BUSH LEGACY: IRREGULAR BEHAVIORS FROM UNREGULATED INDUSTRIES

Government: bad. Corporations: good. If you had to encapsulate the Bush doctrine, this would have to be at least half of it to be sure, along with regional (Middle Eastern) domination of course. Smaller governments, and corporations given free reign to police themselves; to operate unfettered from government regulations and oversight.

This is the GOP party economic platform. Lower taxes and free markets. Less regulations, more competition. And although this looks good on paper, a mere year after the two Bush administrations we are seeing the aftermath of these doctrines.

Mining accidents with clouds of accusations of unsafe working conditions, as we dig further and further into the earth than ever before. Financial institutions left to operate less with the focus of what is good for the economy and its customers, and more focused on achieving their greedy end game of profit, and we are all experiencing the result of that.

And now we are seeing what happens when the offshore drilling industry is allowed to operate with little to no oversight, without a big government over their shoulder to reign in the profit driven practices of big oil....a gulf saturated with millions of gallons of crude, unfettered from a single shut off valve, which is standard practice allover the world.

So who is to blame...BP? Halliburton or others? Yes and no. Truth is, most of the fault lies in the 2001 energy policy masterminded by newly sworn in VP Cheney. Cheney, former CEO of oil and gas company Halliburton was charged with developing a new energy policy as his first official duty. And he did so with the aid of the leaders of the industry, leaders such as Enron's Ken Lay.

The task force report was based on recommendations sent to Cheney from coal, oil and nuclear companies...many of which were major contributors of the Bush election committee. This report included opening up drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and encouraging increases in oil and coal production and output, along with increases in the development of bio-fuels and nuclear power.

A year later, the Bush administration released their first budget, which stripped renewable clean energy efforts drastically, solar and renewable cut by more than a third, nuclear by half, and energy conservation by twenty-five per cent. And as they did, big oil and coal applauded...they had won round one.

In 2003, research and development for biomass, renewable and solar energy were further reduced by the administration and the GOP controlled congress, while they provided multi-billion dollar tax breaks for dirty energy, along with tax breaks ($23.5 billion) and subsidies.

In his energy policy act of 2005, Bush gave $27 billion to coal, oil and gas, while giving only $6.4 billion for renewable energy. Also in that same year, the Interior Departments Minerals Management Service decided that oil companies, rather than big government, were in the best position to determine their operations environment impacts. This meant no requirements for environment impact studies for offshore drilling.

In his 2006 state of the union address, Bush famously stated "America is addicted to oil," and he was correct. What he failed to point out were his administrations continuous efforts to cater to big oil and the special interests efforts to quash all efforts into clean and renewable energy technologies. There can be little doubt of his efforts, as big oil garnered massive, record profits during his administrations.

In 2008, Bush lifted the moratorium on offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Atlantic and pacific coasts, reversing the ban placed in 1990 by his father. Only this time, they could do so with little regulation, little to no oversight, and an MME department all but bought and paid for with gifts and graft. No regulations, no oversight, no environmental impact studies, no shut off valves, no safety contingency plans.

And here we are....cleaning oil soaked wildlife, hiring shrimp boats stripped of their ability to make a living fishing to aid in the clean up, and listening to the conservatives bloviating about how this is "Obama's Katrina." All they needed was to foot the cost of an emergency safety shut off valve. But, unlike offshore rigs everywhere else on the face of the earth, they chose not to. And there was no one around to tell them otherwise. What an absolute crock of shit.