This Is Becoming A Tragic Farce
Let’s start with the Pensacola News Journal story: Getting oil spill cash easier said than done
First, the State of Florida was to reimburse counties for oil-spill expenses, drawing from the $50 million BP sent the state.
Then the rules changed, and counties were told to file directly with BP.
Initially, the counties were told to include cities within their boundaries. Later that same day, they were told not to.
For a while, the state was going to pay for protective boom. Then it wasn’t. Now it is.
Then from the Local Puppy Trainer: today on the barrier island
OKALOOSA ISLAND — Lifeguards have cordoned off a 100-yard stretch of Okaloosa Island so teams can assess and clean up a concentration of tar balls that have washed up there.
“We’ve got some product the size of golf balls, half dollars, very weathered oil,” said Okaloosa County Public Safety Director Dino Villani, who was called to the beach early Wednesday morning.
The from the AP via nola.com: the barriers to news coverage. They were told to stop it, but the media is still being systematically denied access to areas where the oil has come ashore, and the FAA is blocking low-level flying over the area.
Rick Outzen reports on Obama’s speech: How It Played in the Gulf. Bottom line, the only people who liked were hardcore Obama supporters. Generally when it was obvious that it wasn’t really about the spill, people tuned out.
McClatchy has a Miami Herald piece up, Tired of waiting for BP, Florida towns plan to fight oil alone. The reason I went with this link is the picture. It isn’t because it’s a blond in a bikini, it’s that she has a glob of oil on her right side. The caption talks about the shop rag in her hand, but that oily smear is the last thing tourist officials want to see on visitors to the beach.
The article is a nice overview of what we are dealing with along the Panhandle. At this point everyone who is supposed to be helping us above the county level, is just getting in the way of our efforts to protect the coastline.
6 comments
I fail to see how that would not impact the National economy! They really do live in a bubble. With any luck, the air will run out!
It would appear that Moody’s is limiting itself to a subset of those actually affected, as several Florida economists are talking about nearly 200K jobs and over $10 billion in losses in this state alone.
The price of seafood is spiking all over the country because the people who bought Gulf seafood are now bidding for seafood from other places.
The Intercoastal Waterway is shut because it uses local waterways that are now blocked by booms, so the barges that carry bulk cargoes from all of the ports in the Gulf states can’t move. That means that as long as the oil is lapping our shores, bulk gasoline and diesel shipments can’t be made, and there is no coal for several power plants. There will be back-ups at ports that will affect coffee and bananas from the Caribbean and Central America. There is a lot of bulk cargo that still moves by sea, and that is going to be blocked.
Moody’s should go back to telling people how safe those mortgage bonds and derivatives are.
At this point everyone who is supposed to be helping us above the county level, is just getting in the way of our efforts to protect the coastline.
Yep, this reminds me of one of our prior conversations. You know, all you “little people” will be the only ones doing anything constructive. The “big people” are too busy contemplating their navels.
I had not seen that Moody’s projection, Kryten. Thanks for posting it. It just adds one more loose screw to the cast of thousands piling up out there. There’s no way under God’s green earth that this will not affect the national economy.
And I would submit that there will be more than 16,000 jobs PER COUNTY that will be affected by this. When small businesses have no tourism, and they start letting people go, Moody’s will once again make an “after the facts” adjustment and contend that they just couldn’t have predicted this.
Are they really this stupid, or are they shills for the corporations? That is the question. It can only be one or the other.
P.S. Bryan, I just read that Hayward is being relieved of day-to-day responsibilities at BP. I bet he still gets to keep his bonuses.
I couldn’t agree more Juanita, sadly. 🙁
And yeah, you can guarantee Hayward (and all the others) will get their bonuses.
Everyone is laying off down here, but they are doing it by cutting hours, rather than anything that would be picked up by financial analysts. The system has become that you get hired as a part-timer, then you don’t know from one week to the next if you will get any work.
Some of the normal summer businesses just aren’t opening. The word is that some might open for the Fourth of July, if things improve, but there’s no point in air conditioning a building without customers.
If we have a hurricane, I can see people taking the insurance and not rebuilding. You can’t keep a business running on some sort of payment from BP.
It looks like BP may be setting up a separate entity to deal with the well. If things get sticky, the entity will go bankrupt without affecting the rest of the corporation. Frankly, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have Hayward, the CEO of the entire corporation, involved. They should have already had a local entity for the Gulf, and a separate entity for Alaska. BP staff cuts left them exposed.
Hayward isn’t going to resign, he wants to get a big severance bonus like his predecessor, Lord Browne, who was forced out after their Texas refinery blew up. Management always takes care of its own, no matter what happens to customers, workers, or stockholders.