Big Oil's Politicians' Big Lies

1 of 45 from Skytruth

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Think Progress, links at site.

To support the Big Oil agenda of increased offshore drilling, conservatives have been telling the American public that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita for an entire month. The following video shows Sen. McCain (R-AZ), Wall Street Journal writer Stephen Moore, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne, McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer, former Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS), and Sen. McCain (again).

Watch it:

All of these people are polluter-funded, from McCain on down. As Idaho governor, Kempthorne served the interests of the energy industries that funded him. Nancy Pfotenhauer was the top D.C. lobbyist for the right-wing energy company Koch Industries, and Lott is now a lobbyist for Chevron, Shell, and the Edison Chouest Offshore drilling rig company. Stephen Moore, like Pfotenhauer, received his economics degree from George Mason University, before working at the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, then founding the Club for Growth and the Free Enterprise Fund. George Mason, Heritage, and the Cato Institute are all funded by Koch money.

They appeared on CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox Business Network, Fox News, and MSNBC, but were never challenged for their false claims.

In addition, the hurricanes caused disastrous spills onshore throughout southeast Louisiana and the rest of the Gulf Coast as tanks, pipelines, refineries and other industrial facilities were destroyed, for a total of 595 different oil spills. The 9 million gallons reported spilled were comparable with the Exxon Valdez’s 10.8 million gallons, but unlike the Exxon Valdez, were distributed throughout Louisiana, Mississippi, and other Gulf Coast states, many in residential areas. The most massive spills included:

Many comments.

I guess the OCs are giving up on Iraq. Their bought-and-paid-for Chimp couldn't get the Iraqi oil for them so he and their congressional employees are trying to get them some closer to home.

The sickly ironic part is they probably don't even need the domestic offshore oil to turn a big profit. They probably get taxpayer subsidies for exploration and drilling like they do for everything else, not to mention tax deductions for all of our money they spend.

Just as an afterthought, there apparently were no oil spills from the Chinese oil rigs in the Florida Strait either.