I’m sure yesterday’s shutdown of the LA operated barges was the usual union “safety campaign” crap. Some union, probably the Masters, Mates, and Pilots, dropped a dime to their federal friends that the skimmer barges don’t comply with CG regs, so the CG terminates their voyages and inspects them all. I’ve been through lots of CG inspections. They can be as little as the CG comes alongside and asks you how many on board and asks you to show them that many of the right kind of PFD or they can come aboard and turn your boat inside out – and they don’t need no stinking warrants and you don’t get none of that due process stuff.

Anyway, I’m sure that if Jindal just signs a contract with MM&P to put a union crew or at least a union pilot on all vessels operating under contract to the State, all those vessels will be safe again. And, by the way, they do this in every industry regulated by the federal government; they torture shipping companies, airlines, trucking companies, construction contractors doing publicly funded work, etc.

Now watch what happens with the $20 Billion. If BP is paying, they can employ anybody under any conditions they’ll work under; the only limits being the Jones Act and some other safety regulations. Now that BP is turning the money over to the Fed, it is public funds. Now, we’ll start the union contractors and project labor agreements game, Davis-Bacon prevailing wages, and OSHA and the USCG standing by to torture anybody who won’t play, including the state governments. In other words, that “slush fund” just federalized even the state and local cleanup efforts if those governments want any of that money.

who isn’t licensed, is dumb enough to be operating a vessel in an area crawling with CG and other law enforcement without the requisite fire extinguishers and PFDs. That stuff falls in the any damned fool knows category. At least here, if the CG is only checking for PFDs, they just come alongside and ask you how many on board and ask you to show them a proper PFD, Type III if you’re recreational, Type I if you’re for hire, don’t know the rules for a workboat or fishing boat. To get to fire extinguishers, they’d have to board you and then they check for both type and condition. I have an automatic Halon extinguisher in my engine compartment but it is so hard to see that I meet my extinguisher requirement with handhelds in the living spaces just so I don’t have to deal with showing the CG the Halon.

Anyway, I’m willing to bet lunch that the CG got a “tip” from somebody that those barges weren’t properly equipped so they went out and boarded them. They wouldn’t need to know anything about who built them unless they were required to be “inspected vessels,” and I don’t think they would be unless the CG is trying to call them tankers. Even if your vessel is hired, you don’t have to be inspected or licensed unless you’re carrying passengers or goods for hire. So, this probably turns on legal subtleties about whether the barges are tankers under the law, and whether the oil they’re picking up is cargo for hire. Anyway, this is the sort of stuff that can be worked out with phone calls unless the CG has some reason to want to terminate the voyage; obviously they did, and I think a union contract would probably make these vessels perfectly safe and legal.