If You Wish To Understand How Deepwater Horizon Happened

… you must read this piece over at ExiledOnline:

This was the launch of the first Tea Party. And a key figure in the August campaign was Eric Odom, new media coordinator from the Koch-affiliated Sam Adams Alliance. Odom also used DontGo Movement to twitter together “grassroots” supporters to back the Republican sit-in on August 1.

Odom’s job was to make it look like a spontaneous outburst of middle-class support was joining forces with the Republican politicians in Congress, who fused together in one great oil-drilling movement. This way it would appear to out-of-touch Democrats that the pro-oil-drilling movement was really catching on with regular Americans angry at high gas prices, which they blamed on liberal eco-elitists in Washington, rather than on Bush’s two lost wars, and the trashed American economy.

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So remember that when you look at the poisoned Gulf of Mexico, and the ruined beaches of Florida: That’s the Tea Party Vision turned into our reality. The gang running the Tea Party movement has some direct responsibility for the catastrophe unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, maybe more so than BP itself. No wonder the Tea Party crowd is staying out of sight and hoping everyone’s forgotten. They’ve been talking about dumping tea, but all along they’ve been dumping oil, and now we’re finding out just how “maverick” and “anti-establishment” their movement really is.

Koch Industries, the deep pockets behind the astroturfed teapartiers, has a lovely record generating environmental catastrophe after forcing deregulation of their various projects.

* In 2009, the US Justice Department and EPA announced in 2009 that Koch Industries’ Invista subsidiary would pay a $1.7 million penalty and spend $500 million to fix environmental violations at facilities in seven states, in an agreement with the US EPA and Department of Justice.
* In May 2001, Koch Industries paid $25 million to settle with the US Government over a long-standing suit brought by Bill Koch — one of the brothers bought out in 1983 — for the company’s long-standing practice of illegally removing oil from federal and Indian lands.
* In late 2000, the company was charged with covering up the illegal releases of 91 tons of the known carcinogen benzene from its refinery in Corpus Christi. Initially facing a 97-count indictment and potential fines of $350 million, Koch cut a deal with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to drop all major charges in exchange for a guilty plea for falsifying documents, and a $20 million settlement.
* In 2000, the EPA fined Koch Industries $30 million for its role in 300 oil spills that resulted in more than three million gallons of crude oil leaking into ponds, lakes, streams and coastal waters.
* In 1999 a Koch subsidiary pleaded guilty to charges that it had negligently allowed aviation fuel to leak into waters near the Mississippi River from its refinery in Rosemount, Minnesota, and that it had illegally dumped a million gallons of high-ammonia wastewater onto the ground and into the Mississippi.
* Koch’s negligence toward environmental safety has led to tragic losses of life. In 1996, a rusty Koch pipeline leaked flammable butane near a Texas residential neighborhood. Warned by the smell of gas, two teenagers drove their truck toward the nearest payphone to call for help, but they never made it. Sparks from their truck ignited the gas cloud and the two burned alive. The National Transportation Safety Board determined that “the probable cause of this accident was the failure of Koch to adequately protect its pipeline from corrosion” and the ineffectiveness of Koch’s program to educate local residents about how to respond during a pipeline leak.