BP’s safety history flat out sucks..and people die regularly.

I have blogged ad-friggin- nauseum about BP’s lack of safety in all areas of oil drilling and refining. These fuckers simply do not give a tinkers damn, and consider the fines levied against them the cost of doing business.

Lets recap, shall we?

First, the Alaska pipeline. NBC News had a piece in 2006 about BP having not only knowledge of how bad the state of their pipeline was, but they hadn’t performed normal proactive maintenance procedures for over 15 years. The fact that they poisoned a huge area of Alaska with their oil spill, and didn’t blink an eye over it should tell you what their priority is..money..make it while you can and screw the environment. Some parts of the pipeline are quoted as being “paper thin”. The environmental disaster would be horrific.

Next the explosion at the TX refinery which killed 15 workers in 2005. Four years later, they had major safety issues that still had not been addressed. From the Telegraph article:

BP has been handed a record $87m fine for “outstanding life-threatening safety problems” at its Texas City refinery where an explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170 in 2005.

Hilda Solis, the US Labor Secretary, said authorities had found 439 current “wilful and egregious” safety violations which “if unaddressed could lead to another catastrophe”.

“This administration will not tolerate disregard of our laws,” she added.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration visited the refinery 17 times over four years and it claims that 270 notices to correct hazards have not been rectified.

There have been four additional fatal incidents at the Texas City refinery since the 2005 explosion.

One worker was crushed between a lift and a pipe rack, another was electrocuted while working on a light circuit, a third was killed when the top blew off a pressure vessel, and a fourth was hit by a front-end loader.

“There were some serious, systemic safety problems within the corporation and specifically within this refinery,” said Jordan Barab, acting assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. “Just the fact that there are so many still outstanding problems, life-threatening problems, at this plant, indicates that they still have a systemic safety problem.”

As I said, they pay the fines which are usually less than what it would cost them to actually fix the fucking problems. These pigshit mutha fuckas need to be criminally charged for these issues. It will be the only way to wake these bastards up..perp walk the upper echelon of management into federal court on murder charges for starters.

But I ain’t holding my breath..nope. The past and current administrations did not and do not have the balls to do that. A history of not giving a shit will continue, which means people will continue to die and nothing will change. Eleven workers lost their lives in the Gulf Disaster last week…just chalk it up to the cost of doing business….right gents?

The 411 on the AZ immigration law authors…

I was stunned..and it takes a shitload of …well…shit to do that to me. From Rachel’s show this evening…a little 411 about the men that wrote the fascist AZ undocumented workers/illegal immigrants law.

 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640

From The Maddow Blog:

It was [John] Tanton who founded the anti-immigration movement’s most powerful institution, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). A retired ophthalmologist once active on environmental issues, his interest in immigration was marked in the beginning by an explicitly racial argument. “To govern is to populate,” Tanton wrote in 1986. “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”

If you want to know more about these fascist, racist, Holocaust denying bastards, check out this 2005 American Prospect article about these fuckers. Below are their names:

Kris Kobach
John Tanton
The Pioneer Fund, big in the eugenics movement and funders of FAIR.
 Russell Pierce

Google those suckers and be amazed, m’dear reader, at the Hitler-esque fuckery they are involved in. And they compare Obama to Hitler…give me an effin break. From the American Prospect article:

Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Between 1982 and 1994, it received more than $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund. A little-known foundation created in 1937, the Pioneer Fund likes to benignly describe its origins in “the Darwinian-Galtonian evolutionary tradition, and the eugenics movement.” In the late 1930s, though, it frankly admired Hitler. Today, it still bankrolls groups such as the aforementioned American Renaissance and the American Immigration Control Foundation (AICF) in Virginia. As fair has attempted to develop a more mainstream persona, it has dropped the Pioneer Fund as a funding source. FAIR’s executive director, Dan Stein, has repeatedly denied that any racial animus motivates its activities. But the federation has kept Tanton on its corporate board of directors.

In addition, FAIR’s political action committee, the U.S. Immigration Reform PAC, routinely receives significant contributions from Tanton and his wife. FAIR’s PAC has contributed more than a quarter-million dollars for and against candidates since 1999. In 2000, it spent more than $30,000 against Republican Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, an Arab American, who lost that general election. Not surprisingly, it has also given Representative Tancredo $15,000 over the years, according to Federal Election Commission documents. Buried in those documents is a disclosure that the PAC had Peter Gemma on its payroll doing clerical work. Gemma is a denizen of Holocaust-denial meetings and other hardcore anti-Semitic venues, according to Devin Burghart, the author of numerous reports on anti-immigrant groups for the Center for New Community in Chicago. Gemma apparently did not make any of the money decisions at FAIR’s PAC, but his presence is another indicator of the shark-infested waters that politicians like Tancredo swim in.

While FAIR has the biggest footprint on Capitol Hill, the AICF possesses the largest list of donors among the think tanks that provide literature and ideas to local groups. It has also received $180,000 in grants from the Pioneer Fund. But its main source of funds is an immense donor base: more than 400,000 names of contributors who give $5 or more, according to documents provided by the Center for New Community. The donor list legally belongs to American Immigration Control Foundation NC, one of three corporations that make up this particular mini-empire.

Notably, the AICF is heavily interlaced with the Council of Conservative Citizens. The lineal descendant of the ’60s-era white Citizens Councils, the Council of Conservative Citizens revived itself in the ’90s with campaigns for the Confederate flag and against immigration. It stays away from explicit anti-Semitism and describes itself as a “white separatist” group rather than “white nationalist.” This distinction is without a difference — particularly given the arguments its leadership have made for a genetically determined notion of American nationalism. Trent Lott was forced to disassociate himself from the council once his ties to the group became public.

The Council of Conservative Citizens is heavily linked with several anti-immigrant groups, including the AICF. One AICF board member, Brent Nelson, also sits as director of the council’s foundation. President of the AICF’s board from 1993–95, the now-deceased Sam Francis edited the council’s tabloid until this year and otherwise served as its commanding philosopher-general. And the aforementioned Wayne Lutton, editor of Social Contract and occupant of Holocaust-denial circles, serves on the Council of Conservative Citizens’ editorial advisory board.

What a wonderful bunch of white supremacists! Congratulations AZ…you really screwed the pooch this time.

UPDATE: My dear blogger bud REALITYZONE has an excellent post up on this topic as well, entitled We Are All Mexicans in AZ. Also, check out the video below that I filched from my Canadian blogger bud Kim @  repliderium. If the AZ law is allowed to stand…we are all redheads aren’t we?
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11219730&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

Why its Confederate Memorial Day folks!!!

Holy Fuckamoly….from the Maddow Blog:

At the Shad Plank in Virginia, which has no Confederate Memorial Day and remembers anyhow.

Twitter pal @argylestyle notes that state and local offices in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama and Texas are closed today for Confederate Memorial Day, marking the South’s surrender to Union General William T. Sherman in 1865. North and South Carolina have their own Confederate Memorial Days, on May 10.

If one poster to a Virginia blog has his way, we’ll all be “singing Dixie, Carry Me Back to Old Virginia, and flying Battle Flags along with Old Glory” — for the sake of economic development.

The Shad Plank is one of those Virginia traditions that you apparently have to be there to really get. Judging from the picture up top, I’d say it has a lot to do with Confederate flags. And, judging from this comment, a lot to do with misplaced sentimentality, too.
Paul Garber writes:

Virginia could be making so much money off of its connection with the Confederate era. During the 150th Anniversary (2010-2015) we should put into place as many recurring festivals, tours, battle re-enactments and other annual or ongoing events that will attract domestic and international tourists to the Old Dominion.

People are NOT going to throng to Virginia to see the White guilt programs and slave path tours, proposed by Ed Ayers and the rest of the “New South” apologists.

The things that will attract tourism are fun festivals like, Hanover’s Dixie Days, battle re-enactments and musical programs.

I have read research that said that we could add a billion bucks to our Central Virginia economy by promoting our Confederate era tourism.

Everyone should be singing DIXIE, Carry Me Back to Old Virginia, and flying Battle Flags along with Old Glory from Virginia homes and businesses.

All of our jobs have been sent to Communist China. Our Confederate heritage may be the only economic engine that we have left!

Garber gives his URL as SCV.org, for Sons of Confederate Veterans. That’s the group that pushed for Virginia to get a Confederate History Month, with or without bringing up that old slavery thing.

Christ….what a bunch of morons. Who in the blue hell celebrates losing a damn war?? I lived in northern VA (McLean) for years, and thankfully never ran into any of these brain-dead assholes.

Today’s number: $29 Billion

That cunt, AZ’s Jan Brewer, went ahead and signed the bill which legalizes, in AZ, racial profiling and other civil rights intrusions. She received over three times as many anti-bill messages from her constituents than those who supported this fucked-up legislation.

I hope that worthless hag will appreciate the drop in income for her state if, as many think, the state law enforcement folks will go hard after anyone that looks hispanic, otherwise known to the haters as brown people and mud people among other things. Check out this local writeup on what ‘those people’ aka undocumented workers, bring to the state cash-wise:

If all undocumented workers were removed from Arizona’s workforce, economic output would drop annually by at least $29 billion, or 8.2 percent, according to a University of Arizona report released Wednesday.

The study is based on Census Bureau and other data from 2004, the most complete year available, and assumed most non-citizens in the state are undocumented.

It also found that Arizona’s documented and undocumented immigrants generate nearly $44 billion in output annually.

*snip*

Without most non-citizen immigrants, the simulations showed:

• $6.56 billion in lost construction output.

• $3.77 billion lost in manufacturing.

• $2.48 billion lost in service sectors.

• $600.9 million lost in agriculture.

“Filling the specific jobs in question would require large numbers of low-skilled workers, and the U.S. education system produces relatively few of them,” Gans said. “There simply aren’t enough additional workers in Arizona to fill the jobs.”

Output means money folks..as in salaries, spending and of course..profits.

What a piece of shit she is…seriously. There aren’t enough white folks to take those jobs, and I lived there for over a decade, so I ain’t blowing smoke up anyone’s ass. But evidently, the governor can’t see past her own fucking ignorant nose.

Civil rights icon Dorothy Height dies.

She walked the walk, with Martin. For 40 years she championed the cause of civil rights and woman’s rights. She passed away at the age of 98. From the link:

As a teenager, Height marched in New York’s Times Square shouting, “Stop the lynching.” In the 1950s and 1960s, she was the leading woman helping King and other activists orchestrate the civil rights movement, often reminding the men heading the movement not to underestimate their women counterparts.

One of Height’s sayings was, “If the time is not ripe, we have to ripen the time.” She liked to quote 19th century abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who said that the three effective ways to fight for justice are to “agitate, agitate, agitate.”

 Height was on the platform at the Lincoln Memorial, sitting only a few feet from King, when he gave his famous “I have a dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963.

Benjamin Hook also passed away last week. Both these individuals put their lives on the line to further the cause of civil rights for all people.

We have lost two of best within a weeks time. 😦 Their contributions must be remembered and lauded as they spoke truth to power when it was dangerous to do so.

Update: KO does a great piece on Ms. Height in the first half of the video below. Then, he talks about the horseshit the state of AZ is trying to pass for people of color..the color brown.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32545640