I am one of those people who will actually watch those boring, boring, hearings on C-SPAN that most of us flip right on past while watching TV, and this past week I've been watching one of the longer events the channel broadcasts...but it's been far from boring.
The Coast Guard and what used to be the MMS were in Houston looking into what caused the Gulf oil spill and they're taking testimony from representatives of the involved parties...and let me tell you, this is more than just an accident inquiry-it's also a warm-up for the lawsuits that are surely going to follow.
Our good friend Lamar of CenLamar blog had the opportunity last week to join the Coast Guard on a flyover of the Deepwater Horizon site, and he posted a great article along with pictures. Here's a brief excerpt:
I'm not sure exactly why I was invited to do this, but a little over three weeks ago at about seven at night, I received a phone call from someone at the White House, inviting me to participate in a flyover of the former site of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the current location of a cluster of clean-up crews.
I haven't covered the Deepwater Horizon disaster with nearly the same passion and insight and detail as other bloggers in the State, but believe me, it's not for lack of care; it's because I've found myself so frustrated, disappointed, and angered about the whole thing that I simply haven't been able to write coherently about the subject.
You might remember reading our article on June 17th discussing Jindal's plan to build sand berms to stop the flow of oil into Louisiana's coastal wetlands. The response from the Obama administration and scientific community was a collective, "huh?" The idea seemed to be more about sticking it to the feds and less about addressing the situation in a logical way.
Read on to learn about Bobby Jindal's most recent grand idea.
As you read in our earlier post, Daily Kingfish has signed on to the "BP Makes Me Sick Coalition" to encourage BP and federal officials to allow the use of respirators and other safety gear for the oil spill clean-up workers. So far, the attention and the response to this push has been great, with coverage in the New York Times, the Baton Rouge Advocate, and over 66,000 signatures and many more elected officials, organizations and candidates.
There's just no reason why the more than 47,000 oil spill clean-up workers shouldn't be able to wear proper protective gear while they are doing this difficult work to clean up our shores and wetlands. Have you signed the petition?
The Daily Kingfish has joined a broad coalition of blogs, advocacy groups, public officials, candidates, and environmental organizations to push BP to allow all cleanup workers to wear protective gear as they work in and around the Gulf of Mexico.
The new BP Makes Me Sick Coalition is, it's probably fair to say, the first high-profile push we've seen to use political organizing tactics, online and offline, to shape the ongoing disaster in the Gulf. The implicit tactic is to coalesce public opinion around a tangible idea -- one itself important, but that stands for something bigger. The BP Makes Me Sick Coalition is a project spearheaded by the Progressive Change Coalition, with the backing of local groups like Atchafalaya Basinkeeper and Galveston Baykeeper, Gulf fishermen, local blogs like the Burnt Orange Report and Texas Kaos, local electeds like Reps. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Kendrick Meek (D-FL), and national figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helps head the New York-based environmental group Riverkeeper.
The group, explained PCCC's Adam Green, started taking shape about two weeks ago, after Marylee Orr, the head of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network, talked on Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show about BP's alleged efforts to prevent clean-up workers from wearing respirators on the job.
"It's a choice between feeding their family, and not having money to feed their family," Orr told Olbermann. "They're willing to sacrifice their health to feed their family, and I think that's tragic. When our fishermen folks had their respirators on, they were told to take them off, that they would be fired if they used them." (Clip here.) Through Orr, says Green, PCCC connected with local fisherman's organizations. Through them, they reached out to local environmental groups, and on to Kennedy, who came aboard yesterday.
Check out the Countdown interview below with Marylee Orr, director of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network in which she discussed BP's efforts to prevent many of its workers from wearing respirators on the job:
Brighton, Colorado (FNS)-Attorneys from the Republican Study Group (RSG) descended upon the 17th Judicial District courtroom of Judge John T Bryan today to present an amicus brief and associated oral arguments in order to prevent a settlement in a lawsuit related to an automobile accident in this Colorado city.
The intervening attorneys claim the settlement reached between the two parties to the accident is a "shakedown" because the plaintiff had not yet exhausted all possible legal remedies when the agreement was finalized, and because the agreement was executed in the presence of the plaintiff's brother, a well-known local attorney.
They hope Judge Bryan will decline to approve the settlement in today's hearing, and that he will order the parties to move forward to trial.
"What we have is government transferring property from one party, an admittedly unattractive one, to others, not based on preexisting laws but on decisions by one man, a car czar", said Crush Mimbaugh, attorney for the RSG, "and we are here today to protect all Americans from this legally sanctioned rape of an innocent driver."
Honestly, I am absolutely sick of commercial air travel these days. Just dealing with security is bad enough, but then there's the airlines, and...hey, all you really need to know here is that there has to be a pretty good reason for me to fly cross-country.
Well, I had one Saturday night, which is how I came to be in the Colonnade Room of the Fairmount Hotel, Washington DC with about 250 of my closest friends, in a classic shawl-collar tuxedo, attending one of the most exclusive "passing of the torch" ceremonies in recent Washington memory.
And when it was all over, Douglas Feith was a happy man.
I just wanted to take a minute to say hello and to see how things have been for you lately, and to maybe bring you up to date on a bit of news from here.
Well, right off the bat, we hear you have a new Conservative Prime Minister and that his Party and Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems are in partnership, which I'm sure will be interesting; you probably heard that us Colonials are again having Tea Parties, which has also been very interesting.
I have a Godson who's getting married this September, so we're all talking about that, and I hear Graham Norton was even better than last year at hosting Eurovision, despite the fact that it's...frankly, it's Eurovision.
Oh, yeah...we also had a bit of an oil spill recently that you may have heard about-and hoo, boy; you should see how the Company that spilled the oil has been acting.
We're now into day way too many of the BP oil spill, and the President has just yesterday been down on the Louisiana coast-again.
There have been suggestions that the Administration should take action to essentially push BP out of the way and take over the work itself, particularly as it relates to the cleanup.
It may have even occurred to you that an official declaration of some sort might be needed, in order to bring the full power of the Feds into play.
That's some good thinking, but before we go jumping right into declaring things we better understand the law, because if we don't, we could actually make things worse.
In case you missed it, Congressman Charlie Melancon has been calling for the resignation of BP's CEO, Tony Hayward, even circulating an online petition that has over 1500 e-signatures. Apparently, Melancon was none too happy after Hayward mentioned wanting the spill to be resolved because he wants his life back. Now this from an article on Nola.com:
The Huffington Post report said that Keith Jones was the Keith who signed the online petition in slot No. 848 with the comment, "My son died aboard the Transocean Deepwater Horizon. That's whose life Tony Hayward ought to want back." The report said Keith Jones' identity was confirmed through an e-mail exchange with him at his law firm in Baton Rouge.
As the horrific event in the Gulf continues, a website called LogoMyWay.com is hosting a contest to see who can come up with the best redesign of BP's logo - and in doing so, express the anger and frustration felt by so many surrounding this ongoing tragedy.
There are already lots of great entries for the $200 prize - check them out here.
Readers - are you outraged over this spill? If so, leave a comment and share how you are dealing with it, expressing yourself, and tell us your story.
Hundreds of New Orleanians gathered in Washington Artillery Park adjacent to the French Quarter on Sunday afternoon to express their outrage over the response to the ongoing ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The target of most of their frustration was BP, the oil giant that had said that morning the oil volcano under the Gulf of Mexico may not be capped until August - but there was also plenty of invective directed against the federal government, which many of the speakers felt was bowing to the demands of BP rather than taking charge of the situation and telling BP what to do. The protest was staged by Murdered Gulf, an ad hoc group which sprang up to organize the event and has compiled a list of demands - and ways citizens can help - on its website.
(Thanks to Humid Beings for great coverage and video links.)
Steve Scalise is holding a meeting at the SHELL GAS STATION in Metairie. Haa!... oh, what a perfect pair.
Stevie-Boy is going to solve America's Oil problem!... (giggling over here) .. the answer is "all right here off LA.'s coastline"... (Right where we've been the whole time).. "billions of barrels"... "we could be completely independent of the Middle East oil" right away. (our hero)
"MR. DUMAS" award goes to Steve Scalise.
"All we have to do is drill in Anwar..." Scalise says. Duh- All the experts agree, all together, every bit of Anwar oil would be a drop in the bucket of America's Energy problem.. and, then what, Stevie?
Oh, "we have billions of barrels of oil on the other side of the Continental shelf off the Coast of LA" .... We do? Then Louisiana is the new Saudi Arabia? (what is he smoking?.. His ego has gone NUTS.)
(While I do not recall fondly the high gas prices I paid working for the Lamont for Senate campaign in '06 in CT, I am unsure if drilling is the only answer. I realize it may be part of the answer, but we also need to do more than just drill ... such mandating higher gas mileage (40 mpg minimum by 2010) from Detroit automakers, investing in alternative energy sources (such as solar, wind, and biofuels), among others. I do not believe that nuclear power is the answer, as we will have to deal with radioactive waste, and where to store it. That's a headache I'd rather not argue over. - promoted by ryan)
Has America become so homogenized that we are thinking more alike regardless of what part of the country we come from? We all get the same evening news, the same TV shows, and the same radio talking heads telling us what, in their opinion, our opinion should be. Are Louisiana's interests and priorities along the same track as those expressed by locals along the east coast? I decided to take a look ...
I make it a habit of taking a road trip somewhere around the country every few months, to get a sense of outside perspectives on Louisiana, and what we do or do not have in common with other parts of the country. In New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts this week, I found the same issues on the front burner that concern many Louisianians, but often different opinions.
Katrina and Rita were catastrophes that have faded from memory, and are stories for the history books for most of these easterners. They had "moved on" from any major concern a long time ago. This might well be as much a reflection on Louisiana leaders who failed to develop a major public relations effort to keep the hurricane protection problem on the front burner.
This is something that has been brewing on my mind for the last few weeks, as I have spoken with folks about Louisiana politics, and the fact that the Democratic Party has pretty much had a stranglehold on the State Legislature for the past 40 + years.
Many Republicans say it is time to give their party a chance to run Louisiana, mainly because the State Legislature has been run by the Democrats for all of that time, and we still rank near the bottom in darn near every category we don't want to rank near the bottom in.
To paraphrase my father ... if bullshit were energy, the folks making that argument would be bigger than Entergy. Simply put, that dog don't hunt.
