Remember when the US Coast Guard seemingly laid down the hammer on June 12 with this, a “demand” for BP to come up with a better oil containment plan? Remember that there was no “or else” in that, our first indication that it may be just a show for the public?

June 12 (VOANews) The U.S. government has given oil giant BP 48 hours to offer a plan to better contain oil leaking from the damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico. In a letter sent Friday, U.S. Coast Guard Admiral James Watson instructed BP’s Chief Operating officer Doug Suttles to identify additional leak containment capacity.

And then remember how, just in the nick of time, BP suddenly had A PLAN, again making the entire exchange seem like an insult to our intelligence, as though we might not think this was carefully choreographed to buy some time from the public, especially given the timing of President Obama’s visit to the gulf coast?

June 14 (CBS/AP) BP’s original plan called for a gradual buildup of containment capacity, peaking at 50,000 barrels by mid-July. Now the company is hoping to capture up to 53,000 barrels a day by the end of June. Capacity could be increased to up to 80,000 barrels by the middle of July, if needed, according to the new plan.

The revised plan comes as President Barack Obama’s embarks on his fourth visit to the region Monday. It is just part of a campaign to apply pressure on BP to more effectively handle the spill response.

Way to go, guys. Great job “applying pressure” and getting results.  Except, well, today is July 8, a full week beyond BP’s announced date to be collecting 53,000 barrels a day. We’re one week away from the revised plan to be collecting 80,000 barrels a day. So how much oil is BP collecting? According to Reuters, BP collected (OR BURNED) just over 24,000 barrels yesterday, not half what they announced they would be collecting by the end of last month, and just over 1/4 of what BP said it would be collecting next week.

And keep in mind, we don’t actually know how much of that is oil that’s being burned off the top, sending a whole new level of toxic waste into our atmosphere, but is included in the estimates of amount “collected”.

What we know is that BP could have been collecting this much oil months ago, but they decided not to, perhaps because doing so would have been an admission then of just how much oil was leaking. As it is, they’ve been able to count on public burn out and complacency to add to the numbers a little at a time, making it a little less shocking every time they add another 10,000 barrels/day to their estimates. This, by the way, is incredibly shocking:

July 6 (Bloomberg) BP Plc waited six weeks to accept Helix Energy Solutions Inc.’s offer to help gather oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, opting to rely on vessels with less than half the capacity to capture crude from its leaking well.

Helix, the Houston-based owner of floating oil platforms and subsea wells, offered its Helix Producer I vessel in late April…

“The ad-hoc way this has been reacted to has reduced the amount of oil captured,” Kratz said by telephone from Houston. “The connection to the vessel itself is jury-rigged because we’ve only had since June 10 to put it together.”

If BP had accepted his offer to make the Helix Producer I available in late April, the vessel would have plugged directly into an 18-inch opening at the top of the blowout preventer, a stack of safety valves sitting atop the well, Kratz said.

Because that opening is now partially blocked by a device that’s funneling some of the leaking oil to Transocean Ltd.’s Discoverer Enterprise drillship, the Helix Producer I will be gathering crude from a 3-inch line on the side of the blowout preventer, Kratz said.

Bottom line: we are not only not getting the truth from BP, we are apparently also not getting the truth from any of the governmental agencies our tax dollars pay to represent us. Worse, it appears to me that these governmental agencies are actually working WITH BP to suppress information and to coordinate stories to placate the public and keep outrage to a minimum. Regarding the appalling media ban issued by our own USCG:

July 3 (Huffington Post) The Coast Guard directive states, “The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom.”

That statement is the most egregious smokescreen we have encountered on this story. No one is maintaining the boom in Barataria Bay. Boom must be anchored, cleaned and replaced. This is not happening, and the Coast Guard, which reports directly to President Obama, does not want you to see this.

Why aren’t boom maintenance laws enforced? Instead, reporters now become felons for showing the American public the utter mess the Coast Guard, federal officials and BP have created in our once-beautiful waterways.

In an updated story the Huffington Post revealed that the USCG Media Liaison works for BP’s PR Agency. I first heard about this lady (Rachel Polish) recently on Twitter, as other people were claiming she was put there to spin stories about BP in a positive light, while using her status as a USCG reservist to build credibility. I suggest you read the entire story, but here are a few excerpts:

July 4 (Huffington Post) It was Petty Officer Polish’s right to offer commentary and within readers’ rights to offer positive and negative commentary on my post. This is the age of interactive media after all. What absolutely floored me were the number of tips that came in on my Facebook page from concerned citizens of the Louisiana Delta and elsewhere. This information offered the possibility that Petty Officer Polish was a paid public relations operative for BP, working in her capacity as a Coast Guard reservist.

Still, I wondered if Polish’s PR career was concurrent with her duties as a Coast Guard reservist. The answer is “yes.”

OK, so the Coast Guard wants to build taxpayer trust — let’s give them that. But to do so with “a partner organization,” makes one ask the question, just how “partnered” is the Coast Guard with BP, and why have so many, not just the media, felt that the Coast Guard is operating as a puppet of BP ever since the BP oil catastrophe began on April 20?

Polish is obviously a skilled and talented woman, but does it constitute a conflict of interest for her to be working in these two capacities concurrently?

In her own words, Polish is also “serving at the Unified Command as part of the Deepwater Horizon Response effort.” Unified Command consists of the Coast Guard, BP, NOAA and Homeland Security. They are certainly unified, and one of Polish’s Twitter re-tweets strangely says the “Coast Guard IS Homeland Security.”

And FURTHER pointing to the far too cozy relationships between EPA, USCG, BP and Nalco (manufacturer of dispersant Corexit), this story:

July 6 (Huffington Post) At the Deepwater Horizon Joint Command press conference last week (June 30) on the toxic studies of Corexit, Paul Anastas, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Assistant Administrator for Research and Development, answered a question from the Associated Press. He said clearly that there was no evidence of dispersants in the air. Here is the relevant portion of a recording of his remarks. (Listen at 1:50)

However, the EPA site which provides real time data for air quality monitoring on the Gulf Coast indicated that from May 18-June 6 “two chemicals found in dispersants” were detected at numerous GPS locations on the Gulf.

The public’s inability to get answers is especially troubling, since more and more information is coming to light regarding the cozy relationship between the Government, the EPA and private industry involved in this catastrophe. The New York Times reported that Nalco Co., the manufacturer of Corexit 9500 hired a former EPA employee as a lobbyist.

In fact, two days after the press conference announcing the test results on dispersants, “Unified Command” issued a press release directing readers to the CDC website that recommends use of respirators for workers exposed to oil and dispersants.

So, dispersants are clearly present in the air, both over sea and land. If Unified Command is suggesting that oil spill responders might want to reconsider using respirators, why have we been told by the EPA, at a press conference, that there are no dispersants in the air?

Could it be the answer lies in the deep connections between the Coast Guard, the EPA, BP, government lobbyists, and the manufacturer of Corexit?

And to truly seal the deal here, you need to read this information from Environmental Defense Fund, showing how the USCG overrode EPA’s orders for BP to stop using surface-applied dispersants except in “rare cases”. Since that directive May 26th, your USCG has granted nearly every single exception requested by BP, and those have happened for nearly every single day since the directive went out. And where is the EPA on this consistent overriding of its directive?  <crickets>

You better switch off your TV and look around. While you were not looking, your country sold you out to big corporations and your freedoms have been stripped away from you, one at a time. Enjoy your new fenced-in yard… don’t you feel so safe??