This brief article from Orion Jones at Big Think is a pretty clear and honest assessment of the situation in the Gulf - and an indictment of the system in which those who are tasked with investigating the offender (BP) are financed by the target of their investigation. How honest are they likely to be?I have too horrified by the images to say much here, but now the horror is becoming rage at a system that so willingly allows the destruction of an entire ecocsystem and the idiots who want to protect the irresponsible politicians and corporations who created the circumstances in which this disaster could happen. Below the main article is a piece from AlterNet on how the GOP is siding with the oil companies and apologizing for Obama demanding they take care of the people whose lives have been taken away by the loss of fishing in the Gulf.
Adding insult to injury, BP is funding a front group (Gulf of Mexico Foundation) claiming that oil spill jobs are better than ‘normal’ ones, and that storms will clean up the spilled oil - millions of gallons of the stuff.
The blithe feathers of our nation’s patrimony are now literally weighed down by oil, but our government and press already exude the sticky toxins of petroleum. In a sense, petroleum companies are big shareholders in the American political and media machines, and the extent to which change is possible will depend on a willingness to bite the hand that feeds. Perhaps BP CEO Tony Hayward’s reticence during his recent congressional testimony was born of a smug knowledge that his company owns a good deal of stock in both the U.S. Congress and the nation’s press.
Open Secrets, whose mission is to track money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy, details the amount of money received by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, who is currently investigating BP, from oil and gas companies. In 2010, members of the committee received a combined $1,227,455. The ranking Elephant on the committee, Joe Barton, who stuck his oily foot in his foul mouth by apologizing to BP, received over $100,000 last year, the second only to an Elephant from Missouri, Roy Blunt.
BP, of course, is only one company representing the sizable oil and gas lobby. The industry reaches into its deep pockets to fund a variety of interests, including PBS, a standard of American mainstream journalism. Recently, though, companies like ExxonMobile and Chevron have gone stealth, knowing that any press is bad press at a moment when public anger has been stoked to flame—a particularly dangerous element to oil and gas companies.
Michael Getler, an internal critic at PBS, has written about the issue on his blog at the PBS website. BP, it seems, was funding PBS in 2006, but is no longer a sponsor. As for ExxonMobile and Chevron, they “have minimized their profiles as underwriters of some popular PBS programs as the crisis continues.” Getler goes on to say that “corporate identification continues, as does the financial support of the sponsor, but its prominence on the screen is reduced. This means the normally longer and more descriptive visual and spoken messages are replaced simply by a logo, for example, keeping the company's head down but allowing PBS to make sure it continues to identify its underwriters.”
The large corporations that sponsor PBS are no angels and have included Toyota, Monsanto and Bank of America. But PBS insists that none of their sponsors have a sliver of editorial control and that were they to petition for some, PBS would walk away. It is the difficulty of finding underwriters, however, who are willing to accept the low-profile advertising PBS requires that makes is difficult for the broadcasting company to be more selective about accepting companies as sponsors.
The question about passive influence remains—the possibility of corporate sponsors like ExxonMobile and Monsanto having a subconscious influence on PBS programming. Active vigilance is needed to guard against this influence and should be expected to the same degree across news organizations and government bodies, not only of companies like PBS who already do a better than average job.
This piece from AlterNet outlines the GOP corruption in standing behind BP and claiming that Obama is wrong to demand that BP set aside some of their incredible profits to help those whose lives have been taken away.
Meanwhile, from ASPO/USA:The GOP finally takes a stand. And it’s standing behind “Big Oil” and not the “small people.”
Texas Republican Joe Barton on Thursday apologized to British Petroleum and it’s Chief Executive Tony Hayward. He said he was ashamed that the U.S. government demanded a “$20 billion shakedown” from the private company. He said the $20 billion fund that President Obama directed BP to establish to provide relief to the victims of the oil disaster was a “tragedy in the first proportion.”
“It creates a terrible precedence,” Barton said.
Days prior, Republican Michelle Bachman called it a “redistribution of wealth,” repeating a common phrase she has used to characterize health care reform, mortgage remodifications, and just about any policy the Obama administration puts forth. Around that same time, Rush Limbaugh, the mouthpiece for the GOP, called it “a slushfund.”
He is the highest-ranking Republican on the Energy Committee and has recevied more than $1.4 million in political contributions from the oil industry, according to nonpartisan government watchdog croup, Opensecrets.org.
So, clearly Barton has much to apologize for.
But the good thing is, he’s provided some audibles for what is has been blatantly apparent to me, but largely ignored in the mainstream media. And that’s the fact that the deepwater oil spill is symptomatic of theRepublicans philosophy as it relates to energy. He apologized, because in his world view, BP has done nothing wrong. A piece of equipment failed, the environmental damage they caused is simply collateral damage. All that matters ultimately is the profitability of the company.
Barton is not alone in his apologetic cow-towing to big oil. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, another Republican servant to big oil, has repeatedly attempted to minimize the effects of the oil spill and make excuses for BP. This is the Governor of Mississippi, many of whose Gulf Coast constituents lives have been ruined by this company’s recklessness.
According to Barbour, forcing BP to make full restitution to the Gulf’s workers will do only one thing, and that’s reduce its profitability, which will in turn give them less money pay out damages. Make sense?
“All of these ultra-free-market, regulation-and-bureaucracy-hating conservatives agree, by the way, that President Obama and the federal government are just as blameworthy as BP, Halliburton and the other corporations in charge of Deepwater Horizon — because federal agencies didn’t regulate them stringently enough. Regulation is very, very bad, except when Obama doesn’t do enough of it,” wrote salon.com.
Well said.
Who out there honestly believes if there were a Republican in the White House right now, that they would have forced BP to pony up with $20 billion to pay out to “the small people” who have been devastated by this corporate mess?
- Barbour, who has aspirations on the White House, would have likely bailed out BP as opposed to get them to take responsibility for their actions.
- GOP is responsible for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry over the past three years, according to the Center for Public Integrity.
- Most of these citations were classified as “egregious willful” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
- That April 20 platfor m blast which led to the spill killed 11 workers.
Let’s take a look back at BP’s horrid track record, courtesy of ABC News:
- Back in 2007, a BP pipeline spilled 200,000 gallons of crude into the Alaskan wilderness. They got hit with $16 million in fines.
- “The Justice Department required the company to pay approximately $353 million as part of an agreement to defer prosecution on charges that the company conspired to manipulate the propane gas market.”
- In two separate disasters prior to Deepwater Horizon, 30 BP workers were killed and more than 200 have been seriously injured.
- “According to the Center for Public Integrity, in the last three years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97 percent of the “egregious, willful” violations handed out by OSHA”
- OSHA statistics show BP ran up 760 “egregious, willful” safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had eight, Citgo had two and Exxon had one comparable citation.
This is who the GOP chooses to stand up for? Republicans are outraged because someone has the gall to make demands of private industry? And even still, the libertarian, let the “free market reign free” folks out there are complaining about the overreach of the U.S. government?
This proves our government’s reach is not nearly long enough. This proves how much there is left to do, when it comes to dismantling pro-industry, pro-corporate stranglehold that private industry has on our government. I’m no communist or socialist, but you cannot expect corporations to behave altruistically, and one primary purpose of the U.S. government — in addition to protecting us from foreign enemies — is protecting us from multi-national corporations.
In a sickening Interview with Forbes Magazine BP Chief Tony Hayward says the Gulf spill might help the BP and the oil industry to make increased profits of up to 20% by 2015, which would mean record profits for the British oil maker.Tony Hayward tells Forbes that he is “he’s sleeping well these days” and Forbes reports that he is nice and fresh, almost relaxed in his makeshift corner office at BP’s emergency response center in Houston.”
Click here to continue reading the story from Alexander Higgins blog.
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