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Economy

BP CEO Tony Hayward: ‘I’d Like My Life Back’

By Brad Johnson on May 31, 2010 at 9:30 pm

The millionaire CEO of foreign oil giant BP, Tony Hayward, is upset at the inconvenience caused to him by his company’s devastation of the Gulf of Mexico. BP’s offshore drilling explosion claimed 11 lives on April 20, and has since spewed 20 to 100 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. At least 491 birds, 227 turtles and 27 mammals, including dolphins, have been found dead. On Sunday, immediately after apologizing, Hayward then complained about the effect of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on his personal life, saying “I would like my life back“:

We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.

Watch it:

Hayward, who pulled in $4.5 million last year, has a record of insensitive comments about the greatest environmental disaster in the United States:

“What the hell did we do to deserve this?” [New York Times, 4/30/10]

“The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume.” [Guardian, 5/14/10]

“I think the environmental impact of this disaster is likely to be very, very modest.” [Sky News, 5/18/10]

There are no indications that the Obama administration intends to remove Hayward or his company from running the cleanup effort, however. “I trust Tony Hayward,” Admiral Thad Allen, the top federal official overseeing the Gulf disaster, told CNN last week.

Hard as it may be for Hayward to believe, the residents of the Louisiana coast may want their nightmare to end even more than BP. “I was just sitting here thinking our way of life is over. It’s the end, the apocalypse,” fisherman Tom Young of Plaquemines Parish told reporters today. (HT Eschaton)

Update

Peter Sutherland, former chairman of BP:

I think he has been a superb chief executive by common consent, in terms of internal and external perception. That doesn’t change because of this accident.

Bob Dudley, BP Managing Director:

I think he’s done a great job of leading a company to stand up and do the right thing. . . . I think Tony’s doing a fantastic job.

Politics

Paranoid ‘Hatriot’ Group Attempting Takeover of Local Sheriffs’ Offices

By Ian Millhiser on May 31, 2010 at 3:00 pm

sheriffToday, a rather credulous Associated Press article reports on a movement to replace local sheriffs with proponents of a particularly virulent form of “tentherism“:

The retired police officer and investment adviser intends to make that a reality, joining at least a dozen candidates in other states running for office on an intepretation [sic] of the Constitution they say means the sheriff is the highest law enforcer in the land, even above federal agents.

“Frankly if he wants to, the sheriff can probably do more for the Constitution and protecting the people than anyone else,” Nichols said.

The candidates are part of a loosely organized nationwide movement called the Oath Keepers, which is enlisting law enforcement and military personnel to vow to refuse 10 orders they say are unconstitutional, from confiscating guns to warrantless searches.

Inexplicably, the AP article focuses almost exclusively on three aspects of the Oath Keepers’ philosophy: their opposition to gun control, their constitutionally appropriate opposition to warrantless searches, and their opposition to unconstitutional detention policies.

Absent from the article, however, is a discussion of the Oath Keepers’ overactive fantasy life. The Oath Keepers’ website is riddled with paranoid rhetoric about government officials “disarm[ing] the American people,” “confiscat[ing] the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies,” and “blockad[ing] American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.” In early 2008, the Oath Keepers’ founder warned that a “dominatrix-in-chief” named “Hitlery Clinton” would impose a police state on America and shoot all resisters. After primary voters chose a different candidate, the Oath Keepers simply rewrote their paranoid fantasy to include a taller, African-American lead.

At a Center for American Progress Action Fund event remembering the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing, former President Clinton described the Oath Keepers as a “hatriot” group that embraces the same violent rhetoric that fueled Timothy McVeigh. If they get their way, this delusional group will soon be given a badge and a gun.

Yglesias

Gaza

By Matthew Yglesias on May 31, 2010 at 2:14 pm

By Matthew Yglesias

I can’t keep up with the claims and counterclaims about the Gaza relief flotilla and the attack on it, but obviously the idea behind the flotilla was not just to deliver supplies but to try to elevate the level of attention being given to the actual situation in the Strip. As this recent human interest piece on Gaza’s surfers reminded us in early May before this particular controversy “[u]nder an economic embargo enforced by the Israeli government, only basic foodstuffs and humanitarian supplies are allowed into Gaza.” The intention of this is to make economic conditions unbearably bad and it’s been a big success!

Gaza doesn’t contain nearly enough arable land to support the Strip’s population as subsistence farmers. Which of course is true of many other places on earth. But the effect of the embargo is to make meaningful commercial activity in Gaza nearly impossible, pushing living standards down to what would be a below-subsistence level were it not for the trickle of aid that flows in. The Hamas authorities exercise some fairly rough justice over the area, extremist groups burn down summer camps and Israel launches airstrikes periodically sometimes injuring dozens sometimes hurting no one. The overall situation is incredibly bleak. Construction supplies aren’t allowed into the area, so it’s been impossible to rebuild since the war there from a couple of years back, and all the physical infrastructure is just degrading over time. Israel is attempting to defend itself from the sporadic rocket fire that’s emanated from the area since the IDF abandoned trying to directly administer it during Ariel Sharon’s administration, but the level of human suffering—we’re talking about a place where 1.5 million people live—being inflicted is just staggering.

Yglesias

NSS and the German president

By ThinkProgress on May 31, 2010 at 1:29 pm

By Ryan Powers

So Horst Köhler resigned Germany’s (largely symbolic) presidency in the wake of a bit of an uproar over the way he recently characterized his country’s military presence in Afghanistan. The Times explains:

Usually, German leaders justify their soldiers’ presence in the American-led coalition by saying they are needed to thwart would-be terrorists who might use Afghanistan as a base for attacks in Europe.

But, in his contentious remarks, Mr. Köhler said: “A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

The fact that his brief remarks even elicited a response let alone led to a resignation is striking when we compare that to the “Use of Force” section of Obama’s National Security Strategy in which Köhler’s sentiments are essentially laid out as official U.S. policy:

The United States must reserve the right to act unilaterally if necessary to defend our nation and our interests, yet we will also seek to adhere to standards that govern the use of force.

In addition to a little bit of politicking, I assume this has something to do with the Germany’s post-WWII anti-military mentality. But when we’re surrounded by rhetoric objecting to the fact that Obama won’t bomb Iran, it is a little surprising to see such tame language result in a President’s resignation.

Climate Progress

Why has a Newsweek economics editor, Stefan Theil, written “basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint”?

By Joe Romm on May 31, 2010 at 12:55 pm

Bickering and defensive, Newsweek reporters have lost the public’s trust.

Another week, another staggering journalistic lapse in climate science reporting at a once-great media outlet.

How bad is “Uncertain Science,” by Stefan Theil, European economics editor for the near-dead newsweekly?  I asked Dr. Robert J. Brulle for a comment, and the Drexel University “expert on environmental communications,” wrote me back:

This article is basically a condensed version of the climate denier viewpoint.  Mr. Theil significantly distorts the situation, and grossly fails to ground his story in the actual facts, all to support his biased position.  Obviously, Newsweek doesn’t have any fact-checking capability.  How this counts as journalism is beyond me.

Read more

Politics

You can’t be poor if you own a cellphone

By ThinkProgress on May 31, 2010 at 11:37 am

By Jamelle Bouie

Robert Samuelson invokes a familiar canard in his column complaining about the Obama administration’s choice to use a new definition of poverty developed by the National Academies of Science:

The official poverty measure obscures this by counting only pre-tax cash income and ignoring other sources of support. These include the earned-income tax credit (a rebate to low-income workers), food stamps, health insurance (Medicaid), and housing and energy subsidies. Spending by poor households from all sources may be double their reported income, reports a study by Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. Although many poor live hand-to-mouth, they’ve participated in rising living standards. In 2005, 91 percent had microwaves, 79 percent air conditioning and 48 percent cellphones. [Emphasis mine]

With microwaves, air conditioning and cell phones, it’s clear that poor people aren’t nearly as poor as we think they are! I mean, it’s not as if poverty is concentrated in the nation’s two warmest regions — the South and the West — where air conditioning is a necessity, and it’s not as if cell phones are a cheaper alternative to landlines, and critical to navigating the world of low-wage service jobs. I guess you could call microwaves luxuries, but even that’s ignoring the fact that the are for more likely to consume frozen and prepared foods that need microwaving.

So in Samuelson’s column, what you have is another attempt to minimize the actual poverty of poor people by pointing to items that are actually necessary to surviving in low-wage service economy. Indeed, by the end of the piece, Samuelson is a step away from lamenting that the new poverty measures will force the government to do more to combat poverty, as if what we do now is adequate. Of course, given Samuelson’s routine Hooverism — “deficits are more important than everything else!” — and his disdain for Social Security and Medicare, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Security

Israeli Commandos Raid Gaza Aid Flotilla, Netanyahu Cancels Meeting With Obama

By Matt Duss on May 31, 2010 at 10:40 am

The Associated Press reports that “Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis”:

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) … During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire.”

The Israeli raid has “triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel’s longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.”

Greater international attention and sympathy to the plight of Palestinians suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian- (and U.S.) enforced siege of Hamas-ruled Gaza is precisely what Israeli authorities were hoping to avoid. In the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the flotilla, the Israeli government and its American mouthpieces were hard at work both to downplay the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and to present the flotilla’s sponsors as supporters of terrorism. (The evidence for the latter claim seems to amount to the usual game of “Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden,” wherein everyone who has ever contributed money to a Palestinian cause is linked to global jihadism.)

Responding to claims that the aid flotilla itself represented a “provocation,” Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine writes, well, yeah: “The whole point of the ‘Gaza flotilla’ was to get a reaction out of Israel and call international attention to the problem of the blockade of Gaza…like all other acts of civil disobedience it was designed to provoke a response.”

Writing that the attack “is likely to create sustained international attention to the way Israel has treated the Gaza Strip in a way that nothing else has since the Gaza war and possibly since the beginning of the blockade,” Ibish suggests we compare the flotilla “to the ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ in which young white Americans from around the country went to the bastion of Jim Crow in order to organize local African-Americans, register them to vote, educate them and confront segregation”:

They knew it was a dangerous situation, and they were shocked but not surprised when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by the KKK as the project just got going. There were many other acts of quasi-official violence meted out to the volunteers, and while the organizers obviously would have preferred to have avoided all of that, they expected it and it was part of their strategy. The largely but not entirely unstated reasoning was that the country would continue to ignore massive violence directed towards the African-American community in Mississippi, but could and would not remain oblivious to similar violence directed towards young, white, middle-class college students from New York City and other metropolitan centers. This, indeed, proved the case. The violence directed at the Mississippi Freedom Summer shocked the conscience of the country and was among the numerous decisive moments in the civil rights movement that ultimately succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of formalized racism in the United States.

Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

Unfortunately, the killings will also likely result in the strengthening of support for Hamas vis a vis more moderate Palestinian leaders, causing greater unrest, and stirring more violence.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said in a written statement that “the United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained, and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has expressed his “full backing” for the raid, has canceled his scheduled meeting tomorrow with President Obama.

Security

Israeli Commandos Raid Gaza Aid Flotilla, Netanyahu Cancels Meeting With Obama

By Matt Duss on May 31, 2010 at 10:40 am

The Associated Press reports that “Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis”:

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) … During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire.”

The Israeli raid has “triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel’s longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.”

Greater international attention and sympathy to the plight of Palestinians suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian- (and U.S.) enforced siege of Hamas-ruled Gaza is precisely what Israeli authorities were hoping to avoid. In the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the flotilla, the Israeli government and its American mouthpieces were hard at work both to downplay the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and to present the flotilla’s sponsors as supporters of terrorism. (The evidence for the latter claim seems to amount to the usual game of “Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden,” wherein everyone who has ever contributed money to a Palestinian cause is linked to global jihadism.)

Responding to claims that the aid flotilla itself represented a “provocation,” Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine writes, well, yeah: “The whole point of the ‘Gaza flotilla’ was to get a reaction out of Israel and call international attention to the problem of the blockade of Gaza…like all other acts of civil disobedience it was designed to provoke a response.”

Writing that the attack “is likely to create sustained international attention to the way Israel has treated the Gaza Strip in a way that nothing else has since the Gaza war and possibly since the beginning of the blockade,” Ibish suggests we compare the flotilla “to the ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ in which young white Americans from around the country went to the bastion of Jim Crow in order to organize local African-Americans, register them to vote, educate them and confront segregation”:

They knew it was a dangerous situation, and they were shocked but not surprised when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by the KKK as the project just got going. There were many other acts of quasi-official violence meted out to the volunteers, and while the organizers obviously would have preferred to have avoided all of that, they expected it and it was part of their strategy. The largely but not entirely unstated reasoning was that the country would continue to ignore massive violence directed towards the African-American community in Mississippi, but could and would not remain oblivious to similar violence directed towards young, white, middle-class college students from New York City and other metropolitan centers. This, indeed, proved the case. The violence directed at the Mississippi Freedom Summer shocked the conscience of the country and was among the numerous decisive moments in the civil rights movement that ultimately succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of formalized racism in the United States.

Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

Unfortunately, the killings will also likely result in the strengthening of support for Hamas vis a vis more moderate Palestinian leaders, causing greater unrest, and strring more violence.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said in a written statement that “the United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained, and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has expressed his “full backing” for the raid, has canceled his scheduled meeting tomorrow with President Obama.

Yglesias

Exchange Rates and Stimulus

By Matthew Yglesias on May 31, 2010 at 10:31 am

By Matthew Yglesias

The much-discussed question of the dollar-RMB exchange rate hasn’t actually been talked about all that frequently during my trip to China. But it did come up at our most recent meeting (admittedly only because I asked a question about it) and our host offered the predictable-but-not-unreasonable response that though there’s a sound case for gradually changing this any Chinese leader is going to have to be reluctant to take any kind of sudden measure that would be likely to throw some huge number of Chinese people out of work.

What I’d wished he’d added is that there really ought to be a way out of this dilemma, namely for revaluation to occur in the context of the U.S., Europe, and Japan committing to more expansionary measures of a monetary or fiscal (or both) nature. For whatever reason, western political leaders seem to have determined that an extended period of badly elevated unemployment is a small price to pay to head off the possibility of hypothetical future inflation. China’s leaders, more sensibly in my view, have the priorities the other way around—trying to keep an eye on inflationary pressures, but predominantly focused on the actual and present danger of labor market collapse. But it’s just really hard for China to pull this off on its own and the Chinese economy simply isn’t big enough to serve as the engine of global demand. Making life easier for China’s economic managers isn’t the reason western leaders ought to do more, but it’s certainly true that better policy in the west would give them more wiggle room in a way that ultimately would make it much easier to resolve the contentious currency issue.

Climate Progress

Memorial Day, 2030

By Joe Romm on May 31, 2010 at 10:18 am

resource_wars_cover.jpgThe three worst direct impacts to humans from our unsustainable use of energy will, I think, be Dust-Bowlification and sea level rise and ocean poisoning:  Hell and High Water.  But another impact — far more difficult to project quantitatively because there is no paleoclimate analog — may well affect far more people both directly and indirectly: war, conflict, competition for arable and/or habitable land.

We will have to work as hard as possible to make sure we don’t leave a world of wars to our children. That means avoiding decades if not centuries of strife and conflict from catastrophic climate change. That also means finally ending our addiction to oil, a source “” if not the source “” of two of our biggest recent wars. As the NYT reported last August:

The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.

Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.

Read more

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