Your modern-day Republican Party, as represented by Bobby Jindal wants to privatize the excellent state employees health insurance fund so that Jindal can spend its significant surplus in other ways. This will hurt state workers, but it's not like Republicans in 2011 could possibly care about that.
And yet another oil rig explodes off the coast of Louisiana. Supposedly, it's not producing at the present. But if it wasn't producing, why would it explode? And we didn't think the first oil rig was that big of a deal for the first week.
Good times in America.
I was asking this very question about the oil spill. After the Exxon Valdez disaster, you saw endless pictures of dead birds and marine life. But with the BP oil spill, we've hardly seen any such pictures. In fact, with my little oil spill photo series, I've been shocked at the paucity of images to choose from. Now we know why. Since BP is in charge of the clean up, they also have the power to control access to public beaches in Louisiana. And they are not granting access to the media.
A CBS News crew was threatened with arrest when it tried to photograph the spill, and a BP representative in Louisiana told a Mother Jones reporter that she couldn’t visit the Elmer’s Island Wildlife Refuge without a BP escort.
On Monday, journalists from the New York Daily News were also “escorted away from a public beach on Elmer’s Island bycops who said they were taking orders from BP.” However, they managed to get a covert tour of the Queen Bess barrier island from a BP contractor who is fed up with the oil company’s attempt to cover up the disaster:
“There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It’s important to me that people know the truth about what’s going on here,” the contractor said.
“The things I’ve seen: They just aren’t right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I’m going to show you what BP never showed the President.” [...]
The grasses by the shore were littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crude.
“When you see some of the things I’ve seen, it would make you sick,” the contractor said. “No living creature should endure that kind of suffering.”
“BP is going to say the deaths of these animals wasn’t oil-related,” the contractor added. “We know the truth. I hope these pictures get to the right people — to someone who can do something.”
Sorry for my lack of blogging for the past two days--I was in New Orleans at a hotel that said it had wireless but then did not. Very irritating.
Anyway, I am going to put up a photo of the BP oil spill every day until the well is shut off. Just to help us all remember this horror.
Worker shoveling oil, Fourchon Beach, Louisiana.
I wrote a lengthy piece at Global Comment on the oil spill. In part, I said:
Now we have the oil spill. This disaster will exacerbate the region’s problems. It will devastate the fishing industry. It could kill millions of birds, some of which are endangered species. Spring is the migration and breeding season and thus the spill’s damage to birds will be more far-reaching than if it happened in December.
But perhaps we can find a silver lining in this catastrophe. American reliance on oil imports means that we can remain ignorant about drilling’s effects. Not since the Santa Barbara, California oil spill of 1969 has a major spill affected the Lower 48 states. That previous incident helped shape the environmental movement that created the first Earth Day in 1970 and a tremendous amount of legislation during the next decade which cleaned up our rivers, air, and soil, placed industries under new regulations, and led to the recovery of many endangered species.
Moreover, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska turned much of the American public against oil drilling in our most beautiful places. Memories of this event and the millions of dead birds, seals, and fish made it impossible for George W. Bush to open Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to drilling. Yet none of this has dampened Americans’ zeal for consuming foreign oil, where we can’t see the consequences.
Perhaps then it is better that the oil spill happened in the United States instead of Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela. A giant spill and subsequent environmental disaster means nothing to most Americans if it happens far away. The oil industry has created ecological and human catastrophes across the world for a century. But we keep driving our vehicles, oblivious to our impact upon the world. Seeing that damage in the form of oil-covered herons and alligators may create a moment for serious reflection of our actions.As they say, read the whole thing and such.
I am sure am glad Obama opened up offshore oil drilling off the Atlantic Coast. What could possibly go wrong?
On the other hand, it's about time Americans saw the cost of their obsession with oil. Unfortunately, like with the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, it will affect one of the nation's most important wildlife habitats, the extremely fragile wetlands of Louisiana. If this happened in Nigeria or Venezuela or Saudi Arabia, no one in America would know. And most wouldn't care if they did.
This week's images will focus on the history of the oil industry.
Oil workers in Louisiana. No date, but probably the 1920s.
Good ol' Louisiana.
Keith Bardwell, Justice of the Peace in Tangipahoa Parish refuses to conduct interracial marriages:
Bardwell said he has discussed the topic with blacks and whites, along with witnessing some interracial marriages. He came to the conclusion that most of black society does not readily accept offspring of such relationships, and neither does white society, he said.
"I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves," Bardwell said. "In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."
If he does an interracial marriage for one couple, he must do the same for all, he said.
"I try to treat everyone equally," he said.
Of all the horrible, awful stories that we've heard about Louisiana in the wake of Katrina over the last three years, but this story is the worst, most disturbing, and most infuriating yet:
after Hurricane Katrina, white vigilante groups patrolled New Orleans, blockaded streets, and shot at least eleven black men. It “was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it,” said one vigilante
Bayou Borbeau Plantation, being run as a Farm Security Administration cooperative, Natchitoches, Louisiana, 1940
Satyam has an awesome post on this and I am openly stealing from it.
Louisiana Republican lawmaker John LaBruzzo, who represents the same district that David Duke once did, supports funding studies to pay poor women $1000 to have their fallopian tubes tied.
Wow. I mean, WOW! And you know damn well that in Louisiana, these "poor people" mean "black people." And he's just willing to admit it:He said he is gathering statistics now. … “What I’m really studying is any and all possibilities that we can reduce the number of people that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare,” he said.
He said his program would be voluntary. It could involve tubal ligation, encouraging other forms of birth control or, to avoid charges of gender discrimination, vasectomies for men. It also could include tax incentives for college-educated, higher-income people to have more children, he said
“The black community will say this is some sort of race-based genocide. And there will be tremendous push back from the ACLU. They'll try to say these people are incapable of making such a decision when their life is in turmoil. That if you're dangling money in front of them, of course they'll make a decision that will affect them negatively. "My argument would be if they’re incapable of making a decision whether to cease reproduction are they capable of raising multiple children to be good citizens? And if they're incapable, maybe Social Services should take their children."
I am utterly disgusted, but not in the least surprised, to hear about the high levels of formaldehyde contamination in FEMA trailers in trailers provided for refugees of Hurricane Katrina.
I am less critical of FEMA than many commentators; I think the problems emanate from the highest reaches of the federal government. But not just from there. They also stem from our own indifference to the poor. A natural disaster is just another event in the news cycle. One week it's a hurricane, the next a school shooting. We see news as entertainment and we need something new to keep us sated. But it takes a long time to fix people's destroyed lives. We don't elect a government that will take the necessary measures to find permanent housing for Katrina refugees. It's 2 1/2 years later and tens of thousands of people are stuck in trailers. Tens of thousands more are scattered to the winds and are struggling as well.
Whenever natural disasters strike in this country, the poor pay the price. As Mike Davis pointed out in his provocative piece, "The Case for Letting Malibu Burn," half the nation rushes to help the wealthy movie stars of Malibu when fire strikes but no one could care less when fires break out in the horrific tenement housing of downtown Los Angeles. It's the same in New Orleans. Corporations, especially casinos, received a massive influx of money after Katrina and Rita and the poor are breathing in formaldehyde.
As a country, we have an out of sight, out of mind mentality. We didn't care about the poor of New Orleans before the hurricane. Then the storm struck and they were in our sight and we were supposedly horrified at their plight. Then we forgot them by the end of 2005. It's 2008 and we keep forgetting.
Sarah J has more.
