
The vitriol has a xenophobic edge: witness the venomous references to “British Petroleum”, a name BP dropped in 1998 (just as well that it dispensed with the name Anglo-Iranian Oil Company even longer ago). Vilifying BP also gets in the way of identifying other culprits, one of which is the government. BP operates in one of the most regulated industries on earth with some of the most perverse rules, subsidies and incentives. Shoddy oversight clearly contributed to the spill, and an energy policy which reduced the demand for oil would do more to avert future environmental horrors than fierce retribution.
Mr Obama is not the socialist the right claims he is (see article). He went out of his way, meeting BP executives on June 16th, to insist that he has no interest in undermining the company’s financial stability. But his reaction is cementing business leaders’ impression that he is indifferent to their concerns. If he sees any impropriety in politicians ordering executives about, upstaging the courts and threatening confiscation, he has not said so. The collapse in BP’s share price suggests that he has convinced the markets that he is an American version of Vladimir Putin, willing to harry firms into doing his bidding.
Guess that relationship will have to be on hold until 2013.
[Updatea early afternoon]
Barack Obama, most unpopular man in Britain. Glad we have that “smart diplomacy.”
Especially since it was an American contractor, Transocean, doing the actual drilling.
Maybe Obama should apologize to them…
“Maybe Obama should apologize to them…”
Obama doesn’t apologize for anything he does. He apologizes for the actions of his predecessors.
What a double perversion — apologizing for the actions of someone else without authority, or necessity.
By God, that’s a very good insight. Vladimir Putin is indeed an excellent analogy. Thug machine politics, in both cases, and a total means justify the ends philosophy. Plus there’s the similarity in the macho bare-chested personal posturing, too. Brilliant.
So the spill is the fault of shoddy oversight? Then I guess there is a murder, it’s the police’s fault for not preventing the murder in the first place as well.
Give me a break.
Wait a minute, I thought that all of our problems with the rest of the world would be solved as soon as Bush moved out of 1600 PA avenue.
Guess not.
So much for Godzilla’s reading comprehension, but what can you expect of an overgrown lizard? No one said the spill is the sole result of shoddy oversight, but shoddy oversight was obviously a contributing factor. There’s a big difference.
Police can’t and aren’t legally required to prevent murders, but when the police are in bed with the Mafia or drug gangs, is that or isn’t that a contributing factor to at least some of an area’s murders? Hmm?
So the spill is the fault of shoddy oversight? Then I guess there is a murder, it’s the police’s fault for not preventing the murder in the first place as well.
The key difference is that police do not inspect citizens to verify that they aren’t murdering people. An inspection is a certification that the company in question complies with the relevant law.
A tainted meat epidemic is closer.
The source is still obviously at fault. But the inspectors that failed to actually inspect have a whole lot of questions to actually answer.
It’s rather obvious that Barack HUSSEIN Obama has a real problem with the UK – which matters a great deal when somebody with that attitude is US President. This became fairly obvious when he sent back the Churchill bust. It became even more obvious when an official gift to Queen Elizabeth II was an iPod.
Calling BP British Petroleum, when it’s a multinational that hasn’t actually used that name in twelve years, is another such indication. Much more of this treatment might have rather more serious consequences – such as bringing our troops home and letting the USA clean up its own mess.
But the inspectors that failed to actually inspect have a whole lot of questions to actually answer.
I think this is part of the problem. Being forced to “answer questions” is a weak response. Losing your job as a meat inspector and having the respective government agency share in liability is a more appropriate response. This also has the advantage of limiting regulation. If regulation also has liability costs, then that’s going to reduce the amount of it that government does.
God, if the spill is not the fault of shoddy oversight, then oversight doesn’t work. Offshore oil drilling is about the most regulated industry there is, and it’s pretty straightforward stuff, not the kind of weird shenanigans going on in financial derivaties markets, or the highly technical stuff going on with drugs winding their way through FDA approval. It doesn’t, in short, take a rocket scientist to understand what they’re doing out there on that platform.
So if extensive regulation cannot prevent an oil spill — which seems to be what you’re saying — than it can do nothing of any real use, and (1) we should get rid of it, because it’s expensive, and (2) no one should ever again propose the solution to some catastrophe is government regulation.