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The Spectacle Blog
Over at Heritage David Kreutzer deals a deathblow to the administration’s claims of minimal impact from its offshore drilling moratorium. In the process he also begs other questions about administration stimulus claims and its honesty, generally.
When reading this, recall for example the Spanish ‘green jobs’ expose, that there the state took at least two times the resources to create a job than the private sector requires, and often much more; a temporary windmill job cost the Spanish taxpayer $750,000 and up.
Further differences accrue, for example that private sector jobs are created in response to demand, means they are better considered ‘permanent’, while jobs derived from government ‘stimulus’ are inherently Census jobs: they disappear the minute the government underwriting does (in Spain, 9 out of 10 ‘green jobs’ created by the state were temporary). That is the peril of politically crafting economic activity.
As David adds about oil, producing it adds another wealth-generating element to the economy; make-work of the type the stimulus targeted generally does not. In fact, ‘green jobs’ typically do the opposite, adding an inefficiency with economi redundancy (no wind farm has ever resulted in the shut down of a hydrocarbon production facility; those are needed as, ahem, ‘backup’ for things that work with about a 16-20% load factor. Transferring wealth to subsidize, or making people buy, vastly more expensive energy also compounds things).
Also for example, what we know about Los Angeles’ ‘stimulus’ experience — 55 jobs created at about $2 million each — indicates that, with the administration deriving its stimulus jobs figure simply from assuming a job was created for every $92,000, well, there should be some burgs with thousands and thousands of jobs created.
That should be easy to find. Possibly even the administration could do so? But, since it is the same crowd willing to see no harm in its drilling moratorium, who can impose a moratorium on a major domestic source of oil while claiming they’re trying to reduce our use of foreign oil, that can so readily change its standards and formulae to support whatever it wants to claim, well, maybe not.
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More Blog Posts by Chris Horner
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/09/18/administration-moratorium-on-c
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MikeN| 9.18.10 @ 11:11AM
You are misusing begs the question.
Oldefarte| 9.18.10 @ 11:39AM
As anyone that is mentally beyond MORON status truly knows, this administration's oil drilling moratorium is nothing more than their attempt to politically punish an area/people that did not vote for their election in 2008. Just as with their lawsuit against the state of Arizona over immigration, they are playing CHICAGO WAY/gangster politics of the baseball-to-the-knees variety. You/anyone can attempt to rationalize their actions any way you wish, but the fact is that they are simply CROOKS. The economic/financial devastation of this moratorium will be immense, since south Louisiana depends upon two elements for their survival.......FISHING and OIL, and this administration know that. Louisiana suffered the first shotgun barrel by the oil spill's effects upon it fishing industry, and now the second barrel of destruction is being imposed by this moratorium. IMO, there should be a complete and extensive of WHO/WHAT caused this oil rig explosion to begin with. Oh, I know about all the new reported causes of cement, drill pipe, gas,etc; but as one who has lived in this area my entire adult life, there has never been such an explosion EVER on a offshore oil rig. Why or why did this amazingly occur just when the current administration was attempting to pass their cap™ legislation? Additionally, the second ENVIRONMENTAL impacted occurrance has now happened with a mysterious fire aboard a oil platform structure in much shallower waters in Louisiana, and is also EXTREMELY IRREGULAR/STRANGE. I'm telling you, it's THE CHICAGO WAY OF POLITICS occurring here!!!!!!!!!!!
mad libertarian guy | 9.18.10 @ 12:30PM
You need to get your head out of the "How to Bake up a Conspiracy Theory" books.
Obama is a menace, but I highly doubt he's, as you clearly imply, sabotaging oil rigs in order to meet some political goal.
And people wonder why so many see conservatives as whackos.
Mimi| 9.18.10 @ 2:29PM
Heh MAD: The O.F. pretty much knows his stuff. He's not into conspiracy crap....So who knows just who he's been in touch with. Nothing this gang does would surprise me.....The SLICKSTERS! Freedom, the engine which is E-N-E-R-G-Y. Why oh why do they insist so mightly on CAP & TRADE????
Oldefarte| 9.19.10 @ 11:25AM
And you sir possibly need to grow some brain cells [or possibly use the common sense that God gave you]. I am not, nor have ever been, a conspiracy theorist. I am [as are most of us here] keenly aware that this administration has legally sued the state of Arizona [and Sheriff Joe Apaio] to prevent them from enforcing their states' (and the federal governments' immigration laws); has turned the US Dept of Justice into a partisaned political machine that only enforces this nation's civil rights' laws when the victim is non-minority and ignores all other cases; that same DofJ fired its inspector general because he was attempting to investigate its possibly illegal dealings with a political operative; whose Interior Dept has [due to this oil explosion] now needlessly placed an offshore oil drilling moratorium which will economically destroy the Gulf region that depends upon the jobs of same; whose same Department has scuttled/prevented the issuance of oil drilling permits throughout the country because of its political affiliation with the extreme environmentalists of the Democratic Party; that has diverted attention to the domestic terrorism threat to this country by having its Army chief of staff label the reason for the Ft Hood massacre as being a lack of DIVERSITY with the military's ranks; who has fired a professionally capable military commander in Afganistan because he critisized the president; who has politically stabbed Israel in the back by its siding with terrorist Arab states in favor of same; who has labeled American conservative tea party protesters that tax support this country and who have served this country's military needs as right wing conspiracy nut jobs [all because they don't believe in liberalsim]; etc????????? No, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I do have enough common sense to NOT PUT MY HEAD UP MY ARS AND TO SEE THE TRUTH! Why don't you try to do likewise????????????????????
Curly Smith| 9.18.10 @ 1:41PM
The Chicago Way is indeed occurring but it's not the way you describe. There was no conspiracy to destroy the rig but there was certainly an effort not to let a crisis go to waste. We can easily detail the problems that led to the spill:
- inadequate casing design
- woefully inexperienced rig manager
- poor decision making driven by a major cost over-run
What we don't know is in what order the calamity occurred and, contrary to your suggestion, the time to investigate is after you've resolved the immediate problem. It does absolutely no good to divert technical resources to investing the why of a problem when you're dealing with the trouble caused by the problem. As yet, we also don't know why the BOP stack failed to operate and contain the flow.
The second platform fire was not unusual. They don't happen "all the time" but they're not a once in a decade event either. When you deal with flammable gases and liquids under conditions of heat and pressure you sometimes have problems. The second fire would have received no notice had the BP rig not failed so catastrophically. Again, it's just another case of not letting a crisis go to waste.
As for no offshore rig ever suffering such a disaster... you might look into the 1988 explosion aboard Occidental Petroleum's Piper Alpha production platform where 167 people died.
Oldefarte| 9.19.10 @ 11:37AM
Curly, You need to re-read my above comments, since I said that no rig explosion HAS OCCURRED ON A GULF OIL RIG IN MY LIFETIME [not on ANY oil rig]. Your referenced rig explosion WAS NOT IN THE OFFSHORE GULF REGION [from an Economist news article: 'AT 9.30pm on July 6th a massive explosion ripped apart Occidental Petroleum's Piper Alpha oil platform, some 120 miles north-east of Aberdeen in the North Sea.....']. Get your facts straight when arguing a point!!!!!!!!!
Curly Smith| 9.19.10 @ 5:29PM
Well, you should know better than the MMS which reported 69 offshore deaths, 1,349 injuries, and 858 fires and explosions on offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico from 2001 to 2010.
Of course if you're not in the industry then you wouldn't know since the accidents happen out of sight from the casual passerby and you might believe the Obama Administration when it says that it's all unprecedented. Why you'd believe Obama is another question.
The scope of the BP Horizon incident is certainly unusual but the fact that a fire and explosion occurred is not.
A link to a relevant Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_platform
MikeN| 9.18.10 @ 12:24PM
YOu are misusing begs the question.
MikeN| 9.18.10 @ 9:44PM
Looks like some new form of spam using the Trackback.
Casca| 9.19.10 @ 5:57AM
"begs the question" is continually misused but you are taking it to a new level. I think you meant "raises other questions".
danny| 9.19.10 @ 2:01PM
oldefart, hang in there and keep it coming. we hear you loud and clear.
danny| 9.19.10 @ 2:26PM
it is perfectly clear that the tactics of the obama administration are the same as the tactics chavez is using in venezuela. it is also perfectly clear to me that a large part of the american electorate has awakened to that fact. hopefully nov. 2 will remedy this problem. hopefully.