Demanding a Refund for Florida Oil Study

"Oil spills from offshore exploration, development, production and the transportation associated with these activities are unlikely to present a major risk to Florida."

-- Florida Gulf Coast Oil and Gas Risk Assessment, April 9, 2010
-- Phil Ellis, CEO, Structured Risk Solutions, London, England
Ordered by Florida House Speaker Dean Cannon (R-Winter Park, FL)Paid for by Florida taxpayers

Just a week and a half before the BP oil disaster, the Republican majority in the Florida Legislature paid $200,000 in taxpayer money to commission a 'drill-baby-drill' report. The report found "minimal risks in drilling off Florida's coasts."

Would you be surprised to learn the money went to a British firm called The Willis Group? You can read the full text of the laughably incompetent report here. You also can print it out as a fisher-wrapper to hold the tarballs and dead, oil-befouled fish you'll be picking up off Pensacola Beach for years to come.

Governor Crist, whom the crazed Florida Republican Party has abandoned because he wasn't stupid enough for them, should demand a refund. Especially since just two months beforehand the Collins Center for Public Policy, a home-grown Florida think tank, had given the Legislature for free a much more complete and balanced report. ["Potential Impacts of Oil and Gas Explorations in the Gulf"] Warned the Collins Center:

Oil spills can cause impacts from only a few days to multiple years or even decades. Florida’s coastline is especially sensitive to spills because of its mangrove forests, seagrass beds and coral reefs.

Complex processes of oil transformation in the marine environment start developing from the first seconds of’oil’s contact with seawater. The progression, duration, and result of these transformations depend on the properties and composition of the oil, the size of the oil spill and a range of environmental conditions such as temperature, wind and currents.

Oil released into marine waters more than 100 miles off the West Florida shore would probably become entrained in the Loop Current, which feeds back into the Gulf Stream. Depending upon the ability of emergency responders to contain the spill and/or the rate of oil degradation, such spills could pose some risk to coastal communities in the Florida Keys and on the east coast of Florida. Accidental releases on the West Florida shelf closer to land would be subject to prevailing winds and water currents. These can vary considerably.

Holding all other factors constant, the closer an accidental spill occurs to the coastline the greater the risk it poses to coastal communities.

We repeat: That was free.

But the Florida Legislature paid $200,000 US to a British firm that said, "Oil spills from offshore exploration, development, production and the transportation associated with these activities are unlikely to present a major risk to Florida."

If The Willis Group doesn't refund our money, then the Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Dean Cannon, should pay it back out of his own pocket.

Crude Possibilities - Thursday May 13 Gulf Oil Leak Update

1. 3-Day Coastal Oil Slick Projection.

Wind and water current will continue to be favorable for Pensacola Beach over the next three days, according to the latest projections by L.S.U.'s Coastal Studies Institute. Not so much for coastal points west of here, though. CLICK HERE or on the map, above, for a closeup.

Scientists at LSU and other research facilities that study the Gulf Coast are telling us that southeast-to-northwest winds and water currents are the norm for Pensacola Beach throughout Spring and Summer. While there will be exceptions on occasion, they generally are brief. So, if BP's Deepwater Horizion well gusher can be capped soon -- a possibility that still seems remote -- there is a rational basis in fact for hoping that we will escape the worst of the oily sludge.

2. Crude possibilities.

One scientist, who asked for anonymity because he does not want to be misunderstood as speaking for a well-known Gulf Coast employer, told us this week that much of the leaking oil appears to be "very buoyant" and "very light" in weight. It shows signs of "fragmenting," he says, into smaller pools and slicks.

"For a sandy beach like yours," he said, "this would not present much of a clean-up problem. It's worse for marshes with fine grained soils and cohesive particles that have the ability to retain that kind of oil for a long time."

"Over time, you probably will get occasional tarballs -- the flat, hard kind of heavy tar -- washing up on the beach," he forecast. "But that's nothing new."

He pointed out that over the decades occasional tarballs have washed up on Pensacola Beach before. Most of them are thought to be from long-forgotten tanker spills or small leaks from in-shore drilling rigs elsewhere in the Gulf. "Winter storms and of course hurricanes over time can transport the heavier crude patties almost anywhere."

When we asked about Escambia County's proposed plan to scrape the beach and build a landward berm in advance of any oil arriving, this expert said he considered it "unconscionable." He thought is was a waste of money and potentially harmful to the beach ecology. Scrape the beach afterwards if the worst should happen, he advises, but don't go throwing away money now on a worse-than-useless defense.

3. Eye Candy.

Today's New York Times has a report straight from Dauphin Island, Alabama. Reporter Shaila Dewan is there, bemused at the contrast between barefoot bathers enjoying the sun and surf and "National Guard troops and scores of laborers in hazmat gear and gloves" patrolling the beach and fortifying the island. They're there "for the coming war on oil," armed with what one resident calls "eye candy" -- hopelessly inadequate booms, hay bales, and skimmers.

Although 35 pounds of tarballs have been collected this week on Dauphin Island, the slick itself is still well offshore and out of sight:

At this time, it is perfectly possible to enjoy the beach, which is being kept unbelievably clean by the Tyvek battalions, so numerous that there was not enough trash to go around and their nearly empty garbage bags streamed behind them in the wind. But no one knows how long the oil will stay away, nor at what moment the Tyveks will suddenly drive past in four-wheelers towing trailers of hay, or wade into the water with strings of what look like pompoms and affix them to metal posts to catch incoming oil.

Even the normal beach trash is so sparse, Dewan writes, that "nearly empty garbage bags" stream behind the hazmat battalions.

Dauphin Island residents seem as divided as Pensacola Beach islanders. Some are grateful for the flurry of preparatory activity, others deeply skeptical.

David Probst... approached a television satellite truck Tuesday evening in hopes of showing off a small paper bag full of tarballs he had collected.

Mr. Probst opined that the floating booms, hay bales, and skimmer booms — strings of pompom-like material that trail through the water and are supposed to collect oil — were nothing more than “eye candy” whose weaknesses would be exposed as soon as a sustained south wind came along, pushing the disaster right onto Dauphin Island’s doorstep.

4. "Red Flag" Drilling Days.

On the beach everybody knows what a red flag day is: stop playing in the water for your own safety and that of others. Turns out, based on yesterday's congressional committee hearings, there were plenty of red flags waving in BP's face before the April 20 Deepwater well blowout -- but it proceeded with drilling activities, anyway.

WaPo summarizes:

A House energy panel investigation has found that the blowout preventer that failed to stop a huge oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had a dead battery in its control pod, leaks in its hydraulic system, a "useless" test version of a key component and a cutting tool that wasn't strong enough to shear through steel joints in the well pipe and stop the flow of oil.

In a devastating review of the blowout preventer, which BP said was supposed to be "fail-safe," Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on oversight, said Wednesday that documents and interviews show that the device was anything but.
* * *
In Washington, Stupak said the committee investigators had uncovered a document prepared in 2001 by Transocean, the drilling rig operator, that said there were 260 "failure modes" that could require removal of the blowout preventer.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak asked.
* * *
Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), who said the committee has collected more than 100,000 pages of documents, focused on the cementing job by Halliburton. He said statements and documents indicated that a test performed on the work about five or six hours before the explosion showed other dangerous flaws.

Waxman said James Dupree, BP's senior vice president for the Gulf of Mexico, told committee staffers Monday that the test result was "not satisfactory" and "inconclusive." Waxman said the test showed wide discrepancies in pressure between the drill pipe and the kill and choke lines in the blowout preventer. Dupree told committee staffers that the pressure readings should have been the same.

At the hearing, Halliburton's chief health, safety and environmental officer, Tim Probert, conceded in questioning that the pressure readings "would be a significant red flag."

5. The Color of Research Money.

Yesterday, we mentioned the inevitably ugly stampede of hungry academic researchers trying to belly-up to the money trough they hope will soon be spilling out of the BP oil disaster. Today, the PNJ editorial board does its best to clear a place at the table for Florida universities by calling on Governor Charlie Crist to "knock some heads in Tallahassee and raise some cane with BP to get Florida's universities fully engaged."

By "fully engaged" the newspaper means Crist "could make some of the $25 million BP fronted to the state available for the effort, and then he should politely ask BP for more cash."

It's a very old joke that the most exciting words in science are not, "Eureka, I have found it" but "Your research grant has been approved.'" Scholars follow the money, as Phillip Mauser once said.

We have no doubt that some, possibly even many, of the Florida academics the PNJ wants to receive BP money have only the best of intentions. But where were they when Congress and the Florida state legislature were busy passing drill-baby-drill bills?

Where was the scientific curiosity in the Florida university system then? Some professors, surely, must have been researching questions like, "What would an oil well blowout do to the cycle of life a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico?;" or "What innovations in drilling safety have been overlooked by the oil industry in the past three decades?;" or "How can a deep sea oil well blowout be rapidly shut off?"

As far as we're concerned, if anyone was seriously examining these or related questions, they're the ones who deserve to go to the head of the grant-money breadline. It shouldn't matter where they live or work -- in or out of "Florida's universities" or, for that matter, the state as a whole.

The issues are too important to the public at large to be treated like so much pork in the Florida educational funding barrel.

What we should be aiming for is superior, independent, and courageous research that won't disappear from public view behind some corporate claim to copyright or trade secrets, or be watered down to the taste of this year's partisan political fashion or to hike corporate profits.

6. White House Oil Slick Plan.

Speaking of money and research, the White House yesterday publicly released a $118 million supplemental budget request to take account of the BP oil spill. As Reuters reports, "the bulk" of the money is expected to be paid by BP Corp. and a one percent hike in oil drilling fees paid by the oil industry.

In addition to substantial funds to pay for U.S. Coast Guard services, fishermen and other coastal workers' unemployment, and Gulf Coast economic recovery monies, the budget request includes --

• $29 million additional appropriation request "for the Secretary of the Interior for additional inspections, enforcement, studies and other activities that may not qualify as recoverable from the responsible parties or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund;"
• $5 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for activities that support the response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, but may not qualify as recoverable from the responsible parties or the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund; and
  
• $2 million to the FDA to monitor and respond to the environmental impact of the oil on seafood.

The full text of the detailed supplementary request is here. A Fact Sheet summary is here.
Details of the plan.

Oops! Title change 5-14 am

Categorial Surprise

WaPo, buried on page 4:

The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 -- and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions -- show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.
* * *
While the MMS assessed the environmental impact of drilling in the central and western Gulf of Mexico on three occasions in 2007 -- including a specific evaluation of BP's Lease 206 at Deepwater Horizon -- in each case it played down the prospect of a major blowout.

In one assessment, the agency estimated that "a large oil spill" from a platform would not exceed a total of 1,500 barrels and that a "deepwater spill," occurring "offshore of the inner Continental shelf," would not reach the coast. In another assessment, it defined the most likely large spill as totaling 4,600 barrels and forecast that it would largely dissipate within 10 days and would be unlikely to make landfall.

In recognition of BP's predictive skills, MMS gave it a safety award last year. Then, the agency probably invited BP to get back in bed with it.

Before the Oil: One Last Sunday on Pensacola Beach

"Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures than from the convulsions of the elements."--Edward Gibbon, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788)

"I feel like a Roman trapped inside the walls, waiting, defenseless, for the Goths to sack my city." -- Friend on Pensacola Beach, Sunday, May 2

Gibbon was writing of the folly of war. Comparing the "mischievous effects of an earthquake or ... a hurricane or the eruption of a volcano," he observed that these bear "a very inconsiderable proportion to the ordinary calamities" caused by mankind's uglier passions for money, power, and violence.

Five of us gathered yesterday on Pensacola Beach, feeling much as one of our friends described -- like Roman citizens who are utterly powerless to stop the Gothic onslaught. We were standing in front of The Dock at Casino Beach, weirdly assailed by upbeat music from one side and Nature's pounding surf on the other.

Our small, glum group had come for what we believe may be the last time, for many years to come, when we can taste the best seafood the Gulf of Mexico has to offer, see the pure white sand and clean surf of Pensacola Beach, and commiserate with others feeling the same pain. As we wandered the beach we met a number of others from the Pensacola area who had made the same trek.

As more than one of them said, the mood was one of impending doom. Many of these fellow sufferers wept as they talked with us. We wept with them.

Monday BP Oil Gusher Update: No Go Fish

1. No Go-Fish.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) late yesterday banned commercial and recreational fishing "for a minimum of ten days in federal waters most affected by the BP oil spill, largely between Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Florida’s Pensacola Bay." Locally, that grounds fishing boats that put out to sea for fish warehouses and commercial sellers as well as charter fishing boats. According to NOAA:

[T]here are 3.2 million recreational fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico region who took 24 million fishing trips in 2008. Commercial fishermen in the Gulf harvested more than 1 billion pounds of finfish and shellfish in 2008.

All "finfish, crabs, oysters and shrimp" are included in the ban. NOAA scientists will continue evaluating the "evolving nature" of the spreading river of oil and will "re-evaluate closure areas" as "appropriate."

2. All of Florida May Be Affected.

Concerns are growing, as we mentioned yesterday, that the oil spill could spread from the Northwest corner of Florida all the way south to the Keys. Now, Duke University coastal biology expert Larry Crowder has weighed in:

"There's a real potential there, a big problem," he told Sarah Larimer of Associated Press. "The biggest concern I would say from a Florida perspective is that once the oil gets entrained on the Loop Current it will be on the East Coast of Florida in almost no time," Graber said. "I don't think we can prevent that. It's more of a question of when rather than if."

As Larimer explains:

The Gulf's waters come through the Yucatan Strait between Mexico and Cuba, then circulate in what's called the Loop Current, before sweeping south along Florida's west coast. There they head into the Florida Straits and pass along the string of islands that make up the Florida Keys eventually to form the Gulf Stream, the world's most powerful sustained ocean current. The force sweeps up the East Coast of the United States before ending in the North Atlantic.

3. Obama in Louisiana.

Sunday, President Obama flew to the Gulf Coast to state the obvious:

"The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. "It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home."

One can't help wondering why he didn't foresee that obvious risk on April 1, when he shocked environmentalists and much of his political base by promising to open the Gulf to more drilling in future years.

To be sure, Obama was (sigh, once again) trying to triangulate a political compromise with Republican right-wing senators, including Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. But how much longer can he get away with treating Republican recusants more kindly than the Democratic faithful like Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL)?

4. How Deep Is the Ocean?

That's the title of an old torch song by Irving Berling. It's also the lyric to new questions being raised right here in Pensacola.

Yesterday, Rick Outzen of Pensacola's Independent News reported that prominent Pensacola torts attorney Mike Papantonio claims BP's Deepwater Horizon well is deeper than the MMS permit allows:

Papantonio also said that the Deep Horizon well was only permitted to be 18,000-ft. deep, but BP was drilling the well to 25,000-ft. "This screwed up all the permutations on how to deal with this problem," says Papantonio. "The engineers were thinking the well was only at 18,000 ft."

It's not clear from Rick's report where Papantonio gets this information. The BP drilling application which we referenced Saturday explicitly mentions a "depth limit" for the exploratory well of "5,328 feet bml," or below the mud line. Perhaps the actual permit was more restrictive. Or, perhaps, something was lost in translation.

In any event, public scrutiny of every promise BP Corp. made to, and permission it received, from the governing Mineral Management Services agency is warranted. This is the same agency, after all, which during the Bush Administration years was having sex and drug parties with employees of the very energy companies they are supposed to regulate. When it comes to MMS, everything it has done bears thorough investigation.

5. Sans Safety Valve.

In the same interview, Outzen reports Papantonio and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. also complained that:

[T]he BP well not only didn’t have the acoustical, emergency valve that could have shut it off, but was also lacking a deep-hole valve that would have also been able to stop the leaking of 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf of Mexico.

“The acoustical valve is a device required all over the world,” says Papantonio. “In Norway, you can’t drill in the ocean without one.”

This has been more widely reported in the national press as, for example, last week by the Wall Street Journal ["Leaking Oil Well Lacked Safety Device"].

6. BP Bares Its Dark Soul.

In a companion article, Outzen also reports Papantonio saying, "BP... 'parachuted' a corporate team into the Gulf Coast area that is offering local fisherman $5,000 to use their boats." The contracts contain fine print that purports to "prevent the fisherman from suing BP."

That ugly display of BP's corporate ethics has been well established in the past twenty-four hours. Last night, the Mobile Register reported

BP had distributed a contract to fishermen it was hiring that waived their right to sue BP and required confidentiality and other items, sparking protests in Louisiana and elsewhere.

So, BP is running a "fine print" scam. Alabama Attorney General Troy King "has told representatives of BP that they should stop circulating settlement agreements among coastal Alabamians." A mere spokesman for BP by email told the Mobile Register the company "will not enforce any waivers that have been signed in connection with this activity."

Yeah, right. The fishermen now have word of a PR flack-catcher. That'll stand up in court about as long as the Marx Brothers' "Sanity Clause."

7. Unrepentant Scoundrels.

Über right-wing crazies Bill Kristol, Neil Cavuto, and the entire Fox News team in the wake of the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster think oil companies now should be allowed to drill closer to the Gulf coast. Really, they do.

"I'm a drill, baby, drill person," Kristol says.

Oily Social Notes from the Gulf Coast

Washington, D.C.

Date: April 28, 2010

"The Department of Interior's Mineral Management Service (MMS) announced today that the 2010 Annual Industry SAFE awards Luncheon scheduled for May 3, 2010, at the Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston, Texas, has been postponed." (Click here or on the graphic to see the original).

April Fool's Day Joke

Got it! Obama's drill-baby-drill speech, yesterday, was just an early April Fool's joke. Oh, that Obama. He's such a kidder!

Some people just can't take a joke. Here's the real Obama (about 1:20):

"...but what wouldn’t do a thing is John McCain’s new proposals to open up Florida’s coast line to offshore drilling."

Obama: Spill-Lite, Baby, Spill-Lite

The NY Times reports President Obama plans to unveil a new coastal oil drilling plan today. If the oily details leaked to the press are correct, he intends to endanger just a little less sugar-white beach offshore of Pensacola than his predecessor desired. As the Washington Examiner reports:

Under Obama's plan, drilling could take place 125 miles from Florida's Gulf coastline if lawmakers allow the moratorium to expire. Drilling already takes place in western and central areas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Call it "Spill-Lite, Baby, Spill-Lite."

We'll wait for official confirmation. But we won't be surprised if the advance reports are true. By now, it's apparent that Mr. Obama is no dedicated conservationist, any more than he's the wild-eyed, dedicated socialist Republicans and Teabaggers claim.

As the ugly health reform debate showed us over the last year, Obama wants to govern as a centrist in an era when centrists are all but extinct. For Obama "centrism" apparently means giving everyone but liberals a slice from the ideology pie.

Knowledgeable sources say it's unlikely more drilling areas will produce more oil or bring down prices. As Pensacola's own Enid Siskin pointed out four years ago:

Our country contains less than 5% of the world’s gas and oil reserves and uses 25% of the world’s petroleum. We cannot drill our way to energy independence. It’s only through conservation, increased efficiency, and use of a combination of alternative, renewable energy sources that we’ll ever be self sufficient.

Thirty-four years ago, well before the Iranian hostage crisis, that good and honest man Jimmy Carter knew this, too. As president he tried vainly -- some say, naively -- to educate the American public to the facts as if we were adult enough to listen. We know how that turned out.

Now, Obama appears poised to try the same strategy he used in the health care reform initiative: offer a long-standing conservative, corporate-friendly, half-assed solution that Republicans cooked up in an earlier life when they weren't completely crazy, and call it "bi-partisan." He has to know issuing more drilling leases is no solution to what ails our energy policy. Indeed, he said as much, himself, on the campaign trail.

Obama is smart enough to realize expanded drilling won't do much except delay the day of reckoning over our excessive oil appetite for less than a blink in time. Just as he surely knew that health reform without a public option would soon be undermined by the corporate greed of insurance companies.

Carter wanted, like most presidents, to be president of all the people -- the dopes and fantasists as well as the realists. He strove to teach us hard lessons so we could be smarter for our own good. We wouldn't listen.

Obama wants to be president of all the people, too. Apparently, he accepts the fact that some part of the public just doesn't get it and never will. So, he hopes giving them some of what they want -- even if it's nuts -- will remove partisanship from the debate.

What do you bet -- just like health care reform -- neo-Republicans won't take his 'yes' for an answer?

Dept. of Amplificeation
3-31 pm

Told you so. Neo-Republicans today rejected Obama's ancien Republican oil drilling proposal, apparently because while it certainly is stupid, it isn't quite insane enough for them.

Or, maybe they just want a white guy to sing their oldies-but-baddies. Ya' think?

Florida Coast Drilling Postponed

We told you this was likely. The lunatic Republican initiative to allow oil drilling within three miles of the Florida coast failed to pass the state senate yesterday.

But don't think for a moment the proposal is dead, or even asleep. The only way to kill this insane proposal is to throw out of office every single legislator, Republican and Democrat, who voted to put our coasts and tourist industry at risk.

Among others, this means you, Dave Murzin (R-Pensacola), Greg Evers (R-Baker), Ray Sansom (R-Out on Bail), and Clay Ford (R-Gulf Breeze).

Florida Oil Mystery

We've been traveling, and so didn't get a chance to see Wednesday's PNJ editorial opposing the Republican effort in Tallahasee to throw open Florida's beaches to off-shore oil drilling as close as three miles from shore. The PNJ writes it short and bitter. We can make it a bit shorter:

Conscientious state leaders have long opposed offshore drilling not just for
environmental motivations but for economic reasons. They recognize what clean
beaches mean to the state's economy.
* * *
Even as the demand for energy increased, the goal in anti-drilling efforts has been to keep rigs in the Gulf of Mexico at least 100 miles off the coast of Florida, from the Panhandle to the Keys.

There is no reason to reverse the state's long-held opposition to offshore drilling.

Gov. Crist should take a stand and veto any measure that threatens Florida's coastlines.

It is beyond comprehension why the Republican majority in the Florida statehouse planted this roadside political bomb along the road to adjournment in the waning days of the legislative session. Are they trying to commit political suicide? Do they seriously expect Florida voters to thank them for a sneak attack on Florida's 2,200-plus miles of tidal shoreline?

How can Republicans explain, next year when running for reelection, an eleventh-hour proposal so manifestly engineered to discourage and evade public debate and deliberation? Can they seriously believe, here in Florida of all places, that we don't know the magnitude of the threat that would be posed by tropical storms if oil drills and pipelines were allowed so close to our beaches? Are they blind to the fact that this proposal is the biggest anti-small business bill in state history?

The drilling proposal, thankfully, is unlikely to pass the state senate. Even if it did so, Governor Crist almost surely would veto it, unless he plans to run for president in 2012 as the Candidate of Big Oil.

So, why the kari-kari act by Florida House Republicans? There'$ only one an$wer we can think of, and it i$n't pretty.

Oily Florida Lawmakers Trash Earth Day: "Drill, Baby, Drill"

Benedict Arnold? Typhoid Mary? Move over. You've got company.

Gannett reporter Jim Ash, from Tallahassee:

Catching opponents off guard in the waning days of the session, House Republicans unveiled a dramatic proposal Tuesday to lift Florida's offshore drilling ban.

An amendment (HB 1219) by Rep. Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, passed the House Policy Council with less than 11 days left in the session. It would give the governor and the Cabinet the power to grant oil- and gas-drilling leases as close as 3 miles from shore.

"I just want to start a dialogue," Cannon said.

Dialogue? That's a hoot. Not only was the proposal filed just the night before the vote, but according to reporter Ash the "drill, baby, drill" coalition has been "working quietly behind the scenes with the legislative sponsors for months."

They even showed up for the abbreviated committee session with "a half-hour presentation and glossy handouts for committee members and reporters." Apparently, Florida Republicans want the "dialogue" to take place somewhere around 3 am, preferably while the public is sleeping.

Among the traitors to the Florida coastal environment are Northwest Florida's own Dave Murzin (R-Pensacola) and Greg Evers (R-Baker). You might think that they, more than most, would understand how oil drilling within three miles of the coast threatens both the environment and the economy of places like, say, Pensacola Beach and Perdido Key.

You also might think that Murzin and Evers, whatever their ideology, at least would know that among their own coastal constituents are quite a number of highly educated and articulate citizens, business owners, and tourism offciials who, over the past several decades, have acquired so much expertise about the pros and cons of oil drilling off the Florida coast that Congress invites them to share their knowledge in Washington D.C..

Why didn't Murzin and Evers insist that their own constituents be included in the "dialogue"?

It's depressing enough to see legislators, caught in an ideologoical time warp, advancing outmoded and dangerous answers to the energy needs of the nation and the fiscal needs of the state. It's downright alarming when they secretly plot to shut out well informed voices in their own districts from participating in the debate.

Northwest Florida Leaders Indicted

Northwest Florida kingpins Ray Sansom (R-Destin) and Okaloosa-Walton County college president Bob Richburg were indicted Friday on felony "public corruption" charges. Richburg also faces a second charge of perjury.

Sansom, R-Destin, was booked into the Leon County Jail on Friday afternoon and released on his own recognizance. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison on the felony charge.
* * *
State Attorney Willie Meggs said Richburg unconvincingly told the grand jurors that building an aircraft hangar and emergency-management complex 15 miles from the Niceville campus was a "multiuse educational facility."
* * *
Meggs said Sansom's charge, a third-degree felony, reflects the then-House budget chief's creation of a false and fraudulent budget item that described the hangar project as a college building.

The full 10-page grand jury indictment can be read here. From the narrative "presentment" that follows the actual indictment, it's clear that the grand jury more or less considered Northwest Florida developer Jay Odom an unindicted co-conspirator. As Gannett Publishing Co.'s Tallahassee reporter puts it --

Odom, who contributed more than $1 million to the state GOP and Sansom's political causes, was not accused of any legal violation, but the grand jury said back-scratching among corporate honchos and politicians is a symptom of a deeply rooted malady.

At the root of this back-scratch was Odom's persistent efforts to find "other people's money" to finance a $6 million airplane hangar for one of his companies, Destin Jet, which he promotes as a state-of-the-art luxury private jet service. When Okaloosa County emergency managemnt personnel expressed no interest in misusing public money for Odom's company, the grand jury's narrative suggests, Odom used college president Richburg to be his cat's paw, in order to claw the $6 million out of Florida's state education appropriation:

During 2OO7 and 2008 airport officials learned about the appropriation to NWFSC [Northwest Florida State college] and the requirement by the Legislature that the college facility would be built at the Destin Airport. The college was to use a development order previously prepared by Destin Jet. The Destin Airport is located fifteen miles away from the NWFSC campus in Niceville. * * * During this meeting the NWFSC officials discussed how the building would be used. The college would have classroom space and the college could sub-lease the storage area to Destin Jet. The building essentially was the same design as Destin Jet's 2004 design, and is still an aircraft hanger. The second floor drawing now includes classrooms as opposed to office space and the first floor is now called a staging area.

The kicker is, "NWFSC does not have an aviation component in its curriculum" and "the vice-president of NWFSC responsible for construction of structures, Dr. Yancy, was not aware of the hanger project until he leamed that The Legislature had appropriated funds for it."

Your Grand Jurors have determined that the funding for this hanger can be attributed directly and solely to Speaker Designate Ray Sansom. No member of The Legislature ever saw this appropriation until it was inserted into the appropriation bill during conference between the Appropriation Chair Ray Sansom, and his senate counterpart senator, Lisa C arlton. The hanger project for a community college was the sole work of Ray Sansom, Jay Odom and Bob Richburg.

Jaded Northwest Floridians, by now, fully expect to be ripped off by developers like Jay Odom. Cronyism, corruption, and cupidity run so deep and wide among politicians at every level in the Florida panhandle that the only surprise is there's someone left still honest and courageous enough to try catching them.

But a corrupt college president -- and one who allegedly perjured himself, too? That still surprises.

It probably shouldn't. The reality of higher education is that some time ago it ceased to resemble the idyllic vision of berobed scholars, books in arm, thoughtfully wandering the tree-studded groves of academe.

The "Commercialization of Higher Education," as Derek Bok explains in a book by the same title, inevitably has compromised values "that are essential to the continued confidence and loyalty of faculty, students, alumni, and even the general public." When college presidents, in the scramble to acquire more and more money, climb into bed with developers and politicians, it's to be expected many will wake up indicted.

Fruit du Festival d'Art

We went. We saw. We bought. Is it really art? Who cares?

Arts Festival

Great Gulf Coast Arts Festival
Friday-Sunday
Nov. 2-4, 2007
Seville Square in downtown
Pensacola, Florida

"That beauty which is meant by art is no mere accident of human life which people can take or leave, but a positive necessity of life if we are to live as nature meant us to... ."

-- Oscar Wilde, Art and the Handicraftsman
(1882)

Annual Pensacola Arts Festival

It may be a little strong to say, as Pensacola promoters do, that "The Great Gulfcoast Arts Festival is one of the most highly regarded and popular arts festivals in America." After all, there are thousands of arts and craft fairs every year. There also seem to be thousands of self-appointed experts who aspire to grade such things. The GGAF doesn't even register with most of them, such as Art Daily, Art Fairs International, Kara Art, Festival Net, and so on... and on... and on.

But it is a first-class event. Without much doubt this coming weekend, at least, it's the best juried arts and crafts fair anywhere in the U.S.

Greg Lawler, who runs the"The Definitive Guide to the Best Juried Art & Craft Fairs in the United States" gives it a B+ -- and he's a tough grader.

We don't pretend to know anything about art festivals, but we know what we like. And we look forward to the Greater Gulf Coast Art Festival every year. Stop by if you can.