TEAGAGGED! BORN IN OFFSHORE DRILLING, TEA PARTY PROTEST SILENCED
by ilene - June 13th, 2010 5:31 pm
TEAGAGGED! BORN IN OFFSHORE DRILLING, TEA PARTY PROTEST SILENCED OVER ORGANIZERS’ LINKS TO 2008 “DRILL HERE! DRILL NOW!” CAMPAIGN
Courtesy of Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, The eXiled
This article was first published in Alternet.
Why are the hoppin’-mad Teabaggers so oddly quiet these days, ever since the BP oil disaster? That’s what Thomas Frank, author of What’s The Matter With Kansas? asked last week in his column, “Laissez-faire Meets The Oil Spill.” Ideologically, it’s painfully obvious why the Teabaggers are now the Teagaggers: their free-market gospel got mugged by oil-drenched reality — a reality so horrific that even pollster Frank Luntz couldn’t spin the BP disaster as the government’s fault. Best to just shut up when you’re that wrong.
But there’s another, more concrete reason why the Tea Party revolutionaries melted back into their suburbs as soon as the enormity of the Gulf spill disaster hit: The Tea Party evolved out of the pro-offshore drilling astroturf movement in 2008. They even share some of the same organizers and front groups, from PR operative like Eric Odom, to advocacy groups like FreedomWorks, whose combined efforts on the “Drill Here! Drill now!” astroturf campaign succeeded in opening up all of America’s coastlines and waters to offshore drilling, overturning a 27-year ban thanks to threats of “a Boston-style Tea Party,” as one Republican put it in the summer of 2008.
We have been following this movement from the beginning. Back in February 2009, on the eve of the first Tea Party protest, we published the first investigative article exposing the hidden relationship between the fake-”spontaneous” Tea Party protests that month, and the Republican machine that backed and promoted the campaign. Our research led again and again to the right-wing Koch brothers, who are worth a combined $32 billion as owners of the largest private oil company in America, Koch Industries. Koch-linked front groups like FreedomWorks and the Sam Adams Alliance (named after the leader of the original Boston Tea Party) played key roles in both the 2008 campaign to deregulate offshore drilling, and in the Tea Party movement.
Eric Odom, the PR flak who launched the Tea Party in February 2009, is the same Eric Odom who in August 2008 organized Republican Twitter-mobs who crashed Capitol Hill chanting “Drill here! Drill now!” to force Congress to open up…
Who Will Profit from the Oil Spill
by ilene - June 3rd, 2010 5:03 pm
Who Will Profit from the Oil Spill
By Charles S. Brant, Energy Correspondent, courtesy of Casey’s Energy Opportunities
The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico may be the best thing that’s ever happened to green energy producers in the U.S – but the one that benefits the most will probably surprise you.
As the damaged Deepwater Horizon well continues to pump out 5,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf, all the major stakeholders are scrambling to find a way to contain the damage. Investors in BP, Anadarko, Transocean, and Halliburton have had a rough few weeks and should be nervous about the future. The growing political firestorm that’s accompanied this ecological disaster is drastically reshaping the energy landscape in the U.S. There’s huge money to be made from the biggest structural change to the energy markets in the past 50 years, if you know where to look.
The political and economic fallout from this accident is starting to take shape, with the executives from BP, Transocean, and Halliburton being paraded in front of Congress for a public chastising. Predictably, politicians are making stern promises of tighter regulations in the future.
At this point, it’s a guessing game as to what the new permanent regulations will be. So far, a temporary moratorium has been put in place on the issuance of new offshore oil and gas drilling permits. In addition, the Department of the Interior plans to restructure the federal Minerals Management Service (MMS) to eliminate the conflict of interest inherent in its role of monitoring safety, managing offshore leasing, and collecting royalty income.
The Department of the Interior has plans to make offshore drilling rig inspections much stricter. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has also promised tighter environmental…
Drill, Bama, Drill.
by ilene - March 31st, 2010 12:32 pm
Drill, Bama, Drill.
Courtesy of Joshua M Brown, The Reformed Broker
From the New York Times, a quick look at the geography involved in President Obama’s long-overdue offshore oil and gas drilling plan. A bold move from a Democratic president. Props from the Center on this one, Barack.
Source:
Obama To Open Offshore Areas To Drilling (NYT)