Winds, Politics Blow Hard On Gulf Oil Spill Cleanup Efforts

If the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico wasn't so potentially devastating both economically and ecologically, I would offer a cynical remark that three Democratic senators are displaying their infinite wisdom by proposing legislation that would increase the cap of $75 million to $10 billion for damages liable to oil giant BP.

Despite British Petroleum LCC Chief Executive Tony Hayward pledging in a conference call Monday that the company will pay all legitimate costs no matter what the final bill may be,  Florida Sen. Bill Nelson called that "baloney."

Nothing like putting the damage assessment in writing as a law than taking the word of an oil tycoon. That is the tack Nelson is taking along with New Jersey Democratic Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Bob Menendez.

Lautenberg was the only one of the three in Congress when it placed the $75 million ceiling for damages enacted by the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund Act of 1990 following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska which cleanup costs amounted to $3.5 billion.

The three politicians aren't above using sound bites to excite their voters. Here's how MSNBC's First Read reported their comments:

"The bottom line is that oil spills can leave massive holes in the economy. If you spill it, you should have to fill it," said Menendez, the bill's primary sponsor. "There is no such thing as a 'Too Big to Spill' oil well, which is why we need this economic protection in place."

The "Big Oil Bailout Prevention Act" would also eliminate the $1-billion cap on claims against the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. That fund is funded by an 8 cents tax on every barrel of oil produced or imported into the U.S. The senators say that fund is projected to have $1.6-trillion in it by the end of this year.

Their legislation would also eliminate the $500-million cap on damages to natural resources.

As for the spill, an estimated 210,000 gallons of gaseous crude oil is gushing from three separate leaks daily.

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Strong winds from the south have hampered flight crews from dropping chemical spray on the slick, now the size of Nebraska, and underwater efforts using robotic submersibles to apply dispersants at the source. Hayward said crews hoped to install a shutoff valve 800 feet above the wellhead to stem some of the flow.

Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said construction on the first of three multistory steel containment systems designed to drop over the main leak could be completed as early as Tuesday. When installed the system, which has never been used at this depth, would collect the oil and pipe it to a collection ship on the surface.



The winds are causing major concerns because they could push the slick into the Gulf of Mexico current which sweeps around the Florida keys northward along the Atlantic seaboard.


BP also began drilling a relief well late Sunday. That well will bore 18,000 feet below the seabed and eventually intersect with the well causing the blowout. Then, drilling fluid will be injected into the well in hopes of stopping the flow of oil and gas to the surface. That process will probably take up to two months to complete.

On land, the potential disaster offshore was threatening a multibillion-dollar tourist industry, stretching from the sports fishing camps in Louisiana eastward to Mississippi casinos and beaches in Alabama and Florida.
Louisiana estimates the economic impact of fishing tourism alone in the state at $757 million, and it is responsible for nearly 10,000 jobs.

The first evidence of possible killing of sea creatures was reported Monday as 23 sea turtles were washed ashore along Mississippi's 70 miles of shoreline. This is twice the kill observed by the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies in Gulfport for this time of year, said Moby Solangi, the group’s president and executive director.

Necropsies will be conducted by a team of four veterinarians. It’s unclear whether the deaths are related to the oil spill, which is still miles offshore.


“This is the stranding season for sea turtles, but the numbers we are seeing are unusually high. It could be the result of heightened awareness and reporting, but they may also have been affected by the slick and floated this way,” Solangi said.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer 

Feds Nab Inept Times Square Bomber

Federal agents and police detectives have arrested a naturalized citizen from Pakistan in the botched unexploded car bomb in Times Square.

They identified the man as Faisal Shahzad of Connecticut who they said bought the 1993 Nissan Pathfinder several weeks ago through a website ad but did not register it. The unattended SUV was loaded with gasoline, propane, fireworks, two timers and 100 pounds of fertilizer. With smoke puffing from inside the vehicle, a Tee-shirt vendor reported the incident to a cop on horseback patrol.

The Pakistani Taliban has claimed responsibility for the incident which is odd in that the bomb failed to work and apparently was cobbled together by what bomb experts believe were rank amateurs.

Earlier on Monday, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, insisted it was too early to draw any conclusions as to the legitimacy of the claim or to speculate if the attack was a case of domestic or international terrorism.

Not so circumspect was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs who told reporters: “I think anybody that has the type of material that they had in a car in Times Square, I would say that that was intended to terrorize, absolutely.” 

 Shahzad was arrested at Kennedy Airport Monday night as he awaited to board a flight to Dubai.

New York police say they no longer have interest in viewing more video tapes of the bomb scare in which one man was at first believed to be suspicious.


The New York Times reported authorities began focusing on Shahzad after they tracked the vehicle with 141,000 miles on its odometer to its previously registered owner in Bridgeport, Conn., who had advertised it for sale on several websites. He paid $1,300 cash, and the sale was handled without any formal paperwork.

The former owner told investigators that it appeared the buyer was of Middle Eastern or Hispanic descent, but could not recall his name. Investigation of the incident Monday was taken over by federal agents from the Joint Terrorist Task Force.

The materials found in the Pathfinder were sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis, police said.

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EPILOGUE

Americans have cause to rejoice that since Sept. 11, 2001, a string of so-called terrorist plots have fizzled or failed as carried out by rank, inept amateurs who may or not be working in association with al-qaeda leaders in the Middle East. If these are secret cells, the members resemble more of the "Gang Who Couldn't Shoot Straight" as wannabe terrorists than the actual cunning of those at work in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan who ply their skills murderously with IED's and car bombs. Those dumb efforts that come to mind are the Christmas Day underwear bomber, shoe bomber Richard Reed, the gang who tried to explode gasoline tanks stored at Kennedy International Airport and the six goons who thought they could overtake a military fortress at Fort Dix, New Jersey. How much longer our luck will hold remains to be seen. Osama bin Laden must be chuckling to himself in some cave or hideout in Pakistan.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer

Clinton: U.S. Has 5,113 Warheads

The Obama administration has a penchant for laying most of its cards on the table, a poker technique many experts would avoid, and they continued this strange game by telling the world we have a nuclear arsenal of 5,113 weapons.

The heretofore stunning announcement by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at an arms proliferation meeting before the United Nations General Assembly shattered a taboo dating back to the Cold War.

"We think it is in our national security interest to be as transparent as we can about the nuclear program of the United States," she told reporters. "We think that builds confidence."

Whether the other nuclear warhead nations such as China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Israel, France and Great Britain, among the most notable, go along with the United States remains to be seen.

Unimpressed was Iran whose puppet leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the only president of all the nations attending the conference. Despite a member of the non-proliferation treaty, Ahmandinejad said nuclear nations are preventing Iran from seeking peaceful uses of atomic energy.

But Ahmadinejad was greeted with a public scolding about his country's secretive nuclear program from the United Nations' top leadership. The comments by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the chief nuclear arms watchdog, Yukiya Amano, constituted an extraordinary rebuke of a head of state in the General Assembly hall.

Jabbing his finger in the air, the Iranian leader began jabbering about the duplicity of UN leaders which was greeted with representatives from the U.S. and other delegations walking out of the session in protest.

The Obama administration debated the efficacy of releasing the arsenal numbers for months in which some intelligence officials worried it would give clues how much plutonium the U.S. had on hand required for nuclear weapons. Clinton and State Department diplomats won that argument.

Clinton noted that reliable private estimates of the stockpile were readily available. That was confirmed with previous estimates by arms-control groups at 4,500. After Clinton's UN speech, the Pentagon issued a fact sheet saying that the number of working U.S. nuclear warheads had plummeted from a peak of 31,255 in 1967. In addition to the functioning weapons, thousands more have been retired and await dismantlement, the Pentagon said. 

The month-long UN conference is a showplace where the Obama administration wants to revise the 40-year-old, 189-nation treaty to address rogue nations such as Iran and North Korea.

It is essentially a bargain: The five initial nuclear powers promise to gradually destroy their stockpiles, while other countries pledge to never develop them. In exchange, the other countries get help on developing peaceful nuclear energy programs, subject to U.N. monitoring. The U.S. has pledged half of the $500 million over a five-year span to help the compliant nations develop peaceful programs run on nuclear energy.,

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EPILOGUE

U.S. conservatives who still cling to a Cold War mentality no doubt will accuse the Obama administration of giving away state secrets. My question to them is isn't 5, 113 atomic warheads of wiping out an aggressor a case of overkill in and of itself? On the other side, does the Obama administration really believe the other countries who hold nuclear missiles will report their arsenals? As I said, the Obama people play poker in a much different way than I learned.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer

Highs, Lows Of Gulf Oil Spill

Unless he can personally reach down and cap the oil leak about a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico waters, President Obama's visit to first hand inspect the impending damage is political show time.

The president flew to the Gulf Coast Sunday 12 days after the oil platform exploded and sank spewing about
210,000 gallons of gaseous crude oil daily with no containment in sight. Certainly, the president has visions of the political relations disaster in his mind after President Bush's administration's slow response to Hurricane Katrina victims.

The Obama administration already is receiving complaints of unpreparedness by some fishermen although most are tepid and fail to recognize that BP, the oil platform operators, not only underestimated the extent of the spillage but were woefully unprepared for such an event as well as reluctantly tardy in seeking federal help.

Some said that not enough booms had been placed in the area, and fishermen noted the growing public concern over contaminated seafood, though they admitted such worries were premature as of Sunday.


Doug Helton, a fisheries biologist who coordinates oil spill responses for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Saturday that more than 600,000 feet of boom had been deployed or was being readied for deployment. He acknowledged that there was just not enough of it to cover the vast shoreline from Louisiana to Florida.

News coverage of the spill has treated Americans to the best of what journalists can offer. Because the leak may not  be plugged for months and spilling at the rate of  210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) daily, it will create an economic Armageddon, impairment to the shipping channel to the Mississippi River and an ecological disaster to Gulf Coast sea creatures and thousands of bird species. The spill is expected to surpass damages of the Exxon Valdez on the pristine Alaska coastline in 1989.

The news is not all scare tactics. Let me point out several of my favorites in understanding the magnitude of this event.

A small nonprofit group called SkyTruth with one paid staffer in West Virginia caught Deepwater Horizon low-balling the spill at 1,000 barrels daily. By analyzing satellite and radar data SkyTruth forced federal and BP officials to revise their estimates to 5,000 barrels. That was on April 22, two days after the fire and explosion that eventually sank the oil platform.

On Saturday, SkyTruth revised its analysis to 25,000 barrels daily and estimated the oil slick the largest oil spill in American history.

Cost Guard Adm. Thad Allen, in charge of the government's response, disputed the data and didn't care what it was, the critical question was how and when the leak would be capped.

John Amos, SkyTruth's president, said his volunteer staff downloads digital imagery from satellites, map-rectifies it and uses National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration standard methods
to extrapolate oil volume in oil spills.

That's keeping them honest.

Mitigating the damage has included efforts by the Coast Guard to collect and burn small areas of slick but all that has accomplished is polluting the air and leaving oil goblets inclined to stick like Super Glue to anything it touches, environmentalists argue.

Rather, BP officials said they were encouraged with preliminary results by saturating the leak source with chemicals to disperse the gaseous oil. The procedure prevents the spill from rising to the Gulf's surface but the deepwater ecological effects on the Gulf's floor is still under study. 

What I found disgusting that before a drop of oil slick reached the Gulf shoreline, teams of lawyers from across the nation landed like vultures in Miami and New Orleans and in days had filed at least 26 federal law suits on behalf of clients they are still recruiting.

The attorneys are advertising for class action clients from commercial fishermen, charter boat captains, resort management companies and individual shoreline property owners in Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Several law suits have been filed on behalf of crew surviving the oil platform brought against Halliburton Inc., BP's services contractor which caused the explosion when capping the well in a process known as cementing.




As dolllar signs dance in their eyes, the attorneys are hoping for successful prosecution that will surpass the record $507.5 million the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately awarded plaintiffs in the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound in Alaska.

"I want the best brief writers. I want the best deposition takers. I want the best lawyers who can work with experts," said Louisiana attorney Daniel Becnel, one of many who have set up committees to screen potential clients and identify the strongest cases.


 Here's the best part.

Because of the Exxon Valdez law suit, Congress passed a law which limits the liability in awarding damages to $75 million and in this instance would apply to BP and its affiliates operating the spill from the Deepwater Horizons Inc. platform.

 It also created the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund by assessing an 8-cent tax per barrel (42 gallons) on petroleum drillers and import and export shippers which they, of course, have passed on to all consumers.

Up to $1 billion of the current $1.6 billion reserve could be used for losses to natural resources such as fisheries and wildlife habitats as well as to local, state and federal cleanup costs. The government can also collect damages from the operators with civil penalties and assessments.


The money is also used to prepare for spills, including anticipatory measures like stockpiling oil containment booms. And Congress can use money from the fund to reimburse the Coast Guard and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration for their spill-related expenses.

It is unknown at this early stage if BP and its affiliates have enough insurance and financial reserves on hand to cover all the anticipated court awarded damages. Either way, the oil companies are required to pay for all cleanup costs, according to the Oil Pollution Act of 1990.


The president is authorized to spend up to $50 million of the fund in any given year to provide instant money for its spill recovery efforts.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer

Obama's Wit As Commander-in-Chief

I will leave the slicing and dicing to more erudite critics of comedy but as an observer of good satire, I thought President Obama was outstanding at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner Saturday night.

Two jokes in particular struck me as quite telling about the man as president and the man as a father of two daughters reaching the dating age.

I'm paraphrasing, but the lead in to his first joke that tickled my funny bone was observing his falling numbers in job performance "but I'm still extremely popular in the land of my birth."

Perfect timing and perfect jab at the idiotic birthers of whom many believe Obama was born in Kenya where he is in deed popular. It is the native country of Barack's father.

Birther crackpots have forced the state of Hawaii where the president was born in 1961 to enact a law this past week allowing state officials to ignore repeated requests from groups seeking verification of his birth records.

The second joke was at the expense of a young musical group in the audience and one that his two daughters are devout fans. As any good father of teenage girls would warn, Obama reminded them he was commander-in-chief and as such has "predatory drones" at his disposal.

I loved it. It is a crack Bill Cosby would have said. And, I know my two brothers and my son who have daughters would loved to have threatened swarmy teenage boys.

Those of you who have read my columns over the years, might recall I shared some personal characteristics of Obama as a young editor of the Harvard Law Review by my cousin who at the time was Obama's law school classmate.

Not only did we get a head's up on Obama's lofty, passive style of leadership, we also learned about his dry, witty, self-deprecating sense of humor.

He demonstrated the first over the first year of his administration and saw first hand of the latter Saturday night. It only is his critics who perform the slap-stick comedy gigs.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer

Rush, The Oil Rig Truther

Rush Limbaugh apparently believes those crazy environmentalists blew up the oil rig that exploded and sank 50 miles off shore in the Gulf of Mexico. This, courtesy of Ezra Klein of the Washington Post.

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. ... Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade, that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they're sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they're sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I'm just noting the timing here.

Cute, Rush. You're timing is perfect. The oil spill will cost billions of dollars in lost economic revenue for the already struggling tourist and fishing businesses along with threatening to kill tens of thousands of wildlife creatures critical to the ecological stability of the Gulf coastline.And, you make a joke of it.


Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer

You Really Want Immigration Reform?

 Senate Democrats with significant input from Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have introduced a broad framework towards immigration reform which in my opinion is a decent step in the right direction but misses its mark by miles that would eliminate the problem in its entirety.

Ezra Klein, the Washington Post columnist who earned high marks for his explanation of complex health and financial reform legislation,  I'm afraid needs more schooling on immigration.

He says the Democratic framework is a simple compromise. The hardliners get increased border security. The reformers get a path to amnesty. The latter does not kick in until eight separate security benchmarks are met. At that point a bipartisan commission will recommend reform that Congress must enact.

The security measures are summarized by Greg Siskind and his pdf can be downloaded here.

Klein interviewed Graham who told him:

"In this environment," Graham said, "what you'd have is bipartisan rejection of immigration. You'd get 75 or 80 votes for the McCain-Kyl [border security] amendment. Then, when you tried to put the pathway to citizenship on the table without a long process of planning and thinking and building support, you'd probably get 60 people voting against it."

Klein does know his politics. The controversy swilling around Arizona's illegal immigrant laws is forcing Washington to take action even though Congress is reluctant. The Republicans, he argues, are defensive because their opposition probably would lose the Latino vote for generations to come.

If Republicans can't formulate a humane position on immigration for 2010, they're likely to poll abysmally with Hispanics come Election Day. And that may offer the necessary spur for them to attempt to solve this issue -- and repair that relationship -- before the 2012 election.

Washington has this misconception that all of the illegal immigrants living and working in the United States -- an estimated 12 million or so -- want amnesty or a path towards citizenship. Wouldn't a better approach be separating those that wish to stay from those who want to return once they have earned enough money to support their families in Mexico or the other countries in Central America and throughout the world.

Those who want to stay and are cleared of criminal records would be identified and set on a long process of paying a fine, back taxes, learn English and wait their turn. It could take 10 years.

Those who don't would be issued work visas for two-year intervals.

Either way, the relatively cheap labor force would be left in tact and Americans can still buy their tomatoes at fair market prices as they have for years.

For any reform to work, national I.D. cards would be required of all U.S. workers just as Social Security cards are required now.

But the most effective way of cutting off the influx of illegal immigrants is sanctioning employers who hire them, including homeowners who hire day laborers. If Arizona can pass Draconian laws, the U.S. can be equally tough by fining first offenders $1,000 for each illegal worker hired and mandatory jail sentences for repeat offenders.

The Reagan administration tried a less Draconian approach in 1986 but failed to have the will to enforce it.

While the politicians spend billions on border security, certainly some of those dollars should be directed at Homeland Security's Immigration and Naturalization section to speed up the visa application process. If migrants pay $3,000 to coyotes (human smugglers) certainly it would be cheaper for them to spend a portion of that to cover the costs for a legal application to gain entry.

Of course, my proposals would not stand a chance in hell passing muster in Congress. It's too simple even though it attacks the problem directly.

Readers comments are welcome as long as they remain civil. We reserve the right to delete any comments that are vulgar, libelous and totally irrelevant to this posting. -- Jer