GOOD-BAD PLANNING: Updated June 3rd, 2010
"Oy veys mere" is Yiddish:, or just oy, is an exclamation of dismay or exasperation, meaning "oh woe." This is OIL VEYS MERE. And it appears to be nothing but woe.
Nothing happens that isn't planned... sometimes it's good planning, sometimes it's bad. So now we have the largest ecological mess in the history of man less than a couple hundred miles from my front door and out of the clear blue sky the name 'Halliburton", oil supply company pops up again.
OK, this we do know, they poured the concrete seal for the well that blew less than twenty hours later. They were also involved in the blow in TIMURA. Coincidence? We also know certain safety rules were offset in the economical prowess that these companies exhibit.
We know human error will enter into the decisions concerning the single and double walled riser pipes. We know other corners were cut for the sake of profit and big business.
This is big, this is a sixty six million dollar a day company with big hands, big wallets and greedy Congressmen and Senators. Big oil runs the United States and no one is big enough to stop it.
Not even the deaths of those eleven men, and the pain of the families who lost a father, husband, mentor.
Maybe those secret oil meetings held by the former Vice President, leading Obama Basher, and History Re-Writter Richard Cheney need looking into. There is a ton of info on that fiasco, closed to the public by Cheney but recently released by the information act. Big oil had access to meetings the press was not allowed into.
THE CONSPIRACY PEOPLE ARE AT WORK
Things like having a blow, ten days after offshore well drilling is OK'd by the President of the United States smells of coincidence and kerosene, and I'm sure the Legion of Doom conspiratorialists are dragging the printing presses right out of the garage.
I just think it's bad luck and my heart goes out to the families of the 11 men who died in that horrific explosion. If you had a business and 11 men died on the job, there would be someone brought up under charges, criminal charges.
A DISASTER OF IMMENSE PROPORTION
The impacted area is great. Though Florida is 100's of mile from the spill, this mess effects everyone and anyone who benefits from a clean environment. It's not just Florida it's the states most crippled by the Katrina episode. It's Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi.
Scanning the beaches this weekend, many of the beach venues will be under-capacity, or empty. Memorial day was always a money maker for those businesses who every year look at a possibility of a slow summer season or strong hurricane season.
Though the government has declared only three beaches in Louisiana officially closed for safety reasons, the media impact just about finished things off. Money can't buy you love or change peoples perception.
Even the twenty five million Florida received from BP for advertising is too little, too late. Better spent on booms and dredging. I fear we will need it.
We have oil in Alabama now and some of the flumes are just off the Pensacola Florida beaches reportedly by the Beach Authorities as one of the finest beaches in the world. Joe Scarborough on MSNBC (Morning Joe) got to be having a gut call on that one. Thats his turf.
In Tampa where the numbers are off from the housing bust, our economics feature the highest foreclosures in the east. Our foreclosures this year topped 440,000, so high it takes a year to get to court. Some of the highest rates of unemployment, 14.7% in some area's, a devastated crop this year from one of the worst winters in history, and now closed fishing areas.
We are not a manufacturing state. Tourism and associated recreation like boating and sport fishing is our only real product and those rivers of oil will not only kill our environment for decades, it will kill the only sea product we have. Clean white sands bring people. Tar balls do not. Fish is food, fish will die. And add Oysters, Clams, Grouper, Snapper and their related birthing habitat grounds called the marshes might take a decade or more to recover, if they can recover at all.
And like they say in the comedy business it's in the timing. The timing is bad. This is right at the beginning of the Hurricane season after an unusually cold winter did a number on crops. We lost 66% of the years production of tomatoes, citrus, and strawberries. Literally and no pun intended, the perfect storm could wipe the coastline and turn it black.
THE REAL DANGER IS AHEAD
Having flown over these orange brown slicks (only about 8% of the real oil, this is light crude that floats) you can smell the oil in an unpressurized aircraft at 2000 feet MSL. It's horrid and unsafe.
I helped clean birds once and the smell is unbearable. Though I offered to help in the cleanup, my skills will have to be at command centers or something administrative as anyone who has allergies will tell you, not a good place for me. It's a perpetual gag reflux episode. I am just too allergic to smells and chemical reactives.
There are rivers of the heavier stuff six miles wide by twenty miles long by hundreds, possibly 1000 feet deep under the surface just looking to land somewhere. This is catastrophic and this is not going away this decade.
What I fear the most is a Hurricane. Rising tidal flow, high winds and circular patterns could bring those oil flumes and underwater rivers to the surface and over any berms or protective barriers. All the booms in the world won't stop what the Hurricane can do. it could destroy all of the Gulf area. Normally if there is such a thing, it would break things up but looking at the Gulf map we have land on three sides , all pristine beaches the finest in the US.
WHEN WILL WE LEARN
I have said it on many an occasion, almost to the point of it being a mantra, "Mother Nature should not be screwed with". I learned much from my wife before she passed on about this delicate balance man has with his environment and how unforgiving Mother Nature can be.
Though born to and part of a Judeo-Christian culture she was fascinated by the simplicity and spirituality of the The Plains Indians who called the area above the clouds their Heaven but the ruler below the clouds was the Mother of Earth. She loved the swamps, the trees, the high forests, the lakes and this type of disaster would really affect her. She saw our lives as a coalition with nature, not as the rapist of Mother Nature.
BIG BUSINESS RUNS THE US
Does the Oil Spill Scenario sound familiar. "BP too big to fail", all the lobbyists and those in Congress who are bribed by this consortium of black death are suddenly very quiet.
Hmm sounds like the Housing failure, and the Bank failures all over again and say what they will, the US taxpayer will be the one to suffer either in higher gas bills, somehow BP cutting off their payments, moving offshore like Halliburton did to avoid US taxes, or stalling and beating the rap. Regardless of what their public relations department spills out. They have as many leaks in their stories as that well head.
The consumer got screwed in all of these too big corporate scenarios. They (the corporations will) will kill the country.
The Bush Administration pulled government regulation in Wall Street, Mortgages and Mine and Oil Drilling Safety. Thank McCain while you are at it. His crew helped The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act which broke down barriers between banks, securities firms, mortgage lenders and insurance companies. That deregulation repealed Great Depression-era bank regulations with the approval of former President Bill Clinton. That explained the mortgage crisis. Obama has also faulted McCain, the Bush administration and Republicans for a tendency to favor deregulation instead of oversight. So they retort with words like Obama's Katrina, etc.
THAT NAME POPS UP AGAIN
If you wish to really set your hair on fire look up Cheney - Oil Meetings, closed door sessions. Halliburton has been tied to the Deepwater Horizon spill. How surprising. The Wall Street Journal reported, the Leaking Oil Well lacked a Safeguard Device:
The oil well spewing crude into the Gulf of Mexico didn't have a remote-control shut-off switch used in two other major oil-producing nations as last-resort protection against underwater spills. The lack of the device, called an acoustic switch, could amplify concerns over the environmental impact of offshore drilling after the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon rig last week.
U.S. regulators don't mandate use of the remote-control device on offshore rigs, and the Deepwater Horizon, hired by oil giant BP PLC, didn't have one. With the remote control, a crew can attempt to trigger an underwater valve that shuts down the well even if the oil rig itself is damaged or evacuated. The U.S. considered requiring a remote-controlled shut-off mechanism several years ago, but drilling companies questioned its cost and effectiveness, according to the agency overseeing offshore drilling. The agency, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, says it decided the remote device wasn't needed because rigs had other back-up plans to cut off a well. Hmm, was this decision made after those meetings.
BAD, VERY BAD MATH
An acoustic trigger costs about $500,000, industry officials said. The Deepwater Horizon had a replacement cost of about $560 million, and BP says it is spending $6 million a day to battle the oil spill. Some major oil companies, including Royal Dutch Shell PLC and France's Total SA, sometimes use the device even where regulators don't call for it.
Time for the Congress to take back Congress and work for the people not the Oil Companies, or the Banks or Wall street. The solution may be found at RENT-A-FIRING-SQUAD.ORG or DUMP THE CROOKS.com.
At sixty six million dollars a day profit BP will buy the next elections. Thanks to the IMBECILES OF JURICE PRUDENCE, the dumb and blind idiots on the Supreme Court who OK'ed Corporations to donate money to any political party and candidate for any amount they wished.
STOP IT NOW!
I agree with Eric Holder, some should be brought up under charges. And let's for once use a phrase from the last administration. "NO POLITICIAN LEFT BEHIND". Oh that was no child left behind...sorry. Still no one is off the hook even if they are not in office anymore.
I don't care if they trace things back to the former VP. Anyone who had a hand in the money and not put our precious seacoast first should be charged. It is their sworn oath to defend this country and the constitution and it includes our borders. Part of which is seacoast.
Under deregulation, during the control by the PUBS, about as much harm has been done to this country as you can think of.
It bewilders me when I hear about our spending. Words like "socialist and liberalism'. It's called paying the bills. The money is being poured into a hole the Obama boys didn't dig. Some one has to pay these bills and fix the mess that was made. We are not spending. We are repairing damages.
WAKE UP AMERICA:
Someone needs to really go after the crew that cut the corners. BP, Halliburton, the MMS administration for starters. I got abundle bet they will squirm. And get away with it. You are being BS'd again. You are not in Disneyland. No tooth fairy will make it better.
And they also have to look into the other issues that prevailed during the last administration. And we are not just talking about a few Constitutional issues like torture, water-boarding, invasion of privacy, wiretapping, and a few other slick moves like taking Halliburton offshore to Qatar and Dubai to avoid taxation. Some still think Bush, Cheney, Rove are great men.
Let me simplify the "deregulation" theory. You have a henhouse. There are foxes nearby. So you hire a wolf to protect the henhouse from the Foxes who are afraid of wolves. Next week you check on the hens and the henhouse is empty, the Wolf is gone and you are screwed. Moral of the story, a hen in the hand is safer then any hen around a Bush.
These morons who promoted this idea that deregulation is good for the country have a track record.
1) Wall Street did so for promises of MONEY. Follow the money. It went to politicians and power brokers. It failed horribly. Too Big, think Enron.
2) We deregulated the auto manufacturers, they failed. too big. We bailed them out. In the interest of saving gas, promoting the green lifestyle, conservation and the economy, Caddilac announced a new 565 Horsepower engine in their sport series. What the hell are they thinking?
3) We deregulated the chemical part of the drug industry, they failed. Now we have TV blasting us with stuff that the cure is worse than the symptom. We might be all susceptible to G-d only knows in a few years. And drugs cost twice in a corrupt health care market that after BIG OIL bribes itself to the number two spot.
4) Wall Street Banking deregulation led to more fraud, greed, ponzie schemes, bribes and corruption. too big, we bailed them out.
5) The Oil Deregulation is more complex. The National Energy Policy Development Group was a group, created by Executive Order on January 29, 2001, that was chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney. The group, commonly referred to as the "Cheney Energy Task Force," produced a National Energy Policy report in May 2001. I
In a cover note to (CODE NAME FOX) George W. Bush, Cheney (CODE NAME WOLF) wrote that "we have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy (CODE NAME - HENHOUSE) for the future." The composition of the task force, according to the report, was confined to government officials under closed doors.
However, according to media reports at the time, energy industry executives participated in the Task Force. In particular, those identified as having been involved included then-Enron President and Chairman Kenneth Lay and lobbyists Haley Barbour and Marc Racicot.
In April 2001, the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group, sought to obtain the records of the task force meetings.
In July 2001 Judicial Watch filed suit on the grounds that the administration was not "in compliance with the Federal Advisory Commission Act which mandates that certain documents, task force members, meetings, and decision-making activities be open to the public."
Judicial Watch argued that the acting as energy lobbyists -- "regularly attended and fully participated" in the group's meetings held behind closed doors, and were in fact members of the group.
The Sierra Club also filed suit and the two actions were later merged.
At issue is whether Cheney allowed private energy lobbyists and big-name campaign contributors to participate in the work of the group, and if so, whether that information should be made public," UPI reported.
SIMPLE ANSWERS
1) It's really time for election funding reform. Tell the Supreme court to get off the bennies and re-think.
2) Strict guidelines on the separation of Church and State.
3) Line item veto
4) Term limits.
5) Use the time proven Stalin approach to good clean government by elimination of lobbyists and bribe takers.
6) Nuclear Power
7) Cork the wells.
8) Take those who promote Drill, Baby, Drill, and their populist unstable rhetoric lovers who chant and haven't got a frickin clue as to consequence and make them clean up the mess. I am really getting hot over this.
Constitution reform is needed too. We need elections (public referendum to change the limits of our politicians) because it seems Congress is too big and powerful to fail.