July 22, 2010
You might be familiar with the manner in which British Petroleum has been silencing potential witnesses to the extent of damage caused by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. A typical example was recently discussed by Anne Macquarie of the Nevada Appeal:
I have a friend who has been working for the last month for a private contractor, doing wildlife inventories in areas affected by the oil spill. I asked her if I could talk to her about what she saw down there and share it with Nevada Appeal readers.
She told me she’d been required to sign a confidentiality agreement. She couldn’t talk to anyone about anything she did there. I didn’t push her — times are tough and I sure didn’t want her to lose her job.
Anticipating criminal prosecution and a nearly infinite number of civil lawsuits, BP has begun a campaign of signing-up as many potential expert witnesses as can be found, not only to testify on BP’s behalf in the numerous proceedings – but, more importantly – to buy their silence. Litigation attorneys often refer to this tactic as, “buying experts off the street”. Precious little attention has been focused on this activity. Dylan Ratigan has exposed it and CBS News briefly touched the subject. Other than those instances, the mainstream media have not discussed this ploy – at least as of this writing. Here’s some of what CBS had to say:
BP has been trying to hire marine scientists from universities around the Gulf Coast in an apparent move to bolster the company’s legal defense against anticipated lawsuits related to the Gulf oil spill, according to a report from The Press-Register in Mobile, Ala.
Scientists from Louisiana State University, Mississippi State University and Texas A&M have reportedly accepted BP’s offer, according to the paper.
The federal government is expected to file a massive Natural Resources Damage Assessment lawsuit against BP, and it’ll have to draw on large amounts of scientific research to build its case.
* * *
Robert Wiygul, an Ocean Springs lawyer who specializes in environmental law, said BP is in effect denying the government access to valuable information by hiring the scientists and adding them to its legal team. “It also buys silence,” Wiygul told the Press-Register, “thanks to confidentiality clauses in the contracts.”
Scientists who sign the contract to work for BP will be subject to a strict confidentiality agreement. They will be barred from publishing, sharing or even speaking about data they collected for at least three years.
George Crozier, director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, who was approached by BP, told the paper: “It makes me feel like they were more interested in making sure we couldn’t testify against them than in having us testify for them.”
The original story for the Alabama Press Register was written by Ben Raines. His article included this interesting aspect of his investigative work on the piece:
BP officials declined to answer the newspaper’s questions about the matter. Among the questions: how many scientists and universities have been approached, how many are under contract, how much will they be paid, and why the company imposed confidentiality restrictions on scientific data gathered on its behalf.
Coincidentally, CBS also provided us with the perspective of musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson on this subject. She appeared on David Letterman’s Late Show on July 14 to perform a song entitled, “Only An Expert”.
On July 21, Bloomberg News televised an interview with Matthew Simmons, founder of the Ocean Energy Institute. Among the subjects included in the conversation was the topic of BP’s confidentiality agreements. If what Mr. Simmons said is correct, BP’s legal defense efforts will become futile once the public realizes “we have now killed the Gulf of Mexico”. At least on that one point, the cretins at BP are probably not the only individuals who are hoping that Mr. Simmons is wrong.
The War On YOU
July 26, 2010
The fifth annual conclave of the Netroots Nation (a group of liberal bloggers) took place in Las Vegas last week. Among the stories emerging from that event was the plea that progressive bloggers “quit beating up on Obama”. I found this very amusing. After Obama betrayed his supporters by pushing through a faux healthcare “reform” bill, which lacked the promised “public option” and turned out to be a giveaway to big pharma and the health insurance industry – the new President turned the long-overdue, financial “reform” bill into yet another hoax.
As I pointed out on July 12, Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute documented the extent to which Obama’s Treasury Department undermined the financial reform bill at every step. On the following day, Rich Miller of Bloomberg News examined the results of a Bloomberg National Poll, which measured the public’s reaction to the financial reform bill. Almost eighty percent of those who responded were of the opinion that the new bill would do little or nothing to prevent or mitigate another financial crisis. Beyond that, 47 percent shared the view that the bill would do more to protect the financial industry than consumers. Both healthcare and financial “reform” legislation turned out to be “bait and switch” scams used by the Obama administration against its own supporters. After that double-double-cross, the liberal blogosphere was being told to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain”.
Despite the partisan efforts by Democrats to blame our nation’s economic decline exclusively on the Bush administration, reading between the lines of a recent essay by Senator Bernie Sanders provides some insight on how the problem he discusses has festered during the Obama administration:
Let me get this straight . . . Is Senator Sanders telling us that it took the 400 families the entire eight Bush years just to pick up $400 billion and that once Obama came to the White House, those families were able to pick up another $827 billion in less than two years? In fairness, Senator Sanders made a great argument to reinstate what I call, “the tax on dead millionaires”. He began by discussing the harsh reality experienced by mere mortals:
Nevertheless, to understand how the middle class has been destroyed by those 400 families, their corporate alter egos and the lobbyists they employ, one need not rely on the words of a Senator, who is an “avowed socialist” (a real one – not just someone called a socialist by partisan blowhards). Consider, for example, a great essay by Phil Davis, avowed capitalist and self-described “serial entrepreneur”. The title of the piece might sound familiar: “It’s the End of the World As We Know It”. Mr. Davis discussed the latest battle in the war against Social Security and the current efforts to raise the retirement age to 70:
Those who believe that President Obama would never let this happen need look no further than a recent posting by Glenn Greenwald (a liberal Constitutional lawyer – just like our President) at Salon.com:
Despite the efforts to characterize Social Security as an “entitlement program” – it’s not. It’s something you have already paid for – as documented by your income tax returns and W-2 forms. Pay close attention and watch how our one-party system, controlled by the Republi-cratic Corporatist Party steals that money away from you. Both Phil Davis and Glenn Greenwald have each just given you a big “heads-up”. What are you going to do about it?
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