While the fools Bush and Cheney put in charge of the chicken coop played

The aquatic life in the Gulf paid with it's life. I hope all those oil company funded orgies and those high dollar drugs were worth the extinction of everything, that walks, crawls, swims, or flies, for thousands of square miles. These compromised, "compassionate," "REGULATORS" should be burned at the stake, at the very least. If Darrell Issa wants to put the FBI to good use, he should point them at the Bush regime and unleash them.

Point the finger at Bush, because everything he touched for eight years turned to Shit...I have a specific finger in mind when it comes to the de-regulating GOP. Now the oil company's pet repubs in the Gulf cry for the government to come and regulate the damage the de-regulators have done.

Government officials in charge of collecting royalties from oil companies accepted ski holidays and other gifts from the firms they were meant to be regulating, as well as using cocaine and having sex with industry executives, according to an official report released yesterday.

The inspector general's investigation found a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" operating at the mineral management service (MMS), the government agency charged with regulating oil companies.

The investigation focused on the royalties-in-kind programme which allows oil companies to pay royalties to the federal government in oil and gas rather than cash. It is one of the government's biggest sources of revenue outside of taxes, bringing in $10bn (£5.7bn) a year.

"Several staff admitted to illegal drug use as well as illicit sexual encounters," the inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in a memo to the interior secretary, Dirk Kempthorne, released yesterday. Read More...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/11/usa.oil

"Sex, Drugs, And Government Regulators"

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/05/sex-drugs-and-government-regulators.html

Oil Regulation or ‘Sex, Drugs, and Football’
By Larry Doyle|May 25, 2010, 2:36 PM|Author's Website

The economic disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico is enormous and will have an untold impact on our economy and our environment. This disaster could have been avoided. What a shame.

Where were the regulators? A statement released just yesterday by the Department of Interior highlights evidence that the regulation of our oil industry in the Gulf has been quite incestuous. What’s a little incest without throwing in a healthy dose of sex, drugs, and football as well.

Wow. You can’t make this stuff up. The Project on Government Oversight addresses the issues em’bedded’ in the relationship between oil regulators and the industry in writing, MMS District Manager to IG: “Obviously, We’re all Oil Industry”,

This morning the Interior Department Inspector General’s released a report on the investigation into the Lake Charles District office of the Minerals Management Service (MMS). Ian Urbina’s New York Times story covers the essentials about how regulators did crystal meth, accepted gifts and trips from industry, and allowed industry to draft their own inspection reports in pencil. Read More...

http://wallstreetpit.com/29396-oil-regulation-or-sex-drugs-and-football

snip...

The report explores the Lake Charles, La., office of the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency under fire for lax oversight of offshore drilling.

“During the course of our investigation, a number of MMS employees at the Lake Charles, LA district office admitted to attending sporting events prior to 2007 in which oil and gas production companies sponsored teams, as well as receiving lunches accepting gifts,” the report released Tuesday by Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall reads.

“Through numerous interviews, we found that a culture of accepting gifts from oil and gas companies was prevalent throughout the MMS Lake Charles office,” the report adds.


But it also finds that after an MMS supervisor in New Orleans was investigated and later fired for accepting gifts in January of 2007, “this behavior appears to have drastically declined.” Read More...

http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/677-e2-wire/99725-report-on-drilling-regulators-finds-culture-of-taking-oil-company-gifts-before-2007

scroll down and read the Comments

I have come to hate that term - it sanitizes what was going on, making it sound nicer than it is - it's CRIMINAL ACTIVITYf that should be punished. I say we start by sending the top brass, all of the MMS staff (present and former) to the Gulf to help with the cleanup--along with their families and anyone else who benefitted by that "culture." It's time to pay the piper!

The time for that is long overdue.

We need to "LOOK BACK" to protect us in the future!

corporations are to be put on notice!:eyes:

Instead of the national game of tit-for-tat we now enjoy.

The people who cause the trouble or who aid and comfort the abusers should pay the price. Let the chips fall where they will.

Now THERE is a concept worth adherering to... :thumbsup:

same with the BP managers responsible for the disaster.

Eventually someone will realize that it is now 2010 and the election was in 2008. Until then, go for it!

the republicans had done before 2008, when congress refuses to help out? The party of NO dragged out the health care issue that HAD TO BE ADDRESSED and wasted all the time that should have been put to use on other things that needed attention. I admit that Obama spent a lot of time pissing up the wrong stump when he expected the republicans to support anything that he tried to do. I blame the GOP for it's ongoing full court press to undermine Obama and the people of the United States of America's wants and needs, in favor of winning at ANY cost and support for the corporations that fund the GOP.

Do you not support the democratic party?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6817570#6822982\

If Obama wasn't 'pro offshore drilling' and had taken decisive steps towards reigning the MMS in, I could see cutting him some slack. But, he IS 'pro offshore drilling', and he not only maintained the 'staus quo' but intended to further it. Sorry. He's on the hook.

He was his Daddy's second and third terms.

I know- I stayed up til dawn in Oz to watch Bush get taken away take in the helicopter.

not spare change.