bureaucracybusters

Posts Tagged ‘OIL SPILL’

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

DONALD TRUMP AND THE OOBLECK

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Politics, Social commentary on June 26, 2017 at 12:01 am

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) published over 60 children’s books, which were often filled with imaginative characters and rhyme.

Among his most famous books were Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

Honored in his lifetime (1904-1991) for the joy he brought to countless children, Dr. Seuss may well prove one of the unsung prophets of our environmentally-threatened age.

Image result for images of dr. seuss

Dr. Seuss

In 1949, he penned Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the story of a young page who must rescue his kingdom from a terrifying, man-made substance called Oobleck.

The story is quickly told:

Derwin, the King of Didd, announces he’s bored with sunshine, rain, fog and snow. He wants a new kind of weather.

So he calls in his black magicians and gives them the order. The magicians assure him they can create it.

“What will you call it?” asks the king.

“We’ll call it Oobleck,” says one of the magicians.

“What will it be like?” asks King Didd.

“We don’t know, Sire,” the magician replies. “We’ve never created Oobleck before.”

The next morning, Oobleck–a greenish, glue-like substance—starts raining.

The king orders Bartholomew, the royal page, to tell the Bell Ringer that today will be a holiday. But the bell doesn’t ring—because it’s filled with Oobleck.

Image result for Images of "Bartholomew and the Oobleck

Bartholomew warns the Royal Trumpeter about the Oobleck, but the trumpet gets stopped up with the goo. 

The Captain of the Guards thinks the Oobleck is pretty and sees no danger in it—until he eats some.  Instantly, his mouth is glued shut.

The Oobleck rain intensifies. The falling blobs—now as big as buckets full of broccoli—now break into the palace, immobilizing the servants and guards.

At the climax of the story, Bartholomew confronts King Derwin for giving such a rash order: “If you can’t do anything else,” says Bartholomew, “at least you can say you’re sorry.”

King Derwin refuses, and Bartholomew says, “If you can look at all the horror you’ve caused and not say you’re sorry, you’re no sort of king at all.”

In real-life, such a king would have instantly ordered Bartholomew’s execution. But this is a children’s story.

So, overcome with guilt, King Derwin utters the magic words: “You’re right, this is all my fault, and I am sorry.”

Suddenly the Oobleck stops raining and the sun melts away the rest.

With life returning to normal, King Derwin mounts the bell tower and rings the bell. He proclaims a holiday dedicated not to Oobleck, but to rain, sun, fog, and snow, the four elements of Nature—of which Man is but a part.

* * * * *

Flash forward to the following Donald Trump tweets:

November 6, 2012: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” 

December 6, 2013: “Ice storm rolls from Texas to Tennessee – I’m in Los Angeles and it’s freezing. Global warming is a total, and very expensive, hoax!” 

January 1, 2014: “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bullshit has got to stop. Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.”

On May 5, 2016, as a Presidential candidate, Trump pointed to signs being waved at a rally in Charleston, South Carolina:in the crowd: “I see over here: ‘Trump digs coal,’ That’s true. I do.”

Donald Trump

Upon becoming President, Trump picked Scott Pruitt, a leading climate change denier, as director of the Environmental Protection Agency: “So no, I would not agree that [human activity] it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see,”Pruitt said on CNBS’s program, “Squawk Box”

On March 16, 2017, the Trump administration released a budget proposal to eliminate $100 million in funding for the EPA’s climate work, including scientific research.

On March 28, 2017, Trump ordered his administration to rewrite the Clean Power Plan.  His objective: To gut former President Barack Obama’s landmark restrictions on power plant emissions.  

On June 1, 2017, Trump announced that he would withdraw the United States from the Paris climate-change agreement deal.

There are forces in Nature far more powerful than anything Man and his puny strength can defy—or harness. And we invoke the wrath of those forces at our own peril.”

In the world of children’s stories, it’s possible for a king to undo the terrible damage he’s unleashed by finding the courage to say: “I’m sorry.”

In real-life, tyrants almost never say “I’m sorry,” no matter how enormous their mistakes and/or crimes.

From 1936 to 1938, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin slaughtered the cream of his own Army and Air Force. When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Stalin blamed his remaining generals for the massive defeats inflicted by the Wehrmacht.

And as Soviet forces finally closed on Berlin in April, 1945, and Adolf Hitler prepared to commit suicide in his underground bunker, he blamed the German people for losing the war he had started.

Saying “I’m sorry” cannot reverse decades of rampant environmental abuse. To believe that it can is as ridiculous as believing that self-righteous tyrants will ever take responsibility for their own crimes and follies.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

LOVING LESS, HATING MORE

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Uncategorized on June 19, 2010 at 10:51 am

In his play, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare has Marcus Brutus justify his participation in the assassination of his longtime friend with the following words: “Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more.”

President Barack Obama’s Republican critics could have said something very similar during their criticism of him for setting up a $20 billion escrow account to compensate victims of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico:

That they opposed the President “not because I love the oil industry less, but because I hate President Obama more.”

On June 17, Congressman Joseph Barton offered a badly-timed apology to BP CEO Tony Hayward.

“I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong is subject to some sort of political pressure that is–again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown,” Barton, a Texas Republican, said. “So I apologize.”

Barton was apologizing for an announcement made by President Obama on June 16. After meeting with the President at the White House, BP’s leaders had agreed to set up a $20 billion escrow account to–in Obama’s words–“provide substantial assurance that the claims people and businesses have will be honored.”

Barton said he was “ashamed” of what had happened at the White House and called it a “tragedy of the first proportion” that a private company would be subjected to a “$20 billion shakedown” that’s really a government “slush fund.” Barton said it was unprecedented and illegal.

Barton has received $100,470 in campaign donations from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The same group reported that since 1990, the oil and gas industries have given more than $1.4 million to Barton’s campaigns–the most of any House member during that period.

Barton is scheduled to become the Republican Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is supposed to oversee the actions of energy companies.

Nor was Barton the only Republican to condemn the President rather than Gulf-polluting BP. Congressman Tom Price of Georgia attacked the escrow account as an example of Obama’s “Chicago-style shakedown politics.”

“These actions are emblematic of a politicization of our economy that has been borne out of this administration’s drive for greater power and control,” Price charged.

Yet another Republican, Minnesota Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, criticized the BP disaster fund even before it was announced. Bachmann–who has repeatedly damned Obama as a socialist–called it a “redistribution-of-wealth fund” during a Heritage Foundation luncheon in Washington.

Bachmann told The Washington Post: “If I was the head of BP, I would let the signal get out there–‘We’re not going to be chumps, and we’re not going to be fleeced.’ And they shouldn’t be.

“They shouldn’t have to be fleeced and made chumps to have to pay for perpetual unemployment and all the rest–they’ve got to be legitimate claims.”

Bachmann also accused the president of demonizing BP. “He makes them evil, and what we’ve got to ask ourselves is: Do we really want to be paying $9 for a gallon of gas? Because that could be the final result of this,” she said.

Bachmann made these comments 57 days after BP’s shattered Deepwater Horizon oil rig began spewing millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

“Whose side is she on?” asked Tarryl Clark, Bachmann’s Democratic opponent in Minnesota’s conservative 6th Congressional District.

Putting Bachmann’s comments into perspective, Clark said she was giving “advice to the corporate honchos at BP on how to keep themselves from being ‘fleeced’ by the American people.”

Contrary to the stereotyped charge, bureaucracies are not made up of faceless cogs. They are comprised of men and women–whose loves, fears, hates and ambitions are reflected within those institutions.

Nor can bureaucracies exist in a vacumn. Every bureaucracy has a constituency–if not several constituencies. And the people who comprise that constituency expect their needs–if not their wishes–to be met.

This proves true even in dictatorships. The dictator may sit at the top of the pile. But if those who serve him–such as the secret police and the army–feel ignored or slighted, they will take appropriate action–and soon there will be a new dictator.

Adolf Hitler, for example, was careful to retain support among the top leaders of the German Armed Forces, by giving them titles and estates–and an entire continent to dominate.

Thus, it is a mistake to view statements such as those made by Barton, Price and Bachmann as separate from the views held by the constituencies these politicians represent. If the voters who placed–and keep–them in power didn’t fully support their hate-filled views of President Obama, such statements simply wouldn’t be made.

Or, if they were, the voters would quickly register their anger and turn such representatives out of office. It is because such politicians truly represent the hatreds and fears and greeds of their constituencies that they got into office. And it is because they continue to reflect those hatreds, fears and greeds that they continue to remain there.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

BP AND THE OILBLECK

In Bureaucracy, Politics, Social commentary on May 29, 2010 at 10:12 pm

Dr. Seuss (Theodor Geisel) published over 60 children’s books, which were often filled with imaginative characters and rhyme. Among his most famous books were Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.

Honored in his lifetime (1904-1991) for the joy he brought to countless children, Dr. Seuss may well prove one of the unsung prophets of our environmentally-threatened age.

In 1949, he penned Bartholomew and the Oobleck, the story of a young page who must rescue his kingdom from a terrifying, man-made substance called Oobleck.

The story is quickly told: Derwin, the King of Didd, announces he’s bored with sunshine, rain, fog and snow.  He wants a new kind of weather.

So he calls in his black magicians and gives them the order.  The magicians assure him they can create it.

“What will you call it?” asks the king.

“We’ll call it Oobleck,” says one of the magicians.

“What will it be like?” asks King Didd.

“We don’t know, Sire,” the magician replies.  “We’ve never created Ooleck before.”

The next morning, Oobleck–a greenish, glue-like substnace–starts raining.

The king orders Bartholomew, the royal page, to tell the Bell Ringer that today will be a holiday.  But the bell doesn’t ring because it’s filled with Oobleck.

Bartholomew warns the Royal Trumpeter about the Oobleck, but the trumpet gets stopped up with the goo.

The Captain of the Guards thinks the Oobleck is pretty and sees no danger in it–until he eats some.  Instantly, his mouth is glued shut.

The Oobleck rain intensifies.  The falling blobs–now as big as buckets full of brocolli–now break into the palace, immobilizing the servants and guards.

At the climax of the story, Bartholomew confronts King Derwin for giving such a rash order.

“If you can’t do anything else,” says Bartholomew, “at least you can say you’re sorry.”

King Derwin refuses, and Bartholomew says, “If you can look at all the horror you’ve caused and not say you’re sorry, you’re no sort of king at all.”

In real-life, the king would have almost certainly ordered Bartholomew’s execution.  But this is a children’s story.

So, overcome with guilt, King Derwin utters the magic words: “You’re right, this is all my fault, and I am sorry.”

Suddenly the Oobleck stops raining and the sun melts away the rest. With life returning to normal, King Derwin mounts the bell tower and rings the bell. He proclaims a holiday dedicated not to Oobleck, but to rain, sun, fog, and snow, the four elements of Nature—of which Man is but a part.

* * * * *

Flash forward to May 29, 2010: BP has admitted defeat in its latest attempt to plug the Gulf of Mexico oil leak by pumping mud into a busted well. More than 1.2 million gallons of mud was used, but most of it escaped out of the damaged riser

In the six weeks since the spill began on April 20, BP has failed in each attempt to stop the gusher.

First, the company used robot submarines to try to close valves on the massive blowout preventer. But the valves wouldn’t close.

Two weeks later, BP tried to place a 100-ton concrete box over the leak. But this was soon clogged with ice-like crystals.

Then engineers used a mile-long siphon tube to suck up the gushing oil. But the tube sucked up only 900,000 gallons of oil—out of an estimated 18- to 40 million gallons of oil pouring into the Gulf.

“This scares everybody,” admitted BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles. “The fact that we can’t make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven’t succeeded so far. Many of the things we’re trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet.”

There is a moral to be learned here—but not by right-wing fanatics like Sarah Palin and the “Drill, baby, drill” crowd. It’s only for those who are willing to confront the truth head-on:

There are forces in Nature far more powerful than anything Man and his puny strength can defy—or harness. And we invoke the wrath of those forces at our own peril.

In the world of children’s stories, it’s possible for a king to undo the terrible damage he’s unleashed by finding the courage to say: “I’m sorry.” BP’s top executives—and the government officials who refused to hold the company accountable—have been saying “I’m sorry” for the last six weeks.

It hasn’t proven enough, and the residents of Louisiana—and states well beyond it—will be living with the damage of this environmental holocaust for decades to come.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

MACHIAVELLI: ADVICE FOR PRESIDENT OBAMA

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics on May 29, 2010 at 2:49 pm

From: Niccolo Machiavelli
To: Barack Obama, President of the United States

I regret to inform you, Mr. President, of two unpleasant pieces of news.

First: On April 20, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank about 40 miles southeast of the Louisiana coast. The resulting oil spill has pumped millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, with no end in sight.

Second: A May 24-25 USA TODAY/Gallup Poll gives you a poor rating by 53% of your fellow countrymen in your handling of the oil spill off the Gulf.

Fortunately, you can turn this situation around–but only if you’re willing to make some hard decisions and make your enemies even more angry.

First, you should realize that you are partly responsible for the sharp drop in your popularity.

During the 2008 Presidential race, you vigorously opposed offshore oil drilling. This got you the votes of all those liberals who now call themselves “progressives.” But after you became President and the public demanded lower oil prices, you decided that offshore oil drilling was all right after all.

Remember the counsel I offered you in The Prince on how to avoid becoming despised or hated?

…The prince must…avoid those things which will make him hated or despised….He is rendered despicable by being thought changeable, frivolous, effeminate, timid and irresolute—which a prince must guard against as a rock of danger….

I sought to warn Bill Clinton against this mistake, but he never listened to me–and kept making it throughout his Presidency.

I also warned him to stop making constant concessions to his worst Republican enemies. Right to the end of his Presidency he thought he could charm his enemies into liking and supporting him. So he never learned:

…One ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger and covetous of gain. As long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours: they offer you their blood, their goods, their life and their children, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt.

And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined. For the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended in your service.

And men have less scruple in offending one who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared. For love is held by a chain of obligations which, men being selfish, is broken whenever it serves their purpose–but fear is maintained by a dread of punishment which never fails.

I greatly fear, Mr. President, that you will share the same disappointed–and disappointing–fate as President Clinton.

I also fear, Mr. President, that you have not fully accepted the realities of your position–and the world we all live in:

Many have imagined republics and principalities which have never been seen or known to exist in reality. For how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin rather than his preservation. A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must inevitably come to grief among so many who are not good. And therefore it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case.

Finally, Mr. President, you must be prepared to act boldly or cautiously, as the situation demands–and must be able to recognize which quality is called for at any given time:

There are two methods of fighting—the one by law, the other by force. The first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man.

A prince…must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to avoid traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those who wish to be only lions do not realize this.

You are now almost 18 months into your Presidency. You have made some mistakes and suffered some setbacks–as all Presidents must. But there is still time to learn from them–and create victories that will live on in the hearts of your countrymen long after your term of office has ended.

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

CONSPIRACIES VS. STUPIDITIES

In Bureaucracy, Politics on May 26, 2010 at 11:04 am

In his May 24 column, “Rand Paul’s Amazing Meltdown,” conservative columnist Michael Medved poses the question: “Could it be that the media establishment wanted [Rand] Paul to win and treated him respectfully in order to preserve his chances of victory?”

Specifically, he states: “Rand Paul’s amazing meltdown in his first week as the GOP Senate nominee in Kentucky raises serious questions about media conspiracies–not because the network talking heads decided to ask him tough questions, but because they waited to pose those challenges until after he’d won his primary and the Republicans were stuck with him.”

It’s easy to make a conspiratorial argument for anything. And such thinking has huge appeal for both the Left and Right. For almost 50 years, liberals like Mark Lane and Oliver Stone have lived well off the contention that JFK died at the hands of a conspiracy.

On the Right are those who believe that members of the Nixon Administration deliberately sabotaged the President by sending burglars into the Watergate Hotel to be arrested in the act.

Indulging in such conspiracy theories is easier than accepting the brutal truth that Kennedy died at the hands of a malcontented loner, and that Nixon was brought down by his own criminality rather than traitors within the Republican party.

Both sides conveniently forget this truism to be found in Niccolo Machiavelli’s classic work on the gaining and holding of power, The Prince:

Experience shows that there have been very many conspiracies, but few have turned out well. For whoever conspires cannot act alone, and cannot find companions except among those who are discontented. And as soon as you have disclosed your intention to a malcontent, you give him the means of satisfying himself.

Medved, too, has apparently forgotten this. Medved cites the media’s respectful treating of Paul as evidence of a conspiracy to sabotage not just him but the Republican party’s chances of victory in the Kentucky Senate race.

But what if the media had not treated Paul respectfully? It’s a sure bet that Medved and his fellow conservatives would have then accused the media of publicly trying to derail his candidacy.

Since the media treated Paul with the same respect they showed the other candidates in the race, Republicans like Medved must shop for a new theory for Paul’s “meltdown.”

That is, they must find a way to explain his remarks that while he opposes racial discrimination, he also opposes laws–such as the Civil Rights Act of 1964–that ban it. They must also put a spin in his more recent comment attacking President Obama as “really un-American in his criticism of business” by demanding that BP be held accountable for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s certainly easier to attack the media as conspirators than to accept that one’s party has cast its lot with a man who says things that outrage a great many voters.

Consider, for example, his positions–as listed on his own website–on:

ABORTION: “I believe we may be able to save millions of lives in the near future by allowing states to pass their own anti-abortion laws….I would strongly support legislation restricting federal courts from hearing cases like Roe v. Wade. Such legislation would only require a majority vote, making it more likely to pass than a pro-life constitutional amendment.” In short, Big Government should not intrude into the lives of its citizens–unless a woman wants to control her own body.

ENERGY: “Our energy crisis stems from too much government intervention. The solution requires allowing businesses and ideas to compete.” If you like the way BP has handled the ever-spreading oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, you’ll love Paul’s attitude that “What’s good for BP is good for the country.”

HEALTH CARE: “Like other areas of the economy where the federal government wields its heavy hand, health care is over-regulated and in need of serious market reforms. As Senator, I would ensure that real free market principles are applied to fix this problem.” In short, if 31 million Americans don’t have health care, that’s their tough luck. It’s not the role of the Federal Government to protect its citizens from life-threatening illness just because they can’t afford extortionate medical fees.

For more than 50 years, Republicans have portrayed themselves as the only party worthy of trust. They have repeatedly accused their Democratic opponents of not simply being wrong, but of being traitors–of lusting for the chance to “sell out” America to whichever group seemed most frightening at the moment: Communists, criminals, terrorists or “tax-and-spend” liberals.

Those who believe themselves charged with a sacred mission are prone to see evil conspiracies at work when they slam into a roadblock–especially if that roadblock is of their own making.

%d bloggers like this: