Day 86 of the oil gusher.
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USA is #1
ACLU releases torture report.
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Just when you honestly thought things couldn't get any worse for BP. This is disgusting, if true. From Mother Jones:
Is there a connection between BP and the terrorist convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103? Four senators want to know what sway the oil giant may have had in securing the release of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi in exchange for a $900 million offshore oil drilling deal with Libya.
Megrahi, the only person convicted of bombing that killed 270 people in 1988, was released from prison in Scotland last August. A Scottish court granted the release after doctors claimed that Megrahi was terminally ill from prostate cancer and had only three months to live. The release, of course, prompted plenty of outrage. The bomber is still alive, and just this week one of the doctors that gave that dire prognosis last year came forward to assert that the Libyan government paid him to make that claim. Now four senators–Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)—are calling on the State Department to investigate whether the oil giant was involved in the deal-making, and whether "BP might use blood money" to pay for damages in the Gulf of Mexico.
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GOP Candidate: Obama And Carnahan Want To Take Away Your Chance To Find The Lord (AUDIO)
Unbelievable, but people'll fall for it.
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"Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana says he supports conservative organizations challenging President Barack Obama's citizenship in court." What do you expect from a guy who wears diapers when patronizing prostitutes?
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I consider myself fairly cynical about the Forty Years' War Against the Middle Class, but I hadn't previously heard of this particular strategem to help (some) Americans build an aristocracy:
... Congress is feeling pressure to deal with taxes on inherited wealth, which have fallen to zero this year thanks to lawmakers' inaction. In the process, it should address the more pernicious problem of dynasty trusts.
This type of trust is new because until very recently most states had a "rule against perpetuities," which limited the term of any family trust to about 90 years, after which time the family members would own the property outright. This rule derived from the idea that property is best controlled by the living. In the mid-1990s, however, many states repealed the perpetuities rule, and now any wealthy American can set property aside for his heirs forever, simply by hiring a trustee from one of these states.
[...]
Dynasty trusts can grow much larger than the $3.5 million exemption amount would suggest. A couple can, for example, put $7 million (their two $3.5 million exemptions) into a life insurance policy owned by the trust. They apply their exemption at the start, and the trust is forever free from taxes — even when, after the death of the second spouse, the life insurance policy pays off at $100 million. Alternatively, a trust can use the $7 million as seed money for a profitable business that the trust then owns.
An ordinary trust dissipates as money is distributed to the beneficiaries. But a dynasty trust can avoid this by discouraging outright distributions and instead encouraging trustees to buy, for the use of the beneficiaries, things like houses, artwork, airplanes and even businesses. Because the trust retains ownership, the assets can pass tax-free and creditor-proof to the next generation. Beneficiaries don't pay taxes on the use of this property. In contrast, a worker whose employer provides housing or other benefits is taxed on those benefits.
But tax breaks are not the only special advantages that dynasty trusts provide. Even more troubling, they commonly include a "spendthrift clause," which provides that trust assets cannot be reached by a beneficiary's creditors. If a beneficiary causes a car accident, for example, the victim cannot be compensated with assets from the trust, even if they are the driver's only resources. So beneficiaries are free to behave as recklessly as they like, knowing that their money is forever protected for themselves and their heirs…
Jonathan Swift sensibly asserted that his Struldbrugs, those born immortal but not ageless, were forbidden to own property:
As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are looked on as dead in law; their heirs immediately succeed to their estates; only a small pittance is reserved for their support; and the poor ones are maintained at the public charge. After that period, they are held incapable of any employment of trust or profit; they cannot purchase lands, or take leases; neither are they allowed to be witnesses in any cause, either civil or criminal, not even for the decision of meets and bounds… Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequence of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public.
But to look on the lighter side, if our new "aristocracy" is successful in their long campaign to reduce America into a banana republic, at least we'll have some properly feudal entertainment—the Grey Lady is pleased to report that jousting is making a comeback!
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A tale of two oil giants
First there is British Petroleum, which pretty much fits the definition of a "rogue company."[1] They take lots of risks with safety and good practices and, when things go wrong, they don't learn a fucking thing. BP's management is a toxic stew of both arrogance and stupidity. As much as they proclaimed that safety was their number 1 priority, that was just lip service. Safety, in practice, was about the very last thing that BP cared about. Four years after a refinery explosion that killed 15 workers (and which earned BP $21 million in fines), the safety inspectors went back to the same refinery, found even more safety problems than existed at the time of the explosion and fined BP $87 million. It is clear that the institutional attitude towards safety at BP is "well, shit happens".
Then there is Exxon, now ExxonMobil. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska 21 years ago and dumped over ten million gallons of oil into the water. The environmental damage is being felt even today. Exxon's reputation took a well-justified beating. Exxon's brass decided that they did not want to be a part of a similar catastrophe and Exxon changed. They set a goal of making the company into the gold standard of safety in the oil industry.
Exxon also drilled a very deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, one that was six miles deep. They spent over 18 months doing it and over $150 million. But when Exxon's drillers thought the conditions were too severe and that the risk was too high, Exxon's management ordered them to cap the well and Exxon walked away.
BP seemed to believe, and may still do, that with a few pronouncements about safety from their corporate tower in London, that magical managerial fairy dust would be dispensed throughout the company and everyone would follow safety rules. But it is clear that whatever BP's stated safety policies may be, their actions and practices on the ground had little regard for it.
There is way to make safety work in a company. But it takes a hard-nosed attitude and even harder enforcement. BP is even now basically letting OSHA do the safety inspections and discover the problems. But if BP wants to truly change, then they have to find their own problems and fix them on their own.
BP won't ever be a safe company until they break the code on that.
UPDATE: And neither will TransOcean.
Then there is Exxon, now ExxonMobil. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska 21 years ago and dumped over ten million gallons of oil into the water. The environmental damage is being felt even today. Exxon's reputation took a well-justified beating. Exxon's brass decided that they did not want to be a part of a similar catastrophe and Exxon changed. They set a goal of making the company into the gold standard of safety in the oil industry.
Exxon also drilled a very deep well in the Gulf of Mexico, one that was six miles deep. They spent over 18 months doing it and over $150 million. But when Exxon's drillers thought the conditions were too severe and that the risk was too high, Exxon's management ordered them to cap the well and Exxon walked away.
BP seemed to believe, and may still do, that with a few pronouncements about safety from their corporate tower in London, that magical managerial fairy dust would be dispensed throughout the company and everyone would follow safety rules. But it is clear that whatever BP's stated safety policies may be, their actions and practices on the ground had little regard for it.
There is way to make safety work in a company. But it takes a hard-nosed attitude and even harder enforcement. BP is even now basically letting OSHA do the safety inspections and discover the problems. But if BP wants to truly change, then they have to find their own problems and fix them on their own.
BP won't ever be a safe company until they break the code on that.
UPDATE: And neither will TransOcean.
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I can't tell you how excited I am at the prospect of a debate over birth control in the year 2010. Do these religious nuts not have anything better to do than to fight battles they lost decades ago? How about a stirring debate on heliocentrism or phlogiston?
Although I guess we should appreciate the irony that the wingnuts spent the last two years screaming that Obamacare would cut your benefits and lead to rationing, and then after it passes, the first thing the religious nutters try to do is… cut the benefits of half the nation.
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At what point are their taxes cut enough that they start creating jobs? http://brilliantatbreakfast.blogspot.com/2010/07/at-what-point-are-their-taxes-cut.html
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Accountability for official murder
It is happening in New Orleans, where more cops and former cops were charged with killing people in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
But if the DoJ is serious about stuff like this, then isn't it high time that they also look into the killings and torturing done by officials following the 9-11 attacks? The justification for the Danziger Bridge shootings and Bush's pro-torture policy are pretty much identical: "Things were chaotic." we need to clean up our own mess here. Otherwise, outsiders are going to do it for us, just as is now happening in New Orleans, where the state of Louisiana largely turned a blind eye to the killings by the NOPD.
And why doesn't the NY Times post a link to the Federal indictment on its web page? They have the one for the cops charged with shooting and killing Henry Glover and then burning his body inside of his car, which was another post-Katrina murder.
But if the DoJ is serious about stuff like this, then isn't it high time that they also look into the killings and torturing done by officials following the 9-11 attacks? The justification for the Danziger Bridge shootings and Bush's pro-torture policy are pretty much identical: "Things were chaotic." we need to clean up our own mess here. Otherwise, outsiders are going to do it for us, just as is now happening in New Orleans, where the state of Louisiana largely turned a blind eye to the killings by the NOPD.
And why doesn't the NY Times post a link to the Federal indictment on its web page? They have the one for the cops charged with shooting and killing Henry Glover and then burning his body inside of his car, which was another post-Katrina murder.
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A billboard, erected in Mason City, Iowa and funded by the North Iowa Tea Party, which depicts President Obama between Hitler and Lenin has "crossed the line", according to other Tea Party activists in the state.
Imagine how batshit crazy you have to be for the Teabaggers to think you've crossed the line.
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Awwwww. Bionic kitteh.
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Chuck Norris is hot on the trail of Obama's Boy Scout conspiracy
