Environmental Terrorism

…Day 41

And still not one of the terrorists responsible for the deaths of eleven people and the pollution and destruction of the Gulf of Mexico environment have been arrested. The CEOs and other officers of British Petroleum, Halliburton and Transocean still walk free, safe in the knowledge that money can buy them freedom from prosecution and that an ineffective and gutless U.S. government prefers to give little more than lip-service to the victims of the these crimes, coddle millionaires and multi-national corporations and ignore their responsibility to seize these company’s corporate assets and bring these people to justice for their crimes.

The Joe Sestak Non-Story

What happened? The usual pre-election political chess moves, that’s all. Rahm Emanuel asked President Bill Clinton to ask Joe Sestak if he would consider taking a post with the White House and abandon his run against Senator Arlen Specter during the Democratic primary. Joe Sestak politely declined. End of story. No scandal, no wrong-doing, nothing criminal.

Of course the Republicans want to try to make this non-issue a big deal because they have no ideas of their own, nothing positive to offer the American people; nothing to offer except obstructionism, hate, whining and anti-President Obama sour grapes garbage.

Move along folks, nothing to see here pertaining to the White House and Sestak no matter what Representative Darrell Issa (Lying, knee-jerk reactionary Republican from California) says about it.

Note to Darrell Issa: The rest of us are kind of busy right now trying to clean up a big oil mess you and your Republican mega-multi-national drill-baby-drill friends in the oil industry were responsible for in the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe you should shut your mouth, turn on your television and get with the program. The catastrophe in the Gulf is important. Your whining about nothing isn’t.

To Solve A Problem You Must First Be Able To Identify It

MSNBC is spending much of their day today ‘discussing’ the ‘immigration’ problem in the United States but they cannot (or will not) get their facts straight and are constantly mixing the problem of illegal immigration with the non-problem of legal immigration. That’s a mistake and I think it is intentional; a purposeful deception in order to skew the discussion in favor of the criminal activity called illegal immigration.

As an example, they just ran a segment showing a Mexican woman (in this country illegally) who was arrested along with over 300 other illegal immigrants working at an American business. The business shut down after the bust. In the MSNBC interview the mayor of the town lamented about loss of income, taxes, etc. since the closing. MSNBC, in a lame attempt to show how wrong it is to blame illegal immigrants for hurting a community, then switched to an example in New Jersey where a town has a large population of Koreans. MSNBC touted the prosperity of that town saying basically, “See. Immigrants help communities to prosper.” The difference is the New Jersey immigrants were legal. Apples and Oranges. A dishonest comparison by MSNBC.

MSNBC and other networks have used this dishonest approach before and given broadcast time over to illegal immigrant apologists from both Mexico and from numerous ‘spokesmen’ for the Mexican and Latino community in the U.S.A. All complain about the border fence, the Arizona law and the Constitutional requirement to secure our borders. They rail against the Border Patrol, the police, the American military and the fact that this country actually arrests illegal immigrants. This is exactly like having lawyers on television representing bank robbers complaining about laws prohibiting bank robbery and whining about the bank having alarms, locks, security cameras, armed guards and a police force that will come and arrest their criminal clients.

Want to talk about how to solve problems that may exist in the legal immigration arena? Great. Want to talk about how to solve the illegal immigration problem? Great. But be honest and keep the two separate problems separate. They are not the same.

Seize Their Assets

Arrest Their Corporate Officers

More than a month has passed and still no end in sight for the criminal disaster in the Gulf of Mexico caused by British Petroleum. Enough already, President Obama. Time to show the world we are serious. Time to seize all assets of British Petroleum and arrest their corporate officers. Don’t tell us you can’t do it, Mr. President. You can. You have given yourself the authority to have American citizens assassinated on your orders if you even ‘think’ they might be terrorists--no trial, no judge, no jury, no legal procedure. No concern for the law.

Seizing BPs assets is easy. Do it. Don’t sit and wait and hope that somehow BP will follow through on their ‘promise’ to clean up the disaster they caused with their environmental terrorist actions. They also ‘promised’ they had all plans in place to handle a problem with deep water drilling should an emergency occur. They lied. They will lie again to save their money. They will renege on paying for the disaster they caused. They have a proven track record of lying for personal, corporate gain. The Environment Protection Agency ordered BP to stop spraying the deadly dispersant in our oceans; BP said no. They don’t care about our laws, about the environment or about the world we live in. They care only about their bottom line. Time to make their bottom line ours. While you are moving against BP, you must have our Justice Department arrest the members of our government’s Office of Mines and Minerals who were bribed by BP, who skirted required environmental impact studies and safety concerns to expedite the drilling permit for BP. Arrest and prosecute them all.

You must do these things immediately, Mr. President, because doing anything less tells us you don’t care or are too incompetent to lead this country during times of great catastrophe. The people don’t see you moving to solve this disaster. They want you to solve it. They want you to take action against the perpetrators of this nightmare, not coddle them. We do not want you, nor should you, give these environmental terrorists any leniency.

Move now, Mr. President. Now, today, this very moment you must initiate these actions against those responsible. You must do these things to prove effective leadership, show the American people and the world you have the guts to lead. Sadly, right now you are doing a very good imitation of a disconnected, unconcerned and ineffective George W. Bush and, with all due respect Mr. President, that is not acceptable.

Gulf Oil Catastrophe

…British Petroleum: Corporate Criminals

After the costly examples of unregulated/self-regulated banksters on Wall Street stealing billions from our Treasury and the criminal mine owners who put profits before human life, you’d think we would collectively learn the lessons of how horrible it is to allow corporations to self-regulate and government regulatory agencies to turn a blind eye to the outrageous and criminal behavior of the very businesses they are mandated to oversee.

Still think the ‘no government’ or ‘small government’ or ‘libertarian government’ or ‘drill baby drill corporatist no-regulation-on-business government’ ideologues are on the correct side of the issue? You still believe corporations have our best interest at heart? If you think that, you are wrong. So. Very. Wrong.

Look at the oily, murderous catastrophe that is spreading throughout the Gulf of Mexico, onto our beaches and wetlands and into the world’s oceans. Witness the horrific consequences of no government oversight, no effective regulation of out-of-control greedy capitalists and no real prosecution of corporations for the crimes they commit. Look at this preventable, criminal corporatist disaster. It is the essence of corporate environmental terrorism.

Surgery Was Successful

Thanks to a skilled professional medical team I’m back with about 98% vision restored to my right eye. The surgery took just over an hour to complete. The recovery—complete with eye patch and medication four times a day for four weeks—went well. The most challenging part for me during the recovery period was the specific requirement to sleep either sitting up with my chin on my chest or sleeping on my right side only (I generally sleep on my left side or back). I will be wearing prescription glasses forever but compared with the alternative of no vision in that eye, I’ve got no room for regret or complaint and I have neither. It is still possible that at some point in the future I could again lose sight in this eye but for now, it has been restored. I can’t say enough great things about my doctor, his team and the administrative folks at the medical center who helped make this happen. They were all great. Bravo for education, training, intelligence and the science of medicine.

Thanks and great appreciation to all those who posted kind thoughts for me, sent me emails of encouragement and continued to visit this site during my absence. You all are great. Thank you.

Now, back to Tin Can Tabloid’s regularly scheduled postings.