More straights are marching under the gay rights banner. credit: Creative Commons

In light of my last post on President Obama’s repositioning in support of gay-marriage rights, I found this recent GOP strategy memo fascinating. It’s from President George W. Bush’s 2004 pollster, Jan R. van Lohuizen. Within a few years of Bush’s re-election victory – after a campaign heavy with anti-gay-marriage tub-thumping, van Lohuizen crunched the numbers and recommended that Republicans consider the following (my emphasis):

Support for same sex marriage has been growing and in the last few years support has grown at an accelerated rate with no sign of slowing down.   A review of public polling shows that up to 2009 support for gay marriage increased at a rate of 1% a year.  Starting in 2010 the change in the level of support accelerated to 5% a year.

Again: this accelerating change in attitudes is the real political watershed, not Obama’s belated announcement in support of gay marriage. If van Lohuizen’s analysis is accurate, that means as many as 3 million voters will become significantly more accepting of gay marriage between now and election day. And many of those who “evolve,” as Obama did, will be swing voters in swing states. The economy will decide their vote more than any other issue, of course. But if it continues to improve slightly, voters who aren’t totally frustrated will review other issues before casting a vote. Thus Obama’s announcement broadened the campaign agenda by inserting the contentious gay marriage debate into the mix, and he’s on the side with momentum.

Earlier, I looked at the trouble this issue will cause the GOP, especially among its fundagelical supporters in southern states. For example, the 2008 Louisiana Republican Party platform reads:

We believe homosexuality should not be established as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle either in public education or in public policy. We do not believe public schools should be used to teach children that homosexuality is normal, and we do not believe that taxpayers should fund benefit plans for unmarried partners.
…
We oppose actions, such as “marriage” or the adoption of children by same-sex couples. We support the Defense of Marriage Act and support constitutional amendments to both the U.S. and the Louisiana Constitutions to ensure that marriage is limited to the union of one man and one woman.

If national attitudes are indeed trending towards gay marriage at a pace of 5 percent per year, it won’t take long before such views appear wildly out of step – not just with the nation, but with the national Republican Party.

But what about Louisiana’s Democratic politicians? We shouldn’t leave them unmentioned, even if they’ve become scarce in statewide offices. Don’t expect Senator Mary Landrieu to “evolve” on gay marriage any time soon. In fact, the issue might be a boon, because her opposition allows her to buck the national Democratic party (once again) in a way that will appeal to most Louisianians. For a long time I’ve assumed that this will be Sen. Landrieu’s last term. But if she decides to run for re-election, her continued opposition to gay marriage certainly won’t hurt her chances.

The situation for her brother, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu is much more ticklish. As a leader of a city with a large gay population that regularly appeals to gay tourists (not to mention his being a Louisiana pol who is not afraid to identify himself as a liberal), Landrieu could come out for gay marriage with little political risk. Thus far he’s been quietly opposed. Maybe he just doesn’t believe in it, based on his religious convictions as a Catholic. Either way, an experienced operator like Landrieu understands that if he harbors any ambition to return to statewide office, announced support for gay marriage would be an immediate deal-killer.

The central question I keep returning to is this: what accounts for the dramatic change in national attitudes on gay marriage in recent years? We’ve reached and passed a tipping point, but no one can explain precisely why. In less than a decade’s time, we’re seeing two presidents (Bush and Obama) use different sides of an issue – marriage! –  in bids for re-election.

Simple demographics can’t explain the trend. It’s true that most people who die today are against gay marriage, while most of those registering to vote these days are for it (or at least not bothered by it). But that can’t explain the acceleration in the poll numbers. Did popular culture bring us here –  New Orleans’ own Ellen Degeneres and popular sitcoms like ABC’s “Modern Family”? Or is our liberalized attitude just a cumulative effect of the straight community having more contact with “out” gay couples who, like them, just strive to form loving families and raise well-adjusted kids?

Tell me what you think.

Jindal: Eyes on the prize, but which one? Photo by Gage Skidmore

By Mark Moseley,  The Lens opinion writer |

In his Oct. 22 re-election victory speech, Gov. Bobby Jindal repeatedly stressed his desire to make his second term as productive as possible. “I will use every day, every hour of these next four years to make Louisiana the very best that we can be. I don’t believe on resting on our past accomplishments. I don’t believe in taking time off,” he said.

Not long after, Jindal flew to a fundraiser in Tennessee for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who is running (stumbling?) for president. Not long after that, Jindal’s office sent out a release that promoted a piece praising Jindal’s past budgetary accomplishments. Shortly after that, Jindal’s political strategist, former Chief of Staff Timmy Teepell, tossed out the possibility of a third term: ”I can’t imagine this is his last term,” Teepell told The Associated Press.

By touting the past, campaigning out of state, and dreaming about third terms, Team Jindal seems to be straying off message. Instead, they should focus on the present and spend their political capital on difficult legislative goals for the coming year. If Jindal can make his second term half as good as his first term appears to his supporters, Louisiana would be a lot better off, and I suppose any future term in office would take care of itself.

But instead of focus we get smoke, mirrors and hubris.

The smoke is the idea that Jindal’s stumping for Perry helps Louisiana. Jindal always says that any time he can tell people about Louisiana while campaigning for out-of-state Republicans, it’s good for Louisiana. This is a dubious argument, though. Following Jindal’s logic, should Sen. Mary Landrieu stump more for out-of-state Democrats? Should Rep. Cedric Richmond leave the Bayou State to militate for President Obama’s re-election? Is that the best use of their time in office, or does this reasoning apply only to Jindal?

The mirrors relate to the Jindal administration touting a grotesquely inflated “conservative” record to right wing media. Louisiana political analyst John Maginnis described the phenomenon in his Nov. 16 column.

Jindal appears under no pressure, following his landslide re-election, to share details of what he plans to tell the Legislature to do in his second term. Legislators he has tapped to be Senate president and speaker of the House are checking with him before naming committee chairmen. The abrogation of the separation of powers, traditional in Louisiana, is unheard of in other states.

What is heard is the hum of his PR machine, polishing up the record of his first term. Along with real accomplishments were included some specious claims that admiring opinion writers in other states have swallowed as fact. The most glaring was Jindal’s campaign claim of slashing $9 billion in spending from the budget he inherited in 2008 to the one he signed this year.

The B.R. Advocate Inside Report  also covered the story, complete with hit-and-miss attempts at vivid description:

The idea that Jindal cut the budget by 25 percent is based on a shakier premise than assuming the sky is falling when an acorn falls from a tree.

Jindal did not take a pair of scissors and snip away more than $9 billion through privatization, consolidation and a fire sale. He is taking credit for cutting dollars that the federal government sent to Louisiana to help homeowners rebuild after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. As the recovery took hold, those dollars stopped coming, deflating the state budget faster than taking a jagged piece of glass to a tire.

Political watchdog C.B. Forgotston first dissected Jindal’s claim, yet received no  credit for his analysis. He makes a clear, fact-based point with a minimum of words:

The Fiscal Year 2008 state budget which Jindal inherited from the Kathleen Blanco Administration was base on the state receiving an estimated $19.8 Billion from the federal government.

In fairness, when Blanco submitted the budget she only estimated $15.6 billion in fed funds. Apparently, the leges boosted the estimated fed funds during the 2007 regular session.

However, the state actually received only $12.9 billion from the feds during Fiscal Year 2008. That alone accounted for $6.9 billion of the $9 billion that Bobby claims he “cut” from the state budget over 4 years.

Even the $2.1 billion difference in alleged “cuts” is suspect because it is not based on the final numbers for the current fiscal year.The actual size of the current budget will not be known until late 2013 or early 2014.

So Jindal maybe cut the budget by $2 billion over four years, yet boasts of slashing $9 billion. And shortly after Jindal touted these phantom cuts, two prominent conservative pundits repeated the false claim.  Opinion man Cal Thomas recently wrote:

Gov. Jindal also confronted wasteful spending, which Washington politicians often talk about but do little to reverse. He reduced the state budget by $9 billion, or 26 percent, in part by eliminating unnecessary government jobs and streamlining services.

In his nationally-syndicated column, Thomas asked Jindal why the national media ignored his re-election, as well as his conservative record:

“It runs contrary to the political thinking in Washington, which is about more spending and bigger government,” [Jindal] said. The big media don’t want to focus on successes that come as the result of smaller government and less spending because it not only reduces the size and power of government but the influence of journalists who see themselves co-equal with, if not superior to, government.

Jindal should be glad that the national media ignored his record of spending cuts. If they had seen Forgotston’s anlaysis, they’d know Jindal couldn’t have cut money he never had. Instead of celebrating Jindal, national pundits would be making wisecracks like: Jindal, if you’re going to say reduced projections are real cuts, then why not go all in? Get your your legislative lackeys to project a trillion-dollar infusion from the feds, so when Louisiana receives a few billion, you can brag that you’re the austerest governor of all time?

That’s part of the hubris, though: Jindal blasts the national media for not uncritically transcribing his shaky claims about alleged austerity. And he grandly allows his adoring columnists to tout him for vice president, always deflecting such talk with the non-answer, “I already have the job I want.”

Note the timing and sequence of these items. Not long after Jindal endorsed Perry for president, his chief of staff was hired by Perry’s communications outfit. Then Perry botched several debate appearances and his support cratered. This surprisingly drastic drop in support would seemingly foreclose opportunities Jindal might have had for vice president. But now, all of a sudden, columnists like Cal Thomas are rallying around Jindal’s Louisiana “miracle.” They tell everyone that Jindal painlessly cut the state budget by over 25 percent. As Republican voters are craving a champion of austerity, Thomas says of Jindal:

His resume and track record commend him for vice president, whoever the eventual Republican nominee turns out to be.

When anyone asks Jindal about the vice presidency, he never shuts down speculation by saying, “I wouldn’t take that job right now, even if it were offered to me.” Remember, Jindal is a risk-averse man, but he placed a big early bet on Perry. Now it looks like he bet on a longshot. Between the recent promotion of Jindal, and Teepell’s thoughts about a third term for him, is this Jindal’s way of hedging his bet? Is the subtext here a message to voters that says: “Don’t worry, even if Jindal leaves soon for national office, he can always come back to finish the job.”

You can’t discount the possibility, because Team Jindal is great at playing double games, and is hubristic enough to believe the public will never catch on.

Jindal grandly rejects federal money for poor communities that lack broadband service, while  taking full credit for road improvements funded by billions of federal tax dollars. He tells voters that he’s focused on improving Louisiana, yet constantly flies out of state to campaign for Republican candidates. He’ll tout his phantom budget cuts to gullible pundits, while the state economy has been buoyed by federal disaster recovery monies He’ll preach about conservative “principles,” and then recommend Sen. John Alario to lead the Senate. He’ll blame the national media for ignoring his re-election and conservative bona fides, while enjoying a national platform on “Meet the Press” (in order to represent Perry).  He’ll assure Louisianans that his administration will maximize each hour in his upcoming term, while his top strategist expects a Jindal third term. Jindal says being governor is the best job he’ll ever have, and then cozies up to nationally syndicated columnists willing to recommend him for vice president in 2012.

It should all work out fine as long as Louisianans are convinced there’s no separation between the destiny of their state and their governor’s political ambitions.

Testifying in front of the Senate Energy Committee in May 2010 while the Deepwater Horizon was still gushing oil into the Gulf, Louisiana’s U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu voiced her opposition to the moratorium on deepwater exploratory drilling:

Since 1971, not a single spill in the Gulf, or the entire federal OCS (outer-continental shelf), caused by a well blowout exceeded 1,000 barrels of oil. We are exceeding 7,000 barrels of oil every day and a half with this current uncontrolled flow. The record will show from 1947 to 2009, 175,813 barrels have been spilled out of 16.5 billion barrels produced. That is one one-thousandth percent of the total production. I think it is important to keep that in perspective.

Landrieu, a centrist Democrat, repeated variations on that statement in Senate testimony, public statements, guest editorials and most recently at the Gulf Leadership Forum in May. It’s Landrieu’s way of driving home her contention that the oil industry is safe, and the BP spill an exception — “a stain on (the oil industry’s) otherwise impressive safety record,” as she put it in an opinion piece for Politico, the online news site, in April of this year.

The problem is that her low numbers (in particular, the claim that only 175,813 barrels of oil were spilled from 1947 to 2009) don’t add up – unless you are the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade association.

When the Louisiana Bucket Brigade recently asked Landrieu’s office for the source of those figures, her staff pointed us to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. According to BOEMRE data, the amount of oil spilled in the Gulf of Mexico is likely closer to 471,721 barrels (19.8 million gallons) – or more than two and a half times the figure Landrieu likes to use. In fact, BOEMRE acknowledged in an email, “Nowhere in any of the data sets is the exact figure of 175,813 barrels (as stated by Sen. Landrieu) spilled referenced.”

Interestingly, an American Petroleum Institute report from 2009 called “Analysis of U.S. Oil Spillage” offers a figure for Gulf oil spills – 175,812 barrels — more in line with Landrieu’s. Indeed, her number differs from API’s by just one barrel. The API figure, though, comprises only spills from offshore platforms, omitting pipeline spills or vessel accidents. Landrieu failed to make that distinction in her public statements; nor did she acknowledge that she was using data supplied by the oil industry, not the government she’s part of.

The American Petroleum Institute advocates for more than 400 of the largest oil companies in the world, including all of the biggest players in the Gulf, from BP to Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil.

Anyone keeping an eye on new legislation since last year’s BP spill knows politicians have done little to improve safety regulations for offshore drilling and production in the Gulf. Landrieu did her part by repeatedly broadcasting those skewed figures, until the idea that BP was a freakish exception became a mantra. That laid the groundwork for further contention that there was no reason to start implementing needless regulations and safety protocols on an already safe industry.

Looking at Landrieu’s statement within the context of federal data from BOEMRE makes clear just how much the numbers have been manipulated:

Since 1971, not a single spill in the Gulf, or the entire federal OCS, caused by a well blowout exceeded 1,000 barrels of oil. We are exceeding 7,000 barrels of oil every day and a half with this current uncontrolled flow. …

First, cutting off before 1971 when referring to well blowouts is strategic. From December 1970-April 1971, a well blowout at a Shell platform at South Timbalier spilled more than 53,000 barrels of oil. (It also killed four workers, injured 36, and caused $25 million in damage.) A year earlier, in February 1970, a blowout at a Chevron platform spilled 30,000 barrels into the Gulf. Both operators blamed equipment failure.

From then until the BP Oil Spill (based on BOEMRE data of well blowouts of 50 barrels or more where a total amount spilled was given), individual well blowouts in the Gulf did not exceed 1,000 barrels of oil. However, many accident reports from that period mentioned there was a spill/release but did not provide an amount released (more on that issue later).

Now to the second part of Landrieu’s statement:

The record will show from 1947 to 2009, 175,813 barrels have been spilled out of 16.5 billion barrels produced. That is one one-thousandth percent of the total production. I think it is important to keep that in perspective.

Bear in mind, none of the data that BOEMRE or Landrieu’s office provided showed figures earlier than 1956, and the American Petroleum Institute’s report only covers the years 1969-2007. Yet Landrieu repeatedly referred to accidents dating back to 1947.

Though it isn’t clear if Landrieu was talking about spills in the entire OCS or just the Gulf, according to BOEMRE data, 471,721 barrels of oil were spilled in the Gulf of Mexico from 1956-2010 in cases where the spills were greater than 50 barrels of oil.

Still, trying to pull a definitive number from BOEMRE’s data is like trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle knowing at the start that several are missing. In our time analyzing industry accidents over the years, members of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade have noticed a few things:

1) Accident reports submitted to state and federal agencies are voluntary. A company can underreport total pollution from an accident and officials rarely conduct a full investigation unless there was a worker injury or death.

2) The systems for reporting such accidents are insufficient and inconsistent, allowing a company to fill out the “Volume of Pollution Spilled” or “Damage to Property or Environment” columns in many reports with answers such as: N/A, unknown amount, minimal, minor or even just “moderate oil sheen” instead of an actual figure.

3) Summary reports and data sets produced by federal agencies don’t follow the same format (even within one agency over several years). One report only calculates total oil spills over a given period, while another calculates by type of accident over a different period. One data set calculates spills of more than 50 barrels of oil, while another only recognizes oil spills when they exceed 200 barrels.

Knowing those limitations, it’s hard to take Landrieu’s numbers at face value. What’s more, it’s irresponsible of her to use such a small category of offshore accidents to represent oil industry safety across the board. In doing so, Landrieu is ignoring the bigger picture made visible by the BP disaster – that the oil industry has a serious problem when it comes to safety, preparedness and the ability to drill and produce oil in ways that are environmentally sound and protect our coastal communities. It’s a recurring problem. And accidents continue today, more than a year since the BP spill.

Let’s not forget that the oil spill also resulted in 11 deaths. BOEMRE data for Gulf oil and gas operations from 1956 through 1990 shows more than 420 fatalities.

When Landrieu or another politician says the industry is safe and advocates for less regulation, we need to ask for the data. And we need to know the source.

If we don’t call out our politicians on their phony evidence, the misinformation will spread well beyond Capitol Hill and find its way into every news story, every sound bite on the TV news, every blog. And the real picture, the ugly truth about oil and gas production in the Gulf will get painted over.

Benjamin Leger is a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist with the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, an environmental justice organization and watchdog group.

In January 2002, a mound of powdery chemical catalyst used to make gasoline collapsed on a worker doing routine cleanup at the Marathon Ashland Petroleum  refinery in Garyville, La.

Within minutes, the contract employee, from Colfax, was completely engulfed in the toxic chemical and struggling to get free. Before help arrived, the face seal on the man’s helmet broke, allowing fresh air to hit the catalyst and ignite. “Employee #1 was killed as a result of chemical burns,” reads the Occupational Safety and Health Administration report on the death, which was tagged a “housekeeping” issue. The incident report ends with no violations listed and no penalties imposed.

Marathon, which would experience another fatal accident in 2007 and again in 2009, has been considered by the federal government to be one of the country’s safest places to work for nearly two decades, one of 2,434 across the country certified by OSHA as a Voluntary Protection Program site.

This report was prepare in collaboration with iWatch News and other colleagues in the national Invesgtigative News Network.

That status makes the refinery part of an elite group of businesses that serve as ambassadors between industry and the agency’s safety inspectors. In exchange for professing a commitment to safety and carrying that message to private-sector peers, program members get a three-to-five-year exemption from routine OSHA inspections and a friendlier relationship with the feds, not to mention bragging rights useful to the public relations department. Created in 1982 as part of the Reagan Administration’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy, the program was an experiment in industry self-policing.

After two decades of slow growth under Reagan and his White House successors, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the self-enforcement program took off during George W. Bush’s eight years in Washington.

One of the few OSHA initiatives spared cuts during the Bush administration, the program was promoted as a way to encourage employers to voluntarily comply with safety standards at a time when regulations and enforcement efforts were being steadily rolled back. Under Bush, the number of workplaces blessed with the OSHA model-workplace certification tripled nationally, despite warnings from government auditors that such ambitious expansion could threaten the program’s integrity.

Today, the program continues to grow and Congress is considering legislation, co-sponsored by U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., that aims to expand it even further. In addition to codifying the program and expanding access to it, the legislation would prevent OSHA from imposing the user fee it proposed last year to cover increased inspections of participating workplaces. Current rules call for inspections only in the event of a fatality or if a complaint is filed.

If the proposed legislation becomes law, Louisiana – which already has more self-regulated sites than any state other than Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio — is expected to see a jump in participation.

“Louisiana has one of the largest number of VPP sites in the U.S., and from my experience working with companies in the state, those companies that are in have a true commitment to workplace safety and health,” said Davis Layne, executive director of the Voluntary Protection Program Association, a nonprofit trade organization. “Many other companies are now seeing that value and trying to get involved.”

The commitment to safety may be sincere, but evidence that the program is actually achieving its goals is hard to come by. The deaths at Marathon are not the only fatalities at these so-called model workplaces. Since 2000, at least 74 workers have died at certified sites and agency investigators found serious safety violations in at least 47 cases, according to records examined by The Lens in collaboration with Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. In Louisiana, there have been six deaths since 2000, including the three at Marathon in Garyville and two at other facilities that were linked to serious violations of their safety code. None of the Louisiana deaths resulted in companies losing model workplace status.

Critics of the federal government's Voluntary Protection Program say that fatal accidents should not be tolerated at these so-called models for workplace safety.

Indeed, the disconnect between the Voluntary Protection Program’s goals and its results is especially stark in Louisiana, where a large petrochemical industry puts workers in daily contact with life-threatening risks that are not measured by the program. The big problem, program critics contend, is that the potentially catastrophic risks inherent in refinery operations aren’t meaningfully reflected in the personal-injury data that is the program’s primary metric.

“In a refinery, not fixing a pipe or repairing a machine can lead to a major explosion and a slip-and-fall rate is not going to help you know if that repair or maintenance was done,” said Celeste Monforton, a former OSHA policy analyst who now is a lecturer in environmental and occupational health at George Washington University.

The agency’s records lend validity to Monforton’s concern. Petroleum refining facilities account for only about 7 percent of OSHA’s model workplaces in Louisiana – six out of 107 sites. Yet four of the last decade’s six fatalities – 67 percent— occurred in those petrochemical facilities. Nationally, at least 11 of the 74 site- recorded fatalities between 2000 and 2010 — 15 percent — happened at refineries, all of them in Louisiana or Texas, OSHA records show. Additionally, these facilities increasingly depend on contract workers – like the man who died of chemical burns at Marathon’s Garyville plant — whose injuries or days lost are simply omitted from the personal injury rate average that serves as the program’s primary metric for measuring workplace safety. This means that refineries could have a higher rate of on-site injury than allowed by program standards, yet still be certified because a sector of its workforce isn’t factored into the equation.

In March, a contract worker at Valero Energy’s facility in Norco, a certified program participant, fell from a ladder to his death.  A malfunction in the plant had exposed the worker, Victor Rodriguez, 30, to dangerous levels of the toxic gas hydrogen sulfide in the minutes before his fall.

His family is now suing Valero and the contracting company that employed him for wrongful death.

“What happened was a breakdown in the process safety management,” Byron Buchanan, a lawyer for the deceased contractor’s family, said.

But while the Houston lawyer contends that the fatal accident was preventable, and possibly indicative of a larger weakness in the refinery’s process management system, it’s unlikely to affect Valero’s status as a model for workplace safety or cost it money in fines, analysis of OSHA inspection data shows. Among the fatalities that previously occurred at federally certified sites in Louisiana, three of the five complete accident investigations — 60 percent of the total and all of them at Marathon — resulted in no penalties.

While refineries avoided fines, wood and paper companies weren’t so lucky. After a worker was killed at the International Paper mill in Mansfield, OSHA fined the company $10,000 for two separate violations.  No summary of the accident was included in OSHA’s investigation but records show the violations were for failing to maintain proper guard rails and other safety mechanisms. The 2009 fines remain outstanding, though the company told OSHA it had fixed the problems in 2010.

In Oakdale, a Boise Cascade sawmill was assessed $4,410 after an employee was fatally struck by a tractor-trailer while walking to his workstation. “The intersection of the drive aisle was not marked or controlled by signals or stop signs,” an OSHA inspector noted in the accident investigation summary. The lack of traffic signage led to an initial fine of $6,300.The agency later settled with the company for $4,410 in penalties.

OSHA did not respond to a request for information about the mill deaths. It was not, however, the agency’s first time fielding questions about a worker death at a safety-certified International Paper mill.

In 2008, a catastrophic boiler explosion at a mill in Vicksburg, Miss., killed one worker and injured another 22, leaving at least three in medically-induced comas for months while doctors treated serious burns. In a subsequent investigation OSHA discovered that the Tennessee-based company had ignored an internal memo outlining recommendations that, if followed, would have prevented the explosion or minimized risk to workers, according to records examined by the Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News. OSHA, in its investigation, alleged violations of safety standards that program members are expected to exceed, yet the company did not lose certification.

Texas refineries have been less successful than their Louisiana counterparts in avoiding fines following fatalities, OSHA records show, perhaps in part because the deaths at program-certified refineries in Texas have been associated with more catastrophic failures of systems and machinery. In total, 54 percent of fatality investigations at Texas refineries — four out of seven — resulted in fines compared to zero in Louisiana.

What the two states have in common, however, is that none of the fatalities resulted in an establishment losing OSHA certification as a model for safety. After a worker was killed and another seriously injured by a preventable boiler explosion at a Valero refinery in Texas City, for instance, OSHA issued the Voluntary Protection Program participant a citation. The 2009 blast had thrown one of the workers under a stainless steel tank, causing “fatal blunt force trauma,” the accident report reads. Valero hasn’t paid its $4,500 penalty, or suffered a fall from grace as part of the model-workplace program.

At Marathon in Garyville, another worker died after mistakenly driving his pickup into a wastewater retention pond on the refinery’s grounds.  By the time co-workers answered his radio call for help, the technician’s Ford F-150 was completely submerged.  “Employee #1 was found at approximately 3:00 a.m. on September 1, 2007, drowned in the pond,” reads the OSHA report. Again, no violations were found and no fines imposed on the refinery, which was certified as a model workplace in 1994. In the report’s concluding lines, an inspector notes that there are no lights in the area. No penalties were paid and the site remains part of OSHA’s model program.

Ignoring a slap on the wrist, losing a life

Nationally, about 70 percent of sites where a worker has died since 2000 remain in the program today. Typically, a site is removed from the program only after repeated incidents demonstrate chronic mismanagement. At a certified Weyerhaeuser Co. paper plant in Oklahoma, for instance, a worker was crushed to death in a paper machine two years before the site was reapproved for model workplace status. Less than two months after the site was recertified, another worker was crushed to death in a paper machine and OSHA found the same violations that had been cited in the first death, documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show.  Only then did OSHA remove the site from the program.

That reluctance to decertify doesn’t surprise personal injury lawyer Buchanan. After years of representing Texas oil industry workers, he says he has seen no significant difference between certified and uncertified workplaces.

“My experience in Texas is that when a site is (allowed into the program), safety conditions are not vastly improved,” he said. “The certification could be tied to under-reporting more than anything else.”

OSHA did not answer questions from The Lens about the model-workplace program’s implementation in Louisiana, or respond to repeated requests for an interview with the program’s regional supervisor. The agency also failed to turn over personal injury data that must be made public upon request under the Freedom of Information Act.  “People are stretched thin,” spokesman Jesse Lawder said when a reporter asked why questions still had not been answered a month after they were submitted. A spokeswoman for the agency’s regional office, Elizabeth Todd, referred all inquiries to Washington.

Landrieu, who counts Marathon Oil and other Voluntary Protection Program participants among her biggest financial backers, declined multiple requests for an interview to discuss the program or the pending legislation codifying the program that she helped write.

In an interview with iWatch News, OSHA Deputy Assistant Secretary Jordan Barab defended the program. A death leading to the discovery of serious violations is “certainly a strong indication that you’ve got a serious problem,” he said. But overall the program is “very useful as a model to all employers of what can be achieved,” he added.

A partnership between industry and its regulator

OSHA and program advocates like Landrieu sell self-regulation of workplace safety as a way for government and industry to work together and ultimately, save both sides money. In 2007, a typical year, the agency estimated that the program had saved taxpayers more than $59 million and participating companies more than $300 million.

That corporations would wind up assuming more of the regulatory burden and yet actually save money might seem counter-intuitive. Bill Day, a spokesman for Valero Energy Corporation explains it this way: “The benefits are priceless. Not only do you know that your employees are safer, but from a more dollars-and-cents perspective, safer also means more efficient, fewer breakdowns, less worker turnover and a better relationship with OSHA.” Valero, which operates 11 refineries with model-workplace status, including one at Norco, is pursuing certification of its remaining seven in North America. Day declined to comment on Victor Rodriguez or the incident at Norco that took his life.

To join the model-workplace program, companies must submit to an on-site evaluation. Unlike the usual OSHA visit where inspectors can issue citations, however, evaluators — often including employees of companies in the program — issue “90-day items,” a list of hazards to correct within 90 days. Once a site receives certification, OSHA allows it to police itself. Inspections happen once every three to five years unless triggered by a serious accident, formal complaint or a referral of a potential hazard. Moreover, the status exempts sites, from any industry-specific safety programs that OSHA uses to crack down on workplace hazards — regardless of perceived risk.

Whether or not fatal accidents should be tolerated at workplaces held up as models for safety is a question some in Washington are asking. A Government Accountability Office audit of the Voluntary Protection Program in 2009 found that “sites that no longer met the definition of exemplary workplace” remained in the program, and that “OSHA’s lack of internal controls are not sufficient” to stop that kind of adulteration of the program from happening on a routine basis.

More broadly, auditors determined that OSHA had never developed goals or measures to assess the program’s performance, making any effort to evaluate it “inadequate.” In final recommendations that have not been implemented, the accountability office suggested OSHA tighten internal controls and collect more data so that potential catastrophes can be predicted and prevented. Like Monforton, the former OSHA employee now teaching at George Washington University, auditors say that personal injury data isn’t a sufficient barometer of safety at a high-stakes workplace like a refinery, where a simple procedural mistake has the potential to end lives.

“They don’t track what almost happened, just what does,” GAO investigator Revae Moran told The Lens. The lack of documentation can make it “difficult to take preventative action,” and hard to prove when an incident is symptomatic of a larger pattern of sustained or willful negligence, she said.

That lesson had been taught before, but evidently not learned. On March 23, 2005, a jet fuel manufacturing unit at a BP refinery in Texas City went up in flames, killing 15 people and injuring more than 170. A subsequent investigation found that as part of a cost-cutting drive in the years before the deadly explosion, BP management had placed temporary trailers next to the volatile fuel-making unit and made personnel changes that workers felt compromised their job safety.

For lack of stringent reporting requirements on the refinery’s safety processes, the compound effect of these changes was not realized until it was too late, industry post-mortems revealed. An investigation of the explosion by an independent blue-ribbon panel headed by Texas lawyer James Baker, a former cabinet member in the administrations of Reagan and both Bushes, found that better reporting on refinery conditions would have reduced risk.

Most relevant to the Voluntary Protection Program was the finding that relying on the personal injury rates that qualify companies for the OSHA program contributed to the cascading failures that ignited the Texas City refinery. “BP mistakenly interpreted improving personal injury rates as an indication of acceptable process safety performance,” the Baker panel report stated, adding that “reliance on this data combined with an inadequate process safety understanding created a false sense of confidence that BP was properly addressing safety risks.”

OSHA responded to the Baker panel’s findings with a new program of inspections targeting refineries — the National Emphasis Program. A program fact sheet distributed in 2007 drove home the need to target refineries. The total number of potentially hazardous chemical releases between 1992 and 2007 at petroleum refining facilities surpassed the combined totals of the next three highest industries: chemical manufacturing, organic chemical manufacturing and explosives manufacturing.

Yet even with this stark evidence of heightened risk, OSHA exempted Voluntary Protection Program sites from the National Emphasis Program. Moreover, for lack of sufficient staff and budgeting, OSHA’s regional offices have failed to inspect eligible sites. In Louisiana, for instance, where hundreds of petroleum manufacturing businesses are subject to inspection through the program, OSHA has done only 10 planned inspections since the its launch four years ago. The inspections, though rare, were fruitful, resulting in 173 citations, many of them for violations classified as serious by OSHA, agency records show.

The exemption of model-workplace sites from subsequent inspections makes it impossible to fully compare their safety records with the performance of inspected sites. But the probe that followed the 2002 death from chemical burns at Marathon’s Garyville site revealed a procedural safety failure of precisely the kind targeted by the National Emphasis Program, from which the facility was exempt.

Inspections of Marathon refineries that aren’t part of the exempting program have turned up repeated allegations from OSHA that the company is violating safety regulations and in some cases, demonstrating “plain indifference” to them. A 2007 inspection of an Ohio refinery ended with citations for 45 violations, 42 of them serious and 2 classified as “willful” totaling $321,500 in fines, OSHA records show.

Marathon declined to answer inquiries for this article. Company spokesman Robert Calmus told iWatch News that he would not discuss specific incidents, but said the company is “a strong supporter of the VPP program and is proud to have many of its facilities VPP certified.”

A precise speed limit hasn't prevented fatal accidents at Marathon Refinery in Garyville.

Barab, the OSHA assistant director, has said that fatalities at exempt sites have caused the agency to consider reinstating industry-specific inspections for refineries that enjoy model-workplace status. “We have had some fatalities in VPP refineries, so that’s something we are still trying to figure out,” Barab said in an interview with iWatch News. “Our general plan is to inspect at least a few VPP refineries and decide for ourselves whether we really need to continue the exemption.”  He said that the agency hasn’t begun those inspections because it is already stretched thin doing inspections of sites already on its priority list. “We haven’t really been able to pull out of that yet,” he said.

Though the legislation to codify the program that is now moving through Congress mandates more internal controls and documentation at participating workplaces, it reinstates the exemption and doesn’t offer any specific requirements for new controls or reporting.

And if the bill passes, said Layne, of the trade association for self-regulated workplaces, the exemption will be only harder to lift. “If you are a refinery and you are in the VPP you already get more rigorous scrutiny than if you are not in the program,” he said. “The advantage of having it placed into law will then make it funded through normal appropriations.”

Asking the driver to police his ride home

Norco refinery electrician Wilton Ledet has seen co-workers burned by boiling chemical catalysts, frostbitten by propane and cut by tools that don’t have required guards. He has helped co-workers off the shop floor after falls from 20-foot ladders. “I’m lucky none of my guys have died,” said the 20-year veteran of the Shell-Motiva plant, and president of the United Steel Workers Local 750. After years of advocating for better worker conditions, Ledet is an ardent opponent of the Voluntary Protection Program.

A central tenet of the self-regulatory program is cooperation between management and the rank-and-file workforce – all applications require sign-off by an employee representative, or a union official if a site is organized. In recent years, the refinery’s management has approached Local 750 about pursuing certification in the OSHA program, but union membership has voted against it, Ledet said. He likens the program to asking drivers to police their commutes home. “My thing is, am I going to speed home from work, get home and then call the police and say, ‘Oh, I sped home?’ ” Ledet said.

“If a company wants to be in a program that bad, there is a reason why they want it. That reason is not my safety,” he said.

Shell’s Norco refinery did not respond to multiple requests for an interview, but Layne, the trade group rep, says that Ledet is underestimating the program’s value. “It forces management and workforce to come together, reduces employee turnover, reduces management friction, and reduces injuries,” he said.

Layne also disputes the notion that participating refineries receive less scrutiny than non-certified peers because they are not subject to regular OSHA inspections. To make this point, he recalls an explosion at a Tesoro refinery in Washington State that killed four people just one year after OSHA inspectors were there. The inspection had cited Tesoro for 17 health and safety violations that, at the time of the explosion, were being challenged rather than repaired. “Just because they go in and make an inspection, there is no guarantee that anything is resolved,” Layne said.

With an annual budget that is a fraction of other federal agencies and constantly under attack by anti-regulatory interests, OSHA has long struggled to carry out its broad mandate. But while self-regulation has been held up as a solution, Monforton says that well-intentioned initiatives like the Voluntary Protection Program could in fact be costing the public more than they save.

“The principles espoused by VPP are good and the goals are laudable, but I have not been convinced by any data that the government investment is worth it,” she said. “If you get to wave the flag of government-certified safety, you should not have situations where workers are drowning in ponds because there are no lights. We are rewarding companies for non-exemplary behavior and then paying to oversee that reward.”

In Louisiana’s ConocoPhillips Refinery in Belle Chasse, workers recently teamed up with management to get OSHA certification as a model workplace. Anthony Corso, chairman of the refinery’s USW local, supported the move because he saw it as the only way to upgrade the long-neglected facility. “They were dragging their feet on a lot of repairs we’d been asking for but once they wanted their VPP status they picked up,” Corso said. “They wanted to get the site back up to speed.”

Corso estimates that ConocoPhillips, which earned $3 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2011, spent about $1 million to bring the Belle Chasse plant, its second largest in the U.S., up to code. The improvements ranged from basic repairs of guardrails on equipment and cages on ladders to larger pipe fixes, Corso said. The veteran refinery worker worries whether the investment will continue now that the certification is complete.

“We heard from other folks at other refineries that after they get the certification, they stop listening, but right now, we are pleased,” Corso said. “A year and half from now, we may be saying something else.”

Landrieu

The Lens contacted Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office recently to discuss her role in the oil spill response. In an interview with Tom Michaels, the senator’s legislative director, and Aaron Saunders, her communications director, we discussed campaign contributions from BP and from the maker of the dispersants and whether drilling for oil continues to be a worthy domestic prospect for the future.

The Lens: What role has Sen. Landrieu played in the decision of what kind of dispersant to use on the oil?m

Tom Michaels: None. That decision is up to the EPA and the on-scene coordinator.
The Lens: In 2008, dispersant-maker Nalco contributed $3,000 to Sen. Landrieu’s campaign. Given that investment in a Louisiana Congress member, does that compromise the decision to prefer it over other brands.

Aaron Saunders: We don’t do anything with campaigns or contributions out of this office.

Michaels: I’ll just say this — the same as with BP — campaign contributions have absolutely zero effects on the policy agenda of the senator as it relates to the spill or generally. A lot of crap comes up about this issue and it gets under my skin. Sen. Landrieu has been a supporter of the oil and gas industries not because she is in love with oil or because she’s getting campaign contributions but because it employs 13.4 percent of people in Louisiana. . If you want to look at campaign contributions I think you have to look at the whole story. Some of the people who gave money to Sen. Landrieu are trial lawyers who will be suing the pants off many of these companies involved in the spill.

The Lens: Does Sen. Landrieu support offshort drilling as a permanent part of the nation’s energy policy future, or as a temporary bridge to renewable, carbon-neutral sources?

Michaels: She absolutely believes that it’s a bridge to future renewable energy sources. These groups that are calling for us to stop drilling, though, they are immoral and they are doing more at abandoning the environment than the oil companies. Stopping domestic oil production doesn’t do anything to reduce our consumption of oil. This entire country and world consumes oil. If we don’t get it here we will get it from somewhere else. And those other places will have more lax regulatory standards, and will lack the will and resources to deal with their ecosystems.

Saunders: A lot of offshore drilling is for exploration of natural gas and a huge swath of people believe that this can be a bridge to take us away from fossil fuels. The Lens: Do you believe that environmental groups are framing it as a black-and-white issue, where oil is evil and renewable is perfect?

Michaels: Yes, I couldn’t agree with that more, and I think the senator would agree as well. The way she came to be involved with the oil and gas industries, she saw it as a revenue source to fund the revitalization of the coast and wetlands. Throughout that time she has come to learn more about the industry. She respects them as people providing a commodity that people need, but I don’t think she thinks they are heroes, or better or worse than any other company.

Saunders: We are working with the conservation groups. In fact, in the last two weeks we’ve introduced the revenue sharing bill so that a fair share of revenue from the oil and gas industries is diverted back to Louisiana. A whole sweep of conservation groups  endorsed this plan and the sharing of revenue so we are working with these groups, and so it’s not a black and white issue, and those who call it a black and white issue are on the fringe here.

The Lens: Have you considered the irony that for the state’s coastal restoration, you are asking for revenue from the very industries that are right now destroying the coast?

Michaels: I think that is why it should come from them. I I think again you would still have tankers coming up to the LOOP (Louisiana Offshore Oil Port) and to New Orleans and that would also place the wetlands at risk, just as much as offshore drilling would. So the middle ground is that we will continue drilling and also keep tightening the knot on regulation, but accidents will happen again I’m sure. In the meantime, you will pay to invest in the communities that bear the risk and will be most heavily impacted.

Saunders: That is precisely the argument that Senator Landrieu is making. This has definitely been exacerbated by the oil spill, but this is not the result of the oil spill.

Michaels: You take from nature, you have to give back to nature. But this has been a century of mismanagement, of the oil and gas pipelines and everything else. This is an ecological disaster that has been unfolding for a hundred years. This is just the latest squirt of lemon juice into the wound.

Landrieu

The Lens contacted Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office recently to discuss her role in the oil spill response. In an interview with Tom Michaels, the senator’s legislative director, and Aaron Saunders, her communications director, we discussed campaign contributions from BP and from the maker of the dispersants and whether drilling for oil continues to be a worthy domestic prospect for the future.

The Lens: What role has Sen. Landrieu played in the decision of what kind of dispersant to use on the oil?m

Tom Michaels: None. That decision is up to the EPA and the on-scene coordinator.
The Lens: In 2008, dispersant-maker Nalco contributed $3,000 to Sen. Landrieu’s campaign. Given that investment in a Louisiana Congress member, does that compromise the decision to prefer it over other brands.

Aaron Saunders: We don’t do anything with campaigns or contributions out of this office.

Michaels: I’ll just say this — the same as with BP — campaign contributions have absolutely zero effects on the policy agenda of the senator as it relates to the spill or generally. A lot of crap comes up about this issue and it gets under my skin. Sen. Landrieu has been a supporter of the oil and gas industries not because she is in love with oil or because she’s getting campaign contributions but because it employs 13.4 percent of people in Louisiana. . If you want to look at campaign contributions I think you have to look at the whole story. Some of the people who gave money to Sen. Landrieu are trial lawyers who will be suing the pants off many of these companies involved in the spill.

The Lens: Does Sen. Landrieu support offshort drilling as a permanent part of the nation’s energy policy future, or as a temporary bridge to renewable, carbon-neutral sources?

Michaels: She absolutely believes that it’s a bridge to future renewable energy sources. These groups that are calling for us to stop drilling, though, they are immoral and they are doing more at abandoning the environment than the oil companies. Stopping domestic oil production doesn’t do anything to reduce our consumption of oil. This entire country and world consumes oil. If we don’t get it here we will get it from somewhere else. And those other places will have more lax regulatory standards, and will lack the will and resources to deal with their ecosystems.

Saunders: A lot of offshore drilling is for exploration of natural gas and a huge swath of people believe that this can be a bridge to take us away from fossil fuels. The Lens: Do you believe that environmental groups are framing it as a black-and-white issue, where oil is evil and renewable is perfect?

Michaels: Yes, I couldn’t agree with that more, and I think the senator would agree as well. The way she came to be involved with the oil and gas industries, she saw it as a revenue source to fund the revitalization of the coast and wetlands. Throughout that time she has come to learn more about the industry. She respects them as people providing a commodity that people need, but I don’t think she thinks they are heroes, or better or worse than any other company.

Saunders: We are working with the conservation groups. In fact, in the last two weeks we’ve introduced the revenue sharing bill so that a fair share of revenue from the oil and gas industries is diverted back to Louisiana. A whole sweep of conservation groups  endorsed this plan and the sharing of revenue so we are working with these groups, and so it’s not a black and white issue, and those who call it a black and white issue are on the fringe here.

The Lens: Have you considered the irony that for the state’s coastal restoration, you are asking for revenue from the very industries that are right now destroying the coast?

Michaels: I think that is why it should come from them. I I think again you would still have tankers coming up to the LOOP (Louisiana Offshore Oil Port) and to New Orleans and that would also place the wetlands at risk, just as much as offshore drilling would. So the middle ground is that we will continue drilling and also keep tightening the knot on regulation, but accidents will happen again I’m sure. In the meantime, you will pay to invest in the communities that bear the risk and will be most heavily impacted.

Saunders: That is precisely the argument that Senator Landrieu is making. This has definitely been exacerbated by the oil spill, but this is not the result of the oil spill.

Michaels: You take from nature, you have to give back to nature. But this has been a century of mismanagement, of the oil and gas pipelines and everything else. This is an ecological disaster that has been unfolding for a hundred years. This is just the latest squirt of lemon juice into the wound.

Just a couple weeks ago, affordable-housing proponents had little hope that developments to replace the public-housing complexes torn down after the levee failures would materialize.

A damning federal assessment of the Housing Authority of New Orleans stated that, “Two of HANO’s Big Four the former Lafitte and B.W. Cooper projects mixed-income deals are in jeopardy. Lafitte and B.W. Cooper risk not moving forward as planned if Congress does not pass a Placed-in-Service extender bill in the immediate future.”

Such a move would give developers more time to close their deals and get their developments off the ground with the help of low income housing tax credits, which are due to expire at the end of this year. The U.S. Senate did just that as it passed the American Workers, State, and Business Relief Act, a $130 billion dollar bill known nationally for extending unemployment benefits. Locally it’s likely to be known for its provision to not only give Gulf states the much needed extension of the placed-in-service dates, but also lets the state exchange its tax credits for cash through the federal stimulus program.

“Without this bill, the critical housing reconstruction projects that are under way would be shut down,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La, who helped secure the measure in the bill.

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., did his part to secure the tax-credit exchange – considered a long shot by many.

“Allowing disaster housing credits to be exchanged, along with the two-year extension in the placed-in-service deadline, will allow much needed housing developments to move forward,” Vitter said in a press release.

Many housing advocates and elected officials had been pushing for the extension, which seemed like the most likely option open to Congress. However, the extension would have meant little if developers were not able to cash in their low-income housing tax credits. The tax credits waned and depreciated during the financial market crisis leaving the fate of developments such as the former Lafitte and B.W. projects looking futureless.

When the stimulus was passed, it allowed for low-income housing tax credits to be exchanged for cash due to the financial crisis. But in a discretionary move by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Gulf Opportunity Zone low-income housing tax credits were excluded. While a bipartisan Louisiana delegation – at both state and federal levels – pushed for the exchange, Geithner wouldn’t budge, leaving a legislative fix as the last recourse.

The Senate provisions still need to go through the House, and ultimately need President Barack Obama’s approval.

The state, particularly the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency, which administers the GO Zone tax credits, is optimistic.

“We are very pleased with this vote from the Senate,” said agency President Milton Bailey. “Louisiana and the other Gulf States were dealt dual blows: first by the hurricanes of 2005, and then by the recent economic crisis. The GO Zone tax credits are an integral part of the Gulf’s rebuilding efforts, but the landscape has changed since they were first instituted in 2006. We are very grateful that these needed changes were made so that we can continue our rebuilding efforts.”

Read Lens other coverage of this issue:

“Louisiana hit hard, but not among ‘hardest hit’” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3932

“Forgiveness as policy” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3560

“Judge sympathetic, but dismisses complaint about housing money shifted to port”  http://thelensnola.org/archives/3460

“Lens Transcript: Louisiana Housing Chief Milton Bailey” http://thelensnola.org/archives/2958

“BGR President: ‘Inaccurate’ to say too much affordable housing” http://thelensnola.org/archives/3055

A frame grab from one of O'Keefe's videos

Both are inaccurate descriptions. The journalist tag is tenuous at best, and we’ll get back to that. As for posing or dressing as a pimp, that is inarguably wrong. His partner in the videos, Hannah Giles, definitely was scantilly clad while discussing prostitution services with ACORN employees, but there’s no proof O’Keefe joined her in costume.

Last year, O’Keefe released a number of videos where he says in his narration that he introduced himself as a number of different characters.

In his Baltimore video, his voiceover references a scenario of “a man pretending to run for Congress one day,” which accompanies a back shot of him walking into an ACORN office dressed in a blue dress shirt with white khakis.

In San Bernadino, he says he’s “the up-and-coming local politician who wants to use illicit sex money from underage girls to fund my future Congressional campaign,” with no footage of how he is dressed.

In New York City, he says he’s Giles’ “pimp boyfriend banker with the intention of using illicit sex money to fund my future Congressional campaign.” This  footage doesn’t show him, though presumably he’s disguised as a banker.

In D.C., he says he’s “playing the role of a pimp with the intention of running for Congress,” with no images of his attire, but the ACORN employee refers to him as a “Georgetown law student.”

In Philadelphia, he repeats the pimp boyfriend running for Congress statement, and this time gives us a frontal of himself in a blue shirt, white pants and a tie.

So why did virtually every reporter get this wrong? There are spliced shots of O’Keefe dressed outlandishly as a pimp (think Harvey Keitel in “Taxi Driver”) walking with Giles in an outfit straight out of “Leaving Las Vegas.” Those same pimp scenes are sprinkled throughout all of O’Keefe’s videos, leaving one with the impression that this is how he dressed when speaking with ACORN, but there’s no video of this happening. O’Keefe never turned his hidden camera on himself, so we don’t know.

Meanwhile, a quick roundup of this week’s media coverage:

• A Times-Picayune article has a photo caption that says “Filmmaker James O’Keefe dressed as a pimp before entering ACORN offices last year.”
• The accompanying Times-Picayune article reads O’Keefe “was hailed as a conservative hero for dressing as a pimp and taping ACORN employees offering advice on how he and a partner could get away with running an international underage prostitution scheme.”
• On WGNO.com, Web site of ABC Channel 26 news: “In the videos, O’Keefe and Giles, disguised as a pimp and prostitute, appear to receive advice on tax evasion and underage prostitution from ACORN employees.”
• On WDSU.com, Web site of NBC channel 6 news: “The most well-known of the suspects is O’Keefe, a 25-year-old whose hidden-camera expose posing as a pimp with his prostitute infuriated the liberal group ACORN.”
• AP: “O’Keefe, a 25-year-old who posed with an associate as a pimp and prostitute to film undercover videos at offices of the liberal community group ACORN…”

Stories that state O’Keefe was wearing pimp clothes when speaking to ACORN officials should be able to show images of this, but they haven’t. References to O’Keefe “posing” as a pimp isn’t fair either because viewers are led to believe that only due to what O’Keefe says in his voiceovers, not how he actually introduced himself to ACORN employees.  Further, while O’Keefe and prostitute-garbed Giles discuss sex services and money, O’Keefe only refers to Giles as his “girlfriend.”

In the Landrieu office stunt, O’Keefe attempted to record his fake phone repairmen accomplices with his cellphone’s camera. Somehow, this is being construed as “journalism.”

O’Keefe told a media outlet after his ACORN stunts: “I happen to call what I do shoe leather journalism and not advocacy journalism, so, I would consider it just journalism.”

But holding a camera to record a stunt that you choreographed doesn’t make you a journalist anymore than walking into an office in business-casual attire with your “girlfriend” dressed as a sex worker makes you a pimp.

A frame grab from one of O'Keefe's videos

Both are inaccurate descriptions. The journalist tag is tenuous at best, and we’ll get back to that. As for posing or dressing as a pimp, that is inarguably wrong. His partner in the videos, Hannah Giles, definitely was scantilly clad while discussing prostitution services with ACORN employees, but there’s no proof O’Keefe joined her in costume.

Last year, O’Keefe released a number of videos where he says in his narration that he introduced himself as a number of different characters.

In his Baltimore video, his voiceover references a scenario of “a man pretending to run for Congress one day,” which accompanies a back shot of him walking into an ACORN office dressed in a blue dress shirt with white khakis.

In San Bernadino, he says he’s “the up-and-coming local politician who wants to use illicit sex money from underage girls to fund my future Congressional campaign,” with no footage of how he is dressed.

In New York City, he says he’s Giles’ “pimp boyfriend banker with the intention of using illicit sex money to fund my future Congressional campaign.” This  footage doesn’t show him, though presumably he’s disguised as a banker.

In D.C., he says he’s “playing the role of a pimp with the intention of running for Congress,” with no images of his attire, but the ACORN employee refers to him as a “Georgetown law student.”

In Philadelphia, he repeats the pimp boyfriend running for Congress statement, and this time gives us a frontal of himself in a blue shirt, white pants and a tie.

So why did virtually every reporter get this wrong? There are spliced shots of O’Keefe dressed outlandishly as a pimp (think Harvey Keitel in “Taxi Driver”) walking with Giles in an outfit straight out of “Leaving Las Vegas.” Those same pimp scenes are sprinkled throughout all of O’Keefe’s videos, leaving one with the impression that this is how he dressed when speaking with ACORN, but there’s no video of this happening. O’Keefe never turned his hidden camera on himself, so we don’t know.

Meanwhile, a quick roundup of this week’s media coverage:

• A Times-Picayune article has a photo caption that says “Filmmaker James O’Keefe dressed as a pimp before entering ACORN offices last year.”
• The accompanying Times-Picayune article reads O’Keefe “was hailed as a conservative hero for dressing as a pimp and taping ACORN employees offering advice on how he and a partner could get away with running an international underage prostitution scheme.”
• On WGNO.com, Web site of ABC Channel 26 news: “In the videos, O’Keefe and Giles, disguised as a pimp and prostitute, appear to receive advice on tax evasion and underage prostitution from ACORN employees.”
• On WDSU.com, Web site of NBC channel 6 news: “The most well-known of the suspects is O’Keefe, a 25-year-old whose hidden-camera expose posing as a pimp with his prostitute infuriated the liberal group ACORN.”
• AP: “O’Keefe, a 25-year-old who posed with an associate as a pimp and prostitute to film undercover videos at offices of the liberal community group ACORN…”

Stories that state O’Keefe was wearing pimp clothes when speaking to ACORN officials should be able to show images of this, but they haven’t. References to O’Keefe “posing” as a pimp isn’t fair either because viewers are led to believe that only due to what O’Keefe says in his voiceovers, not how he actually introduced himself to ACORN employees.  Further, while O’Keefe and prostitute-garbed Giles discuss sex services and money, O’Keefe only refers to Giles as his “girlfriend.”

In the Landrieu office stunt, O’Keefe attempted to record his fake phone repairmen accomplices with his cellphone’s camera. Somehow, this is being construed as “journalism.”

O’Keefe told a media outlet after his ACORN stunts: “I happen to call what I do shoe leather journalism and not advocacy journalism, so, I would consider it just journalism.”

But holding a camera to record a stunt that you choreographed doesn’t make you a journalist anymore than walking into an office in business-casual attire with your “girlfriend” dressed as a sex worker makes you a pimp.

Many of the national articles I’ve read as to the possible motivations for this scheme to possibly tap Mary Landrieu’s phones mention a recent deal she negotiated into the Senate healthcare reform bill that would increase Medicaid compensation rate to Louisiana to eliminate a temporary spike in the existing federal formula caused by the flow of hurricane recovery dollars. Opponents of healthcare reform have labeled that amendment a bribe, calling it the “Louisiana purchase.”

However, that seems to be an unlikely motivation behind the efforts of the foursome, who call to mind the black-bag operations of Watergate henchman G. Gordon Liddy.  Though their efforts were clearly unsuccessful and seem to have been ill-conceived, there was some degree of thought put into the plot. Neither Dai, O’Keefe, or Basel appear to be New Orleans area residents. O’Keefe flew into town to give a talk. They got their hands on costumes and equipment.

It would seem if that degree of planning went into the execution of the event, there was also some strategy behind the decision to visit Landrieu’s New Orleans office at the moment they did. Not only was Landrieu’s Medicaid reimbursement amendment in the Senate healthcare reform bill already a done deal well before this plot was hatched, but she certainly would not have been negotiating on the phone from her district office. The Senator is in her Washington D.C. office and was throughout the Senate’s negotiations on healthcare reform.

The only possible nefarious activity within the realm of possibility that these guys might find would be if Landrieu’s district office were being used to aid her brother Mitch Landrieu’s campaign for mayor of New Orleans. That might be an esoteric sting for the out-of-town crew. The fourth man, Flanagan, is a Louisiana native. It isn’t far-fetched to imagine he’s kept up with local conservative blogs, that have advanced the pet theory that the White House is in cahoots with the Landrieu siblings to help Mitch Landrieu in his mayoral campaign. A different version of the same idea – Howard Dean’s DNC secret involvement in the mayor’s race on behalf of Mitch Landrieu – was advanced by conservative blogs in 2006. Conservative activists worked to help Ray Nagin win his re-election campaign that year, hoping to perpetuate the administration of a Democrat largely seen as weak.

Local blogger Oyster of Your Right Hand Thief has done incredible work documenting the efforts of conservative bloggers and the local GOP hierarchy to meddle in New Orleans elections and also now theorizes that O’Keefe and the gang’s treasure hunt may have been an effort to prove that Mary Landrieu’s senate office was being used inappropriately to aid the ongoing mayoral campaign. Recent polls have shown Mitch Landrieu well ahead of his competitors. The open primary election is Feb. 6. If he finishes with less than 50 percent of the vote, he will face the next highest vote getter in a runoff election on March 6.

It is hard not to question why O’Keefe would want to film his compatriots in the act of tampering with a senator’s phone, regardless of what they expected to catch staffers saying. In fact, with such little detail, it’s not clear they intended to successfully tap the phones at all.

It could have all been an elaborate plan to expose the gullibility of underpaid Senate staffers for all we know. Still, the assumption that these four men were curious about exposing something related to Landrieu’s Medicaid reimbursement amendment doesn’t pass the smell test. If the motivation was indeed to find some sort of unethical activity out of the senator’s regional office, the mayoral election angle seems like the only sensible possibility, assuming there was any sensible reason applied to any element of this half-baked plot.