Gran’ Ole Party at Interior
posted by Frank Pasquale
Whether sipping wine together at genteel fundraisers, or snorting coke at the Minerals Management Service, the fusion of big business and the executive branch is approaching completion under the Bush administration. To say that the regulators are “in bed with” the regulated is no longer merely a metaphor:
[I]nvestigators [have] . . . “discovered a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” [at the Interior Department] in which employees accepted gratuities “with prodigious frequency.” The report cited one e-mail from a Shell Pipeline representative asking a woman in the royalty office to attend “tailgating festivities” at a Houston Texans football game: “You’re invited . . . have you and the girls meet at my place at 6am for bubble baths and final prep. Just kidding.”
Besides Shell, the energy company employees mentioned in the report worked for Chevron, Hess and Gary-Williams Energy. The social outings detailed in the report included alcohol-, cocaine- and marijuana-filled parties where certain employees of the Minerals Management Service were nicknamed the “MMS Chicks” by the energy employees.
Not only does the system tend to generate enormous rewards for the wealthiest–it also garners ethics awards for those in government:
Just before the Department of Interior’s inspector general released reports that laid bare the oil-and-sex scandal in the department’s oil royalties office this week, Interior won an annual award from the federal Office of Government Ethics, The [Washington] Post’s Mary Pat Flaherty and Derek Kravitz report.
[DOI was praised] for “developing a dynamic laminated Ethics Guide for employees” that was a “polished, professional guide” with “colorful pictures and prints which demand employees’ attention.” The guide, the award noted, was small enough for employees to carry.
I suppose the lamination is very handy for reading while in a bubble bath.
Stalin once said that “one killing is a murder, a million is a statistic.” After the epidemic of lawbreaking in this administration, perhaps we can update that to say “one violation of the law is a scandal; 100 violations are a comprehensive deregulatory program designed to get big government off the backs of business.”
September 14, 2008 at 8:48 am
Posted in: Administrative Law
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Responses (4)
Thomas - September 14, 2008 at 10:02 am
It’s worth noting that all of those involved in this scandal are career employees, not political appointees. They are not part of the Bush administration unless that term now includes all federal employees.
David B. - September 14, 2008 at 11:57 am
You mean civil servants aren’t always upstanding and righteous, looking out for the public interest? Damn, how are we going to nationalize health care then?
Frank - September 14, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Yep, Thomas, the Bush administration has been utterly courageous in its stands against big oil and efforts to bring us energy independence. It’s all those darned civil servants that keep dragging us back to subservience to them.
David B: Yes, the incompetence and corruption of a regime led by privatizers convincingly demonstrates the wisdom of privatization. Your logic is impeccable.
joe - September 15, 2008 at 1:25 am
The effects of this MMS failure to regulate properly were estimated at a loss to Treasury of 53 billion in 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/07/washington/07royalty.html here’s an article with some detail.
My favorite quote from the 2006 article is: “While I think there’s a lot of room for improvement, I’ve not been able to find anything that’s drastically wrong,” C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management, said in an interview last month.
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