ProPublica is reporting that a "conservation group," the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, took an "it's not so bad" angle in a front-page New York Times story on the Gulf oil spill disaster. Problem is that this so-called "conservation group" is made up largely of oil industry executives. Transocean -the owner of the rig that exploded - hosted this so-called "environmental group's" most recent board meeting. Quenton Dokken, the executive director of the Gulf of Mexico Foundation, told the New York Times for their artilce titled, "Gulf Oil Spill Is Bad, but How Bad?", "The sky is not falling. We've certainly stepped in a hole and we're going to have to work ourselves out of it, but it isn't the end of the Gulf of Mexico." When big oil succeeds in pulling the wool over the eyes of The New York Times by handing them a phony "conservation" group to quote about this oil spill it's a serious indictment of both the state of journalism at the Times as well as the power and mendacity of Big Oil. A starting point for addressing this problem of giant transnational corporations ripping up our environment and our media is to enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, and for the UK to enforce their version of it - to break up these giant monstrosities. Such huge entities largely didn't exist before the Thatcher/Reagan era when both stopped the enforcement of anti-trust laws, and still don't exist in many of the world's countries where anti-trust laws are enforced. Such laws ensure competition, as well as preventing corporations from becoming so large they can become the tail that wags the dogs of media and government. It's time to start enforcing them again, like when Teddy Roosevelt broke Standard Oil into over 30 companies, or when Jimmy Carter broke up AT&T. In both cases, the result was an increase in shareholder value and an increase in competition in the marketplace, leading to more innovation and lower consumer prices.