This slimy piece of propaganda that attacks locals who have suffered and received measly millions makes me about a sick as drinking a gallon of oil.
"Gulf Coast states spent millions in BP grants; But review finds not all expenses related to oil spill" by Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press / April 12, 2011
NEW ORLEANS — In the year since the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, officials along the coast have gone on a spending spree with BP money, dropping tens of millions of dollars on gadgets, vehicles, and gear — much of which had little to do with the cleanup.
Did they give themselves big bonuses like the bankers?
Or i$ it like Homeland $ecurity and all the "terror" threat$?
"Pentagon insiders and defense budget specialists say the Pentagon has been on a largely unchecked spending spree since 2001"
And even before: Following Zakheim and Pentagon trillions to Israel and 9-11
Yes, just where did all that money go and why isn't AP investigating?
The oil company opened its checkbook while the crisis was still unfolding last spring and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Gulf Coast communities with few strings attached, an Associated Press investigation found.
The whole tone of the paragraph is offensive to me.
Related: Thousands of gulf spill claims, just one final payment thus far from BP fund
Yeah, BP opened its billions-per-quarter-in-profits checkbook.
In sleepy Ocean Springs, Miss., reserve police officers got Tasers. The sewer department in nearby Gulfport bought a $300,000 vacuum truck that never sucked up a drop of oil. Biloxi, Miss., bought a dozen sport utility vehicles. A parish president in Louisiana got a top-of-the-line iPad, and her spokesman a $3,100 laptop. And a county in Florida spent $560,000 on rock concerts to promote its oil-free beaches.
In every case, communities said the new, more powerful equipment was needed to deal at least indirectly with the spill.
In many cases, though, the connection between the spill and the expenditures was remote, and lots of money wound up in cities and towns little touched by the goo that washed up on shore, according to records requested from more than 150 communities and dozens of interviews.
Florida’s tourism agency sent chunks of a $32 million BP grant as far away as Miami-Dade and Broward counties on the state’s east coast, which never saw oil from the disaster.
That's what the lying, agenda-pushing, cover-up, corporate paper says.
The blogs reported it much differently.
Also see: Fish Fry in Fairhaven
What are we to think of this PoS press, folks?
The April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and spawned the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. As BP spent months trying to cap the well and contain the spill, cities and towns along the coast from Louisiana to Florida worried about the toll on their economies — primarily tourism and the fishing industry — as well as the environmental impact....
Yeah, those selfish, self-centered locals (says the AmeriKan media).
Some of the money BP doled out to states and municipalities hasn’t been spent yet, but the AP’s review accounts for more than $550 million of it. More than $400 million went toward clear needs such as corralling the oil, propping up tourism, and covering overtime.
Then MOST OF IT DID GO FOR OIL-RELATED PURPOSES!!!
And yet the HEADLINE and TONE of the piece is BP got ripped off by corrupt locals.
Much of the remaining chunk consists of equally justifiable expenses, but it’s also riddled with millions of dollars’ worth of contracts and purchases with no clear connection to the spill....
Gee, what a GREAT PUSH of AGENDA-PUSHING CORPORATE CRAP, 'eh?
Must be the AmeriKan media style these days.
When oil from the ruptured Macondo well began to lap at Louisiana’s marshes, BP deployed an army of workers to sop it up and hired contractors who specialize in disaster cleanup.
I don't even know where to begin from MIA workers and the security crews that were there to shoo people away to the sand dumped on the beaches to cover up the oil -- never mind the fact that it washed up in more places than just Louisiana (the impression the reader is left with).
But that's the obfuscating, PoS press Americans have to put up with these days.
Even with BP and the federal government taking the lead, many communities weren’t content to rely on equipment they had.
Yup, BP and the feds were on top of it the whole time while those damn locals sat with their thumbs up their asses.
Can you see why the AmeriKan newspaper industry is dying?
Who wants to be insulted when they sit down to read the newspaper?
Charlotte Randolph, Lafourche Parish president, billed BP for an iPad, saying she needed it in addition to her parish-paid BlackBerry to communicate with officials during the crisis. But she didn’t buy the iPad until Aug. 26, a month and a half after the well was capped and several weeks after the federal government said much of the oil had been skimmed, burned off, dispersed, or dissolved.
Yeah, they claimed it MAGICALLY DISAPPEARED!
Related: Return to the Gulf Coast
But, but, but, how can it still be there after government said it was gone, and said the food was safe?
Lafourche Parish spokesman Brennan Matherne, who bought a new Dell laptop and accessories for $3,165, said working on the spill had worn out the computer he got just a year earlier.
Biloxi, home to a strip of casinos overlooking the Mississippi Sound, bought 14 sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, two boats, two dump trucks, and a backhoe loader with its $1.4 million share of BP grant money.
Couldn't that stuff be used to remove sand fouled by oil?
In Alabama, the state Emergency Management Agency distributed $30 million to local governments without rejecting a single request.
--more--"
Related: Globe and Gulf Bonus Coverage
Yeah, but when's we gets to starts drillin' again!?
