ENVIRONMENT BP's Credibility Gap Six weeks ago, BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig located nearly 40 miles off the Louisiana coast exploded and sank, killing 11 workers. Since then, 20 to 100 million gallons of oil have spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, soaking Gulf Coast shoreline with crude, killing thousands of wildlife, endangering public health, and unleashing untold environmental and economic damage in the region. At the same time, BP is doing everything in its power to mislead the public about the realities of the spill -- from wildly underestimating the amount of oil that has leaked into the Gulf, to denying media outlets access to report on the scene. Last week, President Obama acknowledged BP's credibility gap. "I think it is a legitimate concern to question whether BP's interests in being fully forthcoming about the extent of the damage is aligned with the public interest," he said, adding, "Their interest may be to minimize the damage and, to the extent that they have better information than anybody else, to not be fully forthcoming." Now, the White House is stepping up its public criticism. Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the Justice Department has launched criminal and civil investigations into the spill. But BP's lack of public trust requires the Obama administration to do more, including taking over management of what has become the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
BP'S DECEPTION GAME: While numerous attempts to stop the leak have failed, in the meantime, BP is trying to bolster its public image, even hiring Vice President Cheney's former press secretary to help out the effort. But the facts don't favor the British oil giant. Scientists from several universities have independently identified "plumes of what appears to be oil far from the site of BP's leaking wellhead" based on "video images and initial observations of water samples taken in the Gulf over the last several weeks." Yet on Sunday, BP CEO Tony Hayward -- who had initially said the oil spill's impact would be "very, very modest" -- denied those reports. "The oil is on the surface," he said. "There aren't any plumes." Experts criticized Hayward's remarks. "There's been enough evidence from enough different sources," said marine scientist James Cowan of Louisiana State University. Other top BP executives have tried to minimize the scale of the disaster or just feign ignorance. "It's almost impossible to get a precise number" of barrels leaking in the Gulf, said BP COO Doug Suttles. Even before the rig explosion, BP lobbied federal officials to expand drilling without conducting environmental impact analyses. But in addition to its damage control and deception operations since the oil leak began, reports have surfaced that BP has not provided adequate protective equipment for clean up workers and that the company is trying to cover-up evidence. As such, BP has lost the public's trust. Seventy-six percent of Americans disapprove of how the company is handling the spill. Even Fox News hosts have lost confidence. "We can't trust BP," one anchor said. And at the same time, the enormous impact of the oil spill seems to be an inconvenience for Hayward. "I would like my life back," he said on Sunday.
WHITE HOUSE ACTION: The Obama administration has begun to publicly acknowledge that its confidence in BP to handle the spill has eroded. In addition to the President's remarks last week, his top energy adviser Carol Browner noted on Sunday what BP is trying to do. "It is important for people to understand BP has a vested financial interest in downplaying the size of this," she said. Moreover, after frustrations with BP's lack of transparency, the administration recently decided that Admiral Thad Allen, national incident commander for the spill, will be giving solo daily press briefings -- without BP executives -- in order to "give the government's response a reassuring, authoritative face." And in launching criminal and civil investigations, the White House has indicated that it is serious about holding BP, and other companies involved, accountable for the disaster. "We will prosecute, to the fullest extent of the law, anyone who has violated the law," Holder said yesterday. Obama vowed "full and rigorous accounting" of the causes of the oil spill. BP -- which lost 15 percent of its market value during yesterday's trading -- has previously been implicated in accidents that involved the company ignoring safety violations in order to cut costs. In 2005 at a refinery in Texas City, TX, 15 BP employees died and 170 were injured after a unit that manufactured jet fuel exploded. A panel led by former Secretary of State James Baker III concluded that BP had a "false sense of confidence" about safety. And in 2006, BP pleaded guilty to criminal negligence and paid a $20 million fine after one of its pipelines in Alaska burst, spilling hundreds of thousands of heavy crude. The DOJ investigation comes on top of the Minerals Management Service-Coast Guard investigation, the work of the independent Presidential commission, and several oversight investigations by Congress.
FEDERAL TAKE-OVER: The White House has argued that BP remains in charge of attempts to stop the oil leak because the government does not have the equipment, nor expertise, to solve this engineering problem without BP. Yet at the same time, given BP's feeble credibility, the Obama administration does not need to keep trusting BP's management to handle the crisis. As the Wonk Room's Brad Johnson noted, "If federal officials believe that BP engineers should continue to work on the problem, the President has the authority to have those people working directly for the federal government." In fact, legal code allows the President to "direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove [a] discharge" of oil or hazardous waste "by whatever means available." Moreover, Johnson and Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy highlight a number of ways the federal government can take control of the situation, which include taking over onshore coastal recovery and disaster response, barring BP from new federal contracts, and taking the lead on surface-water recovery and maritime disaster response. Johnson and Kenworthy note that "the National Guard should be fully deployed under the control of each state's governor, with Army units if necessary."
HEALTH CARE -- POLL FINDS INCREASING NUMBER OF AMERICANS OPPOSING REPEAL OF HEALTH CARE LAW: Just days after Republicans released their third "bill" to repeal the health care law, a new 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll found that "given the option to name the sections of the healthcare law they would most like to see the GOP repeal, 42 percent [of Americans] said they would leave the bill alone and repeal no parts." Polling for the new health care law doesn't show the kind of "bump" Democrats had expected, but the numbers are slowly improving. For instance, according to a May 2010 Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 55 percent of Americans said health reform should have a chance to work, versus 42 percent who said repeal and start over. Just 17 percent thought the health reform bill "would make things better, 36 percent said health care would get worse and 37 percent said it would stay the same." "In April 2009, those numbers were 22 percent, 24 percent and 29 percent respectively." Just as Americans are turning against repeal, business groups are showing reluctance to support the conservative agenda. Last month, the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) -- a conservative group aligned with Republican interests -- surprised other business organizations when it joined a state-based lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of health care reform. Immediately after the announcement, business groups of various sizes and ideological persuasions distanced themselves from the lawsuit. "At this time, we have no plans to" join the lawsuit, a representative of the National Association of Manufacturers told The Hill. The Chamber of Commerce also said it would not join the suit and would instead pursue an "aggressive strategy of battling the regulations" of reform. The NFIB is having a hard time persuading smaller, state-based business groups to join their effort. As one article from New Jersey notes, small business groups seem weary of the lawsuit.
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President Obama may recess appoint "a handful of pending nominees" during the Memorial Day congressional recess, an aide told Roll Call. There is a record-breaking backlog of "more than 100 names" awaiting confirmation, and their outlook "appears grim for the rest of the year" as the Senate calendar is packed. The Florida panhandle could be hit by oil from BP's Gulf spill for the first time today. An oil sheen likely caused by the accident was reported less than 10 miles off Pensacola Beach. "The spill's arrival coincides with the beginning of the Panhandle's summer tourism season, which normally brings millions of dollars to the region." Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) lost his state's "Democratic gubernatorial primary Tuesday, ending his bid to become the first African-American to hold Alabama's top job." Many speculated that Davis voted against the recent health care reform to boost his prospects for the gubernatorial race. Party-switching Rep. Parker Griffith (R-AL) lost 51 percent to 33 percent yesterday to Madison County Commissioner Mo Brooks, becoming "the fourth congressional incumbent this year to be defeated in a primary, losing decisively in his first test before voters in his new party." GOP leaders in Washington supported Griffith, but local GOP leaders didn't embrace him when he switched parties in 2009. "The projected cost of Lockheed Martin Corp.'s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, the most expensive U.S. weapons program, is now $382 billion, 65 percent higher than the $232 billion estimated when the program started in 2002," one government official said. The production of a single F-35 is now projected at $92.4 million. The New York Times reports that "at least a half-dozen cash-poor states are now delaying their tax refund checks." As a consequence of the economic downturn and a severe budget crunch, "many state governments are as overextended as their residents" and finding themselves without enough money to pay their bills. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer (R) will meet President Obama at the White House this week, where she says she "intends to press the issue of border security." A White House official confirmed to Reuters that the meeting will take place on Thursday. And finally: So far unsuccessful at figuring out how to stop the BP Gulf of Mexico oil spill, federal officials are turning to film director James Cameron for ideas.
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"There [is] no humanitarian crisis [in Gaza]."
-- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, 6/01/10
VERSUS
"According to UN statistics, around 70% of Gazans live on less than $1 a day, 75% rely on food aid and 60% have no daily access to water."
-- The Guardian, 5/31/10
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