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Thursday, July 1. 2010
Day 73
This is the first day of July, 73 days since British Petroleum, through their negligence, has been pumping 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico. Saw some very disturbing pictures on television Wednesday; a sperm whale breaching through the oil and two pods of dolphins, one struggling to survive and another that was entirely dead. Almost two-dozen dolphins floating belly up in the midst of the disaster. I couldn’t find any of John Wathen’s photos on the Internet. You can see a video of it on the MSNBC website of Countdown With Keith Olbermann.
50,000 barrels of oil equals 2,250,000 gallons, multiplied by 73 days — that’s 164,250,000 gallons of oil that have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico since April 20, 2010.
Sadly, there doesn’t appear to be any end in sight and with hurricane season upon us, and the first hurricane of the season already slamming the East Coasts of Mexico and Texas, the spread of the oil across the Gulf has quickened.
Pensacola’s once white sand beaches will now be slightly to darkly brown in color, as each new tide washes more of the dark brown crude ashore. Florida has been putting tourism commercials on TV for years, but today, for the first time, their commercials tell people not all of that state’s Gulf Coast beaches are affected by the disaster — not yet anyway. The actually have a link on their website that will tell you which areas are clean and which ones are not.
When you visit their Website, there is a box with this disclaimer: “Tar balls, tar patties and sheen have been found in Northwest Florida, with the heaviest impacts reported in Escambia County. Cleanup crews continue to be on site. There have been no reports of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill-related oil products reaching the shore beyond the Northwest Florida region. There is no indication that the rest of the state will have impacts from weathered oil products within the next 72 hours.”
Within the next 72 hours. They don’t want to predict what will happen beyond three days. Thankfully, the site provides links to several official sites involved in the disaster, including NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has charts and predictions of how and when the oil spill will spread.
Still, the Party of No is opposed to holding British Petroleum responsible for every penny that will be spent on this disaster, apologizing to BP for the $20 billion escrow fund that they agreed to create after meeting with the president in the White House. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) had the most laughable response to the escrow fund.
In May Barbour compared the oil spill to the sheen of gasoline we see behind powerboats with outboard motors: “We don't wash our face in it, but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski.”
Really? Oil hadn’t started washing up on his state’s shores. Now that it has, this is the federal government’s fault. Barbour is begging for more equipment to clean up Mississippi’s fouled beaches and of course he doesn’t think the federal government is acting fast enough. This is curious: at the start of the disaster, President Obama authorized the state of Mississippi to activate 5,000 National Guardsmen to assist with the cleanup. As of Monday, less than 60 of those troops were actively involved in the cleanup.
But what really sounds crazy was his response to the escrow fund: “I do worry that this idea of making them make a huge escrow fund is going to make it less likely that they’ll pay for everything. They need their capital to drill wells. They need their capital to produce income. But this escrow bothers me that it’s going to make them less able to pay us what they owe us.”Um, governor, the account was set up to insure British Petroleum does pay those affected by the oil disaster. Of course, this may cost BP three times that amount as this drags into months and then years.
The crazy lady from Minnesota, Michelle Bachmann, called the account a “redistribution of wealth fund.” How does an idiot like that continue to get re-elected?
Then of course there was Republican Congressman Joe Barton of Texas who apologized to British Petroleum: “I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said. "I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown."
Barton added, "I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is — again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize.”Of course he added the disclaimer: “I’m speaking now totally for myself. I'm not speaking for the Republican Party.”
Which is a bit of a lie. The Republican Study Committee, with 114 members in the House of Representatives, called it a “shakedown.” Joe Barton just said out loud, and on the record, what most of his colleagues in the House believe, but haven’t been dumb enough to utter into a microphone.
Then of course there’s the idiot from Alaska, Sarah Palin, who said it’s the fault of environmentalists who have forced the oil companies to drill in deeper waters. What?!? Does she really think the oil companies would refrain from deep water drilling if they could drill willy-nilly anywhere on land? Man! That woman is an idiot!
And all Republicans oppose the moratorium on offshore drilling, which is how this disaster began, 73 days ago. They claim such a moratorium would shut down the oil industry — even though the act would affect less than 1% of the wells already operating in the Gulf of Mexico.
The oil industry apologists are out there, pushing back on our government’s attempts to hold British Petroleum responsible for this horror. In the mean time, life in the Gulf of Mexico is dying; plant and animal life as well as the economic lives of so many who called the Gulf Coast home and their place of business.Yeah, visit Florida now, before it’s too late. Well, everywhere in Florida except the Panhandle, where Escambia County and Pensacola are located. There the beaches are already closed, as they are in Mississippi and Alabama. Visit now while you have the chance.
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