Ever since the Obama administration launched the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), Bank of America has lagged woefully behind the other big banks in terms of the number of borrowers that it managed to navigate through the program. So far, it has only approved 11 percent of eligible borrowers for permanent mortgage modifications.

Part of the problem is that BofA was siphoning borrowers off into its own private mortgage modification program, in violation of its deal with the Treasury Department. However, the bank was also incredibly slow in getting the program up and running, and still has problems streamlining the process, as borrowers’ documents are lost and requests for modifications go unanswered.

BofA had been dismissing its shortcomings by blaming its customers for failing to make it through the program. “On average we have more customers that fail the eligibility requirements than competitors,” said one of its executives last year. However, yesterday, the bank finally admitted that its program has serious shortcomings:

“We certainly know that as we rolled out the modification process we have not handled our customers to the standards Bank of America is accustomed to,” said Jack Schakett, a Bank of America credit loss mitigation executive during a conference call. A reporter had asked about homeowners’ tales of lost paperwork and frustration when applying for loan modifications…“We continue to train and retrain to try to improve our process and we’ve done a lot of things to try to make sure we don’t lose documents anymore,” he said.

Well, at least BofA isn’t trying to blame borrowers anymore for its own ineptness, nearly 14 months after the program was launched.

With the rush of worries caused by the Greek fiscal crisis, lingering high unemployment, and the Gulf oil spill, the housing crisis has been bumped off the radar. However, problems still remain, and banks across the country could still face a day of reckoning when it comes to home mortgages, even leaving aside the commercial mortgage woes that could be ahead.

The New York Times reported this week on the supposedly growing number of people who simply stop paying their mortgages, and are living rent-free until their bank works through its backlog and forecloses on them. As Reuters’ Felix Salmon explained, this could make the banks rue their collective inability to get borrowers into sustainable mortgage modifications early on.

“From the bank’s point of view, if this catches on, there’s a very large number of banks in this country who are just toast,” he said. “And in hindsight they were just much better off dealing in a realistic way with these borrowers a year ago or two years ago when the problem first reeled its head instead of extending and pretending. Now they are in a pickle.”

JP Morgan Chase has actually warned investors that “underwater homeowners may walk away from their mortgages.” According to the latest data, just 300,000 borrowers overall have received permanent mortgage modifications under HAMP, while the mortgage delinquency in the first quarter of this year was 9.38 percent (meaning nearly one in ten borrowers is delinquent), more than one point higher than at the same time last year.

In recent weeks, journalists from CBS News, Mother Jones, the New York Daily News, and other media outlets have been reporting that BP has blocked them from photographing the dead animals and environmental degradation on the Gulf Coast as a result of the company’s oil spill. BP and the U.S. Coast Guard, however, have insisted that there are no restrictions on coverage:

Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident. In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date. Just today 16 members of the press observed clean-up operations on a vessel out of Venice, La. The only time anyone would be asked to move from an area would be if there were safety concerns, or they were interfering with response operations.

The Coast Guard might not have any prohibitions now, but BP sure tried. Powering a Nation, a student journalism initiative sponsored by the Carnegie and Knight Foundations, has obtained a contract BP made with local boat operators helping with the clean-up sign that explicitly barred them from talking to the media:

The contract included a clause prohibiting them and their deckhands from making “news releases, marketing presentation, or any other public statements” while working on the clean-up. It also included an additional section titled “Agreement Regarding Proprietary and Confidential Information,” which states that workers cannot disclose “Data” gathered while on the job, including “plans,” “reports,” “information” and “etc.”

Here are the relevant sections of the contract:

On May 24, however, someone named Tommy G. Mayet sent a letter, “on behalf of BP America Production Company,” to Vessel Opportunity Program members, informing them that Article 22 and Paragraph 5 (as well as other sections) had been deleted from the original contract because of a lawsuit. Nevertheless, the original contract has had a chilling effect on many fishermen, who remain nervous about talking to journalists. “Ultimately, BP is not directly limiting media contact,” writes the Powering a Nation reporters, “but the contract added more uncertainty on top of what the fishermen are already experiencing.”

Recently, a BP contract frustrated with the oil company’s cover-up surreptitiously escorted a New York Daily News crew around some of the affected sites, allowing them to observe a shore “littered with tarred marine life, some dead and others struggling under a thick coating of crud.” “There is a lot of coverup for BP,” said the contractor. “They specifically informed us that they don’t want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence.”

Facing possible jail time for their roles in the largest oil spill in American history, BP and Halliburton are building high-powered legal teams with “deep Department of Justice and White House ties.” But the companies are pursuing other means to defend themselves as well.

Halliburton’s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it “the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008,” Politico reports. Thirteen of the 14 contributions from May went to Republicans, while seven went to members of Congress who are “on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath”:

About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton’s reelection effort. It was Halliburton’s second-largest donation of the month — topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.

In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.

Meanwhile, a Hill analysis found that primarily during the Bush administration, BP and other oil companies “paid for dozens of trips and meals for officials” from the Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Homeland Security — agencies deeply involved in the regulation of oil exploration and spill cleanup. BP had the “highest tab for gifts to government officials” of all oil and gas companies:

BP and its affiliates — BP America and BP Exploration — show up in the gift reports at least 16 different times, paying for meals as well as for oil and gas industry seminars and tours of oil facilities. The cost of the gifts totaled more than $7,200.

Only two industry-funded trips took place during the first nine months of President Obama’s administration. In 2004, BP paid for a group of Interior officials to visit an offshore rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The group included then-deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, who later went to prison for his role in Jack Abramoff scandal. In 2005, BP paid for travel and meals for then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Minerals Management Service (MMS) Director Johnnie Burton to attended the dedication ceremony of another offshore rig in the Gulf. BP also paid for officials from the EPA and the Fish and Wildlife Service to visit Prudhoe Bay, Alaska over a period of several years. A recent Interior Inspector General report covering 2005 to 2007 found a “culture of lax oversight and cozy ties to industry.” Since January of 2008, BP lobbyists have spent $30 million to influence legislation, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Some coastal governors have benefited from BP as well. BP and other oil companies gave Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) $1.8 million dollars for his campaign, and since the spill, he’s been aggressively downplaying the disaster and encouraging people to visit his state’s oily beaches. Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) traveled to a BP-funded conference in Houston last month “to lobby aggressively to drill for oil and natural gas without delay.” Meanwhile, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) dismissed potential BP negligence by calling the spill an “act of God” at a trade association funded by BP in May.

The foreign oil giant BP has launched a new series of advertisements to contain the damage to its reputation and stock price from its uncontrolled disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. In a television advertisement that aired nationally this morning, BP CEO Tony Hayward promotes how his corporation is running the response to the environmental calamity it caused.

Unlike the attitude expressed in interviews when he dismissed the scope of the disaster and complained that he wanted his life back, Hayward tells the camera he is “deeply sorry” for this “tragedy that never should have happened.” With the cries of seabirds in the background, he expresses an air of authority, lumping “volunteers” and “the government” together in his thanks for their help:

The gulf is home for thousands of BP employees and we all feel the impact. To all the volunteers and for the strong support of the government, thank you. We know it is our responsibility to keep you informed and do everything we can so this never happens again. We will get this done. We will make this right.

Watch it:

While BP is on the hook for the billion-dollar costs of the cleanup, it still has money to conduct a broad greenwashing campaign with the support of an army of lobbying and public relations firms and former Dick Cheney press secretary Anne Womack-Kolton. Full-page ads in major newspapers promote the slogan: “We will get this done. We will make this right.”

Hayward’s recognition of BP’s “responsibility to keep you informed” flies in the face of reality, with its demonstrated willingness to misinform the public, lie to Congress, and restrict media access to the scene of its crime.

Hayward’s lack of respect towards the United States government’s authority reflects his company’s position. In addition to the failed efforts to stop the leaks, BP controls millions of dollars of claims processing, thousands of environmental contractors on land and sea, telephone lines, volunteer assistance, access to the disaster site, and data collection. The Center for American Progress recommends that the government take control of the cleanup, instead of keeping the perpetrator in charge.

It is, of course, too late to “make this right” for the 11 workers who died in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, or for the countless animals and miles of shoreline that have been killed by BP’s toxic sludge.

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.

Last week, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) placated right wing anti-tax crusaders by saying that he’d likely oppose any recommendations for tax increases that come from President Obama’s debt commission. “Everybody knows I’m a tax cutter and not a tax increaser, so the odds are that I probably couldn’t support something that would increase taxes,” he said.

Hatch is one of 33 members of the Senate who have signed an anti-tax pledge circulated by Americans for Tax Reform, an organization headed by Grover Norquist, who has famously said that he wants to “reduce [government] to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” 31 of the 41 Republican members of the Senate have signed the pledge.

I’ve been arguing that an adamant refusal to consider any tax increase constitutes an approach to budgeting that is fundamentally not serious, as there is simply no way to balance the federal budget on spending cuts alone. And evidently, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) agrees, as he called the anti-tax pledge “inconsistent with the oath of office” and challenged those who advocate only spending cuts to look at their numbers:

“I think that a lot of my colleagues have taken the pledge, and what they have to understand is that that pledge is inconsistent with the oath of office that they took when they became members of the United States Senate,” said Voinovich…“You know, some of my Republican friends are saying, ‘Oh, boy, you know, look at the president’s numbers,’ and so forth, but they fail to realize, what are your numbers?”…”I have to tell you something: If we don’t get something out of that commission, we are over the cliff.”

It’s nice to hear this from an active Republican member of Congress (albeit, a retiring one), as the only people on the right who have criticized the GOP’s staunchly anti-tax stance are no longer in office, like former senator Pete Domenici or former Reagan official Bruce Bartlett.

Right now, taxes are the lowest that they’ve been in 50 years, and the U.S. currently has the fifth lowest taxes as a share of GDP among economically developed nations. Even if we tried to balance the budget entirely on tax increases (which no one is trying to do), the United States would still be in the bottom ten.

As Paul Krugman explained, a serious attempt to eliminate the deficit with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases could be crafted and “you would end up still with the U.S. having lower taxes than almost all other OECD countries.” But, he added, “all of this hinges on being able to actually talk about tax increases, even modest ones, without it being political suicide.” And organizations like Americans for Tax Reform are poisoning the ability to do that.