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I am one of those people who will actually watch those boring, boring, hearings on C-SPAN that most of us flip right on past while watching TV, and this past week I've been watching one of the longer events the channel broadcasts...but it's been far from boring.
The Coast Guard and what used to be the MMS were in Houston looking into what caused the Gulf oil spill and they're taking testimony from representatives of the involved parties...and let me tell you, this is more than just an accident inquiry-it's also a warm-up for the lawsuits that are surely going to follow.
In the aftermath of 9/11, we saw thousands of workers develop devastating respiratory conditions and other illnesses as a result of exposure to toxic dust that filled the air in the days and weeks after the twin towers fell. To this day, these peoples' plight continues to add misery to the ongoing tragedy of 9/11. What makes it even worse is that these people were assured the air was safe. As we all know now, it wasn't.
Today, sadly, history may be repeating itself in the Gulf of Mexico.
(Thank you to Ligia Ercius-Dipaola, who posted this video on the NRDC Action Fund Facebook Page)
Amazingly, despite reports like this one, BP "continues to pretend that - just like an oil spill of this magnitude could never happen - there also could not possibly be a worker health concern." While the potential health hazards posed by chemical dispersants and oil itself are debatable, it is clear that significant risks existed.
Already, we've seen evidence of the impact that spilled oil can have on human health. For starters, an increasing number of workers and residents in Gulf Coast areas have reported "suffering from nausea, vomiting, headaches and difficulty breathing." Considering that oil contains "petroleum hydrocarbons, which are toxic and irritating to the skin and airways", as well as volatile chemicals "which can cause acute health effects such as headaches, dizziness and nausea" it's no surprise that these symptoms are appearing.
(Thank you to Gary Chattem, who posted this on the NRDC Action Fund Facebook Wall)
So now, with the "60 exposure-related complaints filed with the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals", not to mention the "overwhelming evidence that many of the compounds found in crude oil are dangerous," shouldn't BP be protecting the people who are cleaning up this mess? If they aren't doing so, why aren't they?
The bottom line is this: people along the Gulf Coast deserve to know the facts regarding the dangers they are facing and how to protect themselves. It's bad enough that their economic livelihoods are in danger of destruction in part due to BP's greed and recklessness. But if their lungs and other organs are damaged by oil and dispersant particles in the air, more than their economic livelihoods could be damaged.
None of us should ever forget that this disaster was brought on, at least in part, by BP cutting corners to save a few (million) bucks, and by the government's failure to prevent the company from doing so. As a result, the unthinkable has happened. We must learn from those grave mistakes, not repeat them. That means, in the long term, ridding ourselves of our dangerous, destructive addition to oil. But what must happen now - right now - is for BP to stop cutting corners with the health of the people cleaning up the Gulf.
At the minimum, BP must switch its philosophy from "hope for the best" to "do whatever it takes, whatever the cost, to make sure people are safe." If BP won't "make it right," as the company's ads like to say, then the government should force BP to do so. In the words of one Venice, LA mother: "I've got the two most beautiful children in the world. If something were to happen to them, how could I look in those baby blues and say, Mommy didn't know?" It's a great question. What's the answer, BP?
* Joe Barton is the ranking member of the House Energy Committee. He will be the chairman of that committee if the Republicans retake control of the House.
* GOP House Minority Leaders John Boehner made it clear that, despite his infamous public apology to BP, and despite calls from fellow GOP congressmen for him to lose his rank, Joe Barton will retain his position on the Energy committee. Which means the bullet point above remains true.
* Charlie Bass has not called on Joe Barton to lose his ranking position on the House Energy Committee.
* Joe Barton's PAC has contributed a significant amount of money to Charlie Bass over the years, including $2000 for this election cycle so far.
Brighton, Colorado (FNS)-Attorneys from the Republican Study Group (RSG) descended upon the 17th Judicial District courtroom of Judge John T Bryan today to present an amicus brief and associated oral arguments in order to prevent a settlement in a lawsuit related to an automobile accident in this Colorado city.
The intervening attorneys claim the settlement reached between the two parties to the accident is a "shakedown" because the plaintiff had not yet exhausted all possible legal remedies when the agreement was finalized, and because the agreement was executed in the presence of the plaintiff's brother, a well-known local attorney.
They hope Judge Bryan will decline to approve the settlement in today's hearing, and that he will order the parties to move forward to trial.
"What we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on preexisting laws but on decisions by one man, a car czar", said Crush Mimbaugh, attorney for the RSG, "and we are here today to protect all Americans from this legally sanctioned rape of an innocent driver."
Honestly, I am absolutely sick of commercial air travel these days. Just dealing with security is bad enough, but then there's the airlines, and...hey, all you really need to know here is that there has to be a pretty good reason for me to fly cross-country.
Well, I had one Saturday night, which is how I came to be in the Colonnade Room of the Fairmount Hotel, Washington DC with about 250 of my closest friends, in a classic shawl-collar tuxedo, attending one of the most exclusive "passing of the torch" ceremonies in recent Washington memory.
And when it was all over, Douglas Feith was a happy man.
An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity identifies 20 members of Congress who disclosed owning at least $1,001 worth of shares in BP or Transocean Ltd in their 2008 financial forms. One of the members is Judd Gregg, who had disclosed holding between $15,001 and $50,000 in BP stock -- but he has since sold it off.
"Senator Gregg no longer owns any BP stock," spokeswoman Laena Fallon told OpenSecrets Blog. Fallon did not elaborate on when or why he sold the stock.
Making matters worse for Barton is the identity of the top contributor to his election campaigns. Since 1989, it has been the company Anadarko Petroleum, from which he's received $56,500 in PAC donations and another $90,000 in individual contributions.
...Anadarko has been making a lot of news lately, and none of it is good: they're a 25 percent partner in the Macondo Prospect, which was the site of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that is causing oil to spill into the Gulf of Mexico. Anadarko has also been sent a bill by BP and asked to pay its share of the cleanup costs.
Team Kuster wasted no time, releasing this devastating fact sheet to the press (some of which I had not read before, which is incredible to me given how much time I have spent looking into the BassMaster's record):
Bass & Barton Fought to Decrease Oversight for U.S. Refineries
According to Environment and Energy Daily, "lead sponsor Bass and fellow Republicans called the bill a way to streamline the siting process for new refineries, noting that U.S. refining capacity is not meeting consumer demand for gasoline and other fuels. Bass and Barton told reporters the lack of an efficient permitting process is among the reasons why there is not more domestic refinery capacity today. 'The uncertainty as to how long it will take -- six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years -- makes it difficult,' Bass told reporters." Environment and Energy Daily, May 4, 2006, "ENERGY POLICY: Defeated refinery bill could return to floor next week"
· Bass Criticized for Helping Burton to Protect MTBE-makers
According to Roll Call, "Bass was a key negotiator with Joe Barton on an MTBE deal and voted against a motion by Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) that would have stripped MTBE liability protections from the House bill. Though the protections were removed in conference anyway, critics derided Bass for supporting Barton's efforts . . . " Roll Call, February 21, 2006, "Environment May Resonate as an Issue In Some 2006 Races."
· Bass Described as "Doing the Bidding" of Delay and Barton
"Democrats are licking their proverbial chops over" Bass' MtBE legislation fell through in July 2005. The article stated that even Bass backers did not understand why he was involved in the legislation, as it put him in a position of "doing the bidding of the oil industry and oil-rich Texas congressmen Tom DeLay and Joe Barton by proposing liability protection for the industry and a cleanup trust fund partly funded by taxpayers" especially when he knew that the Senate would not go along with the plan. The editorial claimed that his backers could "see no upside for Bass" in the ordeal, but said it wouldn't hurt Bass in the long-run. A DCCC spokesperson countered that the matter proved Bass "vulnerable and ineffective." The Union Leader (Manchester NH) July 28, 2005 Thursday STATE EDITION
And Annie herself responded:
"Over his six terms in Congress, Charlie Bass voted repeatedly to expand offshore oil drilling, he called for eliminating the entire U.S. Department of Energy, he attacked the Sierra Club a so-called 'extremist'" organization, and he did everything he could to help the big oil and power companies that gave him tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. It should not come as a surprise that the man he called a 'great member of Congress and a good friend' just last week is now catching heat for apologizing to the CEO of BP," said Kuster.
More reax (in the order I got them) below the fold.
Equally as important as going after BP is finding out how years of a lax attitude about regulation and funding of regulatory bodies under Republicans contributed to the Gulf nightmare:
The WSJ (subs required) noticed:
House members also grilled David Kennedy, acting assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to determine how underfunding of the agency contributed to its lack of study in the area of oil spill disasters.
"Our feeling for some time has been that capacity, if it were stretched by a very significant spill, could certainly compromise our ability to respond," Kennedy said.
Kennedy was criticized by Rep. Carol Shea-Porter, (D., N.H.) for not being more aggressive about budget cuts that the agency knew were affecting its capabilities. "If you knew and feared this, and others in your job feared this, I think the response should have been a lot greater than it was," she said.
Tomorrow night, the 44th President of the United States will address the nation from the Oval Office to talk about oil. President Obama is doing this because of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, but in a way, he'll look into the camera and give his fellow Americans the same speech they've been given by their last seven Presidents.
For four decades, our Presidents have told us of the urgency of breaking the shackles of oil and freeing ourselves, our country, our species from the tyranny and the scorched earth of a civilization based on elusive natural resources and a degree of pollution that provides an existential threat to that very civilization and to most other life on earth.
We know where the buck stops. What we don't know is when.
We ask too much of our leaders in this country. The Presidency is so ingrained in our national identity, so intrinsic to our cultural attitudes that we set an impossible standard for the human being sitting in the chair. We expect our President to be a superhero who can stare down our enemies and fix all our problems, but he isn't. We expect our President to be the embodiment of all things quintessentially American, but he isn't. We expect our President to shake every hand, to hear every voice, to consider every idea, to let us have it both ways, to know every outcome of our actions and inactions, but he can't. He's one entirely fallible human being, and despite our expectations, he controls only one branch of one level of government.
It doesn't matter how loudly he yells at the CEO of BP, how calm he seems when he explains the details of oil regulation to reporters, or whether he wears a flag pin on his lapel.
It matters what he says tomorrow night and what he does the next morning, whether he will squander this moment in discussion just of punitive measures and cleanup efforts, or whether he will seize this opportunity to guide the ship of state onto a new path, to finally address the existential crisis we have neglected for a generation.
It also matters what the rest of us do. Citizens, activists, voters, elected officials, the opposition, and timid allies. He can't do it alone, he can't do it without cooperation from the other branches of government, and he can't do it with a Congress paralyzed by the fear of a movement defined only by an irrational anger at all the wrong problems and very few of the right ones--or worse, a Congress controlled by those who have no genuine interest in governing.
But he has to try, because we can't do it without him. We know the buck stops in the Oval Office--the question is only how long we have to wait for someone in that office to deal with it, and how many more people will sit in that chair and deliver that speech before we do. Talk is not cheap, not from the bully pulpit, but it has to lead somewhere, and this President has to lead somewhere. That somewhere is an end to dangerous drilling, an incentive structure that discourages fossil fuel use, a meaningful investment in renewable energy and in the modern energy and transportation infrastructure that we already have the technology for. He has to impress upon the country and its capital the need to think big, and to act. Now.
Two years ago, when he won the nomination for President, Obama told us he knew the difficulty of our challenges but that if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, generations from now we will be able to look back and say that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.
I just wanted to take a minute to say hello and to see how things have been for you lately, and to maybe bring you up to date on a bit of news from here.
Well, right off the bat, we hear you have a new Conservative Prime Minister and that his Party and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are in partnership, which I'm sure will be interesting; you probably heard that us Colonials are again having Tea Parties, which has also been very interesting.
I have a Godson who's getting married this September, so we're all talking about that, and I hear Graham Norton was even better than last year at hosting Eurovision, despite the fact that it's...frankly, it's Eurovision.
Oh, yeah...we also had a bit of an oil spill recently that you may have heard about-and hoo, boy; you should see how the Company that spilled the oil has been acting.
We're now into day way too many of the BP oil spill, and the President has just yesterday been down on the Louisiana coast-again.
There have been suggestions that the Administration should take action to essentially push BP out of the way and take over the work itself, particularly as it relates to the cleanup.
It may have even occurred to you that an official declaration of some sort might be needed, in order to bring the full power of the Feds into play.
That's some good thinking, but before we go jumping right into declaring things we better understand the law, because if we don't, we could actually make things worse.
Kathy Sullivan had a great post on this earlier today, but I wanted to take a second and talk about Kelly Ayotte's statement this morning that taking drilling in New England "off the table" would be a "huge mistake."
It was unbelievable, especially as millions of gallons of oil continue to pollute Gulf waters and coastlines
Reporters both local and national habitually label Charlie Bass a "moderate" without backing it up with proof.
No doubt this happens due to a few of his votes during his six terms in Washington DC. (He pledged to serve no more than six, but whatever).
Yet here we are, 44 days into the worst oil leak in US history, and, unless I missed it, I haven't seen one word asked or answered on whether Bass supports the continuation of off-shore drilling.
Bass doesn't even have energy policy on his issues page, which once upon a time was an oft emphasized focus of his 12 long years in office.
It's obvious that his campaign strategy is to hide under a rock until the primary is over.
But the tradmed shouldn't enable this strategy. If he really is "moderate" Republican, it would stand to reason that his position on this should be different than the predominant GOP mantra of Drill, Baby, Drill.
(Thanks for stopping by Congressman. Only 160 days until we get to vote for you to be the next Senator from the great state of New Hampshire. - promoted by Mike Hoefer)
For 43 days, thousands of barrels of oil have been spilling into the Gulf Coast. 43 days of environmental disaster because big oil companies were given a blank check on offshore drilling with little regulation and poor oversight.
Now, with the recent failure of the "top kill" strategy, there is no end in sight to the amount of oil that is spilling into the Gulf. This spill is poisoning our waters, suffocating our plants and wildlife, and jeopardizing the health of our citizens - threatening jobs, businesses and communities along the Gulf Coast.
My thoughts and prayers are with the people and communities down on the Gulf, who are dealing day and night with the devastating aftermath of the spill.
This disaster was a warning sign. When government puts the profits of Big Oil first, when politicians listen to special interests instead of the people they are supposed to represent - then we put the safety of our workers, communities and economy at risk.
Watching James Carville make excuses for Obama Wednesday on CNN was heartbreaking. I heard enough excuses under Bush, I didn't vote for Obama to hear more. I don't suppose an anonymous and occasional diarist has much pull, but whatever pull I have, whatever my elected officials think they owe, I'm calling it in: MOBILIZE THE FULL POWER OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO FIX THIS SPILL.
I'm mad about this. I want bazillions of people cleaning up those beaches and marshes. I want miles of boom lined up waiting to be used. And I DON'T want people like Carville saying that Obama must not be getting good advice, or that he might not understand the scope of this disaster.
Imagine if it had been terrorists. Respond accordingly. Worry about billing BP later. Two-hundred-umpteen thousand federal employees, and this is the best we can do?
Here's one listof what the White House could be doing, including declaring a state of emergency (he hasn't done that yet?!); getting DARPA to create a skunkworks rapid solutions team; and
9) Call that lazy-assed sad-sack Joe Lieberman and tell him whatever super-secret-y deal you guys have going in the way of a quid pro quo is off if Lieberman cannot find some reason to investigate the relationships between Department of Interior and any corporation with which it deals.
Unfortunately, I still haven't seen more than this tepid response from the White House spokespeople:
MR. GIBBS: I would say relating to some of the earlier questioning, we've asked them to provide more public data on air and water quality, and we asked them 10 days ago and reiterated in a letter yesterday to provide video footage of what's happening 5,000 feet underneath the sea --
Q: Why didn't you order them to do that rather than ask them?
MR. GIBBS: Because it's -- you can't do that from a private company.
It's time to start ordering people.
I will be calling my senators and representatives tomorrow on this. They can harrass BP all they want, but the first job for the federal government is to FIX IT.
Surprise! The Senate GOPers have decided that protecting the oil companies from liability is more important than protecting your jobs, health, and pursuit of happiness when they pollute all over you.
(And do we think Kelly Ayotte or Bill Binnie or the rest of them will behave any differently?)
Fortunately the President of the United States sees this for what it is, and isn't shy about calling them out on it (release):
"I am disappointed that an effort to ensure that oil companies pay fully for disasters they cause has stalled in the United States Senate on a partisan basis. This maneuver threatens to leave taxpayers, rather than the oil companies, on the hook for future disasters like the BP oil spill. I urge the Senate Republicans to stop playing special interest politics and join in a bipartisan effort to protect taxpayers
That's why we investigate who donates to our elected officials. We pay attention to who the big corporate campaign donors are.
In 2005, Abramoff's money, via Tom DeLay's ARMPAC , caused considerable stir. J. D. Hayworth, the Republican primarying McCain in Arizona kept his Abramoff money. Pressure exerted by NH Democrats forced Jeb Bradley to return his $15,000 from ARMPAC. Ron Paul came under fire in 2007 for refusing to return donations from Neo-Nazi Don Black, the creator of StormFront, a white nationalist website. Former Speaker of the NH House, Gene Chandler, got in big trouble for taking donations and not reporting them.
Even as oil devastates the seafood industry and the coast of Louisiana, Senator Mary Landrieu is calling for accelerated offshore oil drilling. Mary Landrieu is the top recipient in Congress of donations from BP.
A recent press release from the NHDP criticizes Kelly Ayotte for taking some $150K from Wall St. execs, including a billionaire hedge fund manager.
Given that we watch and we criticize - it was especially painful to learn that one of the sponsors of the recent NHDP 100 Club Dinner was Wal-Mart. As we all know, Wal-Mart has long been criticized for their shoddy business practices, including not paying overtime, not providing health insurance for employees, and paying so poorly that many employees are eligible for food stamps and Medicaid. They are anti-union. They are anti-women. Wal-Mart pharmacies do not stock the morning after pill. Wal-Mart engages in censorship. Books, movies, and CDs purchased at Wal-Mart may be censored for bad language. Wal-Mart is an evil empire in many, many respects.
I'm dismayed that the NHDP accepted money from Wal-Mart. Not only are their ethics non-existent, taking money from them will lead to speculation about what they got in return.
