The ongoing spectacle in Washington DC as the congress questions oil company officials is just amazing. It could be comic. But only Shakespeare could really do it justice. And of course we'd have to forget about the photographs of pelicans covered with oil, unable to save themselves, waiting to die.
Mr. Tony Hayward, he of the "I'd like MY life back" sentiment, says he wasn't "in on" a lot of the decisions about the Deepwater horizon oil drilling platform and its problems. "Out of the loop." And this is the CEO of the company. He doesn't know what's going on, doesn't know about safety features not implemented, apparently doesn't know that walruses don't live in the Gulf of Mexico.
Ed Markey, congressman from Massachusetts, showed that five different oil company disaster plans for the gulf were almost totally identical, and all had walruses as a species which would be threatened by a potential spill in the Gulf. The really sad fact here is that no one in the government who was supposed to be regulating these activities noticed this interesting fact. Or wanted to. Oil companies have a lot of money and they are more than willing to share it with government officials and elected representatives who are willing to be their dupes.
They aren't so willing to share the money with the people whose lives they have ruined. Finally President Obama got off his high horse and did some real arm-twisting and got BP to put up a respectable starting amount of money for compensation to the people whose livelihoods are crippled by the disaster. Too bad pelicans don't know how to use money.
The perfidious influence of oil money on Congress was highlighted in bold color today with the "apology" of Repubican representative Joe Barton of Texas, said to be the highest recipient of oil money for his political campaigning, to Tony Hayward. Mr. Barton was "ashamed" of the way BP was being "shaken down" by the White House. Imagine this asshat being willing to prostitute himself so openly. Mind-boggling. Of course, even his Repube colleagues saw that he'd made a fool of himself and he had to come out later in the day and try to say that what he'd said wasn't really what he'd said.
I wish I hadn't been working today so I could watch it live. This stuff is right up there with the Army-McCarthy hearings in the '50s. What drama. What a bizarre spectacle.
And how disgusting.
I have to ask again, folks—what are you willing to give up so we don't have to use so much oil, so we don't have to contemplate drilling in places we shouldn't be drilling, to get it?
Those pelicans are dying for our sins.
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