Eideard

President Barack Obama on Saturday kept pressure on the Congress to end tax breaks for oil and gas companies, saying they were enjoying huge profits, as he sought to limit political fallout from rising gasoline prices…

“When oil companies are making huge profits and you’re struggling at the pump, and we’re scouring the federal budget for spending we can afford to do without, these tax giveaways aren’t right,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. “They aren’t smart. And we need to end them.”

Oil companies posted sharply higher first-quarter earnings this week with oil prices above $100 a barrel on unrest in the Middle East and growing global demand for energy.

Leading the way, Exxon Mobil, the world’s most valuable publicly listed company, beat analysts’ forecasts by posting a 69 percent rise in earnings to $10.65 billion, its biggest profit since the third quarter of 2008.

Obama insisted he remained committed to “safe and responsible oil production here at home” but said the money from oil industry tax subsidies would be better invested in developing alternative energy sources…

There’s the usual CYA crap in the middle of the article offering up Republican rationales for their butts belonging to Big Oil. Read it if you like collecting ancient propaganda.

Obama has insisted there is no “magic bullet” for bringing down gas prices. But the White House is worried that if gas prices continue rising, the issue could drown out the economic recovery message at the heart of his re-election strategy.

There is no sanity to providing subsidies and tax breaks to the wealthiest corporations in the world. Obviously Republicans presume a kickback from the Oil Patch Boys to fund their 2012 electoral campaigns. That’s pretty much a given. And in states mostly beholden to fossil fuel profits both wings of the Tired Old Party, Democrats and Republicans alike will siphon funds from that deep dark fuel tank.

The only surprise in this process is the number of Americans willing to accept the same old lies, the same foolishness about helping our economy with trickle-down voodoo economics. The only time anything trickles down the legs of Oil Companies results from fear and trembling at the prospect of paying their own way.

Republicans step into control of the House of Representatives

The Interior Department reversed a Bush-era policy on wilderness on Thursday, restoring the authority of its Bureau of Land Management to identify and recommend new areas for protection.

Since 2003, the department has excluded wilderness as a criterion it applies in managing federal lands for the public benefit.

“The new Wild Lands policy affirms the B.L.M.’s authorities under the law — and our responsibility to the American people — to protect the wilderness characteristics of the lands we oversee,” the bureau’s director, Bob Abbey, said in a statement…

Environmentalists welcomed the decision but questioned why it had taken nearly two years for the Obama administration to reverse the policy. They also expressed worry that the new policy could prove weaker than the wilderness designation formulas in place before President George W. Bush took office in 2001…

While only Congress can designate areas as wilderness, the bureau has traditionally identified areas for study and issued recommendations.

In 2003, Gale A. Norton, then the secretary of the interior, and Michael O. Leavitt, then the governor of Utah, struck a deal that removed federal protections from about 2.6 million acres of public land in Utah that had been designated as potential wilderness by the Clinton administration.

At the same time, Ms. Norton disavowed her department’s longstanding authority to recommend new areas for wilderness protection…

In theory, under the new policy, the Interior Department may begin designating more acres as wild lands worthy of study and fend off more development.

The original mandate of the BLM was deliberately corrupted for the Oil Patch Boys. I’d have to add that into the existing query as to why Obama has taken this long to begin restoration of BLM priorities.

I fear the failure to restore BLM guarantees a sacrificial set of regulations to be tossed to Big Oil lobbyists to enable the next round of “bipartisan” negotiations.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger used the fourth anniversary of the passage of California’s landmark climate change law to slam Texas oil companies Valero and Tesoro for what he described as cynical attempts to manipulate voters into abandoning the law.

The governor’s vehement defense of the climate legislation commonly referred to as AB32 comes amid a fierce campaign led by oil interests to win passage in November of Proposition 23, a ballot measure that calls for suspending the climate law until the jobless rate hits 5.5 percent for a year, a level achieved only three times in 40 years.

Schwarzenegger, speaking before several hundred people at the Commonwealth Club in Santa Clara, said the proponents of Prop. 23 are attempting to subvert the democratic process using scare tactics. He likened the campaign to a shell game hiding what he said was the real purpose: “self-serving greed…”

Schwarzenegger said AB32, which he signed into law in 2006, will create jobs by allowing California to establish a “green economy” featuring solar energy, hydrogen power, bio-energy and a renewable electricity standard that will provide “the seed money for the world’s energy revolution.”

The only job losses or costs, he said, would be in polluting industries like Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp., both of which have refineries in California that climate experts say are sources of greenhouse gas emissions…Seven Western states and four Canadian provinces have joined California in writing regulations in anticipation of a regional effort to curb emissions…

Schwarzenegger praised President Obama for his support of climate change legislation but was highly critical of Congress for dropping the bill, a situation he said was due to blatant partisanship.

The best quote was towards the end of his talk – when he referred to Hitler’s mistress: “Valero’s argument that suspending AB 32 will create jobs is like Eva Braun writing a kosher cookbook.”

The factory owners didn’t care. They didn’t live in town.

The Obama administration said Monday that it would require significantly more environmental review before approving new offshore drilling permits, ending a practice in which government regulators essentially rubber-stamped potentially hazardous deepwater projects like BP’s out-of-control well.

The administration has come under sharp criticism for granting BP an exemption from environmental oversight for the Macondo well, which blew out on April 20, killing 11 workers and spewing nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The more stringent environmental reviews are part of a wave of new regulation and legislation that promises to fundamentally remake an industry that has operated hand-in-glove with its government overseers for decades…

You can guess who’s the hand and who’s the glove.

Drillers are already chafing under a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf and strict new rules on shallow-water wells. The new environmental rules provide a foretaste of what the regulatory climate will be once the moratorium is lifted later this year. The House and Senate are moving legislation that will tighten regulatory standards for offshore drilling and put a higher multibillion-dollar limit on liability for damages from any future oil spill.

The administration is moving on a parallel track. After three months of review of federal environmental law, the White House Council on Environmental Quality on Monday recommended that the Interior Department suspend use of so-called categorical exclusions, which allow oil companies to sink offshore wells based on environmental impact statements for supposedly similar areas, while the department reviews the environmental impact. Permits for the Macondo well were based on exemptions written in 1981 and 1986. The waiver granted to BP in April 2009, as part of the permitting process for the doomed well, was based on the company’s claim that a blowout was unlikely and that if a spill did occur, it would cause minimal damage.

The Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, issued hundreds of these exemptions in recent years to reduce the paperwork burden for oil companies seeking new wells and for government workers. As a result, there was no meaningful plan in place to cope with the BP spill and its impact on aquatic life and gulf shorelines.

This is the how and why that Mussolini always said that fascism should be called corporatism.

The cost in context, in environment, in jobs, in degradation of lifestyle and standing for working people and the middle class is exactly what you should expect. At least, if you ignore the lies of our politicians and collaboration of the press.

When the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform set off the worst oil spill at sea in American history, it was flying the flag of the Marshall Islands. Registering there allowed the rig’s owner to significantly reduce its American taxes.

The owner, Transocean, moved its corporate headquarters from Houston to the Cayman Islands in 1999 and then to Switzerland in 2008, maneuvers that also helped it avoid taxes.

At the same time, BP was reaping sizable tax benefits from leasing the rig. According to a letter sent in June to the Senate Finance Committee, the company used a tax break for the oil industry to write off 70 percent of the rent for Deepwater Horizon — a deduction of more than $225,000 a day since the lease began.

With federal officials now considering a new tax on petroleum production to pay for the cleanup, the industry is fighting the measure, warning that it will lead to job losses and higher gasoline prices, as well as an increased dependence on foreign oil.

They’ve learned all the appropriate catch phrases used by Democrats and Republicans alike.

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In the five years before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, federal investigators documented nearly 200 safety and environmental violations in accidents on platforms and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, describing a stunning array of hazards that resulted in few penalties.

Workers plunged dozens of feet through open unmarked holes. Welding sparked flash fires. Overloaded cranes dropped heavy loads that smashed equipment and pinned workers. Oil and drilling mud fouled Gulf waters. Compressors exploded. Wells blew out.

And yet, in their investigations of nearly 400 offshore incidents, Minerals Management Service officials failed to travel to one-third of the accident scenes, collected only 16 fines and did not investigate every blowout as their own rules require.

BP, the region’s leading offshore oil producer, reported more accidents and blowouts than any other oil company operating in Gulf waters, followed by Chevron, the region’s third largest off-shore oil producer.

BP has had at least 47 since 2005; Chevron 46, based on a Houston Chronicle review of accidents investigated by MMS in the last five years and a decade of government reports on blowouts of oil wells.

Each major oil company paid only a single fine related to violations linked to those incidents. Both Chevron and BP spokesmen defended their companies’ safety records and said their employee injury rates are low…

The Gulf’s second-ranked producer, Shell, had 22 reported accidents and has paid no related fines.

One of the biggest delays in fine collections involved BP. The company took five years to pay a fine associated with a 2002 debacle where two oil well blowouts struck the same drilling rig in three months…

In fact, agency records also show no evidence that MMS investigators visited the scene in about one-third of offshore accidents reported since 2005. In other cases, long delays in site visits were caused by unsafe conditions aboard damaged rigs, bad weather or hurricanes. But most delays and failures to go to accident sites are unexplained in reports.

RTFA. Disgusting history of corruption, inaction, complacency. Lazy, country club-bureaucrats who invent their investigations in the quiet of their offices.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

The U.S. government’s broad move to crack down on offshore oil safety will include the temporary suspension of 33 deepwater exploration rigs, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Thursday after unveiling a series of measures in the wake of the massive BP oil leak.

The halt represents the biggest regulatory threat to the immediate growth of U.S. oil production, potentially delaying project development plans by companies like Chevron Corp in the Gulf of Mexico, where rising output has helped offset shrinking domestic onshore supply.

Unlike the administration’s six-month extension of its ban on new deepwater drilling permits and its decision to cancel a much-anticipated lease sale offshore Virginia, the indefinite pause for existing deep-sea exploratory rigs to meet new safety requirements threatens to affect proven oil discoveries rather than untested areas.

“These actions are all guided by the need to take a cautious approach to offshore oil and gas development, as we strengthen safety and oversight of offshore oil and gas operations,” Salazar said.

In other words, all the crap loopholes provided by eight years of the Oil Patch Boys running the show in Washington still have to be plugged.

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A group of 255 of the world’s top scientists today written an open letter aimed at restoring public faith in the integrity of climate science.

In a strongly worded reproof of the recent escalation of political assaults on climatologists, the letter, published in the US Journal Science and signed by 11 Nobel laureates, attacks critics driven by “special interests or dogma” and “McCarthy-like” threats against researchers. It also attempts to set the record straight on the process of rigorous scientific research…

The letter sets out some basic features of the scientific method. “Like all human beings, scientists make mistakes, but the scientific process is designed to find and correct them. But when some conclusions have been thoroughly and deeply tested, questioned, and examined, they gain the status of ‘well-established theories’ and are often spoken of as ‘facts’,” it says.

The document, citing theories including the age and origin of the Earth, the Big Bang and Darwin’s evolution by natural selection, says that anthropogenic climate change is now so well-supported by evidence that it has achieved the same status. It adds that owing to science’s adversarial nature, “fame” awaits any scientists who can prove the theory wrong.

“There is nothing remotely identified in the recent events that changes the fundamental conclusions about climate change,” the letter says…

“Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence,” the letter says.

Its call for an end to “McCarthy-like threats of criminal prosecution against our colleagues based on innuendo and guilt by association” appears to be jibe at Republican senator, James Inhofe.

In truth, I wouldn’t limit the politics of the assault on science to one or a few Republicans. The whole panoply of creationists, fundamentalist nutballs, those pitiful cowards whose definition of political correctness is grounded in obedience to the rich and powerful – are opposed to reason and research, science and education.

Hey – they loved the original McCarthy last time ’round. Why expect different?

Murkowski viewing a traditional Senate image of payoffs in gold
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

In a speech to Congress, a Republican senator from Alaska announced she would use an obscure and rarely used measure to try to strip the Environmental Protection Agency of its powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as a dangerous pollutant…

Murkowski’s motion of disapproval, though unlikely to become law, is widely seen as a barometer for the chances of getting a climate change bill through the Senate this year…

According to the Centre for Responsive Politics, Murkowski, from the oil-rich state of Alaska, has received $244,000 in campaign funds from oil and gas companies since 2005, and consulted two energy industry lobbyists before launching today’s proposal…

Murkowski was joined today by Mary Landrieu, a Democratic Senator from Louisiana who has repeatedly expressed concern for her state’s oil refining business; Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas; and Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska. Murkowski also claimed support from governors of her home state of Alaska, Mississippi and West Virginia as well as business organisations. Jim Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, has also expressed support for Murkowski.

But there has also been a strong push back against Murkowski from environmental organisations and other business groups. A coalition of 80 companies from Virgin America to eBay wrote to Obama today urging action on climate change…

Murkowski’s strategy hinges on using the Congressional Review Act, a law used for the first time in the early days of the George Bush era to throw out new ergonomic standards for workplaces passed under Bill Clinton. The measure would require only 51 votes for passage and the Senator is confident of signing up all 40 Republicans as well as some Democrats.

Isn’t it amazing how closely reactionaries and cowards stick together?

Next couple elections, it’s time to kick a few more bought-and-paid-for butts out of office.

The Obama administration wants to reduce oil consumption, increase renewable energy supplies and cut carbon dioxide emissions in the most ambitious transformation of energy policy in a generation.

But the world’s oil giants are not convinced that it will work. Even as Washington goes into a frenzy over energy, many of the oil companies are staying on the sidelines, balking at investing in new technologies favored by the president, or even straying from commitments they had already made.

Royal Dutch Shell said last month that it would freeze its research and investments in wind, solar and hydrogen power, and focus its alternative energy efforts on biofuels. The company had already sold much of its solar business and pulled out of a project last year to build the largest offshore wind farm, near London.

This is followed by a load of baloney designed to portray these robber barons as thoughtful and cautious. You can read it in the article. We hear enough of it. You probably could write it.

The administration wants to spend $150 billion over the next decade to create what it calls “a clean energy future.” Its plan would aim to diversify the nation’s energy sources by encouraging more renewables, and it would reduce oil consumption and cut carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

The oil companies have frequently run advertisements expressing their interest in new forms of energy, but their actual investments have belied the marketing claims. The great bulk of their investments goes to traditional petroleum resources, including carbon-intensive energy sources like tar sands and natural gas from shale, while alternative investments account for a tiny fraction of their spending. So far, that has changed little under the Obama administration.

“The scale of their alternative investments is so mind-numbingly small that it’s hard to find them,” said Nathanael Greene, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “These companies don’t feel they have to be on the leading edge of this stuff…”

One issue not addressed in the article is that Big Oil considers handouts from federal governments to be a renewable resource – for them. The billion$ in excess profits they acquire during each price bump means nothing on their ethical ledger. They’ve always had hat-in-hand wimps like George 2nd in office ready to lead Congress and other derelict corners of the political gene-pool into increasing the national debt on behalf of the largest most profitable corporations.

From now on – screw ‘em!