Jeff Pelline's Sierra Foothills Report

The embattled chief executive of BP, Tony Hayward, watched his yacht sail in a race off the Isle of Wight this weekend while oil spewed into the Gulf.

BP described the outing as a “rare moment of private time,” but others were outraged.

“I believe it’s the height of arrogance,” said Richard Shelby, Republican senator from Alabama, in an article in the London Telegraph. “That yacht should be here, skimming and cleaning up the oil.”

Hayward already has come under fire for verbal gaffes that suggested he was insensitive to the oil leak and spill, the worst in U.S. history.

It’s become more fashionable to direct outrage at government, through the Tea Party and all. But I often wonder why more of it isn’t directed at the corporate world, which continues to embarrass itself.

We have held a small number of BP shares for years, and I have written about businesses from the corporate point of view — not just the consumer side.

But I have no sympathy for this. Like many others, I would have handed Hayward his pink slip long ago — and I expect it will happen in the aftermath of this debacle.

An article about how Congress is blaming BP cost cutting for the Gulf oil leak is here. Other oil companies have not exactly rallied to BP’s defense either. The truth is, accidents like this don’t just “happen.”

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The fallout from our county’s declining, aging population manifests itself in many ways, including letters to the editor in The Union. The same names keep appearing, with the same rhetoric.

Just for fun, I sometimes read the letters backwards, starting with the author’s name. Then I try to guess what the letter is about.

Here’s one that ran this weekend:

“A few thoughts.

“It began last November in Virginia and New Jersey. It continued in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Florida, Utah and Kentucky. When Obama campaigned for a candidate, they lost. Candidates who supported Obama lost and candidates who opposed Obama won. Today’s polls show Democrats losing. Obama is destroying the Democratic Party. Their only solution is to impeach him.

“The health care plan will add 16,500 agents to the IRS to check on everyone’s insurance. It will add 150 new agencies and will add billions to our health care costs. It will decrease the number of health providers.

“Ethanol production requires a gallon of oil products to produce one gallon of ethanol. It provides 1/3 less energy than gasoline. Our government pays $0.51 for each gallon produced.

“Cap and Trade is ridiculous. It gives certificates to low carbon producing countries which they can sell to high carbon producers. It does nothing to reduce green house gases. It is called redistribution of wealth. It takes from the rich countries and gives to the poor foreign countries. It will raise prices on everything we consume.

“Obama’s agenda has spent trillions, but only helps to destroy our economy and will never solve our unemployment problem.

Thomas Crosswhite
Grass Valley”

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Who says people don’t read Playboy for the articles? In the magazine’s latest edition, a political consultant lifts the curtain on “many of the politically crafty, somewhat seedy” underpinnings of the Tea Party movement, writes the Huffington Post.

The article, written by an anonymous consultant on K Street (lobbying row in our nation’s capitol), is here. “We make a sport out of confusing the press,” it reads.

“Because it’s written without identification, the piece has to be read with a measure of skepticism,” according to Huff Post. “But the piece certainly dispels the myth — if it still existed — that the Tea Party is some sort of folksy grassroots movement merely trying to add a modicum of sense to today’s corrupt political process.”

Among the claims: Tea Party strategists have “quietly acquired Service Employees International Union shirts to wear at Tea Party rallies,” which the author describes as the equivalent of “handing out TSA uniforms in Kabul.”

•Consultants try to stir up anger among average Americans. “We’re playing to the reptilian brain rather than the logic centers, so we can look for key words and images to leverage the intense rage and anxiety of white working-class conservatives,” the consultant writes.

•Campaign plans are not filled with dirty tricks but a plan to create a nonprofit organization such as “Ensuring Liberty Corporation” to get the message out and support grassroots conservatives.

•Using new technology to design a thank-you note from an imaginary Wall Street executive to working-class taxpayers to “help leverage rage.” The practice is more rewarding than “most other messaging campaigns” and the variable-print technology postcard “can be personalized and won’t look as though it was printed overnight at Kinko’s,” according to the consultant.

The article provides an inside look at campaigning — something most of the press, including our local media misses completely. I’m also reminded that Internet communications — such as email blasts to memberships — has given “grassroots” movements like the Tea Party a major boost.

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