Time for BP to step aside -- and for the US Government to step up b/c it's Armageddon

Lets get the straight from the gitgo: the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is the result of non-existent federal regulatory oversight following eight long years of the Bush Regime that was marked with secret meetings with oil execs to determine how much farther we can bend over in terms of "getting government off their backs." Except, "government intervention" is a-okay when they want to divvy up Iraqi oil fields and need the military to wage the necessary wars in the Middle East to get it.

I'll go one step farther and say that if we're talking about blame for the disaster itself, the honest fingers point squarely in the direction of GOP-run administrations going back to Reagan. Period.

Now, in terms of response, how's BP doing? Because, you know the entire clean-up of this MEGALITHIC disaster is in hands. Which means, the entire existence of the Gulf ecosystem is in the hands of the very company that has already twaddled for a month following their megalithic fuck up. Is anyone surprised at the absence of "oil company dudes save-the-day" heroism like in the movie Armageddon?



Actually, it's just like in that movie. There was no contingency plan, and there's no "plan" happening right now. There's MILES of oil heading straight to the fragile Caribbean ecosystem, and there's nothing anyone is going to do about it. There're not even trying. Or, appearing to try. As a matter of fact, they're busy issuing press releases saying that "compared to the rest of the ocean, the oil is just a drop in the bucket." Lighten up, world -- there's plenty more ocean where that came from. There's more, and I'm not making this up: their "plan" actually lists walruses, seals and penguins as animals likely to be impacted by the oil." Okay, I made up the penguins -- they said otters. What's even worse is that the federal Minerals Management Service APPROVED the plan. This is like the Fed approving a plan to devalue Monopoly money.

I find this all incredibly disturbing given the fact that this is what's in the crosshairs of BP's monumental plumes of disaster now carried by the Loop Current:










The corals in John Pennecamp State Park are so fragile you're not even supposed to touch them. The bays that surround the coral reefs in the Florida Keys are so important that you're not supposed to moor anywhere that's not sandy, for fear of damaging the grasses, because that's where fish come from.

So, I'm waiting and wondering and worrying about what's going to happen with this reaches them:



And this:



And this:





Since this happened nearly a month ago I've been waiting to hear one thing, and one thing only -- that the government was going to finally do the job they're meant to, and take control of the mess. I want to know that the full force of *an independent* agency is down here doing everything in their power to fix this.

It's time for the grown-ups to take over. It's time for some leadership, and it's time for BP to step aside, which means that the Obama Administration is going to have to step up.

photographs are heart-breaking & infuriating

comes from.

8 Then the second angel sounded: And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.

this is so depressing.

Sadly, I'm not optimistic. We have it in our power, we've got public outrage on our side, we've got majorities. But I thought that with the financial crisis, too.

i'm not sure what can be done.

If Bobby Kennedy were president now he'd have federal marshals all over this, they would have gone through federal regulations with a fine tooth comb to find excuses to start arresting people, seizing assets, the works. He would have sent in the Army Corps of Engineers or other agencies to take over the whole operation.


Obama can't do any of this and he WON'T because he is a DLC wimp and has totally caved on energy policy and is worried about getting campaign donations.

I'd have a good laugh at that if it weren't so fucking tragic.

Scentopine nailed it in this post:



:applause:

That our Coast Guard is offering British Petroleum valuable PR protection. The Coast Guard remains fully committed during this time of crisis to seeing that no nasty news crews get important fly over shots of the damage this Armageddon is doing to the entire world.

Go Obama. Yes We Can!

Manchester Guardian had article about how they are suppressing data.....

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/18/gulf-oil-spill-government_n_580815.html


NOAA director Jane Lubchenco on Monday decried media reports about plumes of underwater oil as "misleading, premature and, in some cases, inaccurate." (See the Huffington Post and New York Times coverage.)

Lubchenco implicitly criticized scientists on the Pelican, a research vessel operated by the NOAA-affiliated National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology (NIUST), for being hasty in its pronouncements to the media.

"No definitive conclusions have been reached by this research team about the composition of the undersea layers they discovered," Lubchenco said in her statement. "Characterization of these layers will require analysis of samples and calibration of key instruments. The hypothesis that the layers consist of oil remains to be verified."

NIUST, while partially funded by NOAA, is a cooperative venture with the University of Mississippi and the University of Southern Mississippi. And it was the Pelican crew's idea -- not NOAA's -- to start taking underwater measurements, although NOAA was perfectly happy to take credit for it, initially.

NOAA officials did not respond to repeated questions from the Huffington Post on Tuesday, and therefore did not explain how they could possibly assess or track underwater oil without having any vessels out taking measurements. Nor did they explain how the Gordon Gunter showed up in an administration press release.

Doug Helton, the emergency response coordinator in Seattle who is NOAA's trajectory expert, answered his phone but wouldn't say much. "It's still a pretty dynamic situation as to what's in the field today, as opposed to yesterday," he hedged, before saying he would call back after getting clearance from NOAA's public affairs office. There was no call back.

"The fact that NOAA has missed the ball catastrophically on the tracking and effects monitoring of this spill is inexcusable," said Rick Steiner, a University of Alaska marine conservationist who recently spent more than a week on the Gulf Coast advising Greenpeace. "They need 20 research ships on this, yesterday."

Steiner explained: "This is probably turning out to be the largest oil spill in U.S. history and the most unique oil spill in world history," on account of it occurring not on or near the surface, but nearly a mile below.

"They should have had a preexisting rapid response plan," he told HuffPost. "They should have had vessels of opportunity -- shrimp vessels, any vessel that can deploy a water-column sampling device -- pre-contracted, on a list, to be called up in an event that this happened. And they blew it. And it's been going on for a month now, and all that information has been lost."

Steiner gave credit to the scientists on the Pelican, but noted that at most they had sampled less than 1 percent of the affected waters. "The Pelican happened to drop some of their sampling devices into a plume and found it, but there have to be plumes elsewhere, and the biological implication are vast."

NOAA officials "haven't picked it up because they haven't looked in the right places," he said. "There have to be dozens of these massive plumes of toxic Deepwater Horizon oil, and they haven't set out to delineate them in any shape or form."

(more at link)

I can't imagine why they are lying about it. The deep hole has NO obstruction. Other BP wells IN THE SAME GULF, near the DEEP WATER HORIZON run 25,000 BARRELS PER DAY in "production" mode. so who's to say this one aint leaking at the same rate!!!!?????

BP's analysis of how much their new pipe is siphoning off is BASED ON the 5,000 barrel estimate!


http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/49339

May 18, 2010

NEW ORLEANS – BP SAID on Tuesday that a tube inserted into a ruptured oil pipe now is sucking up about 40 per cent of the crude spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, about twice as much as it did one day earlier.

The company said in a statement that its ‘riser insertion tube tool’ is estimated to be collecting and carrying about 2,000 barrels a day of oil to flow up to the drillship Discoverer Enterprise on the surface 5,000 feet (1,500 metres) above.
<...>

And some experts have warned that the 5,000 barrels per day estimate by BP vastly underestimate the amount of oil actually spilling into the Gulf, saying the true amount may be 10 times as much.

But wait in both those stories the Percentage Number of Oil Recovered, was based against the initial estimate of the Amount of Oil Leaking daily, 5000 Barrels.

1000 / 5000 = 1/5 = 20%

2000 / 5000 = 2/5 = 40%

But I thought this "baseline" figure of 5000 barrels a day, was a gross underestimate by a Factor of at least 10?

So wouldn’t that change the math to at least:

1000 / 50,000 = 1/50 = 2.0%

2000 / 50,000 = 2/50 = 4.0%

Not such a rosy scenario, when the updated estimate numbers are used — No wonder BP resisted releasing those Videos. It makes their overly-optimistic sleight of hand, all that much harder to pull off.

4% vs 40% … which "success story" would you rather sell?

SO now for the "Bad News" part of this exercise in Creative Math. What DO independent sources say about what that "baseline" figure, SHOULD BE, for any percentage calculations?

2000 barrels recovered — may look like small potatoes, against truly gigantic gushers. (Although I admit, that 2000 barrels a day, is much better, than 0 barrels recovered, as was the case for the first 3 weeks.)

Gulf oil leak rate much higher than reported, professor says
A mechanical engineering professor who studied the video of the leak estimates the flow to be 70,000 barrels a day — 14 times higher than BP’s estimate.
By Bettina Boxall, Los Angeles Times — May 14, 2010
"I spent a couple of hours this afternoon analyzing the video, and the number I get is 70,000 barrels a day coming out of that pipe," said Steve Wereley, a Purdue University mechanical engineering professor.

Wereley, who has written a book on flow measurement, said his figure was an estimate that could be off by plus or minus 20%.

"BP has said you can’t measure this. I agree you can’t measure to a very high degree of precision," he added. "But that doesn’t mean you can’t get a good estimate. This estimate, I think, is much better than the 5,000 barrels a day they have previously been floating."

Professor says:

2000 / 70,000 = 2/70 = 2.8% Recovered ???

Some more on Professor Wereley methodology and error ranges:


Gulf Spill May Far Exceed Official Estimates
NPR – Morning Edition — May 14 2010
by Richard Harris

Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue University, analyzed videotape of the seafloor gusher using a technique called particle image velocimetry.

A computer program simply tracks particles and calculates how fast they are moving. Wereley put the BP video of the gusher into his computer. He made a few simple calculations and came up with an astonishing value for the rate of the oil spill: 70,000 barrels a day — much higher than the official estimate of 5,000 barrels a day.

The method is accurate to a degree of plus or minus 20 percent.

Given that uncertainty, the amount of material spewing from the pipe could range from 56,000 barrels to 84,000 barrels a day.

2000 / 56,000 = 2/56 = 3.6% … Low-end estimate

2000 / 70,000 = 2/70 = 2.8% … Actual estimate

2000 / 84,000 = 2/84 = 2.4% … High-end estimate

SO BP is actually collecting between 2.4% and 3.6% of the leaking oil,

IF they had bothered to use an ACCURATE baseline measure.

Still other independent experts have weighed in using, other estimate methodologies:

BP / Gulf Oil Spill – Video of Main Leak Supports SkyTruth Estimates
— Nearly 30 Million Gallons Spilled So Far
SkyTruth.org — May 16, 2010

Multiple scientists have reviewed this video; their estimates of the flow range from 840,000 gallons (20,000 barrels) per day to as much as 2.9 million gallons (70,000 barrels) per day. Add another 15-20% to those estimates for the secondary leak, and it’s clear that SkyTruth’s early alarm back on April 27 — that the spill is actually much worse than the official BP and government estimates — was valid, and conservative.



2000 / (20,000)x(1.2) = 2/24 = 8.3% … Low end, +20% bump for 2nd leak

2000 / (70,000)x(1.2) = 2/84 = 2.3% … High end, +20% bump for 2nd leak

It seems like even Creative Math, can only save this Good News Story, if BP can keep the "official estimate" of total leaking to a mere 5000 Barrels a day. So far they’ve been fairly successful at that aspect of their Message Management.

Too bad, BP can’t stop Reporters from noticing — they’ve been hardly "open and transparent and helpful" about sharing their data.

that nothing can be done. Bp it digging a well (? ) to stop the leak.
that won't happen until August, if we can believe anything they say. Any other solution is supposed to be environmentally as risky.

Please stop! I can't take it anymore!! :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Thinking about this.

It gets worse and worse.

excellent analysis.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

:hi:

painfully true, especially this bit:

"You are keeping your hands clean, determined to show that corporations can run government and war better than its citizenry. You are doing this regardless of the financial, human and environmental costs."

That's the game. Privatize it ALL, just as his hero Reagan tried to (yes, Obama said that Reagan is one of his favorite U.S. Presidents) and retain a hands off policy for anything that doesn't directly profit a major corporation. For a "brilliant" guy he sure is acting like a complete moron and we in the Gulf States, along with all of our flora and fauna, will pay the price. :grr:

Let's not focus at all on the decades of bad energy policy that brought us to this point.

Let's not look at the circumstances that surround this disaster and what it might mean for the future.

Let's not think of all the people on the Gulf whose lives will be affected.

Let's just use this as one more opportunity to bring together all the issues that we want to blame Obama for.

"We can't hold Bush responsible for 911 because of 8 years of Democratic policies that Bush inherited from Clinton. This is clearly the fault of the democrats"

We've come to expect shit like this from republicans. Democrats were completely justified for their anger over these remarks.

Now, fast forward to the Gulf and an aggressive new off shore oil drilling plan is being dumped on America by Obama:

"We can't hold Obama responsible for Deep Horizon because of 8 years of Republican policies that Obama inherited from Bush. This is clearly the fault of the republicans"

All I know is that both of these statements are fucking bullshit, causing my head to explode as the hypocrisy of it all leads to more destruction.

And what part of my post says I'm not thinking of the people and places that have been devastated?



I will argue that Obama should be as concerned.

I am not going to look forward or look past or look ahead like we have been asked to do with war, bailouts, torture, wiretapping, oil drilling, wall street crime, health reform. There is a very clear pattern emerging from Obama and it is one of a slippery man making sure that Fortune 500 comes ahead of the rest of us.

He's about 30% through his first term. If he crams for the final he can pull his grade up to a D.

More food for thought

Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill

Source: New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/science/earth/20noaa.html?hp

Obama rather than focusing on the Horizon Spill sounds exactly like the Right Wing.

believe it or not, it is possible to oppose bush/cheney and obama simultaneously on matters of principle.

of course bush/cheney bears responsiblility for the crisis. who is saying that is not true?

of course, obama is TOTALLY responsible for the gov't's response to this crisis? who, other than terminal obamaphiliacs such as yourself, is saying that is not true?

it is obama who is not addressing the concerns you mention. simple. period.

P.S.: i will use every opportunity to bring together all the issues I blame obama for, until you give me a good reason not to.

obama = fail. get used to it.

As long as it's 'our guy' anything he does is A-OK. :eyes:

Obama deserves blame in this & a host of other issues. If this had happened on Bush's watch & Bush was letting BP take control of the disaster & limiting the information given to the public, you'd be howling like a werewolf on a full moon. I don't blame Obama for the spill, but he has huge responsibility for how it's handled & once again, 'he doesn't walk the walk, he walks away.'

The Great Hope & Change is, after all, just another politician, who knows which side his bread is buttered on.

on energy policy, not on a laundry list of things that some people, who've disliked Obama since before he took office, are upset with.

we wouldn't care who was in charge of the cleanup effort. But we do care & we think letting BP call the shots in this disaster is like letting the fox guard the hen house - like other administrations have done. Many of us expected more from this administration & feel it's our duty to call them out on their status quo policies.

Or who exactly should be "calling the shots".

All that is happening is that "BP......" is the latest rant which gets included in the laundry list of daily "Obama hasn't done this" posts, which started before he even took office.

But on this one, there are no details about how the government has the expertise to plug a well, or drill a secondary well.

Or clean up the beaches or the wildlife--which will happen at the local level.

So, please provide details as to just exactly what Obama should be doing that the locals and the states are not.

stepping in?

I wish you would send this to the white house... not only a great point about the cointingency plans, but the corals' fragility, etc...

ugh...a month? a fucking MONTH!?

This will be the undoing of us in so many ways... human and ecological losses that are irreversible.

Get the suits out of the way and get the HEROES in there!

great scene choice as well, it's almost a perfect comparison of what our corporate media should be asking... why are we not doing more?? Or are we?? Who really knows...

every decision will be made to the tune of dollars in their pockets.

Thanks for the thread, nashville_brook.

The environment, seafood collection industries, tourism, real estate, finance, supporting businesses, regional health and the general economy will all take a major hit, just when it can be afforded the least.

Some of this toxic soup will be transported inland.

:scared:

It's long past the time where BP, which has murdered 25 contractor employees in the past five years because it put profit ahead of human life, has any credibility.

We're now witnessing captured federal agencies trying to protect their own failed record of industry oversight and a questionable federal energy policy.

Watch the video of the oil plume coming from the riser. It looks a lot like a genie escaping from a bottle, doesn't it?

Listening to Bernie Sanders and seeing these corporations do this kind of thing makes me want the government to take over and to hell with them.

Horrible.

that's for sure.

i've been quite impressed some of our leadership -- Bill Nelson, for one, is blowing me away. Sanders, too.

...the longer they allow BP to screw around, the more blame will accrue.

This is not Obama's fault in the first place, although his ill-timed remarks about offshore drilling will be remembered. But if he won't wrest control from these fuckups, then he will pay a big price politically IMO.

More importantly, all of us and the animals and the environment in general will pay a big price. And that is the bottom line here and why I am so very disappointed in the response to date.

It's not enough to force BP to release the occasional footage of the gusher. That should have already been put online as a streaming (sorry) video so that scientists and lay citizens have access to the information.

It's not enough to work to remove the $75M damage cap. It's not enough to threaten legal aciton. We need effective action and we need it now. They should have not 5 crack scientists but 500 working on it from various agencies, working on both how to cap the damned thing and how best to clean it up.

Instead we have BP making a sweetheart deal with a company that is closely associated, to buy dispersant that is banned in England and is KNOWN to be not the most effective dispersant. What the hell.

C'mon President Obama, SHOW SOME LEADERSHIP ON THIS BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!!!!

who're responsible for the mess. who in their right mind would expect them to give a straight answer? it's insane.

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...really appreciate how that hopey, changey stuff is working out for them. Leadership means Obama stops getting checks from the oil corporations.

:eyes:

send in the Navy Seals? A minisub??

Anyone???

NO ONE has a fucking clue as to what to do next.

I'd set off a MOAB just above the fucker. Crush it shut. Or kill the planet.

and why they are sitting back waiting for BP to take care of it (it's obvious they can't. They putting together commissions so they can debate and wring their hands while this grows wors by the hour.

There are solutions out there. there's a huge unemployed sector, teen-agers (looking for summer jobs), unemployed, farmers, small and large business. The government should be mobilizing and organizing this cleanup and charging BP for it.

I would like to see this administration put a lien against BP's assets and take over cleanup. It would be a big feather in the administrations cap if they could get this going asap!

No... Make the boomers do it.

The relevant Federal or State agencies take command under the Incident Command Structure.

If there were "loggers" in the area of a National Forest or BLM timber sale wildfire, the private resources (personnel and equipment) can be legally commandeered by the lead agency,

Obama has sent teams of outside scientist to help BP with a solution don't you think if they had found a way to stop the leak they would've done it already? The government is not in the business drilling oil doesn't the specialized equipment or employ the people who at least theory are supposed to able to stop this thing.

...BP continues to be in charge of operations and is calling the shots. That much is self-evident.

The government has the authority to direct activities. By necessity, this will include BP and their specialized knowledge and equipment. But BP doesn't have to be in charge, chasing away reporters (with the help of the Coast Guard for crying out loud), failing to identify underwater plumes, refusing to release videos of the underwater gusher, and on and on and on.

It is crystal clear to me that the government can and should be doing more. They should be putting more scientists on boats out there to monitor the plumes, rather than reassigning them away from those areas. They should be insisting that only the least toxic and most effective dispersants be used, if any are used at all. They should be grilling the BP team every time they make a recommendation to ensure it is the best path and has a reasonable risk-to-return ratio. They should have armies of people on cleanup duty, and monitoring the spill, and cleaning wildlife, and everything that is humanly possible at this stage. Instead we get reporters chased off, BP releasing a couple short video clips, and we have to listen to the slimy BP CEO saying the oil gusher is small compared to the Gulf, and that those wacky Americans are likely to sue BP, because they're "litigious".

Yes Obama responded fairly quickly (compared to GWB anyway), but the overall response has been weak. Allowing BP to remain in charge is a huge mistake and will come back and bit us all in the ass.

and you're so right on about the "litigious" Americans smear. newsflash -- civil court is likely to the only place we'll see justice in this. The Valdez fiasco showed us that.

Just start with "Armies of people on cleanup duty...and cleaning wildlife."

Do you have any concept of the fact that local communities around the Gulf Coast are conducting 6 hour sessions several times each week to train people to do cleanup duty and to clean wildlife? Armies of people are in fact being trained while you're here complaining about it not being done.

And truthfully, I don't trust BP to do cleanup or clean wildlife. But I do know the people who are working on that locally and I actually trust them a lot more than anyone from the Federal Government.

I want a bottom's up citizens commission. If the administration had any intention of stepping up, they'd be front and center already instead of covering up and lying to us.




On Tuesday May 18, the Huffington Post found out that was only one of several bald-faced lies



There was a DU thread about this a few days ago but it didn't get much play www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8362823


Instead of doing anything, our government repeats BP's lies and allows BP to strew toxic dispersants in the gulf while they prevent non-BP-affiliated scientists from approaching the area and let BP order the Coast Guard to arrest media members poking around.

A branch of our Armed Services is colluding with the BP terrorists? I have no confidence. We're screwed. Royally screwed.

I wish I could heartily agree with your post because I agree with your sentiment. Trouble is, I can't hold my breath about this administration stepping up anymore. All they'll do is stick us with a huge bill after giving BP all the time they want to recoup as much of the oil as possible.

Form a bottom's up citizens commission, bring in Greenpeace and other environmental groups to access the damage and organize a clean up effort. Expropriate, without compensation, ownership of BP, Halliburton, and Trans-Ocean. Jail all three boards of directors and immediately halt the trading of all BP, Halliburton, and Trans-Ocean assets on the market.


Rec'd

first, wrest control of the clean-up from BP -- then, get it in the hands of people have the will/ability to deal with it.

you're absolutely right -- the govt hasn't done ANYTHING to earn our trust in this matter.

We have to wrest control. They don't care about us. If they did, the pace in DC wouldn't be so glacial.

Mexico, Cuba and many small islands will be affected. The most pristine coral reefs in the Caribbean are in danger and so is the livelyhood of thousands of fishermen who depend on the Gulf.

I just realized. We urgently need an international commission with environmental representatives from all the countries that will be affected too. Can you imagine being a poor fisherman in Mexico who has no idea what's taking place?

when the banks "failed" they rushed in to "save" their ecosystem: showered them with money, bailed them out of their bad debts, so that they may "continue" unimpeded by their own blowout.

YET, when the oil co's fail, and the OCEAN has to pay..the same gormint says..."what problem"??? Democrat Rebublican, Black or white..The ENTIRE POWER SYSTEM is CORRUPT.

BP does not know what to do in the Gulf. The government does not know what to do in the Gulf.

The only thing they have been able to think of is to wait and try to plug the leaking pipe that was under the rig. That is probably, in the end, the only thing they can do now. T

The government is not doing more because nothing more can be done. There is no point in knowing how much oil is spewing out at this point. There will be plenty of time for that later.

The government is taking care of this, I'm quite certain. It's just that there is nothing anyone can do at this point. A problem of this magnitude has never happened before. There has never been a leak at this depth or of this magnitude. Earlier leaks were not so deep and therefore could be more easily stopped. Access was easier. It was easier to get the equipment down to the leak.

The government is actually less capable of doing something about this than BP. The time for the government to step up to the plate was BEFORE this happened.

To whom does this land belong? I doubt that this is federal land. Even when events like the Station Fire here in the Los Angeles Mountains happen, local authorities have to help clean up the mess.

The federal government does not have the money or the manpower to take care of an oil spill of this size. BP was supposed to submit a plan to take care of this.

The State of Louisiana and people and governments in the South in general cannot complain about how the federal government is too large and spends too much money and then fail to take care of its own coast on Louisiana land.

The local authorities and BP have to do more.

When we had the Station Fire on federal lands last summer, the Forest Service was responsible for the initial attempts to stop the fire, but the state and local authorities had to send in people. That was a natural disaster. If the fire was caused by negligence or arson then those responsible for causing it will be responsible for paying for putting out the fire.

BP is responsible for this fire. They did not comply with regulations.

The U.S. government cannot afford to put a person in place on every oil rig to make sure that every company complies with regulations while drilling for oil. Remember how Jindal criticized government money on research of volcanoes. Well, volcanoes are natural disasters. The government traditionally takes some responsibility in cases of natural disasters. But there are laws requiring companies to pay to clean up their own messes when they cause environmental damages. And this is about who pays to clean up the beaches, not about who does it. BP can hire crews. The State of Louisiana should have crews on hand. The federal government is generally not responsible for cleaning up shoreline that is privately or state owned.

When divvying up profits, businesses yell and scream about having free markets and needing low taxes. But when it comes to taking responsibility for following regulations or using safe procedures and avoiding unwise risks, businesses run crying like babies to the taxpayers to bail them out.

Just watch, that is what BP will demand -- a bail-out probably in the form of enforcement of the legal limits on its liability.

We need to learn a lesson from this and remove the liability limits on nuclear plants as well as on oil companies.

We are a free enterprise system. Free enterprise should bear the burden of the costs and organize the teams that clean up the messes free enterprise creates. That is not the job of the government.

This is not a natural disaster. This is a corporate-created disaster. The BP shareholders, not the government, are responsible. BP should hire people to clean this up.

welcome to DU! :hi:

Calls & emails to DC..!

tomorrow night. will be interesting to see if this is on her radar.

& if it ISN'T, I bet YOU bring it!
Let us know how it goes, will Ya? :hi:

When the Gulf of Mexico is a lifeless gooey cesspool the finger-pointing assholes from the three companies involved will be
counting their money in one of the few picturesque parts of the world that they haven't gotten around to corrupting yet.

Have we crossed the line yet... :hangover:

for me, it's just too awful to think about it any other way.

about what is at stake.

Yes, the administration is going to have to step up. Soon.

:grouphug: Keep saying it. The obvious. But keep saying it.

the vigil, the worry, the secrecy & media spin--waiting for the help that never comes...

Bad deja vu x(

Everybody involved at the top is so busy trying to look like "everything's under control." But it's so obvious that it's not. They're hoping the country is forgetting about it, thinking about elections, etc.

I was just listening to NPR and a segment came on about some delicious types of fish they cook out in Seattle. This guy was describing his favorite fish recipe, involving oysters. The interviewer was giggling and even laughed when the guy said that Chef Paul Prudhomme had caused the Red Fish to be "fished out." (ie. population crash)

I just thought to myself....CRASS!

We want to hear about fish recipes, as we're losing the source of 1/4th of the country's fisheries....and watching all kinds of sea & bird life die? Surreal, and getting more surreal.

yay for yummy pan blackened red fish, except that, there's no more red fish. mahi will be next.

VERY similar..
When I kept screaming at the tv, "GET THOSE PEOPLE OUT OF THERE!!!"
hour-after-hour, day-after-day, for HOW many weeks?

My God.

that we could bring to bear on grave catastrophes to mitigate the damage, we could do some real good.

Unfortunately they're off on some foreign adventure forwarding the same interests who just killed the Gulf.

How fucking stupid are we, America? Will anything get us pissed off enough to end this nonsense?

this is exactly the kind of thing the National Guard could help with. and, the fact that they didn't cross my mind, tells me how much things have changed.

damn good point.

Maybe what you mean is the examination/release of information should fall to the government?

I have seen no evidence - in face have heard the opposite - that the feds can deal with it more effectively.

shall i go on?

i think that's a pretty good start.

Please, go on. So far you fail.

Analysis is happening by multiple groups already.
Strategy of what? Stopping the leak, or cleaning it up? Clarify that and I'll be able to respond.
Response, I assume, unrelated to stopping the leak. Response to the leaked oil. What more can be/should be done?

This "TAKE OVER OBAMA!" sentiment on DU bereft of any specifics or direction.

if they're so capable, how come the oil is still pouring into the Gulf?

just because BP has failed thus far doesn't lend support that the all-powerful federal government could do it better.

...the kind of poster that allows us to be held up to ridicule, in my opinion.

Nonsensical anger/outrage without a shred of detail. what do you want?

now you're just trying too hard.

Outrage coupled with some specific, intelligent demand for action does not.

Simple logic, that.

Because the leak is so deep that no one knows how to get to it and fix it other than to cement it. And that is a complex task. Remember we got here because they couldn't cement the thing quickly.

is failing, and continues to fail. And there's no reason to think it's ever going to do better. They're talking about stuffing GOLF BALLS in the hole, for crying out loud. What more information do you need, exactly, to understand that it's time to take the oily, stinkin,g oxygen depleting Clusterfrak of the Century ball out of the hands of the OIL COMPANY?

Outrage against BP is understandable, but it's largely bereft of intelligent alternative suggestions. It's easy to get mad and say "something else" should be happening, but unless you can identify that something else you are just noise,

seriously?

Their guy sits on the board of the corporation that sells the chemical. England has banned the chemical-there are other chemicals, safer, that could have been used. It was in BP's interest to use the chemical. Fishermen are already getting sick because of the chemical.

But it was advantageous for BP to use the chemical. BP will do what is best for their own interest-not ours, not the environment. So, what makes you think outside aid wouldn't be more beneficial. Hell, right now, I'd be asking for the best from all countries to stem this catastrophe!

Patiently awaiting your corporate approved numbers and talking points.


LOL

Define the discussion yourself, if that helps. But while at it remember, there's oil continuing to leak, and there's a cleanup response. Is BP controlling the cleanup, and is that the posters complaint? They are controlling the leak effort.

Anger and frustration is shared by all, but I'm patiently awaiting your intelligent and focused response.

why BP should be trusted any further in matters regarding the disaster?

They shouldn't, and that's just another of several red herring demands I've seen on this thread.

BP is lying and withholding information. The leak volume is larger, and I'm sure they know it.

The question, in my mind, here is who should continue in the attempt to stop the flow...and a bunch of knee-jerks want BP off the job. If we yank them off that effort who else can do it? And if indeed anyone else can do it, will it waste time changing players?

Don't waste my time.

So far, BP's "control" has consisted of a series of multiple failed, transparently improvised, ineffective "plans," coupled with pathetic, lawyer-engineered finger pointing at their business partners as to how this happened. NO ONE knows exactly how to fix this. What we do actually know, though, is that BP doesn't have our best interests at heart. The well itself demonstrates this, because it was clearly undertaken with scant thought to the possible consequences of a disaster exactly like this one. The accident demonstrates that BP was NOT in "control" when it came to capping the well, but, at the very, very best, hired incompetent or dishonest contractors to "control" it for them.

The question you should consider answering is why we would EVER leave an oil cleanup in the hands of the oil company whose greed and utter disregard for environmental concerns is the entire cause of the disaster in the first place. You don't ask the cat to look for your missing canary. In short, it's BP that needs to prove it's able to handle this, and it hasn't. It's hard to imagine why we would allow them to continue to pretend they have any ability to do so.

if you don't believe that, you're a fool.

:rofl:

want to make conversation about that, rather than facts/reality?

Chasing me around the forum is poor form, btw.

. . . but not enough to make sure that happened. I'm sensing a note of "Trust big business, because global catastrophes and human casualties aren't profitable" here. Except big business (and big finance) is always willing to roll the dice until the worst actually happens, because they'll take profits now over safety later any day. Stock prices are a quarter-to-quarter proposition.

I won't stoop to your name calling tactics, but if we haven't absorbed THAT lesson yet, we're all fools.

they want to cap the well and keep it open making it easier to get back into production.

... don't you know?

LOL.

. . . if we made them. The government's supposed to be US. A business like BP can never and will never get away from its inherent, overriding concern in all things -- which is to make money for BP. To cover BP's ass. To raise those share prices. BP is conflicted out of solving this situation by its very nature, which is we need the company that supposed to be working for OUR interests as whole -- the government -- to call the shots. Problem, there probably aren't enough non-industry people left in the government agencies to even make an honest unbiased assessment of what's going after eight years of methodical hamstringing by the GOP and the corporate fundamentalism that now passes for conservatism in America. No one's left out there without an allegiance and an agenda to something OTHER than serving the best interests of the nation as a whole, and this is where it gets us -- dead coal miners and dead oceans and zero consequences save for some limp grandstanding at a Congressional hearing. This is the New American Century and it has got to stop.

..but the effort to plug the leak...nobody else has that ability or expertise.

BP has little hands-on deep water expertise. They contract out all their work out for exactly this reason. The us government, on the other hand, invests heavily in oil science and deep water engineering. They have physicists, geologists, marine sciences, deep water submersibles, research teams, research ships (several are currently active in the Gulf), etc. The US has 40 or 50 years of deep sea experience - with direct research as well as project oversight. Ultimately our government, of the people, is responsible for approving plans and safety systems of these wells. That is why it is so important to hire good engineers and scientists in the government. And even though both democrats and republicans have tried to flush out these skilled people from government payroll, replacing them with "contract managers" (in deference to private corporations who are assumed to be superior), many excellent scientists remain employed by the government.

From eye witness accounts, these safety systems were not 100% functional. BP ordered up and paid for the work. By at least one very credible eye witness account, they ordered a change in procedure that put the entire project at risk. Their order for flush the drilling mud will likely be view as an arrogant and reckless action to save a few dollars. Plus, BP has terrible safety reputation with record fines and employees now coming out of the woodwork with new hard evidence.

Given their performance, it is scandalous that BP is given complete authority over this operation. We are employing the same strategy we used with Wall Street. The right wing, Fortune 500 ideologues put the perpetrators in charge of the crime scene. Its like a good cop/bad cop routine.

Obama made his choice. Ideology and politics have trumped science and engineering. It is a terrible choice. Putting BP in charge is just another slap in the face of good government from the hope and change department. Instead of having Rahm Emanuel fighting to water down wall street regulations and preventing an audit of the fed, Obama should have Rahm fighting to lift the liability cap (as well as fighting for bank regulations).

This is a catastrophe and there has been a very poor display of leadership by Obama. There needs to be hands on oversight in the Gulf by our government with truthful reporting on the cleanup methods being employed, risks associated with these methods i.e. chemical dispersants, the volume of oil being spewed and where it is going, etc.

Its been a month and we are still being spoon fed by BPs corporate relations arm. There has been zero transparency. Its like they are hoping we will forget about it.

who has the equipment, the very specific equipment, capable of stopping the leak.

Are you saying the us government does?

The OP wants BP taken off the effort to stop the leak. Do you think that's a wise move?

they are providing the instructions and directions to contractors as well as Coast Guard. I call that criminal.

This is not a specialty that it is unique to BP. If a plumber decides to skirt building codes, causes a flood in your house, should you be forced to have him manage the fix, while you move in to a hotel, waiting for word from the plumber? No. You get another plumber and send the bill to the first one.

On the other hand if the goal is to

- minimize the impact to Obama by having him as far away as possible

- play down the event and put a corporation with massive PR resources to minimize impact to Obama's sparkly clean off shore oil drilling program

- stay faithful to the idea that government only makes things worse and that we should depend on the kindness and benevolence of corporations

- down play the risks associated with massive amount of toxic dispersents being used because they are corporate secrets and because BP doesn't want to be liable for adverse health risks

- take advantage of devastated communities for low wage and largely unregulated labor in the form of watermen desperatly trying to save homes and businesses

- control the flow of information so we are conditioned to accept oil pollution as no big deal

Then, by all means keep BP in charge. We all can see that they have placed their own interests ahead of the country. But that seems to be happening a lot these days.

On edit - seems like I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill

Source: New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/science/earth/20noaa....

. . . and start SCREAMING about this. It's not under control. It's not going to be okay. And it's not just the "cost of doing business." Because this isn't "our' oilfield. This isn't "our" future energy source. This is an incredibly dangerous undertaking that's been allowed and encouraged to benefit a few to the detriment of many. This is the result of the Bush / Cheney doctrine of gutting federal oversight of business at every turn, and more specifically, the practice of making regulatory agencies (FDA, we're talking to YOU) dependent for funding on the very industries they're supposed to be policing. We have got to address the cause and effect here. T

The cause is greed and the effect is death. Enough all fucking ready.

I keep thinking this is pure madness. A bunch of inept criminal pirates cut corners to make an extra buck and had it blow up in their face turning it into possibly one of the worst environmental disasters of all time. You just got to be shitting me we are letting BP control access to the area, the facts and media dissemination, and coming up with a workable solution. Where is the US Government? Hello Obama? Presidential Commission? Well lets watch the oil get into the upper East Coast and watch all hell break out...

More, unfiltered, information must be provided.

But BP is probably the best hope of stopping the leak.

kissy Pooh. They are so entwined you can't get them apart. All for the sake of taking care of each others needs, one needs cash for their machine, the other needs waivers and favors. Meanwhile. Destruction rolls on.

that strategy of being prepared to capitalize on disasters and emergencies by allowing them to wipe out the existing local economy and then bringing in the corporate profiteers. Is that the plan here, like during Katrina?

If they kill off the gulf then there will be no reason to not drill baby drill.
They have kept the oil off the beaches, so people can still do that. They have proven they could, for a while at least, keep the oil off the beaches. Victory..!!

Who is going to get hammered the worst? The working man. The man who fishes for a living. He's done, but we can buy fish from China, so, so what?

Drill baby drill is gonna be the only winner, and Obama has already given them a green light.

Sad but true.

disaster capitalism is predatory after-the-fact. they don't have to dirty their hands in causing a disaster -- they just leverage the chaos/weakened populations afterwards.

jesus H fucking christ...that's the part that bothers me the most....quit it!

I say we just make these motherfuckers PAY for what they did, and pay BIG TIME!

and they should pay for the rest of their fucking lives for it...considering the lives that have been lost in the gulf, and the local businesses whos lives have been utterly FUCKED by the FUCKING FUCK-UPS of these OIL BARON MOTHERFUCKING GREED MACHINES

Sorry OP..I just don't need a visual reminder of what has been fucked up in the Gulf...I think we all have a very good idea what is going on there, it is, however quite upsetting and it just PISSES ME OFF THAT THESE FUCKING PEOPLE DON'T HAVE A FUCKING PLAN TO FUCKING STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

uhh..sorry

down here.

Published a week ago:

Why Obama Must Stop Blogging & Start Leading on the Gulf

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-response-to-gulf-oil-spill-051110#ixzz0oRGyaaov


This environmental disaster must be stopped. BP is NOT helping. Obama is refusing to lead. = Fail.

a drop in the bucket. There's plenty more planets like it out there...somewhere.

on the kindness of BP. BP owns the Gulf. Even the coast guard is working for BP.

BP hired the fucking coast guard. Surreal.

By his absence, Obama is sending a strong signal of confidence to BP

Jesus, I cannot believe I voted and campaigned for this guy. Never again.

He runs away anytime there is an opportunity to do right by the little guy.

is to insist an ensure corporate profits for Fortune 500 companies. Nothing more. Seriously; do they do ANYTHING that helps the American people without it benefiting a megacorp? Obama had UNPRECEDENTED support and goodwill after the election. He could have been one of the greatest leaders in history, yet he's chosen to squander it ALL. I too will never support him again. Thankfully, I doubt that he'll run in 2012, but I'm doubtful that we'll be "allowed" a better choice.

what a show. he used his angry father voice...and it sounded so impotent. in whose experience of the world, does finger wagging ever move 'the masters of the universe' to do ANYTHING? they're telling him and us where we can stick it. 'GET OFF OUR BEACH' etc. we'll embed journos, so don't call us, we'll call you.

this operation. The Gulf cannot wait another day for competent action. BP will pay the bill, but they will no longer be involved in the effort."

Or anyone in the government--which has no competency whatsoever in dealing with oil wells.

you can gleefully rant about the badness of Obama.

Those of us whose lives and livelihoods depend on the Gulf surely do appreciate your joy over another opportunity to talk, not about the disaster, but about Obama.

if you cared about the Gulf at all you would be doing the same.

What does "LEADING" mean?

Giving press conferences, flying to Mobile, Biloxie, Pensacola to act concerned, as Esquire suggests?

:thumbsup:

charge of cleaning up after their own crime scene! Why in the hell did team Obama have this "hands off" policy to begin with? Yes, BP should PAY for every bit of it-but they should not be IN CHARGE of the clean up effort-or stopping the disaster that they caused. Get some COMPETENT people in on this!!

Obama needs to take charge of this and send BP the bill.

Even if it leads to the WH. This catastrophe is one that can't be swept under the carpet. At least it is not the Bush WH - too many people are watching and waiting. We still don't know the truth about 9/11. The Bush 9/11 Commission was a farce. At the very least, the captain is charge of ordering the drilling to continue, even after many warning signs that the safe guards were broken, should be charged with crime. According to the report on 60-Minutes, there are many witnesses ready to testify.

While I will grant that BP has fucked this up. There is no part of the government that I trust to apply the technological fix. I've worked on government contracts. They involve a hell of a lot of waste, inefficiency and stupidity. Having the government fix the problem will make it worse.

well, starting with the "God" Ronnie--it's been nothing but deregulation. And everytime regulation is stripped we, the people, wind up paying for it or losing our shirts. Look at the banking and wallstreet where regulation was stripped--the S&L debacle where people lost their money--the Enron corrupt fest. And, I really love the part about * thinking that corporations should police themselves, because, ya know, they do such a great job. Too bad some have sociopathic tendencies and bottom line always comes before safety. Let me know how that privatizing part of the military has worked-with soldiers twice being given tainted water, substandard food and deaths from faulty electricity. But, hey, a corporation made some bucks so who cares if a few die. If, for the past twenty or more years, the government hadn't stripped those regulations and became more "joined at the hip" with corporations, we'd be in a hell of a lot better shape.

So, you don't trust the government. Well, it took them twenty years to implant that seed of distrust in your brain with their screaming, hatefilled, lying blowhards on TV and radio. Especially, with the last administration and their feeble response to Katrina and their repetition about government is bad (even though they increased government on you)--it's just helping people they don't want to do. They'd love to give their corporate buddies more services that government does--we'll still be paying for it, but don't kid yourself, it'll probably cost us more with less accountability and less service.

BP needs to keep working under heavy government oversight to keep it as honest as possible. However, the government is utterly unsuited to take over the crisis. Like it or not, BP has expertise that the government can not get in the days and weeks necessary to deal with it. Not does the government have the industry expert connections, vendor relationships, etc. to arrange different attempts to stop the gusher quickly. Of course BP is a bunch of vermin - but they're vermin that are needed to end this crisis.

...and they damn well know it.

BP paid off the politicians. The politicians, in kind, deregulated the oil
industry and allowed them to operate with no safety regulations or contingency
plans, should a disaster happen.

There is no plan for an oil volcano like this. We most likely don't even have
the technology to stop such a leak.

Our politicians knew this. That's why BP contributed millions to select politicians--who
made sure that BP would do whatever the hell it pleased.

There is no plan to stop it because there really is no way to stop it.

There plan is to wait until the oil stops on its own.

Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill

Source: New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/science/earth/20noaa....

Are BP and affiliates going to make massive campaign donations to Democrats and DNC maybe?

I was tied up yesterday w children school function. I am just now seeing the video of Coast Guard threatened CBS New w arrest under "BP Rules":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/video/2010/05/18/VI2010051804651.html

WTF President Obama & Democratic controlled congress and DoJ?

Obama should be using the Coast Guard down there to shutdown every BP rig in the gulf.

:wtf:

there has to be a movement. if BP cannot be stopped from destroying the ocean at least they must be stopped from 1. profiting from destroying the ocean and 2. destroying more oceans

they must be stopped, i am convinced. now i need direction, where do i go to sign up to help this movement?

It wasn't this NASA that put men on the moon.

this is worse than Katrina - in more ways than one.

WHAT THE HELL ARE THEY THINKING? I've seen their check list of what they've done since Day One. Obviously it's not enough.
Asking a serial killer to clean up the scene - seriously???

I am not a scientist, not even close, so I don't pretend to know the answer.
But what I do know is this has got to be made top priority right now. The world has a crisis on our hands.
Whatever happened to Rahm's philosophy of don't let a crisis go to waste? This is the one time they should be listening to Rahm.

to see the lack of response. The attempts to stop the flow so far would have been laughable, except that it's not fucking funny at all.

I never really thought of it that way- I always assumed that our government existed at the pleasure of it's donors.

I think you've got it all wrong- BP tells the Government what to do, not the other way around.

Think of "the government" as middle manangement- not even relevant.

BP will "step aside" and let "the government" they own take over when they are ready to, and not a second before.

Been that way for decades, and it certainly hasn't magically reversed itself just because we elected Obama.

indeed -- that's the core of it.

than any corporation did. We SHOULD have a seat at the table...but, you're point is well taken. :-(

Yeah- sounds like they are really champing at the bit to give us that seat, eh?

absolutely heartbreaking that BP is being allowed to let this disaster continue with only halfassed attempts to do something about it.

we know that BP is going to try to weasel out of any financial or legal responsibility for their negligence.

legislation to this effect.

I'm not speaking as a right winger, either. Decades of neglecting government responsibilities have led to atrophy. What assets and expertise does the government possibly have to bring to bear against it now? Besides the coast guard and NOAA, none.

So, if this goes on, I think the only alternative will be an Emergency Order that will nationalize the oil companies' assets. Then the government can run it. Now, I think the only way this will happen only if citizens the conservative states wrecked by this catastrophe are begging for it. That includes Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia. Along with international alarm. I think it could happen, and it would mean political upheaval.

along with bankers, insurance companies, auto industry and the like.

We're just the putz workers controlled by them, and so is our WH and Congress.

BP is lying to us and their ONLY goal is to still be able to extract the oil some time in the future.
Our govt is either too complicit, corrupt, or inept to take over.

What do we do? How do we make ourselves heard? Doesn't this make us ANGRY? So what do we do with our collective anger?

be the springboard to changing the power relations wrt offshore drilling specifically and oil dependency in general.

Something's gonna get blown up or hijacked or . . I dunno, something, and the corporate distraction machine will kick into overdrive.

and hold them without bond until the well is shut off.

You don't post and run, but stick around, as if holding an open house of what you are presenting, responding most appropriately and graciously, even to the cranky ones.
Interesting how some of us come out of the woodwork when it is a really big deal. Like in 2004....

every body says step it up - with what my dear Watson? Aren't other countries helping?

Great OP!

over our resources?

contributions to do what's needed?