This blog is dedicated to progressive and liberal thought. It also discusses new technology, how technology affects privacy and developments in Russia, China, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Rightardia fully supports the rights of workers to organize, the feminist movement, and all Americans regardless or ethnicity, sex or gender.It uses humor, satire and parody to expose conservative thought for what it truly is: BS! Rightardia contributes to the DNC, DCCC, DSCC and MoveOn.Org.
ConocoPhillips CEO James Mulva released a news release Wednesday that derided Democratic legislation repealing oil and gas tax subsidies as "un-American."
Today, House Republicans voted to protect billions of dollars in taxpayer giveaways for Big Oil companies.
Last week, the big five oil companies reported that their profits increased by 38 percent since this time last year, while middle income families are feeling the squeeze at the gas pump. Two weeks ago, Republicans voted to end Medicare and raise health care costs for seniors in order to protect these taxpayer giveaways for Big Oil.
Jesse Ferguson of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said:
ExxonMobil reported profits of nearly $11 billion in the first quarter of 2011, a 69 percent increase. Shell reported profits of $7 billion, ConocoPhillips reported profits of $3 billion, Chevron reported $6.2 billion, and BP reported $5.5 billion.
Republicans chose taxpayer funded giveaways for Big Oil companies making record profits rather than doing what’s right for folks squeezed by high prices at the pump.
House Republicans’ priorities are clear: protecting Big Oil comes at the expense of seniors and working families. No wonder Big Oil rewards Republicans with generous campaign contributions.
The measure House Republicans opposed would bring the Big Oil Welfare Repeal Act of 2011 (H.R. 1689) to the floor for consideration. H.R. 1689 would amend the Internal Revenue Code to prohibit major oil companies (the Big 5) from receiving a tax deduction for domestic oil and natural gas production activities.
As gas prices skyrocket oil companies and Wall Street are reaping huge profits form your misery at the gas pump.
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders says this price spike has nothing to do with real supply and demand and everything to do with oil price speculators driving up the price so they can profit from the gambling.
Senator Sanders is demanding that federal regulators impose limits on oil speculation because he says Wall Street is artificially jacking up the price of oil in energy futures markets. realtionship
Sanders says the same Wall Street speculators that destroyed our economy in 2008 are again ripping off the American people.
Oil companies are making billions on this speculation even as they get $4 billion a year in tax credits and subsidies. Sanders, the AFL-CIO and others are urging both limits on the speculators and an end to the billions in tax subsidies for big oil.
Rightardia has noticed an oil PR campaign to prevent taxes form being raised on the oil industry so the oil industry can "create more jobs."
Rightardia would suspect if oil subsidies are cut, an effect at the gas pump will be noticed quickly. The Republicans who have had a "gay relationship" with the oil barons for years. The GOp will do what it can to protect these subsidies under the guise of protecting jobs.
Posted by Heather Zichal on March 29, 2011 at 1:38 PM EDT
On March 11, 2011, President Obama directed the Department of the Interior (DOI) to determine the acreage of public lands (onshore and offshore) that have been leased to oil and gas companies and remain undeveloped, noting that companies should be encouraged to produce energy from leases that they are holding. Today, the results are in.
The report reaches several important conclusions: first, although the Department of Interior has made available significant acreage for resource development over the past two years, substantial acreage has not been leased by industry.
Secondly, there are tens of millions of acres that are currently under lease that remain idle. Because these areas are not undergoing exploration, development, or production, taxpayers are not getting the full advantage of America’s resource potential.
When it comes to onshore oil and gas development, nearly 57 percent of all leased acres are inactive – meaning they are neither being explored nor developed. In total, 22 million leased onshore acres – acres already in the hands of oil and gas companies – are not being used. That’s roughly the size of Indiana.
KSHB NBC 41 Kansas City
Sep. 23, 2010. 06:13 PM EST
Think you should change your oil every 3,000 miles? Oil changes don't need to be done so often.
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In a telling exchange with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria yesterday, polluter apologist Pat Michaels admitted that “40 percent” of his funding comes from the oil industry.
Michaels was introduced as “a scientist who now works for the Cato Institute.
The CATO Institute is a the libertarian think tank that strongly opposes caps to carbon dioxide,” has promoted global warming denial for decades.
It is funded by a network of oil and coal companies and their ideological allies. Michaels initially denied that he is funded by the petroleum industry, but backtracked under steady interrogation by Zakaria.
Little Green Footballs (LGF): I heard some of this on local talk radio while the Roi & I were out and about today.
There are problems with the BP's claims payment process. However, it seems BP wants to base lost income claims payments on people's tax returns, and it seems some of those tax returns weren't, well, exactly forthcoming in all cases as to the amount of money a person was earning per year.
BP has stated it will accept W-2 and even ship tickets. The man in the video didn't file income tax for three years which is against the law.
Now these folks can either:
1. Keep their mouths shut and accept a claims payment based on what they told the IRS they earned, or
2. Go back and file amended tax returns for each year, which would most likely result in their owing additional income tax (plus penalty and interest).
(LGF has) absolutely no sympathy whatsoever for those folks who got themselves into this pickle by cheating on their income taxes.
New York attorney Jerrold Parker warned about the potential pitfalls facing fisherman who intend to file claims against BP for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Parker, speaking at Harris Martin Publishing's Oil Spill Litigation Conference, said there is "a lot of major tax evasion" among Gulf Coast commercial fisherman.
The conference, held at the W Hotel in New Orleans, dealt with BP litigation strategy.
Parker spoke with Reserve attorney Daniel Becnel Jr. and New Orleans attorney Camilo Salas III during a section entitled "The Claims Game."
Parker, a former IRS tax agent in New York City, warned attendees that, should attorneys file claims against BP - which has established a $20 billion escrow account to handle legitimate claims - the process could get murky for fishermen because many deal in cash.
"Many Vietnamese and Cambodian fisherman live on their boats and don't speak much English," he said. "They pay for their supplies in cash, for their bait in cash and their gas in cash."
The BP guy wanted my tax statements, but how can I pay taxes if
everything I earned was in cash?
But foreign fishermen aren't the only ones affected. In a May 30 article in the Los Angeles Times, an anonymous crab fisherman said, "The BP guy wanted my tax statements, but how can I pay taxes if everything I earned was in cash?"
After the presentation, Becnel said that he and most of the lawyers he knows are providing their services and filing claims for fishermen free of charge.
"If we get something on the back end, so be it," he said. "If we don't, then we struck a lousy deal."
Avoid the tar balls and rightards. Bypass the Panhandle.
Visit Central, South or East Florida. Honeymoon Island in Clearwater has one of the best beaches in Florida and no tar balls to disrupt your romantic adventure.
(July 15-16, 2010 -- NEW ORLEANS) On July 14, WMR witnessed clean-up crews wearing respirators cleaning oil from the shore line of a lagoon in Gulf Shores, Alabama, a neighborhood surrounded by expensive condominiums and vacation rental homes.
Other beach communities where the median income is not as high have not seen such meticulous cleaning operations that include protection of clean up workers and the careful deployment of booms.
Oil boom laid in lagoon in Gulf Shores, Alabama to protect condos and vacation homes. WMR has learned that rental agencies and vacation home owners who rent out their properties -- and who have been plagued by cancellations in reservations -- are lining up to receive BP compensation from Kenneth Feinberg's BP compensation fund.
The word is that they will advance ahead of those who have lost their fishing jobs and other low-paid affected wage earners because many of those jumping the queue are among the wealthy elite of New York, North Jersey, Atlanta, and Chicago.
More boom laid across lagoon to protect vacation home inlets in Gulf Shores and surface skimmers are used to ensure dockside homes remain free from oil in Gulf Shores.
Some clean-up crews are wearing respirators. Illegal alien workers and other low-paid workers are not so fortunate. Many low-paid clean-up personnel are being laid off by BP.
As WMR departs the Gulf Coast and as BP began another public relations blitz announcing that they are optimistic about their latest well cap, disturbing news was received from animal rescue personnel in Grand Isle, Louisiana.
A strange sight was reported to marine wildlife personnel. When they deployed to find out what was being reported, fifty dead porpoises were discovered off the Louisiana coast.
WMR has obtained photographic evidence of BP's use of illegal workers from Mexico and Jamaica being hired through out-of-state contractors. Obama
spoke at tent in Orange Beach, Alabama, surrounded by security and
illegal beach clean up workers from Mexico and Jamaica. [Photo courtesy
of John Caylor]
When President Obama visited Orange Beach, Alabama, last month, he spoke in a tent facility, with selective guests only present, that was near the staging area for the illegal workers being used by BP as clean up crews.
Photo-journalists attempting to take pictures of the illegal workers have been run off by BP security contractors.
Most
of these BP contractor clean up workers are undocumented Mexicans and
Jamaicans, according to local sources in Perdido Bay area. [Photos
courtesy of John Caylor]
In May, the By County, Florida Sheriff's Department raided an illegal BP workers' staging area at the Panama City Marina and made a number of arrests.
BP blamed subcontractors for the hiring of the illegals.
The illegals, many from New York and North Carolina, were hired by BP's Panama City clean up contractor SWS First Response.
It is sad that BP is not hiring locals in the Gulf coast. The Gulf coast is expected to lose more than a million jobs in the next 5 years because of the Deepwater oil spill.
WMR has discovered that BP is discriminating against hiring local Gulf residents, including those with scientific and engineering degrees, in favor of out-of-state contractors and illegal aliens to assist in environmental clean up resulting from the firm's devastating Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Texas buses
ferrying illegal BP workers from west Mobile to Alabama and Florida
beaches.
Every morning in Tillmans Corner, a crossroads in west Mobile, Alabama, workers gather outside a vacant strip mall store to board buses that take them to the beaches for clrean up work for BP.
However, these are not local workers who have been hired by the British oil giant but illegal aliens hired from Mexico, through Texas, and Jamaica.
A close look at the buses that ferry the clean up crews to the beaches reveal that they belong to Turnaround Transportation, Inc. of Wichita Falls, Texas.
The firm's website, which is under construction, reveals the company provides "transportation specialists for the refining, construction and petrochemical industries," and adds its buses are state inspected and fully registered with the State of Texas for use on all roadways."
Local residents report the workers are being put up in motels along Interstate 10 in west Mobile and that few speak any English. There are also reports that some of the workers have committed rapes and muggings in the area.
WMR spoke to one unemployed chemical and environmental engineer laid off from the paper industry who signed up to take BP's wildlife clean up course only to find out that she would not be hired to help clean oil off of water fowl.
The water fowl clean up in Alabama has taken on the air of a covert intelligence operation, with details being hidden by BP and the Coast Guard.
However, the reason for the secrecy, according to one local source, is that the marine bird population has been decimated by the oil disaster and the Coast Guard and BP do not want bird census data revealed in order to protect the firm from major legal damages. Secrecy also extends to the number of dead sea mammals. WMR witnessed two night flying helicopters, search lights trained on waters along the Florida-Alabama coast, to spot dead dolphins, manatees, and whales.
Clean-up personnel, under the cover of darkness, covertly dispose of the carcasses without the attention of the media.
Marine biologists told WMR that the situation is becoming so desperate for sharks that they are resorting to bumping into the hulls of research vessels in search of food.
Here, on the coastline of the Alabama-Florida state line, this editor has experienced a sore throat, the same symptoms now affecting other residents of the area.
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July 6, 2010, Wayne Madsen Report
WMR has been told by our Gulf coast sources in Alabama and Florida that there is a massive BP- and Coast Guard-led news blackout on information from the Gulf coast.
After our report on planned evacuations of certain residents of the Gulf coast, including those with respiratory ailments, was retracted by some websites after pressure was presumably exerted by BP's public relations machine, WMR will be heading down to the Gulf coast from July 10 to 15 to report from the scene of BP's massive environmental crime against nature.
In another WMR report, Pensacola sources report that the local cable company, Mediacom, the seventh largest cable company in the United States, has been blocking access to local Pensacola news broadcasts on the Gulf oil disaster since July 2.
WMR has learned that the 5 pm and 5:30 pm local news broadcasts from CBS affiliate WKRG-TV and ABC affiliate WEAR-TV, as well as the 6 pm national news broadcasts on the stations from CBS News and ABC News, respectively, are replaced by a black screen. NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN are unaffected by the cable company's blockage.
As WMR has only its subscribers to answer to, not advertisers or board members, we will bring unvarnished news from the Gulf, as well as photos, and hopefully, video reports.
There are also reports that the Coast Guard has blocked media access to the seas off the Gulf coast. We have discovered a way, which shall now remain a secret, to head into oil-laden Gulf waters without the interference of either BP Security personnel or the Coast Guard.
Although our actual itinerary must remain somewhat vague, WMR will be in the coastal areas south of New Orleans, as well as the coasts of Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle.
If any of our readers live in the Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, or Pensacola coastal areas and can point out leads, email us at wmreditor@waynemadsenreport.com or rightardia@gmail.com.
Rightardia has advised progressives to avoid the Florida Panhandle because of the oil spill. In addition, the Panhandle area is overwhelmingly conservative unlike Central and South Florida.
BP has said repeatedly that it will pay for the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But its actions show that it does not intend to go it alone.
BP admitted that big oil has spoiled the environment for years because the Republican party gave big oil a 'free ride" after the GOP won a presidential election.
George W. Bush owned the Mineral Management Service when was president and filled its ranks with GOP shills and lackeys. A BP sokesman said Big Oil got whatever it wanted when the GOP controlled Washington.
"The Republican Party is as responsible for the Gulf mess as BP is," said one of the BP talking dogs.
Newly released documents show that on June 2, BP sent out demands for nearly $400 million to its partners in the well, Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Mitsui Oil Exploration Company of Japan, or roughly 40 percent of the $1 billion it had spent in May.
BP also contacted giant oil-services provider Halliburton who is a primary suspect in the investigation into the oil rig explosion that has devastated the Gulf Coast, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Mineral Management Service BP noted that a dozen officials of the MMS were charged with unethical and criminal conduct in the performance of their duties during the Bush era.
The Inspector General found MMS employees had taken drugs and had sex with energy company representatives.
MMS staff had also accepted gifts and free holidays amid "a culture of ethical failure", according to the investigation.
The New York Times' summary states the investigation revealed "a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration’s watch." Halliburton was in charge of cementing for Deepwater Horizon.
Though the investigation into the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon site is still in its early stages, drilling experts agree that blame probably lies with flaws in Haliburton's "cementing" process: plugging holes in the pipeline seal by pumping cement into it from the rig.
BP admits it will probably have to sue Halliburton
The amounts demanded by BP — $272 million from Anadarko and $111 million from Mitsui — reflect the provisions of each company’s joint operating agreement with BP, which gives a share of liability equal to each company’s share of ownership.
BP owns 65 percent of the well, Anadarko owns 25 percent and Mitsui 10 percent.
The total bill includes costs of drilling the relief wells, responding to the spill, and the reimbursements already sent to the federal government, as well as the claims that BP has already paid out in claims for economic loss to people along the Gulf Coast.
BP has handed also out $25 million in checks to several gulf states for various costs, but did not attempt to pass a share of those expenditures on to its partners.
Toby Outdone, a spokesman for BP, said, “We would expect the various parties involved in this to live up to their responsibilities.” He admitted the one exception was Halliburton.Outdone said BP will have to sue those bastards.
