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     THE U.S. POSTAL SERVICE IS UNDER
ATTACK! THE VULTURES WANT TO
PRIVATIZE IT & STEAL THE RETIREMENT
CASH THE GOOD PEOPLE HAVE BEEN
SAVING. THE AMERICAN PEOPLE
HAVE A LARGE INVESTMENT IN THE
U.S. POSTAL SERVICE.
WE CAN’T LET  THIS HAPPEN!
DO SOMETHING!

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As BP Refuses To Pay Remaining Gulf Oil
Claims, US Restores Its Privileges

By Mark Karlin, Editor, Buzzflash at Truthout

Perhaps what best explains why the US government restored BP's right to federal contracts and drilling the other day is this fact: It is the sixth largest corporation in the world in revenues (as calculated by FORTUNE). 

Public Citizen sent out an email excoriating the federal action:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today [March 13] that it had reached a settlement with BP to allow the oil giant to once again secure new federal government contracts and drilling leases.

Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s Energy Program, issued the following statement:

Today’s announcement lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment. 

This is a company that was on criminal probation at the time of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, and it has failed to prove that it is a responsible contractor deserving of lucrative taxpayer deals.

The EPA’s condition of the retention of an independent auditor to ensure the company complies as a responsible contractor is inadequate protection for taxpayers.

While we applaud the EPA for initiating the ban, it is premature to end it.

BP has failed to demonstrate that the corporate culture that allowed the Alaskan pipeline spill, the Texas City refinery explosion, the propane market manipulation and the Gulf Coast tragedy has changed.

Given that the BP Gulf spill was the largest accidental oil pollution of a body of water in history, one would think that the company (which earned a $13.4 billion profit in 2014) would be on its best behavior. 

That is hardly the case.

In fact, BP is currently pursuing litigation to stop making Gulf spill restitution payments that it had agreed to in a court settlement. 

That's right; it is trying to get the legal system to allow the company to alter the terms of how it would pay compensation to plaintiffs represented in a class action suit--even though BP signed the agreement.

BP was just dealt a serious setback when a federal court chastised the company for trying to renege on the settlement terms, as the Wall St. Cheat Sheet website reports:

A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit appeals court in New Orleans came to a decision that will change the course of BP’s (NYSE:BP) fight over the manner in which victim compensation claims for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill are determined.

That ruling held that the settlement of a class action brought by Gulf Coast businesses who endured the months-long oil leak that befouled beaches, killed wildlife, and disrupted the economies of their state was legal.

The judges stated there was “no merit” in the company’s argument that a deal allowing businesses unaffected by the Deepwater Horizon disaster to claim compensation should be illegal.

Plaintiffs’ lawyers took that decision as a victory; it upheld a pact worked out by the company’s own lawyers and stymied BP’s efforts to rewrite history and the settlement....

On January 10, two of the three Fifth Circuit judges rejected BP’s argument that individual fraudulent payments undermined the validity of the overall settlement.

“Indeed the reason that BP has identified no legal authority for this proposition,” Judge W. Eugene Davis wrote in his opinion, seen by Bloomberg Businessweek, “is that it is nonsensical.”

A statement issued by lead plaintiffs’ attorneys Steve Herman and Jim Roy called the Fifth Circuit ruling “an enormous victory for the gulf and an important step forward in ensuring that every eligible claimant is fully compensated according to the objective, transparent formulas spelled out in the settlement agreement that BP co-authored and agreed to.”

In the midst of BP's "nonsensical" effort to reduce its agreed-upon payments to claimants, the pro-fossil fuel DC government decision-makers restore the company's rights to federal contracts and to bid for new drilling rights. 

That action is particularly "nonsensical," unless you accept the reality of the clout of irresponsible oil companies due to their financial assets and profit--and their impact on the political process through campaign contributions and lobbyists.

ThinkProgress notes, "The effects of the 2010 disaster still linger in the Gulf.

As of March 3, tar balls are still being collected from Florida beaches nearly four years after the spill."

But the permanent damage to the Gulf ecosytem and long-term pollution is incalculable.

Obamacare
The subject of the latest debunked Obamacare
horror  story is finally talking, and of course it's
to Fox News.

Julie Boonstra is a Michigan resident with leukemia, and she appeared in an Americans For Prosperity ad against Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Gary Peters, saying that Obamacare made her cancer treatment unaffordable because of out of pocket spending.

Subsequent fact checking, though, found that her monthly premium payments were essentially cut in half, and the limits the law imposes on out of pocket expenses means that at worse, she'd break even between those costs and her premium saving.

The ad also implied she lost access to her doctor, though fact checking determined that her doctor is included in the plan she picked on the exchange.

So with no real basis to the story she presented in the ad, how does Boonstra respond?

The only way she can, the way Republicans always go, playing the victim.

"They're not scaring me. Cancer scares me," she said. "I battle cancer every day.

They're not going to intimidate me." [...]

"Under my old policy, I knew what I could afford every single month because I wasn't hit with extra charges.

Now I don't know what I have to pay month to month," she said. "Leukemia tests are extremely expensive."

Just to set the record straight, pointing out factual inconsistencies is not intimidation.

No one is saying that Boonstra isn't experiencing real angst over having to change health insurance in the middle of her fight with cancer.

No one is diminishing her fight with cancer, they're just pointing out some basic truths which show that her story just doesn't add up.

And as Brian Beutler points out, if the Koch brothers achieved what they're trying to with this and other ads—repeal—then she would really become a victim.

The protections she now has under this law—to never be kicked off her health insurance plan, to never have to worry about having health coverage because of her leukemia, having her annual out of pocket expenses limited, and never having to worry about reaching an annual or lifetime cap where her coverage is just cut off—would be gone if the campaign she's participating in succeeds.

Which is, yes, insane.

If Boonstra is a victim, she's the willing victim of the Koch brothers and AFP who would ultimately throw her to the wolves.

But if she hates the law that much, fine, whatever. What she's doing, though, jeopardizes every other cancer patient in the nation.