Bill Hobbs: “If you think Sarah Palin would do better job than Obama re BP and the oil spill, you’re right. In fact she already has.”

As Governor of Alaska, I did everything in my power to hold oil companies accountable in order to prove to the federal government and to the nation that Alaska could be trusted to further develop energy rich land like ANWR and NPR-A. I hired conscientious Democrats and Republicans (because this sure shouldn’t be a partisan issue) to provide me with the best advice on how we could deal with what was a corrupt system of some lawmakers and administrators who were hesitant to play hardball with some in the oil field business. ...

BP’s operation in Alaska would hurt our state and waste public resources if allowed to continue. That’s why my administration created the Petroleum Systems Integrity Office (PSIO) when we saw proof of improper maintenance of oil infrastructure in our state. We had to verify. And that’s why we instituted new oversight and held BP and other oil companies financially accountable for poor maintenance practices. We knew we could partner with them to develop resources without pussyfooting around with them. As a CEO, it was my job to look out for the interests of Alaskans with the same intensity and action as the oil company CEOs looked out for the interests of their shareholders.

Ixtoc Fire and Oil Spill

The BP Oil Spill is a lot like the Ixtoc I Oil Spill of 1979.

It took ten months to stop the oil flowing after a gas explosion. They stopped it by drilling three relief wells. It spilled 140 million gallons and coated 170 miles (275 kilometers) of U.S. beaches, in some cases a foot deep in oil.

Recovery was nonetheless rapid, and wildlife populations were back to normal in a couple of years.

Some News Agency quotes a marine biologist who provides reasons for optimism.

The good news is the Ixtoc experience suggests the Gulf of Mexico has natural properties that help it cope with massive oil spills, scientists say. Warm waters and sunlight helped break down the oil faster than many expected. Weathering reduced much of the oil into tar balls by the time it reached Texas.

Two decades after the Ixtoc disaster, marine biologist Wes Tunnell sank his diving knife into an area where he had spotted a tar patch just after the spill. The blade came out black and tarry but the hardened surface of the patch was under sand, shells and algae that had completely covered it.

“No one else would know that it was anything other than a rock ledge,” said Tunnell of the Harte institute. “I think that the Gulf of Mexico is hugely resilient, or at least it was 30 years ago. We’ve insulted it a lot since then in various ways.”

The Gulf has also long dealt with oil that naturally seeps from the seafloor. Some experts estimate that tens of millions of gallons seep into the Gulf from natural up-wellings each year, fostering large populations of oil-eating bacteria and microorganisms.

Atlas sostiene la volta celeste, 2nd Century A.D., Collezione Farnese, National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

Claude Sandroff reacts with wholesome indignation to the ritual immolation of the corporate scapegoat by the High Priest of the Cult of the State and his media acolytes.

Obama and his team of thugs are dressed out in heavy boots aimed at BP’s neck. Apparently, oil booms and actionable emergency plans are in short supply in the government, but the Obama administration is buried under a glut of hard heels in a variety of men’s and women’s sizes. And they’re all ready to stomp on BP’s jugular.

Adding to BP’s public relations woes are some of Hollywood’s film geniuses, probably armed with decades of deep-water drilling experience, only too happy to dismiss the exhausted and skilled BP repair staff as a bunch of morons. My advice to the BP board of directors is that they simply accept the third-party assessments of their qualifications and tell Obama, his government, and his media acolytes that the time has come for them to take charge of capping the Deepwater Horizon riser. ...

In the midst of this major ecological calamity, when BP can least cope with major distractions and vile recriminations, Obama’s clueless legal team has decided to threaten the company with a criminal probe. Tone-deaf Eric Holder is unable to pronounce the words “Islamic terrorist,” but he has already unleashed his justice department to cripple BP, essentially labeling it a criminal enterprise. Perhaps Obama and his band of goons need to hear from BP that they are stopping all capping efforts to concentrate on their legal defense.

As a BP shareholder, I wouldn’t be upset. Rather, I’d applaud BP’s actions and even buy more stock with full knowledge that its declaration of bankruptcy is all but guaranteed. It’s already rumored that some of BP’s valuable drilling assets in Alaska might have to be sold off to pay for the Gulf cleanup.

It’s a brilliant idea to sell those assets as quickly as possible. The environmental hit teams have no intention of letting anyone, anywhere, drill in the U.S. ever again. Not in Alaska, not in the Rockies, not in shallow water, and certainly not in deep water. Only the Brazilians and the Norwegians and the Mexicans, and the Chinese and the Indians and the British and the Angolans—only everyone else will be allowed to do that. ...

BP must accept the reality that it is not GM. BO has no vast democrat union base of employees that must be protected at all costs and no mass vote-generating machine to deliver for Obama. They are expendable. They are not even GE, in complete control of a sycophantic media outlet always ready to sing the praises of Obama on broadcast and cable outlets, all day and all night.

BP might become Government Petroleum soon enough if they don’t act quickly. They should offer to sell off their expertise and assets to the Chinese, who at least will appreciate them and use them aggressively. While China’s state-owned oil exploration company, CNOOC, was denied the prize of Unocal in 2005, the United States is in a much weaker economic, military, and political position today with respect to China. Surely a BP sale would breeze through a regulatory review in today’s climate.

Assured access to a plentiful, long-term oil supply is the chief foreign policy concern of China. And BP could revel soon in the irony of drilling again in deep Gulf waters—only this time for the Chinese off the coast of Cuba.

Hat tip to Karen l. Myers.

The BP Oil Spill produced throughout the echo chamber of the American left a familiar narrative featuring some nefarious corporation jeopardizing the public interest accompanied by hints of lax regulatory supervision all leading to the conclusion that, once again, what is vitally needed is beefed-up progressive government riding to the rescue to curb the excesses of unbridled free market capitalism.

Libertarian Sheldon Richman, in the Freeman, explains that the reality of the current situation is far more complex.

[T]his is not just a simple matter of regulation. More fundamentally it’s a matter of ownership. The government has proclaimed itself the owner of the offshore positions where oil companies drill. In a free market those positions would be homesteaded and managed privately with full liability. In the absence of a free market and private property, built-in incentives that protect the public are diminished if not eliminated. Bureaucrats and “political capitalists” are not as reliable as companies facing bankruptcy in a fully freed market. ...

Negligent or not, BP is a player in a corporatist system that for generations has featured a close relationship between government and major business firms. (It wouldn’t have surprised Adam Smith.) Prominent companies have always been influential at all levels of government — and no industry more so than oil, which has long been a top concern of the national policy elite, most particularly the foreign-policy establishment. When state and federal governments failed in the 1920s to put a lid on unruly competition and low prices through wellhead production quotas (prorationing), the oil companies turned to Franklin Roosevelt and the federal government, winning the cartelizing Petroleum Code, significant parts of which were revived after the National Recovery Administration was declared unconstitutional. In the 1950s, when cheap imports depressed prices, the national government imposed quotas on foreign oil. Venezuela was the chief target at the time. (In 1960 OPEC, a “cartel to confront a cartel,” was founded.) Republican or Democratic, energy policy is not made without oil industry input.

In this context there’s less to the contrast between government regulation and corporate self-regulation than meets the eye. Self-regulation in a corporate state does not constitute the free market. When companies are sheltered in any substantial way from the competitive market’s disciplinary forces, incentives turn perverse. Moreover, “state capitalism” and the corporate form – with its agency problem – can produce the temptation to cut costs imprudently in order to make the next quarterly report look attractive to shareholders.

“Putting profits before people” is a feature of state, or crony, capitalism not the free market.

“I missed him even before he was gone.” Steve Bodio remembers long-time Audubon magazine editor Les Line, who evidently had a Weatherby cartridge board and a poster of a Smith & Wesson Model 29 in his Manhattan office.
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Progressive Amnesia: James E. Calfee responds to the attacks on Rand Paul for “not understanding” that state coercion of private businesses was necessary to end segregation by pointing out that the system of racial segregation in public accomodations known as “Jim Crow” was not created by the individual decisions of private business owners. It was put into effect by government through a series of laws passed by Progressive era legislators which were then upheld by the Supreme Court.
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NYT: White House Used Bill Clinton to Ask Sestak to Drop Out of Race.

18 USC Section 600: Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or in part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor, or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.
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Peggy Noonan:

I wonder if the president knows what a disaster this is not only for him but for his political assumptions. His philosophy is that it is appropriate for the federal government to occupy a more burly, significant and powerful place in America—confronting its problems of need, injustice, inequality. But in a way, and inevitably, this is always boiled down to a promise: “Trust us here in Washington, we will prove worthy of your trust.” Then the oil spill came and government could not do the job, could not meet need, in fact seemed faraway and incapable: “We pay so much for the government and it can’t cap an undersea oil well!”