From ABC News: Boycotts of BP filling stations are popping up all over the country amid the growing frustration over the company's failed efforts to stop a massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. But if the goal is to hurt BP's bottom line, then such efforts, not unlike those to cap the spewing undersea well, could be in vain. "Retail gasoline sales account for such a tiny part of BP revenues, the impact of even a massive boycott would be negligible," said Phil Flynn, an energy analyst at Chicago-based PFG Best. "Such boycotts would end up hurting the wrong people." That's because of the roughly 10,000 BP filling stations/convenience stores in the United States, the vast majority are independently operated, either by small regional distributors or individual franchise owners. All BP branded stores, as well as Amoco, which is owned by BP, are located east of the Rocky Mountains... At least two liberal leaning organizations, including the Washington, DC-based Public Citizen, the consumer watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, and Democracy for America, a Burlington, Vermont-based political action committee, have begun anti-BP campaigns. The latter group is asking its 1 million members to boycott BP stations in a campaign that started last week and features bumper stickers that read "AnyoneButBP." There's a petition you can sign here to support the boycott - but before you do so ...
I usually endorse boycotts as a legitimate means of grassroots activism - but I must break with my fellow progressives in this instance. The main problem with British Petroleum, a problem shared with the "Too Big To Fail" banks, is not rank-and-file employees; it is the rot at the top. For malfeasance of this magnitude, greedy CEOs and the government regulators who enable them are the ones who should be prosecuted, picketed, and - I never thought I would write these words - treated as social outcasts. At the very least they should immediately lose their jobs. Starting with the first lie from their disingenuous lips, that first insensitive comment (like BP chief exec Tony Hayward's grossly offensive "I want my life back"); salaries, bonuses and benefits should be forfeited, personal assets frozen. Through craven negligence, these titans of industry have despoiled the environment like never before (and in the case of the financial crisis, brought the American economy to its knees). They have turned the beautiful Gulf of Mexico into a toxic waste dump. Unforgivable.
Disclosure: My partner is a Senior Systems Analyst for a major oil corporation (not BP), and he has watched the disaster unfold with more anger than I've seen him express over any single issue in our 29 years together. It takes a lot to rile Art. He's not a news/political junkie like I am - but each evening after work he is glued to television set watching the coverage. He goes online and spends hours mining information and following developments. Art is as pissed off as he was when we all learned that George W. Bush had sent soldiers to die in Iraq based on lies and misinformation, and then made his tasteless "No weapons of mass destruction here. Nope, no weapons over here either" jokes at the White House Correspondents Dinner. My partner's co-workers feel the same, he assures me. People who are employed by the oil industry are taking BP's laxity, stinginess, secrecy, and constant blundering personally. They're mad as hell at British Petroleum, just like you are.
Having lived in a Texas coastal fishing community for ten years (prior to Hurricane Ike), we're brokenhearted over the livelihoods that have been destroyed by the oil spill, not to mention the abominable loss of wildlife and the desecration of our nation's public beaches. And I believe that most of BP's independently-operated gas station owners are similarly disgusted. They are not the villains in this horrific drama. We know who is responsible.
We should be directing our animus - focusing it like a laser beam - toward those individuals who set the stage for this unnecessary tragedy. That includes lawmakers and conservative activists who promote deregulation and ridicule green energy. The Right's "leave big business aloooone" mantra has got to stop. As other bloggers have noted, Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill" has officially become "Kill, baby, kill" for dolphins, pelicans, whales, cranes, sandpipers, plovers, crabs, oysters... the list goes on and on. And you can forget about the fish. What do you suppose would happen if you pumped just a small amount of crude oil into your twenty gallon aquarium? The aquatic plants wouldn't even survive.
Below are some photos I took back in 2007-2008 showing what our Texas beaches look like. How many years (or even decades) will pass before our Gulf Coast neighbors to the north see such natural beauty again?
UPDATE: Frank Rich examines President Obama's response to the oil spill, and the double-dealing of British Petroleum executives: The single biggest mistake he has made in managing the gulf disaster was his failure to challenge BP's version of events from the start. The company consistently understated the spill’s severity, overestimated the progress of the repair operation and low-balled the environmental damage. Yet the White House's designated point man in the crisis, Adm. Thad Allen of the Coast Guard, was still publicly reaffirming his trust in the BP chief executive, Tony Hayward, as recently as two weeks ago, more than a month after the rig exploded... BP's recklessness is just the latest variation on a story we know by heart. The company's heedless disregard of risk and lack of safeguards at Deepwater Horizon are all too reminiscent of the failures at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and A.I.G., where the richly rewarded top executives often didn’t even understand the toxic financial products that would pollute and nearly topple the nation's economy. BP's reliance on bought-off politicians and lax, industry-captured regulators at the M.M.S. mirrors Wall Street's cozy relationship with its indulgent overseers at the S.E.C., Federal Reserve and New York Fed... That doesn't require a temper tantrum. Nor does it require him to plug the damn hole, which he can't do anyway. What he does have the power to fix is his presidency. Should he do so, he'll still have a real chance to mend a broken country as well.
UPDATE II: It looks like I spoke too soon in apportioning the calamity to our northern neighbors. Dead, oil-soaked birds are now washing up on beaches here in Texas.
UPDATE III: British Petroleum CEO Tony Hayward, still enjoying the lifestyle of a wealthy Mideast potentate, is telling BBC that his company has paid "every claim" for damages related to the offshore-drilling disaster. Hayward is a liar. Brad Johnson at Think Progress provides statistics showing that BP has covered less than half of these claims.
Why hasn't this incompetent asshole been fired?