Yes I am sure it is based on the truth Toot

What is a lobbyist?

A person who tries to influence legislation on behalf of a special interest.



Three out of every four lobbyists who represent oil and gas companies previously worked in the federal government, a proportion that far exceeds the usual revolving-door standards on Capitol Hill, a Washington Post analysis shows..



With more than 600 registered lobbyists, the industry has among the biggest and most powerful contingents in Washington. Its influence has been on full display in the wake of the BP oil disaster: Proposals to enact new restrictions or curb oil use have stalled amid concerted Republican opposition and strong objections from Democrats in oil-producing states.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/21/AR2010072106468.html

An emergency alarm that could have warned workers aboard the doomed Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico drilling rig was intentionally disabled, a rig engineer has told US investigators.



Mike Williams, chief engineer technician aboard Swiss-based Transocean rig, said the general alarm that could have detected the cloud of flammable methane gas that enveloped the rig's deck on April 20 was "inhibited".



More [url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/07/24/2963081.htm?section=justin]here[/url]

I can't believe it fwed, a disaster occurred because sleep was more important than a false alarm. Unbelieveable!



An emergency alarm that could have warned workers aboard the doomed Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico drilling rig was intentionally disabled, a rig engineer has told US investigators.



Mike Williams, chief engineer technician aboard Swiss-based Transocean rig, said the general alarm that could have detected the cloud of flammable methane gas that enveloped the rig's deck on April 20 was "inhibited".



"[Rig managers] did not want people woke up at 3:00am in the morning from false alarms," Mr Williams told a six-member federal board in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, Louisiana.

Boy heads should roll for that

Following on from Gordon Gekko and his 'greed is good' philosophy, this is an excepts taken from an excellent article by Bernie Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus, is the longest-serving Independent in US Congressional history. He says that middle class America is now dead and I think the middle class in Australia is slowly disappearing too.



He writes:



The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.



http://www.thenation.com/article/37889/no-oligarchy

From many things I have read over the last few years this was the plan Toot--the rich to get richer and the poorer to get poorer

LONDON: BP is to begin deep-water drilling off Libya. The new site in Libya's Gulf of Sirte will be 200 metres deeper than the Gulf of Mexico well. Looks like Tony can now get his life back but a new face won't change the stink of BP.

Following on from Gordon Gekko and his 'greed is good' philosophy, this is an excepts taken from an excellent article by Bernie Sanders, a member of the Senate Democratic Caucus, is the longest-serving Independent in US Congressional history. He says that middle class America is now dead and I think the middle class in Australia is slowly disappearing too.



He writes:



The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.



http://www.thenation.com/article/37889/no-oligarchy



This article is biased to say the least. Look into the records and it is more than just Bush. It goes way back over different administrations.



The tax rates they used to make such judgments has been around for many years, not just something Bush put in. Those rich folks are paying for money made from investments. A tax rate set to encourage even the lower income folks to begin saving more money, rather than spending it all like the governments are doing. The investment income tax rate is only about 15% for everyone, rich or poor. Had those rich folks been taxed at the regular rate they would be paying about 35% for their wages if they had wages. Two different tax schedules for two different ways of making money.



Was this fiasco all caused by Wall Street. Not at all. There was maybe a need for more regulations of Wall Street and banks but the folks that used Wall Street are the individuals like me that made a good bit of my retirement saving on Wall Street. The unions used wall street very heavily for their retirement plans. Insurance companies also used Wall Street for their investments. Wall Street has been more than an evil needing to be destroyed. It has paid back far more to me than any bank would for my savings. Wall street is good for long term investments as it goes up and down regularly. So the idea has been to put in and wait, or if time is short lock the income into a fixed savings at a bank or elsewhere.



Now add this to the biased comments. Those top 10% or 15% now pay 90% of the taxes to the US government to waste. The other side is that about 40% of us pay no taxes to the government.



So you see, it is those 'evil rich' that are paying our way with their 'nasty businesses and factories' and create jobs. The problem in the US is not the fact that some folks are smart enough to run a productive business or factory and create jobs, it is the greedy power crazed government that is wasting all the money and bringing us to the brink of bankruptcy.



Hopefully in November we will be able to changed out a lot of those air headed politicians and regain control of the government for the people once again.



Finally, is the middle class dead? I don't think it is dead yet. Much reduced in size but still room for the energetic to get into the middle class, and on beyond

.

This is so disgusting. The UN has exonerated Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta. The sad truth is that the people of the Niger Delta are poor and black and few in the west know or care. And that's why they got away with it.



[i]The $10m (£6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and company negligence, and concludes that the rest has come from local people illegally stealing oil and sabotaging company pipelines.



The shock disclosure was made by Mike Cowing, the head of a UN team of 100 people who have been studying environmental damage in the region.



Cowing said that the 300 known oil spills in the Ogoniland region of the delta caused massive damage, but added that 90% of the spills had been caused by "bunkering" gangs trying to steal oil.



His comments, in a briefing in Geneva last week, have caused deep offence among the families of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni leaders who were hanged by the Nigerian government in 1995 after a peaceful uprising against Shell's pollution.



With 606 oil fields, the Niger delta supplies 8.2% of the crude oil imported by the US. Life expectancy in its rural communities, half of which have no access to clean water, has fallen to little more than 40 over the past two generations.



Communities accept that bunkering has become rife in some areas of Ogoniland, but say this is a recent development and most of the historical pollution has been caused by Shell operations.



Last year, Amnesty calculated that the equivalent of at least 9m barrels of oil has been spilled in the delta over the past half a century, nearly twice as much as the 5m barrels unleashed in the Gulf of Mexico by the Deepwater Horizon disaster.



Tonight the investigation was accused of bias by Nigerians and environmental groups who said the study – paid for by Shell and commissioned by the Nigerian government, who both have massive oil interests in the region – was unbalanced.[/i]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/22/shell-niger-delta-un-investigation