Obama MMS director steps down

MMS director resigns amid criticism - The Hill's Blog Briefing Room

The heads are starting to roll! Birnbaum was responsible for approving the TransOcean drilling permit for the Macondo well.

Fox news said she was fired. ;-)

Are you sure? It was approved by MMS in March 2009 and the article says she didn't head MMS until July 2009. Was she the staff reviewer?

Macondo Prospect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

MMS has also come under fire for allegedly lax environmental oversight under both the Bush administration and President Barack Obama -- including its approval last year of the BP drilling project that went catastrophically awry in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ah, you are right, the article was misleading, looks like they have revised it -



I wonder why she stepped down then?

no, the elected officials have allowed the lobbyists (most of whom used to be an elected official) to write the regulations and the policies for the corporations. It is the elected officials who "look the other way" when they have incompetents in positions of authority.

It is the lack of integrity and principles in our elected officials that allow the people to get screwed over by the powerful CEOs of the banking, oil, insurance, drug industries...

and it is the apathy of the people who allow these kind of people to be elected and re-elected....the government is not some wild and crazy thing that is out to get us all--the government is you and me!

It is the lack of vision of elected officials who are more concerned with the next election than they are with doing what's right that lets them believe BP and all the others when they say they have developed "safe technology for drilling' and " spills aren't caused by drilling", ad nauseum...

but, it is the fisherman, and the boat captain, and the waitress, and the rental agent, and the housecleaner who ultimately pay the price with the losss of their job--their home and sometimes their life.

We can sit around and blame "the government" as though it was some demon on high waiting to do us in all we want...unless people decide to hold those elected officials accountable; and unless people work to elect good, principled leaders, then, all we need to do is look in a mirror -- we are all responsible.

Here's the grim reality: the oil spill is merely a symptom of a much deeper problem, one that is our fault, because for the last 30 years we've been trusting the scorpion.

Corporations and governments are one in the same - they are organizations run by people, governed by elected officials, motivated by a quest for influence and control. It is the accumulation of power that corrupts. The more power an entity has, the more corruption you'll get.

IMHO, the only real way to limit corruption and the influence it has on our lives is to limit this control. You can't fix things by taking control out of one set of hands and placing it another.

There will come times in life and career ahead when you have to choose between integrity and more short-term temptations. You will be the press secretary who is asked to lie to the press; you will be the regulator asked to approve the drilling with the Mickey Mouse safety plan; you will be the artist commissioned to make what you suspect is propaganda; the engineer pressed to use the cheaper, unsafe welds; the job applicant asked to cross the picket line; the research scientist expected to round to the nearest publishable conclusion; the spouse tempted to cheat; the physician tempted to schill; the staff sergeant asked to keep quiet; the politician confronted with the focus group that proves how well appeals to racism poll in your district; the pundit offered the talking point; the procurement officer offered the kickback.

In the short term it's always crystal clear what advances you further, what makes you famous, what gets you your boss' job, what gets you elected, what gets you rich.

In the end, though, blood will out.

History has a way of not remembering that some of those Iraq War press secretaries had real talent in the White House press room; or that BP and Trans-Ocean had a real talent for drilling down to find oil deeper than anyone else.

When given the choice between fame and glory, take glory. Glory has a way of sneaking up on fame and stealing its lunch money later anyway.

you're evolving...come over to the dark side

Sounds like there was a heaping mess of trouble in that MMS office.