Tomorrow is May 1, and college graduation season is almost upon us. Seniors everywhere are writing their last papers, taking their last exams, preparing for the end of their college careers, and probably crying about the employment situation. College placement officers might as well be grief counselors.

For the last three years, the unemployment picture has been Ugly with a capital U, especially for those graduating from college. The Economic Policy Institute’s new paper “Class of 2011: Young workers face a dire labor market without a safety net” is a depressingly accurate take on what they face.

Glad I’m not a commencement speaker this year.

A year after the BP disaster erupted in the Gulf, Cherri Foytlin walked from her home in New Orleans to the White House, to let President Obama hear firsthand the suffering that continues to affect the residents of the Gulf Coast. Sadly, she couldn’t get an invitation to get past the gate. (Rubbing salt in her wounds — she got to watch Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles stroll past her on the sidewalk on their way inside.)

Meanwhile, BP and certain parts of the government continue to try to spin the news, limiting media access to heroic rescuers, limiting scientific access to spill sites, and otherwise trying to hide the record and avoid accountability.

Access. It’s the name of the game.

Fifty-some years ago, the UK recruited America’s help to overthrow the government of Iran to protect BP’s stake in that country because that was seen as the appropriate role for government by those mid-century Anglo-American Masters of the Universe. Now, we’re at that point where our government and BP appear to agree that it is the appropriate role of the corporation that caused a massive disaster to take charge of cleaning up that disaster.