Doonesbury Say What?

[thewayne]

"From time to time there are going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."
-- Texas governor Rick Perry, on possible cause of recent platform explosion and oil leak

Apparently one of the things making this oil spill all the worse was that a special valve (a 'sonic' valve?) that could have stopped the spill was not installed. Allegedly Cheney's energy task force changed the requirement that this valve must be installed in US coastal drilling platforms, because of cost: it's $500,000. That's chump change to the profits of these companies, especially compared to how much this cleanup is going to cost them.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/62899,business,dick-cheney-halliburton-implicated-in-bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill,2?print=print

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-440328

Comments

[silveradept]

Sure, Perry, there will always be acts of God, but if you've taken good precautions beforeheand, most of the time God has to enlist Murphy to make it happen.

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

Oh, come on now. You know full well that somehow they're gonna stick the taxpayer with the cleanup bill. So the $500,000 would come right out of the pockets of the stockholders, and that's SOCIALISM. And Jayzuss hates Socialism, so you can't have it. You got a problem with that? You one of them there commonists or somthin?

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

But the rig is owned by BP, British Petroleum. Shouldn't the Brits be paying for this cleanup?

:-)