Business as usual

So you've gone and dumped the entire oil/dinosaur blood contents of the earth into the Gulf of Mexico. One million billion trillion gallons of oil so far and the flow doesn't look to be stopping any time during this calendar year. It's beginning to look like you caused the death of all sea life, ruined the coastal economy of the Gulf states, and have made our elected betters spend in excess of five whole minutes considering that maybe we should make a serious push into renewable sources of energy. What do you do? I mean besides attempt to stop media access to the area and make anyone with a boat sign a confidentiality agreement. You start gearing up to buy Congressmen.

Halliburton’s campaign donations have spiked as it tries to curry favor with key members of Congress investigating the disaster. The company donated $17,000 in May, making it “the busiest donation month for Halliburton’s PAC since September 2008,” Politico reports. Thirteen of the 14 contributions from May went to Republicans, while seven went to members of Congress who are “on committees with oversight of the oil spill and its aftermath”:

About one week before executive Timothy Probert appeared before the House Energy and Commerce’s investigative subcommittee, Halliburton donated $1,500 to Ranking Republican Joe Barton’s reelection effort. It was Halliburton’s second-largest donation of the month — topped only by $2,500 to former Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), who is running for the Senate.

In the Senate, Idaho Republican Mike Crapo, who serves on the Environment and Public Works Committee, Georgia Republican Johnny Isakson, who serves on the Commerce Committee and North Carolina Republican Richard Burr (N.C.), who serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all got $1,000. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) also got $1,000.

And that's only one of the three companies legally culpable for the oil spill. I'm sure BP and Transocean, the oil rig company run for and by transsexuals, are doling out the cash as well. In fact, over the last few years BP has doled out nearly $30 million to influence legislation. In fact they've already won a small victory by getting shallow water drillers to be excluded from offshore drilling bans and moratoriums. Because apprently you aren't as big of a dangerous, negligent shitbag if you do your drilling in knee high water. The NYTimes article was notable for some grade A whining from lobbyist shits, complaining that a little massive environmental disaster might affect the industry that caused it. Who woulda thunk it?

Bruce Vincent, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, which represents both deep-sea and shallow-water drillers, said Wednesday that he was concerned about a “domino effect” sweeping through Washington, with new regulations now under discussion threatening to cut oil production, jobs and industry profits.

“It’s amazing to see the impact that one company can have for all sorts of other people,” he said. “When a plane crashes, you don’t just shut down every airline in the fleet until you find out what happened.”

Good point, although I'm struggling at the moment to ever think of a plane crash that rendered a massive body of water a toxic oil dump. And one oil company impacts all the others, because we've all rightly assumed that BP's practices, regulations shirking, shoddy safety, and numerous violations are the industry standard. You guys don't seem to be big on sacrificing a single nickel to maybe make it a tiny bit less certain that all the oil you're drilling doesn't flood into the ocean in a torrent of Biblical proportions.

So in case you were worrying that a little think like the end of all life in the Gulf and oil replacing water in the Gulf was going to cause sweeping changes or our elected betters choosing what's right over money, rest assured the oil companies are gearing up to make sure that doesn't happen. Whew! I was worried there for a minute.