This is not a traditional diary in which I link to 6-7 different sources; and give brilliant analysis; but one in which I highlight just two snippets from a MUST READ piece in the current (online) Rolling Stone magazine.
http://www.rollingstone.com/...
My sole purpose here is to get more eyeballs to read the article, so that we all can be more informed about the disaster in the Gulf.
This first paragraph exemplifies the extent to which BP was looking to save money----in the most sickening of ways:
BP has also cut corners at the expense of its own workers. In 2005, 15 workers were killed and 170 injured after a tower filled with gasoline exploded at a BP refinery in Texas. Investigators found that the company had flouted its own safety procedures and illegally shut off a warning system before the blast. An internal cost-benefit analysis conducted by BP – explicitly based on the children's taleThe Three Little Pigs – revealed that the oil giant had considered making buildings at the refinery blast-resistant to protect its workers (the pigs) from an explosion (the wolf). BP knew lives were on the line: "If the wolf blows down the house, the piggy is gobbled." But the company determined it would be cheaper to simply pay off the families of dead pigs.
Pretty sick, huh.
That’s BP for you.
Now of course there is the failure of our Government. Salazar was given the job at Interior, but with his closeness to the industry, did little to make serious changes.
Except that it didn't. 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.
Nice, huh???
This article has 20 or more snippets of incredibly infuriating evidence of malfeasence—it will make you sick.
It indicts everyone from BP to Obama to all the underlings below each.
I simply urge you to go READ the article. It is not short; and you will be more outraged after it, than you are right now!!