That's Isaiah's
The World Today Just Nuts "
Working It For BP" from June 6, 2010.
Have you forgotten the Gulf Coast Disaster?
Barack Obama probably hopes you have.
Black Agenda Report hasn't forgotten.
The bad news is that when the Deepwater Horizon disaster,
the largest known gas and oil spill in history occurred, the Obama
administration actively colluded with oil companies to lie to the public
concealing the volume and extent of the leak. President Obama had the
US Navy and Coast Guard ban civilian overflights of the spill area, and
local police agencies bar civilian access to affected shorelines
apparently to prevent independent experts from assessing the extent of
damage and the speed at which the poisonous discharge was settling on
the sea floor. The Obama Justice Department even protected British
Petroleum by declaring that damage awards could only be assessed against
BP's holdings in the US Gulf rather than against its global assets on
six continents and oceans across the planet. And although
the president's party controlled both houses of Congress for another six
months, President Obama and his party sponsored not one piece
of legislation, not one administrative rule to rein in the plundering and polluting activities of Big Oil.
That was the response.
And while a few people can rightly note that they spoke out (
Peter Fonda and
Harry Shearer among them), the bulk of America remained silent then and now.
It was a key moment in Barack's first term and, as with so many other key moments, he clearly failed to do what was required.
