The numbers in this Institute for Policy Studies (IPS)  report are not surprising, but still astounding. First, let’s start with the overview, via Think Progress:

“These numbers all reflect a broader trend in Great Recession-era Corporate America,” the IPS report says, “the relentless squeezing of worker jobs, pay and benefits to boost corporate earnings and maintain corporate executive paychecks at their recent bloated levels.”

So Americans work harder, longer, and for less (including benefits) while Big Biz bathes in tubs of cash. That’s the America we all know and … not love:

[A]fter adjusting for inflation, CEO pay in 2009 more than doubled the CEO pay average for the decade of the 1990s, more than quadrupled the CEO pay average for the 1980s, and ran approximately eight times the CEO average for all the decades of the mid-20th century.

American workers, by contrast, are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

Hop over to Think Progress for more details, but see if this doesn’t make your eyes pop:

According to IPS, American CEOs make 263 times the average compensation for American workers, up from the 30 to 1 ratio in the 1970s.

No wonder so many Americans are angry. And broke.

And hey, with Citizens United under their belt, guess where some of the big bucks will be spent! Buying elections.

Surprise! BP lied!

Hugh Kaufman, source royale and senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response, linked me to an article today, adding the following comment:

Shhh. Don’t tell the NYT, WashPost, ABCNews, etc., it might burst their bubble of ignorance.

Indeed. It’s much more important to make everyone feel good than to actually deal with reality.  CYA trumps truth. There’s just one tiny problem with that: The truth slips out at the most inconvenient times:

During more than a dozen interviews last week, BP officials and spokespeople for a number of government agencies working on the Deepwater Horizon Oil spill response denied knowledge of oil in the bay.

Even as they spoke, however, Escambia County officials and local fishermen were reporting finding weathered oil, as they’ve been doing for weeks. BP’s own crews were hand-scooping it up, and a submerged-oil team from BP’s Deepwater Horizon Response Incident Command Post in Mobile was investigating.

BP is the David Copperfield of Big Oil. Poof! Oil gone!

Except for this:

–On Wednesday, BP reported cleaning up 3,776 pounds of weathered oil from water near NAS.

–On Thursday, it reported collecting 2,207 pounds from water near NAS.

–The reports say oil was not recovered from water near Fort Pickens on those two days, though 3,255 pounds were collected from the Fort Pickens beach on Wednesday and 2,123 pounds was collected the next day.

–Piggott said 1,000 pounds were collected from underwater one day last week near Fort Pickens.

Oh, but come on now, none of that counts.

Recreational fisherman Mark Fuqua of Pensacola:

“BP is really counting on that out-of-sight, out-of-mind thing. It’s there and they know it,” he said. “They need to be exposed and made to do something about it.”

Gee, ya think?

Escambia County Commissioner Gene Valentino:

“It’s a mess. It’s a mess, I’m telling you,” he said. “I’m frustrated. My frustration is they still have not addressed the submerged oil in the ocean. You can’t convince me that the dispersants addressed 175,000 million gallons of oil — and some scientists say double that — that was released into the environment.”

This is an extensive article. Please go read the whole thing here.

Good. Lord.

It doesn’t look like the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico caused a major, lasting shift in public opinion about offshore oil drilling.

A series of new polls from Public Policy Polling show support for drilling on the rise once again in Florida, Louisiana, and North Carolina.

Dear poll participants:

Please refresh your memories, and then take the poll again. Okay? Good.

Love, Laffy

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)
US (German-born) physicist (1879 – 1955)

This comes via an e-mail from my excellent source for all things BP, Hugh Kaufman, (senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response):

Gulf oil: NYT Editoral says no evidence that the White House is being dishonest…

…and the Head of NOAA who signed the discredited 4 page “report”, Jane Lubchenco, is a respected marine biologist:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/opinion/23mon1.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

No evidence other than the recent Congressional testimony of the author of the “report.

And this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/20/noaa-claims-scientists-re_n_689428.html?ref=fb&src=sp#sb=116702,b=facebook

And this:
http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/08/govt-spill-report-under-fire

And this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/aug/19/bp-oil-spill-scientist-retracts-assurances

Nice to see the NYT join FoxNews in helping coverup the felonies of the Government and BP.

Harsh words about the government from someone who works with the government. Just thought you’d like to see there are those from within who have their eyes wide open.

Today’s Shallow Thought:

A Fox (sorry!) headline: Oil Drilling Ban Costs 23,000 Jobs, Administration Found.

The real headline should be, Oil Drilling Could Cost More Than 23,000 Jobs… and Does Cost Lives.

That was today’s Shallow Thought. Thank you for wading in.

Today’s final episode of L.A. Times letters to the editor:

Two parties, no consensus

Re “A wave of ‘no’ voters,” Opinion, Aug. 13

Ronald Brownstein claims that the Democrats’ “greatest problem is that they control all of Washington’s levers at a time when most Americans are deeply unhappy with the country’s direction.”

If “control all the levers” means the Democrats are in charge, he either misses or conceals the point that the gears of the machinery those levers are supposed to control have been jammed with monkey wrenches — filibuster threats, confirmation “holds,” etc. — from Republicans.

When the minority party is dedicated to blocking the efforts of the majority, being in the majority can’t get Democratic legislation enacted. Politics isn’t the art of the possible; politics is the sullen craft of the legislatable.

So either Brownstein is ignorant about levers and monkey wrenches, or he understands but is insidiously abetting the Republicans’ efforts to make the Democrats look bad. Whichever explanation applies, I submit that it’s he who looks bad.

***

I think Brownstein is correct that Americans are pretty dissatisfied with both parties. And, in most contests, we are faced with electing the lesser of evils again. To me, the Democrats are slightly better than the Republicans, but not much. They are still a corporate party, while the Republicans are a regressive uber-corporate party. They should call themselves the Corpocrats and the Republicorps.

Our government puts corporate profits over the public good. This has been going on for a long time, was taken to the extreme with President George W. Bush and continues under President Obama.

In the upcoming midterms, we will elect a new board of directors, and in 2012, we will elect another chairman of the board of USA Inc. The corporatization of America has created a government of business, by business and for business. It and its companion Second Gilded Age are bipartisan efforts.

We need democracy, not corporatocracy .

Heavy sigh.

My pal and wonderful source for all things BP, Hugh Kaufman (senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response) sent me another link. This time it’s to an exclusive from the Daily Beast:

While officials claim most of the oil from America’s worst-ever spill has disappeared, fishermen hired by BP are still finding tar balls—and being instructed to hide their discoveries.

Two weeks ago, as federal officials prepared to declare that some three-quarters of the estimated 5 million barrels of oil released into the Gulf over three months had disappeared, Mark Williams, a fishing boat captain hired by BP to help with the spill cleanup, encountered tar balls as large as three inches wide floating off the Florida coast.

Reporting his findings to his supervisor, a private consulting company hired by BP, the reply, according to his logbook came back: “Told—no reporting of oil or tar balls anymore. Don’t put on report. We’re here for boom removal only,” referring to the miles of yellow and orange containment barriers placed throughout the Gulf.

Williams’ logbook account, which I inspected, and a similar account told to me by a boat captain in Mississippi, raises serious concerns about whether the toll from the spill is being accurately measured. Many institutions have an interest in minimizing accounts of the damage inflicted. The federal and local governments, under withering criticism all summer, certainly want to move on to other subjects. BP, of course, has a financial incentive.

At the risk of repeating myself, it’s always all about the money.

Please go here to read the rest of Daily Beast’s article. I would correct them on one thing: It’s not a “spill”, it’s a volcano, a hemorrhage, a disaster, a gush, but not a “spill”.

This story, by the way, dovetails perfectly with the “Crime of the Century” posts here and here.

All my posts about the use, ingredients, and controversy over toxic dispersants here.

All of my Hugh Kaufman sourced posts here.

And finally, all of my “DeepwaterThroat” (Barkway) sourced posts here.

UPDATE: Hugh just linked me to this, with the comment, ” Report also says oil and toxic dispersants have entered the food chain.
Special Prosecutor?”…

Report Says Up To 80% Of Escaped Oil May Be On The Gulf Bottom

James “Catfish” Miller, Mississippi commercial fisherman-turned-whistleblower. (Photo: Erika Blumenfeld © 2010)

There’s been Top Hats, Top Kill, Bottom Kill, Kill on the Half Shell, Kill Baby Kill… and the oil volcano seems to have stopped. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Wrong.

Dahr Jamail, a thorough, top notch investigative reporter over at Truthout, has a lengthy report that is a must-read. Here are a few excerpts:

“BP brings in the Carolina Skiffs to spray the dispersant at night,” he added, “And they are not accountable to the Coast Guard.“

James Miller, who had taken the group out into the Mississippi Sound that found the oil/dispersants on August 11, told Truthout that the Carolina Skiff teams spraying dispersants were “common” and that it “happened all the time.” [...]

“Why would we lie about oil and dispersant in our waters, when our livelihoods depend on our being able to fish here?” Miller asked. “I want this to be cleaned up so we can get back to how we used to live, but it doesn’t make sense for us or anyone else to fish if our waters are toxified. I don’t know why people are angry at us for speaking the truth. We’re not the ones who put the oil in the water.”

Miller is bleak about his assessment of the situation. He pointed out toward the coast and said, “Everything is dead out there. The plankton is dead. We pulled up loads of dead plankton on our trip on Wednesday. There are very few birds. We saw only a few when there are usually thousands. We only saw two porpoises when there are usually countless. We saw nothing but death.”

Joseph Yerkes is a Florida commercial fisherman and a VOO (Vessels of Opportunity) operator for more than two months

Yerkes expressed his frustration further. “They are lying about this whole thing and it’s got me in an uproar,” he said. “I’m by myself. I’m the only one willing to stand up. I have a lot of friends who want to stand up and speak out. They know the Coast Guard and BP are lying, but they won’t talk because they are getting paychecks and don’t want to jeopardize that. They are saying they are finding new oil all the time, but the Coast Guard claims they are testing it and saying it’s safe. I know for a fact they are not testing it and we watched and heard C130s fly every night in July.” [...]

“There are stories of people getting notes on their cars, verbal and phone threats. I don’t want to become one of those people. I’m trying to heighten my profile so they don’t want to mess with me,” Yerkes added. “I want the truth to come out so the public knows. I’m trying to make BP and the government come out and tell the facts instead of lying to the public about what is going on. I want to know how much dispersants they are using, where all the oil is and the effects these are having on all of us. Somebody is lying and we want the truth.”

Just because the new 24/7 meme is “mosque, baby, mosque” doesn’t mean this is over. Not by a long shot.

All my posts on dispersants here.

Today’s L.A. Times had a few letters to the editor that I wanted to share. Here’s the third of three:

Nice work if you can get it

Re “Big year for execs at five insurers,” Aug. 11

Healthcare reform has slipped under the public radar, as can be seen by the return of business-as-usual by the health insurance industry. Companies are continuing to rob policyholders blind while their public relations spin doctors throw up their deflector shields, knowing that the public has no effective weapons to change the status quo.

If a health insurance executive does a poor job, they either get another raise or, if they are dismissed, a huge severance package and then have no trouble going through the executive job revolving door with another company.

If any of us peasants get a bad performance review, we are out on the street — and with a black mark on our record regarding future job prospects.

As The Times states, it is indeed another big year for big business execs.

Welcome to Citizens United States of America.

The other day I put up a post entitled “BP Contract Supervisor (former convicted sexual predator) Rapes Clean-Up Worker,” thanks to a link I got from Hugh Kaufman (senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response).

Now we have an excellent video of the CNN report that provides much more heart-wrenching, anger-provoking detail. I’m glad they’re airing this repeatedly, but I hope they go further with it.

BP and others need to be held accountable. Among the “others” is a familiar name, Aerotek. And who is Aerotek? Glad you asked.

I posted about them here, thanks to my very own whistleblower, the renowned DeepwaterThroat, Barkway (all my Barkway posts here), who said of the company:

I wondered if the clean-up agencies were still hiring, so I looked up one of the main companies, a top hazardous job company, Aerotek. They are advertising nearly exclusively on websites that cater to Latinos.  That made me ask two things.

One: Are they lumping them in with the  “garbage people” who they referred to as N-words, people who will work for nothing?

Two: Were they hanging out a sign saying, “Illegal immigrants welcome”? Why advertise on those sites, ones that were written in Spanish only?

They’re using prisoners for clean-up so they don’t have to pay them.  Now, if they hire undocumented workers, they won’t need paperwork. They can pull from an army of people. This is a big company, they have offices all over Florida.

Of course, Aerotek passed the buck. “We are not liable,”  they protested. They pointed the finger directly at the Miller Environmental Group, because they hired Aerotek, who then pointed the finger at BP who pointed the finger at…

With all that public finger-pointing, I hope they all paid good corporate money for manicures.

Here’s hopes CNN follows up on this report. Skating is not an option for BP, Aerotek, Miller, or anyone we may not yet be aware of.

I post and I post about the horrific repercussions of the BP oil disaster. I won’t stop until my stomach stops doing somersaults every time I read a newspaper, turn on the computer, or watch the Tee Vee Machine.

This time I will only post links, and you do the rest. I’ve been gone all day and must catch up on other stories, too.

And with that, read and weep:

–BP says it is no longer using toxic dispersants to break up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Gulf Coast residents claim otherwise, and say they have the sicknesses to prove it.

–BP Spill: Catastrophe, Sure. Disaster? Nah.

–ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — “We’ve been saying there’s submerged oil coming into (Perdido Pass) for some time and (BP PLC) completely dismissed our concerns and our accounts,” said Orange Beach Mayor Kennon. “Hopefully this proves we’re not a bunch of dummies.”

–For all things BP, my posts from superb source Hugh Kaufman (senior policy analyst with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response).

–And from my DeepwaterThroat, all posts via my wonderful whistleblower Barkway.