BP: Making it Right (for BP)

This is the best report I've read in a very long time and it's right on the (ahem) money. This is what people in the Gulf communities have been saying all along, only to be dismissed by BP and the US Coast Guard.  Now, how does that happen?

Who hasn't seen those "Making It Right" ads that BP is using to flood the media like so much run-away oil saturating the Gulf? Over the past nine months, BP has conducted a full-throttle charm offensive, taking out full-page ads in The New York Times, sponsoring small-town festivals all along the Gulf Coast, and running countless television spots, repeating their relentlessly conciliatory message. They're pulling out all the stops -- clearly subscribing to the notion that the amount of penance owed is directly proportionate to the size of the sin. And with the enormity of the transgression of public trust embodied in the spill, BP sure has a lot of "Making it Right" to do.
But BP's a company whose bottom line doesn't account for the cost of restoring our precious natural resources or the health of our communities. BP is it for the money. The amount of "Making it Right" BP is going to do is purely a function of some number-crunching cost/benefit analysis. They spend money on ads because they're more interested in cleaning up their image than cleaning up the Gulf. A clean image means increased profits; a clean Gulf means financial losses in the form of remediation and wildlife rehabilitation costs and Clean Water Act fines.
So while they're working hard, with a whole lot of fanfare, in street festivals and in TV commercials to make it right, they're quietly working even harder behind closed doors in Washington to make it all wrong. In DC, they're undercutting the American public and our Gulf Coast communities, ensuring that at the bottom line of the ledger, they protect their shareholder profits.
This shouldn't be news. From day one, BP has tirelessly downplayed the number of barrels of oil that gushed into the Gulf waterways during their 87-day disaster. Remember when they claimed only a 1,000 barrels a day, and then, when pressed, 5,000? That whole time, their internal documents that were turned over to Congress had BP admitting that in truth, 100,000 barrels a day could have been pouring from their blown well.
Even today, in the midst of their "Making it Right" push, BP still struggles mightily to re-shape the truth. We hear now rumors that BP is lobbying hard in private meeting rooms at the Environmental Protection Agency to once again minimize their impacts and stick a make-believe low number on the amount of barrels that poured forth per day from their disastrously faulty oil rig. It seems as if BP has the EPA over a barrel -- the word is that EPA is actually negotiating with agency to officially reduce the number of barrels spilled in order to reduce the company's fines under the Clean Water Act. By not living up to the true size of this disaster, BP is doing anything BUT making it right.

Please read the rest of the piece.  It's well worth it to know the truth behind the BP coverup and its "Making it Right" fraudulent campaign.  HERE.

And so it goes.
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