Palin review process

We really shouldn't be paying any attention to her anymore at all...but, Sarah Palin has a new FB update. As we can expect from her, some of her "facts" are patently false. Like most of "Exhibit C." Of the 90 billion barrels she says are in the oil fields in the Beaufort and Chuckchi Seas, only about 1/3 are reasonably recoverable from US shores, and most of the recovery won't happen for at least another decade, thereby having no effect on current gasoline prices PDF here. But that's still a lot of oil and a lot of profit for oil companies! Which is why, even after the Evil Environmental Protection Agency asked Shell to clean up their emissions, Shell decided to comply with the Clean Air Act AND WILL START TO EXPLORE during the summers of 2012-2013, a direct contradiction to her point. But we all know that we can't actually expect Sarah Palin to know what's going on in...uh, well, Alaska.

The broader point, however, is the incessant undertone from those on the right, exemplified (simplified) here:

The evidence of the President’s anti-drilling mentality and his culpability in the high gas prices hurting Americans is there for all to see. The following is not even an exhaustive list:

Exhibit A: His drilling moratorium. Guided by politics and pure emotion following the Gulf spill instead of peer-reviewed science or defensible law, the President used the power of his executive order to impose a deepwater drilling moratorium. [...]

Peer review? Isn't that exactly what the National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling was all about? They looked at the causes of the spill and recommended regulatory guidelines for future offshore drilling permits, which are now implemented. The so-called "free market" has traditionally been founded on the principles of gathering as much information as possible, and taking reasonable action to reduce potential of harm onto others. Nowadays, however, gathering and disseminating information is "anti" industry. Studying the effects of timber harvest is anti-timber-industry, gathering information about how much radioactivity seeps out of wastewater treatment plants in Pennsylvania due to hydrological fracturing liquid disposal is anti-industry, and, after Fukushima, when we begin to ask whether our nuclear plants are well equipped, we will once again be described as "anti-industry" just like Jimmy Carter was when he decided to focus resources towards existing nuclear power plant safety following Three-Mile Island. We did it all for the nookie.