BP Coffee Spill

No words are needed.

Gov’t Fails Latest Test of Trust in Gulf (and Everywhere Else)

Don’t let the headline of the article fool you, this isn’t just about the oil spill.  This article is  about our trust (or lack thereof) in the government, and institutions as a whole (from the EPA, to McDonalds).  The only institution Americans seem to trust is the military- which 82% of respondents had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in.

The article raises several good points; and even though the results aren’t surprising, its rather depressing when you put it all together.  The question remains, how bad does it have to get before more people stand up?  People need to stand up not just to government; but to the banks, industries, and corporations that are the root of so many of the problems we see today (including many that the government is blamed for).  Yes, we have the Tea Party, but a majority of the country is still apathetic and/or ignorant when it comes to politics.  There are those few who stand up to the private sector, but without a strong voice or millions of dollars, it is difficult to capture the public’s attention.

We may not have confidence in all of the institutions around us, but what are we doing to fix it?  We elect our government- we chose who is in office.  We choose to spend our money indiscriminately.  How many of you, despite your outrage of the oil spill in the gulf, have actually boycotted BP?  We can’t expect the private sector to have morals and ethics if we aren’t involved and don’t hold them accountable financially.  If you don’t trust the government to handle the banks, insurance companies, oil industry, etc. then punish the companies yourselves by refusing to give them another dime.  And if your trust in government is really that low, then go vote and do your part.  Only 56.8% of Americans voted in 2008, but far more are unhappy with their elected officials.  Hell go one step further and run for office yourself.  You may not win, but you can make a point.

Senator is Protecting Big Oil

I woke up this morning and received a disturbing email from Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY).  Here it is:

Dear XXX,

Watching the tragic consequences of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico these past few weeks-from the economic pain of local businesspeople to the environmental degradation-has been positively gut-wrenching.

So I was appalled yesterday when a Senate bill to hold oil companies accountable for their actions and require them to pay the full cost of their deadly mistakes was blocked by a single Republican dissenter.

We can’t let one of the worst environmental catastrophes in decades go unpunished, and we can’t allow something like this to ever happen again. Please sign this petition demanding immediate passage of legislation that raises the cap on how much oil companies have to pay in damages for their offshore disasters.

Click here to add your name to this important petition that ensures we don’t provide any bailouts to big oil companies.

I have sponsored legislation along with my Democratic colleagues, Senators Robert Menendez, Frank Lautenberg and Bill Nelson that proposes raising the cap on damages from $75 million to $10 billion, making sure that taxpayers don’t have to foot the bill for spills caused by reckless oil companies.

But despite support from both sides of the aisle, Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska brought the entire effort to a halt, effectively putting special interests before the American people and our environment.

How can we let oil companies get away with shoddy practices and careless errors? How can we not do everything possible to prevent a disaster like this from ever happening again? I, for one, cannot sit back and watch my colleague protect the rights of big oil, and I hope you can’t either

Please click here to sign this petition today. Let’s do everything we can to force BP to pay for this terrible mistake and protect ourselves from any future spills.

We can’t just stand by and watch helplessly as this tragedy unfolds. We must take action. Thank you for joining me in delivering a clear and powerful message.

Sincerely,

Kirsten Gillibrand

In disbelief, I thought there MUST be more to the story and I was just getting the Democrat’s spin on the story.  Unfortunately, it happened just like that.  Here it is from her own mouth, “I don’t believe that taking the liability cap from $75 million dollars to $10 million dollars…133 times the current strict liability limit, is where we need to be right now.”

Senator Murkowski is familiar with the oil companies.  She is from Alaska and remembers the Exxon-Valdez spill and the fight for people to get compensation from the company.  Her top four contributors however, are energy companies.  Her argument against the bill is that the small oil companies (there are many in Alaska) won’t be able to pay such a high cap and they won’t be able to get insurance.  While I appreciate that she is looking out for the “little guy”, she needs to worry about the people who are affected by the oil spill, not the ones who caused it.

Marine Scientists: Oil Leak is Much Worse Than Reported

As if it wasn’t already bad enough, some marine scientists are suggesting the oil leak is actually spilling 70,000 barrels a day, 12 times worse than originally reported.  If that is the case, this spill was worse than the Exxon-Valdez spill it is frequently compared to in just 4 days.

This in the wake of more bad news: an offshore natural gas platform off the coast of Venezuela sunk today.  Fortunately, the valve was sealed and there aren’t any leaks according to government officials.  President Chavez appeared on national television to confirm that all personnel were safe and there wasn’t any risk to the environment.

‘Don’t Blame Me’ Is Refrain At Gulf Oil Spill Hearing

While everyone in charge is too busy shifting the blame, the leak continues to pour oil into the ocean.  The best part of this article?

“Over the next two weeks, BP said it will pump golf balls, rope knots and shreds of tires into a partially closed valve on the sea floor, to see if it they can jam it up and stop the flow of oil that way.”

So much for being technologically advanced.  How about we get back to stopping the leak and stop pointing the blame for right now.

‘Don’t Blame Me’ Is Refrain At Gulf Oil Spill Hearing : NPR.

Oil Spill Investigator Reveals the Truth About BP

 

Greg Palast was a fraud investegator tasked with investegating the Exxon-Valdez oil spill in 1989.  In his report, he claims that BP, not Exxon, was in charge of cleaning up any oil spills in that region, and they blatantly lied about their preparedness to do so.  Sound familiar?  

The spill in Louisiana is more of the same, except this time there are leaks that BP still has to stop.  There’s no way for them to get around that.  They did stop one of the leaks yesterday, but they said it didn’t reduce the amount of oil being spilled into the Gulf.  Estimated timeline to stop everything?  3 months. 

When BP’s CEO Tony Hayward first heard of this most recent spill he asked, “what the hell did we do to deserve this?”  Maybe he should ask Mr. Palast.  If his company was truly prepared, this spill would be contained and they would’ve already had a way to stop the leaks (and much sooner too).  He just doesn’t get it.

Hopefully this accident costs them enough money that it will be a wake up call and they will change their ways.  Either way, I dont think I will be stopping at any BP stations to fill up my tank any time soon.  They’ve done too much damage.

Rush Limbaugh: Alaska’s Prince William Sound Is Pristine Despite Exxon-Valdez Spill

I havent written much on the oil spill in Louisiana, as you can find all the information you need from mainstream news sources (the Huffington Post has outstanding coverage).  This however, is not as publicized.  Rush Limbaugh was discusing the oil spill on his April 29th show and commented, “the ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and was left out there. It’s natural.”  After all, oil is a natural resource, therefore nature has its own way of taking care of it.  Unfortunately oil is a natural resource under the ground, not in the ocean.  Only by man-made efforts does the oil ever come out of the ground. 

He went on to prove his point by saying that the Prince William Sound in Alaska (where the Exxon-Valdez spill 21 years ago took place) is now “pristine”.  In fact, that is not the case- as there are still 23,000 gallons of oil that remain in the sound (compared to 11 million that were originally spiled) according to a report by government officials involved in the continued clean up.  While 23,000 may seem a small number compared to the original amount, it is still an extraordinarily high number.  According to AAA, the average cost for fuel today is $2.919 a gallon… if you needed 23,000 gallons of gas it would cost you $67,137.  Still seem like a small amount?

Furthermore, the report indicates that “one of the most stunning revelations of Trustee Council-funded monitoring over the last 10 years is that Exxon Valdez oil persists in the environment and in places, is nearly as toxic as it was the first few weeks after the spill.”

The beaches may not be black and birds may not be falling out of the sky with oil-covered wings, but there is very much a residual effect from a spill that happened 21 years ago.  With this spill promising to be much larger than the one in Alaska, who knows how long we will be seeing the effects.

For more information, check this out: PolitiFact | Rush Limbaugh says Alaska’s Prince William Sound is now pristine.

Where Obama REALLY Got His Money, BP or the Financial Sector?

A Politico story is reporting that Obama received campaign contributions from BP, so I decided to do a little digging.

My first stop was opensecrets.org, a website that tracks every politician’s campaign funds (income and expenditures). 

Here is what I found for the 2010 presidential election.  While this doesn’t mean that the money was from BP itself, it was from the industry.  Interesting to note: McCain received almost $2.5 million… that’s a big gap between him and Obama’s $900,000.

Joe Biden received money too, which you could assume would’ve been rolled up into Obama’s fund if any of that money was left.  So that brings the Obama campaign’s total to $920,454.

From there, I checked Obama’s top contributors to his 2010 campaign.  These are individual companies (or their PACs), rather than an entire industry as a whole.  BP wasn’t on there, or any other oil company.  Here is what I found: Goldman Sachs, his #2 contributor.  Despite the contributions Obama is pushing for finance reform, which would include Goldman Sachs.  As bad as their image is, there is no way Obama could work to support them.  The same holds true for Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase & Co.  UBS AG is also an investment banking/asset management firm, with locations all over the world.  And finally, Morgan Stanley is near the bottom of the list.  A grand total of $3,449,317 from the financial sector. 

In fact, President Obama received a total of $14,891,735 from the securities and investments sector, another $6,309,267 from “misc. banking”, and another $3,316,351 from commercial banks; bringing his total from the financial sector to $27,966,670.  Its amazing he is pushing finance reform at all, although it has taken him over a year to get started on it.  Perhaps he finally realized that finance reform is what the public wants and if Democrats want to do well in Novmber, he needs to address it and show he is focused on the economy still.

University of California	$1,591,395
Goldman Sachs	$994,795
Harvard University	$854,747
Microsoft Corp	$833,617
Google Inc	$803,436
Citigroup Inc	$701,290
JPMorgan Chase & Co	$695,132
Time Warner	$590,084
Sidley Austin LLP	$588,598
Stanford University	$586,557
National Amusements Inc	$551,683
UBS AG	$543,219
Wilmerhale Llp	$542,618
Skadden, Arps et al	$530,839
IBM Corp	$528,822
Columbia University	$528,302
Morgan Stanley	$514,881
General Electric	$499,130
US Government	$494,820
Latham & Watkins	$493,835

But, back to the oil companies.  This chart shows contributions from the oil/natural gas industry to politicians by party for 2010.  If you check out the site you can see the list for past years, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is even larger with each previous year back to 2002.  The last year in which Democrats received such a high percentage was in 1994, with 38%.  Democrats aren’t completely off the hook.  The top recipient of the oil/natural gas industry’s money?  Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Democrat from Arkansas.  Which explains why she is coming out for continued oil drilling in the wake of the spill in Louisiana.

All of that said, BP itself did donate $71,051 to Obama’s campaign in 2008, and $36,649 to McCain’s campaign.  Overall in 2008, it donated $195,415 to Democrats and $190,949 to Republicans in 2008.  Most of the Democrat’s money went to the Senate ($105,152) and a little over half of the Republican’s money went to the Senate as well ($95,749).

So far in 2010, BP has donated $45,550 to Democrats and $53,000 to Republicans.  Most of the money in both parties has gone to the House so far.  The top recipients so far are Senate candidate Jack Conway (D-KY), Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Ark.), and Senator Lincoln (D-Ark.).