Which President and Vice President allowed oil companies like BP to operate without creating emergency plans to protect the environment? Bush and Cheney
When President George W. Bush came into office, Cheney had a super secret meeting with oil companies, as detailed in the Washington Post:
A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.
The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated....
....Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document...
What did the Bush-Cheney team say to the oil company VIPs? Although there has been a lot of discussion about these meetings, we can surmise that oil companies were told something that
1. made them happy, 2. allowed them to operate without governmental interference.
BP and the oil companies had operated under a hands-off policy from Bush-Cheney. Now with this environmental disaster growing, BP is unable to come up with an emergency response because they've never had to plan ahead for one. They were never required to prepare disaster plans, and now we see the results. How many people in the government agency that overseas oil drilling were leftovers from the Bush administration? Have the Republican Senators who have failed to vote for new appointments been accessories to this disaster?
