Morning Migraine: BiPartisanship Commission Member Named to BiPartisanship BP Oil Spill Study

(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Saturday May 21, 2010  One month and one day past the destruction of the drilling rig of the Deepwater Horizon, with BP unable to stop the oil blowout destroying the Gulf, President Obama’s anonymous source announced he will appoint former  Senator Bob Graham (D, FL) and former EPA head William K Reilly to a commission to study the cause of the spill, federal oversight, and the potential risks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

William K Reilly was administrator at the EPA under the first George Bush administration, George H W “Poppy” Bush, the one who invaded the Middle East the First Time and went to war against Iraq the First Time, which was called the ……  Gulf War.

The commission, modeled on ones which investigated the Challenger shuttle explosion and the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, will not include any federal officials, administration officials said this week.

Per the wiki bio, William Reilly is a co chair of the “National Committee on Energy Policy.”

And he’s a busy guy.

Aqua International Partners, founding partner of equity fund.

World Wildlife Fund, COB

Advisory Board Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke Unv

Advisor to TPG Capital LP investment firm

Dupont (oil based chemical industry), director

Conoco Oil, director

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line International, director

National Geographic Society, director

Packard Foundation , director  (6th largest private foundation granting $ to non profits, funds conservation and science for Pacific Ocean marine ecosystems, family planning, and CA preschool and afterschool programs)

But just what is this

National Commission on Energy Policy ?  Here’s the url:

http://bipartisanpolicy.org/pr…

Yes, they’re a self described ••• Bipartisan ••• group of energy experts who advise Congress, President, & States & other policymakers (?) on long term national energy policy, since 2002, so this is one of the Bush era inventions.   I wonder if they were calling themselves bipartisan back when Bush and Cheney were running the country.   What have they done so far.  Well, it took them five years to get fuel milage standards for cars changed.

{{{ In 2009 and 2010, the Commission will focus, in particular, on three critical long-term issues: oil security, climate change, and energy infrastructure adequacy and siting.}}}

So, are we feeling more secure about oil and climate change yet ?

There are 3 commissioners on this National Commission on Energy Policy, John W Rowe, William K Reilly, and Susan Tierney.

Reilly just got named by President Obama to study the BiPartisan Reason Why the Oil is Leaking Out of A Hole Humans Made But Can’t Visit.

{{{ ARC note: Because BP, Halliburton, and the cheap bastards at Transocean left out a gasket and used crappy cement and a busted BOPINA aka Blowout Preventer In Name Only, at extreme temperatures and pressure.  And coincidentally, Obama announced his offshore drilling expansion plan within weeks.  Just like the Challenger had an “O” ring failure at the freezing temperatures in Florida that January morning in 1986, but Reagan was ready for his photo-opp and video chat from space with the school teacher.  Just like a valve on Unit 2 at Three Mile was down for maintenance,  and the coolant got out, the pumps kicked on anyway, and the core nearly melted down.  Human operators ignored a dashboard indicator light showing the valve status because they didn’t understand it.  “Consequences of stuck valve, boiling inside the core,” says wikipedia.  How many millions of $ and weeks will it take for you to waste figuring this out.  Things fail. Usually because people get in a hurry to save money they’re going to lose in lawsuits anyway. }}}

Rowe is CEO of Exelon Corporation Electrical Utility (40,000 megawatts in midwest Chi area)

Tierney is former Assist. Sec of Policy at the US Dept of Energy, and was assistant secretary of energy under Clinton.

she helped lead the DOE Agency transition team for Obama/Biden and works for the Analysis Group (Boston, economic & financial consulting)

….. and withdrew from being nominated for Deputy Sec of Energy under Obama.

It’s so cute, the Bipartisan Policy Center’s email is listed as bipartisaninfo @ bipartisanpolicy.org at the bottom of the National Commission on Energy Policy’s page.  

In honor of this new Commission, A New BiPartisan Logo:

Oops. It Fell In.

_______

Energy is not the only thing that the Commission likes to be BiPartisanship Friendly on. See the “Economic Policy Project”  link on this site, too !    bipartisanpolicyproject.org

Debt Reduction Task Force

The Debt Reduction Task Force will be co-chaired by former Senator Pete Domenici, Senior Fellow at BPC, and Dr. Alice Rivlin, former CBO Director and Federal Reserve Board Vice-Chair. They will lead a •••bipartisan group of federal budget experts, academics, former elected officials, and several key stakeholders for a series of debt and deficit reduction hearings across the country.

A boy Republican from New Mexico who likes Nuclear Power, was involved in the Gonzogate Attorney General firings, and retired from office because of a degenerative brain disease,  and a girl Democrat who likes the Federal Reserve.  This should work.  BiPartisan Budget.  Go team USA Debt Reduction.

{{{ ARC note: retirement aged people like old Clinton era wonk Alice Rivlin,  who want to cut domestic spending by increasing the retirement age for Social Security and means – testing Medicare,  whilst bingeing on more war and tax cuts, should move to Switzerland and leave the rest of us the **** alone. That was then. This is now.  }}}

At the end of the page on the BiPartisanship goodness of the Commission on Energy Policy, it says:

Funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and its partners.

Whoops, what is that little nugget there. Hewlett Foundation.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, amongst all the other things they fund, gives money to the

Carnegie Endowment For International Peace.   http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=40760

Sample of what they’re saying lately:  (ISI is Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence )

http://www.carnegieendowment.o…

Of all the terrorist groups ISI has sponsored over the years, LeT has been especially favored because its dominant Punjabi composition matched the primary ethnicity of the Pakistani Army and ISI; and its puritanical Salafism undergirded its willingness to engage in risky military operations throughout India. Many in ISI are deeply sympathetic to LeT’s vision of recovering “lost Muslim lands” in Asia and Europe and resurrecting a universal Islamic Caliphate through the instrument of jihad.  

Although Pakistani propaganda often asserts that LeT is a Kashmiri organization moved by the Kashmiri cause, it is nothing of the kind. The 3,000-odd foot soldiers who man its fighting ranks are drawn primarily from the Pakistani Punjab. Indian intelligence today estimates that LeT maintains some kind of presence in twenty-one countries worldwide with the intention of supporting or participating in what its leader Hafeez Saeed has called the perpetual “jihad against the infidels.” Consequently, LeT’s operations in and around India, which often receive the most attention, are only part of a large pastiche that has taken LeT operatives and soldiers as far afield as Australia, Canada, Chechnya, China, Eritrea, Kosovo, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, and even the US.

Given the organization’s vast presence, its prolific capacity to raise funds worldwide, and its ability to conduct militant activities at great distances from its home base, LeT has become ISI’s preferred instrument for its ongoing covert war with India. This includes the campaign that Pakistan is currently waging against the Indian presence in Afghanistan and against US counterinsurgency efforts in that country. Active LeT operations in Pakistan’s northwestern border areas involve close collaboration with Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network, and Jamiat al-Dawa al-Quran wal-Sunna. Thanks to these activities and others worldwide, Washington has now reached the conclusion that LeT represents a threat to America’s national interests second only to Al Qaeda and in fact exceeds the latter by many measures.  

Guess who is a fellow with that think tank ?

Robert {PNAC} Kagan, co founder of the Project for a New American Century along with William Kristol,   the brother of Frederick Kagan and his wife Kimberly Kagan, mistress of the “Institute for the Study of War,” and the chief advocates for first the Iraq surge and now the Afghanistan surge.

This is Frederick W. Kagan, of the “American Enterprise Institute” , who is married to Kimberly Kagan, the self described expert on the Surge Strategy and the President of the “Institute for the Study of War.  He’s  Robert Kagan’s brother.  Yale professor Donald Kagan, another signer of the PNAC doctrine, is their father. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D…

Here’s a link from the Carnegie Endowment for “Peace”  Institute under the category “Robert Kagan”

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCR…   It’s a 4/19/2010  CNN interview with Christianne Amanpour

sample quote

AMANPOUR: So, Robert Kagan, you heard what Secretary Gates said and you heard Jamie’s analysis. Do you agree with that? Is the administration positioning itself in the right way?

ROBERT KAGAN, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE: Well, I actually think that the administration is actually trying to help its own diplomatic efforts. I think there is an understanding which was lost at a certain point in this administration that in order to have a successful diplomatic strategy, you need to have the threat of military force. That’s partly aimed at Iran, but I think it’s partly aimed also at China.

What is the incentive for China to cooperate with the United States on sanctioning Iran? They have no economic incentive to do so. The one plausible incentive would be fear that China might have of a U.S. military strike and the disruptions that that might cause.

I think what the administration’s trying to do here is put the military option back on the table so that it can help the diplomacy.

Ah, that BiPartisan smell of burning oil slicks in the morning, wafting in on the Loop Current and the Gulf Stream.  Now in a theatre near you, or coming soon.  Check local listings.

BP Oil Slick in Gulf of Mexico Now in Loop Current, 5/20/2010, Thursday, where it will track between Florida and Cuba, hitting the coral reefs,  and then up north along the Atlantic East Coast of Florida.  Thickest part of slick is silvery in the smudgy brown part laying on the water, from the Florida Panhandle southward down to Cuba.   Photo NRL Monterey, biomass,  cropped and color highlighted by ARC

There has always been a translucent, bright aqua blue tip on the southwestern end of Florida where the water is shallow. On Thursday it began to disappear.