When will Ken Salazar be given the "don't let the door knob hitcha'" treatment?

Ah, wake up call!!! That is what the worst environmental catastrophe will do to you!!!

And we have a horrible piece by Rolling Stone towards the Obama Administration and their practically business as usual attitude....

But before we go ballistic on Rolling Stone for writing such an article, remember they were our FRIENDS...


This Week With Barack Obama and Daily Kos

I have to put that up there because Rolling Stone, prior and during the 2008 election has been PRO-OBAMA. And this is to give Rolling Stone cover because as Huffington Post, which has gotten demonized from some on this site, we have to remind people that publications as Rolling Stone, hire journalists to perform independent journalism. Whaaaaaa? That is not happening anymore? No, not really. Not in the age of 30 second sound bites and opinion cable shows. Sad, but true, so when a magazine like Rolling Stone hire folks, they do expect them to bring the facts to the table, whether we agree or not.

For those who believe nothing can be done wrong by this or any administration (LOL), click on that comment link and call me everything but the Mother of God. The others, it is just part of an on-going dialogue of what the Obama Administration has to deal with and right now, very clumsily.

After you read the Rolling Stone article and believe that Ken Salazar served our President to the best of his ability knowing what he did, prior to the election and since he has been in office, then so be it. But, many others think he has put Barack Obama where he is at now, scrambling to the American Public to make them believe he is in charge of all of this. When the facts are, he was not until recently and for some he still is not.....

Now, however, the president was suddenly standing up to take command of the cleanup effort. "In case you were wondering who's responsible," Obama told the nation, "I take responsibility." Sounding chastened, he acknowledged that his administration had failed to adequately reform the Minerals Management Service, the scandal-ridden federal agency that for years had essentially allowed the oil industry to self-regulate. "There wasn't sufficient urgency," the president said. "Absolutely I take responsibility for that." He also admitted that he had been too credulous of the oil giants: "I was wrong in my belief that the oil companies had their act together when it came to worst-case scenarios." He unveiled a presidential commission to investigate the disaster, discussed the resignation of the head of MMS, and extended a moratorium on new deepwater drilling. "The buck," he reiterated the next day on the sullied Louisiana coastline, "stops with me."

[snip]

Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS, as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency's culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP – a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company – with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years. He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP – and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.

Many are saying that the Obama Administration kept the public in the loop, continued to inform the public as in what was going on. But the fact is they gave minimum information, whatever was going on was behind the scenes, thus chaos of which entity was in charge was the big question through the Gulf. Remember, if the information was so rampant, why has the President gone down twice in two weeks due to pressure and now will do a stay over in LA, MS, AL and FL next week? Talk about running to catch your message?? We all know that Thad Allen was not a permanent presence until recently, along with daily updates of what is really going on, and the constant question of how much oil is really being pumped in the Gulf is the biggest question that has not been answered totally by BP, the Coast Guard or the President.

Now, BP is challenging there are NO OIL PLUMES when in fact the plumes are there in full force, from Countdown with Keith Olbermann:



And this the mother phucker of all, if you care about the environment:

Even worse, the "moratorium" on drilling announced by the president does little to prevent future disasters. The ban halts exploratory drilling at only 33 deepwater operations, shutting down less than one percent of the total wells in the Gulf. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the Cabinet-level official appointed by Obama to rein in the oil industry, boasts that "the moratorium is not a moratorium that will affect production" – which continues at 5,106 wells in the Gulf, including 591 in deep water.

Most troubling of all, the government has allowed BP to continue deep-sea production at its Atlantis rig – one of the world's largest oil platforms. Capable of drawing 200,000 barrels a day from the seafloor, Atlantis is located only 150 miles off the coast of Louisiana, in waters nearly 2,000 feet deeper than BP drilled at Deepwater Horizon. According to congressional documents, the platform lacks required engineering certification for as much as 90 percent of its subsea components – a flaw that internal BP documents reveal could lead to "catastrophic" errors. In a May 19th letter to Salazar, 26 congressmen called for the rig to be shut down immediately. "We are very concerned," they wrote, "that the tragedy at Deepwater Horizon could foreshadow an accident at BP Atlantis."

I expect the Obama Administration to recommence with oil drilling in the Gulf and deep water drilling at that. Just read what Secretary Ken Salazar stated:

US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar told lawmakers Wednesday that offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico will continue "in a safe way" in the wake of the massive Deepwater Horizon accident.

Salazar told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that a range of new regulations implemented following the accident at the BP-operated well would protect against new spills.

"Offshore drilling will continue... it has to be done in a safe way," he told the panel.

[snip]

"The importance of the jobs is very much on the mind of the president and on my mind as well," Salazar said.

Another factor that must be addressed is the jobs. Those folks in the Gulf Region want those jobs and want to keep drilling even though we don't. So, the pressure is on to do a report, quick, fast and in a hurry and then to God Bless the continuing of drilling there. In other words, "Do I expect a real long moratorium or do you?" Absolutely not. Corporations run this country. We the people? Not so much.

Still we will continue to see the Gulf crying about cleaning up the Gulf (as they should), angry at BP (who would not be), pointing a finger at government for not moving fast enough (that comes with whomever is at 1600 PA AVE), while wanting drilling to continue and we witness at minimum 20,000 barrels of oil being pumped in the Gulf of Mexico, daily. What else should happen, but business as usual. Even after all the information shows what drilling does, it will continue to be business as usual. And me? No food from the Gulf of Mexico and I mean even from MEXICO....

When you need Senator Mary Landrieu to SHILL for OIL and GAS and to start drilling, she is the best....



Again, why was BP given a green light to drill? Did anyone read their application? And YES, under the Obama Administration:

Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? "Walruses" and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP's drilling plans for the Arctic. Even worse: Among the "primary equipment providers" for "rapid deployment of spill response resources," BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response "plan" as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. "It was clear that nobody read it," says Ruch, who represents government scientists.

OK, I know you are either laughing in shame or jaw dropped as unbelievable....

And does anyone on this site REALLY BELIEVE that BP will make the Gulf Coast whole? Or if that oil gets into the loop current, make the Eastern Seashore of the United States whole? No, I think they only care about plugging that hole and getting out of fucking dodge. After that, no more press conferences, no more nice smily ads on television of apology, all of that will be replaced with corporate attorneys from here and across the pond and the REMINDER that they are only liable for 75M due to the laws here for oil spills. Even though BP CEO said this:

"We believe claims related to this event will exceed the limit. We are prepared to pay above $75 million on these claims and we will not seek reimbursement from the U.S. government or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund," wrote BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar seen by Dow Jones Newswires.

But when you are battling money in court that thing called, "selective memory", always pops in and WATCH how BP's corporate lawyers will minimize all of this to crumbs, stating their CEO did not have the jurisdiction nor understanding to what BP's obligation was and this shit will go on like Exxon Valdez, for decades. (and I know many will say no it won't, but remember we all said that after the Exxon-Valdez was the worst environmental disaster.....we all know how that turned out....)

Remember, a lawyer from Exxon Valdez stated: Louisianans, 'To Use A Legal Term,' Are 'Just F--ked' sigh.

Finally, this is the real Ken Salazar:

...Salazar did little to tamp down on the lawlessness at MMS, beyond referring a few employees for criminal prosecution and ending a Bush-era program that allowed oil companies to make their "royalty" payments – the amount they owe taxpayers for extracting a scarce public resource – not in cash but in crude. And instead of putting the brakes on new offshore drilling, Salazar immediately throttled it up to record levels. Even though he had scrapped the Bush plan, Salazar put 53 million offshore acres up for lease in the Gulf in his first year alone – an all-time high. The aggressive leasing came as no surprise, given Salazar's track record. "This guy has a long, long history of promoting offshore oil drilling – that's his thing," says Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity. "He's got a highly specific soft spot for offshore oil drilling." As a senator, Salazar not only steered passage of the Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which opened 8 million acres in the Gulf to drilling, he even criticized President Bush for not forcing oil companies to develop existing leases faster.

The big question is this, "If that is Salazar, is this Obama, too?" Got to ask the question when you read this from Barack Obama:

"We are making decisions based on sound information and sound science." The president, for his part, praised Salazar as "one of the finest secretaries of Interior we've ever had" and stressed that his administration had studied the drilling plan for more than a year. "This is not a decision that I've made lightly," he said. Two days later, he issued an even more sweeping assurance. "It turns out, by the way, that oil rigs today generally don't cause spills," the president said. "They are technologically very advanced."

Ken Salazar, you need to be fired. But, we know Salazar won't be fired. It is not politically correct to fire Salazar now, so we just have to deal with his scared to death looks in all of these hearings on the hill. But if Salazar had PERFORMED HIS JOB, maybe this would not have happened. Well, that is coulda, shoulda, woulda talk, we have to deal with the here and now. And though Salazar really need to go, it won't be anytime soon. At least, in the end we know what Salazar is really like:

"And what we've seen with Salazar is that when the oil industry squeaks, he retreats."

Read the LONG article here at Rolling Stone.

Cross-posted @ Daily Kos

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