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To: John Koligman who wrote (254077)	6/14/2010 2:21:54 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 306849

Congress blames BP's effort to save money for Gulf oil leak miamiherald.com By Erika Bolstad McClatchy Newspapers Posted on Monday, 06.14.10 WASHINGTON — BP knew its Macondo well was troublesome in the days leading up to a fatal April 20 blowout, congressional investigators found, but the company "appears to have made multiple decisions for economic reasons that increased the danger of a catastrophic well failure." Beginning with the company's uncommon well design, to its fatal decision not to circulate drilling mud that could have cleared out pockets of gas and the lack of critical testing that could have pinpointed problems with its cementing, the company had many points where it could have prevented an explosion, investigators with the House Energy and Commerce Committee found. Instead, though, the company violated industry guidelines and proceeded "despite warnings from BP's own personnel and its contractors," said the chairman of the committee, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and the chairman of the investigative subcommittee that handled the probe, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich. Those decisions led to 11 deaths and the worst oil spill in U.S. history, and will continue to have an effect on the environment and even the future of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the two wrote in a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward. “Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense,” they wrote. “If this is what happened, BP’s carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig.” The committee will ask Hayward to address their findings Thursday, when they examine some of the root causes of the accident. The day before, Hayward is set to meet with President Barack Obama. Tuesday, top executives with ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Shell as well as BP will face the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee. The grilling is expected to put the companies in the position of distinguishing their own safety practices from BP’s. It is the first time the executives have appeared together since Congress probed high gas prices in 2008.

To: John Koligman who wrote (254077)	6/14/2010 2:46:20 PM
From: Jim McMannis	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

This "blame and fine" talk just shows how screwed up litigious our system has become. I'd rather see all the effort go into capping the well and clean up. Had we been on the clean up since day one instead of only sending lawyers maybe a lot less oil would reach the shore. What if some company with no assets had caused it? And then they sailed away. Then what? OTOH, if you want to blame and fine, think wall street banks. Doesn't seem to happen does it?

To: John Koligman who wrote (254077)	6/14/2010 3:08:49 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

" said David Pettit, a senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council in Los Angeles. " The Natural Resources Defense Council is a group of lawyers who HAVE ZERO EXPERTISE IN ANY ANYTHING SCIENTIFIC. They were the ones years ago who made the big pr stink about the alar in apples at a time when there was close to zero % (less than one %) use of alar in US grown apples. But they decimated the apple industry with their crap. It came to light that their group consisted 100% of lawyers with zero scientific qualifications in the subject---and their paper on alar written by their lawyer only staff WAS NEVER PEER REVIEWED. They are phonies.

To: John Koligman who wrote (254077)	6/16/2010 1:30:04 AM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 306849

John, here is your Natural Resources Defense Council again. Not a scientist among them. ______________________________________________________________ Yet another journalist leaves media for liberal policy job By Alex Pappas -- The Daily Caller 06/15/10 dailycaller.com And another member of the media is leaving the world of reporting for a left-leaning advocacy job. Ed Chen, a Bloomberg reporter covering the Obama administration who was most recently the president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, will rejoin the Natural Resources Defense Council to do the “Lord’s work,” he said in a departure e-mail. It’s not Chen’s first time leaving journalism for the NRDC, a powerful green group known for clashing with industry by filing pro-environmentalist litigation. Chen, once a reporter at the Los Angeles Times, left the news business in 2006 to work for the environmentalist group, though quickly returned to reporting. “I think he’s following his heart,” said Bloomberg’s D.C. bureau chief Mike Tackett, when reached for comment on Chen’s departure. Tackett said he couldn’t speak to whether there were any concerns about hiring Chen from NRDC in 2007 because he was not bureau chief then . Tackett offered little commentary in response to broad questions from The Daily Caller on whether the public is used to having reporters from traditional news outlets go to Democratic leaning organizations. Asked if he thought Chen’s departure contributes to the public’s impression that the media is largely made up of reporters sympathetic to Democrats, Tackett said, “I guess I wouldn’t really have an opinion, one way or the other.” Chen, in his e-mail, said he’s returning to the left-leaning environmental group because the Gulf oil spill has inspired him to “help public officials find the wisdom and courage to do the right thing to combat climate change before it’s too late.” Politico’s media reporter Patrick Gavin, in a blog post about Chen, wrote that “fewer people seem to be surprised or shocked within Beltway circles” when a journalist leaves his or her job for a left-leaning political position. “Still, it is this ease and comfort that will likely reinforce notions across the country that all journalists are bias[ed] … towards Democratic-friendly organizations,” Gavin wrote. Of the recent examples of the revolving door: • ABC News’ political director, Teddy Davis, recently announced that he’s leaving the network to work for the Service Employees International Union. • Veteran journalist Linda Douglass, who had reported for ABC and CBS News, left journalism to be a spokeswoman for Obama’s presidential campaign. She later worked for the White House Office of Health Reform. Douglass just announced that she’s leaving the White House to return to the news business at the Atlantic. • Jay Carney, the former Washington Bureau chief for Time Magazine, left his journalism job to become Vice President Biden’s communications director. • Politico’s congressional reporter Jonathan Allen left his reporting gig there to work for Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s political action committee, only to return back to Politico shortly thereafter. His editor, John Harris, defended the re-hiring of Allen in a post to readers: “Most journalists, in my experience, are not particularly ideological, but a lot of them nurture Walter Mitty fantasies about what it might be like to play the game rather than cover it.” Harris said then that Allen would not be assigned stories dealing with Wasserman Schultz, or Sen. Blanche Lincoln whose campaign Allen once contributed money to — and a review of Allen’s stories show that to be the case, though he frequently writes on Democratic congressional politics. As for Chen, it appears he’s often reported on environmental issues, most recently the Gulf oil spill. During the 2008 election, he authored an article titled, “McCain is praised for climate stance, not his environmentalism” where he wrote how Sen. John McCain was viewed by activists as having a “weak overall environmental record.” Among stories he wrote on environmental issues include “Obama, Harper pledge cooperation on clean energy, environment” and “Obama outraged over BP spill, federal oil regulators.” It does not appear that Chen, who did not immediately return a request for comment by email from The Daily Caller, wrote about the NRDC while at Bloomberg. Read more: dailycaller.com