Published just seconds ago on Facebook.
Oil is penetrating deeper into the Louisiana coastline as we speak, oil is still gushing, BP is still making little to no progress in clean up and the government is doing its best to sound mean and scary about 'what they might do.'
Awesome.
I haven't really known what to write, think or say about the oil mess in the Gulf of Mexico other than 'shit, that's really bad' and 'damn, that sucks' but the pictures of pelicans covered with oil and the little baby pelicans covered with oil have pretty much changed all that. I'm not a huge bird person, but there's something about seeing poor, innocent wildlife covered in petroleum that just pisses me off more than usual. These pelicans, herons and sundry other furred creatures are just after a place to live, nest and bits of fish- and what do they get? Oh, that's right, they get to dive into what they think is water only to come out covered in oil.
Awesome. Totally awesome.
Delicate marshes are under threat- and they're not sure they can ever get them totally clean again. The clean-up chemicals they're using? Oh that's right- they cause environmental damage as well! There's just good news pouring in from all directions when it comes to this mess and there's good news and bad news to be had as a result. The good news (at least from my radical political point of view) is that the political mess that's underway because of this mess is one more piece of mounting evidence that the neo-corporatist anti-democratic duopoly of political power that allegedly runs this country is heading rapidly towards a very high cliff of some kind. Let's consider: Conservatives (well, Republicans) have spent years trying to convince everyone they can that federal regulation of business is bad juju. Major bad juju and there should be a lot less of it. Principled capitalists all, it's a prototypical laissez faire economic point of view that's predicated on the notion that business will take care of themselves and if they've been bad, the invisible hand of the market and proactive consumers will excise bad, bad corporations from existence.
Which all nice in theory, but in practice? Eh, not so much- but as a result of some heavy sermonizing and deregulation while they were in power, the government's power to check on things like, oh, say, safety regulations on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico ain't what it used to be. (For that matter, you can say the same thing about mines in West Virginia as well.) However- far be it from me to blame everything on Republicans, because as it turns out, the people who are supposed to be regulating the oil industry aren't exactly doing a swell job either.
Yes, the President's administration in its wisdom gave the rig that's now all over the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico a safety award. Oh, the irony. Like giving the Titanic certification that it'll stop all known forms of icebergs. And of course, the federal agency that's supposed to regulate the oil industry? Oh me oh my- it's totally in the pocket of the oil industry. Happily the former head of that agency has now resigned and vague promises of reform are forthcoming and of course, the biggest strike against the government of all: they're still letting BP take the lead in cleaning up what I'm sure is going to be the biggest ecological disaster of my lifetime.
So where does this leave us? The pro-business party in Washington D.C. would have us believe that corporations like BP will take care of themselves free of governmental interference and regulation and if they don't police themselves, then the invisible hand of the market will do the rest. The people who question this, say that some regulation is necessary, but like with everything in Washington D.C. a good idea like this one inevitably runs into money, which scums up everything it touches. I don't think I'm in favor of crushing governmental regulation on business, but it's obvious when there is regulation it's completely and utterly toothless which undermines both the efficacy and the point of regulation.
I have stopped trusting the federal government completely. I didn't exactly have a high degree of faith in it before, but now? Eh, I'm done- it's proved in the past couple of months to be completely and utterly useless and a titanic waste of money. What's the point? If the Federal government can't be bothered to take on the tough issues that need to be solved (like, say, immigration) and if they're just going to sit back and let the corporation that made the mess clean it up in what's increasingly seeming to be a very half-assed sort of way then let me ask again: what's the point? Why are we funding this massive turd sucking the life out of our economy that seems to have a mission in life to be as wasteful and as inefficient as it possible can be?
Until we can create a government that's on the side of individuals and not the side of entrenched power structures like corporations, for instant- and more importantly a government that's not in the pocket of said corporations like ours currently is, nothing is going to change. I want a government that's going to fight for ordinary people like me. I want a government that's going to be on my side and not the side of every special interest group out there that has an agenda that's not necessarily all that good for the country. In short, I'd like the money out of politics. But getting money out of politics? That's gotta be a bigger pain in the ass than getting oil out of water.
But something's got to be done. If not for the general health of our democracy, then let's at least think of the poor baby pelicans.
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