Damn BP and Damn the Corporate Criminals

There were a couple of major court rulings getting handed down today, but the one I want to jump to first is the one that makes me angriest and affects me more directly (as I live in one of the affected states).  Today a judge issued a ruling over who bears the most blame for the disastrous explosion and subsequent Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010:

...BP PLC already has agreed to pay billions of dollars in criminal fines and compensation to people and businesses affected by the disaster. But U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier's ruling could nearly quadruple what the London-based company has to pay in civil fines for polluting the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 spill.

Barbier presided over a trial in 2013 to apportion blame for the spill that spewed oil for 87 days in 2010. Eleven men died after the well blew.

The judge essentially divided blame among the three companies involved in the spill, ruling that BP bears 67 percent of the blame; Swiss-based drilling rig owner Transocean Ltd. takes 30 percent; and Houston-based cement contractor Halliburton Energy Service takes 3 percent.

In his 153-page ruling, Barbier said BP made "profit-driven decisions" during the drilling of the well that led to the deadly blowout.

"These instances of negligence, taken together, evince an extreme deviation from the standard of care and a conscious disregard of known risks," he wrote.

BP is of course going to appeal the decision - 'cause God forbid they'll openly accept the blame after fighting this for four years - but are claiming they believe "that an impartial view of the record does not support the erroneous conclusion reached by the District Court."

You want impartial?

Here's impartial:

• Eleven workers died.
• A massive explosion happened on a BP-owned oil rig, from what turned out to be from years of intentional negligence ignoring safety standards, all in a rush to get a rig running to churn out billions in profits.
• A massive ecological disaster occurred as millions of gallons of crude oil - toxic, stifling - poured into the Gulf on a scale that dwarfed all previous oil spills.
• Eleven families lost their loved ones.
• Entire industries dependent on the Gulf for living - tourism, fishing - were wiped out or hit hard, and will remain so for years to come.
• What part of "eleven men lost their lives" do you not get, BP?

It doesn't help BP's case that they've been slow to pay up for damages they've already agreed to own up.  Like any crook, they are loathe to part with the money they've so rightly killed other people to keep.

Some of the online chatter about BP's corrupt practices here, about the satisfaction that finally someone in authority is holding this corporation accountable for the blood on their ledger, is about how the insane rhetoric of the uber-rich claiming "corporations are people" ought to let this follow that logic to its rightful conclusion: putting BP as a corporation on death row for the deaths it caused.  There's a part of that which comes across as poetic justice: the truth is that will never happen, as it's impossible to strap a company logo down into the electric chair.  What should happen is that the courts - that Judge Barbier - should start forcing the CEOs and board of directors of these negligent criminal corporations to pay up in total all that they should.

No more delays.  No more excuses.  Pay all the damn fines and then some.  If these corporate overlords of malice and inhumanity refuse to, then throw them in jail until they do.  Did you know Exxon - the company responsible for the other major oil spill from hell the Valdez - still hasn't paid off their fines they had agreed to pay (they're still fighting it in the courts)?  Make them - Exxon, BP, all the other corporations wrecking havoc across our world - accountable to the law.  MAKE THEM ACCOUNTABLE TO THE PEOPLE WHO SUFFERED.

We are long overdue for true justice.

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Hostage Taking Cannot Fail, It Can Only Be Failed...

The Shutdown Showdown of 2013 is kicking into third gear as I type this, and it ain't pretty.

From The National Review and thence to other news sources like ThinkProgress, the GOP House leadership has crafted a list of demands for Obama and the Democratic Senate leadership to surrender to:

As the nation moves dangerously close to a government shutdown on Oct. 1, House leaders are shifting their focus to the next big fiscal fight: raising the nation’s $16.7 trillion borrowing limit by one year before Oct. 17. On Wednesday night, Republicans circulated an outline of demands, threatening to push the nation into default unless President Obama and the Democrats in the Senate agree to enact a wish list of Republican priorities.

Though Obama has repeatedly insisted that he would not negotiate over the must-pass legislation, leadership is hoping to satisfy conservative members by including every “major piece of the Republican agenda” save a “ban on late-term abortions — and some lawmakers who oppose abortion were arguing to add that,” the Washington Post reports...

Igor Volsky's ThinkProgress article - alongside Derek Thomspon's over at The Atlantic - proceeded to break down the demands, which I can summarize here as well:

1. Delay Obamacare by one year.  Rather than defund or eliminate outright, the Republicans would at least want Obamacare stopped from being enacted before more Americans find out the health care reforms might actually work.  At least until the 2014 midterms, during which the Tea Party candidates can indulge in more fear-mongering to scare up votes and campaign moneys.  Meanwhile, the delay will cut into elements of Obamacare that have already kicked in, causing even more confusion.
2. Weaken/defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  Created as a response to the massive fraud that led to the 2007 Economic Crisis / Great Recession, the CFPB is a bogeyman agency for the Far Right who prefer to deregulate everything and let the uber-rich banks defraud everyone until there's another need for a massive bank bailout.
3. Approval to build the Keystone Pipeline.  This is a pet issue for Republicans who view this as "more oil more money" kind of thing as their energy platform (drill baby drill).  This also includes letting the Coal industry and offshore drilling companies getting everything they want.
4. Enact the budget and tax plan created by Paul Ryan.  It's basically the plan he campaigned for as Romney's Veep partner, and it basically disqualifies the fact that a majority of Americans voted against it by voting against Romney/Ryan.  Plus the simple fact the Ryan budget is evil.
5. Cut funding to health care and social safety net programs, and enact a method of "means testing" Medicare (what is "means testing"?  It's where they test a person's eligibility for Medicare, and the GOP can be mean about it.).  Means testing, my ass: Republicans want any excuse to cut people off Medicare, they just want to cover up what they're actually doing by hiding behind Orwellian wording.
6. Massive cuts to the federal employee pension fund.  Considering the massive number of people reaching retirement age, this is bound to not work out well.
7. Block recent federal regulations capping greenhouse gases.  Because we all know that greenhouse gases are vital to the functioning of our proud country.
8. Tort reform.  Like it was the lawyers' fault doctors commit malpractice or corporations commit fraud/failed safety standards.
9. Passing the Republicans' ideas of "jobs bills"... which are A) cutting safety regulations everywhere and with little to no evidence ending those regs would create more jobs, and B) massive tax cuts to corporations that won't require those tax savings go to actual job creation or wage growth.

I'm with Andrew Sullivan on this: "why not ask for Obama's resignation while they're at it?"

What the sheer gob-smacking scale of these demands means is that the GOP effectively wants to nullify the last election entirely (except of course for their gerrymandered, no-popular vote House majority). The staggering thing about this party as it now exists is that it views the governance of the other party as always effectively illegitimate. Elections do not matter. Only their agenda matters. No compromise is possible, even when this kind of catastrophic default is hanging over our heads. In fact, the danger of catastrophic default is something they relish in order to undo the basic principles of democratic government.

This is not a bargaining position; they already voted for the budget that requires us to raise the debt ceiling. It is a bald attempt to reverse elections as the mark of a democracy and replace them with endless blackmail until they get their way. This isn't conservatism. It’s pure constitutional vandalism...

Sullivan later makes a question about American history where a party in the minority made such an egregious list of demands... and he quickly got an answer from readers who pointed out that yes this has happened before.  Back in 1860, when the Republicans were poised to elect Lincoln into the White House, the slavery-owner leadership of the Southern Democrats faction threatened secession unless Lincoln caved on all demands.  And when it became clear the South had little to threaten with, they seceded and forced the civil war (anyone calling it a War of Northern Aggression is selling you snake oil.  The South wanted a fight and by God they got one).

It shouldn't be a surprise that the end result of Nixon's Southern Strategy would have the southern conservative agenda seek another go at wrecking the nation.  We shouldn't be at all surprised that the Far Right - in the House, Senate, and wingnut media - want push this issue well over the cliff (no matter how much the party's own leadership is aware of the disaster that awaits them).  Their way or the highway.

This "negotiation" over the debt ceiling and the budget by having the Republicans demand this "We Get Everything WE Want" wish list is in my mind akin to a bank robber taking hostages during a heist... and then demanding that not only the cops let him go with all the cash from that bank, but that the cops help him rob three or four more banks right down the road because dammit he's in the right.  That's not negotiating.  That's not even practical hostage-taking.  That's batshit insanity. (pardon my Swedish)

There is no reason for Obama or Reid to answer this list at all.  The Republicans can scream all they want about who to blame when the debt ceiling crisis reaches the Defcon-1 level.  Insisting the majority party enact the worst elements of the minority party's agenda isn't democracy, isn't republican, and isn't sane.

And the polls are reflecting that, yes Americans know exactly who to blame if the shit goes down.

I want every voter to remember this by November 2014: The Republicans do not care to compromise, they do not care to govern, they do not care period.  They want it all.

Please for the love of God vote them out.

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Meanwhile In Other News From the Crazy Week: This Is What We Get When We Deregulate, People

That other bad tragic event from last week - the massive explosion of a fertilizer factory in West, TX - has this not-so-shocking revelation:

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security requires fertilizer plants and depots to disclose amounts of ammonium nitrate, which can be used to make a bomb, above 400 lbs. The West, Texas plant, West Fertilizer, reportedly held 270 tons of the substance, 1,350 times that limit.
"This facility was known to have chemicals well above the threshold amount to be regulated under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards Act (CFATS), yet we understand that DHS did not even know the plant existed until it blew up,"  Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Considering that the factory caught on fire when we were told there weren't supposed to be any flammable chemicals there... Considering that the factory EXPLODED with a force knocking out the surrounding schools and nursing home and apartments... This isn't shocking.  There were clearly flammable stuff there: there were clearly too much nitrate/explosive compounds there.

The reason this all happened was very simple: our nation's system of safety and regulation protocols surrounding dangerous chemicals has fallen apart.  Due to a combination of relaxed laws and serious budget cuts and failure to fully staff our agencies to ensure regulations are upheld, this disaster and other fatal accidents elsewhere have happened.

THERE IS A VERY GOOD REASON WE HAVE LAWS: TO PROTECT PEOPLE.

There is a very good reason why we have regulations: to make sure those laws are enforced.  To make sure the people we are trying to protect - workers, emergency responders, neighbors, entire communities - stay safe.

The arguments for deregulation - they're too expensive, they punish free enterprise, businesses can self-regulate - fall apart after each coal mine disaster, each crashed airplane, each exploding factory, each worker killed.  Every excuse or alternative can't explain away the facts that if we had stricter enforcement of factory safety with chemicals, if that company truly played by the rules, if our regulators like OSHA or the Chemical Safety Board had more budget and more staff, we wouldn't have had that explosion killing people.

And our Republican overlords want to cut even further into our government budgets, weakening our ability to regulate and ensure public safety even further as well.  All because they hate government regulations, and all because they hate raising taxes on the uber-rich to pay for sh-t our nation desperately needs.

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