Is BP Enforcing a No Fly Zone?

Late last month, Mississippi state House Speaker Billy McCoy (D) and Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant (R) started a select committee to look into the BP oil spill and would hold hearings this week. McCoy said, “The people of Mississippi deserve to know how this happened and what the future may hold for this most valuable part of our state." However, earlier this week, BP wrote a letter saying it wouldn’t be showing up for the three-day hearings this week. They, after all, are corporate royalty and don't need to respond to the demands of mere elected officials of the state whose oil they're taking and selling to China. In a related issue, I interviewed extensively a charter airplane operator in Louisiana who said that during the first four weeks after the BP Oil explosion a area of Temporary Flight Restriction or TFR extended 30 miles or so around the Deepwater Horizon and has since expanded to cover virtually every place that oil is in the water or hitting wetlands or land. This representative noted that the command center for the crisis - out of which the Coast Guard and other federal agencies are operating - is headquartered in a BP training facility and, until the intervention of Louisiana Senator David Vitter, whenever charter flight operators called for permission to fly into the TFR they were extensively questioned about who they had on board the plane, and if it was the press the right to fly over the area was routinely denied. In the past few days, though, since the administration has moved from a position of helping BP cover up the extent of their crime by spraying dispersants and keeping the press out to a position of actively challenging BP, flights are being allowed into the area with press aboard.

Comments

stuart clift's picture
stuart clift 12 years 40 weeks ago
#1

Why is this allowed to happen? Where is the "rule of Law" and how can these people be allowed to thumb thier nose at us?

I talked to a conservative friend last night who is in manufacturing and has geared up his company to make oil booms. He and other manufacturing people were told by a BP offical inspecting the plant, that they were wasting thier time because BP wouldn't allow thier use.

Where is Obama? It is time to take over and tell these people this is what you are going to do and if you don't you are going to jail. I think there are empty cells in Guantomano.

Gene Savory's picture
Gene Savory 12 years 40 weeks ago
#2

Expect this behaviour from a government that tries to allow a corporation to issue subpoenas without court supervision. That's what the Recording Industry Association of America got shoved into law. The first judge who took this up said, "WHAT?'

yakboy's picture
yakboy 12 years 40 weeks ago
#3

I know everybody is upset with Obama, I am too. Still when I wake up from a bad dream at night having visions of Newt Gingrich peeking in my window, or Larry Craig waving his fingers under my door. I look over at the wall and see my blackvelvet paint by the number, glow in the dark picture of Obama I know he has my back and can go back to sleep again with visions of him alternately kicking Mitch McConnel and John Boner in the gnads. I just wish Rahm Emmanuel would put some damn clothes on that really is disgusting!

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