President Barack Obama and Congressional leaders spent this week trying to stand up to the oil industry. In the wake of the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Obama pushed BP to siphon $20 billion into a escrow fund that will cover liability claims, and Congress grilled BP CEO Tony Hayward and other oil bigwigs as to how they were protecting the country's coastal waters.
While these developments are promising, mopping up the current crisis and guarding against future incidents will take more momentum than a speech, a meeting, or a few hearings can deliver.
$20 billion
BP's escrow fund indicates that the company is willing to take some responsibility for the damage this spill has visited on the Gulf Coast. But not everyone in Washington is pleased with the fund. As TPMDC's Eric Kleefeld writes, "some Republicans have come out strongly against it-with the sum total of charges being that it will turn into a political slush fund procured through dirty Chicago thug tactics that will be paid out to ACORN."
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) became the poster boy for this sentiment when, at a Thursday hearing, he apologized to BP for the president's actions. TPM sheds some light on the Congressman's possible motivation. It seems Barton might have his own interests at heart, not the needs of the spill's victims (or of the Republican Party-by the end of the day, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) forced Barton to retract his apology).
"Barton's number one career campaign contributor, Anadarko Petroleum, has 25% ownership in the well where the April 20 rig explosion occurred," Justin Elliott writes. "The firm, which has given Barton $146,500 over the years, has been sent a bill by BP for cleanup costs."
Clean-up coasting
As far as the clean-up efforts, Mother Jones' Mac McClelland reports that the company is not doing all it can for Elmer's Island Wildlife Refuge. McClelland talked to one clean up worker who said:
"They're up to 120 guys on Elmer's now, but I can't see any considerable difference. They're only working five sites and it's eight miles of beach. No one seems concerned about cleaning it up. The contractors are getting their money; they don't care. They've got all these people out there, but they're not accomplishing anything."
So far it doesn't seem like BP-or the oil industry-is learning from these failures, either. Also at Mother Jones, Kate Sheppard reports that as bad as BP's clean up response has been, at this week's hearing, the public "got a glimpse of how ridiculous it was on paper." The clean up plan, Sheppard writes, referenced a deceased sea turtle expert and ways to protect walruses and sea lions, which do not live in the Gulf Coast.
"It gets even worse," Sheppard says. "The other four oil giants are using almost the exact same plans."
The next disaster?
BP, at least, needs solid disaster plans, and not just for spills like the one in the Gulf. As Truthout reports, the Deepwater Horizon site isn't the only BP project that poses a safety risk. In Alaska, the Prudhoe Bay oilfield is host to "a long list of safety issues that have not been adequately addressed," reporter Jason Leopold writes. Marc Kovac, a BP employee, told him:
"The condition of the [Prudhoe Bay] field is a lot worse and in my opinion a lot more dangerous. We still have hundreds of miles of rotting pipe ready to break that needs to be replaced. We are totally unprepared for a large spill."
More energy disasters
These sorts of dangers are not limited to BP's operations or the oil industry. As Forrest Whittaker writes for The Texas Observer, "In the past three months, each of the three major fossil fuels-coal, oil and natural gas-has had its own Kaboom! moment. It's almost like Mother Nature is trying to tell us something about our energy policy."
In addition to the BP spill, Whittaker is thinking of the Upper Big Branch coal mine explosion in April, and two more recent blowups of natural gas wells in Texas.
"On June 7, workers struck a 36-inch gas pipeline near Cleburne, causing a massive eruption of flames seen miles away," he writes. "One worker was killed, and eight others were severely injured. An eyewitness described the heat from 300 yards away as "unbearable." The next day, another pipeline explosion in the Panhandle killed two workers when their bulldozer punctured another gas pipeline."
GritTV reports on yet another oil spill-this one in Utah, where a hole in a Chevron pipeline starting pouring thousands of gallons of oil into a Salt Lake City creek a week ago.
"Oil is a messy business, even when it's legal," filmmaker Joe Berlinger tells GritTV's Laura Flanders.
Colorado drilling
In Colorado, on-shore drilling is most definitely legal, and BP is looking to restart natural gas drilling there, the Colorado Independent reports.
"[BP] found the jackpot," Josh Joswick, a Colorado organizer, said. "Not only are they on top of the most productive coal-bed methane field in the United States, they are paying next to nothing compared to what they would be paying elsewhere."
The BP disaster in the Gulf is resonating here, too. "Several much smaller incidents in Colorado and neighboring states are quietly highlighting the need for increased onshore oil and gas drilling regulation," the Colorado Independent's David O. Williams writes.
There is an opportunity right now for lawmakers at the federal and state level to push for real reform; it's not clear yet that anyone's jumping at that chance.
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A lot of big stories percolating out there. The oil spill continues to be an unmitigated disaster. Elena Kagan is Obama's Supreme Court nominee, and the Republicans are upset that she is against slavery (you gotta love these guys' historical consistency, not to mention their political bravery. I mean, who else has the guts these days to be pro-slavery). The financial reform bill goes into its second week of debate, with tons of interesting amendment fights yet to come. No one can figure out if the Greek/Euro crisis is really beginning to be solved or whether the contagion will start spreading. The war in Afghanistan is back in the news with big talks scheduled for the next couple of days.
With all this going on, no one is noticing the political goings-on in the quiet little state of Utah over the weekend. Trust me, though: it's big news. Robert Bennett won't be on the Republican primary ballot. And Jim Matheson will be having a primary. Incumbents of all parties, all political persuasions, all regions and states are in trouble.
Even a lot of people who follow politics closely haven't heard of these two incumbent elected officials from Utah. Neither one of them is especially visible outside of their small, out-of-the-way state. Neither of them is in a major leadership role in Congress, or has played a central role on the biggest issues in recent years. Neither has been on the national political radar screen for being in a competitive re-election race in recent years.
One of them is a conservative Republican Senator, one is a moderate Democratic House member. They both got very unpleasant news via their parties' respective weekend conventions. Bennett, after voting as a loyal conservative Republican Senator for 18 years, got summarily dumped from the primary ballot. He not only wasn't popular enough among Republican activists to get first place in the voting, he wasn't popular enough to get second place, either, so he's out. Keep in mind when pondering this that Bennett is as solidly and loyally conservative a Senator as there is. He didn't hug Barack Obama, or support him- or even flirt with supporting him- on the stimulus bill, the health care bill, or anything else. Bennett is a 98%, true to the bone conservative. But that wasn't enough to protect him from the insurgent uprising in his party.
Matheson is more of a moderate. He has taken more votes to upset the liberal base, but in Utah that base isn't so huge, and he has never had anyone threaten a primary before. To the entire party establishment's great surprise, he failed to get 60% of his convention vote and now finds himself in a primary fight.
One of them is a conservative Republican who has done nothing serious to tick off his base. One of them is a moderate Democrat in a state where there aren't that many progressive base Democrats to tick off. But they both find themselves in trouble. Just like Gov. Crist starting his campaign for Senate as the overwhelming favorite and now is bounced out of the Republican primary, just as Arlen Specter- who has been Senator for a very long time and whose party switching act won him the fervent support of Obama, Biden, Gov. Rendell, and every other establishment politician- is suddenly trailing insurgent challenger Joe Sestak in the polls. Just as Chuck Grassley in Iowa has had a 75% approval rating for the last 30 years, and is now in the 40s
Incumbents in both parties are in trouble for one simple reason: the jobs aren't coming back and the perception among voters is that the incumbents aren't doing anything about it. While there are some encouraging signs on the economy, the official unemployment rate went up to 9.9% last week, and if you add in everything that you should (including farm and self-employed workers, those too discouraged to look for jobs, those who are part-time by necessity not choice) the real unemployment rate is 18.9% and went up by .2% last month. As long as the jobs picture is that weak, the economy overall is very weak too. Very few people are feeling the effects of the GDP growth that has elites proclaiming an improving economy. Check out this new ad by a coalition of unemployed workers organized by the Machinists Union: it isn't supporting or opposing any particular politician or party, it just makes clear that those without jobs are pissed.
Most working families in this country are still hurting, and are still scared there are more economic problems yet to come. They don't think either party cares about them or is fighting for them. As long as that is the case, incumbents of both parties are going to keep getting into political trouble.
[Note]: I wrote the following before late-breaking news that the prospective Utah law has been pulled under mounting pressure. The points still stand--stronger than ever, in fact.
As Brian Elroy McKinley explains at great length,, while the Bible contains a small handful of passages that anti-abortion activists mis-interpret to read as indicating that abortion is murder, there are other passages indicating that it can be blessing, such as Ecclesiastes 6:3-5 :
If a man fathers a hundred children and lives many years, however many they be, but his soul is not satisfied with good things, and he does not even have a proper burial, then I say, `Better the miscarriage than he, for it comes in futility and goes into obscurity; and its name is covered in obscurity. It never sees the sun and it never knows anything; it is better off than he.'
Or Ecclesiastes 4:1-3:
Then I looked again at all the acts of oppression which were being done under the sun. And behold I saw the tears of the oppressed and that they had no one to comfort them; and on the side of their oppressors was power, but they had no one to comfort them. So I congratulated the dead who are already dead more than the living who are still living. But better off than both of them is the one who has never existed, who has never seen the evil activity that is done under the sun.
But there's one Bible passage that's clearly beyond philosophical disputation, because it states clearly that the penalty for causing a fetus to die is not the penalty for murder. Indeed, it is not a criminal penalty at all, but only a civil tort, according to Exodus 21:22-25:
If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.
Comes now the State of Utah to pass a most anti-Biblical, anti-Christian law, making a women criminally liable for causing her own miscarriage. As Karen McCreary, Executive Director, ACLU of Utah, explains at Feministing:
By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/ Democratic candidates in Utah must feel as if they're facing an impossible task. The state is often considered the most far-right Republican stronghold in the United States. Winning Utah is akin to slaying a mighty dragon with only a bow as one's chosen weapon.
Like all dragons, however, Utah has a weak spot. The year 2012 may be a ripe time for Obama to shoot an arrow through it.
One of the country's most contentious voting rights issues came back into the spotlight last Thursday when an Indiana court struck down the state's strict photo voter ID law as unconstitutional. The law, which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008, was found be in violation of the Indiana Constitution because it treated voters unequally.
Access to voter registration continues to be an issue in the U.S. where only 71 percent of the voting eligible population is registered to vote. With young, low income, and minority citizens lagging behind in voter registration and participation, this fraction of registered voters only represents a skewed picture of the American people.
This week's roundup covers some state immigration news and a few book reviews.
The Migration Policy Institute released a policy paper on making U.S. immigration policy more responsive to changing economic and labor conditions while protecting workers' rights. MPI Senior Fellow and former Commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service Doris Meissner stated, "The current economic crisis brings into stark relief the inflexibility of the U.S. immigration system in comparison with the highly dynamic and constantly evolving global economy. Now, more than ever, the United States needs an immigration system that better serves U.S. economic and social interests by being sensitive to economic fluctuations, both up and down." The report can be found here (PDF).
In Rhode Island, lawmakers are considering a bill to require private companies to use E-Verify to check employees' immigration status. Immigration advocates argue that the system is flawed and discriminates against minority candidates.
As several states enter critical phases in their legislative sessions, the debate for one of the most controversial election reforms continues to dominate headlines and legislative hearings. This year, more than 26 states introduced legislation to go above and beyond federal election law relating to voter ID, despite near consensus among voting rights advocates that it hurts the process far more than it helps. Last week, the hysteria around voter ID reached an all time high in six states, evoking public concern from advocates and citizens alike.
On Tuesday, Utah Democrats were surprised by something many of you may take for granted, but for us was a sure sign that at least one of our congressional candidates "got it."
Via a press release, we learned that Morgan Bowen (Democratic Candidate for UT-1) had announced that if he had been a member of Utah's federal delegation, he would have voted against any bill that encouraged granting retro-active immunity for Telco's. This was huge news for any Democrat in the state, let alone the underdog of the underdogs, so surrounded by Republicans parroting Bush's every word. But the real story behind Bowen's press release is a much grander tale than a simple announcement to local media.
That may be something we all are used to hearing about a Democratic candidate in other states, but here in Utah, this is truly a first. We have but one Democrat in our federal delegation, and on FISA, Matheson has proven himself a true Bush Dog. Now it appears a new candidate is ready to step up and show true leadership on a key issue.
Morgan is the Democratic candidate for Utah's first congressional district, a seat currently held by school voucher supporting, "drill here, drill now" parroting, warrantless wiretap backing Rob Bishop. In addition to the 2/1 odds Morgan faces unseating the corporate funded incumbent, he also faces a battle with in-state leadership as a result of Rep. Jim Matheson, our only sitting Democrat, and faithful Blue Dog.
When I took a leave of absence from my job in Washington in 2000 to work in the Montana Senate race, I didn't have much clue what I was in for. Growing up on the East Coast, I thought of the Intermountain West as a huge, far-off, mysterious place of square states and cattle herds - and like many people on the coasts, I didn't know much else.
In the years since that first campaign, I have been working in and reporting on the West, telling people what I say in my new nationally syndicated newspaper column today: That this region is the most politically misunderstood place in America.
Utah media entrepreneur and popular progressive blogger JM Bell has turned to Utah bloggers to draw more attention and support for short-handed Utah Marines in their Toys for Tots program this holiday season.
The Marines have taken ownership of Toys for Tots for 60 years nationally, and 30 years in Utah. Each year the Marine Corps, local media, business, and many volunteers work together on this program. From grocery stores to radio stations, many help to create excitement and offer locations for donation drops, but traditionally the bulk of the work collecting and distributing for the program has fallen on the Marine Corps.
And as Bell has written, local media has not given credit where credit is due. [...]
Living in Utah is rough for a liberal. Our state has the distinction of being one of the most conservative in the country, and depending on where you live or work, this reputation is certainly warranted. But in Salt Lake City where a majority of the residents are Democrats (65% according to one report), we take pride in the fact that we're not like the rest of the state. Yet there are still those with overbearingly conservative coworkers, neighbors, and family members, and Drinking Liberally provides a great place to gather with others that prefer sanity and reason.
A significant portion of Salt Lake City's Drinking Liberally members are from out of state, and even though Salt Lake is an anomaly politically, we're still bound by state laws that make for a good deal of culture shock for those that have just moved here. What *is* the deal with those private clubs?
While the rest of the state gives President Bush his highest approval ratings, Salt Lakers come together in droves to support peace rallies and wave their signs in disapproval of the President and the war. Where there's a large peace rally in Salt Lake City, Mayor Rocky Anderson is bound to be there. And when he's there to speak, you can bet that there will be hundreds of people there just to hear what he has to say. Rocky's message is always powerful, always right to the point. Sure, sometimes he'll say things even Democrats don't like to hear - maybe he'll single out a position their favorite candidate took, or slam a sitting legislator who some Democrats look up to. But by and large, Rocky is a focus point for liberals in Utah - a leader, activist, concerned citizen, even a folk hero.
That's why when Rocky told us that he couldn't think of a better group than Drinking Liberally with which to share some thoughts, our group was very excited. Rocky's first visit to Drinking Liberally was standing-room only in the back room of the Piper Down Pub where we meet, so this time the owner of the bar offered to open the whole bar for his visit. Even a massive snowstorm couldn't keep the bar from filling up with liberals, including some notable local Democrats.
"To me, it's a very clear view of the Republican agenda, said former [Department of Justice Civil Rights Division] Voting Section Chief, Joe Rich. "The GOP agenda is to make it harder to vote. You purge voters. You don't register voters. This is ripe for partisan decision making. You pick the states where you go after Democrats."
We got a bunch of coverage for the Bush Dog Democrat campaign, and I'll go into reactions on Monday and what they mean. Let's just say the top two concern trolls were Fox News and their right-wing blogospheric toenail clippings, and anonymous Democratic senior strategists in the Politico (which did write a good article on the campaign).
UPDATE:Archpundit, a terrific and experienced Illinois blogger and activist, has some interesting things to say about Bush Dog Democrats Melissa Bean and Dan Lipinski. Larry is more politically cautious than I am, and tends to situate his politics in much less ideological and much more partisan terms. It's a useful creative tension, and he's a Bean supporter (I am not). Here's his read.
In the case of IL-8 we aren't likely to get a full throated progressive, but it's a significant problem that Bean has voted for issues trying to appear moderate that do not have the support of the political center even in her district. More than that, the 38 people Matt list are mostly in Republican leaning Districts, but even these votes aren't in the center of these Districts-they are well to the right.
With Bean this is especially relevant. It's true that her district is more concerned with taxes and budgetary issues than many others, but neither the bankruptcy bill nor the FISA changes are popular. They do get the attention of the Tribune which Bean uses to demonstrate she is a 'moderate' and so she ends up seeking their approval on everything. She's not going to change the triangulation pattern-it's a winning strategy in that District, but I think she can be moved towards targeting different issues that aren't nearly as destructive as these. In other cases, we just need to take people out-like Lipinski who is in a 59% Kerry District and votes horribly on just about everything.
However, in the case of Bean and presumably her consultants, we need her to be a strong voice for basic Constitutional Protections-protections gutted by the new version of FISA. We need her to not be voting for a bill that makes those in financial trouble because of sickness or the loss of a job even more vulnerable. We need her to stand up against torture. We need her to stand up against an incredibly unpopular President who not only got us into an unnecessary war, but continues to epically mismanage the war. When she does support such policies, she undermines the reason for Democratic control of Congress and the Presidency, but also, and more importantly, the country.
In a District like Illinois 8 I would never advocate a Democrat try and be Jan Schakowsky. I'll give them slack on tax and budgetary issues. I'll give them some slack on social issues to some degree. I'll give them slack on trade to some degree. But I won't give them slack on issues of fundamental fairness and Constitutional Rights. These are winning issues in all, but the very most conservative areas and even IL-8 isn't that conservative.
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