Faced with widespread criticism over its response to the BP oil spill and the President’s plan to lift the ban on drilling along the pristine areas off our East Coast, the Obama Administration launched a public campaign with officials like Carol Browner proclaiming that the oil seemed to just disappear. This was done a few days before the announcement that the President was going to allow drilling to resume. Now, that amazing disappearing oil has been located — an oil plume at least 22 miles long and 3,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico.
Browner and other officials insisted that it was simply nothing short of a miracle. In a five-page report released August 4 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it was claimed “a vast majority” of the BP oil spill is now completely gone. In the meantime, the Administration was criticized for avoiding questions about the millions of toxic chemicals used to disperse the chemicals despite a lack of knowledge on how the chemicals will affect the ecosystem and food chain for decades to come.
While Browner and others were saying that the oil had largely disappeared, various scientists condemned the report as “misleading if not totally inaccurate.”
If such a report was issued by the Bush Administration, environmentalists and liberals would be outraged and demanding resignations. However, the silence this week is deafening.
Source:
I am very weary of people like this. Mr. A., maybe kind sir he should do as all great Greek’s 3 and never leave your brothers behind. It appears to work in politics and business.
Bonnie, I was also born during Truman’s term, but I don’t know what that has to do with anything.
Bonnie, most of us still support the president. But he made a lot of promises to progressives and keeps asking that wing to take another one for the team. The right has taken a different approach: challenge his legitimacy at every turn. Which do you think is more constructive?
I have never seen a President who is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t do any particular thing. Perhaps, the liberals aren’t as liberal as they think. So far, it seems that it has been bitch, bitch, bitch–more from the left than the right. Truman was President when I was born. The left never seems to be happy even when we win elections. So sad.
I saw an interview earlier today on CNN. One of the two gentleman interviewed said they discovered this and was tracking it but had to quit because of Hurricane Alex. That means this was the end of June when they discovered it some seven weeks ago.
When a group of people worship profits above all other considerations the only way to punish them in a meaningful manner (aside from prison time) is to take their money. Most of it if not all of it.
That’s just basic psychology.
Mike A.,
I also think that the estate of any worker killed on the job should continue to receive their wages for, say, 50 years.
Slarti, I agree. We already have criminal forfeiture laws. There’s no reason the same rationale cannot be applied to corporate criminality.
tomdarch,
I would think that the only way to penalize companies for criminal behavior would be to confiscate shareholder equity. I can’t think of any other punishment that would discourage reckless behavior.
For people who are enamored of the idea of treating corporations as “people,” how do we put BP “in jail” if we find that it acted in a criminal manner?
We’ve clearly created a grotesque imbalance between corporations’ “rights” versus their “responsibilities.”
(Someone please explain how corporations, which are nothing but a contractual mechanism for shared ownership of certain property, gained “rights”!?!?)
BP gives everyone with beachfront property in the gulf free oil for life and all they do is bitch, bitch, bitch.
Gee, am I relieved. Here I was thinking that all that oil had been lost.
Things are getting curiouser and curiouser …
http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2010/08/cleanup-begins-in-deep-pr-waters-2.html
lottakatz,
I don’t know which is scarier – that tar balls and fish kills are normal in New England or that oil from the gulf has made it that far…
NOAA Scientist: Release of Oil Spill Report done by White House, Not NOAA
By Online Thursday, August 19, 2010
-Darrell Issa
WASHINGTON, DC – A NOAA scientist, Dr. Bill Lehr, yesterday told a group of Congressional staff investigators on a conference call that a controversial National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report claiming that nearly three-quarters of the oil from the Gulf oil spill has already been addressed was released by White House officials and not scientists at NOAA.
The NOAA scientist told congressional investigators that the data backing up the assertions made in the report is still unavailable and that peer review of the report is still not complete. Officials at an August 4 White House press briefing had said that the report had been thoroughly peer reviewed.
“This is yet another in a long line of examples where the White House’s pre-occupation with the public relations of the oil spill has superseded the realities on the ground. It is deeply troubling that White House officials apparently preempted the completion and review of a scientific study on the oil spill by NOAA scientists in order to tout conclusions that many experts believe may be deeply flawed,” said Rep. Issa referring to an August 4 White House press briefing focused on the report. “This irresponsible action only adds to the perception that the Obama White House is more concerned about appearing competent than actually making sure the massive oil spill in the Gulf gets cleaned-up as quickly as possible. I will certainly be demanding the White House name those responsible for releasing this report, why it was released before it was complete, and whether its controversial conclusions have led to changes in Gulf clean-up efforts.”
Darrell Issa, Ranking Member
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Govt. and BP can’t find the oil in the gulf; where’d it all go? Wasn’t one of the big concerns all along that the oil (now oil and dispersant combination) would make its way around Florida and up the east coast? There are a couple of big fish kills and tar balls coming ashore in New England. Maybe they should be looking there.
Is this a coincidence or normal for this time of year in New England? How often do tar balls and fish kills occur back east? I just assume it’s part of the Gulf spill fallout but if these things are ‘normal’, like the summer-time Gulf dead zones from industrial and farm runoff, I’d like to know.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2010/08/12/days-tar-balls-york-beach-massive-fish-kills-stretch-nj-massachusets
“However, the silence this week is deafening.”
yup
The Corporate Coup can no longer be ignored.
It is a manifestation of a huge universal fouling,
…add this to the 1,000,000,0000 campaign contribution so conveniently on the heals of SCOTUS’s handy dandy nifty thrifty law allowing corporate campaign donations and the veil is pretty much lifted…
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0510/36783.html
and get the date on this one: 😉
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2456
Transocean claims BP is hiding data on rig explosion.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11033247
I, for one, demand that Carol Browner be fired if she doesn’t resign.
I also demand that BP should have been put in receivership until this mess was cleaned up but the Obama Administration won’t do that as the campaign finance check has cleared the bank.
Sold out fascist bastards.
I have only one request.
The good or bad people of wall street have a knack for making things disappear. You suppose they could go to work in the environmental clean up business?
Just think how quick it would disappear……