White House in Denial; Public Wants Real Action on BP Oil Disaster NOW - FDL

White House in Denial; Public Wants Real Action on BP Oil Disaster NOW
By: Rayne Saturday May 22, 2010 6:09 pm

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It’s been more than 30 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and the well nearly a mile below on the sea floor began to erupt oil and methane, killing 11 of our fellow citizens and injuring even more both immediately and in the continuing damage which followed.

And nothing has happened of any consequence since then.

Oh, we’ve had a Category 5 hurricane of hot air, some decent questions from Congressional hearings, but zippo-zilch-nada in the way of an effective solution. (I pity the people of the Gulf who had to deal with another hurricane they couldn’t escape.)

We had a big metal box set over the leak, not to stop it but to try to capture the oil. Anybody with the wherewithal to Google could predict this was going to fail because of the hydrates. They crystallize on contact with a solid surface in deepwaters below the average depth of the Continental Shelf.

And then we’ve had a tiny little pipsqueak of a hose nosed into the well pipe, which might as well have been a toothpick stuck in our mouths.

Now the White House is having a hissy behind closed doors with the media because dammitall, they can’t stop asking questions about the spill. Oh that’ll work, that’ll make a difference; the biggest environmental disaster our country has experienced will go away if only the media shuts up about it.

Screw that. This has been nothing but a corporate-induced environmental and socio-biological experiment perpetuated on our commons without our consent, and the American public doesn’t take well to experimentation without debate in advance. Witness our slow-moving policy on stem cell research, for example. We don’t frigging like it.

And screw the White House for its insistence that the Fourth Estate stop pestering them and begone. The people have been demanding accountability through our elected representatives in the legislature, but it’s like maneuvering a massive battleship, one that is intended for the making of laws and not their execution.

But it’s the Executive Branch which is charged with the faithful execution of our laws, and it’s failing to do so. It has not done a competent job of communicating with the public or the media would not be hammering on them as they are for more information — and for once, the media is actually doing what we need of them, not what their corporate lords and masters expect.

Instead of scolding the press, the White House should be asking itself why it’s being pestered. Why has "oil spill" remained a trending topic among internet searches across various outlets for more than a month?

It’s because we want ACTION, not more words. We want the damned well capped and we want it capped yesterday, and no, we don’t want to leave this to a negligent corporation which has consistently failed to act in good faith. We want the Executives we elected to office to execute. Do something, for god’s sake.

I’ve had a list of action items for a while now, in fact, if the White House cannot find actionable items of their own. You know that popular site, Getting Things Done? Yeah, well you can call this Get Sh*t Done Now. Here’s my GSDN list as it is right now which I gladly submit for the White House’s immediate consideration and implementation:

1) Obama needs to use that goddamned unitary executive power he’s been clinging to and declare a state of emergency in federal waters along the Gulf of Mexico, using an Executive Order. This is now an international situation, not just an American one, because the oil will eventually end up in the North Atlantic.

2) Declare British Petroleum in violation of its lease and kick them off the site. Threaten to seize all American assets of BP-America immediately if they do not assist in setting up a claims system which will be administered and overseen by the U.S. and paid by BP. (Hire all those poor Sallie Mae folks who were going to lose their jobs because of student loan reform for this purpose. /snark)

3) Ask the Department of Energy’s Steve Chu to create a skunkworks rapid solutions team from NASA and DARPA along with schools which specialize in oceanography, mechanical technology, geology, and computer modeling. Stop waiting for the nice old farts they pulled from JASON because this is an emergency, goddamnitall, we don’t have time for them to come up with a vetted, peer-reviewed whitepaper on this. Don’t listen to anybody’s crap about so-called experts on deepwater drilling and how they’ll solve the problem. As my 16-year-old said, "If there’s experts, where are they? Show me one." Yeah. What she said.

4) Threaten to kick Ken Salazar to the curb if he doesn’t not immediately have every one of the 15+ deepwater offshore drilling sites reevaluated; every evaluation must be on POTUS desk inside 15 days from the date the Executive Order. And we want the evaluations made public — no more of this bullshit opacity the White House calls transparency. No excuses; all this stuff should have been submitted when BP and the other oil industry firms applied for the leases to begin with.

5) Approach corporations to develop an X-Prize type program to develop a private solution in tandem with the skunkworks solution. Ask Congress to create a special R&D tax credit for firms which donate money to the X-Prize for development.

6) Approach Florida State University (which now owns the former Scripps’ Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and its submersibles) along with Mississippi State (which has an oceanography program) and ask them to work with NIUST to develop models of the plume’s distribution, along with identifying the impact short and long-term on the ocean bottom and the ecosystem above it.

7) Suck up the arrogance and pride and ask the elder statesman of the environment to be the face of this effort. Ask Al Gore to do the legwork with the corporations and educational facilities whose cooperation is needed. Tell him this is to be used as an example of what people can do for the larger environment if they focus on this problem first. If they can solve this, they can solve the big problems.

8) Tell the Catfood Commission (read: Presidential Deficit Commission) to find a way to shoehorn in funding for an alternative energy Apollo Program or Marshall Plan. If you have to find a front man, go to Al Gore because this was his idea back in 1992. Jeebus, catch a clue and use the resources you have already; Gore wrote it all out for you in 1992.

9) Call that lazy-assed sad-sack Joe Lieberman and tell him whatever super-secret-y deal you guys have going in the way of a quid pro quo is off if Lieberman cannot find some reason to investigate the relationships between Department of Interior and any corporation with which it deals. Make the call private, and tell him if he doesn’t have hearings within 15 days you are going to publicly call him on the carpet for the benefit of CT voters every chance you get until 2012.

10) You know damned well if they cut corners in the Gulf of Mexico, they did it elsewhere. Threaten to go for the jugular on them if they don’t continue to play ball with clean-up in the Gulf.Take a bunch of bloggers up to BP’s operations in Alaska and let them roam around for a couple weeks. Make BP pay for it — figure it out, you have the EO in one hand and the power to print money in the other. Keep the pressure on BP until they beg for mercy.

11) And right now I’m tempted to tell one Barack Obama to get really, genuinely excitedly-upset, be more than that Spock character for once, add the passion of Captain Kirk and the anger of Dr. McCoy in the mix. That fakery last week only made us heave with nausea. And Rahm? Just bite me; whatever counsel you’ve offered Mr. Spock-the-President has been both incompetent and impotent.

If I could sit and stew a while longer on this and not elevate my blood pressure, I could come up with a lot more. But I’m sure you have more ideas of your own. What do you want to tell this White House to do about the spill? Be specific, stick to workable suggestions — this is not an invitation to a flame war. Give the Executive Branch plenty of reasons to do something instead of nothing but flogging the media.

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Link: http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/50179

:kick:

Time for Obama to stop hiding under the bed.

that we the people are done waiting? Phone calls? Letters? Marching in the streets?

You all have had far more than your share

And it seems that a quick fix to an oil blow-out deep in the Gulf of Mexico is just one of those things.

The best protections for this catastrophe were by-passed by the oil-friendly Cheney Administration.

How about BP IMMEDIATELY cutting large individual checks for fifty years of lost income to every fisherman on the coast? Have them present last year's tax statement, times it by fifty and write the check.

Now we might argue about what quick might be, or what consitutes a fix, but I think that arguing over whether I said nothing can be done is just really stupid.

Watching the Obama Admin flail about is like watching a slow motion train wreck. The lack of national emergency status being placed on this catastrophe truly calls into question the President's competence.

The only thing more epic than this volcano of oil is the seeming lack of importance being assigned to it by the Obama Admin.

They are marketing alarm at the cost of facts.

What is your source for the "four submersibles" claim? I doubt very much that that statement is true.

Also, this situation deserves every bit of alarm that can be raised. In fact, the Prez should hold a prime time news conference and declare a national emergency. While this will do nothing to stop the oil, it would certainly place an appropriate amount of "alarm" on the situation.

Countries with the submersible - Russia, UK, Japan and France.

four countries with one submersible each that can reach that depth and do work...

I'd really like to know just what the world's inventory of capable submersibles (in this instance) is.

:shrug:

The very old but much refitted and rebuilt USS Alvin, now based at Woods Hole.

Don't know if it is presently operational.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSV_Alvin#Current_work

Kicking out the people that know how to drill a relief well for people that know how to build aircraft and launch vehicles sounds like a great way to not solve the problem. Yes it's terrible the US government does not have a good minerals and mines agency. But trying to create one out of nothing isn't likely to go well. The aftermath of this spill is the time to reinvent that agency, right now there isn't much that can be done.

some of DU is in denial too that we can actually demand action from our leaders.

No harsh tone to his voice while talking about it. It's time for ACTION. DO SOMETHING, OBAMA!

This thing has gone on for more than a month. The damage that's been done so far is a drop in the bucket compared to what will happen a few months down the road. This is NOT a topic of little interest to the American people, and interest will grow going forward.

Do something now, you are already WAY BEHIND.

:cry:

Why they wanna go hatin' on Obama like that? :cry:

That's become very clear.

CD

We wanted him to do some pretty strong and sweeping actions on the Bush/Cheney assaults on our rights. He did nothing. I don't really look for him to do much here either.

:boring:

and FDL? :rofl:

Sid

This is an annoying catchphrase from the same people that told us asking for public option was somehow akin to asking for a pony.

Only this is far, far worse.

What is this absurd litte bon mot? A quote? Catch phrase? I'm really not sure what it is. It is in quotations so someone must have said it... but who? Is this notional or some vauge analogy?

I can safely say as an analogy it is a complete failure as the leaves falling out are representing what? Nature? Or worse an inevitablity? Will nothing save the oceans or seal the well or is the gulf doomed like some plucked flower?

Actually having grown up and aquired the very glimmerings of teachings of logic (though clearly my grammar and language usage occasionally wanders) I can spot a bad analogy.

they have about as much to draw upon a mile beneath the ocean as the government does.

Great Rant, though! :thumbsup:

how will kicking BP off the site speed up the drilling of the relief wells?

Unrec.

Sid

Expropriate without compensation.

k&r

It's easy to demand action. But what action? All the things the OP suggests won't solve the problem at hand. And many of those things are being done, I assure you.

The OP wants Superman to come on the scene, dive in the ocean and stick his big toe in the leak. That will take care of everything yesterday. In your dreams.

The time will come when the safety precautions and mechanisms on all rigs must be reviewed. This is not that time.

I assure you, if I were at any technical university in the country, I would be thinking about what to do. The engineers or scientists who find the solution to this leak will be heroes. Every engineer and scientist in the U.S., if not the world, is just aching to get the career boost that solving this problem would bring. Nobody needs to ask them to put in their two cents if they get a good idea.

The OP is totally useless blather.

No thanks.

Time to get some sanity here. Time to be quietly supported of those who are trying to do something. And you probably don't know who they are. They work best in silence, without a lot of prying eyes and attention.

The government does not want a lot of people tramping on beaches as they fill with oil. It will make the clean-up even more difficult. There is nothing you or I can do in this situation. We know nothing about oil rigs. BP, unfortunately, is the expert on this rig.

The only idea that is worth anything is the suggestion that BP should be served with whatever the equivalent is of an unlawful detainer for the oil rig and given notice on its lease. They should pay for the damages and stop operating in the U.S. But other than that, not much we can do. We should kick BP off not just this, but every property they lease in the U.S., bar none, and confiscate the properties just as we would those of other criminals who used the properties for criminal purposes. It's a crazy idea and probably legally impossible, but it feels good to say it. That's all the OP is about. It feels good to say it.

"We should kick BP off not just this, but every property they lease in the U.S., bar none, and confiscate the properties just as we would those of other criminals who used the properties for criminal purposes. It's a crazy idea and probably legally impossible..." (JD Priestly)

I think you have defined the problem and source of the OP's heartfelt anger, JD:

There is no recourse, no real protection under any law, no will to prosecute these executives as criminals. China executes them. Here, they'll play golf next Saturday.

We know there is no justice in America. Well-placed anger is about all we've got.

None of the items listed above will stop the oil from flowing. It's all PR. While some of the things on the list should be done, now is the time to focus on the disaster at hand. Kicking BP off the job would relive them of any further liability. They need to be there working. We can take our pound of flesh out of them once the well is shut down.

Also regarding Item #6, the University of South Florida is already studying the plume.

Obama is doing his job and his job (at the moment) is not trying to placate the anger of the masses. People need to keep their heads. The damage is done and no amount of bitching is going to stop or reverse it.

I hear calls for ACTION!!!! But I hear no real clear definition of what action he can take that will help stop the spill. I'm all for taking BP to the woodshed after the oil is stopped. But for now, we need every available mind working on how to stop this and then how best to clean it up. Unfortunately, that includes BP. Their stock has been hit hard by this and its a PR nightmare...I'm pretty sure they want this over with as well. No one benefits by having the oil just keep coming, therefore it is in everybody's best interest to get it stopped.

I see calls for declaring a national emergency. While it is a national emergency that declaration means nothing. If Obama got on TV tomorrow and made that declaration...not one thing would change. Not one. Therefore it is a useless and futile gesture. All the calls for speeches and congressional hearings are, at present, an extreme waste of time. I would rather congress work on financial reform. If something pertaining to the spill comes up that requires the attention of congress then they should certainly act. But in the meantime, congress really can't do anything about this either.

The best the government can do is to mobilize it's scientists and experts to try and help come up with a solution to the spill and to try and figure out a way to clean it up. Once the spill is stopped and the cleanup is well under way THEN we go after BP/Halliburton/etc. I'd have no problem suing BP out of existence and putting any potential criminals up on charges. I would also completely rewrite the regulations to make sure safety and responsibility are strictly enforced (if it was me, I would stop all the drilling, but it's not me). There should be no leniency whatsoever. If Obama lets BP skate at that point, then we should absolutely be calling for his head...but that should not be the priority right now. All it would be is a wasteful distraction.

The federal government needs to hire workers to go down there to help with the cleanup - and then bill BP for the costs. I have been unemployed for 15 months and would love to go down there, but can't afford to on my own. This would create tens of thousands of jobs, while doing something to mitigate the absolute disaster.

frankly if this were a nuclear spill, the government would have already stepped in and wouldn't be repeatedly saying 'BP is the responsible party here' over and over like some mantra that makes it go away.

Washington needs to take this seriously - it is has been over a month and they continue to willfully listen to whatever BP tells them and ignore scientific evidence that this is, and has been, worse then BP has been claiming

much worse

"Now the White House is having a hissy behind closed doors with the media because dammitall, they can’t stop asking questions about the spill. Oh that’ll work, that’ll make a difference; the biggest environmental disaster our country has experienced will go away if only the media shuts up about it."

Fact is, is that it does work to eliminate the "problem". Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Compared to that first couple of years when every death was front and center news, where images of tanks moving, or politicians visiting, were prized by news networks.

There is still torture going on in those countries, still innocent men being rounded up in night raids, still children being killed 'collaterally' in fire fights. Still countless mutilations from missile attacks. Still billions of YOUR dollars 'unaccounted for'.

But for all we know those wars are over, or at some kind of stalemate where everyone freezes until the cameras turn back on.

We have to have a relentless 5th estate. The BP leak is just one of the stories that need more air time. You'd think with 24/7 networks dedicated to news and only news, there'd be time for every illegal corporate war or corporate misdead, but when the news networks are owned by the same puppet masters this is what you get.

I think the corporate owned press is holding back on the BP leak. They know they have to cover it, but its more about doing damage control for BP. Make it sound like they are critical, while holding back on more damaging revelations.

I don't think Mr. Spock has to worry about it. Corporate press covering corporate misdeads? A softball approach....its only logical.

from this administration vis a vis accountability, prevention or remediation - that's all I want to see. No more pontificating about studies and commissions please. Just some action.

about this crisis, or any of the others we have. And nothing is exactly what we get done about them.

What a surprise. We lower our expectations, and the results are reduced to match.

How's that working for us so far?