Life vests and fire extinguishers

The new Obama slogan: "No we can't. No we can't. No we can't"

Yes, it's well known that every Coast Guard Petty Officer reports directly to a political commissar in the White House.

They sure weren't delegated the authority to think. They should be schlepping over nets full of fire extinguishers and life vests if they are needed, you know, *helping*.

I guess nobody told them that their function is to help.

John

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Come on Jim! Surely you understand that the faster the clean up the less enviromental impact! Obama must do everything to slow down the progress or how else can MMGW recover?

I doubt Obama personally had anything to do with it. What he did or didn't do after he found out about it remains to be seen -- a lack of decisive leadership there ("there is just stupid, I'm giving an executive order right now that those boats can be out there sucking up oil, and the coast guard can go and inspect them while they're working") would be poor.

It sounds to me like some low-level officer or bureaucrat decided to go on a power trip. Certainly "safety officer" positions like that seem to attract those with Napoleon complexes...

That being said, while this shouldn't have happened, I think the impact is being overblown as well -- those boats have only been working for the past week or two, as I understand it, yet we're now two months post-incident, so the idea is having the boats out of commission for one additional day is going to make any huge difference doesn't really ring true either.

---Joel

Not necessarily. These guys are very well aware that they're under a microscope down there. I'm pretty confident that virtually everybody on the front lines -- USCG, agency, and civilians -- are all trying to help and to "do the right thing."

Any action is going to draw criticism from some quarter, and some quarters will go out of their way to find something to criticize about any action. So, is it better to do it right and not cut corners when it comes to safety or to just wave it off because it will "probably" be okay this time?

I'd sure rather take some shit for insuring that an operation is safe than have to live with knowing that the fire extinguishers they "didn't need" would have kept a barge from turning into another fireball. Some other cut corners and a fireball are what started this whole mess...

If the barge is to be used to contain vast amounts of flammable oil products, I do not think that a fire extinguisher in the hands of every crewman would help.

ZERO fire is the requisite, not putting one out that starts, because if that happens, a fire extinguisher ain't gonna cover the need.

They should be doing surface dredging everywhere, and load up that and any and all water they get with it too. Clean it and separate it elsewhere. There should already be a few hundred barges filled with contaminant.

If not, I'd say that they are just putting on a show till the relief well gets completed.

Yes, this is certainly true.

It's best to understand that extraordinary conditions make it accepetable to modify SOP. In this particular case it appears that SOP could have been modified in such a manner so as to still make everyone happy -- both verifying that the boats had the safety equipment necessary without any significant impact on their productivity.

I expect it's possible that someone suggested the "inspect in place" approach and what shot down by someone else. A lot of individuals will leave it at that, rather than going above the head of the guy who said "no" to make the case the *his* boss. Sadly, a lot of beaureaucracies encourage this -- access to those with any real power to change policies is highly restrictive, and many a manager takes great offense if a subordinate doesn't accept "no" as an answer and appeals to a higher authority.

I'm confident those at the head of the coast guard are just as dismayed about what happened as the general public is.

---Joel

I suppose you're the kind of liberal that, when being shot at, would make sure that you had a proper "duck" permit ?:-) ...Jim Thompson

Pretty stupid, considering that the bullet arrives before the sound does in almost all cases. D'oh!

Coast Guard Halts Louisiana Barge Oil Cleanup Operation for Inspections

Published June 18, 2010 by: Mark Whittington

Bobby Jindal, the much put-upon Governor of Louisiana, had another reason for exasperation as the Coast Guard halted for an entire day an operation to use barges to suck up the oil from the Gulf of Mexico and place it in storage tanks.

The reason given was that the Coast Guard needed to inspect the barges to see that they had the proper number of life vests and fire extinguishers. Of course, the Coast Guard was not forthcoming about that reason until numerous calls to the White House, then the media showed up at the docks where the barges lay idle.

The bigger problem with the Gulf cleanup is that no one person or entity actually is in charge of things. The various federal bureaucracies, the Coast Guard, Fish and Wild Life, the EPA, and so on are tripping over themselves, vetoing things right and left. Meanwhile, various state and local governments, such as Jindal's Louisiana, are trying to get things done, such as the barge operation, but are being stymied by sudden, bureaucratic eruptions such as the Coast Guard inspections.

Question: Was there any reason the Coast Guard could not have inspected the barges while they were in operation, so as not to waste a day while the oil spreads ever closer to the Gulf Coast?

There is no wonder that a recent poll suggested that people in Louisiana believe by 50 percent to 35 percent that President George W. Bush's response to Katrina was more timely and more effective than President Barack Obama's response to the BP oil leak disaster. Bush was hammered through the rest of his presidency over a less than five day delay in response to Katrina. It is now almost two months since the BP oil leak disaster occurred, and President Obama's administration is still spending more effort getting in the way than it is actually solving the problem.

A major reason for the problem is that President Obama is not very experienced in running things. Five out of the last four Presidents had been governors of states, with George H.W. Bush having some executive experience in the private sector. Presidents Carter, Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush had already had experience running things, of working the bureaucracy and getting things done. Carter failed because, despite his experience as governor of Georgia he was incompetent. Now, Barack Obama seems to be well along the track of putting the Peanut Farmer to shame when it comes to bungling and failure.

And, there are still 30 more months of this sort of thing to put up with. What more horrors lay in store for the United States?

That isn't the point. The point is 'no one is in charge', and that Obama does have something to do with.

This might be a place for one of his infamous 'czars' but dealing with a real world crisis doesn't have the panache of taking over the government and private sector.

We already have a record for how he reacts to "this is just stupid" with the molasses in January response to Jindal's request for sand berms: a 'plan' he extracted from the Coast Guard's already prepared response plans but other agencies then blocked.

Jindal originally asked for some 20+ berms, the Army Corps of Engineers finally relented and approved 6, but Allen then only approved 1 as an 'experiment'.

Whatever your opinion about the effectiveness of sand berms might be it illustrates the 'no one in charge' problem and how government agencies are stepping all over each other simultaneously 'approving' and 'disapproving' things while little gets done.

Who said a "huge difference?" It's just one more illustration in a continuing stream of problems due in no small part to every agency having veto power with 'no one in charge', the reverse of what you need in a crisis.

The bigger problem is that Obama has zero experience in business, management, or anything else useful, and has populated upper government, and surrounded himself, with people just as ideological and clueless as he is. Their first, foremost, and last 'crisis response' plan is 'image control' so you get things like Obama blustering about 'kicking ass' and we're doing good because a 'Nobel prize winner' is 'thinking about it'. No offense intended but being a 'Nobel Prize winner' might mean you can unravel the mysteries of quantum tunneling but it doesn't necessarily mean you can repair a toaster... or cap a well.

Ok, so rather than just 'bitching', what would an 'executive' do? The first thing, when it became clear conventional means could not control the well, would be to call upon every industry expert you could lay your hands on to get an assessment of the problem as well as response alternatives and their likelihood of success. That would have told you a real crisis is underway.

The next step would be to declare a crisis, not just 'talk' about it being one, and appoint a high level crisis response 'czar' (since that's the current terminology) who would coordinate the myriad government agencies involved and who, by authority of the President, could resolve conflicting regulations or agency responses. I.E. If the Army Corps of Engineers said yea to an idea but the EPA said nay then the 'czar' could decide which answer prevails and direct the response. (One might suggest that FEMA is already there to do this sort of thing but FEMA seems to be mysteriously MIA this go around).

Make no mistake about it. Almost immediately after the blow out every major oil industry company, as well as nations with experience in these things, voluntarily offered advice and help but, instead, Obama took a 'go it alone' anti-business, anti-industry, anti-free enterprise, "boot on their throats," 'kick ass' approach. And, on top of that, he's gone through all that bluster when BP has repeatedly, almost to ad nauseam, accepted full responsibility and promised to pay for everything, including the extorted 20 billion the President had no Constitutional authority to 'order'. But, what the hell, he had no Constitutional authority to break law in stripping automobile company investors of their funds and 'give' it to the unions either.

Now, one might not trust BP to live up to those public commitments but the time to 'kick ass' is if and when they don't, not before, and the proper venue is the courts, not by decree of our 'Dear Leader'.

If the President were not so enamored with his own ego and 'rule by decree' he could have announced in his Whitehouse address that he would 'recommend' to BP, in their upcoming meeting, a third party administered 'trust fund' and BP would almost certainly have agreed even if for no other reason than public pressure. And it would have been legal, not that this administration seems to give a flying fig.

Btw, just in case no one was paying attention, our Ego in Chief, in his eagerness to show what a 'leader' he is, how he was 'on top of things from day 1' and 'in control', took full and complete responsibility for the post explosion response, declaring that BP couldn't do so much as take a piss without being 'told' to do so, which means it's all on his plate so if you have any complaints about how BP has handled things then, hey: Obama told them to do that and in that way. We know this for a fact because Obama said so and you can always depend on what Obama says.

A "kill-switch" on the Internet is the current bill being proposed by "Independent" Lieberman.

Ain't that nice... the ultimate in censorship :-( ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

I'll buy that, although I don't see any indication that it's particularly worse in Obama's administration than in Bush's or Clinton's.

Kinda sounds like the definition of a bureaucracy, all right. :-)

Anyone who's featuring it prominently in papers, blogs, talk shows, etc.

I agree with you there.

Just wait, any day now Obama *will* start sporting a halo, walk on the water right out to the breach, dive down and turn it off himself.

Chuck Norris will assist, if need be.

I don't think I'd hire Al Gore to cut my lawn. :-)

I believe they were largely emasculated if not outright made into eunuchs after Katrina?

OK, I'm making light of what you've posted here, and since this is a serious issue I shouldn't. I think you make a lot of good points and have good ideas; hopefully some good will come of all this in the end.

---Joel

You obviously know nothing about the rules and laws regarding waterways and bodies of water and watercraft in the US and its coastal regions.

They have EVERY right to board your vessel, and they have every right to require safety gear, AND check to insure that it is there.

The problem was with the choice to do that NOW, as opposed to 'while underway' or 'while on scene' or at some other time.

It's the responsibility of the operators and owners, not the coast guard.

Somebody else, besides the CG, is getting paid whether that work gets done or not.

RL

Rationalize... no - and I'm all for laying the blame where it belongs.

But I would suggest that the actions of the Coast Guard were dictated by their standard operating procedures which have been established for a long time before Obama came into office.

That the SOP of the Coast Guard is not well suited to the current situation has about as much to do with Obama as the weather patterns of

Obama has it in his power to declare an emergency, and to order knocking off the bull-shit. He hasn't chosen to do so. Why is Gov Jindal prevented from berming as much as he wants? It's almost as if Obama want to maximize damage and then play that event in his favor to decimate US energy sources. ...Jim Thompson

That depends on the criteria and it's important to realize that 'doing the right thing' does not always produce a rosy result so measuring by 'how bad it appeared' doesn't necessarily do much for evaluating the process.

For example, you might have built your house on high ground with a firm foundations and, in general, done everything 'right' but have an asteroid fall on it. The end result might look just as bad as the idiot who built his in mud under an obvious rock slide but I wouldn't say there's "no indication" of one plan being worse than the other despite the comparable outcome.

Quite right. It's sort of like dealing with a pile of manure. Do you want a big pile or a small pile?

But in either case you're still dealing with a pile of manure.

Oh come on. Since when did something need to make a "huge difference" to be a feature story?

It would seem that "plug the damn hole" is not one of his messianic "repair this nation, heal this world" powers.

For the 'kick ass' part, no doubt ;)

Costs too many carbon credits.

Possibly. It's a good example for the first comment, though. Bush declared an emergency and pre positioned supplies before the storm hit. That would seem to be 'doing the right thing'.

The problems began when the then governor of Louisiana prohibited the entry of supplies, threatening to call out the National Guard to physically bar FEMA if they attempted to bring them in. Her logic was that if there were emergency supplies in the Super Dome then people would take shelter there and she wanted them to evacuate, except they provided no means for the poor to get out so they had no place else to go. And then when the levies breached there was no longer any way to get the supplies in.

Things would have probably been quite different had it not been for the governor's 'plan' and then there's the matter of the levies state of disrepair being the result of decades of local corruption and environmental opposition.

Obama, on the other hand, has created his own criticism because he's acted "from day 1" as if screaming "plug the damn hole" and looking for "who's ass to kick" were 'effective' tools to solve the problem so when the problem is still not resolved people take his cue in screaming "plug the damn hole" and look for ass to kick: his. They're just implementing his own 'plan'.

No problem. It was good natured lightheartedness.