Rep. Doc Hastings of Washington was on C-Span today, touting off-shore drilling in the United States as the path to energy independence. That claim is hotly disputed, to say the least. But Rep. Hastings was just warming up. The real show came when he boldly presented Hurricanes Rita and Katrina as evidence that offshore oil drilling is environmentally friendly. Hastings claimed that "not one rig" ruptured as a result of the hurricanes.
Rep. Hastings isn’t the first Republican or right winger to mislead people about this. Last year, Sen. McCain falsely claimed that Rita and Katrina did not cause significant oil spillage. George Will, Dick Morris and then-Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne repeated the same false claim and, like Hastings, cited it as a justification for expanded drilling. Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said the myth that there were no major oil spills was one of "the great unwritten success stories" of Rita and Katrina (just one? what were the others?).
The reality is that millions of gallons of oil poured out of pipelines and coastal storage tanks ruptured by Hurricane Katrina. The spillage was so significant that, as Think Progress noted, it was visible from space–but apparently not visible to rightwingers. The environmental damage associated with these spills caused by the hurricanes ranks among the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. The EPA, as Think Progress noted, said the spills were "worse than the worst case scenario".
There are distortions, there are myths, there are lies, and then there is utter, brazen disregard for the truth. Rep. Hastings and the other Republicans and rightwingers peddling the false claim that Hurricanes Rita and Katrina did not cause oil spills are without shame. They are willing to mislead the public in the interest of advancing their own political agenda–shilling for offshore oil drilling. Does there come a time when a lie is so transparent that it will be called out on C-Span? We clearly haven’t reached that point yet, and I can see why Rep. Hastings and others believe they can falsely suggest, with impunity, there were no oil spills after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina. So far, they seem to be getting away with it and paying no political price.
If I were Rep. Hastings, the next time I went on C-Span, I’d consider claiming Democrats are actually aliens from outer space who descended on this planet in an effort to euthanize senior citizens by way of health care reform. Might as well push the envelope until someone calls you out.
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The islands on the coast of LA, especially Venice, were badly polluted by the oil spills after Katrina.
Awful pictures of some of the spills can be found at http://www.katrinadestruction&…..acilities/
thanks Ruth. yeah, this is head-spinning stuff. But, as I say, if you’re Doc Hastings, there’s not much of a downside to misleading people as he can rest assured that his C-Span interlocutor will not call him out on a blatant lie
What an embaressment to the state of Washington. This guy is a dim bulb who knows only how to get re elected.
Did you take notice of the oilfeild engineer, that stated that all the natural gas wells in the gulf were shut in to raise the price. Did you notice that even He admitted that the oil we find goes into the world markets. All the drilling WE do, doesn’t help our dependency on oil, make us anymore energy independent, reduce the need for foreign oil, or drop the price to the American consummer. It does make the big oil interests richer, depleats what we have in reserve, and stops us from doing anything to solve the real problems. Until our Government, the people You elect have their minds changed that our Country comes first, and the world come later, we are counting down to our oil armageddon.