Officials at NOAA told the Obama Administration that it was underestimating the rate and risk of spills before the President announced his controversial decision to open up coastal areas to drilling in March. Analysts also noted that there were serious problems in responding to spills.
For environmentalists, the dismissal of such concern reminds them of the Bush Administration, which tended to ignore advice that didn’t fit its political agenda. While the Bush Administration ignored data on weapons of mass destruction, the Obama Administration appears to have dismissed data on environmental mass destruction.
The White House is clearly not happy with the leaked warnings and NOAA officials have come out to stress that they were heeded on other warnings. Experts at the Congressional Research Service and other organizations are cited as warning that “[r]ecent annual data indicate that the overall decline of annual spill events may have stopped’ and that ‘[t]he threat of oil spills raises the question of whether U.S. officials have the necessary resources at hand to respond to a major spill. There is some concern that the favorable U.S. spill record has resulted in a loss of experienced personnel, capable of responding quickly and effectively to a major oil spill.”
For the story, click here.
Kudos: Elaine M.
Glad to see you back.
Hey AY good to see your elf!
Nal,
Almost more than you know. I can assure you of that fact.
Have you been gone?
If I recall correctly, I think Federally they will be limited to 75 million. However, if they have been found not to have acted in a reasonable manner, then the cap can be lifted. This is why they are trying to finger Haliburton and Transocean.
FYI:
BP Oil Slick The Result Of Republican DOJ And Regulatory Policy
By: bmaz Monday May 3, 2010 7:23 pm Tweet32 Share55
The economic and environmental damage resulting from the exploding fireball compromise of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform may be unprecedented, with the potential to emit the equivalent of up to four Exxon Valdez breakups per week with no good plan to stop it. There will be plenty of finger pointing among BP, Transocean and Halliburton, while it appears the bought and paid for corporatist Congress put the screws to the individual citizens and small businesses by drastically limiting their potential for economic recovery; all in the course of insuring big oil producers like BP have effectively no damage liability for such losses.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/05/03/bp-oil-slick-the-result-of-republican-doj-and-regulatory-policy/
Elaine:
that would be a good bill. I hope they can get it passed.
What Speaker Pelosi failed to mention was that President Bush warned the Democratic Congress 17 times in 2008 alone about the systemic consequences of financial turmoil at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and also put forward thoughtful plans to reduce the risk that either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac would encounter such difficulties.
Unfortunately, these warnings went unheeded, as the President’s repeated attempts to reform the supervision of these entities were thwarted by the legislative maneuvering of those who emphatically denied there were problems.
Like the financial meltdown
Nearly two years after the Wall Street meltdown drove the U.S. economy to the brink of collapse, and forced the U.S. government to prop up major financial institutions with hundreds of billions of dollars, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now claims that the Bush Administration prohibited its own top officials who were handling the emerging crisis from briefing Congress until a complete financial collapse was only hours away.
http://www.thefoxnation.com/nancy-pelosi/2010/05/03/truther-pelosi-says-bush-knew-market-would-crash-kept-it-secret
Nal said:
Enough time to repair the damage cause by 8 years which turned interior into the agency where officials snorted coke off of hookers hired by the oil industry? I don’t think that is a realistic assessment. Overcoming institutional memory and completely reversing the prevailing culture (remember, you can’t just fire every single person in the interior department and start over) is not something that can be done in a year and three months. Believe me, I know – I’m a Detroit Lions fan. I’m sure that the Interior department is better than it was (it would be hard not to be) and you might be able to make an argument that it isn’t changing fast enough (though you would have to do some research before I would buy that argument), but to say that the department should be fixed by now is disingenuous at best. The Obama administration is responsible for its reaction to the oil spill (I’d say that they were a little slow out of the gate, but once the explosion happened even the most prompt and efficient response possible could have only slightly mitigated this disaster. Like the financial meltdown and the Upper Big Branch mine explosion this is another piece of the Bush Administration’s legacy of deregulation and I’m much more interested in what the Obama Administration and Congress are going to do to make sure that these type of things can never happen again rather than trying to place blame.
During the 2008 election cycle, individuals and political action committees associated with BP — a Center for Responsive Politics’ “heavy hitter” — contributed half a million dollars to federal candidates. About 40 percent of these donations went to Democrats. The top recipient of BP-related donations during the 2008 cycle was President Barack Obama himself, who collected $71,000.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/05/01
The oil giant behind the spill is now apologizing after trying to get local fishermen to waive legal rights in exchange for $5,000, reports The Daily Beast’s Rick Outzen from the Gulf Coast.
Plus, click here to read the best local blog posts and tweets from the Gulf region, see photos of animals threatened by the spill, and find out how you can get involved in the clean up.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-05-04/bps-payoff-backfire/?om_rid=MMAuZ5&om_mid=_BL4A7jB8H23r$L&
How many more times?
– corporations contribute to political campaign
– politician agrees to look the other way on regulating their industry
– environmental disaster happens because of lack of regulation
– politician gives grand speeches about responsibility, response, etc.
– corporations conduct intense PR campaign
– corporations gradually eat away at any kind of proposed future restraints on their power
Repeat.
WASHINGTON (AP) – To hear Obama administration officials tell it, they’ve been fully engaged on the Gulf Coast oil spill since Day One, bringing every resource to bear and able to ensure without question that taxpayers will be protected.
Not quite.
Take President Barack Obama’s repeated claims that BP will be responsible for all the costs associated with the devastating spill that began after an oil rig operated by the company exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and later sinking.
“Let me be clear: BP is responsible for this leak; BP will be paying the bill,” Obama said while touring the area Sunday.
While it’s true that the federal Oil Pollution Act, enacted in 1990 in response to the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, makes BP responsible for cleanup costs, the law caps the company’s liability for economic damages—such as lost wages, shortened fishing seasons or lagging tourism—at $75 million, a pittance compared to potential losses.
Administration officials insist BP will be held responsible anyway, noting that if the company is found negligent or criminally liable, the cap disappears. Claims also can potentially be made under other state or federal laws, officials said.
Yet the liability cap is problematic enough that a trio of Democratic senators introduced legislation Monday raising it to $10 billion, and the administration quickly announced its support. Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Bill Nelson of Florida voiced concerns that unless the cap is raised, BP would avoid paying for the mess and leave small businesses, local government and fishermen with the bill.
“They’re not going to want to pay any more than what the law says they have to,” Nelson said.
Then there’s the administration’s rhetoric about anticipating the magnitude of the crisis and bringing all resources to bear on Day One.
“We had (Defense Department) resources there from Day One. This was a situation that was treated as a possible catastrophic failure from, from Day One,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
That sense of urgency was not so apparent when White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was questioned about the incident April 23, three days after it occurred. At the time he seemed to dismiss its severity and indicated it wouldn’t affect Obama’s plans to open up new areas of the coast to offshore drilling.
“I don’t honestly think it opens up a whole new series of questions, because, you know, in all honesty I doubt this is the first accident that has happened and I doubt it will be the last,” Gibbs said.
A week later, Obama was announcing plans for Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to review whether new technologies were needed to safeguard against oil spills from deep-water drilling rigs. The president said no new offshore oil drilling leases would be issued without any such safeguards.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9FFVCOO0&show_article=1
Ken Salazar was confirmed as the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior on Jan. 20, 2009, in a unanimous vote by the Senate. No delay in confirmation in this case.
I think one year and three months should be enough time.
I believe that President Obama has been appointing good people.
Elaine,
It may be way off topic, but it’s exactly the type of reform that could actually help clean up Congress. Maybe a miracle will happen and it will actually pass.
Nal,
The Bush Administration systematically gutted the regulatory agencies in this country for 8 years. Do you honestly think that the Obama Administration could have fixed it all in a little over a year while trying to avoid another depression and getting health insurance reform passed? (As well as the many other things that they’ve been doing.) I believe that President Obama has been appointing good people, but given the average wait for confirmation of appointments in the senate and the fact that changing large bureaucracies is a slow, difficult process any reasonable person would come to the conclusion that no, they haven’t had enough time to clean up this cesspool.
I know this is WAY off topic–but it does relate to lobbying–another bad thing that has become “institutionalized” and perpetuated in our federal government from administration to administration.
**********
Bill To Ban Members Of Congress From Becoming Lobbyists Wins Cosponsor In Senate
by Arthur Delaney (Huffington Post, 5/4/2010)
Excerpt:
A long-shot proposal to ban former members of Congress from K Street for life won a cosponsor on Monday in Montana Democrat Sen. Jon Tester.
“From an ethics standpoint it’s the right thing to do,” said Tester in an interview with HuffPost. “From a transparency standpoint it’s the right thing to do.”
The bill, authored by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Col.), would prohibit any member of the House or Senate from taking a job with a lobbying firm after retiring. It would force staffers to wait six years before becoming lobbyists, and it would force lobbyists to wait six years before they can become staffers — a phenomenon that gets little attention despite its prevalence. And the bill would ban campaign contributions from lobbyists, who contribute tens of thousands of dollars over meals and hundreds of thousands in mysteriously legal “bundles.”
“There has been a revolving door between staff members that go to work for senators, go back out in the private sector, come back, go to work for senators, and there’s been a ton of senators who’ve gone to the lobbying arena,” Tester said. “My guess is they’re probably making pretty good coin doing it.”
This bill, Tester said, “helps clean up a perception of Washington that it’s an insider’s game and it’s just a group that keeps switching from job to job.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/04/bill-to-ban-members-of-co_n_561269.html
**********
There’s probably a zero percent chance of this bill passing.
Forget Offshore Drilling Until We Get Some Answers
After the Bush administration took office, the [Minerals Management Service (or MMS, the division of the Interior Department responsible for offshore drilling)] became a cesspool of corruption and conflicts of interest.
The Obama Administration has had enough time to clean up this cesspool.
The reality is that deceit has become institutionalized and therefore perpetuated from admin to admin.
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/05/back-to-future-of-real-world.html