Surreal Thursday July 1 BP Oil Spill Update

1. Beach Report.

Escambia DisasterResponse acknowledged in this morning's Beach Report # 28 (not yet online as this is written) that "Pensacola Beach is seeing coverage of up to 50 percent in some areas in tar balls and tar patties today." Also:

• Cleanup crews were on the beach last night and crews working today as weather permits.

• Heavy equipment is being utilized on Pensacola Beach. Work will continue as weather permits.

Natch', county and beach officials claim the beach "remains open" for swimming except for the area west of the fishing pier.

The open area is exactly the one we visited yesterday, a popular 6-mile stretch of beach from the County East Beach to popular Casino Beach in the commercial core. All of it, although officially "open," has been inundated by BP's tarballs and disgusting orange oil mousse for days on end.

2. Surreal Surf Presser.

Island Authority administrator Buck Lee yesterday held a joint press conference at the fishing pier. He was joined by county neighborhood services chief Keith Wilkins. Conspicuously missing in action was county public health director John J. Lanza.

The presser must have been, by all accounts, a surreal experience. The Pensacola News Journal carried two versions about it. One makes the two county officials sound like idiots. The other paints them as shameless shirkers, blaming everyone else for not stopping them from endangering the public.

The first PNJ dispatch was filed by Mike Greear ["Is It Safe to Swim in Gulf?"]. Greear is a new guy on the block, formerly opinions editor for the University of West Florida's student newspaper.

His on-line report didn't make it into today's print edition. But Travis Griggs sewed a few threads of it together with other hair-raising facts of his own to make it today's above-the-fold top story in the dead-tree News Journal. ["Oil Spill: Water Safe? You'll have to Wing It"]

Griggs' report of the 'news' from the two county officials can be quickly summarized:

• Yes, County and SRIA officials "have the authority to close the beach waters to swimming."
• But no, they haven't closed the beach except for one brief two-day period last week "after the heaviest waves of oil yet washed ashore on Pensacola Beach."
• Yes, county officials will close swimming "when there is no way beachgoers can reasonably avoid the oil washing ashore."
• But no, they didn't close it yesterday even though there were tarballs and orange mousse in the surf all the way along the 7 1/2-mile stretch of beach we trekked both east of the fishing pier and west to Ft. Pickens Gate.
• Yes, county official Williams would no longer let his own children swim in the Gulf.
• But no, he won't close any more beach to swimming until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issues new guidelines specifically "determining the maximum safe levels of oil in swimming water."

Reporter Griggs also contacted Molly Payne-Hardin, a "spokeswoman for the Escambia County Department of Health." She told him the county health department "does not have the authority to close Gulf waters to swimming. " It can only issue "public advisories... based on the amount of visible oil present." (And, as we know, Dr. Lanza relies on Buck Lee's eyesight for what oil is visible.)

Let's hope an infectious viral epidemic never strikes Pensacola Beach. The county public health office might be limited to posting personal appeals on Craig's List to be cautious about spreading disease.

Buck Lee, no doubt realizing someone should look like they're in charge, reassured the press yesterday that he monitors beach conditions daily. "I went swimming Saturday afternoon. It was fine," he said. Let's hope he slept in a Holiday Inn, too.

On Pensacola Beach it comes down to this: the health of tourists and beach visitors now depends on a broken-down county pol's impressionistic view of the state of the water whenever he happens to take a dip in it.

Lee also said, according to cub reporter Greear, that "health advisories refer only to water." Only water!? Rather than boasting about that, Buck Lee ought to be apologizing to the sand. Rick Outzen reports "at least one sand dune has been leveled to provide access to the beach" for heavy bulldozers.

After blowing all this sand in the eyes of reporters Lee does admit, "Even if you can't see tar balls or mousse, there may be oil residue in the water."

3. False Message of an 'Open Beach.'

What is Buck Lee doing to warn beach-goers of tar, mousse, or "oil residue?" We happened into three members of a large church group from Texas yesterday. They told us they checked "on the internet" and the 'city' said the beach was open. From that, like most out-of-towners we suppose, they assumed the water was 'clean enough' for swimming.

Essentially, Lee and Wilkins are preying on the uninformed and naive, hoping the 'open beach' message will convince them it's safe to come to Pensacola Beach to spend their money. But it is not safe. Not unless, like the Texas group, you want to spend your time indoors, staring at a beach you cannot reach without wading through tarballs.

4. What Locals Know.

All of this is known to most locals, of course. At Casino Beach yesterday we met a retired haz-mat worker now living in Pensacola. He's got it figured out:

5. Happy Birthday, No. 412.

Progressive Pensacola the other day passed along "belated birthday wishes" to the congressman ranked No. 412 out of 435 in the House of Representatives. Hey! That's a generous ranking for "Mr. Oil Spill."

6. Grasping at Straws.

A friend on the beach calls to our attention a new and even more desperate straw for everyone to grasp: Taiwan's giant oil skimmer, now said to be on its way to the Gulf of Mexico. It's called the "A Whale."

We're partial to a more nature-friendly solution -- another whale, actually. This one is the giant whale just discovered to have inhabited the oceans some 12 or 13 million years ago.

Leviathan melvillei was up to fifty long and its mouth "was about 9 feet long and up to 7 feet wide."

The upper and lower teeth interlocked when the mouth closed — good for securing prey and ripping through flesh... . Leviathan probably ate anything it wanted to."

First, we'd have it eat all the oil sloshing around in the Gulf, then what's left of the Deepwater Horizon rig, and finally BP itself.

Now and then it's nice to dream.

Mid-Day Pensacola Beach Oil News

From Escambia Disaster Response:

• This morning, Saturday, June 5, reports have been received that more tar balls and mats have washed ashore on Pensacola Beach. Initial reports are that the extent of this second impact is less than the initial one. Unified Command has deployed clean-up and assessment teams.

• The oil sheen is reported less than one mile off the shore.

• On the morning of Friday, June 4, tar balls and tar mats, ranging in size from 3 cm to 18 cm in size, washed ashore on a widely scattered areas on Pensacola. The unified command deployed over 300 people as part of clean-up, assessment and boat crews to the affected areas.

• Pensacola Beach is open for business.

In an earlier advisory EDR mentioned that Northwest Congressman Jeff ("Mr. Oil Spill") Miller "will have a media availability at 11:15 am" at some distant location on Airport Blvd. in Pensacola -- just about as far as one can get from the oily beaches and still be inside the Pensacola city limits.

We're sure everybody is real sorry to have missed him. Many of us were too busy wiping his tarballs off the beach.

Where's Jeff?

Our own Northwest Florida congressman, Jeff ("Mr. Oil Spill") Miller (R-Chumuckla) has been almost invisible the past several weeks. We thought maybe we'd missed his resignation letter, or possibly Massachusetts had agreed to that great trade Rick Outzen proposed.

No such luck. Today's PNJ paraphrases him as saying, weirdly, "the amount of oil spewing into the Gulf means oil company BP could always be doing more to combat it."

His exact words make even less sense:

"With the amount of petroleum product that's in the Gulf, there's always something that BP can do," Miller said. "I hope that everybody continues to force BP as the responsible party to do the right thing."

Wait a minute. Miller wants "everybody... to force BP?" Hey, wasn't that what he promised to do? Remember this headline, from one month ago, May 8, 2010? Take a look:

"Miller Seeks $1 Billion from BP for Oil Spill"

Where's that billion dollars, Jeff?

The man is pathetic. Congressman Jeff Miller just doesn't get it. It's no wonder he's been hiding lately.

For years, Mr. Oil Spill has been a loud and frequent "drill, baby, drill" cheerleader for putting more and more oil rigs off the Florida coast. He never met an offshore drilling permit he didn't like.

To cite just one example, four years ago Miller voted in favor of H.R. 4761, which would have would have opened up all of Florida's coasts to drilling rigs. As MJ reporter Josh Harkinson writes, the bill included "comically pollyannaish" text that claimed:

[I]t is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline... .

Back home, Miller also never missed an opportunity to tell us what fantastic technological advances the drillers had developed to extract oil since the bad old days of the Exxon Valdez. Fact is, he didn't know what he was talking about. Period.

Despite the language of Bobby Jindal's 2006 bill quoted above (yes, that Bobby Jindal), in fact the oil industry did nothing -- absolutely nothing -- to advance public safety, reduce the risks of a catastrophic well blow-out, or develop effective remediation efforts for undersea drilling. As former EPA administrator and oil executive William Reilly said on the Rachel Maddow show the other night, the remediation and "response technology is about as primitive as it was in the Exxon Valdez case."

So now "Mr. Oil Spill" thinks "there's... something BP can do?" Oh, that's helpful.

The time for BP to "do" something, Mr. Oil Spill, was long before BP's oil well exploded and Northwest Florida's beaches were threatened with ruin. That's when you and your "drill, baby, drill" should have been demanding BP 'do something' about developing new public safety techniques and remediation technologies.

Just Like Bush

Words of One Syllable Department:

On the left: George W. Bush, 2005. On the right: Jeff ("Oil Spill") Miller, May 3, 2010.

Miller -- we're not joking -- placed his photo on his own Youtube web site. That same day, he was interviewed on WCOA-AM, one of Pensacola's many right-wing radio outlets. Astonishingly, in over fifteen minutes of air time, he was never asked about his continued support for drilling in the Gulf.

Hot Oil League Trade

Independent News publisher Rick Outzen, just back from an interview and photo trip to Louisiana, wants to trade Northwest Florida's congressman Jeff Miller (R-Oil Spill) for Massachusetts congressman Edward Markey (D-Medford), who represents the suburbs along the north side of Boston.

We know the north Boston suburbs, Rick. They're no Northwest Florida. They'll never fall for your scheme.

Jeff 'Oil Spill' Miller Punked by BP

The big news along the Gulf Coast yesterday was that BP's Deepwater Horizon oil well leak supposedly was coming under control. As Carlton Proctor of the Pensacola News Journal writes in today's paper, the uplifting news was "widely publicized... throughout the day."

Monday afternoon, U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller of Chumuckla, U.S. Sens. Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby of Alabama, and U.S. Sen. George LeMieux of Florida, all Republicans, attended a joint news conference at the Mobile Regional Airport. They had flown over the giant slick in a Coast Guard aircraft.

At the news conference, the four touted that BP was making progress in cutting the flow of oil from its damaged Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

As one of the four politicians -- newly-appointed Florida Senator George Lemieux -- explained for the group at the press conference:

And we had some good news today that we hope that the leak is being somewhat shranken [sic], if you will. They've put some of the clamps on those hydraulic locks and they think that they actually are reducing the amount of flow.

We heard about all of this from several beach friends. Three called excitedly, four sent emails. Everyone wanted to know if it was true. All we could think to say was more or less, 'if you heard it from Jeff Miller it's likely baloney.'

By nightfall, regretfully, we were proved right. Jeff "Oil Spill" Miller and his senatorial cohorts had been punked by BP:

"We were operating on information given to us by the Coast Guard," Dan McFaul, a spokesman for Miller, said later.

For those who don't know, McFaul is the guy Miller hired to clean up the messes the congressman leaves behind. You might say he's "Miller's brain."

Long-time beach residents may recall that about a decade ago McFaul was one of the Tallahassee statehouse flack-catchers detailed to lie to them about their chances of incorporating Pensacola Beach as a self-governing city. McFaul is brighter than Miller by a factor of 10. Personally, however, we regard the two of them as sharing the same soulless lack of regard for the environment of Northwest Florida.

As it turn out, the myth that the oil leakage was slowing didn't originate with the Coast Guard at all. It was started by British Petroleum, itself. Randy Merrow of the Mobile Press-Register has the details:

British Petroleum Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles refuted a statement made earlier in the day by a BP employee, who said the flow of oil from the rig in the Gulf had been slowed.

That employee, Jeff Childs, said BP had successfully deployed a ram to reduce the flow of oil from the drill pipe. At an afternoon news conference, Suttles said the ram did move, but it failed to seal the leak properly.

To be sure, Jeff Miller and his Washington buddies were duped. But that's the point, isn't it? All these "drill, baby, drill" pols are so easy for oil corporations to fool! Big Oil has been doing it for years.

The Gulf Coast pols want so much to escape the consequences of their past "drill, drill, drill" voting records that they'll swallow just about any BP cover story immediately, without bothering to verify it.

Saturday Morning Oil Spill Update

1. Worse Case Spill.

A discouraging AP report by Seth Borenstein suggests if you sat down and modeled a "worst case" kind of oil spill, the BP Deepwater Horizon would be it:

Experts tick off the essentials: A relentless flow of oil from under the sea; a type of crude that mixes easily with water; a resultant gooey mixture that is hard to burn and even harder to clean; water that's home to vulnerable spawning grounds for new life; and a coastline with difficult-to-scrub marshlands.Gulf Coast experts have always talked about "the potential for a bad one," said Wes Tunnell, coastal ecology and oil spill expert at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

"And this is the bad one. This is just a biggie that finally happened."
* * *
The first analysis of oil spill samples showed it contains asphalt-like substances that make a major sticky mess, he said. This is because the oil is older than most oil in the region and is very dense.

This oil also emulsifies well, [LSU Professor Ed] Overton said. Emulsification is when oil and water mix thoroughly together, like a shampoo, which is mostly water, said Penn State engineering professor Anil Kulkarni.

It "makes a thick gooey chocolate mousse type of mix," Kulkarni said.

And once it becomes that kind of mix, it no longer evaporates as quickly as regular oil, doesn't rinse off as easily, can't be eaten by oil-munching microbes as easily, and doesn't burn as well, experts said.

That type of mixture essentially removes all the best oil clean-up weapons, Overton and others said.

If that weren't enough, it's now spawning season for fish and time for marshland plants to fragment, bud, and otherwise reproduce; the windy weather and strong currents offshore have been unfavorable; the river of oil will overwhelm many marshlands that are harder to clean than sandy beaches; and, of course, a new hurricane season is looming.

On this last point, LSU professor Ed Overton says, "A hurricane is Mother Nature's vacuum cleaner. Normally it cleans things up. But that's not a solution with a continuing spill."

2. Who Could Have Predicted?

We commented the other day about all the similarities between BP's Deepwater Horizon oil leak and the oil platform disaster last year in Australia's Timor Sea.

Turns out, the Wall Street Journal has identified yet another. Both oil platform explosions occurred about the same time Halliburton Corp. -- Dick Cheney's old outfit -- was finishing up a deep water well process called "cementing."

An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.

The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn't begun.In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn't known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast.

Regulators have previously identified problems in the cementing process as a leading cause of well blowouts, in which oil and natural gas surge out of a well with explosive force. When cement develops cracks or doesn't set properly, oil and gas can escape, ultimately flowing out of control. The gas is highly combustible and prone to ignite, as it appears to have done aboard the Deepwater Horizon, which was leased by BP PLC, the British oil giant.
* * *
Houston-based Halliburton is the largest company in the global cementing business, which accounted for $1.7 billion, or about 11%, of the company's revenue in 2009,

3. Come Monday.

The Pensacola News Journal reports the river of oil from BP's Deepwater Horizon well is expected to reach Pensacola as early as Monday. Also from the Pensacola News Journal, Escambia County Commissioners have come up with what they call a "plan" to seal off Pensacola Bay's East Pass.

It looks to us more like a Hail Mary pass:

The plan is to use about 30,000 feet of boom — now at Pensacola Naval Air Station, a staging area for oil company BP's response to the slick — and BP's resources to set up a "V-shaped" barrier across East Pensacola Pass to catch the oil.* * *
The hope is that the floating pools of oil coming into the pass will funnel into the center point of the "V," where there will be a "skimmer" or collection area where the oil can be removed, Turpin said.

On its web site, the News Journal is running a suspiciously cheesy-looking map showing a large, red-colored "V" superimposed on what seems to be an old NOAA satellite photo of the East Pass into Pensacola Bay. (Click here or on the image to the left). Better than nothing, perhaps, but if that's all the local governments have, good luck to us.

4. Boom-Boom.

As the Mobile Register reported late last night, typically --

About 1 foot of the boom sits above the surface. Waves taller than that can lap over a boom, something that had been reported Friday off the coast of Louisiana.

The tides will be over 1 foot on Monday, but moderate after that. However, Weather Underground (working as everyone does from NOAA data) is forecasting vigorous seas of 5 to 9 feet through Monday. it will be subsiding to a "light chop" of 2 to 3 feet by Wednesday. Wavefinder more or less agrees.

The nefarious thing, of course, is that no one can forecast the seas for the next three months, which Senator Bill Nelson identifies as the time it will take to drill a new hole and seal off the leaking Deepwater Horizon leak. And that assumes the wellhead doesn't blow.

Bring on the booms, but no one should expect them to be more than a band-aid on the bleeding rivers of oil.

5. Bumper Sticker Politicians.

Speaking of tides, J. Earle Bowden, justly known as the "Father of Gulf Islands National Seashore," understandably takes just about every politician in Florida to the woodshed -- along with President Obama -- for promoting an "oily future" for our "vulnerable Florida beaches" and "potentially shattering the state's mostly clean tourism economy."

Obama he derides as "Mr. Green, playing into the political intrigue, throwing proponents a bone, echoing McCain's willingness to pollute coastal waters to help wean America from its Mideastern obsession." Coming in for a double dose of venom are Governor Charlie Crist, Congressman Jeff ("Mr. Oil Spill") Miller, and those "South Florida politicians who seek to please the Big Oil lobby."

Bowden rants:

I cannot believe insensitive politicians, including Rep. Jeff Miller and U.S. Senate aspirant Charlie Crist, buying John McCain's "Drill, Baby! Drill!" desperation pitch before his campaign for the presidency was shipwrecked on the tides of Obamadom.

Oddly, it's becoming almost impossible to find anyone here in Tea Party country who will admit to having joined in that "drill, baby, drill" chorus. Just yesterday, we found ourselves being passed by a pickup truck that was sporting a "drill, baby, drill" bumper sticker, half-torn off.

We take that as sign that very soon now, all the oily politicians and their Tea Party supporters will be madly trying to erase their despicable records.

Reality is so unfair to right-wingers.

6. Blame Game.

It appears no one -- not BP, not escambia County, not even the federal government -- knows what the hell to do about the river of oil flowing over the Gulf Coast for what may be several months. So, instead of sucking their fingers, federal officials have begun pointing them at BP Corp., and corporate officials are quietly trying to stick them in the eye of federal government's MMS.

The New York Times headline captures the finger-pointing: "BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act."

At the heart of the story is BP's February, 2009 application to commence drilling at the Deepwater Horizon site. The multi-page application is here in pdf format. Below are some tantalizing excerpts we captured on the screen. Click on each image to read the original.

BP doesn't have a Deepwater Horizon "blowout scenario plan"

But BP does claim to have the "capability to respond" to the "worse-case scenario"

It looks like there's plenty of blame to go around:

U. S. Mineral Management Services "required" to "inspect" and ensure "compliance"



If BP's word can be trusted -- no sure thing -- the well also complied with Louisiana and Mississippi state law:

The Deepwater Horizon purportedly complied with Louisiana legal requirements:

And with Mississippi Law:

Mr. Oil Spill

You couldn't tell it from the on-line version, but the dead tree Pensacola News Journal this morning trumpets the front page news that Jeff Miller, the incumbent Republican congressman from Northwest Florida, is doubling down in favor of Gulf oil drilling. Click the article image to read his latest, post-Deepwater statement.

Reality... inconvenient facts .... tens of thousands of his constituents who depend upon tourism.... the millions of Americans who enjoy our sugar-white beaches... the fish and fauna throughout the central and eastern Gulf of Mexico... All can be damned as far as "Oil Spill" Miller is concerned. He'll continue working, as he has promised so often he would, to make sure the unique sandy beaches of Northwest Florida eventually are befouled by a massive oil spill.

The pathetic man we have sent to Congress these past eight years has been publicly sucking up to the oil industry for so long, now, he can no longer help himself. It's become more than a habit with Miller. It's his raison d'être for being in Congress.

Even the ongoing BP Deepwater disaster, which now threatens to rival the scandalous Exxon Valdez oil spill, can't shake Miller's allegiance to Big Oil. Our local congressman continues to 'work hard' to bring oil drilling platforms as close as possible to Pensacola Beach.

"Drill, baby, drill" was his mantra before anyone in the lower 48 ever heard of Sarah Palin. He can't very well change now, he must be thinking; his record is too deeply engraved in the public consciousness. Jeff Miller has, you might say, oil all over his hands.

Miller went so far four years ago as to try to introduce oil drilling platforms directly off-shore of Destin, Fort Walton Beach, and Pensacola Beach. This would have put oil company platforms directly in the path of jets and trainers from Naval Air Station, Eglin AFB, and Hurlburt.

The Defense Department quietly took Miller to the woodshed. After that, Miller changed his tune ever so slightly to add, 'drill everywhere' except where it would "impact the military mission."

You need to know that background to fully appreciate the editorial in today's PNJ ["All In on Risk"]. It is a doleful warning to all the "drill, baby, drill" politicians in Florida who, like Miller, routinely promote drilling with the single exception of the "military mission":

For centuries, the white sandy beaches of what we call home have been a wonder of Mother Nature. Now, that white sand, unparalleled in all the world, is in jeopardy.

About 100 miles due south of Pensacola is a massive oil slick, the result of an oil rig explosion off the Louisiana coast two weeks ago. The blast killed 11 and has sent hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into Gulf of Mexico waters.
* * *
The April 20 explosion on the Transocean Deepwater Horizon oil rig mocks the promise of safe drilling. It mocks the promise of clean drilling. It mocks any who have tried to portray drilling for oil in the Gulf to be as easy as pumping gas into the family car.
* * *
Oil truly is, we are finding out, dirty money.

And we hope it convinces our state legislative delegation, which has opposed drilling almost apologetically, mumbling about the perils of interfering with the military’s mission instead of standing up for the Panhandle’s already battered environment.

Then, in a pointed message to the Republican-dominated Florida legislature as well as Mr. Miller, the editorial adds:

Gentlemen, it’s also about the environment and tourism. Not just the military. What the explosion and the expanding oil slick have done is reveal that to hide behind “drill baby drill” is folly and that Florida will have to make a choice: intolerable risk to our beaches and environment, or oil money.

It can’t have both. Oil spills don’t leave us a Plan B. So make no mistake: If the Florida Legislature allows drilling in our coastal waters, then all of us are, in the language of the gambler, "all in" for the risk.

All of us.

The commercial fisherman. The hotel owner. The parents of the family who love beach
cookouts. The divers. The natives. The tourists. The people who love Pensacola for its beauty.

All of us. All in. [italics added]

Miller and his drill-happy cohorts can gamble all they want with their own lives property in landlocked Washington D.C. and Tallahassee. But to continue tossing the "drill, baby, drill" dice means endangering the lives and livelihood of all the rest of us who live along coastal Florida or want to visit our beaches. If the Deepwater oil spill disaster proves nothing else, it is that these politicians -- no more than dissembling oil corporations like BP, trapped in their own lies -- have no moral, ethical, or economic right to put our lives and property at risk.

Miller quite obviously doesn't get it. So we should be sure to send him another message at the polls this year.

Wednesday Gulf Oil Leak Update

UPDATED BELOW
"A joint government and industry task force has been unable to stop crude oil from streaming out of a broken pipe attached to a well 5,000 feet below sea level."

-- New York Times, Apr. 28, 2010

"As efforts failed Tuesday to contain the flow of tens of thousands of gallons of oil leaking from an exploded well deep in the Gulf of Mexico, emergency response teams are considering a controlled burn-off of the oil on the water's surface as early as today."

-- New Orleans Times Picayune, Apr. 28, 2010

"Efforts to close a well spewing oil in the Gulf of Mexico are failing so the Coast Guard is considering lighting the mess on fire."

-- Associated Press, Apr. 28, 2010

"A US Coast Guard official says if leaks from an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico are not stemmed soon, they could cause one of the worst spills in US history."

-- BBC News, Apr. 28, 2010

"Construction has begun on a collection dome that will be deployed to the sea floor to collect and funnel oil as it escapes from the well, a method that has never been tried this deep before. The first rig to be used for drilling a relief or cut-off well arrived last night, several more are planned – a relief well would take several months to complete."

-- National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin, (NOAA), Apr. 27 p.m. update

"'A lot of it is in God's hands at this time, depending on weather patterns,' Gov. Charlie Crist said Tuesday afternoon after getting a firsthand view of the sheet of oil from a Coast Guard airplane."

-- Pensacola News Journal, Apr. 28, 2010

"The Escambia County Commission has scheduled a special emergency meeting [in Pensacola] for 3:00 this afternoon to discuss any Escambia County response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico."

-- North Escambia.com

"The stretch of northern Gulf coastline likely to be affected -- beginning in Alabama and stretching toward Louisiana -- is called 'the fertile crescent' by federal researchers. It is considered the most productive section of the Gulf, fringed by marshes, seagrass beds and oyster reefs. It produces the lion's share of the Gulf's seafood and is the nursing ground for most of its fish, shrimp and crabs, according to federal research."

--Mobile Register, Apr. 27, 2010

"Had the rig, Deepwater Horizon, been drilling in Florida's state waters, the results would probably have been more dire, oceanographers say. * * * 'If the rig had been as close as 3 miles away — the limit proposed by state legislative leaders this year — 'the most likely scenario would be for the sea breezes to bring all the problems to the coast... .'"

-- Tampa Bay.com

"The oil rig fire and spill spurred Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to ask the Department of Interior to look into the explosion and investigate worker safety, inspections, technology and industry practices used in offshore drilling and gas production during the last 10 years."

-- Panama City Herald, Apr. 28, 2010

Dept. of Video Amplification

Updated 4-28 pm A reader writes in to recommend this summary of the latest oil spill clean-up effort, from Newsy.com:

Words of One Syllable Dept.

"The same Republican led House that last year voted to open Florida waters to offshore drilling on Tuesday continued killing Democratic attempts to expand a popular solar energy rebate program."

-- Pensacola News Journal, Apr. 27, 2010

Oil Spill Forecast

"I continue to support drilling in the Gulf and will work for you to make this happen."

-- Cong. Jeff Miller (R-Chumukla), Aug. 3, 2008

Deepwater Disaster Headed for Pensacola Beach

"Drill, drill, drill"
-- Sarah Palin, 2008 Vice-presidential debate

The explosion and collapse last week of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform off the coast of Louisiana is a major environmental disaster for the entire central Gulf Coast. Oil continues to leak into Gulf waters from a broken drill pipe at a rate of about 42,000 gallons, or one th0usand barrels of oil, daily.

As of yesterday, it appears the leading eastern edge of the oil slick is just 89 miles from Pensacola Beach. (Click on map, above.) The Deepwater Horizon rig is new and outfitted with the latest in oil industry safety devices, including a "blowout preventer, a 450-ton device... that is intended to prevent spills of this kind."

It doesn't work. The "improved technology" solution oil industry lobbyists have been touting as added reason to drill in the Gulf simply failed. No surprise there. Shades of the levy-builders at the Corps of Engineers.

Submersible submarines now are being deployed to see if they can repair or shut off the leak manually. The best-case scenario is that it will take two to four weeks to cap the deep water well. The worst case scenario is that the oil well blows a bigger leak and it takes "several months" to stem all the spillage. ABC News reports that if the well itself opens, "100 times more crude could spew into the water."

Either way, it will take decades to repair the damage to nearby ecosystems and beaches. And for many life forms that depend upon them -- from bivalves to beach business owners -- the damage may be permanent. Let there be no mistake about it: this disaster is man-made.

To be sure, there have been a few far-sighted, dedicated, and brave souls like Carolyn Esther McCormick and Enid Siskin. For many years, they have been warning us that the Gulf of Mexico was already "stressed" and "bringing rigs up to a line or an arbitrary distance on a map won’t stop damage that will be caused by drilling to Florida’s coastal communities."

Rather than listen, learn, and act on the irrefutable proof they offered, too many among us even right here in Northwest Florida applauded -- and voted for -- political pollyannas like Sarah Palin and Northwest Florida Congressman Jeff Miller when they urged "drill, baby, drill." Even President Obama recently caved under the public pressure.

Either Obama doesn't have the courage of his own convictions or he was cursed by spectacularly poor timing in making one of his infamous "compromise" proposals to achieve a chimerical "bipartisan" solution. Either way, he was wrong and he ought to admit it.

But he won't. No more than Palin or Miller will own up to their misjudgments. As happens too frequently in American politics, politicians who are proven by subsequent events to have been flat wrong rarely suffer the consequences.

Palin will continue to rake in her millions as a red-meat speaker for the right wing. Miller likely will win reelection -- aided, no doubt, by many of the same business-men and -women who are about to be ruined by the very policies he promotes. Obama already has vowed to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf, despite the ongoing disastrous results.

Short of a new law requiring that every proponent of expanded oil drilling off the shore of Pensacola Beach eat the tarballs that will soon be washing ashore thanks to the policies they advocated, they will all escape the consequences.

If we raised children like we coddle wrong-headed politicians, we would have a society full of sociopaths..... Oh, wait. Maybe we already do.

Jeff Miller: 'Time for Your Business to Go Away'

There were some very dumb bunnies out on America's astroturf yesterday, like this one in Syracuse. What else would you expect from Fox News watchers?

In the Panhandle, we had more than our share of 'tea bag' idiots, too. Check the reports from the Independent News and PJC's Corsair.

But no one made a fool of himself quite as thoroughly as Northwest Florida's own congressman, Jeff Miller (R-Chucklehead). Sean Dugas reports that while speaking at University Mall, Miller said of government spending--

"We can stop this, but it has to be a grassroots effort... . If your business can't make it, it's time for your business to go away."

A lot of local business owners will remember that the next time Miller is up for reelection. Ironically, some of those small business owners once were located in University Mall -- the very venue Miller chose for kicking dirt on their graves. But as Carleton Proctor reported early last month, all but one of them "have closed their doors." (Google cache here. expired) [Project Vote Smart has the full report.]

updated 11-08-09

Miller Earmarks Money for Morris

Northwest Florida congressman Jeff Miller (R-Irrelevant) actually got a couple of earmarks inserted into the new federal budget bill. No big trick -- every congress person, no matter how stupid or ineffectual they may be, gets at least one or two.

But look who the most favored recipient of Miller's largess is -- his good friend, suspended Okaloosa county sheriff Charlie Morris:

Got that? A paltry $96,000 for beach restoration in all of Okaloosa County, and half a million dollars to the Baron of Bonuses, disgraced and suspended county sheriff Charlie Morris, for "technology."

Maybe that technology will help find Morris' lost passport?

Saving Jeff Miller's Career

Today's Pensacola News Journal calls on Northwest Florida Congressman Jeff Miller (R-Chumuckla) to stop bleating G.O.P. talking points over "old political chestnuts from a different economic time." It's past time, the editorial says, for Miller to start working "to secure the majority of... federal dollars" from the Obama administration's proposal to digitalize medical records "to be used here," where a pilot program is already afoot.

On the table is stimulus money for the development of electronic medical records. There already is a pilot program in our county among the military, the University of West Florida, some doctors and private business. This is the type of high-tech business we crave, the type of business that will keep our children from moving to Nashville or Atlanta in search of opportunity.

Instead of blindly following outdated GOP orthodoxy, we urge Miller to secure the majority of these federal dollars to be used here. We should be, and can be, the center of electronic medical records development.

Instead of calling environmental initiatives a "disservice to all Americans," Miller ought to work to provide funding for our area for much-needed green technologies. We have the opportunity to go from an environmental nightmare to a shining star, with the accompanying jobs and increase in quality of life.

If we were in the business of handing out political advice to lousy congress persons, we'd go a lot further than the newspaper. Miller was a political eunuch even when his own party dominated Congress. No important committee assignments, no memorable legislative footprints left behind, no pork for the home folks that hadn't already been slaughtered and cured by the military on its own.

Ever since he arrived in Washington, Miller has been nothing more than a lowly mailman, trying to claim credit for the paycheck in our mail box while hiding the bills under the doormat.

If he really thinks bringing home the bacon is the surest way to serve his district (and win reelection), he'd pay attention to President Obama's plea for bipartisanship and jump aboard the train with his vote for the administration's budget, health care, and economic recovery proposals.

Sure, it would risk alienating the minority leaders in the House. But what have they ever done for him? Miller has the rare opportunity, right now, to become a national figure as well as a local hero. All he needs to do is break with outdated Republican "orthodoxy," as the News Journal describes it, and vote for what works.

That would be a career saver. Sad to say, we doubt Jeff Miller is courageous or smart enough to know it.

Jeff Miller: Weightless in Washington

After six years of voting for every budget-busting tax cut for the wealthy Bush proposed, the most expensive and disastrous war in history, and all the federal corporate welfare give-aways he could find, Northwest Florida's ineffectual congressman Jeff Miller (R-Chucklehead) tells the PNJ he opposes having the federal government play any role in rescuing the economy. Herbert Hoover could do no worse.

No help for banks, none for the auto industry, none for home owners, none for the unemployed.

Miller, who voted against the bailout plan, said he doesn't support government rescues of Wall Street — or automakers, for that matter. The government also should stay out of various mortgage modification programs now being hammered out throughout the country.

Presumably, too, Miller opposes help for college students seeking loans and small businesses needing credit lines... opposes federal help for cities "to help pay for infrastructure improvements, pensions and short-term borrowing"... won't help Navy families struggling with burdensome mortgages and no prospect of selling their homes when ordered to transfer... and backs Pentagon-run credit unions who are feeling the crunch as they raise their account charges, and tighten lending rules. Military veterans hit especially hard by the credit crisis are on their own, as far as Miller is concerned.

Wedded to a discredited ideology of free market greed capitalism, Jeff Miller offers nothing to any of his constituents. Luckily, he also has no influence -- and knows it:

Miller said his opinion carries little weight.

"It's all up to Democrats. They are the ones in charge of the committees," he said. "Chairman Frank will have to be the decider on that as to what they put forward."

Which raises the question, why are we paying Miller $165,200 a year to sit in Washington D.C. and do nothing?

Warren Buffett Credit Crisis Primer

Whatever your opinion about the $700 billion bailout bill that became law yesterday, it's useful to know what knowledgeable proponents think about it. Few know as much or can communicate their views as clearly as the charming "Oracle of Omaha," Warren Buffett.

Buffett, of course, is chairman of Berkshire Hathway Inc. and one of the richest men in the world. He predicted the credit crisis in his 2002 annual letter to stockholders (starting at pdf page 12 and print page 13) -- well before most others:

[T]he parties to derivatives also have enormous incentives to cheat in accounting for them. Those who trade derivatives are usually paid (in whole or part) on “earnings” calculated by mark-to-market accounting. But often there is no real market (think about our contract involving twins) and “mark-to-model” is utilized. This substitution can bring on large-scale mischief. As a general rule, contracts involving multiple reference items and distant settlement dates increase the opportunities for counterparties to use fanciful assumptions. In the twins scenario, for example, the two parties to the contract might well use differing models allowing both to show substantial profits for many years. In extreme cases, mark-to-model degenerates into what I would call mark-to-myth.

Four days ago, Buffett spent an hour with PBS' Charlie Rose discussing the then-pending bailout bill. The full video of their lengthy conversation can be seen here. It is engaging but long, in no small part because of Charlie Rose's annoying verbosity.

Happily for you, that nearly one-hour video has been edited down to a little over 17 minutes (see below) that captures the essential dozen major points that Buffett wanted to make.

He favors the bailout bill but has no illusions that it is a panacea. He warns, however, that to work at all well, the Treasury Department must use its new authority not to "bail out" banks but to "invest" in them by paying mark-to-market prices for their toxic mortgage derivative portfolios.

Despite Buffett's sunny disposition and irrepressible optimism about the future of the country, he also warns that what lies ahead even if the bill works are more bank failures, rising unemployment, a falling dollar, severe inflation -- and, even now, the "possibility" of a depression.

Here's a choice for you. To understand what's going on you could choose, if you wish, to search the internet for the invariably insipid remarks of Northwest Florida's feeble congressman Jeff Miller, who voted against the bill; or, you could learn something by listening to the Oracle of Omaha:

Bailout Bill 3.0

We are shocked and awed at all the gyrations, machinations, glittering mark-up baubles, and down-right stupid provisions the Senate apparently feels compelled to add to the bipartisan credit crisis bill in order to overcome objections from House free market ideologues in both parties.

The original 2 1/2 page $700 billion no-strings-attached plan of Secretary Paulson was terrible, of course. Chris Dodd's 110-page re-write was substantially better, though far from perfect.

The latest draft bill -- Bailout Bill 3.0, we might call it -- has grown to a bloated 451 pages in length and starts us backsliding into the abyss.

What's behind a bill that grows worse even as it grows longer? Ideologues (and a few idiots like Northwest Florida's own Jeff Miller who does not trouble to read the legislation) in the House of Representatives killed Dodd's bipartisan effort. That left both houses of Congress, as of yesterday, with only one political option: bribe the ideologues.

This is done by --

• Adding a bunch of earmarks giving favored tax treatment to various interest groups from Hollywood to children's toy manufacturers
  
• Throwing in a few more capital gains tax cuts for the wealthy
  
• Including pointless free-market "feel-good" provisions like a U.S. sponsored "insurance" policy covering losses from buying toxic assets, but at a premium priced at 100% of the true risk (which no shaky bank would buy as long as they can unload their bad assets on taxpayers at less than the premiums would cost); and
• Under-girding the whole rescue plan with a dangerous green light exemption from "mark to market" accounting rules for all of Wall Street -- the very same exemption that led to the Enron debacle.

George Soros' proposed solution looks infinitely better to us. Soros writes in today's London's Times:

Instead of just purchasing troubled assets the bulk of the funds ought to be used to recapitalise the banking system. Funds injected at the equity level are more high-powered than funds used at the balance sheet level by a minimal factor of twelve - effectively giving the government $8,400bn to re-ignite the flow of credit. In practice, the effect would be even greater because the injection of government funds would also attract private capital. The result would be more economic recovery and the chance for taxpayers to profit from the recovery.
* * *
A revised emergency legislation could also provide more help to homeowners. It could require the Treasury to provide cheap financing for mortgage securities whose terms have been renegotiated, based on the Treasury’s cost of borrowing. Mortgage service companies could be prohibited from charging fees on foreclosures, but they could expect the owners of the securities to provide incentives for renegotiation as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are already doing.

Economist Paul Krugman echoes the same idea in fewer words:

My view, which I think is now shared by many economists, is that Paulson grabbed hold of the wrong end of the stick — he should have been seeking to expand bank capital, taking an ownership share in compensation, rather than trying to push up the value of toxic paper.

In other words, the most sensible bailout bill would use taxpayer dollars to recapitalize banks by having the Treasury Department buy preferred shares in those banks.

Everybody wins. The banks get new money. Main street business and individual borrowers get their credit lines restored. Taxpayers get made whole with profits made from the eventual resale of preferred stock once the banks have recovered.

This is essentially the Swedish solution we have mentioned before, one that already has proved that it works in similar circumstances.

So, what's the problem? Basically, it makes too much sense to have a chance with this Congress.

GOP "Nilhilists" Sink Bailout Bill

We spent some time tracking down first-hand reports from anyone who could bear witness to what really happened on the floor of the House of Representatives yesterday when the bipartisan credit crisis bailout bill failed. Democrats delivered on their promise to hold their collective noses and deliver more than one-half of the total votes necessary; Republicans broke their promise to deliver the rest from their own members.

C-Span isn't permitted, by House rules, to show anything except blowhard congress-persons making wind for the camera. Most of the cable Tee-Vee political reporters, who have to travel with camera crews, customarily are kept off the House floor and had to hang around the cloakrooms. So, they could share only second- and third-hand spin stories.

But on Jim Lehrer's News Hour, the New York Times' John Shaw saw it with his own eyes:

Well, it was very interesting, because it's hard to know really how each party does their whipping operations, getting votes, but the Democratic side was much more active.

The speaker was right in the middle of it. There were swarms of people around her. They were feeding her notes. She was carefully monitoring the vote. She was sending emissaries over to the Republican side.

On the Republican side -- and, again, they may do it differently -- but the minority leader, John Boehner, was pretty much alone. It didn't seem like many people wanted to talk to him. Roy Blunt, the whip, was pretty much standing off by himself. His deputy, Mr. Cantor, was also pretty quiet.

So visually it looked like the Democrats were working harder. And at one point, Pelosi looked over and saw that not a lot of movement was going on that side. And she just said, in a very loud voice, "We're finished," which signaled that she was done trying to get more Democrats to vote for the package.

Boehner's peculiar quiescence inspired Rachel Maddow of MSNBC to ask a follow-up question -- "Who leads the Republican Party right now?" She came up with a surprising answer: the aforesaid "pretty quiet" Eric Cantor (R-Va), who is Assistant Minority Whip in charge of rounding up votes for the 'lonely' John Boehner.

Even conservative columnist David Brooks is disgusted by the Republicans' behavior:

House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.

Now they have once again confused talk radio with reality. If this economy slides, they will go down in history as the Smoot-Hawleys of the 21st century. With this vote, they’ve taken responsibility for this economy, and they will be held accountable. The short-term blows will fall on John McCain, the long-term stress on the existence of the Republican Party.

Brooks holds out hope that some cosmetic changes might make the bill more palatable to Republicans on a second go-around to pass the bill, probably on Thursday. Possibly so, but it seems to us it will be even more difficult to talk anyone who voted "no" yesterday into voting "yes" tomorrow.

How much more embarrassing, and difficult for constituents to swallow, would it be for a congressman -- say, like the hapless Jeff Miller -- to vote for the bailout bill after voting against it? Inescapably, such a vote would mean the congressman voted at least once this week against the national interest.

Jeff Miller Smack-Down

At about 10:35 am CDT today, Florida panhandle congressman Jeff Miller (R-Chucklehead) took to the floor of the House of Representatives for his assigned two minutes of debate on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 -- probably the most important economic legislation since the New Deal -- and stuck his foot in his mouth. Twice.

It was a deeply embarrassing moment for everyone in North Florida who has to call this guy "our congressman." Miller was elected to be a law-maker, but it seems he can't research or read proposed laws! Either that, or he reads pre-cooked, out-of-date staff memos with utterly no comprehension.

Miller used his two minutes of fame on the House floor to utter two falsities: (1) the fanciful theory that the cure to the banking and financial crisis is more tax cuts for wealthy corporations; and (2) his erroneous understanding that the bailout bill being debated today still contains the Bush administration's ridiculous blank check for $700 billion with no judicial oversight.

1. Tax Cuts for the Wealthy?

Miller's first point is laughable, of course. More tax cuts for wealthy corporations will increase liquidity of our frozen credit system? That makes as much sense as urging the poor to eat pastry. ("Que ne mangent-ils de la croûte de pâté?')

Miller is dead wrong on the facts, too, when he claims U.S. corporate tax rates are among the highest in the world. Check it out for yourself right here. For those who don't have the time to read and compare international tax rate charts, business-friendly Smart Money Magazine summarizes the reality (boldface added) --

You may have heard: U.S. corporations face one of the highest income tax rates in the world, though the mention of "rate" is often enough excised, so that what comes through is the assertion that corporations pay too much in taxes. This is simply untrue if your basis for comparison is the developed world. The truth is that while the 35% corporate income tax rate is high indeed, the creativity and global reach of U.S. corporations make them among the most lightly levied.

Between 2000 and 2005, U.S. corporate taxes amounted to 2.2% of the GDP. The average for the 30 mostly rich member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development was 3.4%.

2. No Judicial Review?

As for Miller's second point, once again he shows how fundamentally stupid, lazy, and ineffectual he is. The man appears to be talking about Treasury Secretary Paulson's three-page proposal of nearly two weeks ago. That was plainly a non-starter, as Bill Moyers remarked the same week Paulson pitched it.

After Miller (thankfully) was forced to sit down by his own Republican floor manager, Rep. Barney Frank had to remind our congressman (see the video below) that Section 119 at page 58 of the bill being debated expressly provides for agency and judicial review.

The video below, which concludes with Barney Frank's smack-down of Jeff Miller, is all the proof you need that Jeff Miller should not be in Congress. He's an embarrassment to all of North Florida.

Jeff Miller Gets Tutored in
How to Read a Bill