Who's In Charge?

This from this morning's New York Times:

“'The pace of technology has definitely outrun the regulations,” Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom of the Coast Guard, who inspects the rigs, said last month at a hearing. As a result, deepwater rigs operate under an ad hoc system of exceptions. The deeper the water, the further the exceptions stretch, not just from federal guidelines but also often from company policy. So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate. . . .

And when company officials wanted to test the blowout preventer, a crucial fail-safe mechanism on the pipe near the ocean floor, at a lower pressure than was federally required, regulators granted an exception, documents released last week show."

Investigating what regulatory devices the government actually employs, the paper reports,

"Its safety inspections usually consist of helicopter visits to offshore rigs to sift through company reports of self-administered tests."

The line I most remember from Micheal Moore's movie, "Roger and Me," is delivered by a General Motors executive who says that the purpose of a corporation is not to honor its home town, its to make a profit. A corporation's moral compass is guided by the single principle. Who doubts that?

"Financial concerns added pressures on the rig.

BP had fallen behind schedule and over budget, paying roughly $500,000 a day to lease the rig from Transocean. The rig was 43 days late for starting a new drilling job for BP by the day of the explosion, a delay that had already cost the company more than $21 million.

With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded."

Sorry. Two days in a row. But the response from what we call "the citizenry" has been underwhelming. Fishermen who have lost their livelihoods and hotel owners make up the majority of what I have read. Perhaps people are in shock. Perhaps denial. Maybe we're just used to things "working out." I keep reading and hearing that a lot of "good lessons" have been learned from this. Enough to put PayPal in charge of space exploration, I guess. Quicker, Better, Faster, Cheaper.

What would China do?