Profound Obama Gulf Spill Mash Up: Rolling Stone and The New York Times

The Spill, The Scandal and the President
Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone via Fec

&

Add Government to the List of ‘Fat Cats’
Matt Bai
New York Times

Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf
was preceded by ample warnings
yet the administration had ignored them.

[Obama] calibrated his response to the Gulf spill
based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP
and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate…

Instead of cracking down on MMS,
as he had vowed to do even before taking office,
Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency…

He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations…
using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years.

…[Secretary of the Interior] Salazar
put 53 million offshore acres up for lease in the Gulf in his first year alone,
an all-time high…

Salazar did not even ensure that MMS had a written manual
required under Interior’s own rules
for complying with environmental laws…

Scientists were stunned that NOAA,
an agency widely respected for its scientific integrity,
appeared to have been co-opted by the White House spin machine…

…Since 2007…BP has received 760 citations
for “egregious and willful” safety violations
those “committed with plain indifference to or intentional disregard
for employee safety and health.”

The rest of the oil industry combined has received a total of one…

Mr. Obama acknowledged
…in his lone criticism of government’s role in the crisis
that the bureau in charge of monitoring the oil companies
had effectively been colluding with them instead.

…the National Oil and Hazardous Substances Pollution Contingency Plan,
…plainly states that the government must “direct all federal, state or private actions”
to clean up a spill “where a discharge or threat of discharge
poses a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States.”…

…What this means for Mr. Obama is that an anxious populace
is now less likely to see his clash with BP
as an instance of government’s standing up to a venal corporation,
but rather as an instance of both sprawling institutions
having once again failed to protect them.

...75 years ago…a relatively small number of corporations,
oil and coal companies, steel producers, [and] car makers
controlled a vast segment of the work force…

…In recent decades...more and more Americans have gone to work
for smaller or more decentralized employers, or even for themselves,
while government has exploded in size and influence.

(It’s not incidental that the old manufacturing unions,
like the autoworkers and steelworkers,
have been eclipsed in membership and political influence
by those that represent large numbers of government workers.)

…voters perceive both business and government
as part of an interdependent system,
and it is hard for them to separate out the culpability of either.

…today’s…populism…is about the individual versus the institution,
not only business,
but also government and large media and elite universities, too.

…You simply have to fear
that large institutions generally exercise too much power
and too little responsibility…

This new American populism
is why the federal deficit has emerged as a chief concern for voters…
…because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness…

Mr. Obama and his party are probably right to presume
that voters don’t trust…the powerful companies
the president has taken to castigating on a regular basis.

The problem is
that they don’t trust Washington to stand up for them, either.