MOS*

*More Of Same 

(Cartoon by Lee Judge, published 6/22/14 in the Kansas City Star and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return, please.)
No, I'm not through yelling about this.  I'd set my hair on fire if I thought it would do any good (or if it were longer than 1/8th inch all the way around).  I'm really that furious.

And so should every American be, regardless of political persuasion.  This administration isn't fooling anybody when it says that the 300 troops being sent to Iraq are there merely as advisors to Iraqi security forces.  Yeah, right.  And I was the inspiration for "My Sharona."

From McClatchy D.C.

“‘Combat’ is an elastic term when you talk about special operations guys, because you never know what they’re going to be doing,” [Former Marine Corp Sgt. Andrew] van Wey, who now does marketing for a military apparel firm in Fort Worth, Texas, said in an interview. “The nature of these guys’ jobs is covert. When you send in special operations, they leave a smaller footprint than infantry or other conventional forces. That’s how they get around violating the spirit of ‘no boots on the ground.’”

Others who served in Iraq said that once the new U.S. troops are embedded with their Iraqi counterparts, all bets are off, because there are few safe havens in a very dangerous country.

“It’s a stretch to say they won’t see combat,” Eric Young, a former Marine corporal who fought in Fallujah during two deployments to Iraq, told McClatchy. “More than likely those Green Berets will take up leadership roles in the Iraqi military. They may not be doing a lot of fighting, but they won’t just sit back and call for support. They’re there to lead from the front. You don’t lead from the back.”   [Enphasis added]

 The US troops will get involved, perhaps wounded or killed and certain elements will call for vengeance and then, just in time for November, 2016, it will become the kind of issue the GOP has been dreaming of.

Like I said last week.  Here we go again.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/20/231083/iraq-vets-say-obamas-promise-of.html#storylink=cpy

Send In The Drones ... There Have To Be Drones

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and posted on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge and then be so kind as to return here, haste-posthaste.)

The nation of Iraq has once again descended into chaos as Sunni and Shiite  forces are battling for control of the country.  The conflict appears to have spilled over into Syria in order to take advantage of the confusion wracking that country.  And the US response?   No surprises here.

From the L.A. Times:

In a sign of the growing danger in Iraq, President Obama notified Congress on Monday that he was sending up to 275 U.S. military personnel “to provide support and security for U.S. personnel and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.”

Obama also is considering sending 100 or fewer special operations troops to Iraq to advise its armed forces as it battles Sunni Muslim insurgents, according to a senior U.S. official. It was unclear whether they would be among the 275 military personnel or in addition to them. ...

Analysts and military officials said sending U.S. military advisors may prove unavoidable to reverse the insurgents’ momentum. Without U.S. experts to guide drones and manned aircraft to targets on the ground, airstrikes may prove ineffective or accidentally hit civilians.    [Emphasis added]

From a promise of no troops on the ground in Iraq by the administration to the insertion of a "mere" 275 troops and possibly another 100 special operations troops to "guide" the drones.  All of this activity is allegedly to "protect" our personnel currently ensconced in that gazillion-dollar fortress euphemistically referred to as an embassy.

Now I'm just sure that protecting our oil interests in Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with this move.  Not a chance.  Nope, no way.

In other words, here we go again.

A Perfect System

(Cartoon by Yaakov Kirschen and published on 5/30/14 on his blog.  Click on image to enlarge and then trot on back.)

The blurb that accompanies Mr. Kirschen's cartoon says simply, "The system could also be good for America."

I don't often agree with Mr. Kirschen (he's too conservative and too much a Zionist for me), but I enjoy his cartoons a great deal simply because they make me think.  This cartoon especially sent the wheels spinning in my head bone.

My first thought was, "Oh swell.  Just what we need, trusting Congress to select the next president."  But then I got a series of thought in quick order.

Isn't that what we allowed the Supreme Court to do for George W. Bush?  And four years later what we allowed the state of Ohio to do?

And then I realized that for quite some time we've allowed others not part of any government to make that selection:  PHARMA, Big Oil and Big Coal, the Adelsons and the Soros, those with the big dollars to make the choice for us by donating huge amounts of money to 501c4 and SuperPAC committees to pay for nonstop commercials and trips to every boondock town in the country.

Now, every citizen gets just one vote, but somehow our individual votes don't seem to carry the same clout we used to have, especially when it comes to nominating conventions.  The two main parties have seen to that.  Not that this needs to be the case, however.

But when voters tune out and stay home, that's what happens.  In the recent California Primary, slightly over 13% of the electorate turned out.  I think that appalling, especially since voting absentee (by mail) is so easy.

A wise person once told me that in a democracy we get the government we deserve.

I think we're in trouble, folks.

Frackin' Mess

(Cartoon by Steve Sack/Minneapolis Star-Tribune (2/23/14.  Click on image to enlarge.)

The president still hasn't given any strong hint as to his decision on building the Keystone Pipeline.  In fact, he made it clear that the decision won't come any time soon.

From the L.A. Times:

 President Obama told the nation’s governors Monday that a decision on the Keystone XL pipeline could come in a matter of months, signaling he did not intend to let a recent court ruling derail his decision on whether to approve the much-debated project.

If that decision comes in the next two or three months, it just might land near the Primary Elections in many states.  I suspect that is his plan:  if he gives the green light to the plan, he's removed one of the issues from the GOP, at least temporarily.   The trouble is that he is going to piss off the environmental and liberal wing of his party who just might not show up.

And the excuse suggested by Steve Sack in his cartoon, that shipping by train is much more dangerous than a pipeline, just doesn't wash.

Stopping the fracking here and urging Canada to do likewise just might.  In the meantime, we'll just hope that governor's will get involved, like the one in Nebraska who got behind some property owners and who convinced a judge not to let the pipeline go through that state.

A pox on all their houses.

Pipe Down!

(Cartoon by Ingrid Rice and found at Cagle.com.  Click on image to enlarge.)

Doyle McManus's latest column nicely summarizes the arguments for and against the building of the Keystone Pipeline.  President Obama isn't going to have an easy time making this decision.

The State Department's 11-volume environmental impact statement released last month attempted to balance the factors dispassionately. Yes, the report said, the oil from Alberta's tar sands is 17% dirtier than most of the oil extracted in the U.S., and its transport and refining could add 27 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year.

But the report also concluded that a U.S. decision to block the pipeline wouldn't significantly reduce that problem, because Canada intends to move the oil whether Keystone is built or not. Indeed, if Canada ships most of the oil by rail, the environmental consequences could be even worse, and the United States would lose out on the pipeline's economic rewards.

That's why some administration officials I've talked with — and even, privately, some environmentalists — are betting that Obama will eventually approve the Keystone project.

How that sits with voters, especially environmentalists, may depend on what conditions the president imposes on the project and what else he does to address climate change.

If he signs off on the project, liberals and environmentalists (the people who worked so hard to get him elected) will scream long and hard.  If he doesn't sign off, several Democratic senators whose states will be affected may lose their seats in the upcoming election, and the Dems will lose their Senate majority (not that the Senate Dems have used that majority very well).

If he signs off, he will be admitting this country isn't serious about fighting climate change.  If he doesn't, the power companies and our Canadian neighbors will ship the dirty oil by rail, which is even more dangerous.

He's damned if he does; damned if he doesn't.

 Sorry, Barack:   addressing tough issues is part of your job.

Intentional Inattention

You know, one of the things about getting older is that one is not as patient, and for good reason.  There isn't much personal future left, and some of us (including me) are trying to make up for lost time and past sins.  I'm willing to admit that I haven't been as "green" as I could have been in practice, although I did use the vocabulary.  Now I'm looking at storms on the East Coast, drought throughout much of the country, horrible water shortages looming all over the globe, and the loss of millions of species, all because humans, especially in the first world, and very especially in the United States, continue to behave as if there wasn't any kind of problem. 

Look at the shiny keys.

And, frankly, I take no comfort that most people don't see the problem, or at least aren't willing to do anything about it.  In fact, that scares the hell out of me.  David Horsey does a damned good job  in spelling out what that means.

Now, as we grow more aware that we face the worst man-made environmental disaster in the history of the world, we are proving to be no more wise than the imprudent farmers who tore up the buffalo grass. Rather than taking serious steps to curb the carbon emissions that are driving up temperatures everywhere, rather than being shocked by the rapid melting of the polar ice packs and mountain glaciers, rather than seeing drought-driven wildfires and monster storms as portents of things to come, we are redoubling our efforts to extract every last ounce of fuel from the dirtiest depths of the land.

The oil boom in North Dakota is turning that sparsely populated state into an American Arabia. Even bigger is the oil bonanza in western Canada. According to a Los Angeles Times report, recruiters from Alberta are scouring California and other states hoping to lure tens of thousands of workers north to the oil fields.

In a time of high unemployment and high gas prices, this seems like happy, hopeful news. But it is hope built on sand -- the vast deposits of oil sands that give up their black gold only through a process that requires a bottomless supply of water and poses huge environmental risks. The worst comes after the oil is extracted. That is when we burn it all up in our cars and factories and send the resulting emissions into the atmosphere. ...

On Sunday, the New York Times published a set of dramatic graphics showing how several coastal cities will be affected by rising sea levels that will be one result of global warming. Scientists say if immediate, dramatic measures are taken to reduce emissions, the seas may rise just 5 feet. New York City might be able to cope by erecting barriers, but Miami Beach would disappear. If the world hits just the modest emissions targets that have already been set, but largely ignored, sea level will go up 12 feet. That means all that will be left of Miami is a scattering of islands, while nearly a quarter of New York goes underwater.

But if we continue full speed ahead, drilling, fracking and burning it all up, then the coasts will see a 25-foot rise that swamps all of south Florida; all of Norfolk, Va.; big swaths of New York and Boston; every beach in California and, strangely enough, more than 60% of Sacramento.

Of course, this is all many decades in the future, our legacy to future generations. For now, in between the storms and wildfires, we will remain oblivious. After all, until the end actually came, Pompeii was a pleasant town with a fine mountain view.

And that's just in this country.

The horrible part is that our wayward behavior is affecting the entire planet, not just our corner of it.  We are so embedded in the idea of "energy independence" as defined by the oil companies (which are multinational and really don't care about anything other than their own bottom line), that we are willing to put up with fracking and drilling in sensitive areas.  What we refuse to look at is the fact that those oil companies are shipping that oil OUT OF THE US to the rest of the world, which, like this country, will burn it, adding to the problem but also adding to the oil companies's bottom line.

We will continue to drive our gas guzzlers, leave our lights on, consume our plastics, do whatever is comfortable for us because we can.  At least we can right now.

Yet no one wants to talk about the issue:  not candidates for President, not members of Congress, and, really, not too many members of state legislatures.  All of those folks are more interested in keeping the wheels greased with carbon based products for the next election.

One of the things about being an elder is I won't have to see too much of the result.  One of the other things is that my niece and nephews and their children and children all over the world, human and non-human, will.

And that makes me sick.

Frackin' Morons

It's hardly comforting to know that the California state legislature is just as prone to cut deals with lobbyists as our representation in Washington. My latest sense of outrage was provoked by Michael Hiltzig's latest column.

Fracking has a lot of friends these days. There's the oil and natural gas industry, which spends more than $4 million a year lobbying in Sacramento. And there's Halliburton Co., which pioneered the technique in the 1940s and remains a huge player in the field. The company's former CEO, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney, got Congress in 2005 to exempt fracking from regulation under the Clean Drinking Water Act, and it employs one of the best-connected lobbying firms in the state.

Now, I hadn't realized that fracking had been going on here in California for quite a while, since the 1960s according to Hiltzig. Unlike the current use of the process to tap into natural gas, the California fracking has been used to get at oil deposits too hard to reach by the normal procedures. Apparently state regulators weren't keeping up either. They knew there were some fracking 'wells', they just didn't know how many or where they were. Nice, eh?

All of the came to light when another company (Veneco) wanted to use fracking in the Monterey Shale region. State Sen. Fran Pavey (a Democrat) wanted to find out more about current regulations only to discover that there were none and the state agency which is supposed to have oversight had no information. Apparently the agency was content with "self-regulation" by the oil and energy companies.

So Sen. Pavey introduced a very modest bill, and it never made it out of committee:

The slain bill, introduced by state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), would have done nothing to actually regulate fracking. It merely would have required that drillers notify local property owners and water authorities in advance that fracking was going to take place, and that groundwater be tested before and after the drilling so that any damage produced by the drilling could be pinpointed. The idea, Pavley says, is that "if there's nothing to worry about, let's go through a thoughtful monitoring and reporting approach to address the concerns the public has."

Nevertheless, whether out of ignorance or misplaced solicitude for a well-financed industry, the state Senate killed the bill in a bipartisan 18-17 vote. Another bill, much watered down, remains on life support in the Assembly. [Emphasis added]

Mr. Hiltzig is being too generous. The industry doesn't want any regulation and its members don't want the public to know what chemicals are being used because they don't want to get stuck with the costs of cleaning up the mess they will undoubtedly make. That industry got their message across to state legislators. I guess we'll have to find a way to get our message across. November is coming up.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things

There are times I wish I could go back in time to grab the country's founders by their necks and to shake them until their eyes spun. This is one of those times. Their idea of a "Senate" to offset the whimsy of the House just hasn't worked out of late.

The Senate has more Democrats than Republicans. That doesn't mean much, and hasn't for quite some time. The Republicans seem to always get their way, whether they have the majority or not. Case in point: the recent vote on getting rid of government tax breaks for oil companies whose profits are through the roof once again. Paul Whitefield had some rather brief but certainly pertinent comments on on the process.

As Time staff writers Lisa Mascaro and Christi Parsons reported Thursday: “The Senate blocked an effort to end billions of dollars in tax breaks for the oil industry, brushing aside President Obama's argument that the five big oil companies were doing ‘just fine’ while consumers were struggling with painfully high gasoline prices.”

Of course, on Capitol Hill, "consumers" are those people who need to be pandered to whenever an election rolls around. Big oil companies, on the other hand, are "providers" -- of lots of campaign contributions.

So I guess that’s how we got to this “free market,” the one in which oil companies are free to charge whatever they want for gasoline, Congress is free to keep giving tax breaks to an industry making huge profits, and you and I are free to walk, or bike, or scrimp on other things so we can put 87-octane into old Bessie. [Emphasis added]

That article by Mascaro and Parsons to which Whitefield refers is also illuminating.

The measure to kill the industry tax preferences failed on a 51-47 procedural vote Thursday. It needed 60 votes to overcome a Republican-led filibuster that was supported by some Democrats from oil-rich states. [Emphasis added]

Because, of course, the "consumers" in oil-rich states aren't getting gouged by the oil companies, and aren't being affected by the slash-and-burn cutting of other federal programs (such as education, food stamps, Medicaid, Medicare, student loans, and so on) so that we can get our deficit under control rather than ending these billion dollar giveaways to the big five oil companies.

The "providers," also known as the "1%" or "our owners," wouldn't have it any other way. And our senators are only too happy to comply.

I swear, one of these days I'm gonna take a hostage.

Somebody Needs His Diaper Changed

Extortion is such an ugly word, but it's the right one for what Sen. David Vitter (Moron, Louisiana) is pulling right now.

From an editorial in the New York Times:

It sounded like a simple bit of noncontroversial Senate routine: raising the salary of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to the level of his cabinet peers. Then, with all the finesse of a shakedown artist, Senator David Vitter, Republican of Louisiana, declared that he will keep a legislative hold on the $19,600-a-year raise until Mr. Salazar has his department approve more deepwater drilling permits in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I cannot possibly give my assent,” the senator wrote to Mr. Salazar. Far from any concern about laws against quid pro quo Washington deals, Mr. Vitter vowed in a press release to keep his “boot on the neck” of the department until his drilling demands are met.

In the wake of the gulf oil spill disaster, the senator wants to regenerate industry jobs, and he is demanding an approval rate of at least six drilling permits per month. Most of the 15 approved since the oil spill, he contends, amount to reissuings.

Apparently the inestimable senator was dissatisfied with the job BP did last year so he wants a do-over. He wants the Gulf completely destroyed.

Unsurprising News

As many of you know, I don't drive anymore. I don't own a car and I rely almost entirely on public transportation. I still have been watching the amazing rise in gasoline prices, usually from the window on a bus I ride each morning. Right now, cheap gas in the San Gabriel Valley is going for around $4.219 for regular unleaded along the bus route. The prices for gasoline are even higher in other areas, especially if the station is close to a freeway on ramp and if the station carries the logo of one of the larger brands such as Exxon.

I had assumed that the gasoline price hikes could be linked to the rise in the price of the barrel of crude oil powered by speculators. It turns out, according to this article in the Los Angeles Times that this is only one part of the price equation.

Exxon Mobil Corp. earned nearly $11 billion in the first three months of the year, a rollicking 69% increase over its performance for the same period last year. That's on sales of $114 billion.

It's the same story for the other big oil companies. Royal Dutch Shell turned a profit of $6.3 billion in the first quarter, and BP — despite lingering costs from the Gulf Coast oil spill — made $7.1 billion.

What they aren't making is fuel, at least not in normal quantities. And that's a key factor in their reinvigorated financial performance. ...

"This is a page torn right out of the handbook of gouge-onomics," said Charles Langley, senior gasoline analyst at the Utility Consumers' Action Network in San Diego. "We call it the law of supply and demand: They supply less product and demand more money for it."

Oil makes up about two-thirds of the cost of a gallon of gas, so expensive oil always turns into expensive fuel. But as for-profit entities, refiners use a variety of means to ensure that they keep as much of that windfall as possible.

The nation's refineries are operating at about 81% of their production capacity, Energy Department statistics show. That compares with a 20-year historic average of about 89% for this time of year, according to department records.

But wait: there's more.

Oil company refineries are shipping a lot of the output out of the country, much of it as diesel for South America. Oil companies, claiming that because the US is still not back economically and therefore not using as much fuel, argue that they need to expand their markets. So, there's less gasoline available for Americans for several reasons. The price hikes, and by extension profits, will obviously continue throughout the summer, thereby hobbling the economic recovery for the rest of us even further.

The invisible hand of the market has flipped us off yet again.

One Thing He Got Right

Although there is ample room for criticism of President Obama's State of the Union address for being too vague and abstract, the president was specific in one area: ending subsidies to the oil industry. An editorial in today's Los Angeles Times noted that suggestion and approved heartily. So do I.

Analysts are expecting a bonanza when Exxon Mobil Corp. announces its fourth-quarter earnings on Monday; the company's stock has jumped by nearly 20% during the last year, and in the first three quarters of 2010, its profit was $21.2 billion — not a bad haul during a worldwide recession. Other oil companies have had similar success, thanks to growing demand in India and China. Yet U.S. taxpayers subsidize this industry to the tune of $4 billion a year.

This kind of largesse toward a hugely profitable business seems bizarre, especially at a time when the federal deficit is reaching alarming proportions, yet efforts to end the tax deductions and credits for companies that don't need them have gone nowhere. That isn't stopping President Obama from trying. In his State of the Union address, he proposed an uptick in federal spending on clean-energy research and development, to be paid for by ending subsidies for oil companies. "I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's," Obama said. [Emphasis added]

President Obama asked the 111th Congress to end the subsidy, but Congress declined. Republicans and "Oil State" Democrats would have none of it. There's even less chance that the 112th Congress will end the subsidies, especially with Republicans in control of the House. The official excuse (delivered to congress critters via fax) will be that ending the subsidies will halt drilling and drive up the cost of gasoline which, in turn, will mean increased prices and (wait for it) lost jobs. And that's a lot of hooey, as the editorial points out.

...A 2007 report by the Joint Economic Committee, which advises Congress on economic matters, found that ending the manufacturing deduction would have a negligible effect on consumer prices. That's because when crude is fetching high prices, as it has for many years and will for many more, companies have ample incentive to drill even without a subsidy — so eliminating it wouldn't cause the kind of supply shortages that push up prices at the pump.

That bit of information, especially when coupled with the earnings reports which will roll out starting Monday, should be thrown in the faces of the recalcitrant with great regularity by the administration and by the news media, including the Sunday Morning Bobbleheads. It also wouldn't hurt if a few million Americans let their representatives know that such subsidies are contributing to the budget deficit and are obviously unnecessary.

It's about time.

Landing On Their Access

For some, government work is a sweet gig: work for a couple of years as a congress critter, aide, or civil servant and then leapfrog into a high paying lobbying job for such organizations as those representing the oil industry. Today's Washington Post details just how government grooms people for the promotion:

Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill, a Washington Post analysis shows.

Key lobbying hires include 18 former members of Congress and dozens of former presidential appointees. For other senior management positions, the industry employs two former directors of the Minerals Management Service, the since-renamed agency that regulates the industry, and several top officials from the Bush White House. Federal inspectors once assigned to monitor oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico have landed jobs with the companies they regulated.

The analogy that immediately comes to mind is that of a professional sports, with the government serving as the minor leagues training ground for many who move on to the high-paying big leagues. The sad part is that the system is being gamed by both sides of the aisle:

The analysis suggests the industry has focused on hiring former lawmakers from oil-producing states. Fifteen of the 18 former members of Congress who now lobby for oil and gas firms are from Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma or Kansas.

Dozens more previously worked as aides to lawmakers from those states. At least three industry lobbyists, for example, previously worked for Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), an outspoken critic of President Obama's oil-drilling moratorium in the gulf.

The article mentions some of these movers as collecting from their future employers even while still in the minor leagues, listing a couple who've been busted for their larceny.

As outrageous as this seems, it gets worse. The door between the government and the oil companies has long swung both ways, with the most successful in the private sector able to return to government in powerful policy making slots, thereby greasing the appointee's return to the private sector.

There's something dreadfully wrong with this picture.

Monday Lift

There aren't too many better ways to start a work-week than reading an editorial like this one published in the NY Times. Imagine: The Gray Lady taking on big oil! The editorial really nails it, albeit in abbreviated form, when it comes out in support of ending the corporate welfare for companies such as BP:

President Obama’s 2011 budget, proposed before the spill, would eliminate $4 billion in annual tax breaks for oil and gas companies. Bills in both houses introduced after the spill would achieve many of the same results. Industry has spent $340 million on lobbying over the last two years to block these sorts of initiatives, and until recently Congress has been eager to do its bidding. This year could be different. ...

Industry argues that these and other breaks are vital to robust domestic production and that both investment and employment would fall if they were eliminated. These arguments, which may have made sense years ago, are much less compelling when oil prices are hovering near $80 a barrel and oil companies — including BP — have been racking up huge profits.

Moreover, a Treasury Department analysis says that ending these breaks would reduce domestic production by less than 1 percent. A separate study by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee says that ending the biggest of the deductions — 9 percent of qualified income from gas and oil produced in the United States — would have zero effect on consumer prices.

That "robust domestic production" has actually declined over the decades as the easily accessible oil has been pumped. To keep profits as healthy as the mega-corps would like they've gone to the riskier sources, those located miles below the surface of the ocean. We see what that can bring. Maybe cutting out all the breaks will discourage oil companies from such endeavors. That wouldn't bother me one bit.

Nor would I mind busting their chops for avoiding any corporate taxes by moving their corporate offices out of the US. Talk about a perversion of the "pay, go" principle!

No, let's cut out that corporate welfare. Instead, as the editorial concludes, use the money for cleaner, more sustainable forms of energy, such as solar, wind, and wave research and technology. The seeds have already been planted, but the necessary investment hasn't been forthcoming.

As to the job loss issue, I figure that we could easily underwrite the cost of retraining oil industry employees to work in safer fields. In fact, many community colleges are itching to expand those opportunities now, but they don't have the funding.

The trick, of course, is getting the necessary movement in the Congress. It would require our elected officials to close the door on lobbyists coming in with satchels of money and require them to do the jobs we elected them to do. I'm not as optimistic on this front, but apparently the NY Times is. I sincerely hope they're right.

Through A Glass Darkly

I was quite surprised during my visit to Watching America at finding so many articles on BP's Gulf oil spill. The one which caught my attention was an editorial-like piece from Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung written by Moritz Koch. Mr. Koch points out the clear connection between the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the disaster on Wall Street. His analysis is devastating and right on the money.

...The bitter truth is that many officials in responsible supervisory agencies prefer searching the Internet for porno clips to looking over the shoulder of investment bankers and oil managers. The neglect of American civil servants connects both crises much more than any other pattern that could be found during a trip down abstraction lane. The financial crisis and the oil spill are the results of a gross violation of state responsibilities; a violation, however, that happened with intent and arose from ideological calculations. Thus, the violation was not an accident and did not result from carelessness. It was politically intended.

The Republicans, who ruled Washington until the end of 2008, had blind faith in the self-regulation of markets. Bureaucratic obstacles were deliberately smoothed out to exhaust all potentials for growth. While financial institutions were allowed to bring an increasing number of complex derivatives on the market, authorities permitted oil companies to drill deeper and deeper and did not waste a single thought on the “what if’s.”

The administration under George W. Bush refused to see reason. Regulation authorities were condemned to idleness and those inspectors who took their jobs seriously were worn down. ... [Emphasis added.}

Mr. Koch has assessed the situation accurately, in my opinion. He even has a little sound advice for the current administration:

President Barack Obama has to enforce the return to basic governmental functions, politically and culturally. He has made some progress concerning the SEC: the agency has regained its self-esteem under new leadership and has even dared to sue the powerful investment bank Goldman Sachs. Nuisances at the MMS continue, however. The president, who appeared helpless over the last few weeks, now has to demonstrate strong leadership. He certainly cannot count on any help from the opposition. The Republicans have continued to radicalize, driven forth by the fundamentalist Tea-Party-Movement. Nothing bears witness to this as much as the comment that Rand Paul, the founder of right-winged government critics and Republican candidate for the Senate, made about the oil spill: “Sometimes accidents happen.”

Two things struck me about this remarkable essay. First, I don't have any optimism when it comes to the Obama administration when it comes to forging ahead to clean up the messes he has admittedly inherited. He is not a progressive and is beholden to some of the same ideals of the previous two administrations: the business of America is business, and business will take care of things if allowed to do so freely. We see where that got us, but what we won't see is any movement away from this paradigm even though it is clearly and demonstrably wrong.

Second, this editorial could have and should have been published by any number of the major newspapers and media outlets in the United States, yet it was not. The most we have gotten is some nervous hand-wringing and some photos of oily pelicans. Oh, the MMS employees caught surfing porn sites instead of doing their jobs will get their chops busted, but only with respect to their accessing pornography and not for being in bed (in some cases literally) with oil company lobbyists and executives.

I don't know which disgusts me more: the failure of my government to do its job or the failure of the free press to do theirs.

Business As Usual

One would think that in the midst of the horrifying disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that BP and other oil companies would lay low this election season, but one would, of course, be wrong. There are still politicians running for office, which means there are still politicians to be bought.

Lobbyists for BP hosted at least 53 fundraising parties for lawmakers and candidates in recent years -- four of them since the explosion and oil spill at a BP-run oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a watchdog group's analysis.

Lobbyists typically represent multiple clients, and it is unknown how many of the events were intended to advance BP's interests. The numbers are based on fundraiser data compiled by the Sunlight Foundation, which collects information from anonymous donors and lobbyist reports. The list is incomplete, and it is possible the lobbyists held other fundraisers as well.

The silly caveats contained in the second paragraph of from this WaPo article aside, it's clear that candidates from both parties and their funders are in full campaign mode, the crises facing the nation be damned. It's business as usual.

What is especially maddening is that apparently both the candidates and the money baggers for the oil companies and the other corporations think that no one can do anything about it. After all, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) (who got over $27,000 from BP and its affiliates) got only a slap on the wrist from his party's leaders for apologizing to BP, probably more for the poor framing of his remarks than for the message.

David Donnelly, of the Campaign for Fair Elections, said he wasn't surprised that fundraisers were held by the lobbyists of BP and other oil firms.

"The fundraising season in Washington never ends, even when there are disasters like in the Gulf Coast and when the economy crashes. Members of Congress still have to look for money," Donnelly said. ...

"It's amazing that Rep. Barton would stand up for a multinational corporation that has wrecked the livelihoods of so many people along the Gulf Coast," Donnelly said. "Comments like this make all Americans question whether Congress represents them or the special interests funding their campaigns."

I think we're past the point of questioning, Mr. Donnelly. We're at the confirmation stage. Thanks to our Supreme Court and our election system, the business of government has indeed become business.

Off Key

Chris Ayres has a snarky commentary on Tony Hayward in today's Los Angeles Times. Ayres suggests that BP take a spare containment dome and drop it over its CEO before he does any further damage to the company's public image.

Here's what I consider to be the money passage in the piece:

Perhaps it's inevitable that any human being, no matter how skilled in communicating with the public, is going to err when faced with a calamity of the scale of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But Hayward hasn't made just one or two off-key statements. Oh no. Like the oil spill itself, the torrent of Hayward's anti-charm has been a slow-motion disaster, at first seeming almost containable, but then accumulating hour after hour, day after day, week after week, until Toxic Tony became a black stain on the Gulf Coast in his own right. If only there were a berm that could keep him out at sea, away from the population.

"This is America — come on. We're going to have lots of illegitimate claims," he sneered to one British journalist, as if the deaths of 11 oil rig workers and the injuries of 17 others in a more reasonable country would simply be considered an acceptable cost of doing business. Then came the terrifying logic of: "The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume." This set the bar for future Haywardisms pretty high, but the BP chief hurdled it nevertheless with his assessment that "I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest." [Emphasis added]

I happen to think that Mr. Hayward's gaffes are actually quite helpful in a twisted and perverse sort of way. He has managed to confirm what many of us have long suspected: that for corporations deaths and injuries are to be expected and computed into the cost of doing business in the US and around the world. Rather than work to prevent the loss of lives and livelihoods, major corporations are perfectly happy to allow for them in the business plan so that profits can be maximized. That the rest of us might be unhappy with such unholy computations doesn't matter. Only the bottom line matters to the Captains of Industry.

Will Mr. Hayward, BP, and its devastating Gulf tragedy prove to be the final tipping point, motivating the rest of us to hit the streets and Congress in protest?

Probably not. Already the general population is salivating at the curiously synchronous announcements of abiotic oil and the earth's replenishing of oil fields long thought to be depleted. In other words, they are ready to climb back into their automobiles and to crank up the air conditioning for the summer. Our national leaders haven't bothered to step up and call for the end of energy wastefulness and over-reliance on the fossil fuels which will choke the life out of the planet and its inhabitants. As a result, when the dramatic pictures of oil soaked birds, dead fish, and tar balls on beaches from one end of the coast to the other fade, it will be back to business as usual.

There is some benefit to be being old. I won't have to be around to watch the further devastation. In the meantime, however, my heart hurts.

Truth In Advertising

(Copped from Economist's View, who found it at Information Processing.)

UPDATE:

This is apparently a hoax. I still think it's the best gallows humor I've seen in a long time. Bravo to the the perpetrator!

Nothing New Makes The News

The Party of No continues to thwart any meaningful legislation from the Senate (otherwise known as the World's Most Exclusive Country Club). Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) was the culprit this time.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) was seeking the unanimous consent of the Senate to move forward on the Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act, which would retroactively boost the legal cap of $75 million on how much companies must pay for economic damages.

But Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) blocked the effort, saying it would make drilling too expensive for smaller companies. "Big Oil would love to have these caps there so they can shut out all the independents," he said, echoing the argument of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who halted an identical move last week.

The legislative maneuvering came as federal officials expanded the no-fishing zone to nearly a fifth of the Gulf of Mexico. The closure now totals 45,728 square miles, extending southeast from the blowout site.

And your point, Sen. Inhofe? I mean, if an oil company can't afford to pay the cost of willful incompetence, then maybe they shouldn't be allowed to drill for oil. The size of the company doesn't matter, the results of its cost cutting when it comes to critical safety elements should. Even at $10 billion, the cap is suspiciously low. This latest disaster is going to cost far more than that.

BP has pledged to pay all "legitimate" claims of economic damage despite the current cap of $75 million. But Democratic lawmakers want to see a $10-billion cap set into law, just in case BP resists paying what is expected to be billions of dollars in claims.

The April 20 BP blowout is expected to cause billions of dollars in damage to fisheries and tourism, which would be covered by the bill.

That's just part of the damage, the calculable part. There's also the incalculable part: the loss of species, the ruination of the estuaries, the degradation of the environment.

Sen. Inhofe and his oil drilling buddies should be glad that there are few real progressives in the Country Club, people who would insist on there being no cap and who would insist on criminal sanctions and a corporate death sentence for any company found to have intentionally cut corners to make a few extra bucks.

A pox on all of the oil grubbers.

Business, As Usual

Avedon has taken to using the phrase "our owners" when referring to the moneyed class that appears to be in charge of just about everything that affects us, most particularly our government. I think she's right in her analysis, and as proof I offer this bit of news:

Since the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig exploded on April 20, the Obama administration has granted oil and gas companies at least 27 exemptions from doing in-depth environmental studies of oil exploration and production in the Gulf of Mexico.

The waivers were granted despite President Barack Obama’s vow that his administration would launch a “relentless response effort” to stop the leak and prevent more damage to the gulf. One of them was dated Friday — the day after Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he was temporarily halting offshore drilling.

The exemptions, known as “categorical exclusions,” were granted by the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service (MMS) and included waiving detailed environmental studies for a BP exploration plan to be conducted at a depth of more than 4,000 feet and an Anadarko Petroleum Corp. exploration plan at more 9,000 feet.

I suppose that technically the spokesman for MMS was correct in noting that the granting of these waivers is not in conflict with the Interior Secretary's halting of offshore drilling. These are not drilling permits, which involve a separate process. No new permits have been issued. That said, however, environmental studies are an important and necessary part of the overall process, and waiving the requirement because there have been studies already done in the region (all before this latest tragedy) seems just a little ... oh, I don't know ... cozy for the multinational oil companies.

It's long been clear that the rapacious multinational corporations have a handy partnership with the MMS, but it takes a tragedy of this proportion to remind us of just who is in charge: the owners.

Avedon, as usual, is right.

Somebody Said It Much Better Than I Could

The incredible unfolding of the results of greed and mammon worship in the Gulf of Mexico has me flummoxed, so flummoxed that I am speechless.

Fortunately, one wise woman has her act together on the issue.

Go read what Southern Beale has to say.