A bird is engulfed in toxic oil sludge at East Grand Terre Island along the Louisiana coast on June 3, 2010. Images are from AP photographer Charlie Riedel.
It seems that our nation will be scraping the putrid remnants of the Bush/Cheney administration off our shoes for many decades; not just in the form our tattered economy, torture and illegal wars, but also the horrific oil spill in the gulf.
Former head of Halliburton, Dick Cheney, is responsible for pushing hard to de-regulate our country’s oil industry, systematically dismantling safety rules, oversight and inspections, replacing regulatory officials with oil industry lobbyists and executives. This has led directly to the catastrophic situation now unfolding in the gulf coast. Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former Chief of Staff, put it simply:
Cheney destroyed the regulatory mechanisms in America…he put a 20 year veteran of lobbying for the oil industry in to the position overseeing essentially the regulation of offshore oil drilling and that sort of thing, the MMS…Cheney is responsible for what is happening in the Gulf, in my view, for two very distinct reasons…
oceans are oil-filled
is this our mass extinction?
choking on profit
If you are so inspired, please add your own haiku in the comments section.
