Oil In The Gulf and Another Dysfunctional Federal Government Agency

Several weeks ago we reviewed reports and an investigation by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) auditors that found numerous cases of SEC management personnel, some at high levels of management (earning over $200,000 a year), using their government issued computers on work time to cruise the Internet looking for pornography. Not only were they searching for pornographic material, they were downloading voluminous amounts of smut to their computers and discs. These activities, according to the auditors occurred before, during and after the financial markets and the economy crashed, dire situations that SEC personnel might have helped avoid if they had been doing their job properly.

Not to be outdone, we now apparently have another dysfunctional Federal agency being identified, this one associated with the massive Gulf Of Mexico oil spill. Matthew Daly of the Associated Press published an article today which highlighted a new government report, from the Inspector General of the Interior Department, alleging that Federal oil drilling employees have been accepting gifts and jobs from the industry that they are supposed to be regulating. The following are direct quotes from Mr. Daly's article:

• An inspector for the Minerals Management Service (MMS) admitted to using crystal methamphetamine and said he might have been under the influence of the drug the next day at work.
• The report cites a variety of violations of Federal regulations and ethics rules at the agency's (Minerals Management Service) Louisiana office.
• Minerals agency employees move between industry and government. While no specifics were included in the report, "we discovered that the individuals involved in the fraternizing and gift exchange - both government and industry - have often known one another since childhood." Their relationships took precedence over their jobs.
• The report follows a 2008 report: that decried a "culture of ethical failure" and conflicts of interest at the minerals agency.
• Several employees cited in the report have resigned, were fired, or were referred for prosecution.
• The report said that employees from the Lake Charles, La. MMS office had repeatedly accepted gifts including hunting and fishing trips from the Island Operating Company, an oil and gas company working on oil platforms regulated by the Interior department.
• Taking such gifts "appears to be a generally accepted practice."
• Two employees at the Lake Charles office admitted to using illegal drugs, and many inspectors had emails that contained inappropriate humor and pornography on their government computers (My observation: there's that pesky Federal employee pornography connection again).
• One MMS inspector conducted four inspections of Island Operating Company platforms while negotiating and later accepting employment with the company.

My goodness, how bad does it get? We are looking at a massive bill for the cleanup of the current spill and massive ecological damage and the Federal employees that should have been protecting us are on industry sponsored vacations, using drugs, working the pornography angle just like the SEC, and obviously putting themselves in a conflict of interest position when they are working and inspecting for the government while they were negotiating for a job from the very people they should be riding herd on. Disgusting. The interesting notation in the report is that some employees had actually been referred for prosecution. You know it is bad when the government cannot ignore your sins and actually wants you to be prosecuted. And this behavior is just from 2000 through 2008, the current Interior Secretary has called for an update to the investigation to bring it up to current time.

These transgressions did not just happen this month. They apparently have been going on for a long time (remember, the report form the inspector general covered the 2000 - 2008 timeframe) and those in upper echelons of the Interior department and on the Congressional committees responsible for the oversight of these functions did not nothing to stop the transgressions and sloppy, and possibly illegal activities. Again this is a prime example where Step 34 of "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" would come into play. It would remove the politicians from the responsible committees for dereliction of duty and replace them with other, hopefully better qualified members, of the political class. There must be accountability for these atrocious Federal shortcomings and removal from their committee posts would be a good start. At the same time, somebody high up in the Interior Department needs to be fired for allowing this kind of behavior to go on for so long, behavior that probably contributed to the lax regulatory environment which resulted in the current oil spill.

Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" also comes to mind since while it calls for year over year reductions in the size of the Federal government, it also calls for a ground up, zero-based review of every government function, entity, and budget. This type of ground up approach might prove useful in identifying poorly performing organizations, rampant pornography habits, and obvious conflicts of interest.

On a somewhat related note, a new report today from the National Highway Transportation Safety Board (NHTSB) now estimates that up to 89 Americans may have been killed from faulty Toyota vehicles. This was another case where government regulation was a failure. We covered this situation several months ago when it was reported that NHTSB auto safety personnel had opened numerous, formal inquires into Toyota vehicles in the past decade or so but all of the investigations had been terminated quickly, with no safety or recall action issued. It was not until it became obvious that there was a problem, i.e. people were dying, that some action was taken. Thus, here are three examples, SEC, MMS, and NHTSB, of Federal entities not doing their jobs. The only difference is that they were responsible for different facets of our lives and so far, it does not appear pornography was a factor in the NHTSB (at least so far).

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