Climate Deniers Get Even Crazier and More Dishonest

Just when you thought the Koch brothers and their sycophants and paid liars could not possible get any more insane in their opposition to accepting the reality of climate change, they roll out a new lie: carbon dioxide is good and that we need even more of it in the atmosphere.  What's equally disgusting is the fact that there are some who for a buck will tell any lie regardless of the long term harm that will be done.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this newest insanity.  Here are excerpts:

For years, the fossil-fuel industries have been telling us that global warming is a hoax based on junk science.

But now these industries are floating an intriguing new argument: They’re admitting that human use of coal, oil and gas is causing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to rise — but they’re saying this is a good thing. We need more CO2 in our lives, not less. 

“CO2 is basically plant food, and the more CO2 in the environment the better plants do,” proclaimed Roger Bezdek, a consultant to energy companies, at an event hosted Monday by the United States Energy Association, an industry trade group. 

This was some creative thinking, and it took a page from the gun lobby, which argues that the way to curb firearm violence is for more people to be armed. 

Another questioner at the event asked Bezdek if he had considered ocean acidification, the release of methane gases, pollution and other side effects of rising CO2. This did not trouble him. “As you develop and you become wealthier,” he explained, “you have the wealth to clean up the mess.” He went on to point out that “35,000 people every year in the United States die in automobile accidents, but the solution is not to ban automobiles. You try to make them safer.”

The U.S. Energy Association membership comes from various sectors but includes big petroleum companies and utilities. Bezdek seemed to have a special place in his heart for coal, “the major world energy source of the past, present and future . . . lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.”

The presentation began as a standard recitation of the climate-change denial position, that “there’s been no global warming for almost two decades” and that forecasts are “based on flawed science.”

Expect these folks to be major donors to Republican candidates.  Note that the threat rising sea levels pose to many American cities was not even mentioned.

Natural Gas is Not America's Energy Solution

The oil and gas industry, rather than diversifying and investing heavily in solar and wind power, continues to chant a mantra of "drill, baby drill" like the cretin from Alaska so popular with brain dead Republicans.   A new part of that mantra is that natural gas is going to deliver America from foreign oil dependence and save the environment.  Like much of what comes out of the oil and gas industry the ads run by Exxon, BP, and the Petroleum Institute don't tell all of the story.  As I not in my not yet published October column in VEER Magazine, I was once an in-house lawyer for an oil company, so I understand the intricacies of oil and gas exploration and the side effects of secondary and tertiary recovery not t mention fracking.   A column in the Roanoke Times calls attention to some of the ignored costs of the natural gas obsession.  Here are highlights:

Natural gas is indisputably cleaner and cheaper than oil or coal, a factor that makes it desirable for a nation that, until now, has been fearful of being dependent on foreign energy sources. Our country has been energized by the natural gas boom, which may not peak until 2030, allowing us to sell some of this valuable fuel, whose smaller carbon footprint makes it desirable worldwide, especially to our European friends who are tied to Russian energy sources and their unpredictable reliability.

To find the true cost of natural gas, however, requires including ancillary costs that are not part of the business model: the cost that communities accrue in their doing or having done business with the power companies; the unbudgeted costs of disaster clean-up; reduced land values where pipelines cross; remediation of by-spills from leaking pipes that invade the water table.

Ryan Hankins, in his Aug. 21 commentary (“Don’t blindly oppose pipeline based on fear”), asks us not to “blindly oppose” the Mountain Valley Pipeline “based on fear.” It would be a blessing to be “blind,” to not know so much about the havoc being wrought by this industry The pipeline to which he refers is but one of many “straws” sucking from the Marcellus Shale, siphoning off the dwindling supply of natural gas.

The natural gas industry, in its hydraulic fracturing process, requires 2 billion gallons of water a day, according to the Government Accountability Office. Fear instructs me that once approved by the Federal Regulatory Commission, the proliferation of these natural gas pipelines will encourage the growth of fracking along its length, in spite of Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s assurance that he will not allow it in the George Washington National Forest. And where will the water come from? And where will the toxic wastewater go?  . . . . Gov. Christie of New Jersey recently vetoed a law passed by his legislature that would have prevented importing and disposing of wastewater from other states.

Not mentioned in the column is the increased frequency of earthquakes in areas where fracking is active.  Too many Virginians forget the dangers of increasing earthquakes in central Virginia where the North Anna nuclear power plant sits near fault lines.  And lets not forget the vulnerability of the Lake Gaston watershed that provides a huge portion of the water for south Hampton Roads. The cost of expanded natural gas production in Virginia could be huge when these elements are factored in.

Ken Cuccinelli's Gas Royalties Scandal

While there are growing calls for Bob McDonnell to resign from office due to the growing "Gift Gate" scandal - McDonnell's defense basically sounds like Sergeant Schultz  in Hogans Heroes: he heard nothing, he saw nothing and knew nothing about his wife's raking in loot and receiving loans for Jonnie R. Williams, Sr. - to date, Ken Cuccinelli has continued to refuse to return any of the loot that he received from Williams.  But perhaps the biggest scandal that has yet to fully unfold surrounding Cuccinelli is his office's improper provision of legal assistance to  the subsidiary of one of Cuccinelli's $100,000 plus donors in a civil lawsuit against Virginians.  

Cuccinelli has tried to claim that the subordinate in the Attorney General's office gave legal advice to his donor's subsidiary as part of her representation of the Virginia Oil and Gas Board.  Pardon my French, but this story line is BULLSHIT.   Why do I say this?  First, I am well familiar with the Virginia's Oil and Gas regulatory scheme.  In fact, when Virginia's statutes were enacted in 1982, one of my fellow attorneys at the oil company I worked for at the time was on the advisory committee working on the legislation (Union Texas Petroleum was at the time the largest holder of oil and gas leases in Virginia).  Since I was a member of the Virginia State Bar, I was involved in reviewing proposed legislation that implemented the current regulatory scheme.   I suspect I know more about oil and gas law in Virginia and elsewhere than anyone on the current Attorney General's staff.  There was NO NEED for the Oil and Gas Board to be involved in this lawsuit.

In addition, in private practice, I have been involved in litigation with leaseholders from the lessee/oil company perspective.  NEVER, EVER in such litigation did the state oil and gas board or the state attorney general's office provide legal assistance to my law firm or our oil company clients.  NEVER, EVER.   In short, there is no legitimate way to explain why an Assistant Attorney General was giving legal advise and assistance to oil company litigants in a civil lawsuit.  A $100,000 contribution to Cuccinelli's gubernatorial campaign is seemingly the only explanation.  Cuccinelli sold out Virginia landowners and taxpayers in exchange for cold cash.  Democrat Attorney General Candidate Mark Herring explains it all well:

“At a time when Virginians deserve the truth, Ken Cuccinelli and his office continue to fight to keep the public in the dark about the help they gave to out-of-state gas companies trying to deny Virginians millions in mining royalties," Herring said. “It’s shameful that Ken Cuccinelli aligned with the gas companies to keep their emails out of the public view. And it’s shameful that Cuccinelli would think it’s acceptable for his office to offer legal advice to an out of state company, instead of working on behalf of Virginians.

“It seems every day we have more proof that Ken Cuccinelli is more concerned with sweeping his scandals – whether it’s Star Scientific or this mining royalties scandal – under the rug instead of revealing the truth. It’s shocking that his ticketmate Mark Obenshain sits quietly on the sidelines while Ken Cuccinelli puts the interest of a company that donates to his campaign over the interests of Virginia taxpayers. This is why Virginians are ready for a change in the Office of Attorney General,”

Oh, and did I mention that Cuccinelli's office fought to block the release of the e-mails that revealed the extent of the Attorney General's office was in this civil litigation?  Cuccinelli is a lying douche bag in my opinion.  Like most of the far right faction that likes to wear their religiosity on their sleeve, Cuccinelli makes a tawdry whore look virtuous.

 

Democrats Launch Attack Ad Against Cuccinelli

This blog has looked at the highly unusual and unexplained situation where a staff attorney of the Virginia Attorney General's office was offering legal assistance and advise to two energy companies being sued by Virginia residents for allegedly cheating them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in gas royalties.  The litigation is private litigation and does not involve the Commonwealth of Virginia or any state agencies.  Hence, there is no outward reason for the AG office's involvement.  Or is there? One of the energy company is an affiliate of a company that donated over $114,000 to Ken Cuccinelli's gubernatorial campaign.  Quite appropriately, the Democrat National Committee is running an ad asking that this matter be investigated.  The ad is above.

As noted before, I am well acquainted with the oil and gas industry and was with a large law firm with an extensive oil and gas practice and worked on lease litigation and royalty disputes.  I also was in-house counsel for a large oil company.  I know of nothing from this background that would justify the Attorney General's office being involved in a private lawsuit over leases and royalty payments.  Absolutely nothing.   Nothing that is other than a pay back to a large campaign contributor.  Cuccinelli is a menace and must be defeated in November.   

Virginia State Senator Wants Cuccinelli's Office Investigated - Or, Follow the Money

Governor Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell has gotten himself into a good deal of political trouble by accepting large sums of money from political supporters.  Now, it appears that Ken "Kookinelli" Cuccinelli, the GOP's 2013 gubernatorial candidate may suffer from similar tendencies.  How else to explain an attorney in Cuccinelli's office assisting corporate litigants who - surprise, surprise - gave $100,000 to Kookinelli's campaign.  State Senator Phillip Puckett is from a Southwestern Virginia district where a lawyer from Cuccinelli's office was assisting two companies being sued by landowners for gas royalties.  He wants answers.  So should every Virginia voter and citizen.  Here are excerpts from a Virginian Pilot piece that looks at Puckett's call for an investigation:

A state senator said Monday he is seeking an investigation into the role of the Attorney General's Office in a natural gas lawsuit after a federal judge wrote she was shocked a lawyer from that office was assisting two companies being sued by landowners for gas royalties.

Sen. Phillip Puckett is a Democrat whose southwestern district encompasses landowners who are suing the companies. He said he is asking the Inspector General's Office to investigate whether the Attorney General's Office had violated any laws or ethics rules.

Puckett noted that one of the companies, CNX Gas Co., is owned by Consul Energy Inc., which had donated $100,000 to the Republican gubernatorial campaign of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.

"The attorney general of Virginia or any elected officer of the state, including me, should be doing the right thing for the people that we serve and not be on the side of someone else just because of campaign contributions or any other reasons," Puckett said in a conference call.

In an opinion issued last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Pamela Meade Sargent cited emails between an assistant attorney general and EQT Production Co. and CNX, Pittsburgh-area energy companies. The attorney, Sharon Pigeon, advises the Virginia Gas and Oil Board.

Sargent wrote: "Shockingly, these emails show that the board, or at least Pigeon, has been actively involved in assisting EQT and CNX with the defense of these cases, including offering advice on and providing information for use on the motions before the court."

EQT has declined to comment on Sargent's written comments, while CNX has not responded to telephone messages and emails.

When first out of law school I worked with a large law firm and worked on oil and gas lease litigation matters.  I also frequently appeared before the state oil and gas board.  Let's be clear: these lawsuits are private civil litigation matters and the AG's office and the State Oil and Gas Board should have no role in them other than to provide copies of public records to parties if requested to do so.  "Offering advice on and providing information on the motions before the court" far exceed these duties.   Cuccinelli has time and time again shown that he sees himself as above the law, above the Supreme Court and above Congress.  Taking a $100,000 payment in exchange for help for the AG's office to the donor(s) would be only too much in keeping with his level of arrogance.

Bush/Cheney Betrayal of America: China Is Reaping Biggest Benefits of Iraq Oil Boom

Remember how dim witted Chimperator George Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney claimed that Iraq would repay America for the costs of the fool's errand known as the Iraq War?  Ironically, on the same day that Bradley Manning's trial for allegedly releasing classified information, a New York Times story reveals that America threw away over $1 trillion and threw away thousands of American lives so that China, not America, could be the big winner in the aftermath of the disastrous Iraq War.  Making the situation even worse, guess who holds much of the debt incurred to finance the Bush/Cheney fool's errand?  China, of course.  That's right, American taxpayers have been doubly screwed.  The GOP mantra to average Americans ought to be bend over and hold your ankles.  Here are highlights from the Times story:

BAGHDAD — Since the American-led invasion of 2003, Iraq has become one of the world’s top oil producers, and China is now its biggest customer. 

China already buys nearly half the oil that Iraq produces, nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and is angling for an even bigger share, bidding for a stake now owned by Exxon Mobil in one of Iraq’s largest oil fields. 

“The Chinese are the biggest beneficiary of this post-Saddam oil boom in Iraq,” said Denise Natali, a Middle East expert at the National Defense University in Washington. “They need energy, and they want to get into the market.” 

Before the invasion, Iraq’s oil industry was sputtering, largely walled off from world markets by international sanctions against the government of Saddam Hussein, so his overthrow always carried the promise of renewed access to the country’s immense reserves. Chinese state-owned companies seized the opportunity, pouring more than $2 billion a year and hundreds of workers into Iraq, and just as important, showing a willingness to play by the new Iraqi government’s rules and to accept lower profits to win contracts. 

“We lost out,” said Michael Makovsky, a former Defense Department official in the Bush administration who worked on Iraq oil policy. “The Chinese had nothing to do with the war, but from an economic standpoint they are benefiting from it, and our Fifth Fleet and air forces are helping to assure their supply.” 

In the desert near the Iranian border, China recently built its own airport to ferry workers to Iraq’s southern oil fields, and there are plans to begin direct flights from Beijing and Shanghai to Baghdad soon. In fancy hotels in the port city of Basra, Chinese executives impress their hosts not just by speaking Arabic, but Iraqi-accented Arabic. 

For China, Iraq is one of several countries it increasingly relies on to keep its growing economy running. China recently became the world’s biggest oil importer, and with its consumption growing, it is investing heavily in oil and gas fields around the world — $12 billion worth in 2011, according to the United States Energy Department. Over 50 percent of its oil imports come from the Middle East, even as imports from Iran have been reduced in recent years. “It’s pretty simple,” said Kevin Jianjun Tu, an expert on Chinese energy policies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “China needs more energy and needs to diversify its sources.” 

Bradley Manning expose American war crimes and atrocities.  Meanwhile, Bush and Cheney authorized war crimes, violations of the Geneva Conventions - actions that led to Japanese and Nazi officials to suffer long prison terms or even execution - and they have suffered no consequences whatsoever.  Now we learn that their idiot war aided China, not America.  In short, the wrong individual is being prosecuted.  Bush and Cheney need to be prosecuted.

The Secret of the Seven Sisters - The Cartel That Contols the World's Oil

For newer readers, in my initial years out of law school I worked first for a private law firm that did a huge amount of oil and gas work and later I was in-house counsel for the then largest independent oil company in America out side of the so-called "Seven Sisters" - Exxon, Shell, BP, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf and Chevron - the biggest oil companies in the world.  Hence, I have known the oil industry from the inside - both the good and the bad.  And, despite the rise of OPEC and set backs in some nations where thy saw their assets nationalized, in part often because of poor stewardship, the Seven Sisters (now diminished in numbers due to mergers) still have largely still ended up on top and still wield immense power.   When you hear advertisements lauding the job creation by the oil industry or attack ads against politicians who want to tighten up on the oil industry - often run by the American Petroleum Institute - you are hearing the Seven Sisters at work.  Interestingly  enough,  Al Jazeera is running a four part series on the history of the Seven Sisters and how they continue to control the world's oil supply.  Here are some highlights (go to the article to view a video clip):

On August 28, 1928, in the Scottish highlands, began the secret story of oil.   Three men had an appointment at Achnacarry Castle - a Dutchman, an American and an Englishman.

The Dutchman was Henry Deterding, a man nicknamed the Napoleon of Oil, having exploited a find in Sumatra. He joined forces with a rich ship owner and painted Shell salesman and together the two men founded Royal Dutch Shell.

The American was Walter C. Teagle and he represents the Standard Oil Company, founded by John D. Rockefeller at the age of 31 - the future Exxon. Oil wells, transport, refining and distribution of oil - everything is controlled by Standard oil.

The Englishman, Sir John Cadman, was the director of the Anglo-Persian oil Company, soon to become BP. On the initiative of a young Winston Churchill, the British government had taken a stake in BP and the Royal Navy switched its fuel from coal to oil. With fuel-hungry ships, planes and tanks, oil became "the blood of every battle".

The new automobile industry was developing fast, and the Ford T was selling by the million. The world was thirsty for oil, and companies were waging a merciless contest but the competition was making the market unstable.

That August night, the three men decided to stop fighting and to start sharing out the world's oil. Their vision was that production zones, transport costs, sales prices - everything would be agreed and shared. And so began a great cartel, whose purpose was to dominate the world, by controlling its oil.

Four others soon joined them, and they came to be known as the Seven Sisters - Exxon, Shell, BP, Mobil, Texaco, Gulf and Chevron - the biggest oil companies in the world.

In the first episode, we travel across the Middle East, through both time and space.

"We waged the Iran-Iraq war and I say we waged it, because one country had to be used to destroy the other. As they already benefit from the oil bonanza, and they’re building up financal reserves, from time to time they have to be bled." - Xavier Houzel, an Oil trader

Throughout the region's modern history, since the discovery of oil, the Seven Sisters have sought to control the balance of power.

They have supported monarchies in Iran and Saudi Arabia, opposed the creation of OPEC, profiting from the Iran-Iraq war, leading to the ultimate destruction of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

The Seven Sisters were always present, and almost always came out on top.  Since that notorious meeting at Achnacarry Castle on August 28, 1928, they have never ceased to plot, to plan and to scheme.

Am I being cynical?  I do not think so.  One need only remember that Dick Cheney's Halliburton before all else was (going back many decades) and is a major oil services corporation totally intertwined with the Seven Sisters.  The America public was played for a bunch of suckers and fools by Messrs Bush and Cheney.

Will Subsidies for the Oil Industry Be the GOP's Next Achilles Heel?

I'm not one to demonize the oil industry in a knee jerk reaction. I was in-house counsel for an oil companies some years back so I do understand the high stakes nature of the industry. Add to that and and I currently own stock in Exxon I recently inherited from my late mother who never sold it (my parents originally owned Mobil stock, which had gay friendly policies which Exxon ended - something I voted to restore on my proxy) because they wanted to allow their heirs to decide what to do with the stock. Nonetheless, obscene greed at some point becomes simply unconscionable. Moreover, not paying one's fair share in taxes is in my view, un-American. Apparently, other voters feel the same way and at town hall meetings the GOP members of Congress are finding themselves under attack for their support of subsidies to the oil industry. That is when they aren't under attack for the GOP plan to kill Medicare for all practical purposes. Think Progress looks at one GOP Congresswoman who has broken ranks and will oppose continued oil industry subsidies. Here are highlights:
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As ThinkProgress has been documenting, conservative lawmakers have been facing the ire of Main Street America at town halls all over the country. These Americans are demanding fair sacrifice rather than budget cuts that unfairly saddle the poor and middle class with the burden of deficit reduction.
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Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) came face to face with this growing movement at a town hall in Vancouver, Washington last night. Dozens of protesters encamped outside the meeting, waving signs like “Save Medicare: Tax the Rich.” When she tried to defend her vote on the GOP budget that would effectively privatize Medicare, “a chorus of boos and catcalls and shouts of ‘liar’ erupted in the auditorium.”
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Yet at one point — perhaps understanding that her constituents were already upset with her enough — she did endorse a position that put her on the opposite side of most of her House GOP colleagues. She told the audience that she favored ending subsidies to oil companies like Exxon and BP:
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Herrera Beutler did not directly address why she has supported making the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy permanent. But she said she does favor taking a hard look at military spending and supports ending subsidies for big corporations like Exxon and BP.
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Of course, Beutler voted, along with the rest of the House GOP caucus, to protect billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies for Big Oil more than once in the past few months.
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Her flip-flop may be evidence that American anger at Big Oil is forcing hesitant conservatives to switch sides. A number of GOP congressmen have told constituents in recent days that they now oppose the subsidies. These include Reps. Joe Walsh (IL), Tom McClintock (CA), and Dan Webster (FL)

Billionaires Pull the Tea Party Puppet Strings

One thing that I find both amazing and alarming about elements on the far right is how gullible they are when in comes to being manipulated by those who would play them for suckers so that the puppeteers can benefit themselves financially. Obviously, Rupert Murdoch's Fox News - a/k/a Faux News - falls into this category. While Fox News makes a joke out of the concept of "fair and balanced" - especially since Murdoch just gave $1 million to the GOP - there are other players who move behind the scenes on an even larger magnitude all the while duping the typical tea party member into thinking that he or she is bucking the system. Unfortunately, given the tea party crowd's and the Christian Right's active anti-intellectualism, indeed anti-knowledge mindset, they are the perfect dupes of those who have a family history of opposing social policies that abate the worse abuses of uncontrolled capitalism. Jane Mayer has a piece in the New Yorker that looks at two such cynical puppeteers who are actively controlling the tea party movement ultimately for their own financial gain. Who are these cynical puppeteers? Charles Koch and David Koch (pictured above) of Koch Industries. Together, they have given over $100 far right wing causes over the years. While they hide their larger agenda behind philanthropic efforts for the arts and other high profile civic endeavors, they should be anathema to anyone who believes in equality and equal rights for all citizens. The most recent recipients of their largess in political affairs are groups backing the tea party movement and organizing anti-Obama and ultimately anti-democracy efforts. Needless to say, the Kochs are likely laughing their butts off at the tea party activist who don't realize that they are being used as pawns of billionaire capitalists. Here are some highlights from this lengthy, must read article:
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In Washington, Koch is best known as part of a family that has repeatedly funded stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular. With his brother Charles, who is seventy-four, David Koch owns virtually all of Koch Industries, a conglomerate, headquartered in Wichita, Kansas, whose annual revenues are estimated to be a hundred billion dollars.
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Their combined fortune of thirty-five billion dollars is exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. The Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation. These views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.
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In a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch Industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States. And Greenpeace issued a report identifying the company as a “kingpin of climate science denial.” The report showed that, from 2005 to 2008, the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change,
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The sheer dimension of it is what sets them apart. They have a pattern of lawbreaking, political manipulation, and obfuscation. I’ve been in Washington since Watergate, and I’ve never seen anything like it. They are the Standard Oil of our times.”
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A few weeks after the Lincoln Center gala, the advocacy wing of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation—an organization that David Koch started, in 2004—held a different kind of gathering. . . . Five hundred people attended the summit, which served, in part, as a training session for Tea Party activists in Texas. An advertisement cast the event as a populist uprising against vested corporate power. The pitch made no mention of its corporate funders.
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Americans for Prosperity has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception. In the weeks before the first Tax Day protests, in April, 2009, Americans for Prosperity hosted a Web site offering supporters “Tea Party Talking Points.”
The anti-government fervor infusing the 2010 elections represents a political triumph for the Kochs. By giving money to “educate,” fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement.
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The Republican campaign consultant said of the family’s political activities, “To call them under the radar is an understatement. They are underground!” Another former Koch adviser said, “They’re smart. This right-wing, redneck stuff works for them. They see this as a way to get things done without getting dirty themselves.” Rob Stein, a Democratic political strategist who has studied the conservative movement’s finances, said that the Kochs are “at the epicenter of the anti-Obama movement. . . They are out to destroy progressivism.”
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Oddly enough, the fiercely capitalist Koch family owes part of its fortune to Joseph Stalin. . . Koch found work in the Soviet Union. In the nineteen-thirties, his company trained Bolshevik engineers and helped Stalin’s regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries.
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In 1958, Fred Koch became one of the original members of the John Birch Society, the arch-conservative group known, in part, for a highly skeptical view of governance and for spreading fears of a Communist takeover. Members considered President Dwight D. Eisenhower to be a Communist agent.
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Charles and David Koch receded from the public arena. But they poured more than a hundred million dollars into dozens of seemingly independent organizations. Tax records indicate that in 2008 the three main Koch family foundations gave money to thirty-four political and policy organizations, three of which they founded, and several of which they direct. The Kochs and their company have given additional millions to political campaigns, advocacy groups, and lobbyists. The family’s subterranean financial role has fuelled suspicion on the left; Lee Fang, of the liberal blog ThinkProgress, has called the Kochs “the billionaires behind the hate.”
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Naomi Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at the University of California, San Diego, is the co-author of “Merchants of Doubt,” a new book that chronicles various attempts by American industry to manipulate public opinion on science. She noted that the Kochs, as the heads of “a company with refineries and pipelines,” have “a lot at stake.” She added, “If the answer is to phase out fossil fuels, a different group of people are going to be making money, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re fighting tooth and nail.”
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During the 2000 election campaign, Koch Industries spent some nine hundred thousand dollars to support the candidacies of George W. Bush and other Republicans. During the Bush years, Koch Industries and other fossil-fuel companies enjoyed remarkable prosperity. The 2005 energy bill, which Hillary Clinton dubbed the Dick Cheney Lobbyist Energy Bill, offered enormous subsidies and tax breaks for energy companies. The Kochs have cast themselves as deficit hawks, but, according to a study by Media Matters, their companies have benefitted from nearly a hundred million dollars in government contracts since 2000.
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The Kochs’ sense of imperilment is somewhat puzzling. Income inequality in America is greater than it has been since the nineteen-twenties, and since the seventies the tax rates of the wealthiest have fallen more than those of the middle class. Yet the brothers’ message has evidently resonated with voters: a recent poll found that fifty-five per cent of Americans agreed that Obama is a socialist.
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The Kochs have long depended on the public’s not knowing all the details about them. They have been content to operate what David Koch has called “the largest company that you’ve never heard of.” But with the growing prominence of the Tea Party, and with increased awareness of the Kochs’ ties to the movement, the brothers may find it harder to deflect scrutiny.
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I cannot help but wonder how many misinformed individuals are now engaged in tea party activities believing that they are defending against a government and big corporation take over civic life and and an erosion of civil liberties. Meanwhile, the truth is that they are being cynically used by corporate titans like the Koch brothers who don't give a tinkers damn about average Americans. Instead, the only care about obscenely further enriching themselves and destroying government regulations that protect the average citizen from greed driven megalomaniacs like themselves.

Obama's Gulf Oil Speech Bombs

From the reviews that I have read, it seems that I am not alone in viewing President Obama's speech last night on the Gulf oil catastrophe as a dud. First, the speech was about a month or more too late in coming. Moreover, Obama tried to make the case that the federal government had been aggressively in charge from the get go when anyone who has watched the news daily knows that BP has been the one incompetently calling the shots and doing its best to keep the news media from being able to fully report on the disaster. In short, Obama seems to have only underscored that he's not the leader that Americans had yearned for. He's a follower and only starts to get engaged when things have passed the stage of being fully f*cked up: health care, DADT repeal, energy policy - the list goes on and on. Typically, once engaged he can give a mollifying speech, but last night fell flat. Especially since the media was simultaneously running coverage showing that NONE of the oil companies involved in offshore drilling had a competent emergency response to a major oil spill. Indeed, they all had more or less the same useless plan with the only variance being in the cover on the "plan" and how much detail was aimed at media and PR response. Obama has been in office two years now and this status is totally unacceptable. For the reality in the Gulf, first these highlights from the Mobile Press Register:
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Oil will likely continue to wash onto Alabama's coast through Monday, according to a forecast by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Persistent winds have pushed the oil slick closer to the Alabama-Mississippi chain of barrier islands and the Florida Panhandle.
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Saturday, the Alabama Department of Public Health expanded its warning against swimming in coastal waters. People should avoid swimming in the Mississippi Sound west of the Dauphin Island Bridge and in Bayou St. John, Cotton Bayou and Old River in Baldwin County.
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Health officials had previously warned against swimming in Alabama's Gulf of Mexico waters off Baldwin and Mobile counties and in Mobile Bay waters at Fort Morgan. In the bay, numerous areas of oil sheen ranging from the size of a baseball field to the size of a tennis court dotted the surface Saturday afternoon. The sheens appeared on both sides of the ship channel to the north of Middle Bay Lighthouse. There were reports earlier in the day of a large amount of emulsified oil floating in that area of the bay, though none was seen during a late afternoon cruise.
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The economy of the Gulf Coast is dying - along with marine and wildlife - as Nero, I mean Obama fiddles in Washington. The government response has been incompetent, and I suspect this disaster will be Obama's Katrina: too little, too late. Here's highlights from the Huffington Post on the President's speech:
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Obama really, really wants to stop the oil spill. And he really, really wants to hold BP accountable for the damage they've done. And he really, really wants the Gulf Coast to come through this hardship and he really, really wants to wean us from our dependency on foreign oil, and oil in general. But "really, really wants" is not a plan, and only the bitterest and most brain-dead of political opponents would have presumed, going into tonight, that Obama had not yet properly sentimentalized his opinions on any of those matters.
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And yet, basically what we got, in spades, was sentiment. To be sure, it was no doubt deeply felt. And for all anyone knows, there may be, already codified, a whole series of plans in the works related to stopping the oil gusher, cleaning the gulf coast, and implementing a new series of energy policies. And they may be great plans! But if you were hoping that some of that stuff would be revealed on actual teevee cameras, in prime time, well, you were S.O.L.
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Some good news, I guess, is that Ray Mabus has been given oversight of a Gulf Coast Restoration Plan and that Michael Bromwich will be the new head of the heretofore terrible regulatory agency known as the Minerals Management Service. It may also cheer you to learn that if all goes according to plan and all the lobbyists in the world drop dead tomorrow and legislators stop behaving like a bunch of politically-compromised ass-clowns, BP will be forced to pay for the damages and the Gulf Coast will be restored.
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I think you can swap out the references to energy and add back references to health care, and we can all take a trip down memory lane, to the time we all wondered why Obama wasn't out there, actively pushing for something specific in the arena of health care reform. Right down to the "I am happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party" part, which basically commits Obama to a lengthy period of Chuck Grassley jacking himself off as the Republican Party returns with the idea of doing nothing that even remotely looks like it might be helpful to his Presidency.
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One very specific action Obama could have taken tonight was to make it clear that BP's ongoing clampdown on the media attempting to cover the oil spill was not to be tolerated and must end immediately. Didn't even merit a mention!
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How do you spell failed presidency? That's what it seems we are getting. But for Sarah Palin on the ticket, I suspect that even with his insanity, McCain now looks to have been a better choice to a number of folks.

Obama's Fatal Error in Failing to Crack Down on the Corruption of the Bush Years

I have been extremely harsh on President Barack Obama on many fronts, particularly broken campaign promises that as of this moment still have not been kept. In respect to the Gulf oil spill disaster, I have been equally harsh. Why British Petroleum - which created the disaster by its utter disregard to safety regulations and the complaints of the drilling staff - has been left in charge of addressing the disaster is mind numbing. From my oil and gas industry background, I continue to believe that BP is more concerned in salvaging the blown out well than it is in stopping the oil flow. Equally disturbing is the fact that the USA in its typical hubris has refused better technology offered by The Netherlands and Norway, both nations with major experience with offshore oil exploration - Norway from its own deep water production and The Netherlands as home of Royal Dutch Shell, the world's eight largest corporation.

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However, what must not be lost in all of the Fox media and GOP noise is the fact that Obama's biggest error - and it was a huge error - was not to promptly overhaul the deregulation nightmare put in place by the Bush/Cheney regime. Under Bush/Cheney - and I suspect mostly under Cheney - the supposed regulators of the oil industry were in effect members of a revolving door operation staffed by either former oil industry officials or people more than willing to turn a blind (maybe even accept a bribe) eye toward criminal misconduct. Surprisingly, it is the Rolling Stone that has one of the most comprehensive articles that traces the blame back to the handiwork of Bush/Cheney. Yes, Obama screwed up an incredible scale by his failure to fully clean house at MMS. But the ultimate blame traces back to Bush/Cheney - a fact that needs to be shoved down the throats of the Fox News talking heads and Republican windbags. We need comparable investigative reporting stories that look at the torture programs and other foul initiatives put in place by the Chimperator and Emperor Palpatine Cheney that Obama has yet to overhaul. Here are highlights from the Rolling Stone article (NOTE: I urge you to read the full story even though it may make you sick):
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For weeks, the administration had been insisting that BP alone was to blame for the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf – and the ongoing failure to stop the massive leak. "They have the technical expertise to plug the hole," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had said only six days earlier. "It is their responsibility." The president, Gibbs added, lacked the authority to play anything more than a supervisory role – a curious line of argument from an administration that has reserved the right to assassinate American citizens abroad and has nationalized much of the auto industry. "If BP is not accomplishing the task, can you just federalize it?" a reporter asked. "No," Gibbs replied.
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Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. "In case you were wondering who's responsible," Obama told the nation, "I take responsibility." Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. "There wasn't sufficient urgency," the president said. "Absolutely I take responsibility for that." He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: "I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios." He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. "The buck," he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, "stops with me."
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Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.
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Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to "catastrophic" errors.
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During the Bush years, the Minerals Management Service, the agency in the Interior Department charged with safeguarding the environment from the ravages of drilling, descended into rank criminality. According to reports by Interior's inspector general, MMS staffers were both literally and figuratively in bed with the oil industry. When agency staffers weren't joining industry employees for coke parties or trips to corporate ski chalets, they were having sex with oil-company officials. But it was American taxpayers and the environment that were getting screwed. MMS managers were awarded cash bonuses for pushing through risky offshore leases, auditors were ordered not to investigate shady deals, and safety staffers routinely accepted gifts from the industry, allegedly even allowing oil companies to fill in their own inspection reports in pencil before tracing over them in pen.
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"The oil companies were running MMS during those years," Bobby Maxwell, a former top auditor with the agency, told Rolling Stone last year. "Whatever they wanted, they got. Nothing was being enforced across the board at MMS."
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Salazar was far less aggressive, however, when it came to making good on his promise to fix MMS. Though he criticized the actions of "a few rotten apples" at the agency, he left long-serving lackeys of the oil industry in charge. "The people that are ethically challenged are the career managers, the people who come up through the ranks," says a marine biologist who left the agency over the way science was tampered with by top officials. "In order to get promoted at MMS, you better get invested in this pro-development oil culture." One of the Bush-era managers whom Salazar left in place was John Goll, the agency's director for Alaska. Shortly after, the Interior secretary announced a reorganization of MMS in the wake of the Gulf disaster, Goll called a staff meeting and served cake decorated with the words "Drill, baby, drill."
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"Employees describe being in Interior – not just MMS, but the other agencies – as the third Bush term," says Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal whistle-blowers. "They're working for the same managers who are implementing the same policies. Why would you expect a different result?"
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The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory. The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill – precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry.
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MMS has fully understood the worst-case scenarios for deep-sea oil blowouts for more than a decade. In May 2000, an environmental assessment for deepwater drilling in the Gulf presciently warned that "spill responses may be complicated by the potential for very large magnitude spills (because of the high production rates associated with deepwater wells).
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Enter the Bush administration. Rather than heeding such warnings, MMS simply assumed that a big spill couldn't happen. "There was a complete failure to even contemplate the possibility of a disaster like the one in the Gulf," says Holly Doremus, an environmental-law expert at the University of California. "In their thinking, a big spill would be something like 5,000 barrels, and the oil wouldn't even reach the shoreline." In fact, Bush's five-year plan for offshore drilling described a "large oil spill" as no more than 1,500 barrels. In April 2007, an environmental assessment covering the area where BP would drill concluded that blowouts were "low probability and low risk," even though a test funded by MMS had found that blowout preventers failed 28 percent of the time.
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Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region.
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Under Salazar, MMS continued to issue categorical exclusions to companies like BP, even when they lacked the necessary permits to protect endangered species. A preliminary review of the BP disaster conducted by scientists with the independent Deepwater Horizon Study Group concludes that MMS failed to enforce a host of environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act. "MMS and Interior are equally responsible for the failures here," says the former agency scientist. "They weren't willing to take the regulatory steps that could have prevented this incident."
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BP is the last oil company on Earth that Salazar and MMS should have allowed to regulate itself. . . . The company applied the same deadly cost-cutting mentality to its oil rig in the Gulf. BP, it is important to note, is less an oil company than a bank that finances oil exploration; unlike ExxonMobil, which owns most of the equipment it uses to drill, BP contracts out almost everything. That includes the Deepwater Horizon rig that it leased from a firm called Transocean. BP shaved $500,000 off its overhead by deploying a blowout preventer without a remote-control trigger – a fail-safe measure required in many countries but not mandated by MMS, thanks to intense industry lobbying. It opted to use cheap, single-walled piping for the well, and installed only six of the 21 cement spacers recommended by its contractor, Halliburton – decisions that significantly increased the risk of a severe explosion. It also skimped on critical testing that could have shown whether explosive gas was getting into the system as it was being cemented, and began removing mud that protected the well before it was sealed with cement plugs.

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[O]n the eve of the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, the Deepwater Horizon rig went off like a bomb. From the start of its operation in the Gulf, BP had found itself struggling against powerful "kicks" from gas buildup, just as MMS had warned. Now, on April 20th, the pent-up methane exploded in a fireball that incinerated 11 workers. Like a scene out of a real-life Jerry Bruckheimer film, the half-billion-dollar rig – 32,000 tons and 30 stories tall – listed over and sank to the bottom two days later, taking a mile of pipe down with it.
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[T]he effort, has been "like a drunk driver [BP] getting into a car wreck and then helping the police with the accident investigation." Indeed, the administration has seemed oddly untroubled about leaving the Gulf's fate in the hands of a repeat criminal offender, and uncurious about the crimes that may have been committed leading up to the initial sinking of the rig.
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The failure of the Obama administration to crack down on BP – and to tackle the crisis with the full force of the federal government – is likely to haunt the Gulf Coast for decades to come. Oil continues to lap up onshore in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Pelican rookeries are fouled, their eggs and nests soaked in oil. The region's fisheries – some of the richest in the world – are imperiled; anglers and shrimpers have been barred from more than a third of the Gulf's waters, which may never fully recover from the toxic stew of crude and chemical dispersant now twisting in its depths. The region's beaches are empty, and tourist towns are dying. Administration officials now admit that the oil may continue to gush into the Gulf until August, when relief wells are finally in place.

Alabama Paying Price for Republican Policies

Having lived on the Gulf Coast for six years - part of it in the Mobile area - and with family roots that trace back to New Orleans, I continue to be saddened by the damage being done to both the environment and people's livelihoods as a result of British Petroleum's apparent gross negligence and wilful misconduct at the Deep Horizon well which continues to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time, I cannot help but note the irony that through their blind support of the deregulation/smaller government worshipping Republican Party, Alabamians helped set the stage for their own misfortune. Yes, the Obama administration has dropped the ball on dealing with the disaster. But the framework that allowed the disaster in the first place was put in place by the Bush/Cheney regime. Time and time again we were told that big oil could police itself. Obviously, the mantra was a lie and now thousands of people are seeing their businesses and livelihoods wither. Whenever the GOP faults Obama's missteps, it is critical that the blame be cast back on the anti-regulation mindset that controlled Washington, D.C., for the eight years of the Bush/Cheney age of darkness. The Mobile Press Register has some details on the latest devastation along the Alabama coast. Here are some highlights: *
As unprecedented amounts of oil slathered Alabama's coastline Friday, officials closed stretches of water in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida to most boat traffic to aid containment efforts.
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The closure of Alabama waters inside Perdido Pass to all recreational boating traffic, requested by Orange Beach Mayor Tony Kennon, effectively shut down fishing from the self-titled "Red Snapper Capital of the World."
Only vessels working with BP will be allowed to use the pass until further notice.
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The main body of the Gulf oil slick will hover just miles south of coasts on both sides of the Florida-Alabama line by Sunday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projected.
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[Alabama Governor] Riley told members of the Press-Register's editorial board on Friday that he was dissatisfied with delays in processing claims related to the spill, and would send National Guard troops and staff from the Alabama Emergency Management Agency to help speed the process.
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"These are small businesses and family businesses that don't have a lot to fall back on," Riley said. "They're losing business, and if they don't get help, they're gone."
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Some of these business owners should have thought harder before casing votes for Bush/Cheney and "drill baby drill" Sarah Palin.

Did BP Deliberately Lie on Its Drilling Application?

The more facts that come out, the more it appears that British Petroleum deliberately lied on its permit application for the Deep Horizon well that is now turning much of the Gulf of Mexico into a toxic wasteland. While fault also lies with the permit review authorities who never checked out the details of the application - e.g., one of the experts cited as available for consultation in the event of a spill had in fact been dead for several years - the principal blame lies on BP which was apparently willing to say anything in order to secure the drilling permit. Obviously, someone at BP needs to be prosecuted for the knowingly false application. The facts as disclosed by the Associated Press certainly seem to support a finding of gross negligence, if not wilful misconduct on the part of BP. The facts also underscore why oil companies need to face strict liability without a liability cap in respect to all future drilling. I suspect BP factored in the maximum fines under the rules in place at the time and figured it was worth the gamble. The Virginian Pilot has some highlights:
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NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Glaring errors and omissions in BP's oil spill response plans have exposed a slapdash effort to follow environmental rules, outraging Gulf Coast residents who can see on their beaches how unprepared the company was.
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BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one, according to an Associated Press analysis. The lengthy plans were approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well.
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Among the glaring errors in the report: A professor is listed in BP's 2009 response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.
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The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as "sensitive biological resources." None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf.
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Also, names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are disconnected.

"The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had the full capability to deal with a major spill," Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., wrote in an e-mail to the AP. "We know that wasn't true."
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Legal experts say that to file criminal charges, the Justice Department will have to find evidence that BP or other companies involved in the deadly oil rig explosion and subsequent spill orchestrated a coverup, destroyed key documents or lied to government agents. Charges and civil penalties can be brought under a variety of environmental protection laws.
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In its Deepwater Horizon plan, the British oil giant stated: "BP Exploration and Production Inc. has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan."
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The plans contain wildly false assumptions about oil spills. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.
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The Gulf's loop current, which is projected to help eventually send oil hundreds of miles around Florida's southern tip and up the Atlantic coast, isn't mentioned in either plan.
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There are other examples of how BP's plans have fallen short:
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- Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore - a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.
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- BP's site plan regarding birds, sea turtles or endangered marine mammals ("no adverse impacts") also have proved far too optimistic. While the exact toll on the Gulf's wildlife may never be known, the effects clearly have been devastating.
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The obvious conclusion is that BP was lying and knew it was lying but simply did not give a damn. Some folks need to go to prison to ensure that no company in the future will dare to file such a false and cavalier document.

Who's in Charge of the BP Oil Spill, Anyway?

Today's Mobile Press-Register main editorial asks a relevant question that focuses on the ineptitude of the federal government/White House's response to the BP oil spill disaster. It's a simple question of who is in charge. Clearly, it's not the feds or the White House. BP continues to dither rather than simply explode the well and seal it permanently. BP would clearly rather turn the entire Gulf of Mexico into a dead zone as opposed to lose a potentially profitable well. It's a travesty, yet the U.S. government continues to sit by with it's thumb up its butt rather than dictate to BP what WILL be done to stop the oil leakage now. Here are some highlights from the editorial (P.S. I once lived in Fairhope):
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A MONTH ago, according to Fairhope’s assistant public works director, BP pledged to put out boom to protect the city from the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But the oil company never followed through. Last week, when oil began showing up on Alabama beaches, the Fairhope City Council quit waiting on BP.

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At an emergency meeting Friday, council members voted to spend about $626,000 of the $650,000 the city has received through the state from BP, and a contractor immediately began deploying boom in two layers, from the Grant Hotel Marriott in Point Clear northward to the Fairhope Yacht Club.

Fairhope’s experience does not seem to be unique along the Alabama Gulf Coast. From Gov. Bob Riley to a beachside condominium manager, people dealing with the oil spill say BP isn’t following through. Some say they’ve called for cleanup assistance and have gotten no response. So who is in charge of picking up tarballs and scraping oil off beaches?
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Should it be local governments? Local officials know their sections of coastline better than anyone, and when a city like Fairhope sees no progress for a month, its leaders are right to take action to protect their shores. But they aren’t concerned with the big picture, and their individual actions are piecemeal.
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But should the federal government be in charge of the cleanup, too, in addition to acting as watchdog over BP’s efforts to contain the catastrophic leak? And where’s FEMA? After all, as implied by its very name — the Federal Emergency Management Agency — FEMA is the government agency that’s designed to coordinate the federal response to emergencies.
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Meanwhile, municipal and county governments can’t ignore the threat at the edge of their shores. Short of breaking the law, no one can blame them for taking matters into their own hands.

White House Endorses Unlimited Liability Cap For Oil Spillers

I guess it's a case of better late than never, but I cannot fathom why the White House did not get on board with removing the liability cap on oil spills a month ago or more. Oil well drilling - whether onshore or offshore - is an inherently dangerous activities which ought to face a strict liability standard. Even when evidence of negligence, possible false application statements, and sacrifices of safety to save money are not involved. Having been in Key West last week and lived on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, it makes me nauseated to think of the environmental damage that has occurred - not to mention what may yet occur. I am still dumbfounded, however, as to why the White House seems to be allowing BP to call the shots rather than the other way around. It still seems to me that destroying the well a month ago wasn't pursued - oh, I forgot, BP doesn't want to lose the well, even if it destroys the entire Gulf of Mexico. Here are highlights from Huffington Post on this belated move by Obama:
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Democrats in Congress and officials in the White House are making yet another major push to pass legislation to make the liability for oil companies involved in damaging spills unlimited.
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On Monday evening, the White House confirmed that it favors the most recent piece of legislation that would drop any numerical ceiling to the amount of money an oil company like BP would have to pay for economic damages caused by a spill. Currently, the cap is $75 million.
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"The president supports removing caps on liability for oil companies engaged in offshore drilling," said spokesman Ben LaBolt. "Oil companies should have every incentive to maximize safety and arbitrary caps on liability create a disincentive to achieve that goal."
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So far, votes to raise the liability cap -- first to $10 billion and then unlimited -- have failed to pass via unanimous consent in the Senate. But now, congressional negotiators are planning alternative legislative routes. On Wednesday, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the author of the liability-cap-raising bill, is set to testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works about his proposal.

Oil from Gulf Spill Hits Alabama Beaches

Having lived on the Alabama Gulf Coast years ago, I know how beautiful the beaches are and how important the seafood industry and tourism are to the area. Thus, the photo above on the beach at Gulf Shores makes me sick. At the same time, I cannot help but recognize the irony that Alabama - a consistently far right Republican, anti-regulation minded state is now reaping the fruits of its own misguided behavior. Will anyone learn a lesson from this disaster? I can only hope so. The Mobile Press Register has more details here.

Reckoning in the Gulf of Mexico

My post yesterday on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill catastrophe focused on the local concerns of residents here in Key West and my own misgivings in terms of trusting BP with control of anything going forward. The lead editorial in the Key West Citizen underscores local distrust of BP. From what has been made public to date, it sounds as if BP broke rules and engaged in actions that the head of the Transocean drill team objected to - and 11 individuals likely paid with their lives when the objected procedure caused the well and platform to explode. The environmental loses since then have been staggering. The New York Times has a spot on editorial that lays out the federal government's much belated response to the disaster. The sad reality, however, is that no amount of money will replace the lost wildlife or the damage to delicate ecological systems. The second sad reality - one that locals here are very much afraid of - is the fact that even if they prevail in lawsuits against BP and other responsible parties, it could be decades before any money is received by those whose livelihoods have been destroyed in the interim. Those who want to see the cap on BP's liability removed should sign the petit1on to Congress here. Now, here are Highlights from the Times:

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The spill, the worst in United States history and growing more damaging by the day, cries out for accountability and appropriate punishment. Attorney General Eric Holder did not name specific targets, but BP, Transocean — the rig operator — and other important subcontractors like Halliburton are obvious candidates.
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Justice’s investigation will run parallel to an inquiry by a special commission appointed by President Obama to discover the causes of the disaster, assess the performance of federal oversight agencies and recommend ways to prevent similar calamities. The White House must take special care that both are allowed to do a complete job.
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Unlike the Justice Department, the commission does not have subpoena powers. Congress should grant that power if only to make sure that witnesses from an industry that is accustomed to going its own way actually show up.
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As Mr. Holder knows, the legal journey will be long and arduous. Exxon did not finally settle up for damages related to the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill — in addition to the billions it paid in cleanup costs — until a Supreme Court decision in 2008. BP is responsible for containing the gulf spill and cleaning it up, but the fines it must ultimately pay, as well as compensatory damages to injured parties, will depend in part on the whether the company can be shown to have broken the law.
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One relevant law is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill, which imposes monetary penalties for every barrel of spilled oil — even if negligence is not found, but more if it is. Another is the Clean Water Act, which carries both civil and criminal penalties for polluting waterways. BP could also be found negligent under the Marine Mammal Protection Act because it failed to obtain necessary federal permits to drill in areas inhabited by endangered whales.
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Senator Barbara Boxer, who was pressing Mr. Holder to act, raised one more ominous possibility: that BP may have made false and misleading statements to federal authorities in the 2009 exploratory drilling plan it submitted to the Minerals Management Service. The plan asserted that the company had “proven equipment and technology” to respond to a blowout. Given the ad hoc nature of BP’s response, Ms. Boxer has suggested, that assertion now seems misleading or even false.
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There are extraordinarily tough times ahead for the gulf and the region’s residents. That BP will also suffer does not trouble us in the least.