oilspill

With all due respect to my friends who say they smell the #oilspill, I'm not sure that's what you're smelling.

Bear with me here, please. I'm not saying y'all are a bunch of psychosomatic wackos. Indeed, many of y'all are feckin nuts, but for a myriad of other reasons. I firmly believe you're smelling oil, but consider:

• "Oil awareness" is at an all-time high. Just going to the gas station and smelling the fumes from the pump bums me out. I can see the same thing happening to others when an oil-burning older car goes by, someone cuts their grass with a cheap lawnmower, you name it.
• Refineries. BP down at Jesuit Bend, Chalmette, Norco. We've been surrounded by oil smells all our lives here. Maybe "oil awareness" is heightening things you've smelled all along?
• Crude vs. Refined. Have any of you ever smelled unrefined/crude oil? It's not the same as the various petroleum products you live with daily.
• Chemical Plants. If you think the refineries are bad, the chemical plants like Cytec and Monsanto make some really nasty shit.
• Wind/weather patterns. NOLA has variable winds on a daily basis. The oil spill started 90 miles off the LA Coast, and that coast is 80-90 miles (as the crow flies) from the metro area. The reports of oil smells down the bayou aren't even consistent enough to conclude that fumes are making their way this far north in quantity.

There are two reasons I bring this topic up. First, some of you are making yourselves miserable over this. I firmly believe you're smelling something, but I don't think it's as serious as you make it out to be. I hate to see people I admire and respect worrying themselves to death.

Second, I don't see where this olfactory freak-out serves any common good. Air quality? Public health? C'mon, three refineries and Shell Polypropylene in the region, our air quality was shit before 22-April. Cancer issues? Anyone who is fighting lung cancer and lives in NOLA has made a lifestyle choice that this oil spill is not threatening any more than the existing problems.

Some of you may think the people complaining, like this McClelland woman, are doing the Lord's Work on the spill, but if they make New Orleans look like an eco-apocalypse, what little business and economic development we have left will be destroyed.

Photo Credit: Judy Reynolds (@jareyn)

Some good stuff in Da Paper this morning. Political consultant and Very Angry Cajun, James Carville, did an op/ed piece that hits home several good points:

But while it is important to note that the tepid response to this catastrophe is unacceptable, it is also essential that the rest of the country understand that this feeling of neglect has festered amongst South Louisianians for generations. It's just one damned thing after another, so the anger rising out of the Gulf is not new.

No, it's not new at all, and this time, it's affecting a lot more white Republicans than the storm did. That's why you're hearing a lot more outrage--no way the BP disaster can be dismissed as just a bunch of Eebil Coloreds who are stealing big-screen TVs in ankle-deep water.

One of Carville's points is a bit disingenuous, however:

Add that to the fact that we have not seen a single penny of royalties for oil produced more than six miles off our coast. We assume all of the risk, produce seafood and oil and gas, with none of the reward. Yes, $165 billion of royalties have gone to the federal treasury that could go to help repair this pressing issue.

He's spot-on that we don't get royalties for offshore drilling past six miles, but saying we get "none of the reward" is a stretch. If that were so, Piyush and Vitty-cent wouldn't be scrambling to keep the other deep water rigs in the Gulf. Once you get south of New Orleans, into Houma and Morgan City, the oil/gas industry is still alive and kicking, creating jobs directly and indirectly.

What Carville misses in his piece is that there's been a social contract of sorts between SE Louisiana and the industry. It's simple--we let you drill, you take safety precautions so you don't kill us. Sadly, BP cut corners, killed men, and is now destroying the state because they breached that contract.

In a letter-to-the-editor, State Representative Neil Abramson also has a few things to say about BP that make sense. Not wanting to make the mistakes of five years ago, Abramson wants to defend first, sending the bill later:

I never considered running for office until Hurricane Katrina. I could no longer bear to see the slow recovery and people struggling to get the help they deserved. After three years as a state representative, I now chair the newly created Hurricane Recovery Committee, where I am working to push $3 billion in unspent federal relief to the people still working to make this their home.

Now, here we go again. For the last six weeks since this spill began, it has turned my stomach to hear our residents and parish leaders say "if BP would just give us the money" we could stop the oil ourselves from washing ashore and destroying our way of life.

Makes perfect sense to me. Lock down BP assets in the state, yes. Sue the crap out of them, yes. Keep on Vitty-cent and Oily Mary to make sure the feds keep putting up money, definitely. But just like when your kids have a medical problem, or a family member is in jail and needs to be bailed out, you put together the cash for the defense first, then worry about the long-term financial consequences. This nasty funk just spreads and gets worse while we wring our hands and demand someone pay for it. Get the people out there, do what has to be done. Seize private (BP/Halliburton/Transocean) assets if we must, and let those chips fall where they may afterwards.

Since the first French explorers established a camp here in 1699, New Orleanians have developed a reputation for being able to adapt and bounce back from adversity. From the fire of 1788, which destroyed over 80% of the buildings in the city, to yellow fever epidemics in the 1830s, to Hurricanes Betsey and Katrina, and now with the worst oil spill in the history of mankind just a hundred miles away, the people of this city have experienced their share of disasters that would have caused lesser people to fold the tent and walk away. New Orleans is not a city where people who whine a lot last very long. So, it's no surprise when I read about folks coming to town end up leaving within a year or two, because they can't nurture a local following as a victim.

Take the tea party movement, for example. When you go beyond the racial aspects of the movement, the loudest people in the group are folks who are, for one reason or another, professional victims. Take the guy from Alabama who advocates throwing rocks and bricks at Congressional offices while collecting Social Security disability. The "black helicopter" set have long part of the permanent victim class of American society.

These folks don't last long in New Orleans, mainly because we don't have time for it. Some of the most conservative (therefore, the most likely to be teabaggers) voters in the area live in St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes. Down there, people make the most of good economic times by working in the oil/gas industry, in the refineries and offshore. When the really good oil/gas jobs fall off, they turn back to the bayous and the gulf for their livelihood. They've survived boom and bust, political changes and hurricanes. Even now, when BP's oil threatens to trump all of that, they're not whining. They're angry, and they know that nobody in the area will give them the time of day if all they do is claim victim status.

On the left, what little of the city's "victim class" got washed away by the storm. There was a group of "activists" who regularly attended meetings of the Orleans Parish School Board, complaining about the "plantation mentality" of white folks in the city, but their complaints only became shriller and shriller as black OPSB members were perp-walked to Club Fed. The storm has altered the landscape of public education in the entire metro area that these "victims" are now forced to either join in to support the charter schools in the area or shut up. On issues other than education, complaints that prior to the storm arguably could have been dismissed as victim-hood are, sadly, all too real in post-storm NOLA. The fight for affordable housing leads the way in this regard.

In the political arena, victims rarely garner sympathy. You don't like how a neighborhood treats you (or a member of your family who is running for office)? There's a simple solution: don't feckin run for office. Politics in NOLA is no worse than, oh, I dunno, maybe New Jersey? Are the townships and counties in and around Princeton small islands of Platonic Democracy? Consider the value of even a seat in the Louisiana Legislature. I can see someone getting into a campaign for such a seat and not appreciating that others are willing to go to extreme lengths to win, but that's how it goes. The storm wiped a lot of slates clean, but politics wasn't one of them. Many folks who run for office have long-term goals in that regard. The storm might have been a speed bump in the path, but five years is ample time to put distance between a candidate and the speed bump. While there are always opportunities for newcomers, assuming that the "old ways" of NOLA politics died with the storm is a quick ticket to defeat. The savvy politician builds on each run for office, win or lose, working the neighborhood groups, active non-profits, and courting the folks with the money.

Like re-building lives after tough times in the bayou country, there's no room for victim-hood in politics.

New Orleans has no place for professional victims. Take that shit someplace else, like back to school.