Carl Hiaasen: Now you don't trust BP, but it's too late

[highplainsdem]

http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/06/12/1677598/now-you-dont-trust-bp-but-its.html

Now you don't trust BP, but it's too late
By Carl Hiaasen



Every time a BP executive appears on television, I think of the garage scene from the movie Animal House.

An expensive car belonging to Flounder's brother has just been trashed on a drunken road trip, and the smooth-talking Otter comforts the distraught Delta pledge with these cheery words:

``You f----- up! You trusted us! Hey, make the best of it.''

If only the BP guys were half as honest.

Incredibly, almost eight weeks after the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the company that caused the disaster remains the primary source of information about it.

Predictably, much of that information has been stupendously, tragically wrong, starting with the low-ball estimates of how much crude was leaking into the sea.

BP didn't know the answer when the rig went down, and it doesn't know the answer now. Nobody does.

Every day we see streaming underwater video of that mile-deep gout of oil, billowing and unstaunched. The image is only slightly less sickening than the pictures of dead sea turtles and gagging pelicans.

Some people I know can't bear to watch anymore, so painful are the feelings of helplessness and frustration. What's happening before our eyes is the slow murder of one of the world's most bountiful bodies of water, a crime precipitated by reckless corporate decisions and abetted by our own government.

-snip-

Back on land, not a soul is able to state with certainty how much has been spilled, where it will end up or what the ultimate damage will be to the Gulf and beyond.

Meanwhile, the coastal marshes of Louisana are dying, and brown glop soils the beaches of Alabama and northwest Florida. The seafood industry is being crippled, and tourism is reeling.

And our government, which possesses neither the technology nor the expertise to plug the leak, is stuck in a grim alliance with the perpetrators.

Oil spills are like hurricanes: One is all it takes to change everything.

From the president to the industry's cheerleaders in Congress to all those state and federal regulators, too many people accepted the oil executives' sunny assurance that deepwater drilling posed no serious threat to this country.

In the immortal words of Otter, you f----- up.

You trusted them.

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Great article. Thanks for posting.

It contains the horrific, depressing, and unvarnished truth.

[Bryn]

2. Amen!

K&R

[madfloridian]

3. It's a horrible helpless feeling.

I grew up going to the Gulf beaches on week-ends. Even in college we were close enough to get to a beach.

I don't think any of us know what to expect...even those of us who live inland. I don't think anyone will be exempt from the pain.

[ellenfl]

4. carl hiaasen is a treasure. eom

[highplainsdem]

14. +1

[seafan]

5. ``You f----- up! You trusted us! Hey, make the best of it.''

Carl Hiaasen in the Miami Herald knows the score on these liars:


June 12, 2010

.....

Imagine a so-called regulatory process that allows oil companies to sink a drill 5,000 feet or even 10,000 feet through a living ocean without any reliable backup for when a blowout preventer fails to prevent a blowout.


Duh, let's build us a big ol' steel dome and drop it on the leak.

If that don't work, we'll blast us some golf balls and shredded tires into the hole.

Or maybe a giant sody straw might do the trick!


Obviously these boneheads didn't have a workable Plan B. Worse, nobody in government figured that out until it was too late.

This is what millions of dollars in campaign contributions buys -- a free pass from Washington. The federal Minerals Management Service basically worked for Big Oil.

It was a relationship that flourished during the Bush-Cheney years, and not much changed when Barack Obama took office. Despite serious safety issues throughout BP's North American operations, the MMS blithely accepted the company's word that everything was peachy on Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico.

.....

Will some effective leadership please step forward?

[BeFree]

11. This is why...

...I don't feel that the average, normal consumer of oil products should be blamed.

WE TRUSTED THEM.

And they failed us. They took the bribes and looked the other way as criminals made off with everything they could sneak out.

I believed that the US government would not allow such a stupid and ill-conceived, major mistake-just-waiting-to-happen, so there had to be real and willful turning away from the core reason for holding their govt. position.

The well head is deep, 5000 foot down, but the corruption which allowed this goes even deeper.

And if Obama doesn't recognize it and speak to do it and take real action against this corruption, then who can or will?

[CoffeeCat]

6. I keep waiting for...

...the latest horror, to be the last horror.

I don't know what to do, to wake up the sleeping lemmings in this country. They're
either watching Idol or too busy arguing that Obama is a Socialist.

I'm growing weary.

[Enthusiast]

7. Carl Hiaasen is a favorite of mine.

He sums the BP situation up well.

[nashville_brook]

8. i woke up this morning in the middle of a dream -- one of those map dreams

and in this dream i was seeing a map of South Florida and the Keys -- the map showed where oil had completely passed through the Everglades and over the Keys. it was definitely one of those dreams of powerlessness.

[cwydro]

9. Love Carl Hiassen!

Yes!

[blondeatlast]

10. Hiaasen is a comedy gem--but he is spot-on when he is serious about the Florida ecology.

Now I need a laugh--think I'll go read "Sick Puppoy" again.

[intheflow]

15. Try Nature Girl, too. n/t

[blondeatlast]

16. Oh, I've read them all. "Sick Puppy" is the one I turn to when I

need to really be lifted ourt of a heavy blues.

[voteearlyvoteoften]

12. rec for the author of "Hoot" and other great novels!

Bring back the governor!

[KharmaTrain]

13. "We" Didn't Trust Them...

They bought off the government and media...spending years pushing the memes of "government regulation" and how evil it was. They were vested in pushing money to get candidates elected (mostly rushpublicans) whose sole job was to push for more "deregulation" and to burrow "friendlies" into government agencies meant to "regulate" them. This wasn't trust, it was outright negligence. This was the end result of the era of greed and corporate domination we've lived under for the past 30 years and a political system that still is severly compromised.

[Jeffersons Ghost]

17. K&R great point N/T

[cwydro]

18. Afternoon kick.

[cwydro]

24. kicking again

[GeorgeGist]

19. I think Mr. Hiaasen is implying that ...

President Obama is Flounder.

[Lorien]

20. Other governments DO have the technology and expertise to plug the leak

I'm sick of the "our government is helpless because they say so. BP is the ONLY answer" meme. BP is covering their asses. They don't want anyone-the government included-knowing just how badly they've lied. It's time to bring some grown ups from other, more responsible Nations if ours insist on continuing to play footsie with corporate criminals.

[Tutankhamun]

21. Do you have any more info about the othr governments/techniques

that could plug the leak? I'd be interested to see what could be done and by whom.

[Laelth]

22. k&r for exposure and insight. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[MadMaddie]

23. Yes and No!

The reality is if the President and the government took over BP from the start the Republicans would have used it as a tool to attempt to destroy the president. Government takeover is what they would have said. They said it with the bailouts of the banks and the auto industry. Let's not pretend that this would not have happened.

It sucks but the government had to let BP fail, remember it wasn't the current president or congress that caused this event. What led to this event was "Republican Free Market" policies. Sadly the Southern Republican states are suffering from the "Republican Free Market" results. No regulation, no oversite and a multi-billion dollar company cutting corners, it was just a matter of time before a catastrophe happend.

[blindpig]

25. Kill Capitalism

while there is something left.