Disenfranchised Citizen

Hey all, got to get focused on a couple of things non-blog related, so I’m going to have to take a short break…one week to be exact, that should about do it…

But before I go,

Mr. Bob Dudley?

Really?

No, “climates of fear” aren’t created by the press, they are created when information is controlled and the authorities lose credibility while the people are losing everything, and the people feel they have no recourse.

That’s what happened in the Gulf, you dumb bastard, BP and the politicians happened to the Gulf, together – and the people are still getting screwed.

Anyways, see ya in a week and if for some reason you don’t know about this site…please, check out New Orleans Ladder for latest on New Orleans and Gulf news…

Have a nice week,

-Drake

Sometimes you need a break…

Sleater Kinney – Entertain

The hidden subtext?

Obviously…      it isn’t so hidden this time, not at all.

“If your heart is done, Johnny get your gun

Join the rank and file, on your TV dial

The grip of fear, is already here

The lines are drawn, whose side are you on?”

Have a nice day.

a nap...it's only a nap...only a...ALGAE!

Yes, doctor, I got a story to tell and I need to tell it now.

I’m serious, this is serious…this is very, very serious, so serious I don’t know how to stress the seriousness of it except to say, I’m serious, and yes, I need to talk to you alone. I’ll only talk to you.

Just you, and I’m serious…

You.

No, lock the door, I don’t want to be interrupted…okay…yes.

Okay…okay…yes. I’m ready, okay.

Here goes: I think the Coast Guard is trying to drive me insane, seriously.

Okay, just stay with me for a moment doc. I have my reasons and again, no interruptions. Okay, ready…okay. The Coast Guard, never thought much about the Coast Guard at all until April 20th and now I think about them all the time and no, I don’t want to rehash all events here, no. I just want to mention that hey, remember when that second oil well blew in the Gulf, back in like August? Remember the initial press reports, the ones that said there was the big oil slick coming out of it and everyone went oh, great, here we go again, now we got two blown up oil wells to deal with? Then the Coast Guard rushed on out and they said no, no, no, never you fear…it was all a mistake and everybody like breathed a sigh of relief and said oh, okay, good, great….wow, I don’t think I could have taken another one. Yeah, you remember that? You do? Okay, okay, good…what?

No, I know doc, I didn’t really think much of it at the time either. I mean, Thad Allen was making me immune to Coast Guard fuck-ups…oh, okay, okay, sorry…mistakes. Right. I figured it was just the Coast Guard, you know, being the Coast Guard…but now, now…algae.

Algae.

Not oil, algae.

The Coast Guard, those rotten fu…gentlemen, they’re starting to make me believe in conspiracy theories.

They are!

I know!

I don’t like it either!

Remember yesterday, when all those press reports came out about all the oil they found in West Bay…yeah, right, 400 feet wide, miles long, pictures of it and everything. No, not oil…no, not today…today it’s algae.

I know!

It is a relief, especially with all the migratory bird soon arriving, landing in the area right where the oil, right where the algae is drifting towards, but you know what doc? I’m worried. I’m wondering if the Coast Guard is lying. No, I don’t want to think that either. Really, I don’t and this may sound crazy, but follow me…so the Coast Guard says it’s not oil, it’s algae, right, but then they say they are going to send some of it away for testing. I’ve seen algae blooms before and they don’t look like oil slicks and I don’t care if the oil is weathered or not, and you know what the boat captain said? The one that reported the oil in the first place?

This:

“I’ve never seen algae that looked orange, that was sticky, smelled like oil and that stuck to the boat and had to be cleaned off with solvent,” said one captain, who like the others wished to remain anonymous for fear of losing their BP contracts. “I’ll wait for the lab reports. In fact, we’re also sending some samples off.”

No wait Doc, there’s more.

The boat captains said they have been telling the Coast Guard about the oil for a week, right?

Okay, so yesterday, the Coast Guard said they sent someone out on Friday to take a closer look at the possible oil slick, but wouldn’t have comment until Saturday, yeah the Coast Guard guy said they had never heard of it before, that the only report they had of oil from the area of West Bay was “a 10-by-10 area of foam and oil called into the Houma office by a shrimper.” Okay, but then today the Coast Guard said they have known about these reports all along, and actually been investigating it since mid-week. He said the reason he made his mistake on Friday is they have poor communication at the Coast Guard and there was more than one shooter on the grassy knoll.

What?

No, never mind that right now.

So, all the Coast Guard guys communicated now, and they talked about it for a few days and they decided it was algae after all and the boat captains who have been boating around in the stuff, well, they’re all just stupid and they want the Gulf to be messed up forever because they don’t want to work anymore and would just rather get huge checks from BP and drink Dixie beer until their livers explode.

What?

Well, that’s what I heard.

Who? Someone at the NOAA. What, why else would the residents of the Gulf Coast constantly report sightings, constantly question the safety, pay their own money to run their own tests, why else…unless it was…

I know!

Conspiracy!

It’s like fake oil slicks off the second exploding well, now you see it, now you don’t.

Now you see it, okay, you did see it but now it’s a plant.

That’s why I’m here…oh, but I almost forgot, no wait, sit back down..no, seriously, there’s more. Yeah, so then I’m reading this other AP article where the Coast Guard guy who said that though that spot was algae, there’s another spot about ten miles away that could be oil and they’re gonna take samples and test that one too. His name? Jeff Hall, yeah, so they’re sampling both spots. One place is huge and they say is just algae and the other is small and they say might be oil. Boat Captains know about the huge one, but don’t know about the little one. So doc, what happens if the Coast Guard mixes up the two test samples and it happens to prove their theory and also prove that all Boat Captains don’t know anything about water and oil, and even worse, what if the labs the Coast Guard sent their samples to are run by the NOAA? Those guys couldn’t find cooking oil at a McDonald’s. What happens if the Coast Guard samples and the boat captain samples say two different things?

It’ll be conspiracy!

I know!

That’s why I’m in here.

I know! Seriously!

Okay…nap, yes…nap…wake me up for the Saints game, yeah?

Good, thank you, yeah Cleveland sucks…The only thing good about Cleveland turned into an asshole and moved to Miami.

What?

I know!

There ain’t nothing good about Florida…

Read the articles:

Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico

Coast Guard says substance found floating in Gulf is algae, not oil

Have a nice day:

Jane says... Have you seen my wig around? I feel naked without it...

The NOAA reopens 7,000 more square miles for fishing in the Gulf:

Expert trained sensory analysts for NOAA sampled 155 samples of finfish from the area, and the agency sent 156 fish samples done in 22 separate composite tests for analysis in NOAA’s labs. The smell testing indicated no oil or dispersant taint, and the chemical analysis found that no levels of hydrocarbons anywhere near the level of concern for humans.

Sounds pretty good…except:

Just three days after the U.S. Coast Guard admiral in charge of the BP oil spill cleanup declared little recoverable surface oil remained in the Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana fishers Friday found miles-long strings of weathered oil floating toward fragile marshes on the Mississippi River Delta. The discovery…gave ammunition to groups that have insisted the government has overstated clean-up progress, and could force reclosure of key fishing areas only recently reopened… Boat captains working the BP clean-up effort said they have been reporting large areas of surface oil off the delta for more than a week but have seen little response from BP or the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the clean-up…

And then one of the more disturbing lines of the article, something that has been echoed in the press for months:

The captains did not want to be named for fear of losing their clean-up jobs with BP.

I’m thinking that if my bosses came to me, and told me that all of my clients had to show marked improvement or I’d be fired, and if a quick survey of my community showed a complete absence of social work positions, and if I had no other way to earn a living, well…guess what? My clients might improve as quickly as the water in the Gulf of Mexico. Their mental health symptoms might possibly disappear as quickly as the oil.

In my not so scientific estimation, despite these reports being about two different, but adjacent fishing areas, if boat captains are afraid to tell the truth, if findings by independent scientists vary widely from the NOAA’s labs, how are we supposed to trust anybody? In the reopened areas, why are we supposed to assume we are getting the complete story, especially when nobody in the NOAA talks about long term exposure, ever?

And we are supposed to take it on faith why, because Jane says so? Because she has been so willing to release data and procedural information for analysis by others?

This rough climate of misinformation and agenda begs two pointed questions:

Is their any truth in the Gulf of Mexico or is their simply fear? And to Jane Lubchenco of the NOAA – if things are as safe in the Gulf as you claim, will you commit to feeding your family seafood from the Gulf of Mexico four times per week for the next year?

Check out the articles, both from the Times Picayune:

Massive stretches of weathered oil spotted in Gulf of Mexico

NOAA reopens 7,000 more square miles for fishing in the Gulf

Have a nice day.

What do you mean, climate change?

Hello,

My name’s Drake.

I trust things are treating you well?

Good, me too.

Don’t worry, this letter won’t be too long but before I get into a couple of things, I feel it is important to tell you a couple of things about myself as they will become pertinent a bit later on. First of all, I’m on the high side of my thirties and I don’t have any children. It’s not a genetic thing if that matters to you, it’s a choice, one I made at about nineteen or twenty and a choice I am quite content with. Second of all, I fit pretty well into a personality disorder type called Schizoid and what that means is I have a distinct lack of interest in personal relationships, oftentimes don’t see the point of spending time with others. This may seem odd for a social worker. I agree, but just because I don’t care personally doesn’t mean I can’t effectively help people. My second choice in careers was to be a minister despite being an atheist. Why not? I’m good with people, public speaking isn’t a problem and I can write a decent narrative so sermons? No worries, I imagined people would have just presumed a belief in God…but I became a social worker, so instead people presume I’m social, anyways…

I’ve been reading your mission.

Especially the part about climate change.

Uh, really?

I am assuming that since you are the Tea Party of Louisiana that most of you live in Louisiana, right? I mean, even if you don’t live in Baton Rouge or New Orleans…Louisiana, right?

Okay.

In your platform I’ve noticed a couple of inconsistencies. You seem to start off by suggesting there is a climate change problem when you say the “purpose of the cap-and-trade legislation to reduce global CO2 emissions may appear to be for the greater good,” and then you go on a little later to suggest cap and trade isn’t actually for the greater good, not because there isn’t a climate change problem, but because other big polluters may not buy in to cap and trade.

So I don’t understand, is there a problem or not?

Oh, okay…not much of a problem, if at all, and certainly not caused by man.

All right, and you state that at the UN Climate Change conference in Poland, over 650 scientists were on hand to state it was not a man-made deal and might not even be harmful at all.

650 scientists, I agree, that might sound like a lot…but c’mon, it’s not, not really, not when you glance towards the other side to see the number of scientists who belive man is involved. From this vantage point, you get the official government scientific organizations of 32 countries, and this other ridiculous number of non-governmental scientific organizations worldwide who would have no qualms about taking those 650 men and women down in a street fight, a quick street fight…yeah, a horribly outmatched streetfight.

So relatively speaking, 650 people ain’t shit, you can find a handfull of so-called experts who will testify to anything. There are still people who believe the earth is flat, too.

Yeah, seriously.

Your platform also talks a lot about cost, but neglects to mention a more recent, larger cost estimate: $350 billion in economic losses along the Gulf Coast due to hurricanes and rising sea levels, two phenomena made much worse by climate change according to most scientists, well, most besides those 650 guys you mentioned so again, relative costs my friends and that $350 billion is a tiny percentage of the costs worldwide once food and water shortages become more serious.

I’ve also read a bit about how a lot of you guys are religious and that’s cool. I never fault anyone their spiritual side even if I am an atheist. I’ve seen a person’s faith do a lot of good in my social work world so bully for you, seriously, but I’ve also read that some of you feel you can do whatever you want environmentally because it says in the bible that God made you all stewards of the land. Okay, maybe so. But if that’s true, don’t you think people in general have to be pissing him off by now? Daddy gives you a new car and you never get the oil changed, the car’s engine locks up destroyed, well…daddy’s gonna be annoyed. If we are stewards, I don’t really wanna get fired because you guys suck at your job.

And in Louisiana, seriously…you guys really need the land and the water to be clean, productive and solvent because a larger majority of your economy kinda depends on it…and man, if those sea levels start to rise, you really want to put that in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers?

Remember, you can’t sue them…

Oh, and I get it..the cynical amongst you snickering to each other about who cares what happens to New Orleans? They vote Democratic anyway…mebbe so, but just try to get your state to function without their revenue, and what the hell would you guys do on Sunday afternoon? Watch the boring-ass Texans?

Long story short…I’m thinking you might want to be more supportive of efforts to do something about climate change, you got a lot riding on it whether you want to ignore it or not, and we are at a rather crucial time…the tipping point, or pretty close to it and if we wait much longer…then it won’t really matter…we’ll all be sitting in that useless, dead car.

And this gets me back to my lifestyle, and my personality disorder.

Between me and you…I really don’t care that much about people.

Oh sure, I play a caring person on TV, but no…not really, not that much…I don’t have any kids to be concerned about, never been all that close to anyone in my family beyond my parents and I’m old enough that short of climate change altering the ecology enough that one of those unstoppable virus’s can flourish in our climate, I don’t have a lot to worry about. If the world does fall apart before I kick off, I’ll just hole up with some food, some booze, some guns and good books and ride it out. That’s okay by me, ultimately…I mean in the grand scheme, but you guys and gals…I would imagine you got kids, grandkids? Are you really so selfish that you’d just throw them to the dogs like that? You guys all hate big government, but when the effects of climate change hit and hit hard, who do you think your kids are going to depend on or need? Yeah, how’d that work out for you during Katrina, the oil spill?

I understand that many of you, like me, will die before it gets really bad. So okay, but I do wish I could be there when you’re on your deathbed at home or hospital, and when it’s all pretty much too late and you think your granddaughter is coming to say goodbye before you die, and just as you reach out your arms for that last hug…

She kicks you in the balls for doing nothing.

Have a nice day.

What say you…good news first?

Okay, the good news: British Petroleum, in compliance with Judge Barbier has given their official decision on whether they will or will not seek to use the $75 million dollar liability cap as a way to contain the financial bleeding. They have opted to fulfill at least one promise and not use the cap. They will pay all judgments made against them in full.

The bad news: per BP’s obvious legal right, a large number of lawyers on their payroll will do everything they can to ensure those judgments are as small as possible, and take as long as possible to get to anyone’s bank account. And speaking of people in oil spill limbo, did you catch that article about how the charities are struggling to make ends meet due to the 25% sustained upkeep in need for food and housing assistance since the spill, those same charities that asked BP for help back in June and are still waiting, those same charities that wouldn’t be having this problem were it not for BP’s catastraphuk? Those same charities certainly have not been made right by any stretch, nor have the people who now depend on them, and due to Feinberg and the long legal process (that won’t have a $75 million dollar liability cap), apparently they will be waiting for a long time to come.

Hmm…

The good news: more waters are being opened for fishing, both sport and commercial by the NOAA.

The bad news: While these announcements by the NOAA’s Jane Lubchenco make for good, positive headlines in the newspapers, they also only tell half the story. In no small part due to the way this Gulf Coast Story has been handled, the government’s credibility is low. Between the misinformation from Thad Allen, the controversy about low-balled estimates of flow rates from the well and the pie in the sky oil chart fiasco people are understandably skeptical about government announcements on safety, which of course means people are skeptical about seafood pulled from the Gulf’s waters, which in turn means the market price for said seafood is very low. When a large percentage of the fishermen in the Gulf think the NOAA is full of shit, how is it we are supposed to have confidence in the government’s confidence?

Which brings us back to more bad news:

The people still getting screwed in the Gulf Coast are getting it from BP and the government’s slow legal proceedings – cap or no cap. They’re getting it from the still-slow rate of payout by Feinberg. The charities these people have had to rely on in ways they previously haven’t are getting screwed because BP is still not making it right, thus the charities are not as able to serve the people in need. The NOAA tries to downplay the ecological trouble by making grand pronouncements that don’t help market prices and only further erode their credibility in the eyes of most everyone who is paying attention.

And now that the six month milestone of the Deepwater Horizon explosion has come and gone, the Gulf Coast won’t get much press until Christmas when AP and CNN will do their “how are the holiday families faring” stories.

Man, this has been a negative six hundred words, even for me…

Okay, good news:

Did you read the one about the summit of conservative donors, who are getting together to figure out how to further erode any chance at doing anything about global warming, disparity between rich and poor, consolidation of resources…etc…

No?

Check it out…it’s a hoot!

Memo exposes secret list of conservative donors plotting campaign against Democrats, climate change

Have a nice day.

I still think we need a few more...

As a teenager, my sisters used to enjoy exploiting my temper to get me in trouble, pushing my buttons until I did something stupid and wound up grounded. I fell for it all the time. I think it was their secret game but I’ve never been able to prove it. One day when our parents were out, my younger sister and I argued about taking out the garbage and I became so angry, I decided to scare her so she would leave me alone – so in a typical teenage ill-advised move, I punched the pantry door in the kitchen. Problem is, the pantry door was a hollow door and I put my fist through it. Oops, and of course my sister immediately ran for the phone to tell my parents what I had done. My father came home, I got grounded and he charged me fifty dollars for a new door.

He never bought the door though, instead opting to take my mother out to dinner with the money. When they moved ten years later, the broken door still had not been replaced. Didn’t need to. He just hung a picture over the hole so it looked good as new.

Six months later, the Obama administration and British Petroleum are hanging pictures all over the Gulf.

They are doing it with words, press releases and commercials.

They are doing it with meaningless promises.

They are doing it, waiting for everyone to stop paying attention so they don’t have to do it anymore.

In the same week that Bob Dudley announced his new plan of giving bonuses tied to safety at British Petroleum, it was noted by the Wall Street Journal that those who were in charge of company operations leading up to the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon are those who remain in charge today.

Lamar McKay, the chairman and president of BP America, remains in place. James Dupree, the man directly responsible for “safe and compliant operations” in the Gulf of Mexico, has suffered just a cosmetic change in his job title. Doug Suttles, one of the public faces of BP’s oil spill response, is no longer in his previous role as chief operating officer of BP’s now defunct Exploration and Production unit, but it seems likely to take up another role in the company.

It would seem that to keep the old guard in place, not only makes it difficult to institute a radical change in policy, but also sends a message down the company line that this new change in policy is not being taken as seriously as it needs to be. Three huge accidents in recent BP history, costing lives, cultures and still as yet undetermined destruction and the only people to get fired are people like Tony Hayward who maintains he didn’t even know there was a problem. What about the people who did?

Meanwhile, despite what the government would have you believe the oil is still everywhere, yet BP continues to lay off clean-up workers. These same workers are starting to give up on certain beaches because they don’t have the personnel and British Petroleum is getting away with it, still holding to that promise of making things right.

Wrong.

They’re only hanging pictures.

They’re holding the nail while the Obama Administration hammers it home.

Remember back in August when the administration put out that whole 74% of the oil gone scenario which was roundly mocked. As Stuart Smith points out, they’ve never really backed away from it. For every finding of oil on the seafloor, question about air safety, seafood and water safety, Jane Lubchenco reassures us all that everything is fine:

“Each reopening (of fishing areas) is a reassuring sign that areas once impacted by oil can again support sustainable fishing activities,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco, “Tourists and consumers should know most Gulf waters are open for fishing and seafood from these waters is safe to eat.”

The problem of course is Jane appears to be one of the few people who actually believe such statements. Independent scientists continue to doubt her and the government’s claims, instead finding dispersants and oil in the water still, and harboring serious questions about the long term effects of heavy metals which are making their presence known in the Gulf and even in the rainwater. A scientist at the University of Georgia, Dr. Samantha Joye recently compared the sea floor to a “graveyard,” stating that of the 78 core samples taken, only five had life where typically all 78 of the sea floor samples should; obviously this is a problem and one the NOAA isn’t addressing or commenting upon.

This is not over, six months later…we’re just beginning and those that should be helping are only hanging pictures on the wall. Although British Petroleum and the Obama Administration make quite a team, each policy change from BP is only another picture. Each statement from Jane? Just another picture. Each commercial during the Sunday football game, or every time the NOAA re-opens more water despite not testing for dispersants or heavy metals… picture after picture after picture, and at this rate, it would seem they’ll keep hanging pictures until the accumulation of nail holes destroys the wall for good.

This has gotta stop.

Keep talking, keep writing, keep pressing…it would appear it is up to the independent scientists, the people of the Gulf Coast and the rest of this country who cares about the reality in the water to keep shouting for the truth, to ignore these pictures they’ve placed in the foreground.

Shit, when I was a teenager at least I got grounded. In the Gulf of Mexico and in this country today, it would seem they just hope we forget about it.

Many of us don’t see this as an option.

Have a nice day.

We won't leave until we make us whole a...you, you...you! whole again

Making things right…?

The other shoe dropped in court on Friday where BP’s lawyer suggested the very company that made all those promises to everyone in the Gulf Coast… well, they may finally be ready to hide behind the Oil Pollution act of 1990 which caps damage claims at $75 million dollars. BP’s attorney, Don Haycraft suggested the inevitable, that BP had already forked over “lots and lots” of money.

The courtroom was surprised.

Judge Barbier: “BP said it would pay whatever is necessary.”

Steven Herman, plaintiff attorney: “Were shocked over here to hear the defendants now bring up this $75 million cap…we were under the impression it was waived.”

Haycraft: “I have said for sure, BP will pay all legitimate claims.”

Herman: “All legitimate claims up to 75 million dollars?”

Haycraft: “I am not prepared to answer that question in this context.”

Drake Toulouse: “You rotten bastards, you spend millions of dollars on your commercials talking about all you plan to do, how you are going to make things right…commercial after commercial, but if you impose this cap, well, quite frankly, you’ll finally be admitting that is all a bunch of bullshit. It would make you all liars, unless of course you change the commercials…you know, you could drag out a few more New Orleans residents and surround them with average looking people, good eggs, common folk, to show just how regular Louisiana your spokespeople are, who would then look sympathetically into the camera, the concern etched tightly into their slightly furrowed brows and say with soft voice, yet at the same time with confident determination, ”We’re BP, and we’re committed to making it right, as right as we are bound too, legally.” Nice. Course that won’t have quite the same ring to it as your present day ads, but what’s the truth but more crap to sacrifice at the altar of standard operating procedure. Yes British Petroleum, $20 billion dollars is a lot of money, but guess what? 4.4 million barrels is a lot of fucking oil.”

Not satisfied with the BP attorney’s promise to continue discussion of the matter at the corporate office, Judge Barbier ordered Haycraft to report back to the court within a week to give their answer on the cap, saying, “We all need to know sooner, rather than later.”

Yes, we all do…especially the people who write advertisements for British Petroleum.

Read the article,

BP attorney suggests that the oil giant might seek to cap spill claims at $75 million

Have a nice day.

Sometimes you need a break…

Bad Religion – Recipe for Hate

The hidden subtext?

Obviously…     The only good thing about Florida is…okay, there is nothing good about Florida.

Have a nice day.

If I get a call from the police department saying they have a person who tried to overdose on pills at the local emergency room and they need me to come assess this person for safety, and I tell them I will be there in thirty minutes but don’t actually show up for six hours resulting in the police not being able to respond to a murder down the street, those cops aren’t going to be congratulating me when I step into the hospital room; so why then does Kenneth Feinberg get dampened criticism and grudging praise in the press when he reaches the one billion dollar payout mark despite the fact he didn’t live up to his own hype, resulting in many residents of the Gulf Coast losing even more than they had to because of this spill?

My superiors would at least have written me up for poor performance…

Here’s the article:

Oil spill claims administrator Kenneth Feinberg passes $1 billion mark

Really, it’s just a question…

Have a nice day.