We aren’t supposed to win. British Petroleum is a global oil company, which made $5.6 billion the first three months of 2010. We are a community recovering from three hurricanes, a depressed real estate market and national recession. I am the publisher of a weekly newspaper and creator of a little blog.
We can’t win.
Pensacolians are trusting people. We don’t like big government, unions and lawsuits. Some even supported offshore drilling, even though the risks to our livelihood -tourism, commercial and military bases- were great.
BP will buy people off. They will run ads convincing us that all is fine. They will pay a bunch of $5000 claims, settle with the federal and state governments and continue to make billions every month. They will blame our claims and the cost of cleanup for “making” them raise the price of gas at the pump. Greedy Pensacola will pay for its claims at each fill-up.
The local media will support BP….there’s too much money for them to make in taking advertising from BP.
Against those billions stand you and me.
We can’t win.
BP makes more in five minutes than the IN sells in ads for the entire month. The PNJ is one of the most profitable newspapers in the Gannett chain. They will make hundreds of thousands off of BP and by creating special Oil Spill inserts (like they did with Hurricane Ivan).
We can’t win.
We still must try….no wonder I can’t sleep.