Surely You Jest

Who thought BP had any credibility prior to its latest disaster? While I don’t expect people to be aware of all of the spills along the Trans-Alaska pipeline caused by BP’s multiple maintenance failures, their botched clean-up of the Exxon Valdez spill and the death of 15 people when their Texas refinery blew up, should have clued people into the fact that BP puts profit before everything. BP is the reason Iran hates the West. This isn’t some new corporate policy shift, it is the way the corporation has always been.

Nonetheless McClatchy writes that Oil spill taking toll on BP’s credibility — and the government’s [I think we are well into negative numbers on both counts.]

WASHINGTON — A litany of half-truths, withholding crucial video, blocking media access to the site and a failure to share timely and complete information about efforts to contain the largest oil spill in U.S. history have created the widespread impression that BP is withholding information about the April 20 oilrig blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, if not misleading the public and the government.

The government has been little better, for weeks blindly accepting BP’s estimates of the size of the spill, all but powerless to force the company to curb its use of toxic chemical dispersants and ignoring warnings from its own officials about possible worker safety violations.

Most damning, say members of Congress, was BP’s failure to release video that would help measure how much oil is being released from the broken well — a number that will be key evidence when federal investigators and perhaps juries consider what damages BP should pay.

As if things weren’t bad enough, you have to wonder how many people know that taxpayers subsidize coal and oil companies? We aren’t just getting slimed down here, our government provided some of the money used to do it.