DN - Holding BP Accountable: Environmental Justice Struggle Continues in Gulf Region After 2010 Spill

The Less We See, the Less We Know

Trey Smith

At one level, BP's cover-up of the gulf oil disaster speaks to the enormous power that giant corporations exercise in modern society, and how unable, or unwilling, governments are to limit that power. To be sure, BP has not entirely escaped censure for its actions; depending on the outcome of the trial now under way in New Orleans, the company could end up paying tens of billions of dollars in fines and damages over and above the $4.5 billion imposed by the Justice Department in the settlement last year. But BP's reputation appears to have survived: its market value as this article went to press was a tidy $132 billion, and few, if any, BP officials appear likely to face any legal repercussions. "If I would have killed 11 people, I'd be hanging from a noose," says Jorey Danos. "Not BP. It's the golden rule: the man with the gold makes the rules."
~ from What BP Doesn't Want You To Know About the Gulf Spill By Mark Hertsgaard ~

I have shared a brief snippet of this thorough investigative piece. I strongly urge readers to utilize the link to read the entire damning story. It will turn your stomach.

For those of you who merely want a capsule summary, here it is. BP utilized a chemical dispersant called Corexit to hide the amount of oil polluting the gulf. This highly toxic chemical, when combined with oil, becomes even more toxic. BP told cleanup workers, government officials and the general public that Corexit was no more dangerous than "Dawn dishwashing detergent" which, as it so happens, is a baldfaced lie. They had documentation from its manufacturer in their own hands which contradicted this lie. Despite this knowledge, they didn't provide cleanup workers with adequate safety equipment and training about Corexit's toxic properties.

BP decided to use Corexit because they believed that less oil shown on TV and in the Gulf itself would minimize their financial liability for the disaster. Sadly, this may prove to be correct. Time will tell.

One thing that was not part of BP's calculus re this disaster is the allegation that Corexit has made thousands of cleanup workers and area residents very sick. Some physicians and scientists have likened it to Gulf War syndrome. People are dying because BP's main concern was limiting their financial responsibility for their own negligence.

Even worse, with the collusion of the Obama administration, nothing much has changed. The next major US oil disaster probably will play out much the same way. Corexit will be the weapon of choice because the government and oil honchos believe in the mantra, out of sight, out of mind. Unfortunately, the mainstream media and the general public basically have proven that belief in that manta is correct.

This Is Your Knight in Shining Armor? (Part 11)

Trey Smith

The environmental catastrophe of the British Petroleum gulf oil spill found Mr. Obama missing in action in the crucial early weeks, claiming that the government of the United States was impotent to contain the damage (or force BP to contain the damage) for several more weeks, and physically preventing reporters from reporting the damage caused by the spill in final weeks. Mr. Obama allowed British Petroleum to exponentially increase the environmental damage of the spill by illegally disposing of 1.84 million gallons of toxic waste (link) under the guise of ‘dispersing’ the spilt oil. As this was taking place Mr. Obama acted as a public relations advocate for British Petroleum and once the spill was ‘contained’ used government resources to cover up evidence of the crime.
~ from Meet Barack Obama by Rob Urie ~

The environment is one of those core issues that we are told represents a key ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans. The latter supposedly don't care about it, but the former want to protect it. President Obama certainly put this myth to be bed in the manner in which he "handled" the BP Oil Spill!

The way Obama protected BP, at the expense of the people and other life forms that depend on the Gulf of Mexico for their livelihoods, was very reminiscent of the way George Bush "handled" Hurricane Katrina. The big difference between the two was that the latter wasn't caused by an irresponsible corporation; both situations were made far worse by an indifferent government apparatus.

Previous parts of this miniseries: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9 & Part 10

Afternoon Matinee: The Gulf 2 Years Later - Scientists Alarmed

Afternoon Matinee: BP Gulf Oil Spill as of April 2012

Afternoon Matinee: The Gulf Is STILL Not OK

It Ain't Luck

Elsewhere, the same paper recorded that a Manchester man had been jailed for 18 months for handling stolen goods (a 37in TV) in the riots. No one has accused [former BP chief Tony] Hayward of criminal behaviour, whatever the record of his new company's president, but the contrast in the consequences of two successive summer outrages is a striking one. The Deepwater Horizon crisis made Hayward the focus of American loathing in 2010, just as this year's looters had Britain's public and politicians calling for punishment and revenge.

But capitalism has encouraged Hayward to "move on" in a way it won't be doing anytime soon to anyone found with a stolen TV in the boot of their car. Public disgrace – the fact of it, whether justified or not – no longer presents an obstacle to powerful careers.
~ from The Titanic Disaster Meant a Life of Shame For Its CEO. Not So BP's Tony Hayward by Ian Jack ~

In this article, Jack relates that Hayward left BP with millions of dollars in compensation and his newly-formed company now stands to reap millions more through a Kurdish oil deal. Regardless of his legal or moral culpability as BP chief, Hayward has landed on his feet big time and is singing all the way to the bank.

On the other hand, petty criminals (like the one Jack mentions) routinely are sent to prison for crimes that impact the few. Think about this for a moment. Hayward's company caused billions of dollars of damages plus wrecked an ecosystem for a generation and he gets off scot-free, but steal a television set or sell somebody a dime bag and you can expect to spend some time in the big house!

Some people might say that people like Hayward are lucky, but luck has little to do with it. Our system is set up to excuse egregious acts by the well-to-do (unless they victimize other well-to-do individuals or corporations -- then they too MAY get in trouble) and to put the hammer down on everyone else. It keeps the masses scared and preoccupied knowing that the law could scoop them up at any time.

Afternoon Matinee: One Year Later

Entirely Legal

I am reading an article in The Nation by Allsion Kilkenny and this part of a sentence jumped out at me and caused me to go into spasms.

...the company’s $9.9 billion tax credit from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which nearly matches the EPA’s entire annual operating budget...

This illustrates something that is very wrong with our current tax code. BP placed corporate profits before safety and public health. When something went wrong, it was their financial responsibility to fix the problem. Yet here they are taking a tax credit for a portion of the expenditures that their irresponsibility caused! And it's legal!!

It would be like me deciding to get behind the wheel drunk. I plow into a gaggle of school children, severely injuring several. At tax time, I would get to deduct a significant portion of the money I expended paying for all the damage I caused.

Who in the world thinks this represents sound tax policy?

Don't answer that. We already know who helped to write our inane tax laws!

How Much If a Life Worth?

In its purest sense, no dollar amount can be put on this miracle we call life. Life itself is precious and money is vulgar and ephemeral. Life comes from the mysterious beyond and money is a human-created mechanism of exchange. Still, within the confines of human social relationships, we must ask: How much is a life worth?

There is no one answer. It all depends upon a person's station in life.

If an individual is a member of the ruling elite, then that life is worth a helluva lot! Money will be thrown at you for assorted reasons. Your tax responsibilities will be reduced and, in many cases, you will be completely excused from shouldering ANY responsibility to your community by not being required to pay any tax at all!

If you run into trouble -- even if your own reckless behavior caused the problem -- your fellow citizens will bail you out. We will hand you buckets of cash hand over fist in the hopes that a few pennies trickle back to the rest of us.

If an individual is not part of the ruling elite, then that life isn't worth all that much. You will be required to pay for most of the services, wars, pollution and lifestyles of everybody else. If you try to scrimp -- even a little -- on what we say you owe, the justice system will come after you and make you pay dearly for trying to skirt your responsibility to society.

If you are unfortunate enough to live near the Gulf coast in the US or Eastern Japan, then the powers that be will demonstrate for you how little your meager life is worth. In Japan, TEPCO is paying families uprooted by the nuclear disaster $12,000. The average payout for victims of the BP oil spill is $16,000.

On the surface, that may sound like a significant chunk of change. People with no jobs or facing home foreclosure might say that $12K or $16K would alleviate a great amount of worry for them. But how can such meager amounts of money replace the lives torn asunder?

In Japan, some people were evacuated with little more than the clothes on their backs. They have lost their homes, belongings, modes of transportation, and everything in between. They've lost their jobs and their children have lost their schools. $12K is a pittance in comparison!

Along the Gulf Coast, the economy is in shambles. The fish and the shrimp haven't come back. Tourism is way down. Oil sheens continue to roll in with the tide. With the fishing and tourism industries stuck in idle, few jobs are to be had.

To make matters worse, according to the federal government, "the 2009 poverty threshold for a family of three was 18,310 dollars." So, handing out an average of $16K doesn't even get a typical family above the poverty line!

The message is clear. Most lives on this planet aren't worth a lot and their value is sinking like a rock.

One Year

One year ago, the world was captivated by 24/7 news reports about a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. For nearly 3 months, the world kept watching. In time, the mainstream media moved on to different tragedies and stories, but the problems the oil spill wrought have NOT gone away.

As Michelle Chen points out at In These Times, "Congress has passed no legislation to prevent the kind of disaster that touched off the explosion that killed 11 workers and poured masses of oil into the Gulf of Mexico." If you think about that sentence, it should strike you as truly amazing. Here we had the greatest US environmental accident of all time and yet... It's as if the powers that be have put all their eggs in the basket of hope -- hoping it won't happen again.

But we know that BP cut corners to maximize profits. We know that BP didn't have an adequate safety plan in place. We have learned in the past month or so that the blowout preventers don't work as advertised -- the blueprint is flawed. And we know that the government agency that was supposed to regulate and oversee gulf oil wells was in bed with the corporations they were supposed to regulate and oversee.

All of these things and so much more cry out for legislation to insure this accident is not repeated and yet, in today's political climate, NOTHING is done. The only new news in this area is that new permits are being granted for the drilling of offshore oil wells.

All the while, the animals who depend on the gulf are dying, the seafood industry is a shell of its former self, the general gulf economy still stinks, and people remain financially desperate AND sick.

One year and nothing much has changed.

Why Am I Not Reassured?

Gosh, the reports coming out of Japan seem to be getting worse and worse. Here's what they announced today.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. on Monday took the unprecedented measure of dumping 10,000 tons of low-level radioactive water in the Pacific Ocean from a facility at its crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex to make room for the storage of more highly contaminated water, which is hampering restoration work at the plant.

With the total amount of water to reach 11,500 tons, including contaminated groundwater from near the No. 5 and No. 6 reactors, the government said the disposal was unavoidable in order to secure safety. The level of radioactive substances in the water is up to 500 times the legal limit permitted for release in the environment.

The government's nuclear agency said the disposal will pose ''no major health risk'' and experts say that the radioactive materials are likely to be diluted in the sea, but it remains uncertain how the marine environment will be affected when taking into account the impact of highly radioactive water already leaking into the sea from the plant located on the coast of Fukushima Prefecture.
~ from Kyodo News ~

Is it any wonder that people are frightened? TEPCO and the Japanese government keep reporting that this or that is up to 500, 1,000, 10,000 or 100,000 times the permissible limits, but, hey don't worry.

This is the exact same scenario Americans were treated to by our own government and BP during last year's mammoth oil spill. We were told that the oil wasn't as bad as it appeared and that the dispersant used would pose no serious health risks to area residents. Despite these reassurances, people up and down the Gulf coast got sick and, one year later, many of them remain sick.

What is the point in having legally permissible limits of toxic substances if, when those limits are exceeded by large margins, we're told it's no big deal? Are the limits themselves meaningless?

Exemplary?

Some news reports simply are too hard to fathom. You read (or hear) it once and, no matter how many times you reread it, your reaction each time is along the lines of "Huh? You've got to be kidding!"

This is one of those stories.

Hopefully, you remember what took place in the Gulf of Mexico last year around this time. An oil rig owned by British Petroleum and operated by Transocean exploded killing 11 people. It took over 3 months to cap the well and, in the meantime, killed untold numbers of other creatures, cripple the area ecosystem, shut down commercial fishing in a large area of the Gulf, threw tens of thousands of people out of work, severely impacted tourism and sickened a good number of the people hired to clean it up.

All in all, it was a bad deal every way around.

So, how did Transocean respond to this year to forget? It awarded its top executives big bonuses "for its "best year" for safety!!!"

That's not a misprint. The bonuses were for S-A-F-E-T-Y.

According to the BBC, a company report indicated that Transocean "exceeded internal safety targets."

Two observations quickly come to mind. First, how low must those targets have been to exceed them? Second, if this was their best safety year ever, I would hate to think what their worst year was like!

This example offers yet another illustration of how out of touch most of the corporate world is. Financial institutions torpedo the economy, get bailed out by taxpayers and then award their execs big bonuses. Here we have a corporation that was partly responsible for the costliest environmental disaster in US history and they consider it a great safety year.

What is wrong with these people? Do they have no conscience whatsoever?

A Black Tide

Everyday the reports coming out of Japan seem a bit grimmer than before.

The country's nuclear and industrial safety agency, Nisa, said radioactive iodine-131 at 3,355 times the legal limit had been identified in the sea about 300 yards south of the plant, although officials have yet to determine how it got there...

More signs of serious radiation contamination in and near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant were detected Thursday, with the latest data finding groundwater containing radioactive iodine 10,000 times the legal threshold...

Japanese officials have conceded that the battle to salvage four crippled reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant has been lost...

A nuclear expert has warned that it might be 100 years before melting fuel rods can be safely removed from Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant...

Think about this last snippet in terms of your own local community. Imagine seeing fire trucks headed downtown to the most prominent building and learning that firefighters expected to battle the blaze for the entirety of your AND your children's lives. The streets around the building would be blocked for 2 generations or more and life, as you know it, would never be the same!

This is one of the secrets that elected leaders and the mainstream media hope you don't recognize: Environmental calamities are not short-term affairs. While the media glare will shine bright for a while, once the cameras move on to other big stories, the people and local environment continue to suffer, sometimes, catastrophic loss.

A swath of Americans SHOULD understand this scenario all too well. Last year the bright lights were focused on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico as the country was gripped by the BP oil disaster. For over 2 months, we were treated to in-depth investigative reports 24/7. But the horrendous problems magically didn't vanish when the cameras moved on. The people in the Gulf region continue to wrestle with these myriad problems each and every day.

There have been a large number of reports -- most coming from the alternate press -- of people who have remained or gotten more sick since the well was capped. Reports continue to come in of black tides sweeping unto the shores. Of course, it's not just the human population that is suffering mightily.

The death toll from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill goes far beyond the animal corpses washing ashore, says a report that warns that whale and dolphin deaths may be 50 times higher than believed.

The report, by an international team of marine mammal specialists, estimates that for every corpse that washes ashore another 50 may never be found.

"When people present the raw carcass counts without any caveats, without any qualifiers, they are implying we have a 100 per cent carcass recovery rate when we don't have anything like that," says Rob Williams of the University of B.C. He is lead author of the report to be released Wednesday as the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon disaster approaches.

He and his colleagues take issue with recent reports that point to a carcass count of just over 100 whales, dolphins and porpoises as evidence of the modest environmental impact of the spill.

"The true death toll could be 50 times the number of carcasses recovered," they report in the journal Conservation Letters...

Technology can be a good thing. It has allowed human society to progress in directions few could have imagined in past generations. But with progress comes greater responsibility. When things don't work the way we expect them to -- as happens time and time again -- we threaten the lives of millions of species and life forms.

Our society has become so enamored with technology that we too often don't ask the most basic question: Do the anticipated benefits outweigh the hard to imagine costs if something goes wrong?

The Story That Shouldn't Go Away

Last spring and summer you couldn't turn on the TV, pick up a newspaper or read news websites without seeing wall-to-wall coverage of the BP oil spill. The media seemed all agog over nearly every aspect of this horrific story. Then, one day, the well was finally capped and the mainstream media pulled up stakes to move onto the next big story.

Of course, the tragedy didn't end when the oil stopped gushing. In fact, in many ways, the story now is far more compelling than it was then. You'd never know it though unless you follow the few reporters -- like Dahr Jamail -- who have kept on it since Day One.

Check out his most recent dispatch here. It ain't a pretty picture at all!!

Still There

Remember the BIG story last spring and summer? Ya know, the one the mainstream media covered 24/7 for weeks upon weeks? After they f-i-n-a-l-l-y succeeded in capping the well, the BP-caused oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico faded from public view. Now, for those who aren't living the nightmare, it is gone and forgotten.

You may not see mention of it very often, but while the cameras and microphones have moved on, the oil hasn't. It's still there!!

More and more scientific research teams are uncovering the gruesome details. Recently, one group took a mini-sub to view the seabed floor.

To start our trip to the seafloor, three of us scrunched into the titanium hull of a submarine named Alvin, on the rear deck of the research vessel Atlantis, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The descent through half a mile of inky black water was gentle, almost meditative. And when the sub's lights finally illuminated the bottom, the scene was serene — fish and shrimp paddled around near the seafloor, going about their business, and crabs scuttled along the bottom.

There was no black goo on the bottom, about 10 miles from the Macondo well. But biologist Samantha Joye from the University of Georgia says she wasn't expecting anything quite so blatant.

Instead, we saw a brown haze covering the seafloor, and Joye started noticing things that weren't quite right.

A once-magnificent fan coral was covered with brown fuzz — dead...

While the evidence appears to be piling up that, despite the government's statements to the contrary, the oil didn't vanish due to use of dispersants, government officials say they still aren't convinced. Maybe not, but Ian MacDonald from Florida State University is.

There are still government officials and scientists who want more proof before they are willing to say a lot of BP oil ended up at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, and MacDonald certainly respects that skepticism. After all, skepticism is a healthy element of science.

"At the same time, the evidence piles up, and after a while you say, 'Gee, there is oil on the bottom,' " MacDonald says. "And, as a simple statement at the end of this cruise, I have to say, 'Gee, there is oil on the bottom,' and that's too bad.' "

Beyond the Yellowed Pages

We all know how it goes. The mainstream media fixates on a story for a time -- going full bore 24/7 -- then they move on to the next sensational item. Since the media has pulled up stakes, far too many members of the public wrongly assume that everything has returned to an idyllic hunky-dory state.

Life rarely goes that way. It's not uncommon at all for most of the real tragedies to occur once the cameras stop rolling. Unfortunately, because the key issues are subject to an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality, the genuine victims of tragedy end up suffering from abject neglect.

This past spring and summer the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico dominated the mainstream media and the blogosphere alike. In time, it faded from view and the nation's attention was diverted to "important" stories like Lindsey Lohan's attempt to stay out of jail. Unfortunately, the damage wrought in the gulf from the oil and dispersants has not gone away at all. Everyone and everything in the coastal communities continue to suffer greatly.

We know this because of journalists like Dahr Jamail who have stayed with this important story. In an article post today on Common Dreams, Jamail writes,

Two-year-old Gavin Tillman of Pass Christian, Mississippi, has been diagnosed with severe upper respiratory, sinus, and viral infections. His temperature has reached more than 39 degrees since September 15, yet his sicknesses continues to worsen.

His parents, some doctors, and environmental consultants believe the child's ailments are linked to exposure to chemicals spilt by BP during its Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.

Gavin's father, mother, and cousin, Shayleigh, are also facing serious health problems. Their symptoms are being experienced by many others living along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

Injected with at least 4.9 million barrels of oil during the BP oil disaster of last summer, the Gulf has suffered the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. Compounding the problem, BP has admitted to using at least 1.9 million gallons of widely banned toxic dispersants, which according to chemist Bob Naman, create an even more toxic substance when mixed with crude oil. And dispersed, weathered oil continues to flow ashore daily...

How to Handle a Disaster

Compared to the United States on a multitude of levels, Chile is like a speck on a map. The entire population of this South American country is almost equivalent to the population of metro New York City. While the US has a GDP of more than $14 trillion, Chile's is less than $250 billion. Yet, when it comes to handling a serious disaster, Chile stands tall over us.

Remember how our government has handled the BP oil disaster in the gulf? They allowed BP to take the lead again and again even though it was well documented that the oil giant didn't have a viable plan in place and they lied through their teeth every step of the way. Our leaders threw up their hands and declared that, somehow, they couldn't muster the expertise to handle the situation themselves.

In Chile, on the other hand, the government quickly stepped in to take "complete responsibility once it became clear that the San Esteban mining company was incapable of handling the rescue" themselves. Somehow the Chilean government was able to muster the expertise to get them to the point in which the 33 miners trapped in the mine may be rescued alive this week -- two months ahead of schedule!!

Maybe we should send our government leaders to Chile for some remedial education!

It Won't Go Away

In our modern era, it is the nature of disasters -- both human-caused or "natural" ones -- to make a big splash across the mainstream media and then quietly to disappear. Remember the earthquake in Haiti? We were treated to round the clock coverage for nearly one week, then the news organizations pulled up stakes and the "human tragedy" in Haiti became a non-story.

This same trajectory is taking place in the gulf region. As long as oil was pouring from the destroyed rig, the BP oil disaster was THE news. Now that the well supposedly is capped, the mainstream media is moving onto other sensational stories.

The chief problem with this kind of tack is that the real story begins once the camera lights fade. Haiti is STILL in shambles and much of the pledged aid has yet to materialize. In the gulf, regardless of what the federal government and BP wants the viewing public to believe, the oil and dispersants have not gone away and will cause serious repercussions long into the future.

My intent is not to follow the lead of the mainstream media. While the focus of this blog certainly is not on the BP oil spill, I have -- and will continue to -- share my thoughts and various articles on this important topic. While most politicians hope this disaster fades from your memory so they can continue on with "business as usual," I intend to remind all of us that this disaster will remain a disaster for some time.

Here's a snippet of an article, "Crabs Provide Evidence Oil Tainting Gulf Food Web" posted on CommonDreams.org:

To assess how heavy a blow the BP oil spill has dealt the Gulf of Mexico, researchers are closely watching a staple of the seafood industry and primary indicator of the ecosystem's health: the blue crab.

Weeks ago, before engineers pumped in mud and cement to plug the gusher, scientists began finding specks of oil in crab larvae plucked from waters across the Gulf coast.

The government said last week that three-quarters of the spilled oil has been removed or naturally dissipated from the water. But the crab larvae discovery was an ominous sign that crude had already infiltrated the Gulf's vast food web - and could affect it for years to come.

"It would suggest the oil has reached a position where it can start moving up the food chain instead of just hanging in the water," said Bob Thomas, a biologist at Loyola University in New Orleans. "Something likely will eat those oiled larvae ... and then that animal will be eaten by something bigger and so on."

Tiny creatures might take in such low amounts of oil that they could survive, Thomas said. But those at the top of the chain, such as dolphins and tuna, could get fatal "megadoses."

Marine biologists routinely gather shellfish for study. Since the spill began, many of the crab larvae collected have had the distinctive orange oil droplets, said Harriet Perry, a biologist with the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory.

"In my 42 years of studying crabs I've never seen this," Perry said.

She wouldn't estimate how much of the crab larvae are contaminated overall, but said about 40 percent of the area they are known to inhabit has been affected by oil from the spill.

Tulane University researchers are investigating whether the splotches also contain toxic chemical dispersants that were spread to break up the oil but have reached no conclusions, biologist Caz Taylor said.

If large numbers of blue crab larvae are tainted, their population is virtually certain to take a hit over the next year and perhaps longer, scientists say...

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Now that BP has announced that it has plugged the oil rig in the gulf -- why should we believe them? -- a lot of attention is now being focused on the use of dispersants. As I shared with you yesterday via an article from The Guardian, many scientist are disputing the rosy picture being painted by BP and the government.

If, as many scientists believe, the dispersants themselves will pose the greatest toxic danger to life in and around the gulf, it begs the question why both BP and the federal government were so quick to employ them in the first place.

From the standpoint of British Petroleum, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why they favored their use. It all boils down to economics! BP must pay a hefty fine for all the oil that has befouled the gulf region. By dispersing the oil (so that it's hard to find in intact sheens), BP hopes to save millions or billions of dollars. With the oil dispersed within layers of the water column, it provides BP with a mechanism to dispute high estimates of released oil because it will be harder for the government to prove that it is there.

While figuring out BP's motivation is easy, many people are having a great deal of difficulty trying to figure out why the government itself bought into this risky deployment of poison. I don't know about you, but in my mind's eye, the reason is just as easy. The Obama administration fell back on an age old, time tested strategy: out of sight, out of mind.

As we all know, election season is just around the corner. The last thing the administration wanted was to have oiled beaches and wildlife capturing the public's imagination on the nightly news. Such depictions would have increased public furor over the whole incident and an angry electorate is not something the party in power wants come election day.

So, despite the dubious science employed, the Obama administration made a calculated decision, one not calculated on what is best for the environment but what is best for the Democratic Party come November! By allowing the oil to be dispersed in a toxic stew in deep water, it will limit the pictorial images of America's worst environmental disaster in history.

Of course, the Democrats are in trouble on a whole range of fronts. This singular issue will not be the tipping point for many races. Still, the current administration wanted to mitigate at least one of the most pressing issues and allowing the widespread use of a toxic dispersant fit the bill.