Smokey's Fingertip

As the debate rages over how much governmental regulation is too much, I recall my first personal encounter with that bullying Federal bureaucracy.

Forty-five years ago, I spent summer working in a meat packing house. The intent was to demonstrate my fate should I flunk out of college. "It's either beer, babes, and books or blood, beef, and bologna, your choice!"

The FDA regulates meat packing. We never knew when he was coming, but at least once every week, the inspector would appear. He would check general sanitation, take temperature readings and pull samples for lab analysis. It didn't prevent us from exercising our Constitutional right to soak the wooden barrels so Oscar Mayer got 370 instead of 375 pounds of meat in each one or add 30 instead of 25 pounds of salt to each barrel going to Seltzer's Lebanon Bologna. It didn't even cause us to throw out the morning's quota of hamburger when Old Smokey lost a fingertip in the grinder and didn't realize it until lunchtime. Smokey's fingertips were all scar tissue anyway.

It did stop us from slipping sliced beef lungs into the bottom of the barrel though and we had to show that we were throwing out the bones, suet, and spoiled meat in order to keep our precious "USDA Approved" seal. By the way, the FDA required that the seal be dipped in concentrated grape juice to make its mark. To this day, I can't look Welch's Concord Grape Jelly in the eye without my stomach turning.

In short, the government infringed on our right to maximize our profit, but it served the public good.

Last Friday, BP's drilling permit application for that well in the Gulf was made public. BP stated that a blow-out was "unlikely" and they had a Blow-Out Preventer planned anyway. The government granted the permit and everyone apparently went out for a beer afterwards. Those interfering bureaucrats failed to ask, "Unlikely as it is, what if the Preventer fails? Maybe you could put a redundant BOP in there or test the first one at the depths and pressures that it will experience. If Blow Out Preventers can't handle the conditions they will experience, how about drilling that "relief well" in parallel with the original instead of months after the first one fails and we give the Gulf Coast an oil bath?"

Old Smokey's fingertip floating in someone's chili is one thing. Wiping out the Louisiana Coast is another.