Franklin's Focus 8/10/10 wsws

Obama's Despicable Approach to Gulf Disaster

Today is a very busy day for me, so I won't offer any additional
comment to the following article. It speaks for me in any case.

A democratic socialist looks at Obama's despicable approach to the
Gulf destruction and sees enormous duplicity and fraud.

Warmest regards,
Richard

===========================================

9 August 2010 8/10/10 wsws

A massive crime compounded by a massive cover-up

by Hiram

The Obama adminsitration is in full propaganda mode in an effort to
declare an end to the Gulf oil disaster. The way is being prepared for
the oil industry in the Gulf to return to business as usual, while
working people, whose livelihoods were stripped away by the Deepwater
Horizon disaster, will be left to fend for themselves.
The administration is promoting claims that most of the oil erupting
from the leak has either been contained or evaporated, with only a
quarter posing a continued threat to the region.
The claim, advanced in a report by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and promoted by the National
Incident Command in the Gulf, is simply the latest in a long record of
lies and falsifications. From the beginning, the policy of both BP and
the Obama administration has been to cover up the true size and scope
of the oil spill. It was NOAA which provided the claim in the days
immediately following the April 20 blowout that only 5,000 barrels per
day were spilling into the Gulf, and continued to drastically
underestimate the size of the spill throughout the crisis.
Like those claims, the current numbers were immediately challenged by
independent scientists. Among them was Susan Shaw, the director of the
Marine Environmental Research Institute, who told the press, “The
blanket statement that the public understood is that most of the oil
has disappeared. That is not true. About 50 percent of it is still in
the water.” Others, like University of South Florida chemical
oceanographer David Hollander, who described the findings as
“ludicrous,” have said as much as 75 percent of the oil remains
unaccounted for.
Even if the administration’s numbers were accurate, this still means
that more than 100 million gallons of oil remain in the Gulf (either
on the surface or sunk to the bottom of the sea)—about ten times more
than was released by the Exxon Valdez.
The widespread concerns of scientists did not deter the administration
from its public relations campaign. Carol Browner, the director of the
Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy, went on NBC’s “Meet the
Press” Sunday to assure the American people that “the vast majority of
oil is gone.” The same day, Thad Allen, head of the National Incident
Command, appeared on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to congratulate BP,
saying they have done “very well” with operations at the wellhead. His
only criticism of the oil giant was for errors in judgement regarding
their public relations campaign.
Under pressure from the oil industry to rescind the moratorium on
offshore drilling, scheduled to end November 30, Michael Bromwich, the
director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and
Enforcement indicated this week that his agency was prepared to do
just that, saying “I think it’s everybody’s hope that we will feel
comfortable enough that the moratorium can be lifted significantly in
advance of November 30.”
The oil companies will return to drilling without having been
compelled to make changes to their safety practices. Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid (Democrat—Nevada) recently withdrew a bill calling
for stricter regulations on deepwater drilling and greater financial
penalities for corporations responsible for spills.
The campaign to minimize the impact of the spill is also designed to
reinforce the adminsitration’s efforts to ensure the continued
profitability of BP. The grossly inadequate $20 billion compensation
fund set up by BP and the Obama administration only serves to shield
the oil giant from overwhelming financial liabilities. The fund is
administered by Kenneth Feinberg who was appointed by President Obama
and, it has been revealed, is on the BP payroll. Feinberg’s job will
entail settling only those claims against BP which he designates as
“legitimate,” while working to prevent costly litigation for the
company.
Above all, no one will be held accountable—either in BP or the
government, which facilitated the disaster by giving free rein to the
company to ignore safety and environmental regulations. The Obama
administration’s investigation into the cause of the Deepwater Horizon
disaster stands exposed as a farce. The New Orleans hearings, co-
chaired by ConocoPhillips board member William Reilly, amounted to
little more than public relations events in which representatives of
BP and the US Coast Guard were given the opportunity to present the
company line unchallenged.
These events expose the absolute dicatorship that corporations like BP
exercise over American society. They expose a political system in
which both the Democrats and Republicans function as direct agents of
the corporate elite. Just as the financial speculators on Wall Street
escaped prosecution for the criminal activities which led to the
global economic crisis, the executives at BP, if the administration
has its way, will escape the Deepwater Horizon disaster unscathed.
With unbridled contempt for the population, the administration—along
with the entire political establishement and mass media—believes that
it can simply declare “mission accomplished” and move on from the
worst environmental disaster in US history.
But it is in for a rude shock. The blatant criminality exposed by the
BP oil spill, combined with the throughly corrupt and cynical response
of the government, has only added to mounting public outrage in the
US, outrage that will find political expression, sooner rather than
later. When it does so, it must be based on the realization that there
can be no serious response to disasters like the Gulf oil spill—and no
serious effort to prevent the next disaster—that does not address the
problem at its source: the capitalist system.

End