Before BP’s oil spill disaster, right-wing lawmakers constantly outperformed each other in a battle to be the most anti-government zealot when it came to energy policy. For instance, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) claimed that energy efficiency standards would set up a “global warming Gestapo” and attacked the administration’s czars who have unbridled powers.” Now, as his state is “in a war” with a black tide of oil, Scalise is complaining the federal government hasn’t done enough to deal with the spill, and has attacked President Obama for not coming in and “tak[ing] over.”

On Wednesday, ThinkProgress spoke with Scalise about his change in rhetoric, and asked if BP’s spill has changed his perception of the role of government. Scalise saw no cognitive dissonance in likening proactive government policies to Nazi Germany, while complaining that not enough government action is a lack of “leadership.” Scalise instead said merely that everyone wants “competent government”:

TP: You criticized the federal government for, you know, not doing enough given the spill in the gulf. But just a couple of months ago, you were saying that the EPA bureaucrats are like the Gestapo. Has the spill changed your perception of the role of government?

SCALISE: Well what it shows is that you’ve got incompetent government right now. MMS, who is the federal regulator, has not been doing their job. What we’re asking is, whether you’re for bigger government or smaller government, we ought to be able to expect competent government. And unfortunately we haven’t gotten that. People need to do their jobs.

Watch it:

One might question whether Scalise himself — who believes the “Climategate” conspiracy theory about the world’s scientific community, and voted against the stimulus but touted the jobs it created in his district — meets the standard of “competent government.”

Scalise is hardly the only anti-government critic now demanding government action in the wake of BP’s spill. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) warned her constituents that living in D.C. placed her “behind enemy lines,” and that people should get “armed and dangerous” to prepare for clean energy policies. But now, Bachmann is ranting that the government didn’t do enough, and that Obama should have “commandeered” boats to deal with BP’s crisis. In March, Sarah Palin decried Obama’s “transformation of America into some kind of socialized country.” Now she wants a government that “regulates oil developments and holds oil executives accountable” and federal criminal investigations to end “oily corruption.”

This is an outright falsehood*:

*Actually, it is still false with or without the asterisk — even if the ad is well-meaning in a far-too-little, far-too-late sort of way.

In fact, the asterisk goes to a statement in the bottom half of the ad (see below) that is also false:  “In 2007, American consumers spent $6 billion on potato chips; U.S. spending on clean energy R&D that year was $1.8 billion.”

Here’s why those statements are both false and misleading:

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Our guest bloggers are Director David Madland and Senior Policy Analyst Karla Walter of the American Worker Project at the Center for American Progress.

Current regulations require that the federal government only do business with responsible businesses, but as the BP oil catastrophe illustrates, existing policies and procedures are woefully inadequate. As a result, BP PLC, which has a long record of breaking environmental, safety, fraud, and antitrust laws, was allowed to sign new lease agreements and get billions of dollars in new contracts. This puts workers, the environment, and taxpayers in harm’s way.

The “high-road” contracting proposal supported by the Center for American Progress Action Fund would ensure that the government has the power and information it needs to avoid doing business with irresponsible companies in order to prevent tragedies like the BP oil gusher from happening again.

Well before the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, BP had a long history of lawbreaking that should have warned the federal government to refrain from entering into risky deals with the company. A complete record of BP’s violations is available at the Project on Government Oversight’s Federal Contractor Misconduct Database, but here are just a few examples:

– A 2005 explosion at a BP refinery in Texas City, Texas killed 15 workers. BP’s negligence and continuing failure to remedy safety violations at its refinery resulted in it receiving the two largest total penalties in the history of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration ($87 million in 2009 and $21 million in 2005). BP also agreed to plead guilty to a one-count felony violation of the Clean Air Act, requiring the company to pay a criminal fine of $50 million and serve three years of probation.

– A hole in BP’s Prudhoe Bay pipeline caused the largest ever oil spill on Alaska’s North Slope — 200,000 gallons — in 2006, resulting in the temporary disruption of oil supplies to the United States. Investigators found that BP ignored warnings about corrosion in its pipelines and cut back on precautionary measures to save money. BP agreed to plead guilty to a violation of the Clean Water Act and paid $20 million in criminal fines, community service payments, and criminal restitution. Four years earlier, BP paid $150,000 in fines and penalties to Alaska’s Department of Environmental Conservation for delays in installing leak detection systems for the Prudhoe Bay crude oil transmission lines.

– BP agreed to defer prosecution in 2007 for a one-count criminal information, which charged the company with conspiring to violate the Commodity Exchange Act and to commit mail fraud and wire fraud after traders for the company conspired to manipulate and corner the market for one type of propane. BP paid $303 million as part of the agreement, including $100 million in criminal penalties.

Despite its failures to comply with the law, BP has continued to receive lucrative government leases and contracts. Since fiscal year 2008 — after the Texas City refinery deaths, the Prudhoe Bay spill, and BP’s settlement (on October 25, 2007) for mail and wire fraud charges — the company received the Deepwater Horizon lease and $4.3 billion in new government contracts. The company extracted $16 billion worth of oil and gas from its U.S. facilities in 2009 alone.

The current process for ensuring that the government only does business with responsible companies has been a failure for several reasons. Debarment — the process by which the government bans irresponsible firms from doing business with it — is rarely used, is too slow a process, and occurs after the fact. And responsibility review — the government’s tool to pre-screen every company’s legal record on a case-by-case basis before it does business with it — is weak and inadequate. Fixing the suspension and debarment process would help prevent the government from continuing to do business with companies that persistently violate the law, but existing the hurdles to effectively using the process are too high. “High-road” contracting rules — enhanced responsibility review based on thorough information and rigorous analysis — would address the key failings of the current process and help avoid incidents like the BP oil catastrophe along the Gulf Coast.

Read the full version of this post at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Wind Companies to Buy More U.S. Parts in Agreement With Unions

Wind-energy companies agreed to buy more parts from U.S. suppliers, and a labor union promised to join in lobbying Congress for a requirement to use more renewable energy.

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Memo to Tea Partiers:  The point of the original Boston tea party wasn’t actually to pollute Boston Harbor.

The tea party movement and their corporate-funded astroturf backers at FreedomWorks often claim to be fighting “big government.” For instance, FW complained that the individual mandate in the new health care law was an “unacceptable, unconscionable, “¦ complete perversion of the liberties our founders fought and died to protect.”

Now, local chapters of the tea party andFW  are collaborating to plan a protest in Gwinnet County, Georgia, to voice their latest grievance against government powers “” mandatory home trash collection.  TP has the story:

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Official gusher estimates finally reach levels reported 6 weeks ago

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.

Back on May 1, Climate Progress reported “Oilpocalypse Now: WSJ reports BP oil disaster may be leaking at rate of 1 million gallons a day.”  Self-deluded BP has been lying to itself and others, lowballing the leak rate — and concealing the images needed for independent analysis — for far too long.  The result has been a wholly inadequate response that comes  straight out of the the mother of all disaster movies.

Finally USGS Director Marcia McNutt, “who leads the teams of scientists collectively known as the Flow Rate Technical Group” admits of the recent estimates:

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Last month, the Interior Department instituted a six-month moratorium for wells deeper than 500 ft, directing them to “cease drilling any new deepwater wells, including wellbore sidekick and bypass activities.” Secretary Salazar explained “With the BP oil spill still growing in the gulf, and investigations and reviews still under way, a six-month pause in drilling is needed, appropriate, and prudent.”  Duh.

But the addicts demand another fix even as the country sees the devastating consequences of their addiction ruining the Gulf of Mexico (see “Jindal jumps the shark, crashes into oil-spoiled Gulf“).  In this repost, TP has the story of the latest addict to speak out.

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It seems insensitive to talk about silver linings in the middle of the life-killing BP oil disaster in the Gulf.  But in fact, there are a couple we should recognize and act upon now.  Bill Becker, Executive Director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, makes the case.

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The Times understands that Mr Prodi, who twice served as Italy’s prime minister, is a key member of an “international advisory board” assisting BP that also includes Josh Bolten, the former chief of staff to President George W. Bush. Both Mr Prodi and Mr Bolten are former employees of Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that advises BP. BP’s former chairman Peter Sutherland also held a senior role at Goldman.

BP has embarked on an aggressive campaign to repair its public image in the wake of the Gulf disaster.  They are doing as good a job on the PR front as they are on responding to the undersea volcano of oil (see As analysts say oil disaster, “could break BP,” company hires Dick Cheney’s press secretary).  TP has more on their latest efforts in this repost.

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