'Obama's Katrina': an Illustrated Timeline

21 April 2010: All 115 workers are evacuated from the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

22 April 2010: President Obama delivers a speech on Wall Street to advocate more government intervention in the country's financial sector, but offers no reforms for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which helped precipitate the 2008 meltdown. He also delivers a speech regarding the contributions of Earth Day to environmental awareness.

23 April 2010: President Obama blasts the Arizona governor, state legislators, police officers and residents for backing federal laws that prohibit illegal immigration.

24 April 2010: The president delivers his weekly radio address, which focuses on further regulation of Wall Street. He also calls upon certain segments of his original supporters -- African-Americans, Latinos, Hispanics, and women -- and asks them to mobilize for political action.

24 April 2010: Efforts to contain the spill are hampered by lack of resources and difficult weather.

25 April 2010: President Obama interrupts a weekend getaway to meet with the Rev. Billy Graham in North Carolina.

25 April 2010: Oil spreads across the gulf and heads toward the Louisiana shoreline.

26 April 2010: President Obama appears in a "Vote 2010" video, distributed by his political action wing Organizing for America, which serves as a stark appeal to blacks and Latinos -- specifically -- for their votes in November.

26 April 2010: The Coast Guard warns that the spill could become one of the worst in United States history.

28 April 2010: The President holds a rare, impromptu press conference on Air Force One, addressing "questions on the Arizona immigration law, the financial regulation bill and other issues." Obama also prepared to make his second nomination to the Supreme Court and warns of a "'conservative' brand of judicial activism in which the courts are often not showing appropriate deference to the decisions of lawmakers."

28 April 2010: large pools of oil are spotted close to the Louisiana shore line.

29 April 2010: the White House Flickr Feed is updated with a photo of the President meeting with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and senior administration officials, including National Security Advisor Gen. James Jones, which indicates that they are urgently working the issue of the oil spill.

29 April 2010: Meanwhile, local officials, the Coast Guard and private citizens continue their efforts to prevent damage to the Louisiana coastline.

Perhaps if the oil breached the Louisiana levees, then caught on fire, and then turned New Orleans into a Dresden-like inferno, the President would stop campaigning for a couple of days and actually pay attention to his own, personal Katrina. Even The New York Times has noticed, decrying the President's lackadaisical response. But I'm guessing that somehow, someway, it's all President Bush's fault.

Video at link.

Antiquated Law Preventing Foreign Naval Aid for Gulf Oil Spill Says CNBC’s Santelli, Heritage Foundation
By Jeff Poor Wed, 06/09/2010 - 17:05 ET
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/jeff-poor/2010/06/09/antiquated-law-preventing-foreign-naval-aid-gulf-oil-spill-says-cnbc-s-sa

When a protectionist law is enacted and nearly a century later it is inhibiting a recovery from major ecological catastrophe, it’s probably time to scrap it or at least temporarily waive it.

But instead a nearly century old provision known as the Jones Act of 1920 is wielding the wrath of unintended consequences. According to the Heritage Foundation, this protectionist measure was put in place to defend the American maritime industry, but is endangering far more jobs than it is protecting.

“The Jones Act, which is supposedly about protecting jobs, is actually killing jobs,” Heritage co-authors James Dean and Claude Berube wrote in a June 8 The Foundry post. “The jobs of fishermen, people working in tourism and others who live along the Gulf Coast and earn a living there are being severely impacted. There are also additional private sector jobs which are NOT being created in the United States since the Jones Act effectively prices U.S. based companies out of the ability to be competitive on the competitive global market. As we strive to develop new technologies for a cleaner environment at sea, the Jones Act continues to hobble our own capabilities, sometimes with devastating results.”
http://blog.heritage.org/2010/06/08/to-save-the-gulf-send-the-jones-act-to-davy-jones%E2%80%99-locker/

And CNBC’s Rick Santelli also noted this impediment to recovery. According to the Belgian newspaper De Standaard, European firms could complete the task in four months, rather than an estimated nine months if done only by the U.S., and just three months if working with U.S. firms. http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=542R5JNH&word=jones+act%29

“They are playing this war of words,” Santelli said on CNBC’s June 9 “Closing Bell.” “Just consider this, there’s an old law on the books Ron, called the Jones Act of 1920. I’ve looked at three articles in a Belgian newspaper. They have special ships that could make a big difference in cleaning this up. But they were told by the State Department that they can’t because that act, Jones of 1920 prohibits ships that aren’t made in the U.S. to do such things in U.S. waters.”
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2010/20100609163127.aspx

And Dean and Berube suggest the law should be done away with altogether.

“The Jones Act needs to be waived now in light of this catastrophe and permit those whom we have helped and cooperated with in the past to assist us in our need,” they wrote. “After waiving the Jones Act for the Gulf clean up effort, Congress and the administration should repealing it all together.”

See some comments here bttt: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2531209/posts

Oil rigs leaving Gulf of Mexico over ban, says official
Rig Zone ^ | June 10, 2010 | Agence France-Presse

Posted on Thursday, June 10, 2010 3:27:19 PM by thackney
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2531969/posts

A Louisiana official said oil firms have begun pulling rigs out of the Gulf of Mexico since U.S. President Barack Obama declared a six-month halt to deepwater drilling after an accident prompted the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

“Already, three rigs have left or are in the process of leaving the Gulf of Mexico,” Chett Chiasson, executive director of the port commission for the town of Port Fourchon, which services 90 per cent of deepwater activity in the Gulf, told AFP.

“If this moratorium goes for six months, these rig operators and these oil companies will have no choice but to go somewhere else,” with a devastating impact on jobs and the economy of Louisiana and the rest of the United States, said Chiasson.

A spokesman for Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which leased and operated the three rigs, said the company had “notified three of our rig contractors that we were terminating our contract because with a six-month moratorium on exploration and appraisal drilling in the Gulf, there’s no work for those rigs.”

But he was unable to confirm that the rigs, which belong to three separate companies, were being physically removed from the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama extended the moratorium on deepwater drilling to give a presidential commission time to investigate what caused the April accident on a BP-leased rig that claimed the lives of 11 workers and fouled the sea and sensitive coastal areas with tens of millions of gallons of oil.

Last week BP placed a containment device over the blown out well, located 80 kilometres off Louisiana, and said it is capturing almost 2.38 million litres of oil a day. But large amounts of oil are still pouring into the Gulf.

All 33 rigs that are affected by the moratorium are serviced out of Port Fourchon.

In a survey conducted by the port commission, companies in Port Fourchon said the drilling moratorium could force them to lay off 50 to 60 per cent of their staff, or more than 4,000 people, said Chiasson.

The moratorium comes on top of a severely curtailed fishing and shrimping season in Louisiana.

According to Chiasson, two-thirds of households in southern Louisiana work in the oil industry and the other third works in fishing.

The shutdown of the two key industries for most of this year would have “a cascading effect” on the region and would result in heavy job losses in Louisiana and around the United States, warned Chiasson.

WSJ
JUNE 10, 2010
Drilling Bits of Fiction
Seven experts say the White House distorted their views.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704575304575296782675625258.html

The Obama Administration is under political pressure to reverse its ill-considered deep water drilling moratorium, and the latest blowback comes from seven angry experts from the National Academy of Engineering who say their views were distorted to justify the ban.

In the wake of the oil spill, President Obama asked Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to produce a report on new drilling safety recommendations. Then on May 27 Mr. Obama announced a six-month deep water drilling ban, justifying it on the basis of Mr. Salazar’s report, a top recommendation of which was the moratorium. To lend an air of technical authority, the report noted: “The recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.”

Senior Editorial Writer Joe Rago explains the latest bizarre news from the White House.

That would be false, sir. In a scathing statement this week, the seven experts explained that the report draft they had reviewed did not include a six-month drilling moratorium. That was added only after they signed off. “The Secretary should be free to recommend whatever he thinks is correct, but he should not be free to use our names to justify his political decisions,” wrote the seven in a letter to Gulf Coast politicians.

The seven noted that they broadly agreed with the report and had even signed off on a proposal to suspend new deep water permits for six months. They also agreed to a “temporary pause” in drilling to perform additional testing on the Gulf’s 33 deep water wells that have already received permits to drill.

But as for a “blanket moratorium,” the seven said it “is not the answer. It will not measurably reduce risk further and it will have a lasting impact on the nation’s economy which may be greater than that of the oil spill.” If anything, the ban could prove “counterproductive to long term safety.”

One of the seven, University of California at Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, further explained in an email cited in the New Orleans Times-Picayune: “Moratorium was not a part” of the “report we consulted-advised-reviewed. Word from [the Department of Interior] was it was a [White House] request.” In other words, the drilling ban is a West Wing political invention designed to make the boss look tough on oil companies. Our guess is that the credit goes to energy czar Carol Browner, who has been loudly touting the ban to show the Administration is doing something.

Mr. Obama has said he’s open to rescinding the ban earlier if new safety recommendations could be implemented sooner. But he has punted that question to the commission he appointed to investigate the spill, which isn’t even fully staffed and has six months to report its findings. That will arrive too late for thousands of Gulf residents who are at risk of losing their jobs within weeks as deep water rigs prepare to leave the Gulf. As a tacit admission of the damage it is causing, the White House is now saying it expects BP to cover the wages of workers affected by its own politicized moratorium.

Americans don’t blame Mr. Obama for the oil spill, but they are beginning to doubt the competence of a President whose decisions suggest political panic more than careful policy. In their letter, the seven experts encouraged Mr. Salazar to “overcome emotion with logic” and rethink the ban. That’s good political advice too.

<> bttt

Also posted here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2532037/posts

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen in hot seat over Gulf oil spill
Published: Friday, June 11, 2010, 11:47 AM Updated: Friday, June 11, 2010, 11:49 AM
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/coast_guard_adm_allen_in_hot_s.html
[Picture and hot links at above link]

The Gulf oil spill spoiling the teeming marshes and white-sand beaches of the Gulf Coast is also threatening the pristine image of the burly, take-charge leader who has become the federal government’s go-to guy in a disaster.

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, one of the few federal officials whose reputation survived Hurricane Katrina intact, is facing growing criticism that he and his agency are overwhelmed by the catastrophe. It’s unfamiliar territory for a former Coast Guard Academy football captain who has managed responses to crises that include the earthquake in Haiti, Katrina and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“It’s very discombobulated and disorganized,” Orange Beach, Ala., Mayor Tony Kennon said of the federal response after tar balls stained the beach and entered Perdido Bay this week, without protection from booms. “They had five weeks to get ready for this, and it still happened.”

Back in 2005, most leaders in the Gulf had kinder words for Allen’s operations after then-President George W. Bush tapped him to take over the widely panned Hurricane Katrina response initially led by former FEMA Director Michael Brown.

Allen was credited with turning the effort around. And when the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, the White House was so confident it had the right man to lead the response that it persuaded Allen to delay his planned May retirement.

Allen, 61, who relinquished his role as head of the Coast Guard but is staying on as the spill’s national incident commander, has since become the public face of the government’s efforts. The Obama administration is increasingly relying on him in White House press briefings and elsewhere to try to assure the public that the government is in charge. Briefing reporters this week, Allen came off cool, calm and confident.

But just as Katrina brought unforeseen challenges, the oil spill has proved unprecedented and unwieldy. Allen is taking his lumps.

Early on, the Coast Guard was widely viewed as giving BP too much control on the scene, effectively looking the other way when the company offered misleadingly rosy assessments. Allen, for example, went along for weeks with BP’s insistence that measuring the amount of oil spewing from the well was unimportant, only later pressing for accurate figures after scientists complained that it could help officials plan for containing the mess and account for liability.

There’s also the Katrina-like gap between what federal officials say is happening and what local leaders say they are seeing. Since the beginning, Allen has insisted the government and BP deployed more resources than needed. That is consistently disputed by local and state officials who complain of poor coordination, shortages of boom and skimmers, agonizing delays in getting responses to requests and a general reluctance to try new or experimental cleanup strategies.

While BP has taken the brunt of it, much of the criticism also is falling on Allen, the son of a Coast Guard man who rose through the ranks to become the 23rd commandant of the agency in 2006.

“I have spent more time fighting the officials of BP and the Coast Guard than fighting the oil,” Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said. “We’ve got to find someone to put in charge who has the guts and the will to make some decisions.”

Nungesser’s parish includes the Louisiana marshes first hit by oil a month ago, where recently pelicans were found coated with thick oil.

David Camardelle, mayor of Grand Isle, La., said he meets daily with state and federal officials but that when he brings up a problem or offers a solution he’s told “BP or EPA, or the Coast Guard is going to have to approve this before we can do anything.”

“How can we accept that when our lives depend on their action?” Camardelle asked, testifying Thursday before a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee.

During briefings with reporters, Allen has noted the frustration of dealing with a spill across the Gulf. He frequently points to the number of fishermen and shrimpers who have been enlisted into the response — the “vessels of opportunity” as he has dubbed the private armada.

But this strategy too has come under fire.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said many of the fishermen in her state “don’t think it’s working.”

And Camardelle complained that shrimpers in his community who sign up for the program “are being sent off on ships where they find no oil (and) ... they want to return and help protect their communities.” At other times they were “ready to go but just waited at the docks for the call,” he told lawmakers.

Unfailingly polite in public, Allen takes criticism in stride. He said Friday that local officials have a direct line to the government’s command center.

Though born in the desert — in Tucson, Ariz. — he’s been around the water all his life, moving from post to post as a Coast Guard brat and, later, for his own career. He worked on his first oil spill 20 years ago as a lieutenant when a barge ran aground near Atlantic City, N.J. He says responding is like fighting a battle: The trick is moving resources quickly to where they’re needed.

Within the Coast Guard — which itself captures the public’s imagination with its rescue swimmers, drug busts on the high seas and missions to save stranded fishermen — Allen is widely admired. On the Gulf, there’s little doubt who’s in charge when Allen’s around.

He has broad authority from the White House to make decisions and can pick up the phone and call BP CEO Tony Hayward when he needs answers. Like the president, Allen in recent days has shown more impatience with BP, writing Hayward a terse letter this week demanding more information about how the company is settling claims.

Last week, preparing for a potentially contentious meeting with Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, Allen sat at a conference table with Coast Guard officers and picked apart a planned presentation addressing Riley’s complaints about protective boom being moved from Alabama to other states.

“Guys, we have to be exact with this,” Allen said, gesturing with one hand as he drank coffee with the other. “One misstatement and the meeting goes south. We have to be transparent. Transparency! Clarity!”

When inventory numbers on the amount of boom available in Alabama didn’t add up, Allen had had enough. He got up, grabbed an easel and a marker and began writing. The numbers got straightened out to his satisfaction just before Riley walked into the room.

The problem appears to have been resolved, but Riley made clear his lingering frustration with Allen in a statement this week in which he credited the president for fixing it.

“I want to thank the president for his personal intervention with the Coast Guard,” the governor said. “Boom that was deployed here in Alabama should never have been taken from us in the first place.”

Briefing reporters before meeting with President Barack Obama on Monday, Allen acknowledged that the Coast Guard never anticipated something like the BP gusher.

Even though the agency ran a Gulf Coast response drill in 2002 simulating a blown wellhead — with Allen playing the role of incident commander — Allen said the expectation is for a single oil slick contained in a specific area. The Deepwater Horizon spill, he said, is taxing resources because the oil is breaking up and being pushed by winds and currents in all different directions. He acknowledged that the disaster will likely change the way the country plans for spills.

“We’re trying to adapt and learn from a spill that’s never happened before in this country,” he said.

While early reviews have been mixed at best, the final verdict on Allen’s performance is still out.

“We’ve lost some battles (but) we can win this war,” Nungesser said. “But it’s got to happen quickly.”

Allen doesn’t have much time to turn the tide. He still plans to retire July 1, although he acknowledges he might not be able to take off the uniform that quickly.

“I didn’t anticipate this would happen to end my career, but I’m honored to have been asked to do this,” he told reporters. “It’s not a very easy job ... It’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with.”

<>bttt

Also posted here: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2532684/posts

BREAKING: Coast Guard Head Was Informed of Maine Oil Boom on 5/21. Yesterday, He Claimed He Didn’t Know

A letter signed by both Maine senators with the four Gulf State governors copied informed Admiral Allen of Packgen's boom weeks ago. Allen told ABC yesterday that he hadn't heard this information. (Read article to see the letter, along with a photo of miles of Packgen boom sitting in storage.)

June 12, 2010 - by Gregory Sullivan

[]

Auburn, Maine, company Packgen has miles of oil spill containment boom on hand and has the capacity to produce upwards of 100,000 additional feet of boom a day. That inventory and that capacity has been available to help the Gulf Coast states for nearly a month. The news of this company was reported here at PJM four days ago, on June 8. The curious case of the lack of interest in Packgen’s boom gets curiouser and curiouser. Yesterday, ABC News had an interview with Admiral Thad Allen, the commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, who is the national incident commander in charge of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After a handful of questions about the flow of oil into the Gulf from the wellhead, the topic turned to mitigation of the spill. Here’s the exchange:

"Jake Tapper, ABC: "I talked to a guy who runs a company in Maine that offers boom, and he has he says the ability to make 90,000 feet of boom a day. High quality. BP came there 2 weeks ago, looked at it, they are doing another audit today. He is very frustrated, he says he has a lot of high quality boom to go and it is taking a long time for BP to get its act together. Don’t you need this boom right now?

Allen: Oh we need all the boom wherever we can get it. If you give me the information off camera I’ll be glad to follow up."

There was no need for the admiral to ask for the information from Jake Tapper. It’s contained in a letter that has been on the admiral’s desk since May 21st. The letter was also sent to Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and to NOAA Administrator Jane Lubchenco. Copies were sent to Governors Bob Riley, Charles Crist, Haley Barbour, and Bobby Jindal. The letter was signed by two U.S. senators.

It’s not hard to come by. Here’s a copy:

[] I interviewed Packgen owner John Lapoint at his facility in Auburn on Friday afternoon. BP today, once again, had representatives in the building to inspect his production line and his product, and to verify his assessment of his capacity to deliver more. BP is still not ready to commit to purchasing the oil boom, though.

Packgen’s boom not only passes every independent ASTM assessment, it’s apparently superior to the material currently being used in the Gulf. According to John Lapoint, it’s priced only slightly higher than oil boom that BP apparently normally purchases from places like China. And according to Packgen, boom manufactured in Auburn, Maine, on Monday can be onsite at the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday. Boom from China normally has a lead time in months.

Packgen still has the 13 miles of ASTM certified floating oil containment boom, packed and palletized and ready to ship at a moment’s notice to the Gulf Coast.

[] That supply has been on hand for over a month, and in the intervening twenty-two days between the time of the notification that Admiral Allen, Secretary Salazar, and Jane Lubchenco received, and today Packgen says they could have manufactured and delivered approximately two million feet of additional boom, all of which could be helping to protect the coastline of the United States from the devastating effects of the BP oil spill.

The federal government has enormous power and responsibility when the United States is in danger from any large oil spill. According to the National Oil and Hazardous Substance Pollution Contingency Plan, the president is tasked with the mitigation of the spill:

"If a discharge, or a substantial threat of a discharge, of oil or a hazardous substance from a vessel, offshore facility, or onshore facility is of such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States (including but not limited to fish, shellfish, wildlife, other natural resources, and the public and private beaches and shorelines of the United States), the President shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge or to mitigate or prevent the threat of the discharge.

"In carrying out this paragraph, the President may, without regard to any other provision of law governing contracting procedures or employment of personnel by the Federal Government –

"(i) remove or arrange for the removal of the discharge, or mitigate or prevent the substantial threat of the discharge; and

"(ii) remove and, if necessary, destroy a vessel discharging, or threatening to discharge, by whatever means are available."

The wording does not equivocate. And the second part clearly states that the president can ignore any non-emergency government procurement hurdles to direct the mitigation of the spill.

If the federal government directs entities other than BP to mitigate the spill, does the American taxpayer get stuck with the bill? No:

Mitigation of damage.- "In addition to establishing a penalty for the discharge of oil or a hazardous substance, the Administrator or the Secretary of the department in which the Coast Guard is operating may act to mitigate the damage to the public health or welfare caused by such discharge. The cost of such mitigation shall be deemed a cost incurred under subsection (c) of this section for the removal of such substance by the United States Government." Recovery of removal costs. "Any costs of removal incurred in connection with a discharge excluded by subsection (a)(2)(C) of this section shall be recoverable from the owner or operator of the source of the discharge in an action brought under section 1319 (b) of this title." The public deserves to know why the federal government continues to allow BP to determine who will supply desperately needed material for the mitigation of their massive spill, determine how much and what type of material will be needed, and even determine if and when it will be purchased or used at all, all while the Gulf Coast’s wildlife and industries slowly die in a haze of oil.

And while American workers who are ready, willing, and able to do the job stand idle. The ball’s in your court, admiral. Er on your desk.

Gregory Sullivan founded and writes for The Rumford Meteor bttt

Hattiesburg American
Ultra DeepWater Drill Crews are not to Blame
G.Ray • Reader Submitted • June 10, 2010

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/article/20100610/NEIGHBORHOODS0202/6100356/Ultra-DeepWater-Drill-Crews-are-not-to-Blame

Ultra-Deepwater Drill Crews Are not the issue Mr.Obama

Posted by Milton Estabrooks on May 31, 2010 at 11:21am in Louisiana Patriotic Resistance http://www.resistnet.com/group/louisianaresistance

I am dependent on Ultra-Deepwater Drilling for my income. The shutdown of Ultra-Deepwater Drilling is an unfair attack on the petroleum industry. British Petroleum Americas (B.P.) failure to perform their drilling operation in a safe manner is your issue. We as an industry are aware of the many B.P. failures on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon. The 11 Men that lost their lives are our brothers. Unsafe well practices by B.P. must be investigated. The root cause is a failure to resolve a poor primary cement job. B.P. had knowledge that the primary cement job had failed; their continued operation was unsafe. As the operator the men on the Deepwater Horizon trusted that B.P. would work safe. Federal government shares cause for allowing B.P. to continue to operate in the United States. B.P. has numerous safety failures and violation of Federal and industry standards.

As Ultra-Deepwater Drillers we demand safety at our work sites. Exploration Drilling is dangerous work. Each day we confront danger by using safe work practices. These work practices are a standard for our industry that we as workers demand. Government only steps in when they can make profit from our labor. Government safety standards require bribes by corporate raiders who also steal our labor.

When we die in helicopters there are no memorials. When we burn to death there is no green peace outrage. If we drown in frigid waters there is no Presidential visit with our families. When we lose a leg, arm, hand or foot government does not shut down for a single second. Media does not visit men that cannot stand straight because of failed backs from the heavy lifting required in our jobs. We shut down operations when someone is hurt. We perform safety stand downs to prove our work can continue forward safely. We pre task each operation to ensure safety. We observe each other as a natural part of our work to keep each other safe. Government does not keep me or my workmates safe we do it because we care about each other. We know what a wife goes through when a husband is lost. We have raised children of lost work mates. We are brothers. We are Teams of men that provide oil and gas to America

Oil field workers hear the garbage of those who don’t have a clue what our families deal with each day. When we miss the first steps of our children do you care? When we leave women to take care of a household by their selves do you care? Our loved ones die and we are on a rig hundreds of miles away do you care? Hurricanes enter the gulf and we are stuck offshore do you care? When we see friends burn to death do you care? When we are clear that a company has killed our fellow workers do you care?

Environmentalists, Politicians and Corporate fat cats have never produced one single barrel of oil. You regulate my labor. You tax my labor. You steal the blood of good men Standards for my labor require me to pass test (urine test, breath test, HUET) before I am allowed on the job site. Yet you give my dollars to those who are never tested. You feed America our bloods labor. What can any of you produce that is of value to this nation? Each of you is a parasite on the backs of Americans and workers. You fly around the globe on jets fueled by our labor. You drive your armed motorcades on fuel that we provide you. Your natural gas heaters are fueled with our blood. When you talk about alternative energy you slap our face for all we have given you. You are Al Gore whining pigs at a plastic trough that we provided you. You are Hollywood millionaires that don’t provide anything of value. Scream about clean energy while driving and flying around the globe.

Each person in government that allowed the President to shut down Ultra-Deepwater Exploration failed working men in women. B.P. will never meet the needs of our families. Lawyers with law firms will turn this case into a class action law suit that will line their pockets. Blood money paid for by Oil Workers. We have just given 11 brothers to the effort of providing a nation with oil and gas. Politicians now repay us with unemployment. I am a proud American Oil Worker. I am not proud of the thieves that are destructing the American Oil Workers way of life. Shame on Politicians and those you work with.

When you shut down our work you only bring pain to the innocent. You need to understand we are not union workers with a hand out. We have invented and built an industry that provides America with tools for independence. Oil Workers understand pain, we learn from every mistake that spills a drop of our blood. When you hurt one of us; we will bring pain to your political dream world. Wake up Washington when you shut down our rigs you solve nothing. You are creating a burden on hard working men and women. We will not allow your destruction of our work efforts. Your lies about caring for our safety are wasted words. We know more about safety then the corporate giant B.P. Your efforts should be to control B.P. and their created oil spill. While America screams at the environmental cost, remember your liability. Not one Oil Worker gave B.P. permission to drill. Not one Oil Worker overlooked the B.P. failures of the past. The men on the Deepwater Horizon knew something was wrong. Failed negative test were a clear indication that the drilling fluid should not be displaced. B.P. knew they failed to bump their cement plug on the casing cement job. It should be investigated how much they over displaced the cement. B.P. made the decision not run a cement bond log. Each of you must look at real facts Blow Out Preventers are well named; they are not Blow Out Stoppers. Follow safety practices that don’t allow blow-outs. B.P. allowed this blow-out to take place.

Stopping the blow out in deep water is the lesson we are all watching. How did B.P. fail to turn back with key indications that the well was flowing? All the signs were given; concerns were raised by members of the Horizon crews. B.P. acted with an arrogant disregard for human life and safety. B.P. deserves punishment for their disregard. We have already started implementing testing to verify we will not have another Horizon incident. We have cried at the loss of our brothers. Shame is not ours. America may hate us and what we do; because we are painted as bad men. After 20 years of success the speculation that we are men with no concern for our environment is out of line. We are not the millionaire C.E.O.’s that we work for. We are men with families that trust us to earn a living at a dangerous job. Each hitch offshore we work to return all crew members to their loved ones. Every man that does this work cares about his nation. Your failure to allow us to make America energy independent is recorded for history to judge. You have sold out your nation; not the Ultra-Deepwater Drill Crews.

Trust that we will not stand-by idle as you destroy our work. We are not some union wimps that rely on government assistance. You keep us out of work for 6 months; watch the power that will join the Tea Party Movement. We are men that shaped and built this industry with blood and sweat. We will engineer a massive shut down of your permit to wreck lives. Someone should investigate who is making profit on this spill. Check the ties to the Obama Administration. One word- NALCO

~ Milton Estabrooks - bttt

Team Obama Finally Asking for Internatioal Help in the Gulf
June 14, 2010 9:55 AM By Greg Pollowitz
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore

Washington Post:

“Four weeks after the nation’s worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

“We’ll let BP decide on what expertise they do need,” State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19. “We are keeping an eye on what supplies we do need. And as we see that our supplies are running low, it may be at that point in time to accept offers from particular governments.”

That time has come.

In the past week, the United States submitted its second request to the European Union for any specialized equipment to contain the oil now seeping onto the Gulf of Mexico’s marshes and beaches, and it accepted Canada’s offer of 9,842 feet of boom. The government is soliciting additional boom and skimmers from nearly two dozen countries and international organizations.

In late May, the administration accepted Mexico’s offer of two skimmers and 13,779 feet of boom; a Dutch offer of three sets of Koseq sweeping arms, which attach to the sides of ships and gather oil; and eight skimming systems offered by Norway.

“As we understand what we need and identify domestic and foreign sources, we will act,” said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, who said the United States has received 21 aid offers from 17 countries and four international groups. “We are maintaining contact with these countries, we are grateful for the offers, and we will take them up on these offers.”

But some lawmakers and outside experts are questioning whether the administration has been too slow to capitalize on these offers, lulled by BP’s estimates on the oil flow rate and on its capacity to cope with the aftermath of the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.”

The rest here. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/13/AR2010061304232.html?hpid=topnews

My guess is that all of the stories on Big Labor and the Jones Act forced the administration’s hand, rather than some sort of epiphany on what needed to be done.
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/10/jones-act-slowing-oil-spill-cleanup/?test=latestnews

06/14/10 09:55 AM bttt

These are the Chris Horner’s last three posts:

June 04, 2010
Planet Gore
The hot blog.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/200232/bp-spill-shows-we-need-pass-bps-bill/chris-horner

BP Spill Shows We Need to Pass BP’s Bill?
June 04, 2010 11:30 AM
By Chris Horner

For those of you who watched Hannity on Fox News last night and wondered why an “eco-entrepreneur” was allowed to discuss President Obama’s claim that the Gulf spill shows that we need his cap-n-trade scheme with no other guest it was because a storm here in Charlottesville left me all made up pretty and sitting in a chair with the satellite connections fried out.

So, here is essentially the rejoinder that you would have heard:

Obama’s argument goes that, with BP having been reckless and the administration incompetent, we need a massive new tax increase on all of us to make energy more expensive. This makes sense only in the land of Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste.

How do you know there’s no good reason for any particular agenda? When the reasons or excuses offered for pursuing that agenda keep changing.So it is that a global-warming tax became a climate-change tax, then somehow a job-creation energy tax, and then a national-energy-security tax, and now is an energy tax to show how engaged and angry President Obama is at BP’s oil spill.

But in his Pittsburgh remarks announcing this new logic, the president failed to note the disconnect in lashing out at BP by . . . passing a light-switch tax that John Kerry admits BP helped to write, and is the most aggressive lobbyist for. Yeah, take that BP!

Instead, he said “The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century.” No. That would be too good for them. Instead, he seeks to hold them hostage to his beloved windmills, which are technology of, at best, the century before that. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dcnow/2010/06/obama-cites-gulf-oil-spill-and-promises-fight-for-climate-bill.html

If decades of eight-dollar gas and wasteful windmill schemes were all that were necessary to inspire the invention of pixie dust and flying cars and our final victory over those stubborn laws of physics, wouldn’t those things already have been achieved in Europe, considering how long they’ve been entertaining such energy-policy nonsense? Instead, all they have achieved is chronic double-digit unemployment, the flight of manufacturing jobs (including steel jobs to Carroll Country, KY), and now bankrupt nations, as even the Spanish socialist government has admitted. http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/55913/emulate-spains-green-economy-no-thanks-mr-president/chris-horner

But none of this takes away from the disconnect between one company’s negligence and one administration’s incompetence meaning we get stuck with a huge energy tax, killing jobs and harming seniors and the poor while driving us closer to Europe’s disastrous model. The truth of course is that this is just a cynical Power Grab using whatever excuse they can find to repeat Europe’s economic disaster here as part of their fundamental transformation of America.

Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America Christopher C. Horner (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596985992/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

PERMALINK 06/04/10 11:30 AM

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June 02, 2010
Planet Gore
The hot blog.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/56270/spreading-del-wealth-del-energy-poverty/chris-horner

Spreading the Wealth Energy Poverty
June 02, 2010 10:40 AM By Chris Horner

Alaska governor Sean Parnell writes in an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal about the Obama administration’s broader agenda to stifle production of domestic energy resources, while insincerely wringing its hands (my take, not his) about “energy independence”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272991022477222.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

“As I noted in these pages last year, responsible offshore oil and gas production, particularly off Alaska’s coast, has to be a critical component of our long-term energy security strategy and so too does responsible onshore domestic production. Yet there are troubling signs that the Obama administration is attempting to stifle particularly in my state the critical onshore component of America’s ability to produce its own energy.

The coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) holds up to 16 billion barrels of recoverable oil. While this area was set aside by Congress in 1980 for later consideration of whether to permit oil and gas production there, a federal agency is now undertaking a “review” of the management plan of the refuge a review that seems aimed at laying the groundwork for a wilderness designation that would bar production.

But it is not only ANWR that the Obama administration seems intent on locking up. Federal agencies are also now blocking oil development in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska. . . .

America, particularly in Alaska, has vast reserves of onshore and offshore oil and gas. The crisis in the Gulf should not be used to implement a misguided strategy that shuts down the opportunities to develop these resources and that further endangers our nation’s long-term energy security.”

Read the whole thing here. WSJ 6/2/10 The Gulf Spill and Alaska — We see signs that the Obama administration wants to use the disaster to shut down oil production even in the safest areas.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272991022477222.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

Or read Chapter 8 of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, titled “Domestic Disturbance: Locking up our resources and shutting down the economy,” which explores this insanity in much more detail. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596985992/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

PERMALINK 06/02/10 10:40 AM

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Planet Gore
The hot blog.
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/56213/embracing-energy-insecurity/chris-horner

Embracing Energy Insecurity
June 01, 2010 12:30 PM By Chris Horner

If you enjoy “The West’s Wrong Turn on Natural Resources” in today’s WSJ by Joseph Sternberg, then you’ll particularly appreciate Chapter 9 of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, entitled “Insecurity Complex.” Here is an excerpt following on Sternberg’s thesis: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704596504575272790583630252.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

“The security implications of cap-and-trade, a low carbon fuel standard, green jobs boondoggles, and sealing off domestic resources are many. Foreign dependence, lack of resiliency, and economic uncertainty all make us more vulnerable. . . . Few also dispute that higher energy costs harm the economy, and therefore harm people. Higher energy costs also make recession more likely energy price spikes have preceded every such downturn in modern times and harder to escape. They mean higher utility bills, higher prices at the pump, and higher costs for food. This reduces consumers’ real wages and purchasing power, and signal higher inflation. It also offsets meager, targeted tax cuts pushed by administrations whose policies drive up these prices with the other hand, which essentially creates a tax hike. Energy tax hikes are among the most regressive, meaning they most hurt seniors and the poor. …

Further, Obama’s own (largely debunked) environmentalist dogma should tell him it is foolish for us to artificially concentrate a quarter of our entire domestic oil output, and more than ten percent of domestic natural-gas production, in Hurricane Alley, as we do currently. By imposing policies that make it difficult to change this, he ensures it will continue, just as we finally recognize the peril. This compounds the security-of-supply issues he mentions in his rhetoric decrying reliance on other countries for our energy. We have massive resources both on-shore and in less storm-prone areas, so this need not be the case, but for politics.

But Obama has said that our current policies (which he is making vastly worse) actually encourage “over-investment” in oil and gas production. This reflects a belief that energy security somehow comes from making energy more expensive. So you should not be surprised that Obama’s energy secretary runs around the country saying things like we have to figure out how to triple the cost of a gallon of gasoline. He specifically cited Europe’s prices as the goal “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe”whose prices at the time he said that averaged about eight dollars, and were over eleven dollars per gallon in some places when ours rose to four dollars. Since we all pay the same for a barrel of oil, Europe’s punitive taxation is to blame for its extraordinarily higher prices.”

The chapter goes on to deconstruct numerous absurdities that turn the notion of “energy security” on its head, all underlying the notion that the anti-energy agenda is really a national-security agenda. (Apparently, they had to first try to sell “global warming” and cap-and-trade because people just don’t take national security seriously. Ahem.) My favorite is the idea that China by supposedly “eating our lunch” in the great windmill race puts us at greater risk. It’s hard to get sillier than that, and I have great fun pointing out why and how they do manage to come close with other feints. Read Power Grab, and enjoy the specifics. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1596985992/ref=nosim/nationalreviewon

PERMALINK 06/01/10 12:30 PM

Planet Gore

Obama Compares the BP Spill with 9/11

June 13, 2010 9:45 PM By Greg Pollowitz
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/204138/obama-compares-bp-spill-9-11/greg-pollowitz

Politico:

Sounding reflective as he heads into a bruising electoral season, President Barack Obama told POLITICO columnist Roger Simon that the Gulf disaster “echoes 9/11” because it will change the nation’s psyche for years to come.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38468.html

Obama facing mounting criticism of his handling of the BP gusher, even from longtime allies vowed to make a “bold” push for a new energy law even as the calamity continues to unfold. And he said he will use the rest of his presidency to try to put the United States on a course toward a “new way of doing business when it comes to energy.”

“In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11,” the president said in an Oval Office interview on Friday, “I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.”

Previewing his message for the midterm congressional elections in November, the president said: “[T]he Democrats in Congress have taken tougher votes, have worked harder under more stressful circumstances, than just about any Congress in our memory. And they’ve done a great job and deserve reelection.”

The rest here. http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38468.html

PERMALINK 06/13/10 09:45 PM

Planet Gore

Friedman’s Credibility Gulf

June 14, 2010 12:00 AM By Henry Payne
http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/204141/friedman-s-credibility-gulf/henry-payne

A reeling President Obama and his media allies are trying to turn the damage of the Gulf spill to their advantage. The spill is a cry from Mother Earth, they say, that we end our “addiction to oil” and pass cap-and-trade. http://www.nationalreview.com/planet-gore/204138/obama-compares-bp-spill-9-11/greg-pollowitz

The New York Times’s Tom Friedman does his bit in his Sunday column, “This Time Is Different,” and it is a marvelous piece of self-parody from the Greendaddy of green columnists. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/13/opinion/13friedman.html?ref=thomaslfriedman

“We have met the enemy and he is us,” writes Friedman. We?

Friedman is a rich journalist who makes his living jetting around the globe on carbon-burning airplanes researching, hawking books, and speaking to rotary clubs. When he’s not guzzling jet fuel, he’s driving home in his Prius to his 11,000 square-foot Maryland home.

“We cannot fix what ails America unless we look honestly at our own roles in creating our own problems. So let’s pass an energy-climate bill that really reduces our dependence on Middle East oil,” he says.

Honestly? The Affordable Power Alliance (via Deroy Murdock here http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36678 ) finds that Mr. Friedman’s guilty conscience will come at greatest cost to the poor. “Rising energy costs have a disproportionately negative effect on the ability of minority families,” reports the APA.

Take Detroit. Increasing gas prices through carbon caps will penalize this city’s working class, which drives to jobs in suburban shopping centers (like those pioneered by Friedman’s wife’s family, http://www.marketingshift.com/people/entertainers/thomas-friedman.cfm the multi-millionaire Bucksbaums).

“We do not know when the next Times Square bomber might get lucky. We don’t know how long the U.S. and Israel will tolerate Iran’s nuclear program. We don’t know if Pakistan will hold together and what might happen to its nukes. We don’t know when North Korea will go nuts,” worries Friedman.

His plan to defend against these threats, apparently, is to cripple the U.S. economically.

PERMALINK 06/14/10 12:00 AM bttt

Gov. Bobby Jindal Orders National Guard to Build Barrier Wall Off Louisiana Shore
ABC News ^ | 06/14/10 | DAVID MUIR bttt
Posted on Monday, June 14, 2010 9:47:25 PM by KevinDavis
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2534649/posts

Eight weeks into the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of the Mexico, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has told the National Guard that there’s no time left to wait for BP, so they’re taking matters into their own hands.

In Fort Jackson, La., Jindal has ordered the Guard to start building barrier walls right in the middle of the ocean. The barriers, built nine miles off shore, are intended to keep the oil from reaching the coast by filling the gaps between barrier islands.

Louisiana Guard Begins Shoreline Protection Project
From a Louisiana National Guard News Release
http://www.defense.gov//News/NewsArticle.aspx?ID=59611

BATON ROUGE, La., June 14, 2010 – The Louisiana National Guard started shore protection operations in Cameron Parish June 12 by staging Hesco barrier wall equipment that will be placed along eight miles of shoreline by members of the 928th Sapper Company, 769th Engineer Battalion.

The shoreline protection barrier, like the 2.5 miles of wall completed by the Guardsmen in Port Fourchon, is designed to keep encroaching oil from entering the marshlands that lie along the coastline.

The Hesco barrier wall will consist of linked Hesco sections, each consisting of five linked baskets that are then filled with sand. This shoreline protection barrier is one of several key Louisiana Guard oil spill response operations.

The Guardsmen also continue to use vacuum barges to suction oil near East Grand Terre Island. More than 8,100 gallons of oil have been removed thus far.

At Pelican and Scofield Islands, the Louisiana Guard continues to drop sandbags to fill 14 key gaps in the shoreline. To date, eight gaps on Pelican Island and one gap on Scofield Island are complete. More than 4,370 sandbags have been emplaced on Scofield Island alone.

The Louisiana Guard has completed about seven miles of Tiger Dam shoreline protection system at Southwest Pass, and almost eight miles at Grand Isle. In addition, about 2,000 feet of Tiger Dam shoreline protection system has been laid on Elmer’s Island to protect low-lying areas.

The Louisiana Guard is closely coordinating with the U.S. Coast Guard and parish officials, officials said, to support current operations and determine future missions in support of parish protection plans.

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