B.P = “Beyond Perverted?” or “Bad People?”
The further from the political center you are and the further from the Constitution and common sense you get, the more likely that the political system is going to exploit you. There are countless foolish Democrats, feminists, Black and Hispanic and Jewish organizations who have clearly and dearly sold their souls to Barack Obama. Along the same lines, there are numerous idiotic conservatives who will basically never say a word against a particular corporation or against some of the atrocities that go around under the guise of corporate climate, etc. When it comes to exploitation, we are already seeing many of the Left’s progressive toadies starting to feel political repercussions for their loyalty to the Annointed One Barack Obama and the legions (54% of voters backed him in November, 2008) are paying the price for not doing their homework and not casting informed votes and will do so far into the future if the toadies have their way. Similarly, let us look at the case of British Petroleum. Does B.P. = “Beyond Perverted?” Can any self-respecting conservative give lip service to B.P. as a responsible corporate entity?
Before going forward, in the interest of fairness before searing B.P., let’s say a few very obvious things about the Gulf Oil Spill . . . MMS under Ken Salazar had the responsibility to ensure safety at the Macondo drilling site where Deepwater Horizon was located. They gave B.P. several write-offs on safety requirements required by the 1990 and 1994 beefed up drilling safety regulations. Their inspections failed to detect an inadequate failsafe device (a deadman-shut off switch) which ultimately in concert with other problems caused the explosion. They failed to force B.P. to have the ten fire booms necessary at the site (there were exactly zero fire booms on site). MMS officials and inspectors, in the booze, drugs, sex and offshore drilling revelations scandal was shown to be repeatedly in bed with B.P., Obama promised that and the whole climate at MMS would change immediately when he got into office . . . apparently the MMS inspectors were still NOT doing their jobs. More recently, MMS and Salazar and Obama knew on February 13, (ten days after problems arose) about ten weeks before the fire, explosion and sinking of Deepwater Horizon that there were serious problems at the Macondo site when (as one California University engineer put it) “the whole damned place got within a hair of exploding” . . . so if there were ever a great time for a Moratorium on drilling at that site and that site only . . . that was the moment.
Now let’s look more closely at British Petroleum . . . . If Obama’s cap and trade bill becomes law, B.P. may make more money by doing nothing than it ever did by drilling for oil. They are in bed with Al Gore’s London-based Generation Investment Management and they own about 8% of ICE (Intercontinental Exchange) which in turn recently bought CCX (Chicago Climate eXchange) when the heat from Glen Beck’s probes into this massive conflict of interest scandal began ratcheting upwards. In effect, B.P. is investing its profits to the utter detriment of the oil industry . . . .
B.P. is the single largest Obama-contributing corporation. Since backing Obama in 2008 (this is a no-brainer) was sure to tighten the screws on the oil industry and on loosey- goosey B.P. in particular, this was a highly cynical and corrupt attempt to win a “get out of jail-free pass” from the Annointed One.
British Petroleum, it was recently revealed, has for years been violating the internation sanctions on Iran and been freely dealing with that rogue government.
Just because MMS had the ultimate responsibility to the American people for the safe operation of Deepwater Horizon, B.P. is clearly running a close second in ultimate responsibility. B.P. chose which safety rules to ignore and ignored a batch of them. B.P. had been warned by its own inspectors about not just the one dead-man kill switch but several related problems. B.P. chose to operate with not even one of the required ten fire booms on site. B.P.’s negligence killed eleven men, hurt their stockholders and destroyed the Gulf environmentally and economically.
Shady seat-of-the-pants operations seems to be the B.P. norm. Just type the words “British Petroleum MMS scandal” into your search engine and you’ll get about 72,000 hits and 90% of these hits will be over two years old . . . for which the Bush administration and in a few rare cases the MMS under the Clinton and Bush administrations are at fault.
Right here in Colorado B.P. has been fined $5.2 million for false, inaccurate or misleading production and reports . . . in effect cheating the Ute Indian nation out of royalty money they’d earned. Because of B.P.’s scandalous relationships with MMS auditors it took over three years for the case to come to decision. California Republican Darrell Issa has been pushing for some time to re-open investigations into the scandals involving primarily B.P. and MMS but “something always seems to get in the way.”
Finally, there’s the freeing of Abdul Al Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber. BP admitted to pressuring the British Government in 2007 to speed up a prisoner release so that they might gain Libyan area drilling permits. Blood money is all over the hands of B.P. executives and for the 189 Americans who died in Al Megrahi’s terrorist attack, Rajjpuut can only say, this is why blanket protection of corporations like Enron and B.P. without first getting all the facts is a foolish, foolish thing for conservatives to do -- by the way, some men live up to 25 years with prostate cancer.
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
