The BP Gulf Disaster

Remove all ads!

As far as long term problems, how do you know they didn't complain? Complaints can be ignored, or written off as a disgruntled employee. It sounds as if BP has a corporate culture of making saftey complaints difficult (which is their reputation in the industry here in Houston, btw). They don't need to fire anyone for complaining, especially regarding safety. But they can always find a reason to fire someome who won't go along.

 

My wife works for the postal service here in the Great White North. She filed sexual harassment, harassment, and incompetance charges against her supervisor because the bastard was guilty of all three. The company has posters and regulations and such encouraging staff to report such abuses, telling them that they are just as culpable if they turn a blind eye, and that it is their duty to help make the workplace a safe, comfortable, multicultural, place for everyone to work blah blah blah your anonymity is guaranteed and there will be no retribution taken for filings made in good faith blah blah blah . . .

She followed company policy to the letter. Her allegations were verified. Next to nothing happened. And the guy was told by the Whisper Wagon who had reported his filthy incompetant butt. But of course, it wasn't done officially.

Of course, he never made trouble for my wife, or acted like a jackdonkey, or gave her the crap jobs . . . oh, wait, HE DID! She ended up transferring to another unit, and edespite the fact that all of her allegations were proved, she was the one in terms of 'corporate culture' who was branded the 'troublemaker'. She followed the policy to the letter, and all of that hassle, stress, loss of face, etc etc for what? Sweet F A. Don't tell me about guarantees of anonymity. It's crap.

 

It appears that Louisiana politics is getting in the way of oil spill response: Jindal holds up deployment of National Guard to fight spill. The White House is reported to have allowed Louisiana to use 6.000 national Guard troops to fight the oil spill. So far only 1,053 of them are being used. Jindal blames the Feds for that:

So either Jindal is incompetent and unable to understand the rules and chain of command (in which case he ought to not hold public office) or he is playing political blame games. What an ass (as in donkey) in either case.

The original CPS report suggests that the state has been reluctant to use the troops because, unlike oil, them soldiers at the beaches would hurt tourism. If true it would only underline that Jindal is (irony!) truly a deep thinker with a knack for long term solutions and nothing but his state's business interests at heart. Citizens may vote, but it's the companies that make the palpable campaign contributions, just to get the priorities straight.

In that sense, Jindal appears to be d'accord with BP in-house publication 'Planet BP' — which put some effort in lining out the bright side of the oil spill: It quoted a local seafood businessman as saying “[t]here is no reason to hate BP” while insisting that “[m]uch of the region’s [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams.”

In the words of Jonathan Turley, 'This is akin to praising the “recovery” in Bhopal as great for the medical and funeral industries'. And there I thought business folks would be treated with the 'broken window fallacy' in Uni ...

 

I was thinking more OSHA or something. As LKD points out below you, in-house complaint systems aren't always 100%. Or even 10%. Actually, neither are government, and I admit it may have been done and all been ignored, in which case there's all the more culpability on the people that ignored it. My point was just that there are systems established by which employees can complain. Whether they work or not is another issue.

Or, he's telling the truth and the red tape gets in the way. In the articles linked from that one, he clearly states that requests take weeks to get approved, and are promptly shut down shortly after. Funny how you didn't consider that possibility.

 

Ragusa, Jindal hasn't yet declared if he is running against Obama in 2012. You have a least a year before you have to spend your energy trying to tear him down.

I think the quote you should have posted from your link is

Everything else is just a political hatchet job.

 

Snook,
that is no concern of mine. I see that Jindal is apparently an idiot, so I spell it out and am on my way. I'm sorry for Louisiana though.

Ah yes, that variant. I go with that he is, let's be charitable on a sunny day, spinning the matter.

More to the point: He has his ideas how the clean up ought to be done, and the Feds have, considering the scale and scope if his ideas (think of a 'Chinese Wall' along the Louisiana coast), doubts they will work, and work in time. That's what he is calling 'red tape'. That's at least the impression I get from PoliticiFact's summary on the bit about BP's funding of barriers:

The problem appears chiefly to be that Jindal isn't getting it his way, and because of that he isn't he isn't using the National Guard, and is playing the blame game, all while being unwilling to invest state funds in his own project. Jindal has called the effort against the oil spill, probably inevitably, a war. Considering that General Jindal is content with using only 20% of his troops it's obviously a limited one.

~*~​

And since I am merrily bashing Louisiana Republicans playing games already - another story: David Vitter filed a bill to delay offshore aquaculture (i.e. fish farms). Vitter, against some industry? Huh? He argues that the environmental impact is unclear. A republican making that argument? That from a guy who ... err.... staunchly supports offshore drilling? More, from a guy who wants to make off shore drilling easier? Hmm. Oh, he is calling for a three year study - a time for which the proposal will be on halt (that brings us back to familiar terrain - keyword: paralysis-by-analysis).

My hunch based on my view of Vitter being as crooked a hypocrite as it can possibly get (and like all Louisiana politicians a major recipient of campaign contributions from the oil industry) is this: He doesn't want to allow a competing offshore industry take foot in the Gulf of Mexico because they depend on clean water for their fish to live and have an economic interest in environmental protection. That would get in the way of offshore oil extraction - by requiring adherence to environmental standards in the oil industry and compliance inspections, thus making offshore drilling less easy and probably more costly - all things Vitter has been persistently trying to gut in his legislative proposals.

If an offshore aquaculture industry would take foot in the gulf that would have consequences for the oil industry: There would be a very real risk of litigation by offshore fish farms (not to mention the bad PR of a case of a fish farm tarred) against oil companies in case of spills (a risk they currently don't face and thus, a change for the worse from an oil industry point of view). Oil spills happen all the time - but an oil spill in a fish farm is destruction of multimillion property, and will be litigated. But, let's again be benevolent because it is a sunny day, probably Vitter has indeed nothing but Louisiana's marine environment on his mind.

 

NOG, Snook, be objective. Jindal is stating that the Federal Government is holding up full deployment of National Guard troops to Louisiana. Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen -- a man holding a non-partisan position -- has stated that it is the Coast Guard that currently holds the authority to approve getting these troops on the ground, and further points out that the Coast Guard is typically approving requests for National Guard troops within a day. Jindal has had quite a bit more than a day to request his troops. It doesn't take a genius to connect the dots, guys. He's posturing.

Sure, some of his requests for other types of Federal actions or other federal resources may be taking more time, but that has nothing whatsoever to do with his (lack of) requests for National Guard troops. Those requests get approved within a day. In some cases, Jindal made requests for things about which the Scientific community had serious concerns. His decision to defy the Obama administration and begin constructing sand berms stands out.

According to Coastal Geology Professor Rob Young among others, the sand berms likely can't be finished in enough time to be effective, will immediately begin eroding, will not stand up to what is predicted to be a very robust hurricane season, and could actually cause wave action to increase, carrying oil inland even faster -- and into areas it might not have reached otherwise. http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=127774917

This spill and its effects will be with us for years, and the hard reality is that the wetlands will be hit and they will be devastated no matter what we do. Taking the time to ensure that what we do doesn't make things any worse than they're already going to be is only prudent.

 

I love how the Americans are blaming British Petroleum for the oil spill even though it was an American component that failed which caused the whole thing.

In keeping with the theory, I blame American Airlines for 9/11

I saw them do it!

 

Bad form. I am very insulted.

 

Barmy - Maybe we can send BP to Lybia:

 

You have got to be kidding. The fact that a part failed is not what's at issue here. It's how the failure was dealt with (or not dealt with in this case) that's important.

 

Of course he was - he even added the 9-11 part, as a snarky comment to show he was kidding.

 

The Feds took weeks to get extra booms for Mississippi, eventually got them from Bahrain or somewhere, and then ended up giving them to Louisiana rather than Mississippi. The Feds stopped oil cleanup boats from going out so they could check on insurance and registration numbers, and then because they were having trouble contacting the owners for verification. The Feds are making a typical mess of things, and I'm fairly certain the National Guard are caught in the middle of it along with everything else.

On a slightly related note, I'm sure the Feds could mandate that BP give their workers respirators, but I haven't heard anything about them doing it yet. Of course, that doesn't get BP off the hook for it, it just throws the government on it along side.

 

No, NOG. Requests for National Guard troops are approved within a day. The rest of this stuff is as unrelated and tertiary to the issue of troop deployments, but I'd still love to get some real details about the rest of those claims. A number of perfectly plausible explanations jump to mind for most of them, and so some context would be helpful.

For example, Bahrain is very far away. Getting cleanup boats from Bahrain to the Gulf may have taken weeks because finding such a ship takes time, and so does the transit. Once the ships arrived, they were probably given to Louisiana instead of Mississippi because Louisiana needed it more. Our resources are finite, and (at least when everything works right) they go where they're needed most.

The Feds actually did hold up some barges -- but it was actually because they couldn't confirm the presence of life vests and fire extinguishers on them. Inconvenient though it may be, Coast Guard bylaws don't just disappear because we're in a disaster -- and this problem could have been prevented if the ships had proper documentation to begin with. Moreover, a lack of fire extinguishers on a ship that's sucking up flammable oil from an ocean covered with flammable oil does strike me as something of a problem, and the barges were back in service within 24 hours.

 

Oh, I'll agree that there are likely explanations. My point is just that those explanations are explanations for delays, not denials of them.

 

...but none of them have anything to do with Jindal's assertion that the Federal Government has been slowing down troop requests. It most assuredly has done nothing of the sort. The reason that those troops weren't on the ground is simple -- Jindal hadn't requested them. He then tried to sweep it under the rug by painting the federal government as being unnecessarily obstructionist, hoping that credulous constituents wouldn't notice his obfuscation.

 

I like to add: ... and credulous bystanders beyond Louisiana.

 

Yes, I was joking. Thanks for the chuck out, Alders.

 

Well, now it seems they're (both BP and the government) moving to silence the media.

As if they weren't shooting themselves in the PR foot enough already.

 

I'm sure both the President and BP would love for this story to go away. And they would probably love if major news organizations stopped covering it. However, I don't think we can go so far as to say that either BP or the government is actually engaging in the rather quixotic attempt of trying to "silence the media". Most of the pictures I have seen of the oil spill are taken from the air. Are they going to impose a "no fly zone" in the Gulf of Mexico?

BP and the government are trying their best to say, "nothing to see here, move along". It's just that the actual chance of most media outlets doing this is zero. (Comparitively, we saw the previous administration try something similar for Katrina back in the fall of 2005. It didn't work then either.)