Subject PRESIDENT BUSH'S LEAKY OIL BARGES Written 437 pm Feb 25, 1991 by christic in cdpch

Subject: PRESIDENT BUSH'S LEAKY OIL BARGES
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 Written 4:37 pm Feb 25, 1991 by christic in cdp:christic.news 


   PRESIDENT BUSH'S LEAKY OIL BARGES 

  Project Censored: Nomination for the "Ten Best Censored Stories of 1990" 


  When three of the most powerful political men in the United States have a 
little business on the side that reeks of conflict of interest, you would 
think the mass media would be interested. But you'd be wrong.  

  Common Cause Magazine examined a financial interest in a Houston- based 
oil tank-barge business (Hollywood Holding) shared by President George Bush, 
Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher, and Secretary of State James Baker 
and found it deserved widespread media exposure for at least three reasons: 

  1) The Bush administration has proclaimed itself the environmental 
administration; 2) the tank-barge industry is a major polluter of U.S.  
waterways; 3) the company that manages the Bush- Mosbacher-Baker barges is 
one of the largest tank-barge companies in the United States; collectively 
its barges, which carry petroleum products, have spilled upwards of 200 
times since 1980, government documents show.  

  The Common Cause Magazine research revealed that: 

  --President Bush invested $50,000 in the barge partnership Hollywood 
L.P.G. 2 in 1978. He already has earned about $130,000 on his investment and 
will continue to receive about $20,000 a year for the foreseeable future.  

  --Commerce Secretary Mosbacher, whose agency monitors U.S. waters for 
pollution, has a 25-percent share in the 220-barge fleet of Hollywood 
Holding which has been responsible for at least 200 oil spills between 1980 
and 1989.  

  --Secretary Baker has invested $175,000 in Hollywood concerns since 1978.  
More than half of the 24 barges Baker has invested in have polluted at least 
once since 1980, according to Coast Guard documents.  

  Although they carry much smaller loads, tank-barges can cause more total 
pollution than tankers since they pollute inland, in bodies of water that 
are more fragile ecologically than the open sea. According to the most 
recent Coast Guard information, tank barges spilled more than 4.3 million 
gallons of oil and other hazardous substances during 1983 and 1984, compared 
with 2.1 million gallons spilled by oil tankers during that time.  

  Congress is considering oil spill legislation that could require double 
hulls in both tankers and tank barges. While barge interests argue that the 
double-hull provision is economically infeasible and would result in only a 
modest reduction in pollution, the Coast Guard says that an entirely 
double-hulled fleet would reduce total barge pollution by 80 percent. 
According to a press spokesperson in the Department of Transportation, the 
Bush administration is not in favor of phasing out single-hulled vessels but 
is in favor of further study.  

  President Bush is apparently aware that mass media exposure of his 
tank-barge investment could be politically embarrassing. On April 10, 1989, 
a little more than two weeks after the supertanker Exxon Valdez gushed oil 
onto hundreds of square miles of Alaska's Prince William Sound, Bush put his 
partnership interest into a qualified blind trust. This means it will not 
appear on his future financial disclosure statements. Nonetheless, thanks to 
the exhaustive investi-gation by Common Cause Magazine, it already is on the 
record and now deserves mass media attention.  

  SOURCE: COMMON CAUSE MAGAZINE, Mar/Apr 1990, "Three Men and a Barge," by 
Teresa Riordan, p 29-33.  


  End of text from cdp:christic.news 
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