Other than that, I want to basically echo what Taibbi already wrote. Much thanks to Coates Bateman, Michael Roston, and Lewis Dvorkin, all hardworking champions, who gave me a job when other editors fainted at my use of profanity and/or selected topics of writing. True Slant operated on a really novel idea: bloggers deserve to be paid for their work, and independent journalism should be free of censorship.

You have no idea how rare that is (unless you’re a blogger, and these days, who isn’t?)

I hope my True Slant followers will join me over at the old (now new again) Unreported.

Inmate laborers erect a barrier fence around a stockpile of absorbent oil booms that will be used to soak up some of the oil slick from the BP disaster. Image by AFP via @daylife

Though President Obama has asked the media to place the burden of responsibility on his shoulders, it’s clear BP was woefully unprepared for a disaster of this magnitude (even though they told the government they could handle a spill 60 times larger than Deepwater Horizon). The truth is the company really didn’t have a contingency plan for something of this scale.

A blowout like this one apparently wasn’t expected, although it should have been. One of the most stunning examples of BP’s lack of preparation is evidenced in the emergency-response strategy report it prepared in accordance with federal law. The report runs 583 pages, but is alarmingly short on how to stop a deep-sea spill.

Perhaps BP’s disaster management was a bit light on the details because the government wasn’t asking tough questions. The MMS, the agency charged with overseeing offshore drilling, is disastrously managed. A report issued recently by the IG outlines the same familiar type of cronyism and corruption that has become a systemic rot in Washington.

A report released this week from the inspector general’s office at the Interior Department revealed federal inspectors overseeing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico accepted meals and tickets to sporting events from companies they monitored.

…

In one case, an inspector in the MMS office in Lake Charles, Louisiana, conducted inspections of four offshore platforms while negotiating a job with the company, the report said.

Others let oil and gas company workers fill out their inspection forms in pencil, with the inspectors writing over those entries in ink before turning them in.

The report also alleged employees at the same office received tickets to 2005 Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl football game from an offshore production company. The report also includes a confidential source informing investigators that a MMS inspector abused drugs, including crystal meth.

With these hapless, corrupt morons overseeing drilling, it’s no wonder BP didn’t bother making sure their rigs wouldn’t explode. Even if they did — so what? The company saved money scrimping on safety standards, and the government was sure to rush in and help with the PR nightmare following any kind of accident.

BP knew the worst that would happen is they’d have to buy off some cry baby coastal victims and fishermen. But as Exxon demonstrated to oil companies, litigation can take years, during which time victims die, or go broke paying attorney fees, and then it’s just a matter of sneaking out the back door, while the media distracts itself with a fluff story about a professional golfer cheating on his wife.

All BP has to do is wait, and to not acknowledge responsibility for anything — a task made significantly easier by Obama accepting full responsibility for the disaster. Denying liability includes dodging any blowback from the use of toxic dispersants like Corexit.

Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, and a third-generation shrimp fisherman, alleges that BP is preventing fishermen from wearing respirators because allowing workers to use the masks would entail acknowledging they face respiratory danger.

AMY GOODMAN: What about respirators? Are people wearing respirators?

CLINT GUIDRY: No, ma’am. Having had prior experience, I know these people. They’re friends. They’re family. I bought respirators, and I brought them down to these people. And when they tried to wear them, the BP representatives on site told them that it wasn’t a dangerous situation, and they didn’t need to wear them, and if they did, they would be taken off the job.

AMY GOODMAN: If they wore respirators, they’d be taken off the job?

CLINT GUIDRY: Yes.

…

AMY GOODMAN: But how does wearing respirators threaten BP? How do the workers, the cleanup crews, wearing respirators, how does that threaten BP?

CLINT GUIDRY: If you would do your research, the same situation occurred with Exxon Valdez over twenty years ago. It is a question of liability. The minute BP declares that there is a respiratory danger on the situation is the day that they let the door open for liability suits down the line. If they could have gotten away with covering this up, like they did in Alaska Valdez situation, like Exxon, they would not have to pay a penny for any kind of health-related claims.

There have already been reports of workers feeling “drugged and disoriented,” and photos have emerged showing clean-up crews sometimes working without the necessary protective gear.

Corexit, the UK-banned dispersant being used in mass quantity by BP, is linked to numerous health problems.

Corexit was used in 1989, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and there were reports connecting the chemical to severe health issues including respiratory, kidney and reproductive problems. In fact, Exxon’s own data listed 6,722 cases of upper respiratory infections among the workers participating in its oil spill cleanup.

Whether it’s from the oil fumes, or Corexit, these workers are getting sick. They need to wear masks, and BP’s fear of lawsuits shouldn’t allow the company to participate in this kind of sick negligence. Because of catastrophes like Exxon, oil companies know exactly how sick workers can get on these sites. BP really can’t claim ignorance on this one.

Image by AFP/Getty Images via @daylife

Scientists have discovered a massive new oil plume stretching 22 miles toward Mobile Bay, Alabama. This is the second major plume to be discovered (the first was found underwater). Ironically, dispersants, the stuff that is supposed to coagulate the oil and sink it beneath the surface of the water, may be the culprits responsible for the plumes.

The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at the site of the leak.

[David Hollander, associate professor of chemical oceanography at the University of South Florida College of Marine Science,] said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants could pose a big danger to fish larvae and creatures that filter the waters for food.

Some versions of Corexit, BP’s dispersant of choice, were banned in the UK more than a decade ago because “laboratory tests found them to be harmful to sea life.” The EPA politely requested BP stop using Corexit — a request the company completely ignored — and now scientists are suggesting this stuff is actually only moving the problem, not resolving it.

I hope I’m wrong, but judging by the amount of chemicals BP is dumping along the coastline, this disaster is going to affect generations of ocean life, and possibly permanently alter the ecosystem.

The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower waters where many fish and other species reproduce.

Events like this can singlehandedly wipe out entire species of wildlife. The worst part is, no amount of suing BP can bring back this life, or the livelihoods of fisherman. I’m not saying that should exempt BP from prosecution, but realizing just how irreversible this tragedy is really makes the magnitude of the horror sink in.

Fraternal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Pastor Ken Gregg poses in his Klan robe. Image by Getty Images via @daylife

John Brennan, the deputy national security adviser for counter-terrorism and homeland security, has announced a new national security strategy that will focus on the threat posed by homegrown extremists. Except, the target of this strategy doesn’t seem to be all domestic terrorism, but rather domestic terrorism with foreign roots.

There has been a surge in right-wing extremism in the U.S., copiously documented by groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, but which was also predicted by Homeland Security. In fact, the report warned that right-wing extremists, who are “angry at the economy and the election of a black president” might recruit GWOT veterans.

I have been writing about how white domestic terrorism has slipped from the media’s radar, but sadly, it seems like the government is also uninterested by the surge in right wing extremism — possibly because such violence doesn’t fit the helpful war narrative of the “dangerous other” being brown, and from a desert landscape.

There have been a couple recent domestic terrorist attack that have been largely ignored by the media and government:

Robert Joos Jr.

A firearms and explosives expert suspected of involvement with two white supremacist brothers in the sending of a bomb to the office of a municipal diversity officer was sentenced to 6½ years in prison in Missouri on Tuesday.

And then there is the unknown man who bombed a mosque in Florida.

Unlike in the case of Faisal Shahzad, these bombs actually detonated. In a rational world, these stories would probably receive considerably more coverage than the Shahzad incident, but again, Shahzad, a Muslim Pakistani-American, fits the narrative of a “dangerous domestic threat with foreign roots.” Joos and the unknown man don’t fit that character description.

In the U.S., having ties to a foreign land is slowly becoming a crime. Those individuals, who are innocent of having ties to extremism, are simply guilty for looking foreign (as in the case of the Arizona racial profiling law.) Recently, this frenzied pandemic of nationalist paranoia almost resulted in a legal citizen being deported to Mexico.

Instead of developing a uniform definition for “terrorism,” the government has adopted the two-tier Newsweek strategy and directed the “terrorist” label only at dangerous “others.” Domestic, white attacks are…something else. The enemy must be clearly defined as living outside U.S. borders, or things would get terribly muddied.

Brennan describes the exact target of this new strategy:

“The president’s national security strategy explicitly recognises the threat to the United States posed by individuals radicalised here at home.

“We’ve seen individuals, including US citizens, armed with their US passport, travel easily to terrorist safe havens and return to America, their deadly plans disrupted by coordinated intelligence and law enforcement.”

Brennan is very clear that the domestic terrorists the administration are interested in are those individuals with ties to foreign nations. They are uninterested in the domestic terrorists, who are also trained and radicalized within the U.S..

It seems a silly strategy, or at least a misguided emphasis, considering some right wing recruits have received far superior training from the military than the average Middle East terrorist receives in al Qaeda camps. A domestic terrorist with a military background probably knows how to make a bomb that will actually explode, unlike the clusterfuck attempt made by the panicked Shahzad.

The teevee is all atwitter right now with news of Obama’s official rebranding of the War on Terror. Obama recognizes that waging war against a psychological state is a pointless, eternal endeavor. (Of course, that hasn’t stopped him from expanding the Forever Wars, but that’s another post.) Random acts of political violence will always exist, as will other things like fear, love, hope, and hatred. These things can never be completely extinguished unless the human race ceases to exist.

Yet, this new strategy picks up where the War on Terror left off. This kind of profiling directs law enforcement at an amorphous “other,” specifically brown people with ties to foreign lands. Foreigners, and foreign-like individuals, become automatic suspects even as white domestic terrorists blow up government employees, and mosques.

It makes good sense for the government to guard against threats from international terrorism cells, but it also makes sense to adopt a uniform standard of terrorism, and to turn that concern inward. This doesn’t mean the government should spy on gatherings of concerned citizens, which it did in spades during the Bush years, but rather that one standard be applied to this “terrorism” business if we are to have any hope of understanding the parameters of acceptable behavior. Otherwise, the government is legitimizing a two-tier, frankly racist, policy where brown terrorism is the real deal, while white terrorism are acts of “lone wolves,” or “survivalists.”

Last week, the wives of some of the fishermen spoke out publicly about the symptoms their husbands were experiencing. This week, some fishermen are starting to come forward. In this WDSU TV interview, one of the fishermen reports feeling drugged, disoriented, tingling, fatigued, and also reporting shortness of breath and cough. These are symptoms that are consistent with what one might expect from exposure to hydrocarbons in oil.

Crab trap builder Shawn Platt stands with his idle traps in on May 13, 2010 in Hopedale, Louisiana. Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife

Maybe. But these are also some of the symptoms reported by individuals who were exposed to Corexit.

One of the two Corexit products that BP is suing [sic] in the Gulf also contains a compound that is associated with headaches, vomiting and reproductive problems

Corexit is also linked with respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders.

Obviously, there’s no way to tell what is causing these symptoms, and BP has no interest in allowing the media to find out. Many of the fishermen working for BP signed contracts that forbid them to talk to the press, and BP is ruling the Gulf area with an iron fist. Even CEO Tony Hayward has joined the fun, and is shouting at random cameramen.

This is standard practice for BP, according to John Sheffield, the owner of a competing dispersant called Sea Brat 4. Stonewalling the press was a specific provision in his contract with BP.

Now is a critical time for these workers, and it’s essential the media have access to them, and the larger clean-up effort. Otherwise, there will be no way to determine what is causing their illness. Right now, there are numerous variables that could be making them sick (the oil, Corexit, listening to Tony scream at strangers, etc.) Perhaps that’s why BP wants to keep the media at a distance — so as to avoid pinning down blame on a specific agent.

The media blackout, combined with some worrying photos of clean-up crews working in regular street clothes — sometimes without gloves — and now these reports of worker sickness, should all serve as red flags.

BP has these workers locked into a world of secret pain. Initially, the company tried to trick desperate fishermen into working for them by offering work in the clean-up effort if they signed wavers saying they will

“hold harmless and indemnify … release, waive and forever discharge the BP Exploration and Production, Inc., its subsidiaries, affiliates, officers, directors, regular employees, and independent contractors … from all claims and damages” arising from helping to clean up the mess that BP has made. [emphasis mine]

Most fisherman refused to sign this, but some did because they’re desperate. Now, some of those people are sick, and they can’t share their stories without fear of legal repercussions.

Gina Solomon reports that fishermen from Alaska who were involved in the clean-up after the Exxon Valdez oil spill are coming down to the Gulf Coast to meet with local fishermen in order to offer advice and guidance. Fisherman have to take care of their own, since BP is more concerned with concealing their epic fuck-up in a media-proof cone of silence.

Image via Wikipedia

This afternoon I spoke with John Sheffield, president of Alabaster Corporation, which makes Sea Brat 4, a safer, less toxic alternative to Corexit, the chemical dispersant BP is currently using in the Gulf.

Sheffield voiced his frustration that — despite the fact that Sea Brat is safer than Corexit, ready to be shipped, EPA-approved, and his company is capable of producing enough product to cope with the spill — BP has decided to instead go with Corexit.

He blames the Corexit monopoly on the fact that one of the board members of Nalco (the company that makes Corexit) is Rodney F. Chase, a former BP board member. This cozy relationship with BP provides Nalco with unique access to the big business of oil spill cleanup, Sheffield says.

Additionally, switching to Sea Brat would basically entail BP acknowledging that they’ve known about a safer dispersant alternative for decades, and despite the UK banning Corexit, and now the EPA requesting BP find a safer dispersant, BP decided to press forth with a chemical that bears a “striking molecular resemblance to anti-freeze.”

BP provided the following statement after ignoring the EPA’s directive to find a less toxic alternative to Corexit (via):

BP’s response below considers the criteria set forth in the directive in the following order (1) dispersants with a toxicity value greater than or equal to 32.00 ppm LC50 toxicity value for Menidia or 18.00 ppm LC50 for Mysidopis [sic], as indicated on the NCP Product Schedule, (2) the availability based on existing stockpiles, the estimated time to begin aerial and subsurface application, and time for manufacturing, shipping and warhousing, and (3) as effective as Corexit EC9500A at dispersing the oil plume. As discussed below, given the above criteria, BP continues to believe that Corexit EC9500A is the best alternative.

Except, it’s obvious BP’s claims aren’t true just by looking at the NCP Product Schedule toxicity table:

Corexit fails to meet criteria number one, while Sea Brat meets the requirement with its 18 ppm LC50 for Mysidopsis.

For the second requirement, I asked Sheffield if his company could keep up with the dispersant orders, especially now that the catastrophe in the Gulf demands such a sharp increase in production. He responded without hesitation that, yes, his company could meet the demand. There are 100,000 gallons of Sea Brat on hand right now, ready to be shipped out.

For the third criteria, Sea Brat’s effectiveness outshines Corexit EC9500A’s performance in almost every crude oil sample.

I brought up a couple possible explanations for why BP may be dodging the Sea Brat solution to Sheffield. Perhaps BP’s cozy relationship with Nalco explained why smaller companies like Alabaster are getting forced out.

“Absolutely. From the start, we have known that. That sort of thing is general knowledge,” says Sheffield. “It’s common knowledge between us, people we know, even people we have communicated with who are employees of BP…the general consensus is that ‘you guys will be lucky if you get anything…People like us get shut out.’”

Also, by admitting that Sea Brat is a safer alternative, BP would have to own the consequences of using toxic dispersants, especially when one considers the company has known about Sea Brat for over a decade. Sheffield tells me he even has reference letter from BP. “BP’s been buying product from us for 15 years. I can tell you, honestly, they’ve bought 20-to-30, maybe 50,000 gallons of similar product over the years. So they’re aware of it. It was they who contacted me, you know, a month ago,” says Sheffield.

“I believe the safer product is being intentionally suppressed,” says Sheffield. He believes if the industry started using the safer, more effective dispersants, they would never be able to go back to using the more dangerous, less effective chemicals. I asked him if he thought BP was also avoiding making the switch because doing so inherently means acknowledging their use of a toxic, ineffective dispersant.

“Correct. Correct. It’s a hell of a lot bigger than just, ‘Oh well. We’re gonna lose out on several million in sales for the next few weeks to some little pip-squeak company that wants to sell this product.’ It’s a hell of a lot more than that. The deal is, once it gets out there that this [product] really works..the oil company is gonna have to really clean up something. That’s part of it.

Then they’re also gonna have to have accountability. They’ve known about this for twenty years, and they haven’t been using this stuff. They continue to use the toxic stuff. I mean, that’s pretty much hitting the nail on the head, what you said. It’s not just a competitive product that will blow them away…It’ll shine a light on the environmental calamity that’s been caused over the years by all these oil companies.”

Image by Getty Images North America via @daylife

John Cole expresses the view of, I think, many liberals on his blog today when he asked: what exactly is the Obama administration supposed to about the oil spill?

He asks this after acknowledging all the terrible things BP and the government have done (missed deadlines, hidden the size of the spill, issued more permits to drill,) while failing to address some other points (BP buying off spill victims, using toxic dispersants, which have been banned in the UK, against the orders of the EPA, racing up to Canada to try to get their country to deregulate, too, etc.)

Cole isn’t an apologist for private business run amok. He just sincerely wants to know: what the hell is Obama supposed to do about this?

But he’s already answered the question with his last peeve point — a realization Cole appears to have at the very end of the post. The Obama administration is still issuing permits. Despite the catastrophe of the Gulf oil geyser, Obama wants to expand offshore drilling. The rationale for this is articulated by Interior Secretary Ken Salazaar.

“We should be honest with ourselves. … We are dependent on oil and gas and we will be,” Salazar told senators. “As an economy in transition, it’s something that we need to do.”

And of course, Obama concurs.

Yet, as Ezra Klein points out, the US uses 23 percent of total world oil consumption, but has only 3 percent of the world’s oil reserves within its borders. Even in the super productive parts of the new area opened to drilling (a 24 million acre area of the eastern gulf,) the expected yield is only 3.5 billion barrels of oil. The US consumes 19.5 million barrels of oil per day. That means the shiny new wells would only produce around 180 days worth of oil.

Here’s a chart illustrating US oil consumption. You can see how little new offshore drilling actually contributes.

Basically, expanding domestic drilling is a huge, huge risk with very little pay off.

So the first thing Obama could do is end the Domestic Drilling As Savior Of Society charade. The US is addicted to foreign oil, and engaging in risky domestic drilling isn’t going to reverse that trend.

Obama could also defend the American people by supporting proposals to raise the potential cap on damages for oil companies beyond the current limits, and increase the amount in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund by increasing taxes on industry. The proposal would increase the amount the fund could pay for cleanup and damages related to any spills.

Thus far, the administration has offered a tepid response.

The Obama administration remains confident it can recover “every dime” of taxpayer expense from the spill, with or without legislation to substantially increase the dollar amount at which oil-spill liabilities are capped, Associate Attorney General Thomas Perrelli said Tuesday.

Why bothering raising the cap if it’s only going to piss off wealthy industry donors? Seems like a waste of energy, really, and not the “dumped into the ocean” kind.

The Obama-BP relationship is an ongoing thing. It’s not as though this very bad thing happened, so now Obama has to sign endless bits of legislation to permit the next bad thing to happen, as well. As far as I know, the government is still capable of regulating industry. I’m not claiming they’re actually doing any regulation, but they do possess the tools to do some regulation if they desire.

And clearly, the White House gets that they still have the power to regulate industry.

The new automobile fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks that the administration outlined last month are anticipated to cut oil use 11.6 billion gallons per year by 2016. The executive order Obama issued to raise mileage standards for heavy trucks could cut oil consumption another 11 billion gallons by 2030.

Super. Genuinely good stuff. Now, how about standards that make using busted blowout preventers — complete with dead batteries, leaks in the hydraulic system, a “useless” test version of a key component, and a cutting tool that wasn’t strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe to stop the flow of oil — criminal offenses that, at least, raises the cap of liability, and also lose a company any new drilling permits?

Additionally, if the EPA orders a company to stop using toxic dispersants that have been banned in the UK, and the company flips them the bird and keeps using those toxins, that company should be held accountable for their actions. Imagine if the FDA banned a certain toxic chemical from food that bears a “striking molecular resemblance to anti-freeze,” and causes respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney, and blood disorders. Now, imagine if a company kept using that chemical even after the FDA made their polite request.

What should matter more: The sovereignty of a corporation, or the health of the American people?

What is Obama supposed to do? His job. He’s supposed to protect the American people. I believe he took an oath swearing to do that very thing.

Pete Peterson Image via Wikipedia

Update: Nalco’s website and every other official record of ownership I came across weren’t entirely updated. In 2007, Blackstone, Goldman, and Apollo sold their remaining direct and indirect interests in the Company. Obviously, the problems of deregulation and privatization didn’t happen overnight, so I think the connections are still an important reality, and should be highlighted here.

Interestingly, the 2010 board nominees for Nalco include former BP, and current Tesco board member, Rodney F. Chase, Monsanto’s Carl M. Casale, and Lockheed Martin and J.P. Morgan’s Mary M. VanDeWeghe. It’s like Nalco finds its board by playing Evil Corporation Roulette.

Rep. John Hall (D-NY) pointed out here the obvious conflict of interest of having a former BP board member, Chase, serve at Nalco at a time BP is buying a toxic, inferior dispersant from the company.

——————————————————-

After flipping the bird to the EPA, BP has continued pouring around 655,000 gallons of a chemical, which has been banned in the UK, into the ocean to break up oil patches. And not only is the chemical toxic, it’s also inefficient:

Of 18 dispersants whose use EPA has approved, 12 were found to be more effective on southern Louisiana crude than Corexit, EPA data show. Two of the 12 were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective, respectively. The toxicity of the 12 was shown to be either comparable to the Corexit line or, in some cases, 10 or 20 times less, according to EPA.

So why the big rush to use a toxic, inefficient dispersant? That brings us to the really fun part. The chemical, Corexit, is manufactured by Nalco Holding Company, whose current leadership includes executives from BP and Exxon, even though the Exxon-Nalco venture “dissolved” back in 2001.

Nalco, a global company that provides water processing solutions, first had access to Corexit in the 1990s, when it had a joint venture with its energy solutions business with Exxon Mobil.

The partnership was really a brilliant move on Exxon’s part. They got to profit from oil drilling and from the oil spills. It was a real win-win situation, even though everyone at Exxon and Nalco were already aware of the health problems associated with Corexit.

Corexit was used in 1989, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and there were reports connecting the chemical to severe health issues including respiratory, kidney and reproductive problems. In fact, Exxon’s own data listed 6,722 cases of upper respiratory infections among the workers participating in its oil spill cleanup.

But even with the joint venture dissolved, the story gets stranger. In 1999, Nalco entered a merger agreement with Suez, one of three companies that dominates the water privatization business. Suez would love to see the United States handed over to Libertarian nut jobs like Rand Paul, who think everything should be privatized, including the right to clean drinking water. In Suez’s dream world, nothing is a human right, and everything has a price tag — including water and oxygen.

Nalco is now owned by the Blackstone Group, Apollo Management, and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners. Blackstone is a private equity and asset management firm, which was co-founded by Pete Peterson, the man who longs to privatize your Social Security, mostly because he’d make a pretty penny from the con.

Apollo Management is another private equity investment firm i.e. a clubhouse for the Masters Of The Universe, and I believe you’ve all met Goldman Sachs, so there’s no need for me to burn this Lloyd Blankfein effigy I have here at my side.

These connections all seem serendipitous until one considers the larger picture, and there isn’t even a need to get all New World Order creepy conspiracy theory with the narrative. Everyone — Peterson, Blackstone, Nalco, Exxon, BP, Suez — all stand to benefit from shrinking the role of government and regulation.

If the powerful can remove the regulators from their paths, they’re free to do anything, up to and including, drilling into the earth until their rigs explode into fireballs, leaving the dolphins to swim in the oil lagoon where the sea used to be. Then, they can profit from the clean up, too. It’s called playing the Long Con.

Nalco swears to everyone that an “older and newer” version of Corexit being used in the Gulf are both safe for workers and the environment, which fails to explain why they felt the need to ever invent a newer version of the chemical in the first place. Nevermind. Go watch Peterson talk about why you should give him your Social Security money on CNN again.

Even though Corexit has been linked with human health problems including respiratory, nervous system, liver, kidney and blood disorders, BP is using tons of this chemical right now.

While Corexit has been used by various companies worldwide, nothing compares to its current usage for perhaps Nalco’s biggest project to date. It had to ramp up production at its facilities in Texas and Louisiana, [Nalco spokesman Charlie Pajor] said.

“This has been most unusual,” Pajor said about the demand.

Very unusual, indeed. How any Nalco representative can claim this level of exposure is safe — for anyone — is really beyond me. Oh well. I’m sure Nalco, or Blackstone, will merge with a company that manufactures oxygen tanks, so they can profit from that side of the disaster, too. It’s called diversifying, you illiterate philistines.

Image by AFP via @daylife

Judging by the government’s handling of the spill zone, I’d be hard pressed to tell you who is in charge of the country right now. BP has stifled the freedom of the press, given the finger to the EPA, and will not be forced to testify in Obama’s shiny, new commission. Honestly, I’m amazed Obama’s first reaction wasn’t to rename the country The United States Of BP.

Mac McClelland, a human rights reporter for Mother Jones, has been chased away from spill site by a local policeman, who claims he was just doing “what they told me to do.” McClelland asked the logical question: Who are they? And aren’t the police usually the ones charged with maintaining order?

The “they” is BP, the company that has already used contractors to chase a CBS news crew from a beach in South Pass, Louisiana when they tried to film a thick coat of oil. And McClelland records that BP spokespersons told two reporters they were not allowed anywhere on the beach, despite the fact that “tons of tourists” are in those locations.

BP has quartered off the Louisiana coast like an army in a war zone, and has shaken off any attempt by the government to control their response to the environmental disaster. EPA weakly asked BP to (pretty please) not use those toxic dispersants that have been banned in the UK, but BP has since decided to stick with Corexit.

Even Obama seems to be quaking in the presence of the almighty oilman. The president signed an executive order to form a commission to study the BP disaster. Except, he shed the original proposal to subpoena BP and Halliburton, and now the commission will politely “request information” from the huge corporate entities. Well, as long as Obama does it in a super nice fashion, I’m sure they’ll comply.

The original committee was also supposed to be comprised of persons free of any conflicts of interest, but Obama had a different vision for that, too. For example, the Republican co-Chair of the commission is William Reilly, a Director at DuPont and ConocoPhillips.

The members shall be drawn from among distinguished individuals, and may include those with experience in or representing the scientific, engineering, and environmental communities, the oil and gas industry, or any other area determined by the President to be of value to the Commission in carrying out its duties.

And I’m sure those “distinguished individuals” won’t prioritize taking care of their own, and make any unnecessary unpleasantness (like government regulation) go away as quickly as humanly possible.

Finally, as usual, Obama wants us all to — for the love of God — look forward and not at the charred remains looming behind us. He wants the country to “develop options for guarding against, and mitigating the impact of, oil spills associated with offshore drilling.”

On the surface, that may seem like encouraging language, but when weighed with the Obama administration’s lack of regulation, and spineless request that BP please provide all incriminating information, it’s obvious how pathetic this response really is. The government might as well say, “Look, people, this is definitely going to happen again, but maybe we can try to ‘guard against it,’ and then ‘mitigate’ the unholy disaster unleashed upon society when it happens. But this is definitely, definitely happening again, okay?”

And when it does happen again, the Obama administration will make it easier for BP to suppress the media, skirt liability, dump toxins into the ocean to break up the stuff that looks really bad when captured by photographic evidence, and get back to a system of freewheeling deregulation. Fingers crossed no one gets blown to smithereens during the next explosion, you guys!

This is the official plan even though the exciting potential for disaster rests in a plethora of equally unregulated oil drilling sites, and while BP certainly won’t be ordered to testify before a commission, it will be allowed to suppress the First Amendment, and pick and choose what laws it obeys. All the while, Obama will continue implementing his overly medicated reaction to the huge problem of deregulation, politely requesting massive corporations cooperate as they steamroll the nation’s laws.

Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana’s wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.

As BP CEO Tony Hayward demonstrated, many people remain ignorant about the magnitude of unseen damage the underwater oil geyser is inflicting upon the ocean’s ecosystem right now. Hayward’s comment that the oil patch is “relatively tiny” compared to the “very big ocean” probably represents the views of many Americans.

Sanitized language like “patch,” “spill,” and “plume” make this terrible event seem more like a minor inconvenience – like a baby spilling a glass of milk. It’s adorable, really, except when it’s beautiful or delicious i.e. when it’s being described by Rep. Gene Taylor as “a light, rainbow sheen with patches that look like chocolate milk.”

Meanwhile, the “patch” is now larger than Maryland and Delaware, combined. The AP is desperately trying to depict the magnitude of this event by using an array of easy-to-envision examples:

a month’s worth of leaking oil could fill enough gallon milk jugs to stretch more than 11,300 miles. That’s more than the distance from New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. That’s just shy of 130 million gallons.

I overheard an MSNBC reporter utilizing the visualization of high school gymnasiums — hundreds of them — stacked atop one another, filled to the ceilings with oil.

Those members of the media fighting the good fight — the ones who are trying to get the public to understand how bad this catastrophe is — are battling a giant corporation’s PR machine. It’s now clear that BP was either being disingenuous, or lying, when they told federal agents they could handle an oil spill 60 times larger than Deepwater Horizon. Purdue Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Steven Werely, estimates that nearly 100,000 barrels — 4 million gallons, or an Exxon Valdez every three days – is spewing from the leak.

BP attempted to block the press from filming the extent of the oil disaster. In fact, the company’s first reaction was to limit damage inflicted to its public image, and protect profits, by buying off the victims, and quickly making the visual evidence disappear using chemical dispersants, which have been banned by the UK, into the ocean. The EPA has since ordered BP to use less toxic chemicals.

Scientists have now discovered enormous underwater oil plumes, described by one of them as a “shocking amount of oil.”

The team found evidence for oil in three or four deep layers, including one 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in places.  They found them in the deeper water – the shallowest at around 2,300 feet, the deepest, near the sea floor at about 4,200 feet.

They also found the underwater oil plumes depleted the oxygen in the water, which they fear may endanger marine life.

One of Andrew Sullivan’s readers used the ridiculous rationalization that the Gulf is a “dead zone,” so the 4 million gallons of oil emptying into the ocean every three days aren’t really harming anything. A more astute reader pointed out that the ocean has these things called plants that are extremely valuable to the ecosystem. Just because there aren’t dead dolphins washing up onto the beach every day (there have been some, but the oil’s role in their deaths is unclear) doesn’t mean the geyser isn’t inflicting massive damage.

BP estimates that the gusher could continue until early August, a date that falls right smack in the middle of hurricane season. Needless to say, the presence of a hurricane will significantly restrict any clean-up effort. In fact, a severe storm could propel spilled crude and tar balls over vast expanses of sea and beach, according to scientists.

I know I shouldn’t speak out of turn here, lest Rand Paul think me un-American for daring to criticize a business’s unethical practices, but lots of people have gone to prison for doing far less than the damage inflicted upon society by BP. They misinformed federal inspectors, and cut corners at every turn, and they have no desire to stop this behavior. While Americans were gnashing their teeth about this horror, BP ran up to Canada to urge their officials to adopt the same deregulation measures. You know, because profit is all that matters. Long live, President Paul!

This is America’s same ol’ deregulation song and dance. Big business shaves the bone to make another billion dollars, endangering everything from the environment to workers’ lives along the way, and when a mine or a rig explodes into flames, killing workers and poisoning the planet, all the CEOs and politicians shake their heads at “what a shame” it all is.

It’s more than a shame. It’s a crime — a totally preventable crime.