“It’s ALL about the MONEY”
Read Time:1 Minute, 24 Second
That’s what Pensacola Gregg said to the EPA. Take a listen:
Yeah; it’s all about the money…
Scattered across the internet, ‘grassroots’ sites are dedicated to doing something constructive to relieve the stress, involve the communities, bring brass band attention to the lack of follow through by government & corporations in a horrendously growing crisis, seeking honest answers avoided by and or lied about by the MSM or Washington or BP… the internet is sprouting what Krell referred to last night as a growing social awareness that becomes an “organic journalism”… localized honest content brought to us through the tools of social networking and blogging. The unspoken, avoided and outrageous that spews from the MSM is not feeding everyone. Krell’s discussion with Oso (and the rest of us) formed an open question to all of us; are you going to educate yourself and dig for the truth or are you going be a passive, apathetic bystander to the dissolution and destruction of the best of our world? (A monsterous paraphrase / un-permitted quotation… but it reaches sincerely into the heart of the matter…) The Gulf of Mexico is the instantaneous situation, yet there is no end to the number of issues, incidents and catastrophes we are facing as individual citizens’ and as species. In this ‘organic’ community of honest, intel driven information networking, leaders will emerge, as honestly aligned and community driven. Pensacola Gregg Hall can be been identified as one. And there is RFK Jr. He’s always been a large part of the ‘grassroots ecology’ network in America.
The times, they are a changing.
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Krell – There are many advocates standing up against the “monolithic bloodsuckers” (lol) … guys like RFKjr are the larger than life-sized. Pensacola Gregg is the hoi polloi sized version. The media do lack a credibility more and more observable (foils like MSNBC enable some) and we are given this opportunity through tools like social networking, blogs, radio (:-) and what all develop our own skills for recognizing and understanding the truth. A netroots nation elected Obama… who’s to say that was their only claim to high power? [ah, you know what I mean]. That ober-liberal group of college goers and techno entrepeneurs are still a hellva force to be reckoned with and they are keeping their attention on the pulse. It’s up to us uniquely, now, to define truth. Up to us to do our own due diligence. It’s not that we’re headed there. We are already there! The info on Al Gore’s piece about the 27,000 leaking old wells sunk throughout the Gulf’s oil heritage is kinda old news… been making rounds on blogs like FDL for more than a month. So… we’re stocked well with resources.
I think you made such an incredible point about individual responsibility to be informed and to ‘pass it on’ when we all talked on the show. Incredible point. You know, most of the wingnuts call lefty liberal bloggers a ‘huge conspiracy’ … it’s what stands for fact when you can’t do any better. We inform ourselves with new, bright tools, you know? You are a bright man… I would love to see your ‘blogroll’… I would use it up. I have definite places I go for resource and many are plain, independent bloggers. (Jack Jodell and Vigilante come easily to my mind as resource.) What they bring to the conversation is from an organic truth. One day, it’s possible, that future generations will plumb the “online archives of MadmikesAemrica” to research something, to gain lost insights or to find a inspiration lacking in the contemporary. Ya know? Hey! You know this, I know… but still: it only took just less of a 1000 people to bring into awareness and create the Renaissance. The Enlightenment was less.
Gwen, on your radio program Oso mentioned Martin Luther King and his knowledge of the rules of the game that he was working with. MLK was a social and strategic genius when he set up the Freedom Marches. He understood that change required that he be given access to the American Public.
Of course back then the gatekeepers to access was a legitimate news media. Dr King knew that the walks and marches would eventually get the news media involved and create a daily situation in which the American public would take interest.
Just when the public interest was involved and peaked, MLK set up situations that would visually show the real treatment of blacks in the south from types like Birmingham Police Department and Eugene “Bull” Connor.
He knew that the nonviolent civil disobedience methods that he had learned from Ghandi and Rustin would open the doors to America. That was the method to use back then.
Today, IMHO, there is a new revolution happening. The door to public access is open and the gatekeepers have been pushed aside. This isn’t to be taken lightly or for granted.
Who knows how long it will last? But it is a rare opportunity for the truth seekers of the world to shed some light on the dark. I count several here on MMA that are definitely fighting the “Good Fight”.
Society could be described as a great big ship in the water. You turn the wheel now and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the change in direction starts to happen. Just have to keep at it. If not for yourself, then the future that you are giving.
Mike and I have discussed this some,(emails back and forth), and it really is the new frontier, the next great adventure.
Very exciting stuff!
I understand your enthusiasm, Krell. I don’t think there is a blogger who doesn’t. Anyone who sits down and thinks it over, edits it down and polishes polishes and does their best to bring their truth into the larger conversation… on a global pallet, well! Its to be enthused.
You chose to use the Challenger disaster as an example up there… funny that, to me. It was one of the last stories’ I covered for the little weekly I worked on in Avery Co., NC. I was home (south FL) when the accident happened and my editor asked me to get what I could from where I was and file with her by fax. I did. My editor was my closest friend for many years. I miss her terrible. She had a quirky sense of humor… she stepped on Nancy Reagan’s heel and asked her if she meant to do that? She called me to ask if dared to file under the title “Rest in Pieces”?? Gallows humor is overwhelming in a newsroom. On a blog… that kind of gallows humor is acceptable somehow…..
We are enthused… all.
Oso, if you don’t mind I want to quote from this comment on my FB profile. Well, if you do mind….tough…it is too good not to share with as many people as possible.
“Govt can work for the public good, no one else can. It can build a park for poor people to use with no need to make money on the deal, the private sector can only build a Disneyland.”
Why don’t you guys just make these things into posts?
As I was reading through the comments my thoughts crystallized but Krell essentially summed them up. Much like someone who just found his missing car keys but had one more place to look I’ll comment anyway.
With the New Deal FDR addressed a host of problems besetting the country. His party had overwhelming control of the House and equally overwhelming public support.With these advantages he enacted sweeping political and economic change which greatly improved life for the majority of Americans. The opposition hated him and called him a traitor but the masses loved him.
We again need sweeping change.Krell referred to the blood-sucking monoliths needing to be regulated.It brings to mind the proverb of the scorpion and the frog, the scorpion’s sting dooms both because it is the scorpions nature to sting. It’s also the corporations nature to ultimately think only of its officers and shareholders profit.
With high upper marginal tax rates (91% under Eisenhower)a corp has to sink profits into capital or even wages or else pay it to Uncle Sam.With low upper tax rates profits go to bonuses and dividends.
So business boomed and we shared the wealth till financialization (financial sector paper wealth) began to overtake the real economy – manufacture of goods and services.
So what I’m trying to say is this: Govt can work for the public good, no one else can. It can build a park for poor people to use with no need to make money on the deal, the private sector can only build a Disneyland.
We have lobbyists choking Washington like oil on the poor birds in the gulf. Few politicians can overlook financial backing. No president can be elected without being thoroughly vetted by financial interests, neither can a senator or congressman. Half-measures and quarter-measures and no-measures are celebrated by the MSM as great political victories, they are not. They are window dressing.
We need term limits and public financing of elections and all lobbyist contributions banned. With these measures we could move towards an informed electorate voting for those who can truly do what’s best.
There is no conspiracy in the sense of the Illuminati or Bilderberg or space aliens. I believe there are formal and informal agreements and legislation which are done strictly for the benefit of the big multinationals. This is close to a conspiracy as exists, and it’s enough to keep most of our $ clustered among the top 1%.
The only cure I see is an informed electorate, and the only approach I see is what Krell suggested on Gwen’s radio show-social networking through the internet, as we do here. That, and reading books.
EDITED
It always amazes me what I learn reading Oso! Dude, FDR didn’t shiv a git what kind of political fallout was heaped onto him, the masses loved him as fair, giving, generous, family oriented and he never had any extraordinary bill to pay after election to huge corporations. Wonderful commentary, and Mikes’ right .. .it’s a post.
The Chinese are going to be handing us our cultural asses in less than three generations if we keep on the course we are on. The election hasn’t really shifted the welfare of the masses in our country much at all. As the ladies at the table said; that one is all show and no stay. I personally feel more and more as though I bought a ‘bill of goods’ … and it breaks my heart.
I’ve heard it said that as a society, we are 70% more frightened much of the time, now. That’s awful. How do we manage to live so long? Pharma knows! LOL They perpetuate it all because its profitable. We should all be prosperous and healthy… this is a recreational planet. We are all getting ‘hip’ to this profiteering … but are we junkies to it?
Great commentary Krell and Oso! Gee, I’ve got to bring you both on regular!
Yes… ratings count! Lmfao! I’ve actually had over 78 listens to that show. Kinda wow-ed me.
Gee, edited it to make it readable. Ta for indulging me.
Krell writes:
“HuffPo just had a article that there 27,000 abandoned wells in the gulf. It has been going on since the early 1950′s”
I had no idea. How very disturbing that is. Thanks man for keeping us informed.
I was informed by Gwen posting the HUFFPO link on one of her FB updates.
This post has nothing to do with ‘dooms day’…
it provokes the consideration that the whole cause and response to this incident turned ecological catastrophe is ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. I closed my thoughts with the best example of ‘how I see’ it with RFK’s wisdom. Don’t change the effn’ light bulb… change the lying, the corporate and the failing politicians.
I’m not worried about Palin. I’m worried about the health of people in four states and of the oceans. These are issues where the vital point is American lives and environment. Dissembling over whether someone is re-elected doesn’t seem real in the context. I think it’s a shame, Mike, that you see this in that kind of context. Playing into political scrapping seems to me to be a choke hold strategy that corporate criminal are excited to have us playing at … instead of defining who is responsible and how we will contend with the mess. On all levels.
We agree to disagree my friend 🙂 I see this as a terrible disaster, beyond what we have ever seen before. That, however, is how I see it, as a disaster, an accident. Nothing more. Of course it was motivated by money. It is drilling for oil. No different than the opening of any new business. That does not change the fact that what happened was an accident not a government run conspiracy. Finally sand is always replenished. Why is this particular “replenishment” a huge conspiracy? Because it doesn’t otherwise fit into the “doomsday” scenario.
Gwen, my whole comment wasn’t really about a doomsday either. My point was to illustrate that the BP spill was a failing. But in a strange way, the real failing was not with BP. BP is just going to be doing what they do, maximize their profits anyway they can.
They have consciously made the choice to increase profits by taking shortcut. That crap happens everyday in the corporate world! Every f$%^ing day! Wall Street is doing it,Corporate America is doing it. And they are all saying “Well if we don’t do it, somebody else will.”
No one is standing up to these monolithic blood suckers to implement rules that keep them in check. They have gotten too big and Washington has gotten too bought off. Even the “news” is starting to be just product placement.
Now when you are making a little plastic trinket for a penny because you can pay 10 cents a day for labor for something that will get sold at Wal-mart, it just means that some plastics injection company here in the United States goes out of business.
When it is a company screwing with Mother Earth and the only thing monitoring their safety and backup procedures is a office of porn watching industry hacks, that is when you get things like this spill.
Just like the Hedge Funds regulations, etc…a bunch of noise is going to be made about cleaning up the industry, congress will put on their dog and pony show, the real rules will be made behind closed doors away from the public eyes, deals will be made, and it will be business as usual.
HuffPo just had a article that there 27,000 abandoned wells in the gulf. It has been going on since the early 1950’s. So do you blame the leeches for wanting to bleed you dry or do you blame the people that are supposed to be protecting you?
Indignation and anger is a great start, but until the corporations face some real sting, it will be just the cost of doing business. Goldman Sachs 550 million fine,laughable!!
They probably had a office pool and gathered the pocket change to pay that.
And of course it is a “huge conspiracy”. Do you think the MMS just happened to be loaded with good ole boys. Do you think that Wall Street has more lobbyist than politicians in Washington for nothing! Do you think Pharma was paying over a million per day for politician access for nothing!
The conspiracy is not about doing a single event. The conspiracy is controlling the circumstances of EVERY event. The repercussions of penalties, the press coverage, the access to land, the tax breaks, the bypassed environmental studies. The list is too long to even begin!
11 guys dead. It WAS doomsday for them.
Yes! But it wasn’t the end of the world for the world. It was/is a horror for those family members who live in despair at the loss of their loved ones. That doesn’t change the fact that the world for the world is not ending. Thanks for stopping by.
That is the perfect argument for “I really don’t give a shit about you. I’m still here. What’s the prob?”
We have no idea what this mess is going to do in the long run. The short run has been a total clusterfuck.
I don’t deny that this was a cluster-fuck, however that doesn’t mean that I don’t care about what has happened to the region or to our environment. I am just saying that we will bounce back, us, and our poor critters. It is not the end of the world as some would have us believe.
Before Richard Feynman was asked to assess the Challenger disaster, NASA had estimated the likely of a disaster like the one that occurred to be in the range of 1 in 20 million.
Later when the investigation was on-going, NASA revised the probability to be in the range of 1 in 250,000.
When Feynman was finished with his results, Feynman estimated the chance to be about 1 in 200.
The point is that you cannot allow a company or group of companies to set the level of preparedness when the stakes are so high. They must be FORCED to design and prepare for the very worst. There is just too much at stake!
Mike, being prepared for the very worse scenario or forcing a company to be prepared does not mean that you want that scenario to happen. It means that you subscribe to the philosophy of SHIT HAPPENS and you had better be prepared.
Just because a “Doomsday Scenario” may not have happened this time, even with the damage as great as it is, doesn’t mean that it cannot happen.
There were 21 space shuttle flights that happened before the Challenger disaster. In hindsight, they probably would have liked to have a re-design for that last one. But for the first 21 missions, it was a 1 in 20 million chance of disaster.
Just a note back, they don’t know yet if they prevailed over the gusher. For now it looks pretty good except the pressure is not where they want it to be. It’s actually on the low end,but hopefully will hold until the relief wells are done.
Not out of the woods yet as there may be cracks in the sea floor.
Of course there’s the methane gas and dead zones to worry about to as well everything else these people must endure. The loss of wildlife will be felt for years to come. It’s nice their cleaning the sand but that’s the least of the problems right now.
Whom ever the President was during the debacle would have to take some blame. Why? because the buck stops there. He’s Man enough to accept criticism and learn from possible mistakes.
He is the one who put Salazar and Thad Allen in charge. As far as I’m concerned, they weren’t up to the task and so it falls back on him. If in all this Sarah Palin becomes President because of it, well then shame to every American. Democrats are not lemmings as the Republicans are and speak their thoughts. For that we become a better Country. Just my thoughts. See did you miss me 😉
LOL! Yes Tim we missed you. We agree to disagree as do Gwen and I and thousands of others with whom I disagree. The constant bashing of this president by members of his own party could well cost him the election. Democrats are known for their ability to screw things up and this cycles is no exception 🙂
I’m so so glad it’s twenty past midnight and I’m off to sleep…
hic
nite peeps
I see that the world is once again coming to an end even though the oil leak has been stopped (I know HUGE scam). Everyone is involved from the president of the United States, through the Prince of Persia and even the Pope and all the Catholics, along with all the non-Catholics of course, although they were just dupes because they have been saved. Then, before I forget, Anderson Cooper is part of the conspiracy, along with the hapless Jimmy Buffet who was blindfolded and walked to a part of the beach where there were hardly any tarballs and raped with his own guitar.
Now Pensacola Gregg, eminent scientist and Rhodes Scholar who brought his own video team, and who said at least five times that he grew up in Pensacola and is a self declared sand and oil expert, is innocent of all blame, given that he is a sand expert, unlike any the world has ever seen and if they had all the other sand experts would be criminals in the pay of Evil BP and the rest of those corporate government people eaters. It is after all about the money and nothing else. Now this doesn’t have to be on the record it can be off the record!! By golly!
So! When the world comes to an end in the next couple of days because of the sand being replaced on Pensacola beach who can we blame? Why Obama of course!! It is after all an Extinction Level Event (ELE) even though and especially since the leak has been stopped. Damn evil BP and their partner Obama. How dare they stop that oil leak just when the doomsayers were having so much fun ending the world? There’s only one thing for it in 2012!! PALIN FOR PRESIDENT!!!! 🙂
Ed. Note #1: Sand is replenished regularly on our nation’s beaches because it gets dirty and also erodes. The fact that it had been placed on Pensacola’s beach however is yet another indication of a universal conspiracy that reaches all the way to the Borg Empire. 🙂
Ed. Note #2: Now don’t be mad at me Gwen! Brothers and sisters will fight you know 🙂 Secondly I listened to your radio show and loved it. Kudos to all 🙂
The problem was definitely money. The safety measures never kept up with the technology. Why invest in a hydrant and hose when we have squirt bottles and we almost never use them?
There’s only one emergency response team to deal with a spill. All of the major oil companies use the same response team. And if you didn’t know it was just bought by Haliburton. Doesn’t that just make you feel better? Anybody thought what would happen if more than one company had a major spill at the same time?
British PM ‘Call Me Dave’ Cameron is on his way over. He reckons he’s going to tell The Prez to support BP as thousands of American jobs are on the line and America own 39% of BP.
How do politicians manage to miss the point by so many miles?
Gwen, What is the link to the site where one could hear your broadcast of Thursday’s show? As I predicted, I was fast asleep when it was taking place. Kennedy is a hero.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cosmic-comedy-radio-show
You’ll have to copy and save the link… I’m so inept at doing the link thing in comments..LOL RFK is one of the few who is assured a political success and eschews it in favor of honest advocacy, completely… Like his buddy Redford. I admire those men, much.
The last hour of the show is a record / it wasn’t live… sort of our ‘after show’ like bill maher… Oso, Nic and I talked almost exclusively about MMA and the writers. It’s the loose end of the show. And it’s only our second show… baby steps! Especially for this sinus plagued hostess last night. Oso and Krell were great guests…! So was Monnie Way. Hope you enjoy.
Thanks.
first things first, I tuned in last night and heard most of the broadcast. Gwen thanks so much for including me. I don’t hear that well so I didn’t participate. Oso,you did good.. I enjoyed the conversation. I do wish you guys would identify who’s who when talking cause I’m an idiot.
Money is truly the root of all problems. People are pissed and I’m afraid our Government has failed us once again. I don’t want to hear the same old bullshit, What was Obama to do, swim down there and stop up the hole in the ocean. NO, what I wanted him to do is grab BP by the balls and take control. I can write all day about how they failed us. Guess what, it’s not over yet. Finally they are going to inspect the rest of the 27,000 wells down there. Workers are still being exposed and so are the residents of the Gulf. From the beginning of this quagmire, I had copies of the MSDS sheets and read them. Why hasn’t the Government? I have over 20 years as a EHS specialist so I know how to read an MSDS.
So the subject was Money, Up to now BP or Money has been calling the shots for the world. I don’t mean to start any hard feelings but I call them like I see em.
Thank you Tim.I agree about Obama, some of the criticism is misdirected but much of it is incorrectly criticized. You put it very well.
Geez I would love to hear this Gwen!
We spent most of the evening trashing lawyers and croppy eaters, and croppy-eating lawyers.
My daughter was just telling about what’s going on in Vallejo, nearby to us. I haven’t verified this but the news said budget cuts just cut the police force in half, city of 142,000 which had 13 shootings last weekend.
Ignore the environment, ignore the economic realities, ignore infrastructure.
Absolute truth. All about the $.
Oso, they eliminated our police in my town here and use the county sheriff’s exclusively. I’m not to fond of the sheriffs’. I liked the local constabulary better. Many of them were community anchored and cared sincerely even with the crime rates. Crime has risen, naturally, as the economy has turned sour. We are in a multi-cultural zone… we have Maya from Mexico, lots of islanders and then old timers in the neighborhood who are, well, like me, white bread! We are close to the water / ocean but were are in an old town / area just below palm beach. I love it here. But the crime can be daunting for some … I agree with your assessment of the national situation (which mirrors).