Sunday, August 09, 2015

The Gulf Coast Disaster




Working It For BP


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.

And probably hopes you've forgotten his big lie, "It turns out the oil rigs today generally don't cause oil spills."



Black Agenda Report hasn't forgotten.

Last week, Bruce A. Dixon offered:

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.