monday june 14, 2010
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Of Cozy Relationships....




















and Criminal Conspiracies











There is a difference.

Cozy relationships are like your mom reading you a bed-time story, with a tucked-in sleepy ending where all live happily ever after...criminal conspiracies end with indictments, and people going to jail...I'm just saying.

The cunning slicksters of the right have schooled us well in the art of the media spin, and the importance of directing the flow of conversation. With that in mind, I can't help but pay attention to the message sent to us sheeple of the lamestream media whenever I hear the phrase "cozy relationship" as a descriptor for the quid pro quo that existed between employees of BP and the Minerals Management Service, (the federal agency responsible for, among other things, safety and environmental regulation of deep-water drilling, and collection of royalties for the oil taken by the petrochemical giants operating off our shores.)

Regardless of the media outlet, from Fox News to the New York Times, the phrase "cozy relationship," is being used when alluding to the scandalous reports of drug use and sex parties that hit the papers some time last year, and the relevance of this old news to the current catastrophe in the Gulf. There is nothing the media likes better than reporting on naughty sex parties after all.

My concern is that the phrase is waaaaaaay too light-hearted for the reality of the moment. It seems likely to me that a bit of diligent investigation by the Department of Justice is likely to turn up, not a cozy relationship, with all the warm fuzzies implied by the phrase, but rather a criminal conspiracy...one whose consquences now flow by the millions of barrels from a hole punched by BP in the bottom of the ocean.

In the years since Watergate, the art of the ass-covering memo has been perfected. I am as sure as I can be, that a paper trail in rich detail extends from every drug and sex party hosted by BP employees for their co-conspirators in the Minerals Management Service, to every supervisor up the chain of command whose approval would have been needed for expense account items that included cocaine and hookers. To be succint, when low-level BP employees take the initiative to corrupt government officials, they are acting on orders from higher up...much higher up. Do I know it? No. Can you bet on it? Yes. In fixing responsibility for initiating the various acts of corruption through which BP vacated the power of the government to check its greed, we need to recall that foot soldiers don't set policy, general staff officers do.

We are learning that these parties at the MMS were standard operating procedure during the past 8 years. In an administration that ignored federal regulatory responsibility as a matter of policy, the employees of the MMS had little to do on a day to day basis, and as we know, idle hands...

We are quickly arriving at a point where the bill for the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico can be totaled and presented to BP. Without a doubt, it will be far more than it would have cost BP to simply operate under the law in the first place. But hindsight is 20/20.

But what of the cost to the environment in the gulf, and the people of the region that make a living on its fisheries...and its oil? And what of the cost to the taxpayers in the uncollected royalties that should have been paid by the oil companies but were not , due to the negligence and malfeasance of the same corrupt officials? The same evidence trail that documents the connection between federal/corporate corruption of safety and environmental operations are also likely to demonstrate that BP has profited hugely in this regard as well.

Wake up America...your country needs you.

DHL

(btw, speaking of cozy relationships...)