{"id":2023,"date":"2010-06-25T07:24:21","date_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=2023"},"modified":"2010-06-25T07:24:21","modified_gmt":"2010-06-25T14:24:21","slug":"corrupt-gop-judge-refuses-to-budge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2010\/06\/25\/corrupt-gop-judge-refuses-to-budge\/","title":{"rendered":"Corrupt GOP Judge Refuses to Budge"},"content":{"rendered":"

I did not expect Judge Feldman to grant the stay, customary in cases to be appealed.  Either his person oil interests render him too corrupt, or his GOP ideology renders him too activist, or both.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"GOBP\"<\/a> The Obama administration\u2019s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal judge who struck down the administration\u2019s six-month moratorium refused to delay the decision\u2019s effects<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The Interior Department petitioned Judge Martin L.C. Feldman of the United States District Court in New Orleans to grant a stay of his decision, which lifted a ban on new drilling projects and on work on the 33 rigs<\/strong> already in place in the Gulf. <\/p>\n

But Judge Feldman said he was denying the delay for the same reasons he gave for his June 22 decision: that the moratorium was doing \u201cirreparable harm\u201d to the businesses in the gulf that depend on drilling activity and that the government had not given sufficient basis for the moratorium. <\/p>\n

The White House imposed the moratorium in May, about a month after a fatal explosion and fire on April 20 on the Deepwater Horizon rig, which left an undersea well spewing crude oil into the gulf. The moratorium, intended to give time for improvements in rig safety measures, was \u201cblanket, generic, indeed punitive,\u201d the judge ruled. <\/p>\n

Judge Feldman said on Thursday that the Interior Department now had 30 days to comply with his June 22 decision, a longer time than the 21 days he originally specified in his ruling. The government\u2019s appeal of the ruling will be heard by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Ken Salazar, the Interior secretary, plans to reintroduce the moratorium in another version in the next several days, emphasizing why the moratorium is necessary in answer to the judge\u2019s criticism. <\/p>\n

Judge Feldman\u2019s ruling on Thursday, denying the stay, held few surprises, given his ruling on Tuesday, but it did not mean that drilling would resume immediately. <\/p>\n

\u201cDoes this mean companies are going to rush back to work?\u201d asked Andy Radford, the senior policy advisor for offshore issues with the American Petroleum Institute. \u201cThere are probably too many unknowns to get a large-scale resumption of work at this point<\/strong>.\u201d <\/p>\n

Mr. Radford said Mr. Salazar has been talking about a \u201cflexible\u201d moratorium that could be more beneficial than the original blanket ban. It could identify \u201ca framework where companies can meet safety requirements and have equipment inspected and get back to work while we figure what exactly is going on,\u201d<\/strong> Mr. Radford said\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Personally I favor a semi-permanent ban on deep-water drilling.  If there is one thing we should have learned from the GOP gusher is that neither the technology to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster, nor the the technology to adequately respond to such a disaster, exists.  Until the necessary research and development is done to provide both, we must not risk another gusher.  If Salazar thinks that meeting current safety regulations, gutted in the GOP emasculation of MMS, are sufficient, he should be fired and replaced.<\/font><\/p>\n

Rachel Maddow and oil industry expert, Bob Cavner, explain why the ban on deep water drilling is necessary, and provide the perspective to show just how absurd lifting the ban would be.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

That\u2019s right.  Only the 33 drilling rigs will be effected, not the 36,000 production rigs.  It will be years before we see one drop of oil from these projects, and that oil will just enter the world market, not provide the US with home produce energy as the GOP Drill Baby Dunces deceptively claim.  Worst of all, since the resources use for response are collective, there are no resources left to to provide even another woefully inadequate response to another event.<\/font><\/p>\n

In light of this, to continue deep water drilling is insane.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I did not expect Judge Feldman to grant the stay, customary in cases to be appealed.  Either his person oil interests render him too corrupt, or his GOP ideology renders him too activist, or both. The Obama administration\u2019s efforts to suspend deepwater oil drilling were dealt another setback in court on Thursday when the federal […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2023\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}