Posts from — May 2010

A warning to one-and-all: the web site of the Local Puppy Trainer, AKA Northwest Florida Daily News, AKA www.nwfdailynews.com, may cause your browser to crash. I suspect a badly executed Javascript that is in their ad stream, as it is intermittent, but has occurred a half dozen times in the last month when I click on a link to a story.

They are covering the oil spill from the local perspective, but that coverage is wasted when they keep crashing your browser.

Rick Outzen, the editor and publisher of the Pensacola Independent News a local weekly, where he blogs, also writes for The Daily Beast. His Beast post, BP Tries Damage Control, got Rick an invite to Keith Olbermann’s show tonight.

If not the first, Rick was one of the first to report on BP’s efforts to get people to sign away their rights to sue, an effort directed mainly at fishing boat operators.

Go read the whole thing about the problems local people, governments, and organizations are having trying to deal with BP. The people in this area aren’t the most sophisticated in the world, hell, they vote for Republicans, but they know how to deal with disasters. Our emergency management people are experienced professionals who know how to plan, and execute those plans. The current head of FEMA is the former head of Florida’s emergency management agency. BP is the choke point in the system, and they have to approve before plans can be implemented.

BP has contracted with a Delaware wildlife rescue group to take care of oil soaked critters. I’m sure they are fine people, but what do they know about sea turtles and dolphins, or any of the other inhabitants of the Gulf? That was an insensitive decision that will cost BP in the end.

It can’t get worse, more reality creeps in.

Via Digby [and a number of others] from the New York Times: Tax on Oil May Help Pay for Cleanup

Under the law that established the reserve, called the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, the operators of the offshore rig face no more than $75 million in liability for the damages that might be claimed by individuals, companies or the government, although they are responsible for the cost of containing and cleaning up the spill.

This means that BP is on the hook for all of the costs of clean-up, but their liability is capped at $75 million for the associated losses suffered by others because of the spill. The Feds have a fund that will cover another $1 billion in losses, but that is not going to be enough.

The law creating the fund was passed under Reagan. The tax that supports the fund and the liability limits were passed during Bush 1, and is one of the earlier examples of privatizing profits while socializing risks.

Before I forget… you will notice that the latest date on the Minerals Management Service report on failed blow out preventers was 1999. The Hedgemony discontinued those reports and a lot of others that might have provided people with needed data when opposing drilling or other corporate actions.

[Updated based on looking at the text of the laws involved.]

It looks like the pain may be spread around as the Pensacola News Journal is reporting that the oil may be pulled into the Loop Current within the next day.

The Loop Current will take the oil down to the Florida Strait between Florida and Cuba and then out to the Gulf Stream, to head up the Eastern Seaboard on its way to Britain. It will coat our reefs and the Keys, and can wash up anywhere on the East Coast. Welcome to our nightmare, y’all.

Over the weekend 20 sea turtles were found dead along Mississippi beaches. It is time for them to come ashore and lay their eggs on the beaches. Instinct tells them where to go and they need a lot of food for the effort, so they have to pass through the oil and eat the polluted fish.

In an article about BP’s containment boxes this gem pops out:

Another spokesman, Steve Rinehart, said the oil will flow into the chamber and then be sucked through a tube into a tanker ship at the surface.

BP did not build the containment devices before the spill because it “seemed inconceivable” the blowout preventer would fail, Rinehart said.

“I don’t think anybody foresaw the circumstance that we’re faced with now,” he said. “The blowout preventer was the main line of defense against this type of incident, and it failed.”

It’s the Rice defense- “I don’t think anybody could have predicted …” Ms Rice was also involved with the oil industry.

Unfortunately for Mr. Rinehart, McClatchy reports that Decade-old report cited failure of oil rig safety system

Citing a Minerals Management Service report, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said there were 117 failures of blowout preventers during a two-year period in the late 1990s on the outer continental shelf of the United States.

As the Times [the real one in London] reports BP warned of rig fault ten years ago.

There are multiple sources that note that Norway and Brazil require additional equipment because they don’t trust blow out preventers.

In addition to the sites I have already mentioned, the Pensacola News Journal has a Gusher section and the Pensacola Beach Blog is scouring the web for stories.

A lot of people who have barely recovered from Katrina, Ivan, and Dennis are facing the loss of their livelihoods. You can’t make the payments on your boat if you can’t fish. You can’t run a seafood market if there is no seafood.

Shrimpers have already found oil in their catch. The oyster beds are being affected now. No one wants to have a vacation in an area that smells like an oil refinery. In too many ways, this is going to be worse than a hurricane and the damage more widespread.

So now there’s a major hissy fit on the right because the President said that the Department of the Interior was going to send “SWAT” teams to inspect the oil platforms in the Gulf.

That was an unfortunate choice of words, but Resource Protection, Preparedness and Response Team, or RPPRT [RePPaRT?] doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

The Miami Herald reports on next year’s Republican leadership and their oil dilemma

For months, Rep. Dean Cannon and Sen. Mike Haridopolos had envisioned using oil drilling leases off Florida’s Gulf coast to fill a $6 billion budget hole expected next year. But as the oil slick washed closer to Pensacola last week, Cannon — on tap to be the next House speaker — conceded: “I think it definitely is a game changer.”

The “game” was to pass a bill authorizing leasing in state waters, i.e. the area within 10 miles of the coast, this year, but these two “service station attendants” had to pull their bill when the gusher happened. Since nothing was done to actually fix Florida’s revenue problems, [in fact, the situation was made worse by a series of incentives and tax breaks for businesses and people who want to buy yachts and private airplanes], and there is no more Federal stimulus money to plug holes, as has happened in the last two budgets, the next legislature is going to be looking for revenue. Anyone who thinks that drilling leases are off the table now, doesn’t understand the Florida legislature.

Cannon and Haridopolos will introduce a bill to authorize oil leases in the next session, if they don’t do it in a special session. They will try every short-term solution they can imagine to avoid having to actually fix Florida’s revenue problem, because they have been pushing constitutional amendments for years that all depend on growth in the state for the funding of the government.

The best news today comes from Dr Jeff Masters who writes that indications are that the oil slick isn’t moving towards shore with the volume you would expect from the higher than normal Spring tides, and the on-shore winds that are creating the waves that are over-topping the containment barriers. Dr. Masters thinks the shape of the bottom may be creating an eddy that is keeping the bulk of the oil off shore.

The spill is spreading out, generally to the east, which isn’t good news for my beaches. Hopefully the wind will shift.

CNN has set up an aggregator for for news on the gusher, and, as I noted earlier, here’s NOAA’s National Ocean Service official site on the DEEPWATER HORIZON Incident and NASA’s Earth Observatory’s satellite images of the oil.

The legislative session finished last night and people headed home for a break until the special session is called after people realize that what got passed won’t work. It’s the same every year, although, since Charlie became an “independent”, the legislature may decide it doesn’t want to return to fix things.

Here’s the AP list of the bills that the Republicans thought were necessary, including some that violate the state constitution, but that’s traditional.

Because Florida likes to be on the leading edge of bizarre, we now have a political party called the “Florida Tea Party”, and they are selecting candidates. As The Hill reports: First elected official from the Tea Party

The newly created Florida Tea Party announced Friday it is nominating Polk County Commissioner Randy Wilkinson in the race for retiring Rep. Adam Putnam’s (R-Fla.) seat.

It would be wonderful if “Howdy Doody’s” seat in the US Congress went to a Democrat because of the Florida Tea Party. Putnam was one of the sponsors of the bill to open coastal waters to drilling. He quit to run for Agricultural Commissioner. [He is Cruella de Harris’s cousin, a grandchild of Ben Hill Griffin who was the king of Florida politics for years]

The Republicans called it the “Malaise Speech”, but it was actually titled “Crisis of Confidence” and was delivered by President Jimmy Carter on July 15^th, 1979.

An excerpt from the text:

We ourselves are the same Americans who just ten years ago put a man on the Moon. We are the generation that dedicated our society to the pursuit of human rights and equality. And we are the generation that will win the war on the energy problem and in that process rebuild the unity and confidence of America.

We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I’ve warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure.

All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem.

Of course the voters chose the easy path which has led to exactly where Jimmy said it would. He learned one of the hard realities of American politics: voters don’t reward people who tell them the truth.

The May Day association with labor is all American, and just as controversial as everything of any consequence in history. The day is tied to a strike for the eight-hour day and the so-called “Haymarket Riot” of 1886. When it comes to “riots” and the Chicago police are involved, you are not going to find a single truth.

The dynamic duo that mucked up the Pledge of Allegiance, Dwight Eisenhower and his Republican Congress, made May 1^st both Law Day and Loyalty Day so those Commie working people wouldn’t get any ideas about having rights.