What A Joke

It's barely worth commenting on Dick Cheney slamming Obama for not responding more boldly over the BP oil spill. It's certainly not surprising that the architect of the Bush Administration's non-action on any issues that concerned the deaths of poor or brown people would be a hypocrite. But the sheer gall of saying this when the whole Bush Administration clearly didn't care about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina because black people weren't going to vote for Republicans is just outstanding.

Ethanol and the Oil Spill

Kobi Abayomi has a useful piece discussing one of the unintended consequences of the BP oil spill--even more momentum for the ethanol industry:

We might have expected losses of oil output from the recent disaster in the Gulf – direct losses from production and indirect increased costs – to place additional pressures upon the fuel supply. We would then expect, in ordinary political terrain, for these pressures to further exacerbate competition among corn for feed stocks, exports and food and corn to ethanol.

This is important. Obama is rightfully (finally!) starting to use the disaster to call for overall energy reform. That's important, but equally vital is how we replace petroleum. Abayomi points out that Obama recently called for a tripling of ethanol production by 2022. This is not useful. Tripling ethanol production means that corn doesn't get used for food. And while Americans' addiction to corn (and farm states' addiction to agricultural subsidies) means we are constantly finding new and often unhealthy ways to consume corn, in Mexico and other poorer corn-centric nations, rising corn prices has real consequences. NAFTA led to the flooding of cheap American corn onto the Mexican market, driving farmers off their land and to the United States. But rising corn prices a couple of years ago as commodity prices skyrocketed and Americans began using corn to fuel their vehicles created a new panic situation in Mexico. People wondered how they would pay for these pricey tortillas, which is another way of saying they wondered how they would eat.

Certainly we need a real energy policy. But relying on ethanol as central to that strategy doesn't help us very much from an environmental or a foreign policy standpoint.

BP Oil Spill Photo of the Day

President Obama examining the effects of the BP oil spill on a Louisiana beach.

BP Oil Spill Photo of the Day

Where's the Dead Animals?

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.”

I guess BP is taking the Bush Administration's lead on media access. If the American people didn't see dead soldiers coming back from Iraq, everything must be going OK, right? Same here. If BP can avoid images of dead dolphins, they may think their public image won't take the long-term hit that Exxon did after 1989. But it's wrong and I don't see why the government is allowing BP to control media access.

The Hypocrisy, It Burns

Even I am amazed at the rampant hypocrisy of Republicans who are demanding widespread government intervention over the oil spill. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, at one-time a supposed leader for the 2012 Republican nomination and a constant yapper about small government, is demanding more activist government intervention. OK, he's the governor of Louisiana and he has to win reelection. So his hypocrisy might make sense. But then there's Minnesota lunatic Michelle Bachmann:

BACHMANN: The administration, they were hands off. They didn’t do anything. Where were the boats that could have been commandeered by the government to be sent into this region to deal with that oil plume as it was coming up in the water and destroying marine life? Nowhere to be found. Why? The administration was hands off on this policy. 

But I thought the federal government was supposed to be so small you could drown it in a bathtub?

What's really going on here of course is that the Teabaggers don't want a small government. What they want is a government that doesn't help black people or the poor. They love big government when it fights wars in random countries, subsidizes home loans for their McMansions, builds their roads, and limits abortion access. With the oil spill, they feel the government should get in there and protect their Pensacola vacations. What's the Redneck Riviera without the Rednecks?

But when the government tries to ensure equal educational opportunities for African-Americans, when it tries to make sure that poor people receive health care, and when it tries to allow gays and lesbians to serve their country on an equal basis, why then it's big government intervention!!!!11!!!

What total hypocrites.