Out of his depth

With little fanfare, the First Dope has lifted the ban on drilling in the gulf. The ban was supposed to last until December but he needs votes so whatever is supposed to happen is irrelevant. The problem is that – by Government estimates - 10,000 lost their jobs because of the ban. (What are the odds that their number is too low?) It seems that the oil rigs involved are valuable, moveable, and don’t make any money when there are not in use. It is a surprise to no one except the Administration that many of the rigs have left the Gulf. Whether they come back to deal with the additional levels of paperwork the Administration now requires is not yet know – at least not known to the Administration.
The elephant in the room is why the drilling in the Gulf is going on anyway. It would make the environmentalists happy if were to go any, it would make the oil companies happy not to have lay out the additional costs for deep water drilling, and it would make the customers happy if it were cheaper to obtain domestic oil. This is too easy. Drill on land. There are lots of reserves under land that the Administration is keeping off limits. Drilling in these areas can be controlled, is cheaper for everyone, is safer, is domestic and if anything does go wrong can be fixed sooner than the months the under water accident took to resolve