Is it just me, or does it seem passing strange that the Environmental Protection Agency and the oil industry safety overseers hold the power to force oil drilling out into deep water, but cannot enforce their own regulations applicable to the allegations of British Petroleum being “a recurring environmental criminal.”
“They (BP) do not follow U.S. health safety and environmental policy,” said Jeanne Pascal, a former EPA lawyer, apparently intending to close the barn door after the horses have escaped.
Government regulatory agencies cost the taxpayers billions of dollars, but these allegations, if true, are proof that taxpayer money was wasted by government employees who failed to do their jobs.
When (If?) Obama gets around to deciding which behinds to kick, the EPA, OSHA and the environmentalist organizations responsible for pushing oil production into deep water where the difficulty of dealing with a spill is increased by orders of magnitude, his list had better include them all.
The massive leak from the sunken rig in the gulf would have been trivial to deal with by comparison to the ecological catastrophe now taking place had the well been drilled on shore, or in shallow water.
Pamela Geller seems to agree. http://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2010/06/09/the-ass-obama-should-kick-is-his-own/
UPDATE June 12
Publius takes the environmentalists to task for their role in the gulf oil spill. While rending their flesh over the calamity, the enviros refuse to acknowledge their responsibility for a disaster that is directly attributable to forcing oil production into deep water. Their hypocrisy is unforgivable.