Obama Top Recipient of BP Oil Campaign $$$$$

amborin

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Thu May-06-10 08:57 PM
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Obama Top Recipient of BP Oil Campaign $$$$$

Barack Obama Top Cash Recipient of BP Oil in 2008

"Barack Obama received more campaign money from multinational BP Oil, the company whose rig is now leaking, than any other person in 2008 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Note that 18 days before the leak began, in what is likely to be the largest such disaster of all time, Obama changed the nation’s off shore drilling policy. Obama reversed 27 years of policy and essentially took up Sarah Palin’s cry of "Drill, Baby, Drill". The oil well in question, moreover, was drilled (March to September 2009) after Obama took office so it was under the supervision of his administration.

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During the 2008 election cycle, individuals and political action committees associated with BP — a Center for Responsive Politics’ "heavy hitter" — contributed half a million dollars to federal candidates. About 40 percent of these donations went to Democrats. The top recipient of BP-related donations during the 2008 cycle was President Barack Obama himself, who collected $71,000.
BP regularly lobbies on Capitol Hill, as well. In 2009, the company spent a massive $16 million to influence legislation. During the first quarter of 2010, it spent $3.53 million on federal lobbying efforts, ranking it second (behind ConocoPhillips) among all oil and gas industry interests.
Its registered lobbyists include a number of former federal government and high-ranking political campaign officials, including longtime political operative Tony Podesta, former congressional chief of staff Bob Brooks, former congressional legislative director David Pore and vice presidential aide Michael S. Berman, the Center’s research shows.

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The Podesta family has important connections with Obama. Recall that John Podesta headed Obama’s transition team. For more on Podesta, see this Washington Post article. John Podesta also was a key adviser to Tom Daschle, whom Obama wanted in his cabinet before Daschle’s failure to pay taxes issue scuttled his appointment. Tony Podesta and his wife, according to a recent article in Huffington Post, have raked in millions in lobbying against change in Washington, D.C.:

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Bloomberg’s Al Hunt, who writes that Tony and Heather Podesta "are raking in millions from the insurance and drug industries, tobacco companies and corporate interests fighting changes to labor laws or the overhaul of the student-loan program."
Hunt calls the Podestas "conscientious objectors to the culture of change in Washington" and says they personify the "ingrained money and political culture."
Heather and Tony Podesta’s firms represent clients opposed to just about every part of the Obama change agenda.
But Podesta told Al Hunt that "We have only some small differences with the administration and the Democratic leadership."
Following the money trail, the Podesta lobbying group, with its insider ties to Obama and his administration received $320,000 from BP in both 2008 and again in 2009. Thus far in 2010, BP has given the Podesta Group $80,000, but yeh, it’s only early in May. Remember that the Podesta Group is a virtual pipeline to the Democratic Party and Obama. Would a hard-fisted investigation into BP and it’s cash donations lead directly to Obama’s front door? You bet as the foregoing indicates.

.....Froomkin presents information to show that Obama had been informed by NOAA (the agency that oversees oil safety) that pursuing a policy of off shore drilling was very risky:
National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration officials last fall warned the Department of Interior, which regulates offshore oil drilling, that it was dramatically underestimating the frequency of offshore oil spills and was dangerously understating the risk and impacts a major spill would have on coastal residents.
…NOAA also wrote that the administration’s "analysis of the risk and impacts of accidental spills and chronic impacts are understated and generally not supported or referenced, using vague terms and phrases such as ‘no substantive degradation is expected’ and ’some marine mammals could be harmed.’"

Froomkin, moreover, quotes a whistleblower who notes that Obama’s policies (and personnel) are about the same as W’s:
Jeff Ruch, the head of the public-employee whistleblowing group, said that as in many other regulatory agencies, Obama political appointees in the Interior Department’s notoriously troubled Minerals Management Service (MMS) have not taken enough steps to reverse the anti-environmental and anti-science policies of the Bush years.
"For the most part, the Obama team is still the Bush team," Ruch told HuffPost, noting that beyond a thin layer of political appointees, offices like MMS are run by managers who were "promoted during the Bush years — In many instances, promoted for basically violating the law. And from what we can tell, their conduct hasn’t changed."

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/45293
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BP Worked With FreedomWorks And The Chamber To Build ‘Grassroots’ Support For More Drilling
This post originally appeared on Think Progress.

BP has long touted itself as a “green” company interested not only in oil and other fossil fuels, but in renewable energy like wind and solar. But as Rebecca Lefton reported on ThinkProgress last week, BP barely invests anything in clean energy — most of its green campaign is actually just a massive advertising gimmick to conceal the truth about the company.

While BP has spent hundreds of millions building its brand, it has offshored the dirty work of promoting expanded drilling to right-wing front groups and trade associations. In a 2007 PowerPoint presentation obtained by ThinkProgress, BP appears to have been interested in fighting to open up protected waters to new offshore drilling. The presentation, organized by the BP-funded front group “Consumer Energy Alliance,” was delivered at the American Gas Association’s marketing meeting in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. The presentation calls for a five-year plan to build grassroots support to open wide swaths of both the East and West coasts to new drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf:

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Trade associations openly represent the needs of industry, so many industry groups like API have delicately tried to defend offshore drilling, but without explicitly defending the actions of BP. However, FreedomWorks portrays itself as simply a citizen-based group. In reality, FreedomWorks has a long history of orchestrating public support for its corporate and lobbyist backers. Earlier this week, FreedomWorks lashed out at criticism of BP, claiming the administration has its “boot on neck of BP” by proposing that BP should have more liability for its spill.

http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/05/06/bp-worked-with-freedomworks-and-the-chamber-to-build-%e2%80%98grassroots%e2%80%99-support-for-more-drilling/

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BP: Billionaire Polluter

By Amy Goodman

Less than a week after British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and unleashing what could be the worst industrial environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company announced more than $6 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2010, more than doubling profits from the same period the year before. Oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz notes: “BP is one of the most powerful corporations operating in the United States. Its 2009 revenues of $327 billion are enough to rank BP as the third-largest corporation in the country. It spends aggressively to influence U.S. policy and regulatory oversight.” The power and wealth that BP and other oil giants wield are almost without parallel in the world, and pose a threat to the lives of workers, to the environment and to our prospects for democracy.

Sixty years ago, BP was called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (AIOC). A popular, progressive, elected Iranian government had asked the AIOC, a largely British-owned monopoly, to share more of its profits from Iranian oil with the people of Iran. The AIOC refused, so Iran nationalized its oil industry. That didn’t sit well with the U.S., so the CIA organized a coup d’é tat against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. After he was deposed, the AIOC, renamed British Petroleum, got a large part of its monopoly back, and the Iranians got the brutal Shah of Iran imposed upon them, planting the seeds of the 1979 Iranian revolution, the subsequent hostage crisis and the political turmoil that besets Iran to this day.

In 2000, British Petroleum rebranded itself as BP, adopting a flowery green-and-yellow logo, and began besieging the U.S. public with an advertising campaign claiming it was moving “beyond petroleum.” BP’s aggressive growth, outrageous profit and track record of petroleum-related disasters paint a much different picture, however. In 2005, BP’s Texas City refinery exploded, killing 15 people and injuring 170. In 2006, a BP pipeline in Alaska leaked 200,000 gallons of crude oil, causing what the Environmental Protection Agency calls “the largest spill that ever occurred on the North Slope.” BP was fined $60 million for the two disasters. Then, in 2009, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined BP an additional $87 million for the refinery blast. Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis said: “BP has allowed hundreds of potential hazards to continue unabated. ... Workplace safety is more than a slogan. It’s the law.” BP responded by formally contesting all of OSHA’s charges.

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http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/bp_billionaire_polluter_20100504/

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