The BP Gulf Disaster

Remove all ads!

yeah... an American Jury

 

I don't know what that has to do with it. Before anything can be determined for sure, there will have to be a complete investigation. I have a feeling that BP has bought a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. Nevertheless, criminal guilt would be a hard thing to determine in a case like this, where eveyone is playing major CYA. I think Obama did the best he could, given what he was up against (just the politics of this are HUGE). A real investigation would take years, and the American people are not in a patient mood, especially those along the Gulf.

 

The Godfather is NOT some dumb mafia movie.

As for the situation at hand if someone doesn't make heads roll it is a disgrace. People need to be held accountable for this, this was no "accident". An accident is when you lose control over your car on an icy road and bump into another car. This is a man made disaster that could and should have been prevented. A few years of prison time and enough damages to cripple BP for decades is called for (doesn't even matter who they send to prison as long as someone goes).

 

They tried. Or, at least, the EPA tried to force BP to use a less toxic dispersant. It didn't work.

Clinton appologized to China about the Arizona Immigration law. What here surprises you?

Seriously, though, the only think it appears to me that the government has done is seek to lay blame, and demonize anyone involved. That was one of the first things they did, and this was not the first call to seize BP assets to make sure they pay out what they should. I understand not giving them the benefit of the doubt any more, but could we at least try to be legal about it? The original proposal, a retro-active law, isn't.

This is just stupid. This is why all the news reports are reporting that BP agreed to set up the account. Because Obama couldn't force them to.

 

I still say that legally Transocean are responsible, it was their rig.

If someone leases the club for a private party, they tell us what they want to do, we tell them what they can do, and we are still responsible for the safety of the guests and the club for the duration. If someone climbs up the rigging, I have to get them down, they cant just do what they want because theyve leased the place.

 

Aldeth, I used the term "inconvenienced" because the stronger words I wanted to use can't be used on SP -- I am well aware that it is an extreme understatement.

Barmy, I get that you think the Americans are overreacting. But this was not an unforeseeable incident. Corporate executives sitting safe and secure in air-conditioned offices made safety decisions that cost lives and wreaked havoc on the environment -- everyone knows that I am pretty well anti-green but even I can see the tremendous impact this spill will have on the ecosystem of the area. The cuts were made to increase profits -- pure greed, no other motive. The executives should be made to pay for their greed, but that's highly unlikely. They'll manage to wriggle out of it and other people will be forced to pay.

 

1. It is a movie about the mafia
2. It isn't exactly Shakespeare, or even close.

I have no idea what that has to do with the topic, the spill in the Gulf, or BP. Can you explain?

Get a grip. Some Republicans actually accused the president of being "in bed with the oil companies" because he was not being tough enough at first.

---------- Added 1 hours, 51 minutes and 30 seconds later... ----------

I thought this was a reasonably interesting discussion on a few of the issues raised on this topic:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036789/vp/37775953#37775953

 

The point was that politicians apologizing to others for things their country has done but they oppose is nothing new. Clinton was the most recent example, and most egregious, considering who she apologized to. It was a stupid move for both parties, but nothing new.

... That's part of my grip. You noticed I said 'the government', not 'the Democrats'? Both parties are guilty of this, just on different targets. And it's entirely the wrong thing to do. For both of them. Both groups saw this happen and the first thing that came to their mind was the potential political fallout, and they haven't let go of it yet.

I think some of this is a good analysis. People seeking to blame Obama need look no further than the MMS. He knew there were problems before he even took office. Of course, he doesn't bear that responsability alone. He shares it with the likes of Bush and Clinton. Those seeking to place any more blame on him for this than that are just plain wrong. Beyond that, he's only responsible for the response.

More of it, though, is just more of the same thing they're criticizing. One of them is calling this 'more Bush's fault than Obama's'. BS. Equal, maybe, but not more. Bush created it, but Obama turned a blind eye to it. And the response to it is all on Obama.

 

The Chinese did not destroy the Gulf of Mexico.

What did the country do that Hillary apologized for?

That's not the fault of politicians - it's the nature of our media culture, at the moment, unfortunately. The president (either party) has to worry about who's going to stick a political knife in his back, while at the same time trying to fix a problem. This is an election year, so why do think the Republicans made this guy go out in front of the cameras and apologize for his apology? Talk about being "strong-armed and forced...."

The blame goes straight to BP, and, as others have pointed out, those partners who were involved in the construction and operation of the platform. Bush is not to blame, Obama is not to blame, certainly Clinton, who was president like 10 years ago, is not to blame. BP got its lease, it has the resources to manage it; if the company that operated the platform knew that it was not to spec, it could have refused to continue, regardless of BP's arrogant requests. People, both in and out of government, wanted a deregulated industry and that's what they got. Just a few months ago everyone was shouting, "Drill, baby, drill," since everyone wants the oil, including the general public. As someome commented, Obama was writing leases every few minutes for these guys.

The point is that people who are whistle-blowers and try to fix these kind of problems, before they happen, end up with short careers - and no one cares. The least little attempt at trying to prevent a crisis is seen as a "government take-over," because people are more worried about the politics than are about actually trying to fix a problem. It's all about deregulation, and keeping government in its place, whatever that is supposed to be. And of course, blame government because Big Oil just lost the Gulf of Mexico. At least the taxpayer won't be stuck with THIS corporate scew-up. That's a nice change - for once.

 

hmmm.... doesnt the government carry out health and safety checks on these rigs?
unarranged spot checks?

 

Do they?

 

Thats what Im saying, do they? the british government carries out strict health and safety checks on everything.

 

I'm not sure, but I know there are thousands of wells operarting off-shore in the US. I don't know where they would find the manpower to send a guy to check all of them. There appears to be about 50,000 wells alone in the Gulf. As I said, the industry pretty much regulates itself, or so it seems.

http://robslink.com/SAS/democd33/borehole.htm

 

If youve got an industry which regulates itself...

could you imagine if the media were unregulated?

the way the UK does things, doesnt matter about the man power, because they make the businesses they inspect pay for the visit

 

I don't have to. Our media is unregulated.

 

You know a situation is important to the puclic when gaming comics start referencing it

 

Read my post, #44. You obviously missed that part.

If that's your feeling, then you must be content letting the blame for the recession fall only on the CEOs, and not on any politicians involved. Mind you, I understand such a position, and I wouldn't even criticize you for it. It's just not what I've seen in the past.

This is so confused and mixed, I don't even know where to start. One, there was a whistleblower. In 2008. Two, government takeover of what? A government regulatory body? God forbid the government should manage control of... itself. Thirdly, as I've heard it, there wasn't actually any serious deregulation, just the complete corruption of the regulators. This was a failure of enforcement, not regulation. And don't get me wrong, BP holds plenty of the blame for this. The vast majority, in fact. And, lastly, don't be sure about the taxpayers getting off light. First off, taxpayers are also consumers, and this will end up costing us at the pump, most likely. Secondly, at least on the state level, there have been some serious questions about who's going to pay for things like the National Guard. Obama authorized the troops, but not the money to pay them, which means the states would have to pay and hope to get re-imbursed by BP.

Yes, they do. Or, at least, in theory, yes. In practice it looks like the rigs performed their own inspections, often literally writing the reports themselves and just having the inspector sign them.

 

Really? What's "obvious" to me is that Arizona is a state not a country.

I'm not a part of the deregulation crowd - a least not generally. I think deregulation is fine as long as the public, as both citizens and consumers, are protected to a reasonable degree. We should not kill economic growth at the expense of trying to protect citizens in an "iron-clad" box, but a degree of reasonable protection is a good function of government (like making fraud illegal).

Regarding the meltdown: no one in government hinted, suggested, or demanded that lenders and Wall Street firms commit fraud. If you remove the amount of fraudulent loans that were given out, and repackaged as structured investments by firms, the meltdown would have had much less impact on the economy. Greenspan has commented that the government knew that fraud was occurring in the lending and investment industry, but claimed that there was not much the government could do about it. I posted this on another thread, but I will post it here, since you want to know if I blame CEOs for the meltdown:



They knew that there was fraud in the system. But Greenspan, nor Bush, ever suggested that companies commit fraud. That is something firms decided on themselves. Greenspan says there was not much that banking regulators could do regarding fraud. Personally, I find that hard to believe, but I don't know enough about the regulations to know if government could have clamped down on the firms regarding structured investments and how they are supposed to be rated for the investors who purchase these investment products. I believe that packing a subprime loan as a AAA rated investment is fraud. If investors knew what they were really getting, they would never have purchased them, at least if they had any sense. But they [CDOs] were sold as something that they were not - that's fraud.

What I do know is that a handful of banks control most of the economy of the US. That in itself is pretty scary.

...And that amounted to what?

Talk about "confused" and mixed...what are you talking about?

Heard from whom? Show me.

 

... I fail to see the importance of that distinction. Obama's a president, not a senator, too. Clinton apologized to China for what Arizona did. This guy apologized to BP for what Obama did. Neither one was criticizing themselves, but rather what someone else they're somewhat associated with had done.

I agree entirely, but I see a knee-jerk reaction in parts of American culture toward regulation. That crowd is already calling for more regulation of off-shore drilling. Never mind that the regulations in place were ignored, or that the regulations in place would have prevented this if they had been followed. The opposite side, of course, has a knee-jerk reaction toward de-regulation, which is just as bad.

From the news reports on the corruption. All of them. There were inspections going on. There were applications being filed. There were requirements being checked. They were just all rubber-stamped, often by the people who were subject to them. The blowout preventer didn't fail because it wasn't required; it failed because no one had bothered to make sure it was working.

 

NOG,
the point is not regulation per se but it's (lack of) enforcement. Decades of appointing people hostile to the idea of regulation, seeing it as being bad for business - starting under Reagan to whom 'government was the problem', and in part continued under Clinton and culminating in the Bush administration - have left the responsible bodies underfunded and with a ruined institutional culture. That extends to all regulation, starting with environmental protection and safety standards and ending with financial regulation. The result is rapacious behaviour in the markets.

The mentality generated that way saw regulatory agencies as 'service providers' for the industry which led to a culture of rubber stamping and (intentionally) ineffective enforcement (think of not being able to stop a coal mine from operating despite literally hundreds of safety violations; not inspecting a rig at all; the comptroller of the currency actively preventing states to do something about the emerging mortgage crisis (by invoking responsibility for the matter - to then do nothing), diluting enforcement by amending or changing laws (making it harder for regulators to impose sanctions) etc. pp.). That's just some of the manifestations of the malaise I described before.

Regulatory agencies are service providers for the public good - much like the fire department making sure that houses meet fire safety standards. They are there to enforce regulatory laws issued in order prevent harm from the country and the population at large - not to make industries happy. Regulatory agencies are essentially white collar crime cops.

What is needed is not new regulation but roll-back of the 'oversight is bad for business' mentality and proper enforcement - starting by appointing competent and diligent people who see merit in regulation and serving the public good - and firing those who are incompetent or see themselves as buddies of the industries they are supposedly regulating. And it does require adequate funding, manpower and, as it takes several years to train the necessary highly specialised staff and re-develop competences lost due to cuts of the past, a long term commitment.