Posted on 05/09/2010 8:37:19 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Florida senator: Lobbying by 'big oil' contributed to Gulf spill By Jay Heflin - 05/09/10 10:27 AM ET
Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) on Sunday said lobbying efforts by influential oil corporations led to lacking regulations that contributed mightily to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Big oil has had its way among the regulators; there’s been a cozy relationship between the regulators and [the Minerals Management Service],” he told CNN. "You remember all those stories back in the mid part of this past decade. Sex parties, all kinds of trips."
Nelson also said efforts to hold congressional hearings to strengthen oversight of the industry were repeatedly thwarted by oil interests.
“That is what a number of us have been calling for and we could never get to first base because big oil would flex its muscle and call in its votes and we could never get anything done,” Nelson said. “Tragically, it’s going to take this disastrous oil spill to finally clamp down on them.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
hmmmm...only ONE oil company is at the center of this spill and THAT oil company has given most of it’s political money to Obama and the democrats....LOL!!
Apparently nobody has clued The Squint in as to who got the most money from BP.
hard to believe this guy was smart enough to be an astronaut.
Dear Senator Clown,
Just for fun, assume that is true.
Then why, since you have been in charge since Jan 2007 have you allowed this to happen?
Either you are corrupt, or incompetent, either way the voters should fire your ass.
“Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) on Sunday said lobbying efforts by influential oil corporations led to lacking regulations that contributed mightily to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.”
He ought to know.
During the 2008 election cycle, BP-linked donors gave $71,051 to Barack Obama’s senate campaign, more than they gave to any other senator that cycle.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=14#14
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http://planetgore.nationalreview.com/
Blame BP [Chris Horner]
I hope to elaborate later I’m wrapping up two weeks on the road promoting Power Grab but it seems to me the issue with the recent oil-platform explosion and subsequent leak issue is BP, not offshore drilling.
Offshore drilling has a very good track record in the past few decades and especially recently; BP has a terrible one. The Deepwater Horizon incident is consistent with only one of those track records.
Like Enron and indeed, in close cooperation with Enron on the “global warming” rent-seeking BP got distracted from its core businesses and spent its energies getting into solar ventures and carbon-trading schemes, and otherwise losing the plot of an energy company. The absurd re-branding to “Beyond Petroleum” (really? your balance sheet doesn’t quite agree) speaks volumes.
They thereby also lost focus on these operations and implicitly told their best people that the future did not lie there.
And for a decade we have seen BP facilities blowing up with human and environmental consequences all over the place.
The newsiness of this spill is testimony to its aberrant nature. The issue today isn’t offshore drilling so much as it is the company that, in violation of all laws of probability, continues to be involved in a preponderance of its various industries’ high-profile workplace tragedies.
05/02 11:00 AM
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=80#80
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Obama admin exempted BP’s Gulf drilling from environmental impact study
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2505164/posts?page=103#103
So he’s saying that the Democrats sold out to Big Oil?
Saving
A person's degree of emotional maturity -- not IQ -- determines the degree to which he has the courage to face the truth about anything. IQ is helpful in allowing him to obtain important facts, but his emotional maturity will determine how he interprets those facts.
Emotionally immature people can be highly successful in their work/careers but are basket cases when it comes to their personal lives/relationships.
Most DemocRAT mentalities are emotionally immature. Those that aren't are cynical opportunists that play them like a fiddle.
Top contributors to Sen. Bill Nelson
Lawyers/Law Firms $2,726,205
Securities & Investment $486,218
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In July 2006, during his campaign for the U.S. Senate, incumbent Sen. Nelson was accused of taking $80,000 in illegal campaign contributions from *Riscorp, Inc.
Sen. Nelson has never repaid the funds he received and used in his campaign.
Mr. Bill Griffin, CEO of Riscorp (workers’ compensation managed care), pleaded guilty to felony counts involving illegal campaign donations and conspiracy and served prison time.
*Riscorp, Inc. issued to the investing public false and misleading statements regarding, among other things, Riscorp’s financial performance, revenue, and earnings growth and their impact on the company’s future. The Complaint alleges that as a result of these misrepresentations and omissions Riscorp’s Class A common stock was artificially inflated throughout the Class Period.
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Oct. 16, 2009
When Florida regulators last week ordered the liquidation of the insolvent American Keystone Insurance Co. of Jacksonville, a home and condominium insurer with about 7,600 policyholders, little did we know who was helping to pull the insurer’s strings.
Bill Griffin. Yes, the one-time Sarasota entrepreneur who built up a worker’s compensation insurance busines called Riscorp, only to see it collapse. The same Bill Griffin who somehow became part of the original ownership group of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. and the same Bill Griffin who landed in prison for orchestrating illegal political contributions.
The same Bill Griffin whose felony conviction, under federal law, is supposed to prevent him from such involvement in the insurance industry.
* Riscorp’s crash represents the second-largest insurance failure in Florida history.
* Griffin started Riscorp in 1996, taking it public in a $200 million offering and pocketing more than $60 million in bonuses in the process.
* Less than a year later, Riscorp was little more than a shell, its books indecipherable, its assets sold and five of its officers, including Griffin, indicted on campaign finance abuse charges.
* Federal indictments alleged they had funneled over seven years more than $360,000 in illegal contributions to politicians (then-insurance commissioner (now U.S. Senator) Bill Nelson received $80,000, Nelson received $62,000 from the company during the mid-1990s)
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In 2008 the Center for Responsive Politics released a report showing Nelson had received some $46,000 in campaign contributions from financier R. Allen Stanford, the most of any member of Congress. Stanford is being sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly orchestrating a fraudulent $8 billion investing scheme.
Bill Nelson D
Contributions from Labor: $241,890
Contributions from Healthcare: $613,594
In 1978 Nelson was elected to Congress and then he used his influence as a congressman to hitch a ride on a space shuttle trip in 1986. Despite his claims that he was an astronaut, he used NASA to beef up his resume. He spins the story otherwise!
If I owned an oil company... I would no longer sell product in his state. That would stop this crap cold.
LLS
The oil spill was an accident. The fact that the government did not have the fire booms readily available as they were responsible for was negligence. Fire booms would have prevented the oil slick from spreading. The government is responsible for the environmental damage.
"Smart" had absolutely nothing to do with it. They just need a high profile lab rat.
No. BP’s operational incompetence caused the spill and the federal government failure to do its job in adequately enforcing regulations only aggravated it.
This one is the fault of the BP corporation and the Obama administration and that’s that.
So it’s possible that some of the chimps we sent into space had higher IQs than Nelson.
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