Despite reports that oil continues to leak into the gulf at an alarming rate the continuing pressure on the stock of BP and the need for other oil companies to stay afloat has forced one man, a judge in the US, to overturn the Obama moratorium on new oil wells in the Gulf.
Oil companies say the government has not proven the need for a blanket ban on deep sea drilling and warn it will lead to major layoffs. Judge Feldman agreed and in his ruling on Tuesday sharply rebuked the U.S. government.
The downward pressure on BP’s stock price has now been linked to pensioner funds in the UK. So the global impact of our neverending thirst for stuff to put in our cars rewards the capitalists but punishes the workers potentially affected by the moratorium, undermines the financial security of retirees and still costs the earth.
Of course it is easy to suspect the motivation of a single judge delivering a decision that favours the oil companies despite the explicit wishes of the President. Even from Oz you can easily imagine various scenarios that would explain it. Local pressure to keep local businesses afloat, traditional distrust of the north by the south or straight out graft and corruption.
But there’s a far more troubling dimension to this news. It connects somewhat arbitrarily to the local mining reaction to the election of Julia Gillard as PM. Both outcomes seem to illustrate that public politics is subservient to other forces. Our democratically elected representatives can do no more than ask the capitalists to play along. When the capitalists decide not to play the game is up.
And just in case you thought there was some vestige of the socially progressive spirit alive in the US consider the news (both fair and balanced) from Fox News that in the US the minority Republican extreme right has somehow defeated an Obama bill that would extend unemployment benefits and provide financial assistance to the states to avert unemployment. The reason, government debt. Of course government expenditure on defence in the US has nothing what so ever to do with government debt, let alone the billions of dollars routinely handed private enterprises like Blackwater.
Government loses bid to keep oil drilling ban | Reuters.
