On last night's show, the highly esteemed Rachel Maddow turns her eye to United States government contracts with BP, which tally up to a tune of $837 million -- so far this year.What for? BP has a $9 billion contract with the Defense Department, $2.6 million with the Veterans Affairs Department, $2.2 million with the Transportation Department, not to mention $3 million more with other government agencies.
The segment's a must-see for anyone who's sick and tired of the silence coming from the same corners that are so quick to complain about government spending. What we need are more voices demanding that BP pays, not more voices defending BP's ways.
BP/Deep Horizon oil spill, Madoff, the collapse of the mortgage economy and the great recession, the coal miners who died, what does it all have in common? The lack of effective government monitoring and regulation.
That's the argument Jim Surowiecki makes in his always brilliant and interesting weekly New Yorker column this week. In discussing the Mineral Management Service (MMS), the federal agency responsible for overseeing deep water oil drilling:
M.M.S.’s bad behavior was unusually egregious, but it’s hard to think of a recent disaster in the business world that wasn’t abetted by inept regulation. Mining regulators allowed operators like Massey Energy to flout safety rules. Financial regulators let A.I.G. write more than half a trillion dollars of credit-default protection without making a noise. The S.E.C. failed to spot the frauds at Enron and WorldCom, gave Bernie Madoff a clean bill of health, and decided to let Wall Street investment banks take on obscene amounts of leverage, while other regulators ignored myriad signs of fraud and recklessness in the subprime-mortgage market.
These failures weren’t accidents. They were the all too predictable result of the deregulationary fervor that has gripped Washington in recent years, pushing the message that most regulation is unnecessary at best and downright harmful at worst. The result is that agencies have often been led by people skeptical of their own duties. This gave us the worst of both worlds: too little supervision encouraged corporate recklessness, while the existence of these agencies encouraged public complacency
He's not anti-capitalist or anything, far from it, but he lends credence to the argument that a functioning society needs systems of trust between people (as investors, institutions, partners, etc...), and benefits from a system of quality regulatory services that serve the common good.
All is not well in the Gulf Coast, to put it mildly.
Solutions to coping with the effects of the disastrous oil spill seem all but sidelined as the nation watches effort after effort to staunch the flow of spewing oil fail. We can only hope that the latest attempt -- the containment cap -- will work.
Meanwhile, the workers from coastal communities who made their living in Gulf waters face increasing uncertainty -- over what will happen to their livelihoods, their futures, their families -- and building frustration. America Magazine tells the story of one such man:
[Chris] Nelhig, a fisherman for 36 years, wears a tan visor over a long ponytail. His face is glossy with sweat.
“What’s going on down here, [with regard to the oil spill], I don’t completely understand it yet,” he says. “I can’t get the truth from nobody. Don’t know how long it’s going to last.” His eyes shine, but show his worry. The environmental and economic effects of the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling site off the Gulf Coast more than a month ago are obvious, but what many don’t see are the emotional effects on the fishermen and their families.
Already, local and national charities have sprung into action. And the Jewish community -- and Jewish Funds for Justice are not exception. [Follow the link to read more about JFSJ and other Jewish efforts to help individuals in the affected coastal communities.]
At least he's got a good well paying job, not an easy thing to come by in this economy, and especially not if you are a fisherman in Baratria who's been completely shafted by Deep Horizon, like those at Bayou Keepers, co-led by Tracy Kuhns, one of the Gulf Coast Fellows for Community Transformation.
President Obama just ended his press conference on the Gulf Coast disaster by saying he takes full responsibility for getting it cleaned up. Nice to hear.
In general, I haven't heard much anger directed at Obama the way I think it would have been directed at President Bush over this oil spill.
Thoughts on what that's about or even if it's true? Has Obama been doing a good job handling this?
Got a note today from Tracy Kuhns, one of the organizers we support through our collaboration in the Gulf Coast Fellows for Community Transformation. Tracy works out of Baratria, LA, with coastal and fishing communities, creating good clean energy jobs and economic opportunities for her community:
We got a call today that one of the Shrimpers who has been working the spill the last two weeks in the Gulf. We were told they came in because they were spitting up blood. I haven't been able to confirm this because they haven't gotten home yet. Most of the guys from our community put their boats to work on the oil spill yesterday when the oil started poring into Barataria Bay. We are in desperate need of a community health care center here in Lafitte with an Occupational Medicine Doctor and Nurse as well as a mental health professional, NOW! Most of these guys do not have insurance and will not be able to go to the local doctor.
Her husband wrote a deeply powerful post, over at their new Bayoukeeper site, in part:
