Hello ladies and gentlemen. I am here talking about the Gulf of Mexico disaster that has been going on for over a month now. Many, if not all of you have heard about it in one way or another. This has been a total disaster on so many levels it is a wonder anyone could do anything about it in the first place. BP, Trans Atlantic and Halliburton have done nothing but point the finger at the others as for whose fault it is; when I think it is all three of their fault and others fault as well. The thing of this is is that this all started long before this current disaster and even though I will lay a good share of the blame on the Bush/Cheney administration there is still plenty of blame to go around. This has been something that, like Wall Street and various other disasters, has not happened in a very short time. This has been going on for many years and through various administrations. It boils down to money both from the oil, natural gas, coal and various other industries that have a vested interest in lack of regulation and financial incentives for doing what they are doing and what has occurred over time. How various parts federal government is so, right now, in bed, figuratively and literally, with various energy producing sectors that it is not funny at all and, in this persons opinion, very criminal. But as I stated before this is something that has not happened over night; although the Bush/Cheney administration accelerated the pace of a lot of what the various energy sectors wanted for their own piece of the pie. The Bush/Cheney administration had secret meetings with the various energy sector players and used the veil of “national security” to hide what had gone on in those meetings and the Supreme Court of this land allowed them to do it. Personally I think policy of that nature is not a national secret because if will, over time, be revealed what all was promised and what was wanted to be done. The American people have the right to know some of what their leaders, and corporations, have done together. If it affects their lives and livelihoods it is of the utmost importance that they know what decisions have been made. The fact the Bush/Cheney administration used the “secret” is as good as an admission of guilt in my eyes that they had nothing but foul intentions and were working on destroying what had been good practice and policy before. The sad thing is that until we learn from mistakes like this we will continuously be remaking the same mistakes over and over again. We need to have good strong regulation that has safety as the first and most important factor in anything that is on the scale of offshore or onshore drilling for oil. We need to have safety of the workers as the main priority for safety of people who work in the mines of this country. It is not a question of if we should have good regulations if is something that should not be a question at all. If we do not have regulations that are clear, strong and most importantly enforceable; we are just setting ourselves up for another disaster likes the ones we have now and have had in the past in more than just nature.