I see some commercials in the fall:
Congressional Democrats and the White House are toying with different ways to force BP to cover the costs of damages from the Gulf oil spill. But they face stiff opposition from industry…and it seems leading Republicans. In response to a question from TPMDC, House Minority Leader John Boehner backed Tom Donohue, President of the Chamber of Commerce, in saying taxpayers should help pick up the tab.
“I think the people responsible in the oil spill–BP and the federal government–should take full responsibility for what’s happening there,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference this morning.
On Friday, Donohue made clear that he opposes efforts to stick BP, a member of the Chamber, with the bill. “It is generally not the practice of this country to change the laws after the game,” he said. “Everybody is going to contribute to this clean up. We are all going to have to do it. We are going to have to get the money from the government and from the companies and we will figure out a way to do that.”
I thought Republicans opposed bailouts?
This also might be a good time to examine what kind of tax breaks big oil gets.
cleek
Boner’s gonna have to moonwalk that one back, PDQ.
4tehlulz
SOSHILLIZM IS UNAMERICAN
But BP is British so no prob.
Quiddity
Will someone please ask Boehner how the federal government is responsible for the spill? (Is this a version of Limbaugh’s “regulations forced companies to do deep water drilling”?)
smedley
How is the federal government responsible for the spill?
The Dangerman
PPSL
Privatizing Profits, Socializing Losses; might as well give it an acronym.
Fuck BP.
Allison W.
we should bailout a company that grossed 200+ billion last year? genius.
Dave C
God, I hope that somebody in the Democratic party has the brains and the stones to make the Republicans choke on their full-throated
fellatingembrace of BP come November.4tehlulz
@smedley: If only the federal government had enforced the regulations we seek to undermine, this would never have happened.
flotsam
just fuckin shameless…
jibeaux
A relative of my husband’s is an environmental engineer working on cleanup in the Gulf now. He’s sent some of his thoughts on the whole mess, one of which I thought was a pretty good analogy. He was basically warning of the dangers of demonizing BP alone and stopping there, his point being that there are dangers in the technology, made by man and always fallible, that all the oil companies use; and that the oil companies are providing what we’re all demanding — cheap, inefficient energy. His analogy was only blaming the whore, when the johns share the blame.
And I think that’s true. So here’s my message to John Boehner: I didn’t vote to drill in water a mile deep, and I didn’t design your faulty equipment that caused this mess. And I’m not going to pay for that. But I acknowledge that my house, and my car, and my standard of living are all bought on the back of cheap, nonrenewable energy, and that is making our planet worse and our children’s future worse. That I am willing to do something about. So ask us to pay a little more for our carbon use, as part of a comprehensive energy and climate bill. Because that, I will pay for.
dmsilev
Strangely BP, at least in public, disagrees:
I’m sure that behind the scenes, BP is furiously pulling every string that they can to stick the taxpayers with as much of the bill as possible, but that’s their public stance.
And someone *really* needs to ask John Beohner just what responsibility the federal government has for the spill.
dms
Shalimar
@smedley: The regulators were bought off with sex and cocaine, so it’s their fault for failing to force BP to act safely and responsibly. Thus, regulations don’t work and we need deregulation to fix this mess so it doesn’t happen again. Also, it’s only fair to make the federal government pay for all of this because you really can’t expect a corporation like BP to act any other way than it did.
danimal
There’s more than one way to capture the cost of carbon. Cap and Trade is more fair and predictable, carbon taxes can be work as well, but if those two routes can’t be taken, then billing the hell out of oil companies for cleanup costs along with closing out subsidies and tax loopholes will get the job done.
Removing tax preferences for oil companies is a great wedge issue to create Chamber vs Teaparty smackdowns.
Moonbatting Average
I’m waiting for the winger blogs to try and drum up support for a BP “buycott”. Later on, we’ll have Palin tweeting about how liberals are actually the ones who hate the environment, because they aren’t supporting BP and therefore are depriving the company of capital it will need to pay for the cleanup.
Arguingwithsignposts - ipod touchs
This is going to go over real well in the gulf states. WTF are these folks smoking?
El Cid
As Digby pointed out, Mary Landrieu will probably be all in favor of this.
Allan
@jibeaux: That’s a magnificent comment.
Unfortunately, it is expressed in a reality-based language unknown to Republicans, and you might as well try lobbying Boehner in Sanskrit.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@cleek:
No he won’t. IOKIYAR. Boehner and the Republicans will be able to play both sides of this game. They will get to shill for BP and the CoC and then when the government pays for the clean-up the folks like Limbaugh, Beck and the teabaggers will take over and accuse the administration of soci@lism and bailouts.
some other guy
Anyone want to make some bets on which Congress will cut first: Social Security/Medicare/Medicaid benefits or tax breaks for the oil industry?
Keep in mind that, unlike with SS and the like, there’s no presidential commission currently seeking out ways to screw over the oil companies in the name of deficit reduction.
Violet
These tax breaks are massive. If Americans were only aware of the kinds of tax breaks Big Oil gets, they’d be shocked.
BC
Well, if Obama had just gotten angry and ranted and raved, the government wouldn’t bear any responsibility for the oil spill, but since he didn’t (and since he uttered “ass” on national tv so all the schoolchildren in America could hear him), then the national government is also responsible. If McCain had been president, he would have been able to express his anger in an appropriate manner and the oil spill would have been God’s responsibility and God would have cleaned it up.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@smedley:
That’s easy, the Obama administration didn’t clean house at MMS and allowed the industry to sleep in bed with the regulators responsible for keeping industry honest.
Everything was fine at the Minerals Management Service until 12:00pm (est) on January 20, 2009 and then it went to shit when the Obama Administration and his Chicago-style cronies took over.
sukabi
Time for Obama to “act Presidential” and use the authority of his office. It’s time to quit fucking around with BP, seize the American operation, start hiring, training and deploying folks to do the clean up, along with ordering the other oil cos. to start helping and bringing in ships and shit to skim oil and plug the damn hole, and take over the reimbursement phase of the operation as well… then present a huge fucking bill to what’s left of BP with the understanding that their financial commitment isn’t over until the last fucking drop of oil is cleaned up… which may be 30 – 50 years from now. And use the Treasury to seize their accounts at the first sign of foppery (which would be yesterday).
And let Boner and the rest of the corporate whores have their conniption fit… they’re going to do it anyway, no matter what he does. And at least the plan above would be popular with the majority of folks, would provide JOBS for a bunch of the folks down there who are having their lives destroyed, and for a bunch of other folks that need work and can’t find it.
Bill E Pilgrim
It’s not the federal government’s fault until Obama became President and then it is because if Obama had been more emotional the oil would have sensed this and not leaked.
freelancer
This, in combo with “HELL NO YOU CAN’T!” should make for some great TV ads
The Moar You Know
When did John Boehner become the spokesman for young bucks buying T-bone steaks?
Dave C
Does it reflect poorly on my character that I now daydream about seeing a publicly-televised hanging (on the White House lawn, I’m thinking) of the execs of the major financial institutions and BP?
Don SinFalta
I know it’s a dangerous thing to say here in the middle of all the Obots, but I’m going on record right now predicting that this whole affair will be business as usual, with the taxpayers picking up the significant majority of the bill, the Democrats (including our President) paying a bunch of lip service to the responsibility of the oil companies and the need to do something about our energy addiction, climate change, blah blah blah, and with the usual absence of change in the way the plutocrats manage to always privatize the profits and socialize the losses. That said, nobody will be happier than me if I turn out to be wrong about this.
eemom
@Dave C:
only partly. The BP execs should not be hung but soaked in oil and left to die in the sand on a hot beach.
As for the wall street thugs, hanging is too good, but I guess it’ll have to do.
Josh
In happier news, it’s a nice, sunny day.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Don SinFalta:
Do you know what the word “dangerous” means?
kdaug
The answer: $35 Billion in tax breaks.
And today, Bernie Sanders pushed a measure to repeal them:
Josh
@Don SinFalta:
Whenever I see the word “Obot” I can’t help but feel compulsively inclined to point about that “Obot” is a very weak word.
I prefer to use “Obamaton.”
Zifnab
@Violet: Oh, by the “kind of tax breaks” they get, you mean “all of it.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/04/06/exxon-tax/
Almost makes you wonder what the point of having transnationals run out of the US would be, if we aren’t allowed to actually collect any of the money, eh? But I’m sure it’s not like Exxon makes any use of the taxpayer funded US infrastructure. And they sure as hell don’t derive any benefit from the US state department or the US military.
:-p
liberal
@danimal:
I thought some people argued that C&T is much more subject to fraud and gaming than a carbon tax.
catclub
@Allan:
“Unfortunately, it is expressed in a reality-based language unknown to Republicans, and you might as well try lobbying Boehner in Sanskrit.”
I think more lobbying takes place sans skirt.
kdaug
Link fail. Here
Zifnab
@Don SinFalta: Thank you for your pessimism. Now let’s hear your plan of action.
cat48
Since Rolling Stone found Obama personally responsible for the spill, he should probably pay himself. We may have to extend credit to him or start letting him promote products for profit since the ad people seem to like him……..he should have it paid for in no time. Look how well Tiger did w/endorsements! Maybe he could work on the debt also,too!
numbskull
@Violet:
Not doubting you, but where does one go to get that information?
liberal
@jibeaux:
I agree there are dangers, and it might be reasonable to say “no drilling in such deep waters.”
But the fact remains that the data show that BP cut corners on this well (e.g. on the blowout preventer).
It’s like saying auto tech is dangerous, and giving as an example a car whose breaks are all worn out.
Josh
@cat48:
That article was crap. jibeaux has it right. We all share a little of the blame. We want things in huge quantities, and we want it cheap, so we make cut-backs and sacrifices.
And it finally caught up to us. If there was ever any indication that things needed to change, it is this spill and all of the bullshit being spewed from everywhere in vastly greater quantities than the oil.
Americanadian
@Josh: That still doesn’t mean you and I should have to foot the bill for BP’s shit-poor safety record.
I’m still holding my breath for someone in power to say, “hey, maybe if we cut back on our oil consumption, up mileage requirements, and phase out whatever oil power plants and home-heating systems we still have, we’d have to cope with less of this bullshit.”
You’d swear the FCC was dishing out million-dollar fines for using the word “conservation” on T.V. or the radio.
cat48
@Josh:
I agree. Time magazine has a good article & they give him some of the blame, which I’m ok with. They name 11 other people too so that seemed fair since it included MMgt, BP, Explorer, etc.
jibeaux
@liberal:
True, but aren’t there other oil companies who cut corners on blowout preventers? because they aren’t required? or am I thinking of something else? I tend to think if the roulette wheel had spun a little differently, it could have just as easily been, say, Shell. To me that doesn’t take anything away from the blame justifiably heaped on BP, just acknowledges that things going wrong in operations like this isn’t a one-off kind of thing. He’s a little concerned, I think, that people are worried about the company, and not the technology, which could lead to people concluding, say — Drill in ANWR? Is that really a good idea? Oh, Chevron. Ok, well, as long as it’s not BP.
Brachiator
Some of the more conservative UK newspapers are also suggesting that Obama’s tough talk is anti-British.
Putting this into a little context: “BP was Britain’s biggest company before the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 and worth around £122billion but is valued has now halved.”
And there is also this little tidbit from one article:
And lastly there is this:
Apart from the devastating environmental issues, there are all kinds of little unintended consequences likely to spew before this is all settled.
Comrade Mary
When mild-mannered Canadian biologists get angry, they don’t mince words:
Do read his follow-up and the other comments, please. Especially this:
LittlePig
@Dave C: Hell no – that would be must-see TV!
Make it pay-per-view and split the proceeds between national debt reduction and oil spill cleanup. Funding problems over!
LittlePig
@Don SinFalta: Oh please.
“He has disparaged the name of the One, Barack “The Islamic Shock” Hussein Superallah Obama, PBUH”
I think you’re dead right on this one, but you know, slavering mindless hordes and all that.
Napoleon
@Brachiator:
Someone I work with worked at BP when they were HQed in Cleveland and came hear from there, and in the past mentioned to me a few times something that made me think a hugh chunk of her 401 (k) is tied up in BP stock (I bet they had somekind of a matching plan). And she is not exactly wealthy.
slag
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
In a rational world, I would be very excited about the potential outcomes of having this argument.
Because I, in fact, do hold the federal government accountable for helping cause the spill. But that’s because I’m not a Republican, and I believe that the federal government does (or should) play a vital role in regulating business. And when the government doesn’t do that, I consider that a failure.
However, since we do not live in a rational world, there are no good potential outcomes of having this argument. At least no good potential outcomes for me. Only good potential outcomes for Republicans who believe that the federal government does not (or should not) play a vital role in regulating business.
Irony. It’s a harsh mistress.
I should add that Obama said “ass” on the teevee, which clearly makes this irrational world we live in all his fault.
cat48
Well, friggn crist on a crutch! Anti-British & anti-Israel!
Dave C
@LittlePig:
Oh man, I swear I’m not a violent person–I don’t even believe in the morality of capital punishment!–but I would seriously pay money for that.
some other guy
@liberal:
Cap and trade schemes always seemed a bit fishy, reminiscent of the energy trading scam that Enron was running. There was a Harpers cover story (“Conning the Climate” by Mark Schapiro) a few months back that really cemented my skepticism of a “carbon trading” market:
http://harpers.org/archive/2010/02/0082826
Or, if you don’t have a Harpers subscription, you can download a PDF of the article here:
http://citizensclimatelobby.org/node/383
Zifnab
@Josh:
No no no. You’re not going to dump this out as “everyone’s fault”. BP, TransOcean, and Halliburton built a shitty well that was far below even the lackluster standards of your typical deep sea drilling operation. They failed to build in proper safeguards or even correctly anchor the well’s cement base, and they had absolutely nothing in the way of disaster response planned out.
This wasn’t citizenry clamoring for a few extra cents off the price of gas. This was a handful of contractors and executives working to “contain costs” to fatten their own wallets, with absolutely zero regard for the market price of oil.
BP has a history of fuck-ups, from gas leaks to plant explosions. Other companies turn a profit just fine while drilling and extracting natural resources. No gas guzzling consumer I have ever seen has demanded Exxon or Shell cut it’s quality control standards to save a few cents at the pump. This disaster is uniquely and unquestioningly the result of poor judgement by BP and it’s affiliates.
cleek
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
consider it walked back.
from Boehner’s spokesman, Michael Steel:
Right Wing Extreme
@Josh: I prefer Obamazombie. It is much better than Obot or Otamaton.
IndieTarheel
@catclub: Well played.
slag
@Don SinFalta:
That’s ok. Even if you do turn out to be wrong about this, I’m sure you will find a way to consider yourself right.
some other guy
@some other guy:
[fixed link]
Brachiator
@Violet:
There’s not necessarily a big secret here. It’s just that the average person doesn’t know much about taxes and doesn’t want to be bothered.
For example, you can google up Exxon’s financial statements. If you know that depletion is often included with depreciation and amortization, you find that in 2009, Exxon Mobil had a gross profit of $89 billion and about $12 billion in depreciation/amortization.
But let’s get to the punch line:
Yep. Exxon Mobil paid $0 federal income tax in 2009.
Comrade Kevin
@Brachiator:
Boris Johnson, currently the mayor of London, is widely regarded as a clown in the UK.
Americanadian
@Napoleon: This would be an excellent chance to point out that company stock-based matching policies amount to a mandatory placing of every employee’s eggs in one basket, and should perhaps be reformed to make employees less vulnerable to bad management decisions they have no control over.
This crisis is being wasted in so many ways.
PTirebiter
I’ve heard at least two GOP congressmen push the idea that removing limits on their liability would only make the big oil companies more powerful by squeezing out the little guys. I don’t recall hearing anything about deep water wildcatters, but I’d watch the show when it came out.
Josh
@Zifnab:
Well no shit, Zinfab. But just punishing BP and passing some shitty new laws will not fix the overarching problem of our energy consumption and our collective lackluster concern for the environment.
There needs to be a large social and political shift to change our energy consumption, and to really invest in green forms of energy.
While we’re all comfortable using cheap fossil fuels, this isn’t going to happen. You can’t lay the social fault at BP’s feet; you can lay the lax government regulations and corrupt regulators at the feet of the government, and you can lay the fault for BP and Transocean’s fuck-ups at their feet, but you can’t just ignore the bigger problems as to why this happened.
And it isn’t just our energy consumption, but the mindset that the big corporations are the backbone of America, and what is good for them is good for the country.
Kryptik
Proposing that taxpayer money goes toward seeing that Americans have some kind of minimum of medical coverage? That’s Soshuisms and tyrannical!!
Proposing that taxpayer money goes toward paying off an oil company responsible for one of the worst spills in our history because the CoC is butthurt that people are blaming one of their members, who happens to own the rig? That’s just good governance, no Liberal Big Gov’t about that at all?
Good god, fucking priorities….
Bill Section 147
@Zifnab: Yes. Tax me for emissions and tax me on gasoline, and any energy derived from fossil fuel and whatever else but don’t tax me on BPs spill. They own it. They bought the rights to drill it from me for pennies on the dollar thanks to anachronistic mineral rights laws. They knew the risks and they calculated the rewards. It sure as hell isn’t my fault if they underestimated the cost and over estimated the profit. That’s capitalism baby.
dmsilev
@cleek: How long until a video recording emerges showing that the TPM reporter had perfect diction and was sitting three feet away from Boehner?
dms
scarshapedstar
Let me get this straight: the GOP wants the federal government to throw money at a problem.
Hmmmmmmm…
kay
@Don SinFalta:
It’s not, really. I’ll measure Obama’s effectiveness by the dollar amount he extracts from BP. I simply want what BP would pursue, if they were in my shoes: compensation for total damages.
I can already see the Chamber of Commerce and House members working for business interests, muddying the water with ideological issues, and I’d like to stay focused on what BP might do if their property were damaged, which is go to the absolute wall on what they could get. There wouldn’t be any discussion of cost-benefit to society as a whole, or any of that. We know that, based simply on their actions so far.
I’m like them, now. I want to get paid.
Comrade Dread
Good for Cameron.
I have little doubt if an American company had completely f***ed over the British coastline, there’d be plenty of anti-American corporate feelings across the Pond, and they’d expect that company to pay up in full.
Of course, I can also easily imagine our own right wing a**holes screaming about Britain betraying us and calling for boycotts of H.Salt Fish and Chips shops, so maybe I should just ignore right wing idiots in general.
Napoleon
@Americanadian:
No joke.
I have a client whose nest egg consisted of stock that he had in a real estate developer who he helped found and which had been take public before he left and founded a new real estate development company. Of course both “amazingly” went south at the exact same time and his nest egg was considerably smaller when he needed it to help keep his new company afloat.
El Cid
@scarshapedstar:
Well, as long as it’s not schools. Throwing money at a big company can solve all our problems, but you can’t fix schools by throwing money at them.
Josh
@El Cid:
Nope. You can only fix school by firing teachers and packing students into rooms like sardines and using textbooks that don’t know how the Vietnam war turned out.
cleek
why should BP have to pay to clean up Bill Clinton’s mess ?
tesslibrarian
@BC: Acc. to the Onion, Obama has a plan.
Sadly, I think the story is an accurate account of what the American media wants.
Kryptik
@cleek:
…can we just feed Dick Morris to Kaus’ goats or something? Please? I’m just utterly sick of seeing his tripe, and given some kind of credibility simply because he was employed by the Clintons (thus everything he says about them MUST be the super-truth!).
cleek
@Kryptik:
i see no reason why we shouldn’t.
IndieTarheel
@cleek: Hey! What did those goats ever do to you guys anyway?
Brachiator
@Comrade Kevin:
RE: fellow Tory Boris Johnson ramped up the pressure by accusing the U.S. President of ‘buck passing’ and ‘beating up’ the British-based company.
Good point. You’re right, and this is probably one of the reasons that British prime minister Cameron didn’t take the bait. And except for people with ideological axes to grind, you don’t see many average citizens coming to BP’s defense.
gnomedad
@jibeaux:
Hear, hear.
Kryptik
@Brachiator:
My worry is exactly that: the average citizen isn’t coming to BP’s defense. The rich and political influential are. And they’re pretty much the only ones that matter until elections come, and people can be swayed enough to believe something totally bullshit as long as enough ads are put out to drown the truth.
Bob
sukabi:
I didn’t know the federal government had a warehouse of oil rig/plugging equipment. Does Obama have the legal authority to seize the property and order other companies to help? I bet not.
cleek
@Bob:
given recent history, it seems obvious that Presidents can do pretty much anything they want, if they simply claim it’s for “national security”.
Kryptik
@cleek:
You forgot the necessary caveat:
“as long as they’re a Republican”
cat48
Mittens has an oped ripping O in USA Today. He’s decided O must be there & handle everything himself. I wonder if he knows it doesnt just involve LA. He only mentions NOLA & oil is hitting most states now.
NonyNony
@Comrade Dread:
Actually, and somewhat amusingly, they’d be calling for boycotts of British Petroleum. And possibly English Muffins if they thought about it for a little bit. We are talking about the people who coined the phrase “Freedom Fries” because France thought invading Iraq was a bad idea, after all.
ed drone
@The Dangerman:
I think it’d read better ‘tother way ’round:
Socialize the Loss, and Privatize the Profits : SLAPP
That way, you can not only pronounce it, but it’s onomatopoetic as well.
Ed
Martin
I’m going to give Britain a tiny bit of defense here.
Nobody in Congress really gave a shit about holding oil companies accountable until this happened. Rather than concentrate on how to get money out of BP, they need to make sure they’ve got the whole system locked down. I don’t doubt that some of that is happening, but it’s all concentrated on BP, in part because it (and Transocean, Halliburton, etc.) are foreign corporations. Our focus is being presented as too focused on BP because everyone is too fucking scared to rattle the chains of Exxon and the rest.
As usual, Congress needs to man up and do this shit for real, not for the case at hand.
Redshift
@ed drone: Yeah, but SLAPP is already in use, for “strategic lawsuit against public participation.” Publicizing those is a good cause, and I wouldn’t want to confuse either effort by using the same acronym for both.
sukabi
@Bob: think about this Bob, if a “terrorist organization” had contaminated the food / water supply of several states and put thousands of people out of work and just generally disrupted their lives what do you think the Government’s powers would be?
Our government, which seems to be powerless in the current situation, would be seizing assets, freezing bank accounts and just doing everything possible to bring them to task… and all you have to do is look back a few years to all the charitable organizations that were froze out of their money / accounts because of some tenuous ties at best to some “terrorist organization”…
as to your other statement about the government not having warehouses full of equipment and other stuff for plugging up and soaking up the oil… that’s where the other oil companies being pressed into service comes in… and I might add all the companies that produce that stuff should be operating at full capacity to produce more…
If we just sit around with our thumbs in our asses and wait for BP to clean, plug and pay all we’ll have for our patience is a thumb in our asses while we sit in a huge mess of oil.
bemused
Interesting how “good” Christians in this country have been so worked up about those horrible “sins”, being pro-choice or gay, they have completely ignored greed. Oh wait, I forgot it depends on who is getting a break. People in need = free ride/greed.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T but this just came through my inbox from WaPo breaking news, and I’m wondering what everyone makes of this. Is it kind of par for the course in terms of numbers screwed up, or an outrage? Don’t know details yet so I’m not sure if these misidentifications go back decades, or just in recent years.
I think I’ve mentioned before that I have two ancestors, Union soldiers (father and son to each other) who died during their imprisonment at Andersonville and are buried there. I have visited their grave markers and found it quite a moving experience — but I never believed for one minute that their actual remains were located in those precise locations (indeed, I think they were mostly mass graves for a very long time). But I was interested in the permanent marker/memorial, not where the long-decayed body was. Maybe others feel differently, and I certainly am fine with that. But to me, unless there needed to be an exhumation, it wouldn’t make a big difference.
(And obviously I’m not saying, oh, just put the bodies any old where, it doesn’t matter. I’m not saying that at all, and yes, I’m in Georgia and I remember the Tri-State Crematorium horror of a few years ago.)
Apologies for the O/T. Back to Welfare Queens.
Ruckus
@Allison W.:
Forget the yearly gross sales.
The profit BP made so far this year will pay to clean up the mess. Many times over. And you and I have no idea how much that total will be. As of today the number I heard was currently at around 900+ million. That’s almost chump change for BP, whose profit for 1st quarter 2010 was over 5.5 billion.
Do they have any insurance to cover any of this? I read somewhere that BP self insures. Still looks like they can afford it.
The Dangerman
@ed drone:
I call winner.
I’m just wondering what would happen if Obama was ever onamatopetic about onanism.
Bulworth
Well, Boehner is “numbnuts” and probably truly didn’t understand what he was being asked or at least thought he was being given an opportunity to bash Obama. But the Chamber’s Tom Donohue does know, I think, a bit more of what he is talking about and his whinyasstittybabying about “not changing the rules” and pretty clear demand for some sort of BP bail-out is the more interesting aspect of this. I’m in favor of dunking Donohue in some spilled gulf oil.
stuckinred
@SiubhanDuinne: Same old shit, believe me. I will say that I have buried two friends there and the funeral part was top notch both times.
Americanadian
@Bulworth: He’s just doing what they pay him for – trying to redirect anger against big business to any other target he can think of, or at the very least just putting his finger to his nose and shouting “not it!”
Ruckus
@Martin:
As usual, Congress needs to man up and do this shit for real, not for the case at hand.
Isn’t that going to be pretty hard to accomplish? My wild ass guess is that about 80% of the congress only gives a shit about getting reelected, so they whore themselves out to the highest bidder. It always amazes me when anything good comes out of congress. Fortunately I learned long ago not to hold my breath expecting anything from congress, otherwise I’d be a lovely shade of deep blue.
Calouste
@Brachiator:
Boris Johnson is a terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease, complicated by a severe instance of engage-mouth-before-brain syndrom. Funny as the but of jokes in topical news shows, rather embarrassing in any role more powerful than backbench MP.
I bet Cameron was quite happy when Boris became mayor of London, because that meant he would be spared of having to give his old Bullingdon Club buddy a seat in the cabinet.
Kryptik
@Ruckus:
And at least 45% of Congress seems to have a vested interest in ‘If it’s Good/Bad for Obama,it’s Bad/Good for Us!’ and reflexively opposing anything Obama might agree on, at least until enough concessions are made that the damage is already done in the public eye. Even if it means fucking over a significant amount of the American people, because they know they can fool a big chunk of them into blaming Obama, the Dems, everyone except the Republicans and Corporate Interests.
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
Yes, because there are laws allowing us to do so. Those organizations’ assets were frozen using those laws. The government didn’t just step in and start taking stuff willy-nilly — they used the courts and the legal system to do it.
Please point out which laws allow the federal government to take over private companies if we think those private companies are dragging their heels in cleaning up after themselves.
D0n Camillo
@cleek:
This is one of the reasons I fucking hate Republicans. Michael Steel just had to call a reporter who was doing his job a “numbnut”. He couldn’t just say that Boehner misheard what the reporter was saying could he? They always have to insult and belittle anyone who disagrees.
Mike Kay
Slow news day.
Dramedy and flame wars are much more entertianing.
Oscarbob
The disconnect between the republican positions from week to week is truly staggering. Will anyone in the media even question the contradictions?
Mnemosyne
@Mike Kay:
Slow for you. In our little burg we have an overturned oil tanker on one of our major freeways, plus my alma mater, USC, has been banned from bowl games for the next 2 years. Much excitement and drama in the Southland today.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: there could be a case made that they are a terrorist organization… all you’d have to do is take a comprehensive look at how they’ve operated in any of the countries where they have oil ops and the tactics they’ve used / wreckage they’ve left behind….
Mike Kay
@Mnemosyne: USC is overrated. All that talent and only one championship under Carroll. That said, the USC girls are smoking hawt!
Mnemosyne
@sukabi:
Take a look at the current laws and let us know how that works out for you.
I’m pissed off about this whole thing myself, but you’re living in a fantasy world if you think that the US could successfully declare British Petroleum an international terrorist organization and seize its assets on that basis. I think that might cause just a wee bit of trouble with the British government, don’t you think?
NonyNony
@Bulworth:
I’m in favor of taking Donohue at his face value when he says “we” in those little sentences and take it as members of the US Chamber of Commerce volunteering to have their taxes raised to pay for the goddamn cleanup and reimbursement of people whose livelihoods have been destroyed by this. After all, as head of the Chamber of Commerce that’s who he’s speaking for when he uses the word “we”, right?
brent
@dmsilev:
This is a bit of a trick. The question is not, and has never been, whether BP would pay for the cleanup. They are already legally obligated to pay those costs fully. The issue is paying for damages for which they are only legally responsible for a max of $75 million dollars. And as with most things, if a company is ethically but not legally responsible, you can bet that they will be telling ethics to go fuck itself sooner or later.
scav
Don’t know about the terrorist rap as I don’t think they killed people and / or ecosystems in order to scare the populace / govt into following their wishes — but if BP is realio trulio a person in this great nation of ours (as best I recall a realio trulio repubio positiono) and as the repubs are “Tough on Crime!”™ “Three Strikes You’re Out!”™ hard-liners, I would like to simply remind folks that 760 > 3 for the mathematically challenged. Wouldn’t want any activist judges to attempt to invoke empathy for any scoff-law low-life punks now, would we?
Ruckus
@Kryptik:
No kidding.
It’s power for powers sake.
Citizen Alan
@Mnemosyne:
Nah, it’s just Great Britain. It’s not like it’s Israel or something.:)
MikeJ
@Mnemosyne:
BBC News this morning was wall to wall, “the Americans are being mean to Britain.” Very concerned that pretty much every pension in the UK is heavily invested in BP. Boris was on.
keestadoll
Dem Fall Ad Idea: Boehner as Gumby
MikeJ
@keestadoll: His horse Pokey was the orange one.
keestadoll
@Citizen Alan:
Eggggzactly
kay
@Martin:
I’m not comfortable with that answer. We have like a 90 second attention span. All this blame-shifting is good public policy, but that isn’t how it’s going to be used.
It’s going to be used to muddy the water and blur the lines of responsibility here.
The executive branch needs to go after BP for damages. The Oil Pollution Act isn’t the only relevant law. There’s plenty of law.
Congress can follow with whatever they manage to pass, going forward, but there should be a “laser like” focus on holding these responsible parties liable.
It’s interesting and relevant to talk about government’s role in regulation, but that’s a discussion voters can have, and it has nothing to do with what BP damaged, and how much they should pay, and when.
I get nervous when lawmakers and business interests start talking in global policy terms in these situations.
I know your intent is honorable, but I don’t want to lose focus of what happened here, and I’m always wary when business interests start talking about “our shared responsibility”.
BP didn’t concern themselves with shared responsibility, and if I blew up one of their oil rigs they’d be pursuing me to the ends of the earth. They damaged property, they should pay the damages, first, before we get into policy discussions.
Robert Sneddon
@Comrade Dread:
Google for “Torrey Canyon” sometime — it was a Liberian-registered supertanker owned by California-based Union Oil subsidiary corporation on lease to (guess who!) BP. The ship’s cook was steering the 120,000 tonne supertanker in 1967 when it ran aground off the Isles of Scilly on the SW English coast.
I don’t recall anyone in the UK at the time screaming about lynching Union Oil executives even while volunteers collected oiled seabirds for treatment and tried to clean up the mess.
D0n Camillo
@Robert Sneddon:
In retrospect, maybe they should have. It seems like oil company executives just don’t give a shit about the consequences of their negligence.
sukabi
@Mnemosyne: do you think the Brits would pass off a chance to go after an American company that destroyed over 1/3 of it’s sea food production capabilities and the environment / people that produced it?
I somehow doubt that they would be timid about their actions toward such a company.
mai naem
Until upper management at these companies is held criminally responsible for pulling crap like this, this stuff is going to continue to happen. Tony Whatshisname wouldn’t have even thought of uttering those stupid “I want my life back” words if it looked like he was facing some stiff prison time.
Sidenote – for anybody who caught Carville’s rant about sending people who went for deregulation being forcibly sent to reeducation camps – has anybody asked him if he feels his wifey should be in a reeducation camp?
kay
@Martin:
If we bring them in, it will play out like finance did. Just replace “finance sector” with “energy sector”.
“Mistakes were made. People were too dependent on fossil fuels (cheap credit). Government regulators failed (SEC).”
We’ll end up talking about “lost jobs”, and how we can’t stifle their pioneer spirit, with “plain vanilla” drilling.
BP would love to talk about “energy” and “regulation”, instead of dead birds.
Jacob Davies
Boo hoo for the investors in “pretty much every” pension fund in the UK. You invest your money in a company that is so badly managed that it can’t adhere to standard safety practices and causes a multi-billion dollar catastrophe – well that is called “a shitty investment” and your massive losses are “what happens to people who make shitty investments”.
Perhaps you should have picked fund managers who were willing to do minimal due diligence on the 1/7th of their portfolio that was tied up in BP and ensured that they were well-managed enough that they weren’t running serious risks of billion-dollar accidents to save a few million bucks here and there on exploration rigs.
I say this as a bona fide Briton albeit one who lives in the US and has 0 money in UK pension funds, and in fact I have all my retirement money in an index fund because I don’t trust fund managers to gamble with my money – but if I did, and a company that was a major component of my retirement fund caused a colossal environmental catastrophe costing many billions of dollars and devastating several entire industries, that would be TOUGH SHIT.
Allan
Looks like Greg Sargent finally got Boner’s spokesperson, the Other Michael Steel with no E, to eat the last bite of crow that was still on the table.
Platonicspoof
@numbskull:
If googling, try “tax deductions”, rather than “tax breaks”, to see another way in which we will be indirectly charged for part of the costs.
E.g.,
I haven’t double checked this example, and I expect the actual code is too complicated for me anyway.
dmsilev
@Allan: I found this bit to be especially hilarious:
These folks project so much, they should be the movie business.
dms
Makewi
How’s Urkel’s ass kicking going anyway?
asiangrrlMN
In the words of the immortal Jon Stewart, BP, Donohue, Boehner, and anyone else who wants the taxpayers to pay for one red cent of this hot mess: Go Fuck Yourself.
I agree that we, as a society, are too comfortable with the use of cheap fossil fuel (look at how much bitching people did when gas went over three bucks). However, that is a separate issue than the rampant corruption that went on in MMS and all the corner-cutting BP took. They had over 700 citations over the last three years. The next closest competitor? 8. Yes, all the companies do this kind of shit, but not to the degree that BP did. Let’s focus on that first (along with the regs), and then we can tackle the broader policy implications.
kay
@dmsilev:
Listen to them. The blame shifting started with Palin, of course.
It’s environmentalist’s fault because BP wouldna been OUT in all that deep water if we hadn’t ‘a chased ’em!
Listen to conservatives across the board and look for “BP”
The responsible party is barely mentioned. It’s Obama, or tree huggers, or “government”. It’s freaking amazing. There is an entity at fault here, and it isn’t difficult to see who that might be. Conservatives are pointing at everyone but the oil company, the same way they pointed at everyone but the banks.
SiubhanDuinne
@stuckinred: Agreed. Have never attended an Arlington funeral but have attended a couple of military funerals at other sites, and they never fail to be first-class all the way.
Platonicspoof
@Makewi:
Are you recommending buying BP shares at this time?
wrb
@sukabi:
This
wrb
Can’t get a jobs bill passed?
This is the perfect opportunity.
$100bn for clean-up, compensation, and research into technologies that will prevent future spills- and recoup the money from BP.
WPA here we come.
It is so fucking obvious I could scream.
sukabi
@wrb: what?
sukabi
@wrb: that’s what I’m advocating… it should be a no-brainer, but it looks like there are no brains in charge.
Americanadian
@wrb: But that might imply that government can do something right, and thus IT IS BAD FOR ‘MURIKA.
When 40-45% of the government believes truly, deeply and passionately that government can’t do anything right, they can be relied on to do everything in their power to prove themselves right.
wrb
@sukabi:
I agree with your prescriptions except for the changing horses on plugging the leak bit. I don’t see how a better or more motivated team could be assembled.
And I’m pretty much ok with how Obama has handled cleanup and restitution to date because he was faced with a moving target- BP has been assuring everyone that they were on the verge of stopping it.
But now is time to go all in on clean up and restoration, ensure that no one and nothing is more hurt than can be avoided and to take full political and economic advantage of the situation.
If there is one pool of oil uncollected and collectable and there is one boat on the gulf not yet chartered, that is stupid. If there is one mile of coastline not protected by absorbent boom, that is stupid.
Makewi
@Platonicspoof:
Nah. It seems like the Chinese have that covered.
Martin
@Ruckus:
@kay:
Then nobody should be surprised or critical of any reaction out of Britain that we’re singling them out – to a degree, we are. At least, from the outside it cannot be discerned whether or not we are.
That’s what needs to change and I don’t mind it if Britain applies some pressure if it helps us get it a bit more right. If we don’t want to offend Britain, then maybe Congress could cast their net a bit broader to demonstrate we’re not only after them.
(I don’t think Britain is in any way offended – probably just concerned that with their own economic problems, their largest corporation just stabbed themselves in the heart and Congress is now about to twist the knife, and that’s only going to add to their woes.)
Makewi
Heck of a job Barracky, with a bonus Government is hard.
Makewi
@kay:
It’s funny how everything is the fault of the right wingers with you. You may be the smartest one here, but this is a like a nervous tic.
wrb
@Makewi:
It was reasonable to think that BP had plenty of motovation to throw everything at fixing the mess. I don’t see anything wrong with starting out with that assumption. Time to adjust to the contrary evidence though. He does that Obama will have done fine.
Mnemosyne
Why am I not surprised that Makewi is all in favor of spending taxpayer money so a massive corporation doesn’t have to pay for their own mistakes? I guess it’s not the stockholders’ fault that BP was too cheap to put safety equipment on the well, so the citizens of the US need to pay for the cleanup so the poor, innocent stockholders don’t have to suffer. They might have to wait until next year to upgrade their Lear jet.
kay
@Martin:
I understand what you’re saying, but I’d like to take it out of the context of “offending” anyone.
I guess what bothers me is, as an individual, the United States would not be offended if BP sued me for damages, when I destroyed their property.
Would BP be saying “Cast a wider net. There are many like Kay”?
We are only after them, as far as money damages.
Look, I’d be happy if Congress would just shut up and get to work, I’ve never been a huge fan of hyperventilating and screeching, but then they’d be accused of not channeling our rage, or something.
A series of specific events happened here. There is the entity that did the damage, and there is the damage. If BP wants to withdraw from this inhospitable country, and not do business here anymore, they can do that. I know individuals will be hurt financially (shareholders, perhaps employees) but what am I to do about that? Surely the answer isn’t to shift the focus to Exxon, out of even-handedness? Isn’t that almost an incentive to be careless? A broad finding of responsibility all around! Wouldn’t it be great if you or I were judged like that?
Obama/MMS have some responsibility here. Our non-energy policy has some responsibility here. Our inability as citizens to face anything head-on is in this. But none of that changes what happened.
Martin
@kay: But the ongoing impact of this isn’t just due to BP. If we want better regulatory controls, or even more effective oversight within the current policy, and we want better responses, the cost of that shouldn’t just come out of BP, but out of the broader industry. The national industry groups that were formed after Valdez to organize cleanups that are now failing terribly aren’t just a failure of BP but of the broader industry.
Sure, we want these costs out of BP, but our target is really broader than just BP, and the fact that we didn’t address this shit until this moment is a poor reflection on us. Yeah, I get that this is the trigger, but nobody should have assumed that this could never happen and the $75M cap was put there deliberately. So now, all of a sudden, it looks like Congress is realizing that ‘Hey, this non-US company is going to get off not compensating people and not paying for the cleanup, we ought to fix this law’. I’m don’t care about the party politics of this (because nobody else would care anyway), it’s just damn lazy of us, that’s all. It’s bad enough that this is happening, but Congress seems intent on demonstrating that not only were we shitty at legislating against disaster in the past, even with this monumental industrial disaster, we still can’t manage to bring ourselves to legislate well to protect against the future.
kay
@Martin:
I’m just not sympathetic to this, because I’m told over and over by business-types that entities like BP are in it for the bottom line, and return to shareholders, and on and on, and thinking they’d feel some duty to behave decently or responsibly is naive and silly.
And I accept that. Okay. That’s the deal. Lesson learned.
Then they screw up massively and all of a sudden they have a nationality and a heart, and it’s about people.
MBSS
the criminal negligence case looks like a slam dunk. if there isn’t a conviction it would be a marcia clark level fail. there should be more than enough evidence from the last few weeks reporting from the WSJ alone to seal the deal. yes, limited corporate liability will buffer the executives, but, i’d love to see a conviction anyway.
mike papantonio is leading the civil suit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/11/us/11liability.html?pagewanted=2
Mike Papantonio, a Florida lawyer, has many cases involving fishermen and shrimpers, but he is also filing civil racketeering claims intending to tie the BP blowout to the what he sees as close collaboration between the industry and Bush administration officials.
“It’s a case that helps us reflect on where we are after eight years,” Mr. Papantonio said. The relaxation of regulatory oversight “disconnected the hydraulic line from your brakes,” he said.
i’d really love to see him deliver a body shot with the civil racketeering lawsuit.
i’d also love to see obama use this opportunity to end all offshore drilling, but, unfortunately, it looks like it’s going the other way. and, to be honest, i never expected obama to do something like that, and that’s why i would never vote for him.
http://money.cnn.com/2010/06/08/news/economy/drilling/index.htm
Ken
@Dave C: Yes, your desire for public hangings does reflect poorly on your character. However, as my own fantasies are more Saw–like, I am in no position to criticize.
Martin
@kay: Ok, but the entire economic recession is no different, except by scale. From the shrinking retirement accounts to the lack of jobs, 80% of the entire economy is a case of chasing the bottom line and returning value to shareholders. We then have no more case to be concerned about the economy and jobs than you’re saying the British have to be concerned about the effect of a struggling BP on their retirement and their economy and tax base.
Just because we can single out to one member of the free market doesn’t mean that their actions and impact is any different than all the other members. If BP is supposed to twist in the wind and the British can’t be worried about it, then our economy can equally twist in the wind and we need to stop complaining about it – and about the income disparity 3 blog posts up, and so on.
MBSS
i just want to see white collar criminals treated like blue collar criminals. instead of locking them up the way we would someone who holds up a 7-11, we feature them in magazine spreads, and we collectively drool over their yachts and travertine and marble tiled bathrooms. lifestyles of the rich and conscienceless.
eat the rich. or at least nibble off their feet and hands so they can’t day trade anymore.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@Mnemosyne: It’s all pretty diabolical if you think about. Wingnuts deregulate over decades, corrupt oversight and watchdog agencies with PRon watching gawd fearing other wingnuts. Shit happens, Ie, Wallstreet, etc, etc. and now a big fucking hole in the Ocean Floor that is spewing Texas T whilst wasting petro dollars and killing the Pelicans and Cracker ways of life.
Obama doesn’t bail them out like the nutters are screaming the soshulist Kenyan did with the Banksters. So they perform a double axel dismount and call for saving the oilsters by keeping the Crackers and Capitalists happy and in the black, no pun.
Then if and when Obama does their bidding it’s a reverse double axel remount into the rarified airs of red baiting the ACORN stooge for taking over big bidness per his evile designs on world domination and tea bagger concentration camps.
No muss, some fuss.
MBSS
the scary thing would be BP managing to pay off the shareholders and execs, then filing bankruptcy and leaving the tab to you and me.
i’ve heard rumbles that they have been furiously shuffling and reshuffling assets.
the government has demanded that they set aside 2.5 billion for the cleanup, but it looks like the tab will far exceed that sum. i’m thinking 100’s of billions and the inevitable result is a coastline damaged for a century nonetheless.
wrb
@MBSS:
Hopefully he’s not that stupid.
Ending offshore drilling would kill the chances of passing a climate change/green energy bill. Doing so is way more important than whether we add some more offshore platforms to the thousands already there.
I despair of those with whom we have to share any liberal coalition.
Citizen Alan
@wrb:
At a minimum, we should end all deepwater drilling. We plainly don’t have the technology to do it safely nor do we have a corporate culture that would even attempt to do it safely if it cost too much.
Mnemosyne
@MBSS:
Enjoy having President Caribou Barbie in 2012, then. Unless you somehow think the Republicans are going to do a 180 between now and 2012, drop all of the teapartiers, and become responsible adults who will properly regulate industry, them’s your choices: disappointing but not insane or completely batshit crazy.
MBSS
@wrb:
ditto.
and i mean that like patrick swayze in “ghost.”
MBSS
we don’t share much. i’m a green and you are democrats.
we can both mock uncle pat, and republican hypocrisy. it seems to end there. democratic hypocrisy is taboo.
kay
@Martin:
I have to think about this, Martin. I feel as if you’re taking me down this path that is endless, and ever-broadening.
If we were to find out that BP was criminally negligent, and “returning value to shareholders” ended with 11 dead, can we then single them out?
There’s hysteria and anger and politicking, so I’ll wait and see, but it looks like their safety record sucks. If their safety record sucks regarding human beings, what chance does a body of water have?
MMS shouldn’t have been accepting BP’s bogus self-reporting, but maybe BP shouldn’t be in a business that involves this much risk, if they had such disdain for the regs that they thought it was about filling out a form, and not about actual good practice.
Makewi
@Mnemosyne:
And it isn’t surprising that you are so willing to just pretend that you know what I want.
Mnemosyne
@Makewi:
Oh, I’m not pretending, sweetie. I know you would rather let the taxpayers pick up the bill for the cleanup than let poor, innocent BP suffer any more. And then you’ll blame Obama for doing what you want and claim you wanted the opposite all along because shut up, that’s why.
It’s a cycle we’ve seen from you more than once.
Viva BrisVegas
It might also be worthwhile mentioning that BP is owned about 40% in the UK, 39% in the US and 21% elsewhere.
So as far as foreign corporations go, BP is not all that foreign.
After all why would the CIA have worked so hard in 1953 to give BP the Iranian oil fields? And thereby gifted the rest of us with the Islamic State of Iran.